London, United Kingdom. Metropolitan Police announced on Friday the arrest of a 44-year-old dual British and Azerbaijani national who was detained in Cyprus last year over allegations that he spied on the RAF base at Akrotiri and the Andreas Papandreou airbase in Paphos.
The man was initially arrested by Cypriot authorities in June last year and remained in custody at the central prison before a decision was made for him to stand trial in the United Kingdom rather than Cyprus.
Alleged planned attack
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said on the day of the man’s arrest that a planned attack on Israeli citizens in Cyprus by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard had been prevented through cooperation between Cypriot and Israeli authorities.
“The Islamic Revolutionary Guard – the terror arm of the Iranian regime – tried to carry out an attack on Israeli citizens in Cyprus,” Sa’ar wrote on social media. He thanked Cyprus for what he described as swift and effective action.
It was widely understood that the intelligence leading to the arrest had been provided by Israel.
Legal challenge
In August last year, the man’s lawyer, Efstathios Efstathiou, challenged the legality of his arrest before the Supreme Court.
He argued that the Limassol district court had made a fundamental error by accepting undocumented and unverified information as a sufficient basis for the warrants. He said the information had originated from a third country outside the European Union.
“The dependence of an EU member state on information from a third country, the source of which is inaccessible, unverifiable, and not cross-referenced, is not permissible,” he argued.
The court ruled that the arrest and the subsequent search of the man’s apartment were lawful, stating that the information received by Cypriot authorities did not amount to general and vague allegations.
It added that the information from the foreign country had been confirmed through the physical monitoring of the applicant by Cypriot authorities over a specific period.
UK trial
The decision to try the man in the United Kingdom followed reports that most of the intelligence he allegedly gathered concerned the RAF base at Akrotiri rather than the Andreas Papandreou airbase in Paphos.