TESTS HAVE CONFIRMED that a body exhumed from a Bucharest cemetery in July is that of the the former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

The bodies of Ceausescu and his wife Elena were exhumed in July following a long-running controversy about what happened to their bodies after the 1989 revolution.

DNA tests carried out by the national institute for forensic medicine confirmed that the body was Ceausescu’s by comparing the DNA of the body with the DNA of Ceausescu’s brother and son.

“The DNA from his brother and his son show that it is Nicolae Ceausescu,” Dan Dermengiu, head of Romania’s legal medicine institute, was quoted as saying by Mediafax news agency.

The family had threatened the Romanian state with legal action if the bodies were found to not belong to the Ceasescus. Ceausescu’s daughter Zoia, who dies in 2006, and son Valentin had requested that the bodies be exhumed.

The Ceausescus were executed near the town of Targoviste, and the bodies were buried unceremoniously, giving rise to doubt over whether the graves in Bucharest actually contained their remains.