Chief of Forensic Medical Examination Office supplied corpses to avant-garde artist from Germany

The prosecutor's office of the Novosibirsk Region filed against chief of the Novosibirsk Regional Forensic Medical Examination Office Vladimir Novoselov a charge with abuse of authority. He is suspected of illegally supplying human bodies to German avant-garde artist Guenter von Hagen.

As the prosecutor's office of the Novosibirsk Region reported on Tuesday, the charge was brought within the investigation of the criminal case launched in the spring of 2001 on the fact of the shipment of 56 human bodies, as well as 400 "preparation made of brain" from Novosibirsk to Germany.

The corpses were sent from Novosibirsk to a Heidelberg Institute of Lamination. As it was found out somewhat later, the director of this institute, Dr. von Hagen, is better known in the West as a scandalous avant-garde artist using corpses and their components in compositions.

According to the official documents, the corpses had to be used for preparing training appliances for the Novosibirsk schools of higher learning. But the Regional prosecutor's office viewed this as violation of the federal law On Burial and Funeral Business under which the body of a deceased can be used for scientific purposes only with the consent of his relatives.

At first fourteen heads of medical institutions of the Novosibirsk Region figured as suspects in this case but the examining magistrates of the prosecutor's office filed an official charge against only one of them.