CYPRUS: For the Hangman

• Share

Behind the yellow stone walls of Nicosia's Central Prison last week, three young Greek Cypriots in their early 20s awaited the hangman. Andreas Zakos and Charilaos Mikhail, condemned for ambushing a British army jeep and killing its driver, lay placidly on their cots and listened to records of Bach and Beethoven. Iacovos Patatsou, who had been condemned for killing a Turkish Cypriot policeman (out of uniform), accepted the farewell of his widowed mother: "Face death with courage, my son."

As a tenseness spread over the island, affecting British and Cypriot alike, the Greek Cypriot underground E.O.K.A. announced the capture of a 78-year-old retired British civil servant named John Cremer, who is spending his old age teaching English to Cypriot children. He had been on an evening stroll when four masked men stepped from behind a tree, and one, brandishing a revolver, said: "E.O.K.A. Hold up your hands. We are not going to kill you." Cremer replied: "Well, it doesn't much matter if you do, at my age." They bound him hand and foot and drove off with him. Shortly thereafter, E.O.K.A. circulated a pamphlet that warned: if the three condemned Cypriots hang, Cremer will die.

In their prison cells the three young men heard the news, and Zakos pleaded on their behalf with E.O.K.A.: "I beg that the life of this elderly Englishman should not be exposed to any risk, even if our executions are decided upon and finally carried out." E.O.K.A. promptly released John Cremer unharmed.

But the British, who feel that they need the Cyprus base more than ever now that Nasser is acting up at the Suez Canal, decided that they could not return this gallant gesture, nor afford to conciliate the underground by reprieving killers. "E.O.K.A. terrorists are not entitled to think themselves humane or magnanimous," said one British official. "They have committed no fewer than 17 cold-blooded murders in the past month."

At 1 o'clock one morning last week the three Greek Cypriots were led out of their cells, amid the uncontrolled shouting of their fellow prisoners. They mounted gallows fitted for a simultaneous triple drop and manned by a hangman flown in especially from England for the job. At 1:05 a.m., the farewells of their comrades still dinning in their ears and the Greek national anthem on their lips, they died.