Former president Tassos Papadopoulos’s body was found in a shallow grave three months after it was robbed from his family plot, Cypriot police said on Tuesday, following a tip-off call in “broken Greek.”
The discovery, in a case that has shocked the Mediterranean island, sparked a bizarre dispute between Justice Minister Loucas Louca and the Papadopoulos family over whether a ransom was demanded.
“There was a ransom demand” of the wealthy family, the minister told reporters, without disclosing the amount or when it was made. However, “no ransom was paid”.
But family spokesperson Chrysis Pantelides, within an hour, phoned in to a state television news programme to deny they had received any such demand and reprimand the minister.
“The Papadopoulos family did not, and I reiterate did not, receive any kind of demand for a ransom,” said an angry Pantelides. “We should all at this moment in time be acting responsibly, especially all those in authority.”
Meanwhile, the minister ruled out political motives for the theft or the involvement of Turkish Cypriots on the divided island, but would give no clues on the identity of any suspected perpetrators.
Police spokesperson Michalis Katsounotos told state radio DNA identification within hours of the find on Monday night had confirmed that the body was the missing corpse.
The body was found at a cemetery in a Nicosia suburb, less than 5km from the robbery site in an another graveyard, after an anonymous tip-off from a telephone box.
Katsounotos later said the corpse was found in a recently dug shallow grave, found with directions given in the tip-off.
“Right now the investigations are ongoing and a large number of people are expected to be called in for questioning,” he said, in a case for which no arrests have yet been made.
The robbers may have panicked, according to Katsounotos. “Maybe the culprits felt the net of the police coming down on them.”
Family spokesperson Pantelides told reporters that the caller “spoke in broken Greek” and had first telephoned the family, who redirected him to the police. Katsounotos said it was the family that contacted the authorities.
In search of fingerprints, investigators have sealed off the phone booth in the village south of Nicosia from which the tip-off originated.
President Demetris Christofias, the successor to Papadopoulos as Greek Cypriot leader, joined the family in expressing “relief and satisfaction” over the discovery.
The former head of state’s widow, Fotini, read out a statement to the media at the family estate on the outskirts of the capital, and thanked the police.
“The finding of the body of our beloved Tassos has finally put an end to the ordeal which has overwhelmed us for the past three months and has restored calm to our family,” she said.
Pantelides said the body, which was taken to the state morgue after examination by police at the scene, would be returned to the Papadopoulos cemetery plot near their home for a small private reburial.
Grave robbers stole Papadopoulos’s body from inside his coffin on December 11 — one day before a memorial service was due to be held to mark the first anniversary of the 74-year-old’s death from lung cancer.
Police at the time said it would have taken three or four people to remove the heavy 250kg stone slab that covered the tomb.
Greek Cypriot media have been awash with reports the crime might have been a ransom attempt by a foreign gang, as Papadopoulos ran a successful law firm before becoming president and had married into the wealthy Leventis family.
Police have said the robbery was “deliberate and carefully planned”, while Cyprus has sought the help of Interpol, the FBI, Scotland Yard, Greece and Israeli police as it scoured the area of the macabre crime.
Hard-line nationalist Papadopoulos was president from 2003 to 2008. In 2004, he led Greek Cypriots in rejecting a UN plan to reunify the island with the Turkish Cypriots in the north. — AFP