Fifty-two years after the coup of July 15, 1974, the family of eight-year-old Stavros Pidias and his 62-year-old grandmother, Margarita Theodorou, still marks the anniversary of the morning both were shot dead in the Agios Ioannis area of Limassol.
The two were killed by machine-gun fire in front of the rest of the family, who had gathered at the grandmother’s house for breakfast. The house on Milou Street stood a short distance south of the Agios Ioannis Police Station, where fierce fighting broke out that day between coup forces and resistance fighters.
Margarita Theodorou’s grandchildren and Stavros’s cousins, Georgia Theodorou and Spyros Christodoulou, shared what they remember and what they later learned about the killings, saying they want the story kept in the country’s collective memory.
“It’s a story I believe needs to be heard,” Georgia Theodorou said. She was interviewed alongside her 87-year-old father, Neoklis Theodorou, who was dressed in black. She noted that “ever since the tragedy, every July, my father always wears black.” An attempt to get a statement directly from Neoklis Theodorou proved impossible, with his daughter explaining that dementia stops him recalling details, and referring us by phone to her cousin, Spyros Christodoulou, who was eleven years old at the time.
Georgia Theodorou said their grandmother, Margarita, had moved to Limassol from the village of Eledio in Paphos after her husband’s death, to help the families of her five children and their seven grandchildren, among them Stavros, “a very good pupil at Limassol’s 4th Primary School, who dreamed of becoming a pilot,” and who was raised alongside his cousins like a sibling.
Living in neighbouring houses that shared a yard, the family would gather each summer for breakfast and treats prepared by their grandmother. The same happened on the morning of July 15, 1974, except that this time the coup was already under way, and a double killing was about to take place.
Spyros Christodoulou said his uncle and father, both supporters of Archbishop Makarios and members of AKEL, had earlier been called on to collect weapons and defend the police station, but returned home after finding the weapons too old to use. “My father, who worked for the Kypros taxi firm, put the car in the garage as the trouble started, and was crouched in the passenger seat trying to connect a loudspeaker,” he said, adding that “my aunt, my grandmother and all the children were sitting on the veranda nearby, listening to Makarios speaking on the radio, apparently from a recorded speech.”
He said that around 9:30am, a jeep appeared on Soranou Street and headed towards the Agios Ioannis Police Station, but access to Archbishop Makarios III Avenue was blocked with barrels. “We heard voices from the police station asking who was inside the car, and the driver reversed, possibly to leave,” he said. The men in the jeep wore military clothing, he added: “We didn’t know if they were armed, if they were coup supporters, but then shooting started from the direction of the police station, with bullets hitting my grandmother’s house and also the window of my father’s car, who thankfully was crouched down.”
“Everyone on the veranda dropped to the ground,” he said, adding that Margarita and Stavros, who was holding a bowl of crème caramel, were killed by the gunfire while inside the house. The shots hit Stavros Pidias in the head and Margarita Theodorou in the heart and chest, while his mother, Nafsika, was wounded in the arm, Christodoulou said, his voice shaking. “I can’t forget holding my cousin in my arms, his head half gone, shouting at him, ‘Stavros, what’s wrong, Stavros, wake up.’ His eyes were open and his arms and legs were shaking,” he said.
He said Stavros’s mother, Athinoula, crossed the road to the house opposite and shouted at those firing from the police station. “I was holding onto her dress, and I remember someone from the police station said something, and I heard a voice reply, and my aunt was shouting that they had killed her baby,” he added.
Asked about the shooting, Christodoulou said he believed coup supporters were present inside the police station and had watched his father and uncle leave earlier, then turned their weapons on the house. He rejected the possibility that it was an unfortunate coincidence, noting that the house was in the opposite direction from, and some distance from, the jeep that had appeared in the area.
He said his father drove Stavros, his grandmother and his mother to Limassol General Hospital, after an ambulance that had been called was blocked by coup supporters from reaching the house. Georgia Theodorou said the jeep reappeared in the area afterwards, and she believes “they came to take the bodies.”
Their fears were confirmed: the family said that as soon as the bodies of Stavros and Margarita were brought to Limassol General Hospital, they were taken away by coup supporters in a jeep, with no one knowing where they would end up.
The rest of the family spent that night in hiding at their grandmother’s house, while fighting continued outside the police station. “That night we hung sheets over the windows so the lights wouldn’t show, and we all slept together on the tables. We could hear gunfire, sirens, cars, voices from loudspeakers telling us to stay indoors,” Georgia Theodorou recalled.
The family’s search for the two bodies, and for their aunt Nafsika, continued for days without success, Georgia Theodorou said. About ten days later, she said, a priest from Agios Nikolaos church, who knew their grandmother, told them that an attempt had been made to bury the pair in a mass grave at Agios Nikolaos. “He told us they were his people and he had buried them together, at another spot which he showed us, and told us that our aunt Nafsika was being treated at Limassol General Hospital,” she added.
“What happened that day destroyed us,” Georgia Theodorou said. As a five-year-old, she said, what she remembers most vividly is the following day, “when the blood had to be cleaned up and Stavros’s brain matter scraped off the walls.”
The two cousins said the family never received any help from the state, no psychological support, and never saw justice for the deaths of their relatives. “It’s too late now. What could we ask for, justice? We know who these people are, and when I grew up I asked and found out who had the weapons and fired from the police station, but we never learned why other police officers didn’t stop them,” Theodorou said.
In 2015, with the support of the Metropolis of Paphos, the family erected a memorial with busts of Stavros and Margarita in the community of Eledio, Paphos, where they hold an annual memorial service, as they did last Sunday, July 12.
On the anniversary of the coup itself, Georgia Theodorou said, the family follows a routine: “From 6am we get ready, and at 7am we’ll be at Agios Nikolaos cemetery, and afterwards we’ll go to the Resistance Fighters’ Memorial to lay wreaths.”
Stavros’s parents and other relatives who lived through the events are no longer alive, but among those who honour the memory of the two family members each year is Stavros’s younger sister, born seven months after his death and named Stavri Theodorou Pidia.
The names of Stavros Pidias and Margarita Theodorou are included on the list of civilians who lost their lives during the treacherous coup, and are inscribed on the Memorial to Fallen Resistance Fighters, opposite Agios Nikolaos church.
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