Is it really the body of tsar's heir?

MIKE ECKEL

IN MOSCOW

RUSSIAN prosecutors have reopened an investigation into the deaths of the last tsar and his family nearly 90 years ago after claims that the remains of Alexei, the 13-year-old heir to the throne, may have been found.

The announcement of the reopened inquiry, while a routine matter, signalled that the government appeared to be taking the claims by archaeologist Sergei Pogorelov seriously.

Mr Pogorelov said bones found in a burned area of ground near Yekaterinburg belonged to a boy and a young woman, roughly the ages of Tsar Nicholas II's son, Alexei, and a daughter, Maria, whose remains also never have been found.

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