Ceausescus exhumed in bid to lay controversy to rest

• People gather at the tomb of Nicolae Ceausescu after the bodies of the dictator and his wife were exhumed. Picture: Getty

Ceausescu ruled Romania for 25 years with an iron fist before being kicked out 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 - including the couple's children. 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.

A team of pathologists and cemetery officials hoisted the wooden caskets of Ceausescu and his wife out of their graves. They then took samples from the corpses and put them into plastic bags - a procedure lasting more than two hours - before reinterring the coffins.

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. "We are closer to knowing the truth," said the couple's son Valentin Ceausescu, 62.

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

Cemetery worker Cornel Muntean, who stood just yards from the exhumation, said Ceausescu was dressed in a thick gray overcoat. What looked like a thick gray fur hat was visible at one end of the coffin.

Ceausescu was toppled on 22 December, 1989, as Romanians fed up with years of rationing and personality-cult-style 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.

Mr Oprean's wife, Zoia Ceausescu, had sued the defence 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. The couple's other son Nicu died of liver cirrhosis in 1996 and is buried in the same Ghencea cemetery.

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 was also known for the fierce way he stifled dissent with his Securitate secret police, which were believed to have had 700,000 informers in the nation of 22 million.Aurel Chiubasu, 66, a former carpenter in a military unit, heard about the exhumation and rushed over to tend his wife's grave nearby.

"I didn't agree with him being executed but the family has the right to know where he was buried," he said. "People speak like it's not him there and he's buried somewhere else."

Another woman at the cemetery said her family had suffered dearly under Ceausescu's rule. "My in-laws were thrown out of their homes like dogs and their properties were sold. My husband was a political prisoner," said Aurelia Fuica, tending marigolds at the family grave.

She had no disagreement with Wednesday's operation. "There is a mystery that needs to be solved," she said.

FROM FRIEND OF THE WEST TO BRUTAL DICTATOR

DURING the 1960s and into the 1970s, Nicolae Ceausescu was regarded by the West as one of the good guys of the Communist bloc. After taking power in 1965, he began to distance Romania from the Soviet Union.

He ended Romania's active participation in the Warsaw Pact, refused to take part in the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, made Romania the first Communist country to recognise West Germany and joined the IMF.

Such actions made him internationally popular, but in the early 1970s he became inspired by North Korea, brutally reforming the country and allowing the excesses of the feared Securitate secret police free rein.

By the time of his execution, Ceausescu was living in a bubble, utterly oblivious to the suffering of ordinary Romanians.