Authors: Andrew Symeou
Extradited (26 page)
Prosecution witness Jason Mordecai took an oath – agreeing to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. He started his testimony
by telling the court how close he and Jonathan were; they’d been friends from the age of eight. I could relate to that; I’d known Michael my entire life and was distraught when we lost him. It was the same year that Jonathan had died and I couldn’t imagine being in a courtroom, five years later, having to revisit such a tragic event in my life.
Jason continued his testimony:
We came to Zante on holiday and on our first night we went to Rescue club. Andrew Symeou was urinating on the stage where we were dancing. Some of it landed on me, so I went to the toilets to clean myself up. He was with another tall blond male; we didn’t talk, but I think he was with Andrew. I didn’t see the punch because I was in the toilet.
The accusation that I’d urinated in the middle of a nightclub was disgusting, and is something that I’d never even consider doing – even if I had been drinking! I kept on hearing about this blond person; where was he!? All of my friends on the holiday were Greek Cypriot – other than Aron who’s black!
Jason Mordecai was challenged about his statement made to the police in Greece, where he had stated that the blond male was the attacker.
‘I never once said that the person who hit my friend was blond! I mentioned him in the statement because I thought that he was Andrew’s friend! Mark [O’Gorman] said that Andrew punched Jonny,’ said Jason. In court, he described the attacker as having brown hair and thin sideburns that met with his goatee beard. Then he said that the attacker had eyes that he would ‘never forget’. ‘There was no doubt in my mind, or any of my friends’ minds, that it was Andrew Symeou who urinated and punched Jonny.’
I was more prepared to hear my name being defamed than the previous day in court, so it wasn’t a complete surprise. Nevertheless, my blood was still boiling and I felt like a volcano on the brink of erupting. These people had no idea who I was and no idea whether I’d killed their friend or not! If they had convinced themselves to believe it, they were very wrong. I’d spent eleven months coping in a series of Greek prisons, but composing myself that day in court was far more difficult.
When questioned about his statement to the Greek police, which stated: ‘I wish to point out that the perpetrator had shaved off his goatee on the day of the incident and had left only slightly long sideburns’, Jason’s reason was the same as Mark O’Gorman’s and Christopher Paglionico’s: that he and his friends told the Greek police that the attacker may have shaved later and to keep an open mind when searching for him.
He was then questioned about the description he gave of the attacker in his South Wales Police statement. Jason stated, ‘I didn’t mention his facial hair to the police in Wales because it was question and answer; he didn’t ask the question so I thought that he already knew.’
A recess was called and the council panel left through the side door. Jason’s two-hour-long testimony had finished and we made eye contact for a few seconds as he walked towards the public benches. I’d never looked at anyone with such fire in my eyes.
‘You’re a fucking liar,’ I mouthed. ‘You killed my best mate!’ Jason blurted, even though he wasn’t a witness to the alleged attack.
I started to breathe heavily – I was about to lose it. I couldn’t bear to hear my name being slandered any more – I wanted to explode. They were sitting on the left side of the courtroom and I couldn’t stop myself from staring in disgust. ‘You’re all liars and I’m going to sue you!’ I screamed.
‘Sue away! You’re a murderer!’ I heard an older woman say.
‘Look, he’s showing his true colours now,’ cried another older man.
It brought back flashbacks of prison: ‘
Skotoses enan anthropo, kai rotas yiati?
– You killed a man, and you ask why?’, ‘
Gamo ton! Dolofonos einai!
– Fuck him! He’s a murderer!’ I couldn’t bear any of it any more.
It was almost impossible to control myself – the volcano was erupting. My dad grabbed me and pulled me to the side. ‘Calm down, you’re doing so well! Do you really want to fuck this all up now!?’
He was right; I had to treat it in the same way as I always had and control my emotions. I stormed into the hallway and took a puff of my uncle George’s cigarette, even though I’d stopped smoking six months earlier.
Robert Hares was the fourth prosecution witness to testify. He was quite a handsome guy – tall, thin and blond. He stood confidently and told the court that he was in the Rescue club at the time of the attack. Robert said that someone was urinating on the stage where they were dancing. He went to the toilet and when he returned – according to Mark O’Gorman – the person urinating had hit Jonathan. Robert described the man as ‘slightly beefy’ and wearing a blue polo shirt; he had short dark hair and an ‘artistic beard and moustache’. ‘I didn’t see Jonathan being hit, but I saw the man urinating – and that man was Andrew Symeou.’
