No one was convicted for the murder of the US ambassador 50 years ago

“Justice has been inadequately served” – US Embassy after the shooting of Rodger Davies

Another 50th anniversary being commemorated this year is the shooting of American ambassador Rodger Davies in the US embassy in Nicosia; no one was ever convicted for the shooting.

On August 19, 1974, the 53-year-old ambassador and the 30-year-old Maronite Cypriot embassy secretary, Antoinette Varnava, were killed as they sought shelter in a corridor near his office after the building came under fire during a violent anti-US and NATO protest following the second wave of the Turkish invasion on August 14.

Hundreds of angry protesters said the United States was partly to blame for Turkey's ability to continue its first invasion attempt on July 20.

The killings remain a mystery to this day. No one was ever charged with murder, although two men were eventually convicted of minor weapons charges in a 1977 trial brought about by pressure from Washington. To make matters worse, both men were released after just 18 months, claiming they had been made scapegoats.

At the time, the US Embassy was located opposite the Hilton, now the Landmark Hotel in Nicosia. The bullets that killed Davies and Varnava were fired through the window of his second-floor office and ricocheted off a wall into the corridor sometime between 12 and 1 p.m., although witnesses' accounts vary widely.

Davies had arrived in Nicosia with his daughter and son just weeks earlier – just four days before the Greek-backed coup that led to the invasion. He was mourning the recent death of his wife, who had died of cancer, and hoped that life on a quiet Mediterranean island might help the family process their grief and move on. Antoinette, a Maronite and only 30 years old, had already worked at the embassy for a decade.

The ambassador was killed by a bullet in the chest. Varnava rushed to his aid, but was hit by a bullet in the head.

According to a report by journalist and historian Makarios Droushiotis, a group of men armed with Kalashnikovs climbed onto a building under construction opposite the embassy – the so-called Alpan building – and at least one of them opened fire.

When Glafcos Clerides, the then acting president, learned of the incident, he rushed to the embassy. Clerides gave instructions to take the body to a hospital. Shortly after, he called US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to express his grief over the ambassador's death. Kissinger reportedly called on the Cypriot authorities to investigate the incident and bring the culprits to justice.

However, the subsequent investigations were inconclusive and the case was filed as unsolved. This in turn led to all sorts of conspiracy theories among the Cypriot public, such as that the CIA had Davies murdered to prevent him from speaking about the coup against Archbishop Makarios, in which Davies was allegedly involved.

The Americans continued to put pressure on the Cypriot government to solve the case. In 1976, the case was reopened on Makarios' orders.

This was done under pressure from Kissinger, as can be seen from a Wikileaks cable from him to the embassy in Cyprus. “Given that there are no new developments in the investigation, I believe it is time to reiterate our position. Consequently, [US ambassador] “I should seek an appointment with President Makarios to discuss the Davies investigation. You should emphasize to Makarios my personal interest in this matter,” Kissinger wrote.

Since the United States was obviously suspicious of the Greek Cypriots, it insisted on playing an active role in the investigation. The questioning of witnesses took place at the US Embassy.

The case was eventually brought to trial, with two defendants initially charged with murder. Prosecutors later decided to change the charge to illegal possession of weapons, apparently fearing that the murder charge would not hold up. The court found the two defendants – G. Ktimatias, the alleged shooter, and N. Leftis – guilty as charged and sentenced them to seven and five years in prison respectively. Their sentences were later reduced and they were released after 18 months. Trial records showed that Leftis at least did not carry such a weapon, a Marsip rifle, whose bullets could never have reached the embassy grounds, let alone through a window.

Summaries of the trial as it occurred and as recorded in cables from the U.S. Embassy to the State Department available on Wikileaks describe in detail the difficulty of pinning the murders on the suspects and include the court's reasons for not doing so. There was an alleged conspiracy of silence, reports of alleged witness tampering, and contradictory testimony from one of the prosecution witnesses, a firefighter who allegedly harbored a personal grudge against one of the two accused men and was disciplined because of it.

A cable from the U.S. Embassy to the State Department, following the court's decision not to charge the June 10, 1977, murders, stated that the court had rejected the fireman's testimony regarding the defendant's presence in the building under construction because he had made three statements to the Cypriot police, naming three possible locations in the building where he had seen them.

“She has rejected all testimony regarding the time of the fatal shots because the recollections of many witnesses (at least nine were cited) were confusing and contradictory,” the cable continued. “She has rejected the expert testimony of a senior surveyor and a police ballistics expert regarding the location from which the fatal shots were fired, on the grounds that their information was not specific enough,” the cable said.

The court concluded that there was no evidence that the two defendants fired the volleys that caused the killings or any other shots.

According to the cable, the embassy's legal adviser had informed the ambassador that Makarios was “very upset” about the verdict. In his opinion, the judges should have waited until the end of the trial to make a decision, as this would have affected the balance of the entire process.

A comment from the embassy said: “We must conclude that justice has not been sufficiently served…”

“Based on the verdict … we see no reason to hope that convictions on the lesser charges will result in sentences that could be considered appropriate or deterrent to terrorist-motivated or other acts of violence against American officials,” it concluded.