BUCHAREST (AFP) – Gravediggers exhumed Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife's remains on Wednesday for tests to dispel doubts about the identities, two decades after their execution by a firing squad.
The exhumation at Bucharest's military graveyard of Ghencea came at the request of the family who have long suspected the bodies in the burial plot were not those of the Ceausescus.
Although the test results are not expected for months, one relative said he thought the remains were indeed that of the Communist strongman who ruled Romania from 1965 until 1989, and his wife Elena.
"I tend to believe the remains are those of my in-laws, but I cannot be a hundred percent sure until the DNA tests are performed," Mircea Oprean, the widower of the Ceausescus' late daughter Zoia, told reporters.
"I saw the bodies, my father-in-law's was quite well preserved. I recognised his black winter coat with some holes in it," presumably bullet holes, he added after the exhumation.
Ever since the couple were shot dead after a mock trial on December 25, 1989, and then promptly buried, doubts have lingered over the burial.
Fearing the tombs might be desecrated, leaders of an uprising which brought down the regime decided to bury the Ceausescus surreptitiously at night under crosses bearing false names, according to witnesses.
The couple's three children, of whom just one son, Valentin, is still alive, repeatedly said they doubted their parents had actually been buried there.
But for years, authorities blocked their attempts to have the two bodies exhumed.
"If my wife Zoia had been alive, this would have been the happiest day of her life," Oprean said.
Valentin Ceausescu, a physicist who shuns the limelight, was not present at the graveyard.
After DNA samples were taken, the two bodies were reburied.
An AFP journalist at the scene said she had seen fresh soil on the two graves, several yards apart.
Oprean said he planned a full funeral ceremony if the tests confirmed the remains were those of his in-laws.
If they did not, he said he would sue the authorities for hiding the truth.
Oprean moreover accused former president Ion Iliescu, who took power in the aftermath of Ceausescu's fall, and his aides of having "murdered" the couple.
A former top official in Iliescu's administration who supervised the burial in 1989 said the tests would finally prove he had told the truth all along.
"The Ceausescus' remains will definitely be found in those tombs," Gelu Voican-Voiculescu told Realitatea TV channel.
The DNA tests could take up to six months, the director of the national Romanian forensic institute said.
As soon as the exhumation procedures were over, dozens of those nostalgic for the communist regime gathered around the tombs.
While most Romanians do not regret Ceausescu's demise, a lengthy recession has prompted some to remember the past more fondly.
Ana Ruse, a 76-year-old pensioner, recalled her "immense joy" when she watched the Ceausescus' execution on television but felt differently now.
"In 1989 we were hoping things would change for the better. We were happy, feeling free, because we had been living here as if in a prison," she told AFP.
"But today we nearly feel we were better off under Ceausescu. We all had a job, we could raise our children."
Twenty years after the toppling of the regime, many of the dramatic events of the time are still shrouded in mystery.
Some Romanians still question the circumstances of the Ceausescus' execution, the aftermath of which was broadcast around the world.
But prosecutor Dan Voinea, who drew up the charge sheet against the couple -- the dictator's wife was first deputy prime minister in the 1980s -- and later investigated the uprising, said the doubts were not justified.
"I was at the execution. It happened very quickly; the cameraman didn't even have time to film it," he told AFP last December.
The 1st of May is Labor Day in Romania and we had a picnic with our youth group out in the woods at the edge of Bucharest. We had about 70 people come--it was a great day. We grilled, we sang songs, we played games like volleyball and ultimate frisbee (above), and simply enjoyed the nice spring weather and great fellowship. Thank you God for such a nice day!
