An Azeri man was sentenced on Friday to six and a half years in prison for attempting to assassinate five Israelis in Cyprus in 2021, with the final conviction being “conspiracy to murder” and not terrorist charges -as Israeli authorities originally presented it.
The Cypriot news outlet Philenews reported that the Nicosia Criminal Court's sentence means 42-year-old Orhan Asadov is expected to be released in 2026, as he was detained pending sentence in 2021 at the Ayios Andreas municipal swimming pool in Nicosia on suspicion of terrorist offenses and planning the murders.
According to Cypriot law, every nine months spent in detention prior to a sentence counts as a year, so that the six-and-a-half-year sentence will be reduced to five years in real time in prison.
The site also reported that this sentencing was archived thanks to an agreement between Asadov’s attorney and prosecutor Polina Efthyvoulou, after the Azeri man admitted to conspiring to commit murder.
In exchange for admitting to the conspiracy, the terrorism charges, which carry up to life imprisonment, were withdrawn.
Israel claims Iranian links to the case
In 2021, Ynet reported that Matan Sidi, former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's media advisor, claimed that the attack was carried out in order to attack several Israeli businessmen living in Nicosia.
"This was a terrorist incident directed by Iran against Israeli businesspeople living in Cyprus," Sidi said.
The report also cited Iranian officials from its embassy in Nicosia, who described the allegations as "baseless."