Remains of missing Greek Cypriot soldiers found

NICOSIA, Cyprus —The remains of five Greek Cypriot soldiers who appear in an iconic 1974 photo surrendering to invading Turkish troops were found in an abandoned well in the Turkish Cypriot north, officials said Monday.

The soldiers’ families and Greek Cypriot officials called the photographs proof that they were murdered in the custody of Turkish troops.

“It’s a cold-blooded execution,” Andreas Hadjikyriakos, a brother of one of the soldiers told state TV. “I can never accept this.”

The Turkish Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment.

Turkey invaded 35 years ago and split Cyprus into an internationally recognized Greek south and a breakaway Turkish north in response to a coup by Athens-backed supporters of union with Greece. Around 1,500 Greek Cypriots and 500 Turkish Cypriots vanished during the invasion and in interethnic clashes in the early 1960s.

The photographs became a symbol of the decades-long bids by relatives of the missing to trace the fates of their loved ones.

The remains of the soldiers and 14 other people were exhumed from an abandoned well in late 2006 near the northern village of Tziaos, Elias Georgiades, an official with the United Nations-led Committee on Missing Persons, said. He said the soldiers’ families were informed Friday that the remains had been identified.

Government spokesman Stefanos Stefanou urged Turkey to open military archives to shed more light on the disappearances of Greek Cypriot civilians and soldiers.

“And for them (the soldiers) to be discovered the way they were, in a well, proves they were murdered,” he added.

Greece’s Foreign Ministry on Monday also said the latest discovery “confirms … crimes committed during the invasion.”

Since starting exhumations three years ago, a U.N.-sponsored program has unearthed 537 sets of remains from 269 burial sites on both sides of the divide. Some 162 identified missing individuals, 119 Greek Cypriots and 44 Turkish Cypriots, have so far been returned to their families.

Relatives of missing Greek Cypriots have said the program does not go far enough and have a long-standing demand for a formal investigation to account for the fates of the missing.