Mussolini's brain 'stolen for sale on eBay'

Benito Mussolini's granddaughter demanded a police investigation on Friday after the late Italian dictator's blood and brain were reportedly offered for sale on eBay, the online auction website.

Alessandra Mussolini, a right-wing MP, said she was outraged and upset when she heard reports that the remains of her grandfather were being sold online.

The initial asking price was 15,000 euros, or £13,000, but nobody had had a chance to bid, eBay said.

The online auctioneer does not permit the sale of body parts on its website and removed the listing hours after it was posted.

Miss Mussolini said the remains, which were reportedly contained in three glass vials, could have been stolen from a hospital in Milan where an autopsy was carried out on the dictator's body after he was killed and strung up by partisans at the end of the Second World War.

"I was advised this morning that pieces of my grandfather's brain and some of his blood were being sold on eBay for 15,000 euros.

"This is very serious, these are the kinds of things we have to guard against," the Right-wing politician and former showgirl said.

But the Policlinico hospital said the samples it took from Mussolini's body were destroyed in 1947, two years after his death.

After being shot alongside his young mistress, Claretta Petacci, Mussolini's body was dangled from a petrol station outside Milan in a grisly display of summary justice by anti-fascist partisans.

It was then taken to the hospital for an autopsy. The dictator's remains were not returned to his family until 1957, when they were interred in his birthplace, the northern Italian town of Predappio.

It has become a shrine to the fascist leader and does a roaring trade in Mussolini-themed souvenirs, from key rings with fascist insignia to imitation weapons and bottles of wine bearing Mussolini's glowering profile.
[link to www.telegraph.co.uk]