Tuesday 24 June, 2008 (U.S time)
At Peter Sarandinaki's request:
See: http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=12807470&PageNum=0Tests confirm belonging of Yekaterinburg remains to royal familyMOSCOW, June 24 (Itar-Tass) -- A number of tests have confirmed that human remains found near Yekaterinburg last July might belong to Crown Prince Alexy and his sister, Grand Duchess Maria, Russian Prosecutor General’s Office Investigation Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin told Itar-Tass.
Detectives are analyzing results of the examinations done at laboratories of Russia, the United States and Austria and will post them in the second half of July, he said.
“The Sverdlovsk regional forensic bureau led by N. Nevolin conducted identification tests with the assistance of leading experts,” Markin said. “Three independent teams of experts examined remains, which presumably belong to Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna, and bone fragments from the grave unearthed in 2007,” he said.
“Genetic tests were made by the chief of the laboratory chief of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Vavilov Genetics Institute and the DNA laboratory of the U.S. Massachusetts University Prof. Rogayev [Doctor of Biology]. He conducted unique tests on the remains found in 2007 from November 2007 through May 2008,” Markin said.
“In addition, genetic tests were made at the DNA laboratory of the U.S. Armed Forces [led by Michael Cobble] with the assistance of experts from the Sverdlovsk regional forensic bureau T. Tsitovich and N. Bandurenko, as well as at the DNA laboratory of the Innsbruck Forensic Institute [Austria] with the assistance of Yekaterinburg experts Y. Vylegzhanina and Y. Trynova in May 2008,” he said.
“All the aforesaid researchers found male and female DNA and made mitochondrial and nuclear DNA tests,” Markin said.
“Russian State Archives Director Dr. Mironenko is supervising a historical examination. His team is made up of leading historians and archivists. This far, the examination shows that the remains belong to the Russian royal family,” he said.
“All the historical documents related to the execution and the burial of the royal family have been studied. Neither Soviet documents nor files of N. Sokolov [a representative of the White Movement who investigated the royal family’s execution] contradict the theory that bodies of the royal family members and servants were buried at the 184th kilometer,” Markin said.
“Detectives considered the possibility that the bodies might have belonged to victims of political repressions of 1917-1950s or criminal offenses. No confirmation was found. There were no burials of political repression victims in that area. There was no simultaneous disappearance of a boy and a girl [of that age] in that area over the past 40 years either,” he said.
