The Supreme Court will on Wednesday announce its decision regarding the cause of the death of conscript Thanasis Nicolaou in 2005.

The Limassol district court had ruled in May that Nicolaou had been strangled to death, almost 19 years after state pathologist Panicos Stavrianos had found that he had committed suicide.

Stavrianos then filed to have the Limassol ruling annulled, saying that he was an interested party in the case and should have had the right to participate in court proceedings in Limassol.

If the Supreme Court now finds that the Limassol district court’s ruling was correct and that Stavrianos need not have been heard there, the ruling of Nicolaou’s death as a murder will stand.

If, on the other hand, it finds that the court should have allowed Stavrianos to testify, it is possible that the Limassol district court’s ruling will be annulled.

The Limassol district court had found that “Thanasis Nicolaou, whose body was found under the Alassa bridge, died on September 29, 2005, as a result of strangulation due to criminal activity.”

His mother Andriana Nicolaou had for nearly two decades campaigned to have Stavrianos’ ruling overturned, remaining adamant that her son had not committed suicide.

Speaking after the ruling, she said, “I thank God for giving me the strength these years through all my sickness,” and promised that justice would eventually come for those who killed her son.

“For two decades we fought to prove true that everyone did everything to cover up the truth,” she said.

The investigation was carried out on the basis of the new information brought to light following exhumation and examination of Nicolaou’s bones in 2020, which led to the conclusion that his death was due to a criminal act and not a suicide.

Following the Limassol district court’s ruling, the government appointed two new investigators, retired Greek police lieutenant Lambros Pappas and lawyer Thanasis Athanasiou, to further investigate the matter.

Speaking after the announcement of the investigators’ appointment, President Nikos Christodoulides called for the “truth to shine”.

“What matters for us is for the truth to shine and for the investigators to begin work immediately, because Thanasis’ mother and father, as well as society at large, await answers,” he said.

He added that the government had appointed the investigators “precisely so we can see why for all these years … some aspects were possibly not investigated.”