MOSCOW, November 27. /TASS/. Bodies of the Russian last Tsar Nicholas II family and of their servants could not have been incinerated in sulfuric acid and fire, Chairman of the Forensic Association of Russia’s North-West and President of the International Congress of Forensic Sciences Vyacheslav Popov said on Monday.
At the conference titled "The Case the Royal Family Murder: New Examinations and Files. A Debate" in Moscow’s Sretensky Monastery he presented forensic results of the remains found in Yekaterinburg. The topic of remains has been important for the believers for recent decades. One of the version says the remains do not belong to members of the royal family or to their servants, claiming the bodies were incinerated immediately after the murder.
- 100 years on, Czar Nicholas II’s demise still weighs on Russian history
- Church not finalizing position on Russian royal family’s remains probe — Patriarch Kirill
- Romanov descendants seek proper burial of last Russian emperor’s children
- Life of last Russian royal family in pictures
- Investigators point to authenticity of Russian royal family’s remains
"There are no reasons to overestimate the running force of sulfuric acid, which, of course, could have been poured onto the bodies, but in that case it could not have destroyed it with that concentration," the expert said. He told about experiments, where use of concentrated sulfuric acid showed it was impossible to burn down the bodies without any traces.
Thus, the expert doubts the earlier version, where the case investigator said the bodies were cut and then incinerated in the acid and fire.
Earlier on Monday, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia said the Russian Orthodox Church had not yet finalized its stance on results of examining the remains of Nicholas II and his family.
Tsar Nicholas II and his family were shot in Yekaterinburg in 1918. White Army investigator Nikolay Sokolov who conducted the probe in 1919-1922, soon after the Russian royal family’s execution, concluded that all the bodies had been incinerated.
In the early 1990s, a group of researchers found some remains that could have presumably been the ones belonging the Russian royal family. In 1998, they were reburied in the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg, in the Romanov tomb. The Russian Orthodox Church posed a number of questions to the investigators and the state commission, which have remained unanswered. Therefore, it has adhered to the opinion that the probe had been insufficient and the remains found in Yekaterinburg could not have been those of the Romanov family.