Extradited (24 page)

I sat down.
Breathe
, I told myself. I looked to my right; George Pyromallis acknowledged me and nodded – his assistant Vanessa offered a sympathetic smile.

The court assigned the jury, which took at least an hour. After this process there was the public prosecutor to the left, two jurors, three judges, and another two jurors to the right. They loomed above me and examined my every facial expression and movement. Their close scrutiny made me feel like I’d done something wrong, to the point where I almost had to remind myself that I was an innocent man.

It turned out that the court had failed to summon any witnesses. It was a joke. All they’d had to do was send the relevant witnesses letters via post. Shock was written all over the judges’ faces when they realised that Chris Kyriacou and Charlie Klitou
were present. We knew that they hadn’t been summoned and they were only there because we’d told them to come. We feared that the court had failed to summon Jonathan Hiles’s friends too, so the charity Fair Trials International had sent them letters on our behalf. They were informed that the trial was set for 4 June and that they may not receive a summons. Mr Hiles was present, but his son’s five friends didn’t attend. It was in the interest of justice that the friends of the victim were there. I refused to continue with the trial unless all the witnesses were present, and George Pyromallis made that very clear to the judges.

I took the stand. It was a wooden lectern that faced the bench with an old copy of the Bible resting on the top – a book that I’d almost finished reading. I looked up at them. They towered over me like three powerful queens. Through a young, female translator, I pleaded with them that they grant me bail. I explained how difficult it is being the youngest foreign person in a maximum-security prison. After almost a year behind bars I couldn’t bear it any longer. I told the judges that I was unwilling to continue the trial without the prosecution witnesses and that it wasn’t my fault that they were absent. I wanted justice! I wanted every witness present for a full trial because I had nothing to hide – I wanted to clear my name!

They asked me if I would be able to financially support myself if let out of prison.

I replied, ‘Yes, my family are financially stable.’

‘
Den ehei lefta!
– They have no money!’ the translator blurted.

‘No…’ I said.

‘Ooh, sorry.
EHEI lefta!
– they DO have money!’ I had to stop myself from shaking my head in disbelief. What if I hadn’t understood a word of Greek? The judge’s decision to grant me bail would probably have been clouded by the assumption that I couldn’t afford to live.

George Pyromallis stood up to speak. ‘In my entire
seventeen years
as a criminal lawyer, I have never experienced a
defendant
request the summoning of
prosecution
witnesses!’ he bellowed in Greek. There was a deep tone to his voice that made it powerful, even when he was speaking softly. He demanded that the judges grant me bail and explained that I had a residence in Greece where I could live.

There was a recess. We were suspended in mid-air, waiting to either fly or fall. I was about to discover whether I’d have to go through the painful transfer back to Korydallos and live with the junkies or be with my family. I couldn’t bear the thought of going back there – it was like a nightmare. This time, they needed to make the right choice.

My gran asked a young police officer if he could kindly take me out of handcuffs. ‘
Einai ena kalo paidi
– He’s a good kid,’ the officer said, releasing them from my wrists. For the first time I was able to hug my family and it felt incredible. After months and months, to be with them all again in the flesh almost made me forget that I was about to discover something huge. Lef called Riya on his mobile and it was amazing hearing her voice. ‘If I make bail we’ll put you on the first plane out here,’ I told her. I didn’t want to raise my hopes, but I could feel my heart rate increasing as I heard the words escape my lips.

George Pyromallis had re-entered the courtroom after going for his cigarette break. ‘What do you think the likelihood of bail is?’ I asked him.

He always remained impartial when it came to these things. ‘It could go either way, Andrew. Let’s see.’

An hour had quickly passed and all those present in the court were asked to rise. The judges and jurors walked in and took their seats at the bench. Everyone was asked to sit and the main judge began to reveal the bail decision.