Robert gave the same reasons for the inconsistencies between statements, and why there was never any mention of facial hair at all; in Greece it was lost in translation – and in Wales the police officer asked only about the perpetrator’s hair and clothes.
The prosecuting lawyer stood up. ‘Can you look at the defendant?’ he said.
Robert turned around and looked me in the eyes.
‘Can you look this man in the eyes and tell the court that you are 100 per cent sure that this is the man who attacked your friend?’
‘Yes, 100 per cent.’ There was a fierce look in his eyes as he said the words and I was blasted with a numbing shudder.
George Pyromallis cross-examined Robert.
According to your statement made to Greek police at the time, the attacker was drunk, clean-shaven and wearing a blue polo shirt. There are several photographs of the defendant taken from different cameras throughout the time of the incident. These show that the defendant was in a different nightclub, wearing a yellow T-shirt with thick facial hair. How can you explain this?
‘Well … I didn’t mention the beard because I wasn’t asked about a beard – I can’t tell you about his clothing; maybe he changed his clothes?’
George began to circle the witness, forcing an animated, confused face. ‘So you’re suggesting to this court that the defendant was wearing a blue polo shirt – he attacked your friend – then ran back to his hotel, changed his clothes, sobered up and shaved his beard within a few minutes!?’
‘If someone commits a crime, they may want to change their appearance. He could have changed his clothes,’ Robert answered.
George nudged Theo, the translator. ‘
Vlepis para poly tileorasi pes tou
– Tell him he watches too much television.’ Then George began to quote Robert’s South Wales Police statement:
I can describe this male [the attacker] as being white but well-tanned, he was five foot ten inches tall with a bulky build, quite stocky, I thought he appeared to have something of a foreign appearance due to his facial features but I can’t really describe
why. He had black spiky hair, which stood up about one-two inches. He was wearing a blue polo shirt with the collars turned up and blue or dark-coloured jeans.
‘Why didn’t you mention the facial hair?’ George asked.
‘The officer didn’t ask the question.’
George looked like he was about to lose his temper. ‘But look at what you said here: “something of a foreign appearance due to his facial features”!’ George turned to the judges. ‘Look! He even says the words “facial features” and he doesn’t mention the facial hair!?’ His attention flicked back to Robert. ‘What did the police officer ask you then? Tell us, what was the question!?’
‘I can’t remember, it was a long time ago.’
Lee Burgess was the last of the five to testify – a lanky brown-haired guy who openly admitted that he was very drunk at the time of the attack. He told the court that once seeing my picture, he had a ‘feeling’ that he’d seen me before and had a ‘feeling’ that the attacker had a beard. He said that he can’t be 100 per cent sure because he did not see the incident, but believes his friends. Later in his testimony he was 100 per cent sure that the attacker was me. ‘He had features that I can’t forget. Mainly his beard and eyes.’
I was hearing the same bullshit over and over. Lee Burgess’s testimony was so ridiculous that it must have completely shattered the credibility of all five of them – if they even had a scrap of credibility to begin with.
D
uring the break before the next day in court, our solicitors in London had contacted the South Wales Police officers who had taken statements from Mark O’Gorman, Christopher Paglionico, Jason Mordecai, Robert Hares and Lee Burgess for the coroner’s inquest in Wales. The two officers agreed to make written testimonies for the trial in Greece and answer a few questions that we had.
On 8 April, George Pyromallis submitted these two statements to the court. One of the officers had stated:
In relation to the statements [of Jonathan Hiles’s friends in Wales], I can confirm that the witnesses were spoken to individually at their home addresses, with the exception of Lee BURGESS who was spoken to at his place of work, and their own accounts of the incident were discussed and then recorded in written statement format. This would have covered points of what they had seen, what they had heard, their actions before, during and after the incident and also antecedent knowledge of their friend Jonathan. This included descriptive details of the male responsible. In this case, I can only say that if there is no record of the suspect having facial hair then it was not
mentioned by the witness. I would normally ask this question when talking about descriptions. Following completion of their statements they would have been read back to the witness and following their agreement as to the content of the statements they were signed as being a true and accurate statement.
The police officer who took Christopher Paglionico’s statement said:
Generally, in obtaining a statement, I would ask the witness to give a full detailed account of what took place. I would then make notes and on completion of the witness’s first account question further to expand on any issues that I judged as being relevant to the enquiry. When obtaining descriptive details from the witness of any person or persons that they mentioned, I would ask the witness to describe in detail the person from head to toe and I would ask them to describe their facial details. Due to the passage of time, I am unable to say if on this occasion I specifically asked about facial hair; however I would have expected this to be covered when asked about any distinctive features. Finally, I would have either read the statement back to Christopher or asked him to read it himself prior to signing it as an accurate account of his evidence.
