Filenews 7 February 2025
The Ministry of Health is proceeding with the thorough reconstruction of the Forensic Medicine Service, after the last incident where a coroner was suspended due to the case of the death of a Pakistani man by a policeman's bullet, a fact that was not diagnosed during the autopsy.
Yesterday, a meeting was held under the Minister of Health Michalis Damianos (he had announced it a few days ago) during which the Minister of Justice Marios Hartsiotis, the Assistant Attorney General Savvas Angelides, the Director General of the Ministry of Health Christina Giannaki and the Chief of Police Themistos Arnaoutis were present.
During the meeting, the serious problems of understaffing of the Forensic Medicine Service were mentioned, since at the moment only two forensic pathologists, for the whole of Cyprus, are in office. It was also mentioned that the volume of work of forensic pathologists has increased significantly, since in addition to incidents of sudden deaths, they also have to examine incidents of violence, rape, criminal acts, etc. At the same time, they have to testify at death investigations, prepare reports, handle samples taken for analysis, which increases their workload. This results in delays in preparing reports, issuing results and overloading existing forensic pathologists.
After exposing all the existing problems, it was decided in principle to purchase services from other forensic experts (probably from Greece) and at the same time it was deemed necessary to reconstruct the Service from the beginning. For this purpose, a Committee will be set up to prepare a study on the needs of the Forensic Medicine Service and how it operates. It is not excluded, as "F" is informed, that a proposal may be made for the independence of the Forensic Medicine Service.
It is noted that due to the lack of forensic experts, the Paphos morgue has been temporarily closed and post-mortems are now carried out in Nicosia. Recently, an issue arose with forensic pathologist Nikolas Charalambous due to the case with the 24-year-old Pakistani who was found dead in an open area on the Acropolis. Initially, Mr. Charalambous, who conducted an autopsy, had not diagnosed a criminal act, a fact that he found during the autopsy four days later, when he found a bullet in the victim's body. This triggered a scenario about a cover-up of the case, after the victim was finally found to have been shot dead by a police officer during the incident in the area of Potamia.
This development had provoked the reaction of the Minister of Health, who ordered a disciplinary investigation and at the same time asked the National Health Service to suspend the coroner. Charalambous' lawyer refuted the criticism, saying that during the autopsy his client did not rule out a criminal act and that during the autopsy he had found the bullet in the body of the 24-year-old.