They had no idea what I’d been through; nobody did, not even my family. Even those reading this memoir will never truly understand. There’s only so much of a story you can tell on paper. The subtleties of prison life are difficult to put into words, as some of the most important things (which are almost too insignificant to mention) make my experience difficult to recreate. The smell of the prison air; the faces I would see every day; the Greek prison culture. I was the only one who lived it in there. I was the only one who saw it; who felt it; who smelled it – if I think hard enough I still can. Being in prison for something that I knew I hadn’t done was a rollercoaster of emotions: fear, sadness, frustration. But the cruellest test of all was patience; a test of how much I could take. My entire time in prison flashed before me in my mind. It seemed like years ago – landing in Athens and being dragged into the police van with toothless Yiannis Economou; the transfer jail; Patras and Zakynthos police stations with ‘Sean Penn’ and ‘Mel Gibson’; Avlona – Arnas; Fivos; Christos electrocuting himself and piercing his own tongue; prison school. Korydallos – Leonarde smiling on that first day; Stelios, Ashmul and Vasilis; the cockroaches; Apollo; heroin; the crazy riots. Alpha wing – the junkies; ‘
Fuck him, he’s a murderer
.’ It had all changed my life so much. It was like prison had chewed me up and spat me back out a different person. It had been a journey that I couldn’t have imagined ever happening. It was my experience – and it was over. My eyes began to stream as the translator informed me that I’d be released on bail for €30,000, but was not allowed to leave Greece.

I could hear my family sobbing behind me – it was a surreal feeling. I was bursting with happiness because I didn’t have to go back to Korydallos, but furious because my bail should have been granted a year earlier. I rotted in a series of Greek prisons for almost a year; how was I supposed to feel? Did they not understand how that can affect a young person’s life? Was I supposed
to thank them now? Was I supposed to feel grateful that they’d let me go free? Fuck them – I shouldn’t have been there in the first place. At the time it reminded me of the line from the Oasis song ‘Half the world away’: ‘You can’t give me the dreams that were mine anyway.’

When I left the court in the custody of the police officers, the young officer high-fived me before the handcuffs went back on. ‘Amazing, man! You are free! Now you can go party in Mykonos! Yeah baby!’ he said.

‘I don’t think so,’ I replied – still overwhelmed with shock. The news was yet to sink in.

I could see that there were journalists with cameras outside of the court waiting for me to exit. ‘Here, do this,’ the officer said while putting my suit jacket over my head to cover my face like I was Josef Fritzl.

‘No!’ I said. ‘What do I have to hide?’

‘OK, whatever you want, my friend!’ he replied before we walked out. My head was held high.

It took a week for the bail money to be transferred to the court and for the prison to let me go. On the day of my release, one of the inmates in my cell helped me pack my things and wished me luck. He shook my hand. ‘You remind me of myself when I was your age. Don’t waste your life,’ he said.

After four hours of being held in a holding cell on my own, a couple of police officers entered the prison and handcuffed me. ‘Why are you handcuffing me!? I’m a free man!’ I said while they escorted me to their unmarked police car and sat me in the back seat.

They sat in the front and turned on the engine. ‘Because you are a foreigner, we have to take you to the police station and you will sign some papers first.’

‘Then I’ll be free?’ I asked.

I could tell from the back of the driver’s head that he was smiling. ‘Yes. What will you do tonight?’ one of them asked.

‘Tonight, I’ll be spending time with my family.’

I recalled the morning of the day I was extradited – almost a year had passed since then. I remembered the journey from Belgravia Police Station to Heathrow Airport. ‘I can’t tell you what’s going to happen in Greece, but I won’t be handcuffing you’, was what one of the Scotland Yard officers said. I could still hear the sound of his deep voice in my mind. It felt like an eternity ago, and I couldn’t believe how much had happened since.

For the entire hour’s drive to Patras town centre, I stared out of the window in amazement. The view was very different from that of a city. Everything travels so fast when watching central London from a moving car; shops and buildings fly by and it blurs into a shade of concrete grey. This view stayed the same for almost the entire journey, and it was as though I was staring at a beautiful painted canvas. After almost a year of being locked up, I watched a sparkling blue sea with a soaring mountain in the distance. It was carpeted with hundreds of trees that reflected a leafy, green glow, and the mountain was mirrored on the surface of the wavy sea beneath it. The peak of the mountain was right in front of me, and it was the closest to it that I’d ever been so far. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was the most stunning thing that I’d ever seen.

A student held in a Greek jail on suspicion of killing an 18-year-old Welsh roller-hockey player on holiday has been granted bail.

Andrew Symeou, from Middlesex, is accused of the manslaughter of Jonathan Hiles, from Cardiff, in an incident at a Zakynthos nightclub in July 2007.

Mr Symeou, 21, who denies being in the nightclub at the time, has been held since his extradition in July 2009.

