Minutes reveal how remains of 70 Assia villagers were dumped at Dikomo landfill

Local Cyprus problemmissing personsTop News Minutes reveal how remains of 70 Assia villagers were dumped at Dikomo landfill 20150122 1658771384 Relevant News Minutes reveal how remains of 70 Assia villagers were dumped at Dikomo landfill 19 July 2026 Police arrest 19 in nationwide overnight operations 19 July 2026 Temperatures to reach 41C as isolated mountain storms remain possible 19 July 2026 Vassos Vassiliou 19 July 2026 FacebookXWhatsAppEmailPrintViber Minutes from a meeting between the Committee of Relatives of Missing Persons from Assia and the three members of the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus (CMP) on 17 November 2017 shed light on how the remains of 70 Assia residents were dumped at the former landfill in occupied Dikomo after they were murdered in cold blood. The Assia villagers were killed in August 1974 and initially thrown into two wells in Afania. Their remains were dug up in 1995 and dumped at the landfill in an attempt to erase all traces of them permanently. According to the relatives’ committee’s minutes, they were informed during the meeting for the first time that witnesses had been found who had first-hand knowledge of the removal of the remains from the two wells in the Ornithi area and their disposal at the landfill. The initial disclosure by the Turkish Cypriot representatives came as a bolt from the blue, and some of those present did not want to believe what they were hearing. Why would anyone show such disrespect by throwing human bones into a landfill? Of course, when you execute 70 people in one of the largest mass killings committed during the Turkish invasion, you presumably see no problem in digging them up and dumping them at a rubbish site. It appears, however, that the decision was based not only on disrespect but also on practical considerations. Anyone who saw lorries travelling towards a landfill would not suspect that anything was wrong with their cargo, as they might if the vehicles were heading elsewhere. Moreover, once something is buried at a landfill and covered over, nobody will find it until the Second Coming. Nevertheless, people who took part in the operation to make the bones disappear were persuaded to speak, although they initially denied any involvement. The operation to move the remains had been assigned to specific trusted individuals amid fears that they would be discovered in the wells at Ornithi. According to the minutes of the meeting between the relatives and the CMP, they were briefed as follows: On Thursday, 16 November 2017, the then Assia community leader, Giorgos Ioannou, received an urgent telephone call and invitation from the Greek Cypriot member of the CMP, Nestor Nestoros, asking him and other members of the Committee of Relatives of Missing Persons from Assia to attend an emergency meeting with the CMP’s three members at Ledra Palace, inside the buffer zone in Nicosia. Despite Ioannou’s repeated attempts to find out what the meeting concerned, Nestoros insisted that he would have to wait until the following day’s meeting to be officially briefed. A four-member delegation from the Committee of Relatives of Missing Persons from Assia attended the meeting. It comprised community leader Giorgos Ioannou, Christoforos Skarparis, the current community leader, Maria Leontiou and Giannos Demetriou. The CMP was represented by Nestor Nestoros, the Greek Cypriot member; Gülden Plümer Küçük, the Turkish Cypriot member; Paul-Henri Arni, the third member representing the United Nations; the late Xenofon Kallis, assistant to the Greek Cypriot member; and Murat Soysal, assistant to the Turkish Cypriot member. After a brief introduction and welcome, Paul-Henri Arni gave the floor to Küçük, who informed the relatives that the Turkish Cypriot side had submitted an official document on Thursday, 16 November 2017. It followed a two-year investigation that had uncovered significant new evidence about the removal of the remains of Assia’s missing persons from the two mass graves at Ornithi. The relatives were informed that the investigation, based on corroborated information obtained from six people who had participated in the removal, found that it had taken place in 1995 and that the final destination of the remains had been the landfill in Dikomo. The Ornithi investigation Küçük then gave the floor to Soysal, who had coordinated the investigation. Soysal first expressed his sympathy over the families’ ordeal and suffering before providing a detailed account of the investigation’s approach and findings. Soysal said the search for the place to which the remains had been moved began after the two mass graves at Ornithi were investigated in 2009. The investigation was unsuccessful until two years before the 2017 meeting, when two people who had taken part in moving the remains were identified. They were initially unwilling to talk because they were afraid. The investigation continued and gradually led to six people who had participated in the operation. They initially denied any involvement, but investigators managed to persuade them to cooperate a year earlier, in 2016. The investigative team corroborated and matched their accounts, which confirmed that the remains had been removed from the two mass graves at Ornithi and dumped at the Dikomo landfill in 1995, the relatives were told. According to Soysal, those involved chose the Dikomo landfill because it was easier to dump huge quantities of soil mixed with bones there without attracting attention. The material was dumped in the eastern section of the landfill, at a location some distance from the nearby road to reduce the risk of being seen by others. The same witnesses said a large number of bones were initially visible among the piles of soil dumped at the site. Those involved therefore continued bringing and discarding bulky rubbish, including cardboard and vehicle tyres, on top of the bones to conceal them. Soysal described the serious difficulties faced by the investigative team. However, after the information had been corroborated, the Turkish Cypriot side was