24 May 2002.

KYRENIAN Titina Loizidou has spent a week in Strasbourg reminding Council of Europe officials that landmark human rights court rulings should be implemented.

"I'm neither a politician nor a lawyer. I'm just an individual who feels that justice should not be bargained," she told The Cyprus Weekly yesterday shortly after her return from the European city. Loizidou personally lobbied with 26 out of the 40 CoE delegations telling them that Europe's legal system should not be discriminative.

She says she hopes her message was sent higher up, to the CoE's Committee of Ministers who referred to the Loizidou case once again on Wednesday. 

The discussion was behind closed doors but Loizidou feels they are willing to put pressure on Turkey.

"The feeling I got is that the 1996 judgement on my right to peacefully enjoy my property as well as on the 1998 damages decision should be executed," she said.

The Ministers are the ones obliged to take whatever steps are necessary to force Turkey to honour the judgement, including the non-abiding country's expulsion. 

However, reliable sources from Strasbourg find it highly doubtful that the Ministers will expel Turkey right now even though they have already passed three interim resolutions.

The resolutions stress that the consequences from a refusal to comply with a judgement are serious.

Turkish Cypriot press reports have also highlighted the need for Turkey to comply with the Court's decision.

Moreover, the British newspaper The Observer which broke a story last week on Britons flocking to buy under-valued homes in occupied Cyprus, especially in Kyrenia, also referred to the Loizidou case.

Warning opportunistic potential buyers that property bought from a pariah "state" may not be theirs for long and that title deeds may prove worthless, the reliable newspaper stressed:

"The European Court of Justice has already issued a landmark ruling favouring one such refugee"."