Fair Trials International called for his trial to begin as soon as possible.

Mr Hiles, who was in Britain’s roller-hockey team, fell off a dance podium after losing consciousness when he was punched hard in the face, it is alleged.

He suffered a severe brain injury and died two days later.

Mr Symeou, a Bournemouth University student, is accused of manslaughter and his trial was scheduled to begin on Friday at Patras on the west coast of the Greek mainland.

However, due to the absence of key prosecution witnesses, the public prosecutor requested an adjournment.

A new date for the trial will be set by the Court of Appeal in Patras in due course.

Fair Trials International, a human rights charity which is backing Mr Symeou, said the Greek authorities had accepted that the latest delays in his trial were their fault and granted him bail.

Jago Russell, the charity’s chief executive, said, ‘After a long legal battle, we are delighted that he is finally going to be released on bail.’

Right to liberty

‘We hope that the Greek authorities now do everything within their power to ensure his trial goes ahead as soon as possible.’

Mr Symeou will remain in custody until the bail conditions are met, said the charity.

Fair Trials International said it had challenged previous refusals by the Greek courts to grant Mr Symeou bail in the European Court of Human Rights.

It argued that it had been discriminatory, a violation of Andrew’s right to liberty and contrary to the principle that Andrew should be presumed innocent until proven guilty.

In a statement the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) said, ‘It is our understanding that as result of today’s court hearing, Andrew is due to be released on bail.’

The statement said consular staff in Greece had offered assistance to both the families of Andrew Symeou and Jonathan Hiles.

R
umbling motor scooters filled the streets in Patras town centre. They emitted the warm smell of combusting petrol – a familiar scent that I’ve always loved. The front windows of the car were open, so the fumes lingered in my nostrils as we approached the police station.

It was so strange seeing cars driving past and pedestrians living their everyday lives, some doing their daily shop, or standing on the edge of the pavement and sticking an arm out to flag down dark purple-coloured taxi-cabs. Suddenly, I could see my uncle George standing just behind a parked van, then I could see my dad, then the rest of the family! They’d all been waiting for me, probably for hours and hours. Words can’t describe how great it felt. After everything that I’d gone through I was about to be with my family again. No more prison cells, no more handcuffs, a real bed and an amazing meal!

‘
Ade! Kane to “beep beep!
” – Come on! Do the “beep beep!”’ I said to the officers in the front seat.

The officer who was driving used the bottom of his palm to slam the middle of the steering wheel – I could tell from the back of his head that he was smiling again. He held down the horn for a few prolonged seconds, which grabbed the attention of my
family across the street. They looked over to the police car and could see me through the window, sitting in the back seat. Their sombre faces became beaming smiles and I was welcomed with waving hands. My mum threw both of her arms up in the air and I waved back with both of my cuffed hands.

The officer parked and opened the car door for me. He helped me out and I was instantly suffocated with hugs as soon as I stepped out.

‘Handcuffs!?’ my mum yelled.

‘Don’t worry, they’re coming off!’ I reassured her.

Within ten minutes I was walking the streets of Patras. I watched my feet stepping on the pavement in amazement. It didn’t feel real. At the time I believed that I’d stroll out of prison and feel exactly the same as how I always had in the outside world. Surprisingly, my surroundings were more difficult to digest than I’d thought. Small things, which I normally wouldn’t notice, stood out because they were so different from what I’d become used to in prison. The stone slabs on the ground made a zig-zag pattern and fitted together perfectly. It was a strange thing to acknowledge, but it was such a drastic change from the endless concrete flooring.

I was shocked because the world seemed to be
absolutely huge
. I’d become content with being in very small spaces for long periods of time, and the largest outdoor area was a courtyard surrounded by tall, barbed-wired walls. In comparison, the high street seemed as though it was never ending. Everything was buzzing and loud, and it was great to see lots of women walking the streets – I’d been surrounded by other males for far too long!

Such ‘normal’ things seemed so strange to me. I wasn’t an alien exploring a newfound world; I’d seen cars and smelled burning petrol from motor scooters before – I’d seen pavements and high streets. I’d definitely seen women before.

‘This is so weird!’ I said to my sister Sophie. She clung onto my arm as we walked towards the hotel, practically skipping.

‘I bet!’ she said.

