November 20, 1958
KYRIAKOS MATSIS: Nicosia, 19 – According to an official announcement by the security forces, the Greek patriot Kyriakos Matsis has been murdered near the village of Dikomo in northern Cyprus. According to the British announcement, he was the deputy of Colonel Grivas, the leader of the National Cypriot Fighters’ Organization (EOKA) and had a 500-pound bounty on his head. Matsis was killed by a hand grenade tossed into his hiding place. Previously, Andreas Sophocleous, whom the British said was another of Grivas’s deputies, had been arrested. The announcement by the British forces said that following a tip-off, a curfew had been imposed in Dikomo in the district of Kyrenia. A British soldier had found a hideout under the paving stones in a hut. The hut was surrounded and one of the paving stones removed, revealing the entrance to a subterranean chamber in which three men were hiding. Matsis ordered his two companions to give themselves up, which they did, but he himself refused. «I will not come out alive. I will come out shooting,» he reportedly said. Two hand grenades were then thrown into the hiding place, killing Matsis instantly.
