TSALIKIDIS AND OTHERS v. GREECE JUDGMENT 23 77. Nevertheless, and despite the lack of sufficient evidence to demonstrate unequivocally the alleged deficiencies in the initial investigation, the public prosecutor had granted the applicants’ request for a reopening of the proceedings – a fact indicative of the domestic authorities’ diligence in examining the case – and had ordered the exhumation of Mr Tsalikidis’ body. However, the exhumation did not reveal evidence corroborating the applicants’ theory that he had not committed suicide, as no traces of poison or drugs were discovered in his body. 78. In respect of the hyoid bone, the Government argued that no safe conclusion could be drawn as to whether it had been broken ante-mortem or post-mortem during the exhumation. In the initial autopsy report coroner G.D.L. had stated that the hyoid bone had been intact, which was an indication that the bone could have been broken during the exhumation process. The fact that only the hyoid bone had been reported as broken following the exhumation could easily be explained by the fact that exhumation had been focused on only a few parts of the deceased’s body. In any event, even if the hyoid bone had been broken ante-mortem, the applicants had not mentioned whether this phenomenon, whilst typical of strangulation, was also to be found in cases of hanging. Concerning the coroners’ conclusion that the cause of death remained unclarified, the Government submitted that it would have been arbitrary to draw any other conclusion, given the time that had elapsed, and that the coroners’ task had in any event not been to establish the cause of death. 79. As to the specific investigative measures that the applicants insisted should have been taken, the Government submitted that there had been no need to request assistance from laboratories abroad as Greek laboratories were fully equipped. As regards forensic examinations of the place of death and of the rope, they would not have been appropriate as the applicants had intervened at the place of death and had cut the rope from which the body had been hanging. They had therefore tampered with the evidence, whose value had hence become negligible. As regards minutes of the meeting allegedly held in phone operator V.’s premises the previous day, the Government argued that there was no evidence that such a meeting had in fact taken place or that minutes had been taken. In any event, such minutes could not have added anything to the investigative measures that had already been taken. Even if a causal link existed between the wiretapping affair and Mr Tsalikidis’ death, that did not mean that the investigation had been ineffective. 80. The Government also argued that a third coroner’s report was unnecessary because the conclusions drawn by coroners G.D.L. and F.K. during the initial investigation had not been contradictory, as the applicants erroneously maintained, but rather complementary. In particular, coroner G.D.L. had concluded that the rope had encircled Mr Tsalikidis’ neck with a knot at the right of the occiput and coroner F.K. had made the observation