We lodged perjury suits against Jason Mordecai, Robert Hares and Lee Burgess.
Chris Kyriacou was called to testify by the public prosecutor, but was there to defend my innocence. He explained to the court that he was with me on the night of the incident in Zante. At the time of the attack we were in a completely different nightclub over 200 metres away, and told the court that our party spent the night out with two different groups of girls: Toni Martelli and her three friends – and Christina Christou and her two friends.
I’d left the island on 22 July. Chris gave a detailed account of how the police were showing my photograph, and that of another blond male, at the hotel on 24 July. They then took he and Charlie to the police station and didn’t tell him that someone had died. While questioning him in a darkened room over a period of eight hours, police officers also slapped and punched him. He said that a female translator was present and bore witness to some of the violence. She looked at Chris sympathetically, but the police officers sent her out after some time. Chris said that there were probably around fifteen police officers in the police station at the time. One of them had seized his passport from the hotel; they then violently intimidated him and forced him to sign a document in Greek that he didn’t understand. Chris told the court that he’d made a complaint to the British embassy as soon as he left the police station. Someone from the British consulate came to see him and Charlie in their hotel room – but was thrown out by the manager for trespassing.
The prosecuting lawyer made a request to the judges: ‘The testimony of the translator, Electra, who was present in the interrogation of Chris Kyriacou is necessary to submit. Her testimony may discredit the witness!’
‘I have no objection to that,’ George Pyromallis thundered. ‘But if we summon Electra, I request that we summon the translator, Jake, who was present in the questioning of Jonathan Hiles’s five friends. With his testimony, these five witnesses could be further discredited!’
The judges didn’t summon any of the translators and Chris continued his testimony:
When we got back to England we went through photographs of the night, which were taken by different people. They built a picture of the night and it wasn’t long after the holiday, so I could
remember at the time. Andrew’s family hired a solicitor and we all made statements. If it wasn’t for that, I probably wouldn’t remember that night now.
‘Is there anything else you would like to add?’ asked the main judge.
What I signed in Greece was retracted. When I saw Andrew’s family, I told them that I was so sorry for what happened and that I would do whatever I could to help. We remained friends for a while, but once he was arrested he didn’t want to speak to me. I’ve come to court to testify because I know Andrew didn’t do this. I’ve known him since we were kids, he isn’t a violent person – he isn’t capable of doing this. He has good manners; he’s polite; his family are good people – he’s had a good upbringing. I’ve never seen him involved in a fight. It breaks my heart to see him in this position because of a statement that I was forced to sign.
Charlie Klitou was next to testify; he too gave a full description of what happened on the night of the attack. He was with me in a different bar called Bad Boys, which he too could remember because it was documented with a solicitor in 2007. He stated that after the incident in the police station he attended hospital after being punched in the jaw by a police officer – he couldn’t eat. He said that he later saw a psychiatrist, who diagnosed him as having post-traumatic stress from the incident in the police station.
‘How many police officers would you say were in the police station?’ asked the prosecuting lawyer.
‘Erm … maybe seven or eight?’
‘Lies! How can you explain that your friend Chris Kyriacou saw fifteen policemen in the police station!? It couldn’t have been that traumatic if you can’t even remember how many there were.’
‘If that’s what Chris said, that’s what he thinks! I would say there were about seven or eight, I didn’t count them!’ Charlie said.
Patras is home to the Basilica of St Andrew, which is ironic because I am his namesake. Apparently, the apostle was crucified in Patras in the late first century, and the cathedral there is one where his relics are now kept.
I would go there every few days to unwind. The scent of burnt candle wax and incense lingered in the airy space and I could almost hear the echo of my own breath. Soaring walls were covered in biblical artwork, each of which burst with colour and told a different story. A broad, domed ceiling displayed a huge mural of Jesus Christ, whose eyes were wide and mesmerising. Sometimes I felt like I could have stayed in there forever, like how I used to sit at Michael’s grave years earlier. I didn’t really pray very much; it was more therapeutic just to sit and let my mind wander. When I was there, I would feel sheltered from the chaos back at the apartment. I’d leave the cathedral and take a stroll by the sea in the early-summer Greek sun. I would sit and listen to the waves slap the rocky coastline – they would break into white splatter and I would feel a cool spray of salty seawater on my face.
