Novosibirsk Official Put on Trial After Shipping Dead Bodies to Germany

The court of Novosibirsk, Western Siberia has postponed proceedings on the case of illegal shipping of human bodies to Germany.

According to a source in the court of Novosibirsk's Kirovsky district, the court session was postponed because the judge in charge of the case fell ill.

The person facing the charges is one Vladimir Novosyolov, the head of the regional Forensic Medical Examination Bureau, who, according to investigators, supplied 56 bodies of people who died in the Novosibirsk region to the German scientist Guenther von Hagens, who heads a private Institute of Plastination in Heidelberg, Germany.

Von Hagens is known in the West as an avant-garde artist who uses human bodies in his anatomical shows.

Initially, the court brought up charges against 14 heads and employees of various medical institutions. Official charges, however, were brought up against only one of them, the aforementioned Vladimir Novosyolov.

Investigators from the regional Prosecutor's Office say Novosyolov violated the Federal Law of Burial and Funeral Affairs, in accordance with which human bodies can be used for scientific purposes only by approbation of the deceased's relatives.

The injured party is represented by eight relatives of dead people whose dead bodies were illegally shipped to Germany - the only relatives the investigators managed to identify.