No one has been convicted of killing US ambassador 50 years ago

US Embassy says after Roger Davis shooting: ‘Justice not fully served’

This year also marks the fiftieth anniversary of the shooting of U.S. Ambassador Roger Davis inside the U.S. Embassy in Nicosia, an incident in which no one has been convicted.

On August 19, 1974, the ambassador, 53, and Antoinette Varnava, 30, a Maronite Cypriot embassy secretary, were killed while taking shelter in a corridor near their offices when the embassy came under fire during a violent anti-American, anti-NATO protest following the second wave of Turkish invasion on August 14.

Hundreds of angry protesters believe the United States was complicit in allowing Turkey to advance further in its initial invasion on July 20.

To this day, the truth behind these murders remains a mystery. No one was tried for the murders, but under pressure from Washington, two men were eventually convicted on lesser weapons charges in 1977. To make matters worse for the US government, the two men were released after just 18 months. They claim they were made scapegoats.

At the time, the US Embassy was located opposite the Hilton Hotel (now the Landmark Hotel Nicosia). The bullet that killed Davis and Varnava was fired from the window of his office on the second floor and ricocheted off the wall into the hallway between about 12 noon and 1 p.m., although eyewitness testimonies vary widely.

Davis arrived in Nicosia with his daughter and son a few weeks ago, just four days before the Greek-backed coup that led to the invasion. Davis was grieving the recent death of his wife from cancer and hoped that living on a peaceful Mediterranean island would help his family move on. Antoinette, a 30-year-old Maronite, had worked at the embassy for ten years.

The ambassador was shot in the chest and died. Vanawa rushed forward to rescue him, but was shot in the head and fell to the ground.

According to a report by journalist and historian Makarios Droushiotis, a group of men armed with Kalashnikov rifles climbed to the top of a building under construction across from the embassy, ​​the so-called Alpan Tower, and at least one of them opened fire.

Upon learning of the incident, then-Acting President Glafcos Clerides immediately rushed to the embassy. Clerides instructed that the ambassador’s body be taken to hospital. Soon after, he called US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to express his sorrow over the ambassador’s death. Kissinger reportedly asked the Cypriot authorities to investigate the incident and bring the perpetrators to justice.

But subsequent investigations went nowhere and the case was classified as unsolved. This in turn led to various conspiracy theories among the Cypriot public, such as that the CIA assassinated Davis to prevent him from speaking out about the coup against Archbishop Makarios, in which Davis was allegedly involved.

The United States continued to pressure the Cypriot government to resolve the case, and in 1976, the case was reopened on Makarios’ instructions.

This came after pressure from Kissinger, according to a WikiLeaks cable to his embassy in Cyprus. “In light of the lack of any new developments in the investigation, I believe it is time to reiterate our position. You (the U.S. Ambassador) should therefore seek a meeting with President Makarios to discuss specifically the Davis investigation. You should emphasize to Makarios my personal interest in this matter,” Kissinger wrote.

The United States, apparently distrusting the Greek Cypriots, insisted on taking an active part in the investigation. Witness questioning took place at the US Embassy.

The case eventually made it to court, where the two defendants initially faced murder charges. Prosecutors then decided to change the charge to illegal carrying of a firearm, apparently fearing that the murder charge would not hold up. The court found the two defendants, the alleged gunman G. Ktimatias and N. Leftis, guilty, sentencing them to seven and five years in prison, respectively. Their sentences were later commuted, and they were released 18 months later. The trial transcript shows that Leftis at least was not carrying the type of gun he was carrying, a Marsip rifle, whose bullets could never have reached the embassy grounds, let alone through the windows.

Trial summaries published on WikiLeaks and transcripts of U.S. embassy cables to the State Department detail the difficulties of pinning the killings on suspects and include the court’s reasons for not doing so. There was an alleged conspiracy of silence, witness tampering and inconsistent statements by one of the prosecution’s witnesses, a firefighter who was said to have a personal vendetta against one of the two men on trial and was disciplined for it.

On June 10, 1977, after the court decided not to prosecute the murder case, the U.S. Embassy sent a cable to the U.S. State Department stating that the court rejected the firefighter’s testimony regarding the defendant’s presence in the building under construction because he had provided three statements to the Cypriot police listing three possible locations in the building where he had seen the suspect.

The cable also said: “Due to the confusion and conflicting recollections of many eyewitnesses (at least nine eyewitnesses), the court rejected all testimony regarding the timing of the fatal shooting.” The cable said: “The court rejected expert testimony from a senior surveyor and a police ballistics expert regarding the location of the fatal shooting on the grounds that the information they provided was not specific enough.”

The court concluded that there was no evidence that the two defendants fired the burst of bullets that resulted in the killing, or fired any other bullets.

The embassy’s legal adviser told the ambassador that Makarios was “very angry” about the ruling, according to the cable. He believed the judge should have waited until the end of the proceedings before making a ruling, which undermined the balance of the entire trial.

“We have concluded that justice has not been adequately served,” the embassy said in a comment.

“Based on this ruling … there is no reason to expect that convictions on any lesser charges will result in appropriate sentences or serve as a deterrent to any acts of terrorism or other violence against U.S. officials,” the report concluded.