highlights
Ex-Cyprus president's body stolen from grave
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-12-12 20:17
Papadopoulos served as president from 2003 to 2008, ushering the ethnically divided island into the European Union in 2004. He was a central figure of Cypriot politics for decades, with a career spanning most of the island's turbulent history since it gained independence from Britain in 1960.
The island was split in 1974 into a Turkish-occupied north and an internationally recognized Greek Cypriot south.
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 This Dec. 16, 2006 file picture shows the late Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos (C) together with people who lost their beloved ones during the 1974 war. [Xinhua] |
A British-trained lawyer, Papadopoulos was a guerrilla leader for the Greek Cypriot group EOKA, which waged an anti-colonial campaign. Later, at 26, he served as the youngest cabinet minister in the island's first post-independence government.
In 2004, he urged Greek Cypriots to reject a UN-brokered reunification plan, which he vilified as entrenching the island's division rather than ending it. Three-quarters of Cypriots obliged him in an April 2004 referendum. Two-thirds of Turkish Cypriots accepted the plan.
Papadopoulos' family issued a statement saying they were grieved and angered by the "sacrilegious act."
The theft of his remains "cannot in any way bury the policy or erase the political will of Tassos Papadopoulos. Wherever his body may be, his voice will still be heard," the family statement said.
Relatives, former colleagues and politicians visited the desecrated site throughout the day, with Papadopoulos' daughter, Anastasia, taking away a framed photograph of her father that had stood at the grave.
The body snatching was roundly condemned, including by the European Union's Swedish presidency and Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou.
"This is really shocking. I cannot believe that such a thing could happen, especially in Cyprus," said Andros Christou, a nearby resident. "The only thing that I heard last night was rain and thunder."
