The Prosecution Authority filed a request for a witness to testify via videoconference in the naturalization case related to the Al Jazeera documentary on Monday morning.
This is one of the two witnesses for whom the Prosecution had requested time in the past, in order to make it possible for them to testify, since they reside abroad. As heard in court, the specific witness, who resides in England, was deemed unable to fly to Cyprus to testify due to a medical issue, and for this reason the relevant request was submitted. It is noted that, as mentioned, any testimony he may give via videoconference will be done in cooperation with the English authorities.
The request was registered by the representative of the Prosecuting Authority, Haris Karaolidou, on Monday morning before the start of the trial and was served on the defendants' lawyers.
One of the defense attorneys, Chris Triantafyllides, noted that the medical certificate attached to the request, which states that the witness cannot travel by air to Cyprus for health reasons, is dated October 7 and is not final. Therefore, he requested further information.
The lawyers for the three defendants said that at first glance it appears that they will file an objection to the request, with the President of the Criminal Court, Nikolas Georgiades, setting Monday, February 3 as the date for hearing the request.
On Monday, the first three witnesses called by the Prosecution also testified. The first witness works in the Department of Information Services of the Ministry of Interior and has access to the database of the Department of Civil Registry and Migration. In her testimony, she stated that the database shows that Nikolay Gornovskiy's biometric data was taken on June 20, 2019.
The second witness was a police sergeant, who presented as evidence a series of photographs he received from a specific office of a Ministry of Interior official.
The third witness, also a sergeant, testified that he presented to the court documents related to the case received from the Police. Among other things, the files of the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Finance for the exceptional naturalization applications of Nikolay Gornovskiy and Almi Armoush, the investigative statement taken from the accused Antonis Antoniou, as well as data extracted from a bank account of the company George Pittatzis LLC, regarding a customer account for Nikolay Gornovskiy, were submitted.
The defense attorneys raised an objection regarding the deposition of evidence taken from the home of British real estate agent Anthony William Kay in Paralimni. Specifically, the Prosecution wanted to submit documents taken from his home, a computer and its contents.
Lawyer Chris Triantafyllides requested that the relevance of the computer be proven to the specific case, while he suggested that the specific evidence be evidence for identification by the witness in question, if he is called to testify.
Lawyer George Papaioannou requested time to examine the content of the documents, reserving the right to object if the content of the computer constitutes legally inadmissible testimony.
Lawyer Andreas Pittatzis said that it is a jurisprudential principle that collective testimony cannot be submitted. He noted that the computer, without its content, can be submitted, but if its content is also submitted, hundreds of thousands of documents “of which we do not know the relevance, admissibility and content as a defense” are indirectly entered into the court as collective testimony.
Ms. Karaolidou noted that the relevance of the testimony of the specific computer is intertwined with the relevance of the testimony of Mr. Kay, who is included in the indictment. As she said, the content of his statements is in the possession of the defense lawyers and his testimony concerns all the facts relating to charges 2-5. “He has firsthand knowledge of the facts of the case,” she said, noting that in his statements, he also refers to elements that are directly related to the specific computer.
The court accepted the deposition of the computer, noting that it is part of the chain of presentation of evidence, while the documents found in the house were ultimately submitted without objection.
The date set for the continuation of the hearing on Wednesday, January 29, was canceled in order to give the defense time to examine evidence that the Prosecution will deliver tomorrow. Therefore, the next hearing has been set for Monday, February 3, when the testimony of the specific witness will be completed with the presentation of additional evidence and the parties will present their positions regarding the request for testimony via videoconference.
Source: KYPE
