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Cerska Grave Site Yields First Corpse
‘We have found at least one body. There are
"We have found at least one body. There are definitely more bodies in there," William Haglund, an American forensic anthropologist leading the U.N. inquiry team, told reporters at the site on a wooded hill near Cerska in eastern Bosnia. Investigators began digging late on Monday afternoon, earlier than expected, after sweeping the site for booby traps, clearing away underbrush, measuring and photographing it, and hiring guards to watch it over night.
Experts from the International Criminal Tribunal on former Yugoslavia (ICTY) started a three-month field mission on Sunday to excavate the graves of victims killed in alleged massacres between 1991 and 1995 at 20 sites in Bosnia and Croatia. The team's first task will be to exhume mass tombs in Serb-held eastern Bosnia believed to harbour the remains of at least 3,000 and as many as 8,000 unarmed Muslims killed when separatist Serb forces overran Srebrenica in mid-1995.
They will be trying to corroborate survivors' testimony given to the tribunal, which has indicted Serb army General Ratko Mladic and political chief Radovan Karadzic for genocide and which on Monday urged major powers to arrest them. The Srebrenica bloodbath may have been Europe's worst war atrocity since the Nazi Holocaust against Jews and a judicial reckoning with the killers is considered crucial to a lasting peace in the ex-Yugoslav republic. Srebrenica Muslims are believed buried in a dozen or more suspected mass tombs scattered through the lush, rolling Drina River valley region of Serb-controlled eastern Bosnia. Pinpointed by survivors and U.S. spy satellite imagery, the graves are thought to contain corpses numbering from dozens to hundreds and possibly more -- as many as 2,700 in one case.
A 20-strong team of pathologists, forensic anthropologists and other experts set up camp in a forest near Cerska 35 km (20 miles) west of Srebrenica on Sunday for work at the first grave site which was expected to last a week to 10 days. The area is along an embankment dipping from a dirt road towards a brook. On Monday afternoon, ICTY workers used shovels, spades, pick axes and brushes to hew out a cros-section of the embankment wide enough to stand in, yielding at least one corpse.
Haglund declined to say what condition the body was in or give further details. Reporters were kept well back from the trench. He said excavations would continue on Tuesday.
Haglund, a member of Boston-based Physicians for Human Rights who comprise much of the ICTY, said earlier that a series of trenches would be dug starting from the edge of the site and working towards the centre. He said a refrigerated truck was expected to bring special containers where exhumed bodies would be stored on site temporarily to prevent rapid degradation from exposure to air.
When a secure mortuary was found, probably within two weeks, bodies would be taken there to be examined in detail for injuries, the cause and date of death, and identification -- a process that could last months. |
CERSKA, Bosnia, July 8 (Reuters) - War-crimes investigators on Monday discovered the first of what may be many bodies as they began exhuming a mass grave of Bosnian Muslims allegedly massacred by Serb forces in the conquest of Srebrenica a year ago.
Concertina wire was strung along the fringes of the suspected grave. Two qualified local Serbs were hired to keep it
under surveillance at night, according to U.S. soldiers in NATO's peace force (IFOR) in Bosnia. U.S. troops are securing the approaches to ICTY probe sites by day to keep possibly hostile local Serbs away. A large white backhoe, akin to a bulldozer, stood ready to remove earth and help excavate hard-packed ground not too close to bodies. Three shallow "test trenches" dug in a preliminary inspection six weeks ago yielded four decomposed corpses, one with a bullet-sized hole through the back of the skull.
Berserkistan, July 7 · Excavation Begins at Srebrenica Mass Grave
Berserkistan, July 3 · Mladic Promised Safety to Srebrenica Muslims
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, 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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