The Justice Minister has ordered police to prepare a fresh study on tasers, reviving efforts to legalise the stun weapons five years after a previous attempt was quietly dropped from Parliament.
Justice Minister Marios Hartsiotis instructed the police chief to update the study to establish a complete and documented framework for possible reconsideration of legislation, he told Parliament.
The move follows a question from DISY MP Nikos Georgiou asking whether police possess such weapons and whether special legislation is needed.
Current law explicitly bans electric discharge weapons, with violators facing up to five years in prison or a £3,000 fine. The Firearms and Non-Firearms Law of 2004 prohibits any person from possessing, importing or transporting any device designed for electric discharge or projection of noxious substances.
2021 attempt vanished
The Justice Ministry proposed in 2019 to amend the law to allow police to possess tasers, arguing the weapons are widely used abroad to disperse demonstrations when public safety or property is at risk, Hartsiotis said.
The proposal was based on a police study of other EU member states’ experiences and was presented to Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee.
However, one party threatened to vote down the entire bill if the taser provision remained, the minister said. The bill went to plenary on 4 February 2021 with the provision intact, according to the committee report.
The provision vanished from the final law published on 17 February 2021, with no recorded debate or formal amendment to remove it.
Implementation steps
If legislation is adopted, various steps would follow including procurement, usage regulations, training, and pilot implementation before full rollout, the minister said.
“As five years have passed since the last update of the study, instructions were given to the Chief of Police to update it,” Hartsiotis said.
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