This week in history

THIS week in history last year, senior officials were putting “final touches” to proposed changes to the law that would allow them to seize TRNC assets from Amaranta Valley property fraudster Gary Robb. A revised version of the 10-page draft legislation was to be sent to government legal advisers to ensure that it complied with the Constitution.

Also this week in 2017, an investigation and precautionary measures swung into action on an Esentepe housing estate after three people who had stayed there in August were diagnosed with malaria. All three tested positive for P vivax malarial infection in the UK after holidaying at the Pine Valley development.

This week in 2013, a former US congressman taking on a $20,000 contract to lobby for the TRNC in the United States was quoted as saying Turkey was “wrong” on Cyprus. Democrat Michael McMahon — a New York congressman from 2009 to 2011 — was to handle the contract awarded to New York-based law firm Herrick Feinstein and said he viewed it as “extremely important work”.

This week in 2009, a two-yearold British boy on holiday with his parents was snatched from a popular TRNC beach by a stranger. A man grabbed Presley Cassell and fled. The toddler’s dad Nicholas, a 27-year-old sales executive from Ovenden, near Halifax, gave chase and caught up with the man and boy 30 yards along Kervansaray beach.

This week in 1998, “illegal” and “unmethodical” were allegations levelled against management of the TRNC’s Bayrak Radio and Television Corporation (BRTK) in a hard-hitting report by the Auditor-General into the handling of multi-million-dollar tenders.

On this very day, September 22, 1980, three weeks of border clashes between Iran and Iraq finally erupted into all-out war. The Iran/Iraq war lasted eight years, despite the limited military capabilities of the two sides. Iraq’s superior military equipment initially gave it the upper hand in the fighting but Iran fought back and even advanced to occupy some Iraqi territory in 1984 and 1986.

On September 27, 2001, a gunman ran amok in a central Switzerland government building, killing 15 people before turning the gun on himself. Ten people were also injured — eight of them critically — in the country’s worst mass killing which shocked the nation.