5.  The applicant was born in 1966 and lives in the village of Kalepia, in the district of Paphos. 6.  The applicant was arrested on 23 July 2000. 7.  On 28 July 2000 he was charged under the Criminal Code (Cap. 154) with rape and various offences against morality. 8.  On the same date he was taken before the Paphos District Court which referred the case to the Paphos Assize Court (“the Assize Court”). 9.  On 5 September 2000 the applicant appeared before the Assize Court and pleaded not guilty to the charges. His detention was ordered until his trial which was fixed to commence on 9 October 2000. 10.  Between 9 October 2000 and 22 March 2002 the case was adjourned on five consecutive occasions by the Assize Court owing to hearings in other cases. 11.  In the meantime, on 4 December 2000, the applicant was released on bail. 12.  The hearing commenced on 22 March 2002 and ended on 6 February 2003. One hundred and four hearings in camera were held within this period. There were no adjournments. During the trial the Assize Court heard approximately thirty witnesses and examined a considerable amount of material which included thousands of pages of evidence. 13.  On 19 March 2003 the Assize Court gave judgment in the case convicting the applicant of rape, defilement of a girl under 13 years of age, defilement of a girl between 13 and 17 years of age and abduction under sections 144, 153(1), 159 and 154 of the Criminal Code respectively. 14.  The court, in a lengthy judgment of 157 pages, examined the evidence given by the witnesses in depth and, after warning itself of the dangers of acting on uncorroborated evidence, accepted the complainant's evidence in its entirety without recourse to corroborating evidence. It found that the complainant's evidence was credible and that the main and intrinsic body of her evidence was characterised by clarity, consistency and firmness. It noted that the differences in her evidence were minimal and immaterial and that her credibility remained intact. The Assize Court, however, pointed out that, even if it had decided that corroborating evidence had been necessary, such evidence did exist in support of the applicant's conviction. The Assize Court referred to examples of such evidence. 15.  On 20 March 2003 the applicant received one sentence of four years' imprisonment for the offence of rape, seven sentences of four years' imprisonment for the offence of defilement of a girl under 13 years of age, one sentence of one year's imprisonment for defilement of a girl between 13 and 17 years of age and two sentences of six months' imprisonment for abduction. All sentences were to be served concurrently. 16.  On 28 March 2003 the applicant appealed against his conviction (appeal no. 7426). The Attorney-General lodged an appeal against the sentences (appeal no. 7347). 17.  The applicant raised a total of forty grounds of appeal. The first ground concerned the manner in which the prosecution had presented its case and its conduct throughout the proceedings; the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh grounds challenged the Assize Court's assessment of the evidence given by the complainant and its decision to rely on it without recourse to corroborating evidence; the remaining grounds challenged the Assize Court's evaluation of the evidence given by the other witnesses. 18.  On 3 April 2003 the Chief Registrar of the Supreme Court sent a letter to the Registrar of the Paphos District Court requesting to be informed of the number of pages of the transcript of the case and the amount of time it would take to prepare it. 19.  On 9 April 2003 the Registrar of the Paphos District Court sent the appeal notice to the Chief Registrar of the Supreme Court informing the latter that the court transcript amounted to 3,820 typed pages and would be sent to the Supreme Court by 31 December 2003. 20.  On 15 March 2004 the Chief Registrar of the Supreme Court sent a follow-up letter. 21.  On 16 March 2004 the Registrar of the Paphos District Court informed the Chief Registrar of the Supreme Court that efforts would be made to send the transcript by 6 April 2004. 22.  On 5 April 2004 the case file and the transcript of the first-instance proceedings were sent to the Supreme Court. 23.  On 30 April 2004 the parties were notified that the appeal hearing had been fixed for 25 June 2004 and that the written outlines of their submissions should be filed by 14 May 2004. 24.  On 10 May 2004 the applicant applied for an extension of the deadline for filing the written outline of his submissions on the ground that it was impossible to go through the extensive transcript of the case before the given deadline. The request was granted by the Supreme Court on 7 June 2004. 25.  On 5 July 2004 the applicant requested another extension and this was granted by the court on 22 September 2004. 26.  The written outlines of the submissions were filed on 22 October 2004 by the applicant and on 15 February 2005 by the Attorney-General. 27.  Supplementary outlines were filed on 28 February 2005 by the applicant and on 10 March 2005 by the Attorney-General. 28.  On 23 March 2005 the applicant applied for an adjournment of the hearing. This was granted and the hearing was adjourned until 24 May 2005. 29.  The hearing began on the above date and ended on 29 September 2005. Several hearings were held. 30.  On 9 November 2005 the Supreme Court, in a judgment of approximately twenty-three pages, dismissed the appeal and upheld the findings of the Assize Court. In particular it held as follows:
“The principles on the basis of which the appeal court intervenes to set aside the findings of a first-instance court regarding the credibility of witnesses are known. The issue of witness credibility is a matter for the first-instance court. The appeal court intervenes only if the findings or the conclusions of the first-instance court contravene common sense or are not justified given the evidence or its own conclusions. In so far as omissions or contradictions in statements or evidence are concerned, for first-instance judgments to be set aside by the appeal court, these must be material, so they strike a fatal blow to the credibility of the witness or disclose his disposition to distort the truth.
