TSALIKIDIS AND OTHERS v. GREECE JUDGMENT
29
the initial stage of the investigation. Most importantly, following the
exhumation, the hyoid bone was found to be broken. According to the
material brought to the attention of the Court by the applicants – which was
not refuted by the Government – a broken hyoid bone is a finding consistent
with strangulation. Besides this, the new forensic reports drawn up by the
coroners following the exhumation of the body concluded that the cause of
death remained unclarified, which is a striking difference compared to the
initial forensic report.
101. In view of the above, one could reasonably have expected the
domestic authorities to address the inconsistencies identified above.
However, the public prosecutor decided to close the investigation,
upholding the conclusions of order 80/06, and simply citing the relevant
steps that had been taken during the supplementary investigation without
addressing any of the above-mentioned findings and inconsistencies. The
Court notes that it is not clear on what grounds the Athens public prosecutor
based his decision not to prosecute or to order further investigative
measures because the order contains no reasoning, merely a reference to the
new reports.
102. The Court additionally notes that the applicants did not have at
their disposal any remedy against the public prosecutor’s decision to close
the supplementary investigation. While the applicants could challenge
order 80/06 by which the initial investigation was closed, a remedy used by
the first applicant albeit unsuccessfully, it appears that the public
prosecutor’s order to put the case back to the archive was final and the
applicants could not appeal against it or advance their arguments for further
investigative measures.
103. The Court reiterates that Article 2 does not impose a duty on the
investigating authorities to satisfy every request for a particular
investigative measure made by a relative in the course of the investigation
(see Ramsahai and Others, cited above, § 348). In the Court’s view
however, some of the investigative measures suggested by the applicants
could have elucidated the circumstances surrounding the applicant’s death.
In particular, the Court notes that, although the cause of death had not been
sufficiently elucidated, no reconstruction of the incident and no forensic
examination of the place of death were ever ordered, despite the applicants’
request and their technical advisors’ suggestion to this effect. While the
Government alleged that such a reconstruction would not have been
appropriate as the applicants had tampered with the evidence at the place of
death, the Court opines that a reconstruction and/or a forensic examination,
even at a later stage, would have shed light on the possible proximity of the
body to nearby furniture and would have provided answers as to whether his
body should have suffered injury, given the position in which it was
hanging.