The family of Thanasis Nicolaou will file private criminal prosecutions next week against seven people, 20 years after the death of the 26-year-old National Guard soldier.
Thanasis Nicolaou’s body was found under a bridge in Alassa in 2005 and his death was deemed by the army and police as a suicide. But after his remains were exhumed in 2020 over suspicions of foul play, further autopsies showed he had been beaten and strangled.
The charges will be filed at Limassol District Court, where the alleged crime took place, and target four former police officers, two former National Guard officers and forensic pathologist Panicos Stavrianos, according to the findings of criminal investigators Pappas and Athanassiou appointed by the cabinet.
Private prosecutions will be brought against the four former police officers who served at Limassol Police Directorate when Thanasis was found dead and had responsibility for directing the investigation.
The soldier’s death was attributed to suicide, leading it to be examined as a minor offence by Larnaca police station rather than by Limassol CID.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled in a condemnatory decision against the Republic that the investigation conducted from the beginning by authorities was inadequate, which is why no possibility other than suicide was examined.
The two military officers are included in a report attributing blame to them for the first time, as it was judged that whilst they knew what was happening at the camp where Thanasis served, they took no action.
Charges range from neglect to falsification
All defendants will face charges of alleged neglect of official duty, whilst the forensic pathologist faces the most serious accusations including issuing false certificates, destroying evidence, providing false information to police, perjury and interference in judicial proceedings.
All individuals are presumed innocent. Stavrianos has maintained throughout that Thanasis’s death was not due to criminal activity and has rejected the allegations against him.
Filing private prosecutions requires permission from the Attorney General. He has repeatedly stated he will not refuse consent for prosecutions against five people – the four former police officers and the forensic pathologist.
However, it remains unknown what action he will take regarding the two military officers, who were implicated for the first time in the latest report. The Attorney General may suspend private prosecutions against them whilst allowing proceedings against the other five to continue.
Attorney General’s previous position
In a letter to the family’s lawyer Nicos Clerides, Assistant Attorney General Savvas Angelides had clarified that after studying the latest report by criminal investigators Pappas and Athanassiou, he decided not to proceed with criminal prosecutions because the element of “deliberate” neglect of official duty required by law could not be proven in court.
He stated that “the report did not reveal new data capable of overturning the legal reasoning of our decision, which was communicated in our letter dated 14/6/2023, taken after the Matsas-Alexopoulos report”.
Angelides noted that even accepting expert findings of strangulation, “there is no trace of testimony about the forensic pathologist’s knowledge of the existence of murder or intention to cover up perpetrators to enable them to escape punishment, so as to become an accomplice”.
He emphasised that charges against Stavrianos are based exclusively on the assumption that the cause of death was due to criminal activity, and consequently, recommendations for perjury, issuing false certificates and other offences arise from the uncontested assumption of criminal conduct and the pathologist’s knowledge of it.
Read more:
