Our View: Is appeal over passport case simply to quell public anger?

The state Law Office wasted no time in announcing its decision to appeal against the court ruling that acquitted former House president Demetris Syllouris and developer Christakis Giovanis, also an Akel deputy at the time, for a range of charges related to corruption.

The two former deputies were charged with conspiracy to defraud the Republic, abuse of power, bribing a public official and unlawful interference in citizenship procedures, based on comments they had made on a video that was illegally obtained by journalists from the Al Jazeera news organisation.

The decision of the legal service was taken a few hours after Tuesday’s ruling and announced on Wednesday, raising suspicions that the main concern was to quell public anger. Social media and newspapers were awash with critical comments about the court decision, some claiming that the prosecution had purposely done a bad job, through its selection of witnesses, omissions of the criminal investigation and the failure to use the Al Jazeera video as evidence among other things. The charge sheet for Syllouris was “very weak” claimed a columnist, reflecting public sentiment and the tendency to blame the Law Office.

Much was made of the fact that the ruling was a “split decision” by the three-member court, but this was rather misleading. On the two charges the court’s decision was unanimous while on the third charge one of the judges disagreed because of a different interpretation of the testimony provided. Under the circumstances nobody could claim this was a marginal decision, and the critics thought it was easier to direct their fire at the prosecution rather than the judges.

With great ease, commentators concluded that the two defendants were acquitted because of the incompetence of the prosecution. And this is because they assumed that the defendants were guilty before they had even stepped into court. The only evidence against them was comments they had made while being secretly filmed. Why had the Al Jazeera video not been used as evidence, asked the decision’s critics, as if the video provided indisputable evidence of the defendants’ guilt. It did not, not to mention that it had been heavily edited. Everyone knows that the film footage had been illegally obtained – the result of a criminal offence – and therefore could not have been used in court.

We do not know whether the Law Office will go ahead with the appeal it announced, but this could lead to another embarrassment. It needs to take its decisions based on the law rather than the diktats of public opinion. We suspect the prosecution of Syllouris and Giovanis was based more on political rather than legal considerations. That it led to embarrassment and accusations of ineptitude for the Law Office is a direct result of taking a decision not based exclusively on the law.