Hearings to begin in November for Thanasis Nicolaou case

The new judge on the case of the national guardsmen, Thanasis Nicolaou, suspected to have been murdered in 2005, said on Tuesday that she intends to have a speedy trial for the case.

The new judge was appointed, following the recusal of the former judge at Nicolaou’s family’s behest.

During Tuesday’s hearing, the procedures to be followed were decided and a new court date was set for November 10. At that hearing, the court will decide whether Panicos Stavrianos, who was the medical examiner that ruled Nicolaou’s death as a suicide at the time, will participate in the further trial as an interested party.

The court asked the legal services counsel and the family’s lawyer for their views on whether the process should start over or whether the witness material and findings should be submitted as evidence, to start the process from where it was, when the previous death inquest was stopped.

In addition, the judge expressed her intention for the inquest to be completed quickly, as she said, through a process of two or three presentations per week.

The two sides agreed that the process should continue from where it had stopped, that is, based on the new data created after the exhumation of the bones of Thanasis – in 2020 – which led to the conclusion that his death, on September 29, 2005, was due to a criminal act and not to suicide.

From the point of view of the legal service, it was reported that this is a “peculiar case”, with a huge amount of witness material, and it asked the court to clarify whether the medical examiner Panicos Stavrianos, in case he is called as a witness, could subsequently participate in the process with his legal counsel, as an interested party.

The family’s lawyer said that he does not consider that the new evidence requires the presence of Stavrianos as a witness, while he added that the family intends to present the two new expert testimonies that have emerged in recent years.