The family of Thanasis Nikolaou is doing what the State and the Legal Service should have done, his mother, Andriana Nikolaou, told CNA, marking the 21st anniversary of his death and today’s court proceedings, where the private criminal prosecutions against five defendants are continuing.
It is recalled that 26-year-old Thanasis Nikolaou was found dead under the Alassa Bridge on September 29, 2005, with his death initially attributed to suicide, followed, among other things, by the exhumation of his remains and three postmortem investigations, with the last one—in 2024—attributing his death to strangulation resulting from a criminal act.
ΣΧΕΤΙΚΑ ΑΡΘΡΑ
The Legal Service’s decision not to proceed with criminal prosecutions, despite the subsequent findings of the independent criminal investigators that confirmed the criminal act, led the family of Thanasis Nikolaou to initiate private criminal proceedings against medical examiner Panikos Stavrianou, former Limassol Police Director Andreas Iatrou, former head of the Limassol Criminal Investigation Department Nikos Sofokleous, former Rural Police Chief Christakis Nathanail, and former head of the Platres police station complex, Christakis Kapiliotis.
Following a lengthy process of pretrial motions, during which the indictment was revised, the charges were read at the most recent hearing; these include, among other things, conspiracy to obstruct the course of justice and dereliction of duty. The defense stated that its clients are not yet ready to respond and filed new motions, on which the court is expected to rule today.
On the occasion of the 21st anniversary of Thanasis’s death, Andriana Nikolaou stated that, “These days are always difficult, and we dedicate them, as a family, to his memory, because Thanasis was always close to the church.”
She reiterated that her son was the victim of harassment and intimidation inside the military camp after witnessing drug trafficking, noting that Thanasis had requested a transfer from his unit the day before he was found dead.
“On a day like this, I reflect on all the stages of my son’s preparations—when he woke up at 6 a.m. to go to his unit—and then I wonder where he might have been, whether he was alive or dead, until the afternoon when his lifeless body was found,” she added.
“I,” she adds, “believed my son was in the army until noon, when his commander informed me that he hadn’t reported for duty,” while noting that “since they called him (at the camp) at 7:30 in the morning and he didn’t answer, it means that someone took his phone, turned it off, and made it disappear, since it was never found.”
Ms. Nikolaou wondered, “How do all those responsible feel—not only for his death, but also for this ordeal they’ve been inflicting on us for 21 whole years, since they know very well what happened and know very well that they’re mocking us, as a body cannot remain intact after a fall from such a height without external injuries.”
In addition, he placed the blame “first and foremost on the Legal Service,” saying that “We saw them during the third inquest, where the Attorney General said one thing, promised us another, put something else out to the public, and the Legal Service’s lawyers did yet something else”. “They said they wanted to help us, but it was all just fairy tales, and if we hadn’t fought for ourselves, nothing would have happened,” she added.
He noted that “what we had to do as a family—to prove the obvious, the very things we’d been shouting from the very beginning—namely, that they killed our child, we did it, and it was proven in court,” while he questioned whether “it was up to us to chase after the perpetrators, or should the state and the Legal Service have done so?”
This, he continued, “should have been their job, not ours,” while emphasizing that the family is keeping its distance from the current legal proceedings “because we don’t want to see any of them in front of us.”
Today, she concluded her statement by noting that the family will hold a memorial service followed by a trisagion at the monastery where Thanasis’s remains have been kept since the third inquest was completed.
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Source: KYPE
