NICOSIA (Reuters) -Police in Cyprus have arrested a British man on suspicion of terror-related offences and espionage, authorities said on Saturday.
The man appeared before a district court on Saturday, which ordered an eight-day detention pending inquiries. No further details would be issued, police said, citing national security.
A spokesperson for Britain’s Foreign Office confirmed the individual’s nationality, saying it was in contact with local authorities.
“We are in contact (with) the authorities in Cyprus regarding the arrest of a British man,” the spokesperson told Reuters.
Several Cypriot news outlets reported the suspect was a man of Azeri ethnic descent and had been arrested in the Zakaki suburb of the coastal city of Limassol. The suspect was thought to have had a British RAF military base in nearby Akrotiri under surveillance, as well as Cyprus’s own Andreas Papandreou Air Base in the western region of Paphos since mid-April, Cyprus’s ANT1 news portal reported.
Cyprus lies very close to the Middle East and has in recent days been used as a transit point for people either leaving or going to the region amid the conflict between regional foes Israel and Iran. Terror-related offences on the island are very rare.
(Reporting by Michele Kambas and Sam Tabahriti in London;Editing by Mark Potter, Tomasz Janowski and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
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