Specialized lab tests carried out in Greece showing that the disputed death of a Greek Cypriot soldier in 2005 was from strangling and not from suicide will be sent to the criminal investigator in charge of the case.
This is what the Law Office decided on Thursday after examining the new findings on Thanasis Nicolaou’s ovoid bone.
Insiders told Philenews the report of pathologist Emmanuel Agapitos appointed by the Law Office to examine the bone shows a partial difference compared to the that by Greece’s Demetra Karayianni who was appointed by the family.
The Greek professor was absolute in her conclusions that the fracture of the hyoid bone came from hanging or strangulation while he was alive.
Agapitos’ conclusion underlines that it is possible the breaking of the bone took place while he was alive. This view can be interpreted in different ways, an insider also said, adding that this is the reason the Law Office is to both reports to the investigator and take it from there.
The family of Nicolaou had never believed he had committed suicide as was insinuated by army and police authorities at the time of his death.
The soldier was found dead under a bridge while serving his army sentence.
The family believes he was bullied, beaten to death and then thrown off the bridge of Alassa in Nicosia where his body was subsequently found, not far from his parked car.
A court order, okayed by the attorney general’s office, paved the way in December for the exhumation of his bones and for a new post mortem examination to take place.
This time, by coroners assigned by both the state and the distraught family.
The family took Cyprus before the European Court of Human Rights in 2010 on the grounds that the investigation into their son’s death was incomplete and insufficient.
The ECHR sentenced Cyprus for the death of Nicolaou on January 28, last year, after accepting the family’s claim that authorities had failed to conduct sufficient investigations into his death.
