Cyprus police has arrested a suspect who damaged the tombs of three archbishops in the early hours of Sunday.

A police spokesman said the man, an EU citizen, confessed that he had removed the tombstones from the graves of Archbishops Kyrillos II, Kyrillos III and Sophronios III in a Nicosia graveyard.

Cyprus police retracted initial statements that the remains of two archbishops were stolen, after preliminary investigation revealed that the remains of Archbishop Kyrillos II had been reburied in the past by the Church of Cyprus in another village while the fate of Archbishop Sophronios III's remains is still under investigation.

The suspect, a 34-year-old man from Romania as some local media reported, also removed the tombstone during the night from the grave of Archbishop Kyrillos III without touching the remains.

The incident happened just two weeks after local police shed light on another high-profile grave robbery targeting a late president.

The remains of former Cyprus president Tassos Papadopoulos were stolen on Dec. 11, 2009, one day before the first anniversary of his death. Police arrested three suspects two weeks ago, one of whom confessed that they had stolen the remains for ransom.

A notorious Greek Cypriot criminal serving a life sentence was alleged to be the man who had masterminded the snatching from inside his prison cell.