[1] A former journalist and EOKA militant pardoned under the London and Zürich Agreements, Sampson was first elected Member of the House of Representatives in 1960 on a platform of Enosis (unification with Greece).

Following the return of the legitimate government to power, Turkish troops refused to leave, causing the division of Cyprus.

The death sentence was subsequently commuted to life imprisonment and Sampson was flown to the United Kingdom to serve it.

A year and a half later, under a general amnesty as part of the 1959 Zürich and London Agreement, he was released but he remained in exile in Greece until Cyprus gained formal independence in August 1960.

[9] According to The Daily Telegraph, as a journalist, he flew to Algeria to interview Ben Bella and to Washington, D.C. to talk to U.S. President John F.

[10] On 14 May 1961, he was arrested, along with another man, a garage mechanic who was also a former EOKA member, in connection with the murder of a British architect, Peter Gray, who had been only three weeks in the country and had been shot and killed in Kyrenia in his car.

Following an explosion to the statue of EOKA hero Markos Drakos in Nicosia, Sampson actively participated in clashes between the Greek and Turkish communities in December 1963.

On 15 July 1974, Makarios was deposed by a military coup which was led by Greek officers of the Cyprus National Guard.

He claimed not to have anticipated the impending coup that had installed him, adding that, after military officers had insisted, he "saw the possibility of civil war and accepted"[20] to prevent the clashes.

Nonetheless, Sampson was prosecuted and sentenced to 20 years in prison for abuse of power (Greek: νόσφιση εξουσίας) in 1976.

His son Sotiris Sampson was elected member of the House of Representatives of Cyprus for three terms in a row in Famagusta District.

[22] Some on the political right in Cyprus refer to Sampson as a hero of the EOKA independence struggle that sought to unify the island with Greece.

Meanwhile, many on the political left, while acknowledging his contribution to the EOKA struggle, see him as a traitor to the Republic of Cyprus for his involvement in the coup and complicity in the killings of some liberals and leftists.