PHR Library
July 9, 1996
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PHR Investigates Srebrenica Mass Graves
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Nathaniel Raymond |
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PHR FORENSIC TEAM BEGINS INVESTIGATION OF MASS GRAVES AT SREBRENICA FOR WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL; WORKING TO IDENTIFY REMAINS
A six-member international forensic scientific team, coordinated and sponsored by the Boston-based Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), began exhuming mass graves in the Srebrenica region in Bosnia and Herzegovina today. The team will provide evidence it collects from the graves to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
The PHR team, which began work yesterday in Cerska, Bosnia, is comprised of four forensic anthropologists and two forensic archaeologists. They will be joined during the next few weeks by a team of forensic pathologists, a radiologist, and an evidence technician. Team members come from the United States, Guatemala, Chile, and Denmark. The PHR team will spend some three-months at various sites in Bosnia unearthing mass graves of victims of massacres in the region.
In separate, yet related, projects in the former Yugoslavia, PHR, at the request of the Expert Group on Exhumations and Missing Persons, will establish and direct an Antemortem Database based in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The information entered into the Database will be crucial in resolving the fate of thousands of persons currently listed as missing in the Srebrenica region and elsewhere. The Database will be particularly essential for the identification of bodies exhumed from mass graves throughout the country by PHR experts and others, because it will be designed to capture the type of information that can best be correlated with those postmortem observations likely to lead to identification.
PHR is uniquely qualified for this task because it is the only organization with the full range of scientific skills and experience required for the exhumation of mass graves and the identification of victims of extrajudicial executions, genocide, and war crimes. The forensic experts of PHR have directed such work in Argentina, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Iraqi Kurdistan. PHR has received minimal funding thus far from the international community for its work on the identification of remains. PHR will also deploy forensic monitors to support exhumations conducted in the former Yugoslavia by entities other than the ICTY to enhance the likelihood that the techniques used are linked to the collection of antemortem information that can be used to identify the remains.
The forensic anthropology team currently in Bosnia is led by Dr. William Haglund. Dr. Haglund recently co-directed a 16-member forensic team in Rwanda, which collected evidence in Kibuye and Kigali for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda from January -March 1996. Under the auspices of the Attorney General of Honduras, Haglund led two PHR investigations into the disappearances of civilians in the 1980s, exhuming mass graves and utilizing DNA testing. He participated in the exhumation of the Municipal Cemetery of Coatepeque, Guatemala in search of the remains of Effrain Bamaca Velasquez, husband of Jennifer Harbury, and the PHR investigation of the mass grave at Vukovar in October 1993. Dr. Haglund conducted preliminary assessments of grave sites for the ICTY in October 1995 and May 1996.
Dr. Haglund is based in Seattle and is the former Chief Medical Investigator for King County and an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Washington, Seattle, the University of Alberta, Edmonton, and the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. He specializes in human identification, including fingerprinting, DNA, and facial approximation of victims of serial homicides, such as the Green River Serial Murders and the Wah Mee Massacre where thirteen Chinese adults were murdered in Seattle.
The forensic pathology team, which will arrive in Bosnia in mid-July, is led by Dr. Robert H. Kirschner, director of PHR's International Forensic Program in Chicago. Dr. Kirschner also co-directed the PHR team in Rwanda. Dr. Kirschner has been a forensic pathologist for the past seventeen years and is an internationally recognized authority on the documentation of torture and extrajudicial executions, and a nationally recognized authority on child abuse. Since 1985, he has traveled to Argentina, Colombia, Czechoslovakia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Kenya, Kuwait, Rwanda, South Korea, West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the former Yugoslavia to investigate torture, political killings, and suspicious deaths in official custody. He has testified as an expert before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica, and served as a consultant to the United Nations Truth Commission in El Salvador. He is former Deputy Chief Medical Examiner of Cook County, Illinois, and is on the faculty of the Departments of Pathology and Pediatrics at the University of Chicago.
Other team members participating in the investigations at Srebrenica and other sites in the former Yugoslavia include:
Rebecca Ann Saunders, Ph.D., is Assistant Curator of Anthropology, Museum of Natural Science, Louisiana State University. Dr. Saunders participated in the PHR investigation at Vukovar, Croatia in December 1992.
Dorothy Gallagher is a forensic anthropologist from Baton Rouge, LA.
Jose Fernando Moscoso Moller is a forensic archaeologist associated with the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Team based in Guatemala City, Guatemala. He has worked at sites at Kaminaljuyu; El Chaguite, Jalapa; Itzen, Peten; and Dos Pilas Aguateca, Peten-- all in Guatemala. PHR has had a long affiliation with the team, working with them on several sites in Guatemala in 1993 and conducting extensive scientific training of its members. Other members of the Guatemala team worked at the Vukovar site in 1993.
David DelPino is a forensic archaeologist from Galveston, TX, formerly affiiliated with the Chilean Forensic Anthropology Team. He participated in the PHR investigations in Rwanda in March 1996.