We have carefully gone through both the above and the rest of the points in the statements and evidence of the complainant, which the appellant's lawyer referred to us in order to point out omissions and contradictions. The same points were also put before the Assize Court, which also dealt with them extensively in its decision before finally accepting the evidence of the complainant. We consider that the reasons given by the Assize Court for its evaluation of both the omissions and the contradictions of the complainant are in all respects convincing and reasonable so as not to justify intervention by us. Its conclusion that the discrepancies in the complainant's evidence 'are minimal and completely immaterial with the result that they leave her credibility intact' and that 'the main and intrinsic body of her evidence concerning the various episodes of sexual intercourse as described in her evidence is characterised by clarity, consistency and firmness ... At no point in the cross-examination was the basic core of her evidence shaken', finds us in agreement. Consequently, the relevant ground of appeal is dismissed.
The remaining grounds of appeal, except for one, which we will deal with further on, touch on the evaluation and the resulting findings of the Assize Court with reference to the evidence adduced by the prosecution to corroborate the evidence of the complainant and/or to prove its case against the appellant, always in relation to the evidence adduced by the defence to corroborate the evidence of the appellant and/or to rebut the evidence of the prosecution.
In view of our conclusion that the previous ground of appeal, which touches on the Assize Court's acceptance of the complainant's evidence in its entirety without recourse to corroborating evidence, is not well-founded, we consider that the extensive examination on our part of the remaining grounds of appeal would be of academic significance only, since, regardless of our conclusion relating to the one or the other ground, the appeal must be dismissed in the end. We confine ourselves, simply, to noting that we have not been convinced of the validity of any of these grounds. This is particularly the case with reference to the specialist scientific evidence of the geneticist M. K., a ground to which a great deal of time was devoted in the proceedings before us as well.
The last ground of appeal against the conviction of the appellant touches on the whole of the proceedings before the Assize Court, which, it should be noted, lasted for almost one year, and consists of the point that, according to the appellant, the prosecutor from the Attorney General's Office ... presented his case in such an improper, unfair and oppressive way as to render the whole procedure vulnerable and the trial unfair. Inter alia, it makes the charge that [he] was particularly pugnacious throughout the whole trial and made constant verbal attacks and insulting statements and characterisations at a personal level at the expense of the defence lawyer, the appellant and certain witnesses for the defence; that he spied on both the defence lawyer and on some of the defence witnesses; that he raised unjustifiable obstacles and other difficulties to hinder the smooth conduct of the appellant's defence thus causing unjustifiable prolongation of the proceedings, the length of which resulted in the violation of the appellant's rights safeguarded by Article 30 (2) of the Constitution and Article 6 of the Convention on Human Rights; that he made extremely unfavourable and inadmissible statements about the appellant with the aim of influencing the court to his detriment; that he acted contrary to the professional responsibility and the basic duties and rights of prosecutors as adopted by the Council of Ministers on 6.10.2000 after their adoption by the International Union of Public Prosecutors on 23.4.1999 and that, in various respects, he put the defence in an unfavourable situation and caused it serious and irreparable harm.
It is a fact that on certain occasions the behaviour, phraseology and, in general, the reactions of [the prosecutor], particularly at the sensitive stage of the cross-examination of witnesses for the defence, exceeded the bounds which the high principles of the profession of lawyer impose and, particularly, of that of public prosecutor; principles which impose the demonstration of the highest possible self-restraint and tolerance towards the other side, particularly during cross-examination. Of course, the fact does not escape us that, in certain cases at least, the reactions of [the prosecutor] were to some extent occasioned by the attitude of the appellant's lawyer. This, however, is not a justification. The unpleasant atmosphere of confrontation and tension which was created without reason between the lawyers, at specific phases of the proceedings, did not, in our judgment, deprive the appellant of a trial that was fair from all points of view. The Assize Court, with its patience, occasional interventions and its indications, mainly to [the prosecutor], restored the requisite calm to the entire proceedings and secured for the defence every possible opportunity to present its case in full. This is demonstrated, inter alia, by the exhaustive cross-examination of the prosecution witnesses and the very detailed examination of defence witnesses, as it emerges from the transcript of the trial.”
As regards the claim of the appellant's lawyer that [the Prosecutor] 'unnecessarily contributed to the creation of excessively lengthy and time-consuming proceedings that resulted in the violation of the 'constitutionally safeguarded rights of the accused as provided for by Article 30 (2) of the Constitution and Article 6 of the Convention on Human Rights', we observe that the proceedings did indeed take a long time but that this was mainly owing to the extensive case of the defence”. 31.  The Supreme Court also dismissed the Attorney-General's appeal against the sentence.