A little after daybreak, a police van carrying an elderly Briton pulled out of the high-walled, colonial-era complex that is Nicosia’s central prison.
As on so many other occasions, it was the start of a journey David Hunter knew well: a near 100-mile road trip that would take the septuagenarian to the only other building he has been permitted to visit over the past 19 months – the district court in the coastal town of Paphos.
Except this journey was different. After countless adjournments, endless legal wrangling, tears and high drama, Hunter was finally to be sentenced in a trial more closely watched than any other in Cyprus in recent years.
For the former miner it marked the end of an ordeal that began in December 2021, days after Janice, his wife of 52 years, died at his hands after beseeching him “for weeks” to relieve her of the excruciating pain brought on by advanced blood cancer.
Not a day has passed, says Hunter, when he has not replayed the events of that fated night; events that would lead him to finally submit to Janice’s demand, using his hands to block the 74-year-old’s airways before she took her last breath in a white leather armchair in the couple’s villa outside Paphos.
Later that night – after telling his brother William in the UK who would alert the police – the Northumberland-born Briton would attempt to kill himself with an overdose.
This month, as the eastern Mediterranean island sweltered in record-breaking temperatures, the court’s three-member panel of judges announced it had found Hunter, 76, guilty of manslaughter but not premeditated murder – the charge he had faced, which carries an automatic life sentence.
His lawyers reacted with barely concealed delight. “This gives the court the option of a suspended sentence which we say is appropriate given the time David has already spent in custody, his age and the tragic facts of this case,” said the British barrister Michael Polak, whose legal aid group, Justice Abroad, has coordinated Hunter’s defence.
“Janice and David were in a loving relationship for over 50 years and it is clear that David did what he did out of love for Janice upon her request. We strongly believe that no proper purpose would be served by David spending any further time in prison.”
The defence team, he said, would submit extensive case law “from across the common law world”, citing sentencing in similar cases. Four days after the oral and written submissions were made, the presiding judge, Michalis Droussiotis, announced the court’s decision: Hunter was sentenced to two years but could walk free because of time already served.
“Before us is a unique case of taking human life on the basis of feelings of love,” said the Cypriot judge, emphasising that ending any life remained a crime. “[In this case it was committed] with the aim of relieving the person of their suffering as a result of illness.”
In a society that is socially conservative and profoundly influenced by the Greek Orthodox church, where euthanasia remains outlawed and even as a subject is highly taboo, the long-running proceedings were without precedent.
From the day Hunter was charged – days after he was rushed to Paphos’s general hospital following his suicide attempt – the trial has challenged public opinion and tested a justice system forced, for the first time, to deal with what an array of other EU states would consider assisted suicide.
Equally, Greek Cypriots have been forced to ask questions they might previously have found disquieting. “Never before has euthanasia been discussed publicly, never before have people here had to take a position or stand,” said Dr Nicos Peristianis, the island’s leading sociologist. “Throughout, there was this double question hanging over the whole debate: was it assisted suicide or was it murder? Did his wife really want to die?”
The court’s decision was so significant precisely because it would set a precedent. “It will be a kind of rail track for what will follow,” Peristianis said.
In often emotional proceedings, Hunter described how the couple’s “dream life abroad” had collapsed as his wife’s illness worsened. At first they had been forced to sell their flat in the resort town to pay for Janice’s medication. Once in their rented maisonette in Tremithousa, a village in the hills above Paphos, they had become increasingly isolated, exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic when lockdown restrictions resulted in access to doctors and treatment also becoming difficult.
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Fast losing her sight, forced to wear nappies and unable in her final days to walk, Janice had “begged” David to end what had become “unbearable suffering”, he said.
“She wasn’t just my wife, she was my best friend,” the Briton told the court, tearing up. “I would never in a million years have harmed her.”
For those in the former British colony who have long campaigned for the vexatious issue to be publicly aired – let alone introduced on the statute books – Hunter’s trial has been a tipping point, a “wake-up call” to focus minds in a culture primed to emphasise life at any cost. MPs sitting in the island’s House of Representatives are due to debate draft legislation allowing euthanasia in the autumn.
“In Cyprus we do not have provisions for euthanasia and it is therefore illegal,” said Achilleas Demetriades, the country’s pre-eminent human rights lawyer and a contender in recent presidential elections. “It is unfortunate that Mr Hunter has had to undergo this ordeal when the amendment of this law is about to be discussed in the house. Perhaps his case should be reason to expedite its introduction.”
Irene Charalambidou, the leftwing MP who heads the parliament’s human rights committee, said advocates had repeatedly come up against “the dogmatism” of the Orthodox church.
“Their stance is not unlike their very conservative views on many other issues,” she said. “And, yet, so many Cypriots who have seen relatives go through very painful deaths are in favour of euthanasia.”
Cyprus is home to one of Europe’s biggest communities of British immigrants, with the majority settled in the wider Paphos area. Many have watched Hunter’s plight with unalloyed compassion.
“There is a lot of sympathy for David,” said Chris Jones, a Welsh former headteacher who retired with his wife, Trish, to Cyprus two decades ago. Given the advanced age of most Britons, Jones has been overseeing the establishment of a palliative care facility in the hills above the town – a hospice that will, he says, take in foreigners and Cypriots when it opens in the new year. “Everyone sympathises with the very difficult choice David made in circumstances that were so difficult during lockdown,” said Jones. “Many of us feel ‘there but by the grace of God go we’.’’
