March 13, 1957
EVAGORAS PALLIKARIDIS: At 1.30 a.m., Reuters reported from Nicosia that the hanging had taken place there of a young Cypriot student, 19-year-old Evagoras Pallikaridis, who had been convicted of carrying a gun. As the hour of his execution approached, residents of the Cypriot capital living up to a kilometer away from the prison said they heard men and women prisoners shouting «Long Live EOKA» (the National Cypriot Fighters’ Organization) and other patriotic slogans. Late this evening, EOKA distributed leaflets in Famagusta asking the populace to hold a general strike tomorrow in a show of protest against the young patriot’s execution. «I cannot face the hangman without a crucifix in my hands,» Pallikaridis reportedly told his mother. He also told his parents, who visited him for the last time, that he prayed night and day that he would be the last Cypriot to be sacrificed for union with Greece. His father appealed to the British governor of Cyprus, Field Marshal Sir John Harding, for a reprieve for his son, and the prisoner’s lawyers gave the Greek Consul General a copy of the appeal, reminding him that the youth had been convicted of carrying a gun, even though the weapon was non-functional.
