NICOSIA, July 9: Ten Pakistanis were deported from Cyprus on Friday during a security operation here. Government officials refused to give specific reasons for the detention of the men earlier this week.

A lawyer said they were students at a private Cypriot college and were aged between 20 and 28. They were deported to Pakistan on Friday as "undesirable characters", a Greek Cypriot lawyer recruited by their families told Reuters.

"Authorities delayed giving us the paperwork until they were all out of the country. The letter I have says they were undesirable characters but we have nothing more than that," lawyer Sotiris Drakos said.

Cypriot Interior Minister Andreas Christou and government spokesman Kypros Chrysostomides declined to give more details or say why they would deport people they considered a security risk.

"I can confirm that instructions were given for their arrest for security reasons, nothing more," Christou told Reuters. The Pakistanis were arrested in a police swoop in the holiday coastal town of Larnaca on Wednesday.

Asked about the arrests, a police spokesman said: "Matters which relate to state security and terrorism are not issues we comment on." Acting on a tip-off last month, authorities rounded up a number of Pakistani students for questioning in Larnaca and the capital Nicosia, but later released them.

One of them had a pilot's licence and experience in handling explosives, a senior security source told Reuters at the time. Mr Drakos said some of the Pakistanis had not been allowed access to a lawyer, a right which is standard practice under Cypriot law. -Reuter/AFP