Nikolaos Yiagou

He was born in the village of Kato Zodeia¹, Nicosia district, in 1934.

On October 9, 1958, he was tortured to death and passed away at the Lefka² police station.

Nikolaos Yiagou finished the primary school of Zodia and was a farmer. He was sworn in as a member of EOKA shortly before April 1, 1955 and took on the recruitment of other members in his village. He took part in various activities, such as the attack on the Koutrafas³ police station.

He was a group leader of Pano Zodeia⁴ and developed a rich activity. He maintained a hideout in his house in which he hosted guerrillas, taking on both their protection and supply, as well as their movement, knowing at all times where they were.

On October 5, 1958, an EOKA ambush was successful in Kato Zodeia and Nikolaos knew where the group of guerrillas who carried out the attack had taken refuge. Two days after the ambush, he was arrested and tortured to death, in order to reveal the whereabouts of the sector commander and his group. He knew that the group was in Nikitari after the ambush in Zodeia, but he preferred death to betrayal. He died before the eyes of the fifteen-year-old student Antonis Papaevripides, who had also been arrested and tortured with him.

Antonis reports:

“The beating by our torturers, who were two police officers, an Englishman and a Turk and several English soldiers, continued, one on me, the other on Nikolis, outside Morphou towards the sea, near a ditch with water, where they threw us when we fainted. At two o’clock after midnight they put us in the same car, Nikolis in the front and me in the back seat. At a bend in the road, Nikolis leaned against the door, which opened, leaving his body hanging crumpled, exhausted, unable to make the slightest effort to hold on.”

Nikolaos Yiagou, according to the testimony of a police officer, died at the Lefka police station where he had been transferred, near which he was buried by the two police officers who had caused his death.