My cousin (and ‘Bum Squad’ member) Andrew Demetriou flew out to Greece to surprise me, as did my friend Kristianna Paraskeva and godfather Lef. My aunties Teresa and Georgina were coming back and forth – and even my uncle Spyros and auntie Nikki came for part of the trial. It was amazing to see them all, but difficult to fully enjoy their company with the thought of the trial in the back of my mind.
Between court days we’d spend most of our time in a local café. I absolutely loved it there because the café owned every board
game that I could possibly imagine. I would meet my grandma and uncle George there most mornings and we’d play
tavli
for a while. The others would meet us later and we would all play a Greek card game, which was similar to Rummy. I remember one afternoon we all played Greek Monopoly. Sometimes we played games for hours – it passed the time and kept our minds busy. I never would have spent so much time with my family back at home; this was probably the only positive thing I could say about my time in Patras in 2011.
We appeared in court again after an eleven-day break to hear the testimonies of the Rescue nightclub owner, the photographer, a Rescue nightclub member of staff, a security guard and one of the investigating Greek police officers. None of them saw the incident or a person urinating.
A member of staff from the nightclub testified, claiming that there were no raised stages in the establishment. The prosecuting lawyer submitted a photograph to the court, which showed people dancing on an elevated stage with no safety barriers. ‘How can you explain that these people are raised then!?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ said the witness – denying all knowledge.
Of course there were raised stages in the nightclub! It wasn’t an opinion; it was a fact. Anyone could have gone there and seen for themselves. The president judge just rolled her eyes.
A security guard who worked at the entrance of the nightclub gave his testimony: ‘I thought someone may have fainted, but I was told that a boy was hit. One of the boy’s friends came with me to look for the guy who punched him, but we couldn’t find him. I can’t speak English, so I don’t know who they were looking for!’
One of the nightclub’s owners, Anastasios Zades, told the court that he wasn’t in the establishment at the time of the incident, but was told about it three days later. He briefly explained how the nightclub is laid out, saying that there are some stairs
leading up to balconies. ‘The dance floor is flat, not elevated,’ he claimed. Anastasios stated that there were no CCTV cameras installed in the nightclub until 2009 – two years after the incident. He wanted the judges to know that he could prove this with receipts – and I’m not sure why he was so intent on making this point.
The president judge pulled him up on this, reminding him that CCTV had been mentioned in the investigation. Anastasios Zades denied all knowledge and said that any images or video that were included in the investigation must have been from the photographer – James Gibson.
James Gibson testified in court next, explaining that he wasn’t in the nightclub on the night in question. He was taking promotional photographs there on the night before the incident (the night I was there) and he couldn’t remember taking any video. The photographs that he’d taken the night before the attack were used in the investigation at Laganas Police Station in Zante. James Gibson told the court that he was present when the photos were shown to Jonathan Hiles’s five friends.
I stayed at the police station for about three hours with my laptop. The boys looked at the photos together. They picked out someone from the photos, but there was definitely some doubt. One boy said, ‘maybe it was him’, then another said, ‘no, well … maybe,’ then they began to convince each other. It was a difficult and stressful process. I’m not sure who they picked out. The police wanted them to find the perpetrator and the boys were tired and pressured.
One of the investigating police officers, Angelos Polizos, later gave his testimony. He was born in 1987, so must have been only nineteen or twenty years old when the incident had occurred. As
a witness for a serious homicide trial, he represented the entire Laganas police force, wearing jeans, trainers and a hoodie.
Angelos stated that there was no CCTV in the nightclub at the time. When asked why CCTV had been referenced in the investigation, Angelos claimed that they meant a ‘DVD with photographs saved on it’.
Why were the police hiding such vital evidence? It would have instantly exonerated me as the attacker! The CCTV would have shown me entering the Rescue nightclub at around 4 a.m., staying near the front bar and then leaving. It would not have shown me entering or leaving the nightclub at any earlier time – but it had mysteriously vanished.
Angelos continued his testimony:
We showed the photographs to the victim’s friends, which were taken on the previous night. They looked at these individually and they all identified one as the perpetrator. We zoomed in on the photo and sent it to all the police stations, airports, ports and to Interpol. From the information we received back, the alleged offender was staying at the Mariana Hotel in Laganas. When we showed the photograph to the manager of the hotel, he told us that the suspect had departed back to England. His two friends admitted that this male was Andrew Symeou.
The young officer made it clear that there was no reason to violently intimidate Chris Kyriacou and Charlie Klitou because they’d volunteered the information. He also stated that he wasn’t present during the majority of the interrogations: ‘There was no reason to force the witnesses to tell us things that they didn’t know about; the statements were taken by an interpreter and we tried to tie the case up.’