Three months after its disappearance, three men were arrested for stealing the body of the late Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos.
Suspects include an Indian citizen with a fake Bulgarian passport, a prisoner serving a life sentence and his relative. National television reported that the Indian man confessed he stole the body with the help of the other two. Then he moved the corpse to the cemetery, where the police found it on Monday.
Justice Minister Lukas Luka said on Tuesday that the motive for the theft was ransom, as the criminals contacted Papadopoulos’s family and asked for money for the return of the remains. But ransom was never paid, he emphasized. The former president’s family spokesperson, however, denied the existence of a ransom.
