A British victim of a knife attack in Ayia Napa, in which his friend was killed, says it was unprovoked and they had never seen their attackers before, his sister has told the Guardian.
Ben Barker, 22, from Dartford in Kent, is still in hospital after he was stabbed four times in the back as he made his way to his hotel in the early hours of Sunday morning. His friend, George Low, also 22, was stabbed in the neck and died.
Ben’s sister, Rebecca Barker, who has travelled to Cyprus with her parents, said her brother strenuously denied claims by the girlfriend of one suspect that he and Low had been involved in a row with their attackers over urinating in the street.
She said: “It’s caused quite severe upset and frustration to Ben, because he feels like they are being portrayed as ‘Brits abroad’ and that they aggravated the attack, which is completely untrue. They were just victims of a random attack by these men as they were walking home.
“There wasn’t an altercation beforehand, they hadn’t seen them before, there weren’t any cross words, there wasn’t a fight over a girl or urinating or anything like that. It was just that these men decided that they were going to kill George and attempt to kill Ben.”
In the hours following the attack, Famagusta’s district assistant police chief, Georgios Economou, said the attack had taken place shortly after Barker and Low had been involved in a “shoving match” with another person.
Then, on Wednesday, a 48-year-old woman told a Famagusta court that her boyfriend, Mehmet Akpinar, 22, had told her that he and a friend had carried out the attack after a row sparked by the tourists urinating in the street.
She also told the court that she picked up Akpinar from the resort shortly after the stabbing and helped him change clothes, then returned to collect his mobile phone from a spot where he had hidden it.
The court ordered the woman, whom reports did not name, into police custody for eight days to give investigators time to prepare a case against her as a potential accessory after the fact.
Rebecca Barker was critical of the woman’s testimony. She said: “She’s the person being held on remand for aiding the murderers’ escape. She wasn’t at the scene. She didn’t see it. She’s just relaying what she’s been told by one of the men.”
Authorities are still searching for Akpinar and his suspected accomplice, Sali Ahmet, 42, and have issued pictures of the men and warrants for their arrest. However, it is feared that the men, both Turkish Cypriots, may have travelled across the border to the breakaway Turkish Cypriot republic on the north of the island.
Ben Barker and Low had been due to fly home on the day they were attacked. Rebecca Barker said her brother was recovering in hospital. “The doctors are being really good and they are doing a really good job of looking after him, but I don’t think that they want to let him leave yet just because of the severity of the wounds,” she said.
