Jan Masaryk body exhumed in Czech murder inquiry

Czech police began exhuming the remains of former Czechoslovak foreign minister Jan Masaryk on Wednesday as they investigate his 1948 death as a suspected murder.

Masaryk's body was found on March 10, 1948, under the window of his official apartment shortly after a communist coup. Authorities at the time shelved the case as a suicide, but questions have remained.

The Office for the Documentation and the Investigation of the Crimes of Communism, a Czech police unit, is handling the current inquiry. Police said on X that the exhumation started early Wednesday at a cemetery near the presidential summer residence of Lany, west of Prague.

“We believe this will help us clarify the circumstances behind the death of Jan Masaryk,” police said.

Police spokesman Jakub Vincalek told AFP that investigators would try to complete the examination of the body “as fast as possible” but declined to give details.

Police have reviewed the case several times since the communist government was toppled in the Velvet Revolution of 1989. They announced another review in early 2025 after the discovery of new diplomatic and intelligence records from the United States, Britain and France.

Masaryk, the son of Czechoslovakia's first president Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, was foreign minister in the Czechoslovak exile government in London during World War II and kept the post after the war. He declined to join mass resignations of non-communist ministers that paved the way for a Moscow-backed government in February 1948.