A Greek Cypriot army officer has been given seven life sentences after pleading guilty to killing five women and two children whose disappearances were initially ignored.

Nicos Metaxas, a 35-year-old National Guard captain, reportedly sobbed as a prosecutor in Nicosia read out the charges against him before apologising for his “abhorrent crimes” – described as the worst peacetime atrocities exacted against women on the Mediterranean island.

On no other occasion in the country’s postcolonial history has a defendant faced so many counts of premeditated murder. And on no other occasion has a sentence been as tough.

“I accept full responsibility for my actions and am ready to face the consequences,” Metaxas told the packed courtroom as he read out a handwritten statement, clad in a bulletproof vest. “I cannot go back in time and undo what I have done.”

A divorced father of two, Metaxas admitted killing five foreign women employed as domestic workers in local households and two children, daughters of his targeted prey.

“A big apology to the victims and their relatives for the unjust pain that I have caused them,” he said. “A big apology to my children and my parents for the distress I have caused them and a big apology to Cypriot society which is wondering how one of its members reached this point. The question is torturing me, too.”

Born to a Bulgarian mother and Greek Cypriot father, the army officer met most of the women through online dating sites in a series of killings that went undetected for years.

His first victim was murdered in September 2016; his last in August 2018. The women, from the Philippines, Romania and Nepal, had all sought employment on the island, long home to a community of south Asian women whose plight and working conditions have also come under scrutiny.

The self-confessed killer was eventually tracked down after the body of one of the victims, a 38-year-old Filipina, was brought to the surface of an abandoned mine shaft by unusually heavy rains on 14 April. A group of bikers and tourists who happened to be in the area reported the incident to police, setting in motion a series of events that would lead to the soldier’s arrest within days.

Metaxas, who also faced charges of kidnapping, said he was willing to put himself forward for scientific research so experts could delve into his psyche. Police have previously spoken of his detached manner in describing crimes in which some victims were dumped in suitcases weighed down by cement blocks in a toxic lake south-west of Nicosia, the island’s capital.

The failure of the authorities to adequately investigate the murders, despite the five women and two girls being declared missing, has triggered outrage in a society until now unused to serial killings and the horrors of serious crime.

The island’s police chief was fired and the justice minister resigned as the scale of the crimes came to light.

President Nicos Anastasiades, acknowledging the bungled handling of the cases, accused police of “dereliction of duty”.

Protest vigils have been held by migrant workers and civil rights groups outside the presidential palace, and in towns across the island.

The trial followed a two-month search for the bodies of the victims, with British and Israeli experts flying to the island to offer specialist assistance. In what was the final discovery for authorities who had worked around the clock to locate victims, the body of a six-year-old girl, the youngest person to die at the hands of Metaxas, was found earlier this month wrapped in a sheet tied to a cement block 20ft (six metres) underwater.

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Anastasiades’s government has announced it will cover the funeral and burial costs of all the victims.

Last week, the British Cypriot businessman and philanthropist Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou also announced he would be compensating the families of victims.

“I am as shocked as everyone else in Cyprus by the heinous crimes against these five women and their two daughters,” said the entrepreneur, whose philanthropy on the island is more usually focused on fostering reconciliation between the war-divided country’s Greek and Turkish communities.

“They came to Cyprus for a better life, but they ended up losing their lives in a tragic way. I am aware that no money will ease the pain of the relatives of the deceased, but expressing the respect of my fellow Cypriots in the sanctity of the human being, irrespective of race, religion, nationality or any other criteria, I feel the need to help, so that the husbands, parents and children of the victims, will be able to cover some expenses that they may have during this difficult time.”

Cheques for €10,000 (£8,900) would be sent to the families of each of the seven families, said Haji-Ioannou, who founded the low-cost airline easyJet and is the son of a shipping tycoon born in Cyprus.