The Sunday Times - World
The Sunday Times August 06, 2006
Link:- http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2300534,00.html
Boy wins £300,000 payout for noise of Red Arrows
Michael Theodoulou, Nicosia
AN autistic boy in Cyprus has won £300,000 in damages for the torment he
suffered from the noise of the RAF Red Arrows team practising over the
holiday island.
A Cypriot court ruled that Alexandros Costaki, 11, had suffered actual
bodily harm after several doctors testified that autistic children can be
extremely sensitive to sound and that he had suffered “great pain and
distress”.
Christos Pourgourides, a British-trained barrister whose law office handled
the case, said: “A noise you could hear 100 metres away he could hear 10
miles away.”
The family sued the Cypriot government for “failure to protect its citizens”
because “under the prevailing legal regime we cannot sue a foreign state,
which is the British government, in the Cypriot courts,” Pourgourides said.
The Cypriot authorities can appeal.
Alexandros’s family was forced to take the boy to America for costly
treatment after every visit by the Red Arrows, said Charalambos Ioannou, the
lawyer who fought the case in court. The damages awarded at the end of the
five-year action will be controlled by the court until Alexandros is 18.
The British bases in Cyprus have yet to see the judgment and will take legal
advice to decide whether the ruling has implications for them. Pourgourides
said that from now on Cyprus should insist that the Red Arrows train only
over the sea.
The boy lives in Limassol, a port on the southern coast which borders RAF
Akrotiri, a sprawling airbase nicknamed the “kebab posting” by visiting
airmen.
The Red Arrows, which celebrated their 40th year of exhibition flying in
2005, are based in Lincolnshire but visit Akrotiri for up to six weeks a
year, where they make three half-hour training flights a day, weaving their
magic at 400mph, wing-tips at times just 5ft apart.
The Red Arrows are “not sanctioned to fly over any centres of population —
and never Limassol,” a British bases spokesman said. The jets used only
three display areas, all near Akrotiri.
Residents of Akrotiri and parts of Limassol have complained for years about
noise from the Red Arrows and other military aircraft. Some villagers have
claimed that vibrations from the jets have damaged their houses.
Michael Wrase, a German resident of Kolossi, a village next to Akrotiri,
said: “The noise from the Red Arrows is appalling. They do their training
right up to the edge of our village’s boundaries and it can be very
menacing.”
_________________________________________________________________
Windows Live™ Messenger has arrived. Click here to download it for free!
http://imagine-msn.com/messenger/launch80/?locale=en-gb
All emails are checked before they are sent on to the list. Please see the original "Welcome to the DAN Mailing list message" for further information. DAN mail list archives from 1 May 1999 are available at the Yahoo Group web site here http://groups.yahoo.com/group/danmail/messages . Free our people.
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/danmail/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[log in to unmask]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
________________End of message______________________
This Disability-Research Discussion list is managed by the Centre for Disability Studies at the University of Leeds (www.leeds.ac.uk/disability-studies). Enquiries about the list administratione should be sent to [log in to unmask]
Archives and tools are located at:
www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/disability-research.html
You can JOIN or LEAVE the list from this web page.
|