Thanasis case: AG says Legal Service did nothing wrong

The Legal Service has done nothing wrong in the way it handled the case of Thanasis Nicolaou, attorney-general George Savvides said on Thursday.

He was responding to questions after the Supreme Constitutional Court hearing into the auditor-general’s suspension case.

Savvides said he had fully briefed the president over the matter, who in turn appointed two independent investigators through a cabinet decision.

“They must be allowed to do their job. I do not believe the Legal Service, at least at the time when we took over, has done anything which was not correct.”

Asked whether he believed there were responsibilities that concern the Legal Service and its handling, Savvides said “I’m not here to attribute responsibility to anyone.”

There are cabinet-appointed investigators, and this is an ongoing process, he added.

The third inquiry into the death of national guardsman Thanasis Nicolaou ruled earlier this month, that he was killed by strangulation.

It overturned 19 years of insistence by authorities that Nicolaou killed himself, after his body was found under Limassol’s Alassa bridge in 2005.

He was 26 at the time.

Reading out her decision, judge Doria Varoshiotou criticised the stance of state prosecutor Xenia Xenophontos calling her line of questioning so intense it became argumentative.

The judge and state prosecutor had clashed horns multiple times, with Varoshiotou on one occasion telling the prosecutor that the AG’s office is ‘ignoring’ European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) rulings on Nicolaou’s case.

This was because the Legal Service insisted that forensic pathologist Panicos Stavrianos’ findings that Nicolaou committed suicide be accepted in the proceedings, despite an ECHR decision calling the investigation into his death inadequate.