Britons cleared in Cyprus suit
A Cypriot court yesterday acquitted two British men charged in connection with the hit-and-run killing of a Cypriot teenager last summer at the resort of Protaras in southern Cyprus. Luke Atkinson, 22, and Michael Binnington, 21, walked free after the Larnaca court ruled that there was not enough evidence to blame them for the death of Christos Papiris, 17, who died after being knocked off his moped by the car in which the two men had been traveling last August. The verdict provoked chaos in the courtroom as relatives of the victims scuffled with officers and shouted at judges. Atkinson and Binnington, both from Essex in southeast England, had pleaded not guilty to the manslaughter of Papiris and to causing grievous bodily harm to Marios Dimitriou, also 17, who had been a passenger on the moped. A third Briton, 39-year-old Julian Harrington, the car’s driver, has pleaded guilty to manslaughter and causing grievous bodily harm. He is to be sentenced next week. He is accused of using his rental car to repeatedly ram the moped Papiris had been riding.
