Chlorakas, Cyprus. The family of a British father charged in connection with the death of his three-year-old son is seeking UK government support to allow him to return to Britain for the child’s funeral.
The 37-year-old man is on bail and barred from leaving Cyprus pending a court hearing on July 31, following the boy’s death after a fall from a fourth-floor hotel window.
Request for humanitarian intervention
According to media reports, the family hopes UK foreign secretary Ed Miliband will engage with Cypriot authorities on humanitarian grounds to enable the father to attend the funeral after next week’s court proceedings.
The father has been charged with causing death by a rash, reckless or dangerous act.
Hotel fall investigation
The child died on July 12, the first day of the family’s holiday, after falling from a fourth-floor window at a luxury hotel in Chlorakas, near Paphos.
Police said the boy was playing with his father in a corridor outside the family’s room while they waited for a lift. Investigators believe the child slipped from his father’s grip and fell through an open window.
Bail conditions
The father was arrested later that evening and was initially remanded in custody for eight days before being released on €20,000 bail.
His bail conditions require him to surrender all travel documents, report weekly to Paphos central police station and remain in Cyprus pending trial proceedings.
Paphos police assistant operations director Michalis Nikolaou told the Cyprus Mail that a quantity of alcohol was found in the man’s blood during testing and said the matter would be evaluated by the court hearing the case.
Legal and safety questions
Criminal lawyer Christos Triantafyllides said he had not seen a similar case during 46 years as a lawyer and described the earlier lengthy remand decision as a major mistake.
Authorities are also examining whether all relevant hotel safety requirements had been met.