‘It’s only been eleven months!’ I added. In that moment, I was reminded that the case wasn’t over. This was only a little taste of freedom – a tease. I wasn’t allowed to go home, so I technically wasn’t free at all.
Forget it
, I thought. I was with my family again and that was all that mattered in that moment. It was definitely a lot better than where I’d woken up that morning anyway.

The walk to the hotel was probably about fifteen minutes, and I went straight up to the room and lay on the bed. I told everyone how amazingly comfortable and soft I thought the beds were.

‘What? These beds?’ my uncle George questioned. ‘These beds are shit!’

He was right, they were hard and lumpy, but any bed would have felt incredible in comparison to the thin mattresses that I’d been sleeping on for the past year.

I was given some time to myself, and I had (what I believed to be) the best shower ever. There were no inmates singing or rushing me, no faeces floating near my feet, no spunk covering the walls, and no splatters of brown liquid. I didn’t even have to wear flip-flops. It was just warm water and soap that smelled amazing. I felt so privileged, especially as I could use the toilet without having to squat. On my first night out of prison, I felt like a king – and the toilet was my throne.

That evening we headed to a lovely Greek restaurant for my first meal out. I sat at the head of a long table, which was outdoors in the fresh air. The pedestrianised road was packed with rows of tall, beautiful trees. Their thin branches were lush with thick, green leaves and they cradled juicy oranges the size of grapefruits.

We ordered some drinks and (of course) we stood for a toast. ‘To Andrew,’ said my dad.

‘To Andrew!’

‘To me!’ I said before we lost ourselves in joyful conversation that had been a long time coming.

When the food came I couldn’t believe my nose –
souvlaki kebabs
cooked to perfection, mouth-watering lamb chops and
kalamari
rings drenched in lemon that melted on the tongue. The waiters brought over traditional Greek salads – with feta cheese, black olives and tomatoes that were redder than any I’d ever seen; then they brought bowls of rice and thickly cut chips. The metal cutlery felt cold and heavy in my hands because I’d been using plastic cutlery for so long. I stabbed a piece of chargrilled pork and put it to my mouth. I noticed that I’d got into the habit of biting the fork too hard with my two front teeth, which isn’t noticeable when using softer, plastic cutlery. Even the way that I’d been eating had changed and I couldn’t help but wonder how I might I have changed in other ways. I chewed and tasted the herby flavours and meaty juices. It was
pretty damn good.

The next day, my grandma, uncles and aunties left early for the airport. I didn’t want them to leave Greece because I was so happy to see them. I knew that they couldn’t hang around forever, as some of them had been there for weeks already. Unfortunately for me, they had lives to get back to. I, on the other hand, couldn’t get back to my life just yet. My family had almost dropped their lives in London completely, so we took a coach to Athens to live in an apartment owned by my great-uncle Andreas.

Getting used to life outside of prison didn’t happen overnight. I’d still sit for hours a day, thinking, drinking
frappes
, smoking cigarettes and spinning my
pegleri
between my fingers while feeling the raging sun heating up my face.
Rich in vitamin
D
, I’d
think – remembering the words of Stefanos from Korydallos. It’s funny how one little phrase would act as a cue for a string of memories and thoughts about prison. Suddenly I’d be reminiscing about the riots: people covered from head to toe in blood and beaten half to death. I was out – so why did I have to think about it? At least now I was on a balcony overlooking an urban Athens road – not the most beautiful view, but definitely safer than a courtyard full of prisoners. I was a step closer to freedom, and I remembered what Arnas had told me when I was abruptly made to leave Avlona’s Parartima: ‘It doesn’t matter how long it takes to happen, all that matters is that it will.’

I still had some habits that I’d acquired on the inside. For example, when I used to have dinner, I’d finish eating and then wash my plate – but only my plate – nobody else’s. When having dinner at home we would always take it in turns to do the washing up, which would never happen in prison. I even found myself pushing in front of people in supermarket queues, as though I needed to reach the checkout before someone would steal the items from my plastic basket. It was a completely unacceptable way to act!

As time passed, the bad prison habits tended to lessen, as did the special treatment from my mum. I was hoping that she would feel sorry for me after everything that I’d been through – hopefully she’d want to spoil me and let me relax. That lasted about two days, then I had to clean, cook, shop and help in any way that I could. I loved it though – just being with my family made me very happy.

