Nicosia, Cyprus. Direct Democracy MP Diana Constantinides said she will work to combat violence against women during her five-year term, linking the issue to the lasting impact of her mother’s rape and murder in 1993.
Personal account
Speaking on Sigma TV this week, Constantinides said her mother was Christine Constantinides from Sweden, who was raped, murdered and dumped in the Kotsiatis landfill in 1993. Christine Constantinides, 28, had been missing since June 7, 1993, and her body was found in November that year.
Constantinides had taken part in the House human rights committee on Monday, which discussed violence against women and recent femicides. She said a murder causes “collateral damage” and referred to her own experience.
“I am also living the part of collateral damage, even if it wasn’t a matter of domestic violence. Having your mother taken from you, the person we all need so much, is not just a legal issue. It is a deeply personal matter. No woman should be a victim of attempted murder or femicide,” she said.
She added that “the children who are left behind bear the burden.”
Details of the 1993 case
Antonis Prokopiou Kitas, also known as ‘Al Capone’, told police on October 31, 1993, that the body of 21-year-old Oxana Lisna from Romania, who had been missing since June 20 that year, was in a well in Livadia, Larnaca. Kitas then admitted he had also killed Christine Constantinides.
Authorities took 17 days to find Christine Constantinides’ body among the rubbish. Autopsies indicated that both women had been raped and beaten and had died a violent death.
Kitas did not act alone in the killing of Christine Constantinides. His accomplice was Michalis Iacovides. When Kitas, who was 25 at the time, was first arrested, he blamed Andros Kalopsidiotis for both crimes. Kalopsidiotis was arrested and remanded for eight days before being released when nothing was found against him.
Police later arrested Iacovides, a taxi driver from Lakatamia, who admitted both murders and implicated Kitas.
Conviction and later developments
Kitas was convicted to two life sentences in 1994. He escaped twice: once in 1993 after being arrested for robbing a jewellery shop in Athienou, and again in 2008 when he climbed out of a clinic window and disappeared for weeks.
The 2008 escape prompted the resignation of the justice minister and chief of police, as well as suspensions of police and prison officers.
In 2009, Kitas was convicted for masterminding the exhumation of former president Tassos Papadopoulos from the cemetery in Deftera. The remains were found almost a year later.
In 2019, Kitas requested release with an ankle monitor, but the request was rejected.
Support after the loss
Constantinides said that while two men killed her mother in 1993, two others stood by her and supported her: her father and later her husband.