A former police officer charged in the private criminal prosecution over the 2005 death of National Guard soldier Thanasis Nicolaou has asked the Attorney-General (AG) to suspend the proceedings, citing “abuse of process.”
The request comes 20 years after the 26-year-old soldier was found dead under the Alassa bridge, a death long contested by his family, who insist the initial ruling of suicide was a cover-up for murder.
The defendant making the application is former police officer Christakis Kapiliotis, who was the head of Lania Police Station when the death occurred in September 2005.
Through his lawyer, Andriana Klaedes, Kapiliotis sent a letter to the AG arguing that the lapse of more than 20 years since Nicolaou’s death is too long a period for private criminal prosecutions to be filed. Critically, he is strategically leveraging the AG’s Law Office’s own previous assessment of the evidence.
The letter attaches a response sent by Assistant AG Savvas Angelides on 11 June 2025, which had rejected a request by the Nikolaou family’s lawyer, Nikos Clerides, to file state prosecutions based on the Pappas-Athanasiou report. In his rejection, Angelides stated that the elements of the offence of deliberate neglect of duty meant there was “insufficient evidence to substantiate the offence.”
In that same letter, specifically addressing medical examiner Panikos Stavrianos—who is also a defendant in the private case—Mr Angelides stated there was no evidence that the medical examiner had knowledge of a murder or any intention to conceal perpetrators.
It is expected that the other four defendants—including medical examiner Panikos Stavrianos, former Limassol Police Director Andreas Iatropoulos, former Limassol CID head Nicos Sophocleous, and former Rural Police head Christakis Nathanael—will send similar letters to the AG.
The AG has since asked the Nikolaou family lawyers to submit their position on Kapiliotis’s request within 15 days. The family is expected to object to the suspension and insist on the continuation of the prosecution for a final court decision. This follows the AG’s earlier declaration that he would not suspend the private prosecutions if the family proceeded, following the issuance of the Matsas-Alexopoulos report.
The five defendants made their first court appearance on Tuesday, 9 December, where a preliminary objection was raised regarding a conflict of interest. The court set the next hearing for 22 January 2026.
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