Cyprus prison project faces another test over proposed site

The government has spent seven months attempting to resolve where to locate the new central prison, with the project now standing on its third iteration with an expected cost of some €300 million. No one argues with the need for a new prison. The existing one now holds nearly 1,200 prisoners, an occupancy rate of 227. 6 per cent, the highest in the EU and more than twice the number the British had intended it for when it was built in 1894. Expanding the decaying Victorian relic at its present site in Ayios Andreas in Nicosia has been ruled out, as has its relocation to Mathiatis after local opposition kicked in and a government reassessment of the site’s suitability. The justice ministry’s eyes are now on state land near Ayios Sozomenos, an abandoned Turkish Cypriot village to the east of Nicosia and near the buffer zone.

Apparently a perfect compromise, that site too is proving controversial. Earlier this week, Justice Minister Costas Fitiris presented draft plans for the new prison to the House finance committee. It showed four detention wings, a medical unit, a football pitch, a Christian chapel and a Muslim prayer room. A day later he conceded that the images were in fact produced with AI and were only a “depiction of what the complex could include”. The justice ministry described the rendering as “an indicative illustration, which in no way constitutes the master plan of the project nor does it prejudge its final form or layout”. Fitiris stressed that final decisions would follow environmental and urban planning studies, with the ministry’s next annual budget setting aside €1 million for those studies and preliminary work. From Mathiatis to Ayios Sozomenos The presentation arrived after a difficult autumn for the project. In March the minister announced that the…