Moscow crash:The body of former Fianna Fáil TD Liam Lawlor, who was killed in a car crash in Moscow at the weekend, is expected to be returned to Ireland today.
The inquest into Mr Lawlor's death was opened and then adjourned in Moscow yesterday in the presence of family members and Irish Embassy staff.
Mr Lawlor, who is survived by his wife and four children, will be buried in Lucan, probably on Thursday.
An embassy official, Brian McElduff, also accompanied Mr Lawlor's son Niall and a relative to the morgue at Skhodnya, 40 kilometres from the city, for formal identification.
He said that while the body was likely to be released this morning, the full inquest was likely to take two months to complete.
Mr McElduff stressed that there were no suspicious circumstances to the accident and no other vehicle was being sought. "It is very cut and dried, he died in a road traffic accident."
Toxicology tests are still being carried out on the driver of the car, named as Ruslan Suliamanov, who also died in the crash.
The embassy repeated that their information was that Mr Lawlor had arrived in Moscow the night of the accident and that it was his first trip to the Russian capital.
A two-month period for the conclusion of the investigation is not unusual in Russia, especially for an investigation involving two fatalities, one of them a foreign national.
Julia Kushnir, Mr Lawlor's legal secretary who was slightly hurt in the crash, was due to give a statement to the police yesterday and may be asked to stay in Russia to give evidence at the resumed inquest.
The road on which Mr Lawlor was travelling is the main road in from Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, and is notorious for crashes caused not by the road conditions, which are good, but by the often reckless driving of Muscovites. Car crashes in Moscow are many times the average in Western Europe.
One reason is the tendency for Russians who come into money, and have spent years driving clunky Ladas and Volgas, to splash out on western imports, in particular Audis and Mercedes, and drive at excessive speeds. Moscow has few speed cameras to enforce the rules.
