A mass grave in eastern Bosnia. Wikipedia
From Bosnia To Syria: The Investigators Identifying Victims Of Genocide -- The Guardian
Thousands of people are missing because of conflicts. But DNA advances now make it possible to identify bodies from mass graves, providing evidence to bring warlords to trial – and comfort to bereaved families. A harrowing special report.
The dead body of the man in the blue T-shirt is covered in blood, and has been dumped in a line with tens of others in the courtyard of a building in Syria. In the colour photograph, the sun is shining down on the corpses, all of whom bear the marks of violence, some showing multiple bullet wounds.
Dr Radwan Ziadeh, the director of the Damascus Centre for Human Rights Studies, clicks on to the next slide in his presentation. It shows a trench filled with the dead bodies of those killed in a massacre in Syria in 2012, the corpses lying jumbled, packed tightly on top of one another.
"That man in the blue T-shirt," says Ziadeh, looking at his audience, "is my cousin." He pauses, looking at the assembled Kurds, Iraqis, Libyans, Bosnians, Serbs, Mexicans, Americans and others in front of him, gathered in the airy auditorium of the Peace Palace in The Hague.
"I never thought," says Ziadeh, a soft-spoken man with a neat moustache and black hair, "that I would see mass graves in my country."
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My Comment: The closure that such technology can provide for relatives wondering about lost ones cannot be underestimated.
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