The London Daily News

News Desk

The Cypriot community in London, has been enveloped with shock and disbelief at the news that former Cypriot Tassos Papadopoulos corpse, who died this year, has been stolen.

The largely conservative Cypriots, the majority Greek Orthodox Christians, were shocked to hear the news of the crime, with the island in disbelief.

The Times Cyprus correspondent Mike Theodoulou said:

"State television interrupted normal programming throughout the morning to bring live reports and reaction to the desecration. It came a day before a memorial service was due to be held to mark the first anniversary of his death."

"Mounds of freshly dug-up earth lay at the site of the macabre robbery in the cemetery in Deftera, a suburb to the southwest of Nicosia, the Cypriot capital."

“The grave of the former President has been violated and the body robbed. We are still investigating,” Michalis Katsounotos, a police spokesman, said. The motive for the theft remains unclear, investigators said.

Michael Ellinas the head of the DIKO party and editor of the leading Greek-Cypriot newspaper in the UK Eleftheria in the UK, said:

"It is an act that the human mind cannot comprehend, no one can analyse or understand, it is an act that no words can describe, and I suspect this is provocative step with ulterior motives."

There are an estimated 400,000 Greek and Greek-Cypriots in the UK with the majority living in north London.

Tassos