The Limassol district court on Wednesday approved the filing of private criminal charges against five people – former state pathologist Panicos Stavrianos and four former police officers – in relation to their actions in the aftermath of the death of conscript Thanasis Nicolaou, who was killed in 2005.

According to the Cyprus News Agency, a total of 38 charges have been filed, most of which have been filed against Stavrianos, and include charges of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, neglect of official duty, issuing a false certificate, perjury, destruction of evidence, and interference with judicial proceedings.

The five stand accused of covering up that Nicolaou had not committed suicide, as Stavrianos had initially ruled, but had instead been murdered.

The filing of private charges comes after the legal service had announced in June that it intended to file no criminal charges with regard to the alleged coverup of Nicolaou’s death following the completion of a report into Nicolaou’s death and the circumstances surrounding of its aftermath written by lawyer Thanasis Athanasiou and retired Greek police lieutenant Lambros Pappas last year.

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The legal service had written in a letter to Nicolaou’s family that Pappas and Athanasiou “did not reveal any new facts capable of overturning the legal reasoning of our decision” not to file charges beforehand.

“There is no trace of testimony about [Stavrianos’] knowledge of there having been a murder or [his] intention to cover for the perpetrators in order to provide them with the opportunity to escape punishment.”

Later, the legal service criticised the report’s conclusion.

It said that “the offences attributed to Stavrianos are based exclusively on the assumption that the cause of death is due to a criminal act and consequently, it is suggested that he committed perjury, issued a false death certificate, and committed other related offences, having given as an undisputed fact that on the one hand, there was a criminal act, and on the other that [Stavrianos] had knowledge of it”.

Therefore, it said, “we wonder how they came to the conclusion that all the evidence reveals a serious possibility” that Stavrianos committed crimes in the aftermath of Nicolaou’s death.

It also pointed out the fact that in February, the Supreme Court had found that prior to its ruling that Nicolaou had been strangled to death last year, the Limassol district court had made a “legal error” in not allowing Stavrianos to testify during the case.

The judge who made that ruling, Dora Varoshiotou, has since lost her job, with the supreme judicial council having decided to not offer her a permanent position within the judiciary following the conclusion of a two-year probationary period.

She was the only one of 11 judges under probation whose employment was discontinued, with seven being offered permanent appointments and three being given further probation.

Nicolaou’s mother Andriana Nicolaou was furious with the legal service’s decision.

“Provocatively, for 20 years, they have protected those who covered up the crime instead of bringing them to justice,” she said last week.

“To this day, the legal service, with the audacity of a thousand monkeys, protects and makes excuses for the position of [former state pathologist Panicos Stavrianos], who issued a report within ten minutes at the scene, before performing an autopsy and before the basic investigations were carried out,” she said.

“Those who murdered my child were amateurs, as has been scientifically proven, but those who covered it up and continue to cover it up even today are professionals. They have committed the most crimes, and continue to commit crimes against society, against justice, and against the Republic of Cyprus.”