Newsroom
More than 18 years after the mysterious death of army conscript Thanasis Nikolaou, his family is refusing to let his story end in silence. His mother, Andriana Nikolaou, says they are pressing ahead with private criminal prosecutions against seven individuals named in the latest independent investigation, and she won’t stop there.
“These seven are certain,” she told the Cyprus News Agency (CNA). “But it shouldn’t just be seven. It should be 107. It wasn’t just one or two people who helped cover this up. For 20 years, they kept mocking us.”
Andriana’s anger and pain are palpable. For nearly two decades, she has fought to uncover the truth about her son’s death, which was originally dismissed as suicide. A fresh investigation by two independent criminal investigators concluded Thanasis was murdered and that multiple people were involved in either the crime or the subsequent cover-up.
Now, with her lawyer Nicos Clerides preparing to take legal action, she’s hoping private prosecutions will succeed where the state failed.
She makes no secret of her distrust of the Legal Service, the island’s prosecutorial authority. “It doesn’t matter how many attorneys general come and go; three have changed already. The files are still in the hands of the same lawyers who’ve been fighting us all these years,” she said.
In her view, legal staff should rotate with each new attorney general, just as Cabinet members do when governments change. “That way they’d know they’re being watched, and they’d be held accountable by the ones who come after.”
Her comments come in response to a report published in Phileleftheros, which also noted that lawyers representing controversial pathologist Panicos Stavrianos, the one who signed off on the original suicide ruling, are attempting to reopen the case and challenge past court rulings. But Andriana was clear: “You can’t reverse final Supreme Court decisions. All the pain, all the damage caused by Stavrianos won’t go unanswered.”
There was one moment of relief, though. After years of waiting, the state finally returned Thanasis’s remains to his family, more than four years after they were exhumed for a second post-mortem.
“I felt a little resurrection,” Andriana said quietly. “Like a weight had been lifted, not just from me, but from our whole family.”
She says public support is what keeps her going. “The legal service and all those in power should be afraid, because the voice of the people is the wrath of God.”
The Nikolaou family’s battle for justice has struck a chord with many in Cyprus. What started as one mother’s fight for answers has grown into a symbol of resistance against a system that, for years, tried to bury the truth along with her son. Andriana is determined: this story will not be forgotten, and neither will Thanasis.
