Missing Persons Pioneers

Bosnia offers Iraq its expertise in identifying bodies from mass graves.

by Anes Alic

11 July 2003

MORE FROM TOL Of Reckoning and Reconciliation Small but important steps are being made on the Balkan reconciliation front. Kosovo, Albania Sign Free Trade Agreement Belgrade is fuming over the agreement, which it says violates international resolutions on Kosovo. Trying War Crimes at Home in Serbia New legislation to help Serbia with wartime reconciliation.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina--Bosnia is a pioneer in the high-tech DNA identification of bodies found in mass graves--expertise it earned tragically enough, but that is beginning to help the rest of the world in the search for persons missing in the violence of war.

After the 11 September terrorist attack on New York, a breakthrough Bosnian-designed DNA program helped the United States identify the victims of the tragedy. Today, Bosnia is offering its expertise to postwar Iraq, where the number of unidentified bodies exhumed from mass graves far exceeds those found in Bosnia.

In early June, Paul Bremmer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, invited members of Bosnia's International Committee for Missing Persons (ICMP) to visit Iraq to determine whether Bosnia's experience with identifying exhumed bodies could be put to use in Iraq.

ICMP President James Kimsey and ICMP Chief of Staff Gordon Bacon were quick to offer their services.

"It is a tribute to the ICMP and to the government and institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina that the model developed here is seen as possibly applicable in other parts of the world, and at this time especially in Iraq. . I hope we can show how our experience can bring relief to the suffering and loss now being felt by the people of Iraq," Bacon said in a 16 June press release, shortly before departing for Iraq.

The ICMP believes that Iraq has between 250,000 and 300,000 missing persons, almost 10 times more than all of the former Yugoslav countries put together--a situation it says would make identification impossible without Bosnian help.

"We understand that they have a difficult situation there, with lists with missing persons more than 15 years old, and I believe that [the ICMP's] DNA testing is the best solution for them," Bacon told TOL upon his return from Iraq in mid-June.

THE DNA MIRACLE

Before the development of Bosnia's new DNA testing program, the percentage of positive identifications for exhumed bodies was frustratingly low. Out of 5,000 bodies exhumed after the end of the war in 1995, only around 3 percent were successfully identified. And in those cases, identification only occurred if documents were found on or near the exhumed body, or if families were able to identify the clothes the victim had been wearing on the day he or she disappeared.

Between 1995 and 2001 the Missing Persons Commission of the Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) and Bosnian Croat-dominated federation entity exhumed over 14,000 bodies. During the same period, the Missing Persons Commission of the Bosnian Serb-dominated Republika Srpska entity exhumed around 1,000 bodies.

Authorities are still searching for the bodies of more than 20,000 Bosnian citizens believed to be lying in mass graves somewhere in the country.

The federation commission has exhumed over 276 mass graves in the past seven years--all on territory under the wartime control of the Bosnian Serb Army. But until the creation of the new DNA testing program in 2001, most exhumed bodies were stored, unidentified, in warehouses in Tuzla, Visoko, and Banja Luka.

The new DNA technology, created by American scientist Edwin Huffine together with a Bosnian computer programmer and a team of Bosnian experts, is now working to bring hope to the families of an estimated 40,000 missing persons in Bosnia.

What Huffine calls "kinship analysis"--the ability to make mass identifications when no DNA records exist for the victims--is the basis of the new technology. The program looks for DNA profiles to a probability of one in 10 million, and can identify a victim using a blood sample from even a very distant relative. Once the program breaks into that family circle, the identification process can take less than one second.

According to Huffine, previous technology required blood samples from a victim's mother and father, making identification in Bosnia, where only 5 percent of unresolved cases have a living father, and other entire families were killed, nearly impossible.

Since the ICMP unveiled its new technology in 2001, more than 1,200 bodies have been identified.

"This is a difficult and challenging process, complicated by the lack of dental and medical records in the former Yugoslavia. Thousands of bodies have been recovered that could never be identified accurately were it not for DNA testing," read a 27 June ICMP press release.

The ICMP has opened four new DNA laboratories in Bosnia that complete 200 DNA analyses every month, says Bacon.

Bacon recalls that locating family members for DNA samples was a challenge in the beginning.

"They were very sceptical, but now they believe in the program. We have established cooperation with almost all countries in Western Europe and the United States to help us locate family members," said Bacon.

The families, says Bacon, must finally be shown their loved ones' remains and be able to give them a proper burial. "Only then can they get on with their lives and have closure," said Bacon, a former British police detective.

The federation commission's vice president, Amor Masovic, told TOL that the results of the ICMP's new DNA testing program have been successful beyond his greatest expectations.

"It was difficult to believe that DNA testing would be as effective in practice as it is in theory, but now we have achieved speed and efficiency in identification," said Masovic.

He says the timing of the new DNA testing program was significant--coming right after the exhumation of secondary mass graves, graves that contain bodies that had been moved from an earlier mass grave.

In many cases, says Masovic, one victim's bones are spread out among different mass graves, rendering previous identification processes useless. With the new technology, though, the individual bones can be identified.

THE IRAQI CHALLENGE

The timing of Bosnia's technological breakthrough is also significant for Iraq, where at least 60 suspected mass grave sites have been identified, and international workers say they have received reports of hundreds more.

The largest mass grave so far found, near Hilla, 55 miles south of Baghdad, is believed to contain the bodies of some 15,000 people.

Human rights groups estimate that over 250,000 people disappeared during the rule of Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party. Relatives of missing persons in Iraq have been digging up mass graves and exhuming bodies since April.

Villagers near Hilla have so far dug up around 1,500 bodies, 65 of which have been identified. Most of the victims are believed to be Shiite Muslims who died in an uprising against the regime following the 1991 Gulf War.

"There is a huge forensic task to do here, but hardly anyone available to help," the BBC quoted one of its correspondents as saying on 7 June after residents discovered a new mass grave in Salman Pak, south of Baghdad.

According to the BBC, British forensic experts are investigating grave sites, but identifying the bodies will be difficult, due both to the number of bodies to be exhumed and the fact that villagers digging in the graves with bulldozers and their bare hands may tamper with or destroy evidence.

"Iraq is the land of mass graves and secret prisons," the BBC quoted one man as saying in Salman Pak.

Though the families of the Iraqi victims buried in mass graves may be hindering the identification process, the ICMP says it is the families' willingness to help that will make the identification process easier in Iraq.

"The combination of government support, cutting-edge science, and the efficient organization of families of the missing is essential if the issue of missing persons is to be solved with accuracy and speed, and these elements work together well in BiH," said Bacon.

"Whether [Iraq] will accept our offer will depend on the new Iraqi government. But we know that there can be no peace or progress until the families who have lost their loved ones find out what happened to them," said Bacon.

Bosnia's ICMP is also using its technology to help identify bodies exhumed from mass graves in Serbia, including Kosovo.

---

TOL newsletter

Stay informed with the latest updates at TOL with this weekly newsletter that gives you a quick overview of the past week's articles published in the TOL magazine. TOL Weekly is delivered every Monday.

Your e-mail address: