Judge’s ‘bombshell’ resignation,
A TOP judge who was given round-the-clock protection earlier this year after receiving death threats sent shockwaves through the judiciary after announcing his resignation.
Tacan Reynar, who presided over the trial of six men found guilty of attacking the offices of daily newspaper Afrika in Lefkoşa in January, dropped the bombshell statement last Friday via his personal Facebook page.
“There is no meaning and importance for me to continue with this job in this order,” he wrote.
In a second post, he added that he had not been referring “solely to the judiciary” but had been “talking about the whole system that had been set up in the north of Cyprus”.
His boss, Chief Justice Narin Ferdi Şefik, issued a statement following Mr Reynar’s comments.
She said Mr Reynar, first appointed as a judge in 2010 before being promoted to senior judge in 2016, had tendered his resignation in a letter sent on May 24.
Chief Justice Şefik said Mr Reynar, who had carried out his job “perfectly”, had first told her he was thinking of quitting in October last year, after returning from a three- month spell in Canada during the judicial recess to “improve his English”.
He had applied to doctoral courses at a number of universities in Canada, she said, adding that she had provided written references, upon his request, to support the applications.
“Mr Reynar’s resignation and moving abroad were totally his own decision,” she said.
“An attempt to establish a connection with his resignation and the cases that he has heard is a distortion of the facts.”
Girne Local Bar chairman Gürcan Bayramoğlu said Mr Reynar’s resignation was a “huge loss” to the “TRNC judiciary and the country”, but he said the decision was “his right if he thought he was going to be happy by doing so”.
He said he was “saddened” that the resignation had been taken to a “totally different place where a whole lot of meanings had been attached to it”.
Mr Bayramoğlu said he did not believe Mr Reynar’s departure was “to do with the threats alone”, while noting that the former judge would be making a more detailed statement “in due course”.
He called on others to “refrain from speculative comments” in the meantime.