able to prepare and submit an official document to the CMP concerning the removal of the remains from the two mass graves at Ornithi. Further movement of rubbish at the site The landfill remained in use during the following years before it was abandoned and rehabilitated with European Union funding from 2002 onwards. Soysal informed the relatives that piles of rubbish may have been moved during the rehabilitation work, before soil was laid over the surface and trees were planted. He said he did not have precise information at that stage about what had been moved or the quantities involved. This would be investigated through studies conducted in cooperation with the local Turkish Cypriot authority in occupied Nicosia and the consultants responsible for the rehabilitation project. All three CMP members assured the relatives that, despite the obvious difficulties, they would immediately begin examining all the available information. This would include collecting architectural plans for the EU-funded project, topographical maps of the site and information about the quantity of rubbish deposited there between 1995 and 2002, to prepare an investigation programme for the area. They asked the relatives to allow them one to two months to carry out the work. The committee thanked the CMP for its efforts to clarify how the remains had been removed from the mass graves at Ornithi, particularly Küçük and the investigation’s coordinator, Soysal. The relatives acknowledged that the development represented a step in the right direction towards resolving a tragedy that had tormented the families of the missing for decades. They said they would await the CMP’s next steps in investigating the information. Eyewitness described the mass killing The events surrounding the killing of the 70 Assia villagers are also described in a text written by Giannos Demetriou, a representative of the Assia community, entitled The war crime committed by the Turkish army at Ornithi. The text says the crime was recorded in harrowing detail in Kurdish-born journalist Roni Alasor’s book Order: Execute the Prisoners, published by Kastaniotis in 2002. On pages 117 to 119, eyewitness O. Saat, who in 1974 served at the Fire Direction Centre in the headquarters battery of the 1st Battalion of the 21st Artillery Regiment, which was sent to Cyprus two or three days after the first invasion, said: “Following an order from our commander, Mehmet Gungormus or Gungoren, we loaded them onto our battalion’s military vehicles. The officers took their money, watches and chains. Some of them were crying and begging. “Our commander, who was then a major and later became a lieutenant colonel, tried to calm them down, not out of compassion but probably because he did not want to be bothered by their pleading. He told them: ‘Do not cry. We are taking you to your children.’ “A few days later, using the excuse that there was no room at the concentration camp where the prisoners had been taken, they brought around 70 to 80 Greek Cypriots back to our unit. Because of my duties, I was close to the commander’s tent. “There, I heard radio conversations between our battalion commander, Mehmet Gungormus, and his superiors. Our commander asked them what he should do with the prisoners. They were a problem for the unit, both because they had to be fed and, more importantly, because they had to be guarded. “The order he received was: ‘Load them onto the train!’ “Anyone who heard it immediately understood that it meant: ‘Execute the prisoners.’ Everyone knew that Cyprus had neither railway lines nor trains.” They loaded them onto the ‘train’ and murdered them in cold blood. Decades later, their relatives are still searching for fragments of their bones at a former landfill. The process stalled over the cost, which was estimated at up to €10 million. Even if the killings of civilians had been committed by irregular forces, there would still have been no justification, although an outside observer might have attributed them to the uncontrolled conditions at the time. When such crimes are committed by a regular army, however, they take on a different dimension and permanently expose those responsible.” DNA tests sought for all unidentified bones from Ornithi The Committee of Relatives of Missing Persons from Assia also raised the extremely important issue of the large number of unidentified bones found at Ornithi and held at the Anthropological Laboratory near Nicosia Airport. It reiterated its position that DNA tests should be carried out on all the bones for three reasons. First, the tests would rule out the possibility that more than 70 people had been buried in the mass graves. Second, the anthropological study had confirmed the presence of 70 people, while DNA tests had produced evidence for only 68 of them. The committee requested, and it was accepted, that a new scientific study and report should be commissioned. It also called for ways to intensify efforts to identify the two remaining missing people whose presence had been scientifically confirmed. Third, the necessary procedures should be completed so that the bones can be returned to the relatives for burial. The committee also raised the cases of all the other missing people from Assia who disappeared individually or in small groups after being captured in Assia or elsewhere and who did not belong to the “Ornithi group”. It pointed out that it had provided relevant information requested two years earlier but that, by 2017, the cases had still not been investigated. Former Greek Cypriot CMP member Nestor Nestoros later told the House Refugees Committee, citing corroborated information and testimony, that the transfer of the remains and soil from the two wells to the landfill lasted about a week. According to a document he cited, the lorries entered the area along a dirt road and continued to the easternmost point of the landfill, where the remains and soil were deposited. Vehicle tyres, cardboard boxes and other rubbish collected from the surrounding area were then placed over them to conceal them. The landfill was landscaped in 2012. 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