They’d bought a USB internet stick, so for the next few weeks I was constantly using Skype to talk to Riya and my friends. We all had so much to catch up on. I told them stories of how ‘this crazy guy’ pierced his own tongue with a wire, and how the Avlona school opened my eyes to how important education is.
I tended to tell them of the light-hearted memories that I have from my time in Avlona, as opposed to the heroin scene and ‘mad prison riots’ that I’d witnessed in Korydallos. I did tell people about them (to some extent) but I made them out to be nutty stories that weren’t a big deal at all. The honest truth was that I couldn’t get the bad memories out of my mind, and I still couldn’t sleep because of it. I tended to put a very positive twist on the things that I’d tell people, because I found it so difficult to explain how I truly felt.

Now that I was out of prison we needed a bigger apartment, so my parents rented one in another part of Athens called ‘Neos Kosmos’. It was a five-minute walk from a
Sklavenitis
supermarket, which is comparable to a Sainsbury’s. A corner shop was right downstairs, which sold
Sklavenitis
’s own-brand food for double the price! There was a tram stop down the road, which took us straight to central Athens in one direction, and to the beach in the other – ten minutes each way.

Having been uprooted and transported from cell to cell, wing to wing or prison to prison for the past year, I felt like I could settle in absolutely anywhere. The apartment was perfect, and it had become home.

My dad was in the UK for a lot of the time, fighting for work and trying to keep his interior architecture firm going. Things weren’t going too well for the business, not only because of the case, but because they’d been hit pretty hard by the recession. I was out of prison, so at least he was able to focus more on building it up again. On the other hand, my mum was in Athens a lot more and she’d started to volunteer at the church’s food programme. She would go to Omonia Square a few times a week and serve meal packs to the needy. I was asked if I’d like to volunteer, which I wanted to do because I had so much time on my hands. In prison I’d witnessed the poverty that some people were
facing, and I wanted to give back to the community. But to be honest, the thought of bumping into people from prison worried me. Jamal would have been released from Avlona and I knew for a fact that he and his friends used to sell drugs in Omonia Square. My mum had probably served him food without even knowing who he was. I didn’t want to risk seeing him – or anyone else from prison who’d recognise me.

The delay before the actual trial was disgraceful; it had been months and I had a life to get back to! How long did the Greek authorities want me to sit around and wait?

Back home, the coalition government came into power and our new Tory MP Nick de Bois was very supportive. He raised the profile of my case in Parliament and managed to call for a meeting with the new Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg. My dad and Sophie met with him, lobbying the DPM to push for a speedy trial date or bail to the UK.

Slow weeks became even slower months, but nothing seemed to come of the meeting. I’d already been in Greece for way over a year and we still hadn’t heard anything of a new court date. At least there had been quite a bit of coverage in the UK media about the controversies of the European Arrest Warrant. My case highlighted a severe flaw in the legislation, so a short documentary about me had been shown on a programme called
Inside Out.
The BBC’s
The One Show
followed up the report, so they came to Athens to interview me. When the piece was aired, Riya recorded it and sent it to me over the internet. It exposed the inconsistencies of the Greek investigation, and expressed that what was happening to me was gravely unjust. In a nutshell, it proved my innocence in a ten-minute television piece! If only it would be that quick to prove my innocence in the eyes of Greek law. It was all taking so long, and it left our emotions fluctuating. The way we were living wasn’t normal. I was living the life of a loser:
I was twenty-two years old, I had no job, I lived with my mum and I hardly left the apartment. Sometimes I wouldn’t leave for two weeks at a time, and when I did, it would be a short walk to the supermarket.

My mum and I would pass the time watching films and series box sets on DVD. The one that we loved the most was
The Sopranos
, which is (in my opinion) the greatest television show of all time. It’s about the life of a New Jersey mobster battling depression and balancing his gangster life with his pseudo upper-middle-class, suburban family life. The main character, Tony Soprano, has some great quotes that I absolutely loved, like: ‘I’m like King Midas in reverse, everything I touch turns to shit!’ and (my favourite) ‘Every day is a gift, just … does it have to be a pair of socks?’ It was exactly how I felt; I appreciated that every day was a gift because I was so happy to be out of prison, but at the same time a dark cloud still loomed over me. I was in limbo. My mum and I watched all eighty-six hours of
The Sopranos
, almost back-to-back, because we didn’t have very much else to do. It was
frickin’ amazing.