Neoptolemos Leftis and Athos Petridis, the two surviving gunmen of the Greek Cypriot armed terrorist organization EOKA (Ethniki Organosis Kiprion Agoniston ‘National Organization of the Cypriot Warriors’) which committed the first bloody act on April 1st, 1955 in order to end the British colonial rule in Cyprus and to annex the island to Greece (Enosis), confessed to the massacres they had carried out against the Turkish Cypriots with the group they were part of in 1964.
“We shot 68 Turkish Cypriots and threw them into the pit”
Neoptolemos Leftis and Athos Petridis confessed to the massacres on Omega TV in cold blood stating that they were members of the group led by Nikos Sampson when EOKA began the attack against the Turkish Cypriots.
Speaking to Greek Cypriot Omega TV in an interview with Soteris Paroutis, the two gunmen said that they loaded 68 civilian and unguarded Turkish Cypriots into large vehicles at different times, in 1964, and took them to Eylence region (the village near Lefkoşa in South Cyprus), got them out of the car and lined them up at the head of the pits, shot and then skewered them. They pushed the Turkish Cypriots they killed into the pit.
“We took 10 Turkish Cypriots lives for one Greek Cypriot life”
Neoptolemos Leftis stated “after the murder of 2 Greek officers and a Greek Cypriot police officer who were trying to locate the Turkish positions in Famagusta city in 1964, they were ordered to kill 10 Turkish Cypriots for one Greek Cypriot killed and they organized a group of 500 people to implement this order and they went through training”. Leftis said, “We were going to kill 10 Turkish Cypriots for one Greek Cypriot, and that’s how it happened. That’s why we killed 68 Turkish Cypriots. They still ask me about the 68 Turkish Cypriots we killed and their burial places. Where can you find it, so much time has passed”.
“We were vanishing the Turkish Cypriots by shooting them with guns and throwing them into the pits.”
Regarding the massacres they carried out, Athos Petridis said, “We were stopping the vehicles passing near the village of Eylence. Turkish Cypriots were traveling in big cars, buses. We were getting the Turkish Cypriots out of the vehicles and first taking their money and valuables. Then we were shooting, skewering and vanishing them by throwing them into the pits.”
Many more massacres against the Turkish Cypriots were carried out by EOKA with the same barbarity confessed by both gunmen until 1974.