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| - A mother voiced heartbreak Tuesday at the treatment of her son, a suspected hacker who became the first Cypriot national extradited by his country to the US. Joshua Epifaniou, 21, was flown out from the Mediterranean island before dawn on Friday to face charges including several counts of wire and computer fraud, identity theft and extortion. "I managed to see my son for the last time for only two or three minutes," said Vivina Polloso, a 57-year-old supermarket employee. "I managed to hug him and kiss him goodbye. This was devastating, heart breaking!" Epifaniou, wanted in the US states of Georgia and Arizona, is the first Cypriot citizen to be shipped to America under a 1999 extradition treaty. Arrested in Nicosia in May 2017 at the age of 17, he spent more than three years in Cypriot jail on trial in a local hacking case, without being convicted, and fighting extradition. "They deprived him of his youth, he became an adult in prison," his mother, a Filipina who has lived more than 30 years in Cyprus, said in a statement. Polloso said the last time she saw her son, before their tearful parting at the island's Larnaca airport, was on July 1 in court. The island's coronavirus lockdown had limited prison visits. The FBI accuses Epifaniou of extorting tens of thousands of bitcoin from US firms while still a teenager by breaking into their IT systems and threatening to leak their data. His defence team tried to block the extradition, arguing that Epifaniou was aged 15 to 17 at the time and suffers from Asperger's syndrome, a developmental disorder. Epifaniou could serve 20 years in a US prison if convicted. Social media users in Cyprus voiced alarm at his extradition. "He was a juvenile with Aspergers and American prisons are not known for... human rights protections," one tweeted under the handle @disqus. "The poor guy's mental health has most likely taken a massive hit." Cyprus last week also extradited Lebanese national Ghassan Diab, 37, an alleged money launderer for Hezbollah, to face charges in America, the US Justice Department said. "This successful operation was the result of close cooperation between American law enforcement agencies and the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Cyprus," the US embassy in Nicosia tweeted. Diab is wanted in Florida for multiple felonies related to laundering "drug proceeds" amounting to more than $100,000 for Hezbollah's "global criminal support network", the Justice Department said. Hezbollah is designated a terrorist group by the United States. Diab was provisionally arrested in Cyprus in March 2019 after landing in Larnaca from Lebanon, based on a request from the United States. cc-hc/par
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