Cypriot police have discovered the corpse of former president Tassos Papadopoulos, three months after its theft.
Police said the corpse, found at a cemetery on the outskirts of the capital, Nicosia, after a tip-off late yesterday, had been identified by family members and subjected to DNA tests.
Papadopoulos died in December 2008, and his body was stolen last December, a day before the anniversary of his death.
Those held responsible for the crime ranged from Balkan crime gangs looking for a ransom to political opponents of the former president, who led Cyprus from 2003 to early 2008.
Local newspapers today reported that police suspected a criminal gang of snatching the body.
The corpse was found in a grave in a cemetery close to where he was initially buried, and is believed to have been placed there recently, police said.
A forceful character, Papadopoulos led the Greek Cypriots to the rejection of a UN reunification blueprint for ethnically divided Cyprus in 2004, shortly before Cyprus joined the European Union.
The island was split by a Turkish invasion in 1974 triggered by a brief Greek Cypriot coup.
