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Finnish Forensics Experts to Exhume Srebrenica Graves
War crimes investigators say at least 3,000 Bosnian Muslims were massacred after the fall of the Srebrenica enclave in July last year. Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and army chief Ratko Mladic face genocide charges over the slaughter.
The Finnish experts will not be exhuming bodies from mass graves already identified by the United Nations, but rather gathering skeletons from the hillside at Kravica and transporting them to the government-held city of Tuzla. They will try to identify them and then hand them over to the Bosnian government, which will return them to their families for burial.
U.N. human rights officials said the operation, which will last up to a month and cost half a million dollars, was
organised by U.N. special investigator Elisabeth Rehn. Rehn, who took the U.N. post last year just after Srebrenica's capture, visited the region in February to investigate the genocide allegations. "She was shocked to find skeletons littering the hillside at Kravica. She thought it was impossible to leave them," said one U.N. official, who did not want to be named. Rehn, a former Finnish defence minister, contacted her government and won their backing for an operation to remove the bodies, which are said to number up to 100.
The experts Helsinki recruited are veterans of the Estonia ferry disaster. The ship sank in freezing Baltic waters off southwest Finland in September 1994 with the loss of 852 lives.
The operation, jointly financed by the Finnish and Dutch governments, has been formally brought under the auspices of the U.N. Centre for Human Rights in Geneva. Officials at the Centre said the team would cooperate with investigators from the prosecutor's office of the Hague-based international tribunal for ex-Yugoslavia.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, which is trying to trace around 6,000 people still unaccounted for from the fall of Srebrenica, will also be involved, as will international peace coordinator Carl Bildt.
Although both Bosnian Serbs and Bosnia's Muslim-led government have given their green light to the project, the NATO-led IFOR peace force will help ensure protection, along with three Finnish de-mining experts. The officials said the main object of the mission was to identify the bodies and return them to the families -- it was not primarily a war crimes investigation.
Four Finnish experts have already arrived at the site and the rest of the team are expected to fly into Tuzla at the weekend and start work at Cravica on Monday afternoon. They will make extensive use of "ante-mortem data," such as pre-war dental records, to help identify the remains they gather.
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GENEVA, June 27 (Reuters) - A team of Finnish forensic experts who worked together after the 1994 Estonia ferry disaster will be reunited in the hills of Bosnia next week to identify victims of the Srebrenica massacre. U.N. officials said on Thursday more than 20 experts would start working on Monday collecting human remains that litter a hillside near the eastern Bosnian town.
Berserkistan, June 8 · Srebrenica Victim Graves Probed at Brnica
Berserkistan, June 5 · Mass Grave at Nova Kasaba May Hold 2700 Srebrenica Victims
Berserkistan, May 29 · Documentary Claims Serbia Provided Srebrenica Arms
Berserkistan, May 29 · War Crimes Team Probes Suspected Mass Grave
Berserkistan, Apr 5 · Tribunal Probes Srebrenica Killing Fields
Berserkistan, Massacre Hill Jim Bartlett in Bosnia's Killing Fields
Berserkistan, Ghosts in the Woods Team Berserkistan Investigates a Srebrenica Massacre Site
Serbs Massacre Muslims in "Safe Area" of Srebrenica
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia United Nations
Coalition for International Justice
Reports concerning human rights abuses in Bosnia Intac Access
Major War Criminals/Suspects CalTech's Bosnia Site
Reports on War Crimes in the Former Yugoslavia CalTech's Bosnia Site
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