Cyprus police have arrested three people in connection with the exhumation and theft of the body of late Cypriot president Tassos Papadopoulos, international media reported on March 10 2010.

The arrests happened only a day after the body was found in another Nicosia cemetery. The bizarre robbery occurred on December 11 2009 when people reported that his grave had been excavated and the coffin was missing from the Deftera cemetery in the outskirts of Nicosia, Cyprus's capital.

But authorities, who acted on a tip-off, found the body and basing their discovery on DANA analysis, confirmed on March 9 that the body was indeed that of Papadopoulos.

According to local press reports, one of the three arrested is an Indian national who in turn implicated a Cypriot national serving a life sentence in a local prison as also being involved in the plan to steal the corpse.

This revelation by the Indian suspect was reinforced by a statement from Panikos Kyriakou, former warden of the island’s jail, who told Cypriot media on March 9 that speculation that the crime had been perpetrated by a life-term convict aiming to blackmail authorities into reducing his sentence might be true.

According to the Greek Kathimerini, justice minister Loukas Louka said that the late president’s relatives had been advised by police not to pay a ransom demand should one be demanded. The family denied that one had ever been made.

Papadopoulos served as Cypriot president from February 28 2003 to February 28 2008. He was inaugurated on 28 February 2003 after winning a first round majority with 51.51 per cent of the vote. He then ran for re-election in February 2008 but lost to Demetris Christofias, a former fellow party member and partner in his centre-left coalition.

Papadopoulos, a heavy smoker, died on December 12 2008 of small cell lung carcinoma.

Papadopoulos was at the spearhead of the campaign to ensure the Greek Cypriot rejection of a United Nations reunification referendum for ethnically divided Cyprus in 2004, declaring at the time "I received a state. I will not deliver a community."

Cyprus remains separated following the 1974 Turkish invasion that was triggered by a brief Greek-inspired coup.