Clea Msindo Koff is a forensic anthropologist, specializing in electronic mapping of mass graves. She is based in Alameda, CA and participated in the PHR investigations in Rwanda in March 1996. She has done human identification work for the Pima County Forensic Science Center, Tucson, AZ and conducted osteological analysis of burials from the Los Vaqueros Archaeological Project and Cypress Project Historical Excavations for Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, CA and at Presidio Cemetery, Tucson, AZ,
Cyril Chan is a forensic radiographer/photographer, specializing in identification of remains by dental and\or X-rays and the use of 2-dimensional facial reconstruction for identification purposes. Formerly with the Alberta Government-Justice Department and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Edmonton, Alberta, he is based in St. Albert, Alberta and recently worked on identifications in two cases in Saskatchewan that led to the apprehension of the killer.
Lawrence Harris, M.D., is a forensic pathologist from Greenville, NC
Nizam Peerwani, M.D., is a forensic pathologist and Chief Medical Examiner for Tarrant County in Fort Worth, TX. He participated in the PHR investigation in Rwanda in March 1996.
John Eisle, M.D., is a forensic pathologist from San Diego, CA.
Yvonne Milewski, M.D., is a forensic pathologist from New York City
Jorgen Thomsen, M.D., is a forensic pathologist from Denmark affiliated with PHR/Denmark. Dr. Thomsen participated on a PHR investigation to Iraqi-occupied Kuwait in 1992.
Timothy Martin Curran, is an evidence technician from New Haven, CT
PHR investigation teams' work is usually divided into five phases:
Phase 1: A Mapping and Surveying team of forensic anthropologists will map the location and size of the mass graves and massacre sites.
Phase 2: Forensic archaelogists and forensic anthropologists will undertake the exhumation of the graves and the osteological examination of the remains, as well as determine the number of bodies in each grave.
Phase 3: A Pathology team will conduct autopsies at a site near Tuzla to determine the age, sex, nature of trauma, and cause of death of the deceased. Following completion of the work, the bodies will be turned over to families of the deceased, if they are identified, or to appropriate local authorities for reburial.
Phase 4: A team of investigators will collect ante-mortem data on missing individuals and input this data into an antemortem database which will sort information to try to identify bodies exhumed from the grave. The collection of antemortem data will occur concurrently with the exhumations.
Phase 5: Forensic reports, including photographic and video evidence and other evidence collected from the sites, will be submitted to the ICTY.
Medicolegal investigation of mass graves usually entails the excavation of the grave and the removal of bodies for laboratory examination and analysis. During the exhumation process, meticulous removal of small and fragile items, such as teeth, bullets, and personal effects are often critical in the identification of the deceased and the determination of the cause and manner of death. Studies of the delicate remains of plants and insects found in the grave can aid in establishing the time of death. Laboratory specialists examine and the test the remains to identify the deceased. These tests may include comparison with ante-mortem data such as dental and medical X-rays, anthropological study of the skeleton, and mitochondrial DNA analysis.
PHR is engaged in these efforts because it feels a duty to the victims and their families. The organization also believes that those responsible for past violations of human rights, especially those involving rape, torture, and murder, in the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere, should be held accountable before a court of law. Accountability provides the ]most secure foundation for future respect for human rights and humanitarian law. It also ensures individual responsibility for what is now seen as collective guilt.
"The identification and proper reburial of the missing dead and the international community's participation in this effort is an essential part of the peace and reconstruction process in the former Yugoslavia," said Dr. Robert H. Kirschner, who co-directs PHR's investigations into mass graves in the former Yugoslavia and coordinates the development of the Antemortem Database.
Since 1992, PHR has devoted considerable energy and resources to assist the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and its predecessor, the U.N. War Crimes Commission, to collect evidence of war crimes and other human rights abuses in the former federation. PHR has devoted similar resources and expertise to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
In December 1992, PHR sent a four-member international forensic team to exhume the mass grave at Ovcara near the Croatian city of Vukovar. A 14-member team returned to Vukovar and a site at Packrack Poljana, a region near Kutina on the territory of the Republic of Croatia, in October 1993. On November 9, 1995, the ICTY indicted three high-ranking officers in the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) for the mass killing of approximately 260 non-Serb men who had been removed from the Vukovar Hospital in eastern Croatia in November 1991. The indictments were based largely on PHR's investigation of a mass grave near Vukovar where the hospital patients are believed to have been buried. PHR will return to Vukovar in September 1995 to complete that exhumation and begin the lengthy task of identification of the some 200 victims thought to be contained in the grave.
Since its founding in 1986, PHR has carried out forensic investigations, including exhumations and autopsies, of alleged torture and extrajudicial executions in Brazil, Israel, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Iraqi Kurdistan, Kuwait, Mexico, Panama, Rwanda, and Thailand.
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) mobilizes the health professions to advance the health and dignity of all people by protecting human rights. As a founding member of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, PHR shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize.
Date posted: July 11, 2007
Last updated: July 11, 2007
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