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NICOSIA, Cyprus - Ransom was the motive behind the bizarre bodysnatching of Cyprus' former President Tassos Papadopoulos, the justice minister said Tuesday, hours after the body was found dumped in a Nicosia cemetery - but Papadopoulos' family denied receiving any such demand.
Minister Loucas Louca said during a news conference that Papadopoulos' family had received a demand for ransom for the return of the body, which was stolen from its grave on Nicosia's southern outskirts in December. He said no money had been paid.
"The conclusion is that ransom was behind the theft and there was no political motive," Louca told reporters, adding that the family had contacted police after receiving the payment demand.
But two spokesmen for the family refuted Loucas' statement, telling The Associated Press that the family had received no such demand.
"Officials must be very careful when they open their mouths," said Vassilis Palmas, former government spokesman during Papadopulos' tenure and a close friend of Papadopoulos' family. "No ransom demand has been made of any family member. ... The minister said something that is unfounded."
Another close family friend who has been acting as their spokesman, Chrysis Pantelides, told AP that "No demand for ransom has been made to the family. At no time was such information passed on to authorities from the family."
It was the latest twist in a baffling investigation that had drawn in the FBI, Interpol and Israeli law enforcement.
A telephone tip-off led police to the body late Monday at the cemetery in the Nicosia suburb of Tseri in the Greek Cypriot south, and DNA testing early Tuesday confirmed it was Papadopoulos' body, police spokesman Michalis Katsounotos said.
Katsounotos wouldn't elaborate on the state of the corpse, but said more details would be disclosed at a news conference later Tuesday.
Cemetery caretaker Petros Avraamides told the semiofficial Cyprus news agency that Papadopoulos' body was found at a grave where another person is buried, and local media reported the body had been inside the grave, covered with a thin layer of soil.
The bodysnatching shocked Cypriots and came as the divided island's Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders were locked in complex reunification talks that have made only marginal progress after 18 months.
The call to police was made from a phone booth a few miles (kilometres) away from the cemetery, Katsounotos said, adding that investigators examined the booth for fingerprints and other evidence that could lead to the caller's identity.
Louca said the investigation was focusing on Cyprus.
Family members, including three of Papadopoulos' adult children, rushed to the cemetery amid heavy police security after being notified of the corpse's discovery.
"The discovery of our beloved Tassos' corpse has put an end to the agony that we have been living through the last three months and has brought back peace and tranquility to our family," Papadopoulos' widow Fotini said.
Reading from a prepared statement from the family home in the Nicosia suburb of Deftera, she said: "We hope that the police investigation leads to the capture of the perpetrators as soon as possible."
Cypriot President Dimitris Christofias said he had spoken with Papadopoulos' wife and that he feels "satisfaction and relief just as the family does."
Pantelides said a man speaking broken Greek had called the family on Monday with information about the corpse and instructed them to contact police.
He said the family would reclaim the corpse for burial after authorities conclude their examinations.
The tip-off unlocked an investigation that has remained mostly dormant since grave robbers removed a heavy marble plaque from on top of his grave, digging down to the coffin and removing the body of Papadopoulos, who died of lung cancer on Dec. 12, 2008, at age 74.
A lack of clear motive and few clues led to widespread speculation that the theft could have been politically motivated, but authorities tried to dampen speculation, suggesting early on that ransom was a more likely scenario.
The robbers left few leads at the scene. Lime was strewn over the grave in what investigators believe was an attempt to erase any tracks they might have left behind.
Investigators even sought the help of the FBI and Interpol as well as Greek and Israeli law enforcement authorities to solve the case.
Cyprus was divided into an internationally recognized Greek Cypriot south and a breakaway Turkish Cypriot north in 1974, when Turkey invaded after a coup by supporters of uniting the island with Greece.
Papadopoulos, who was president from 2003 to 2008, was considered by many right-wing Greek Cypriots to be a champion of resistance against peace accords weighted against them.
Papadopoulos ushered a divided Cyprus into the European Union in May 2004 after urging Greek Cypriots to reject a U.N.-brokered reunification plan, which he vilified as entrenching the island's division rather than ending it. Three-quarters of Cypriots rejected it in a referendum; two-thirds of Turkish Cypriots accepted the plan.
The leader was defeated in a February 2008 presidential poll by Dimitris Christofias, former head of the communist-rooted AKEL party.
Papadopoulos was a central figure in Cypriot politics for decades, with a career spanning most of the island's turbulent history since it gained independence from Britain in 1960.
A British-trained lawyer, Papadopoulos was a guerrilla leader for the Greek Cypriot group EOKA, which waged an anti-colonial campaign. Later, at age 26, he was the youngest Cabinet minister in the island's first post-independence government.
