Bodies of ex-Romanian dictator Ceausescu, wife exhumed

July 21, 2010 02:10 pm | Updated 06:52 pm IST - BUCHAREST

In this TV grab taken in Tokyo on December 26, 1989 shows the body of ousted Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu after he and his wife Elena were executed by firing squad on Christmas day. Authorities have exhumed on Wednesday, the bodies of Ceausescu and Elena at the request of the family to perform DNA testing in order to confirm their identity.

In this TV grab taken in Tokyo on December 26, 1989 shows the body of ousted Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu after he and his wife Elena were executed by firing squad on Christmas day. Authorities have exhumed on Wednesday, the bodies of Ceausescu and Elena at the request of the family to perform DNA testing in order to confirm their identity.

Taking the country by surprise, forensic scientists on Wednesday exhumed what are believed to be the bodies of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena at the request of their children.

Ceausescu ruled Romania for 25 years with an iron fist before being ousted and executed during the 1989 anti—communist revolt in which more than 1,000 people were killed.

Some Romanians doubt that the Ceausescus were really buried in the Ghencea military cemetery in west Bucharest. There is also some nostalgia for the communist period and regrets that the couple were executed on Christmas Day, 1989.

The news of the exhumation, the latest development in a five—year court case, broke as most Romanians were asleep. Officials rapidly closed the cemetery as dozens of journalists began arriving at the gates. A few elderly people wandered around the sprawling cemetery but were kept away from the exhumations by guards.

Ceausescu was toppled on December 22, 1989, as Romanians fed up with years of draconian rationing and communist rule revolted. He tried to flee Bucharest by helicopter but his pilot switched sides. After a summary trial, Ceausescu and his wife were executed by a firing squad three days later.

A team of pathologists and cemetery officials hoisted the wooden caskets of Ceausescu and his wife out of their graves on Wednesday. They took samples from the corpses and put them into plastic bags, a process lasting more than two hours {hbox}” before reburying the coffins.

“We are closer to knowing the truth,” the couple’s son Valentin Ceausescu told The Associated Press by phone.

Officials say it will take up to six months to determine the identity of the remains.

Ceausescu’s alleged remains were better preserved than those of his wife, said Mircea Oprean, the couple’s son—in—law who was present at the exhumation.

Oprean’s wife, Zoia Ceausescu, had sued the defense ministry in 2005, saying she had doubts that her parents were buried in the cemetery. She died of cancer in 2006 and her brother Valentin took up the case.

Cemetery worker Cornel Muntean told the AP that Ceasescu was dressed in a thick gray overcoat. An AP reporter saw a dirty cloth being removed from Ceausescu’s remains and what looked like a thick gray fur hat at the end of the coffin.

Romanians rose up in 1989 as other Communist regimes collapsed in Eastern Europe, angered and exhausted by years of rationing as the dictator tried to pay off the country’s foreign debt. Meat, cooking oil and butter were severely limited and blackouts were common.

Ceausescu stifled dissent with his Securitate secret police, which were believed to have 700,000 informers in the nation of 22 million.

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