DNA tests have confirmed that a body exhumed from a Bucharest cemetery in July is that of the communist-era dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, a senior pathologist has said.
The conclusions moved a step closer to ending a long-running controversy over what really happened to the bodies of the dictator and his wife after their execution in 1989.
Dan Dermengiu, director of the national institute for forensic medicine, said he had reached his conclusions after comparing DNA samples taken from the body with others from Ceausescu's brother and his son.
‘If DNA samples of Nicolae Ceausescu existed when he was alive, we would be completely certain,’ he added. ‘But it is certain that the DNA analyses done with his brother and his son indicate that we are indeed talking about Nicolae Ceausescu.’
But there was not yet enough comparative evidence for the body thought to be Ceausescu's wife to establish a firm conclusion, he told the Mediafax news agency.
A senior official at the institute said they would present their official results on Thursday.
The two bodies were dug up at Ghencea military graveyard in the small hours of 21 July at the request of Valentin Ceausescu, the only one of the dictator's three children still alive.
He had asked the Romanian courts to exhume the bodies so as to officially confirm their identity, and after DNA samples were taken, the bodies were reburied.
Nicolae Ceausescu ruled Romania with an iron fist from 1965 until 1989. In December 1989, as communist regimes crumbled across eastern and central Europe, the Ceausescus fled massive protests in Bucharest and other cities.
They were arrested and executed on 25 December, after a summary trial. Brutally put down, the anti-communist uprising and the ensuing violence with mysterious ‘terrorists’ left 1,104 people dead and 3,352 wounded.
Fearing the tombs might be desecrated, the new authorities decided to bury the Ceausescus surreptitiously, at night, under crosses bearing false names, according to witnesses.
The couple's three children repeatedly said they doubted their parents had actually been buried there, but for years, the authorities blocked their attempts to have the bodies exhumed.
At the time the two bodies were exhumed, Mircea Oprean, the husband of the dictator’s late daughter Zoia, told reporters, he was inclined to believe they were indeed those of the Ceausescus.
‘I saw the bodies, my father-in-law's was quite well preserved, I recognized his black winter coat with some holes in it, presumably bullet holes,’ he added.
During the same period Gelu Voican-Voiculescu, a former top official of former president Ion Iliescu's regime, said he was happy the tests would finally prove he had told the truth all along.
‘The Ceausescus' remains will definitely be found in those tombs. They were buried on 30 December and the interment was taped,’ Voican-Voiculescu, who supervised the burial in 1989, said.
