Tuesday 15 May 2012

8 000 corpses still unidentified in Mexico

Even if someone had not chopped the heads, hands and feet off the victims first, the chances of investigators identifying the 49 bodies dumped on a road in northern Mexico this weekend would have been far from certain. More than 8 000 corpses left across Mexico since 2006 have not been identified, according to the National Human Rights Commission, a government-run body. At the same time, more than 5 000 people who have disappeared during the drug violence sweeping the country have never been tracked down, according to the commission. The failure to find and identify victims of massacres and murders has spurred criticism of the war on drug gangs waged by President Felipe Calderon since he took office in late 2006. The thousands of grieving families searching for lost loved-ones are also likely to haunt Calderon's successor, who will be chosen in presidential elections on July 1. “When you can't find your family member it completely destroys you,” said Irma Hidalgo, whose 18-year old son was dragged from her home in Monterrey in 2011. “We just want to know if he is alive - or if not, then lay him to rest.” Hidalgo immediately called the Monterrey morgue following the discovery of the pile of dead outside the city on Sunday, but police told her not to come in because they said the bodies were so badly mutilated they were only identifiable with DNA. She has already given her DNA samples to state and federal police and is assured they will be compared with the victims. The sheer scale of the carnage makes it difficult for authorities to handle the murder cases. The latest violence has pushed the total number of drug-related deaths to around 55 000 since Calderon assumed power in December 2006. Emergency teams have had to confront mass graves with more than 200 corpses, dozens of bodies thrown into mine shafts and massacres such as the 49 headless corpses left on a road about 29km east of this industrial city. State-employed forensic scientists complain it is an almost insurmountable task. “I used to just deal with traffic deaths and the odd crime of passion. I never thought I would see this kind of devastation in my country,” said a forensic scientist in Monterrey, who asked his name not be used. “I had a day recently when I had to look at five bodies that had been shot in one street, then three in another and then five corpses that had been cut up.” “At first you feel sick when you have to take evidence from bodies that have been decapitated and mutilated. But then you get used it and you don't feel anything,” he said. It has also been a challenge to store so many corpses. Following the killings on Sunday, forensics vehicles needed to make several trips to take all of the 49 cadavers back to a morgue located in a public hospital in Monterrey. Hospital officials said they just managed to fit the corpses in their fridges. In other cases, such as when mass graves were found by the nearby town of San Fernando in 2011, the government had to send refrigerated trucks to store all the victims. Calderon defends his offensive by saying his government has made record seizures of marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine, and arrested or shot dead dozens of major traffickers. “There are people who criticise my government for fighting criminals, but what do they want? To invite (criminals) for a cup of coffee?” Calderon asked as he inaugurated a hospital in Mexico State recently. “If someone doesn't want to fight criminals, they shouldn't be in government.” But critics point out that even as soldiers and police round up drug smugglers, they fail to solve most murders. Fewer than 20 percent of homicides in the last two years have led to arrests and convictions, according to police and court statistics. With such a backlog, cases of disappearances are given even less priority, family members complain. Jorge Varestegui has been searching for almost two years for his brother and nephew, who were taken by armed men at a road block near his town of Parras in northeast Mexico. “Police don't take the cases of disappearances seriously. They say the person probably ran away or something, even when you bring evidence to show they were kidnapped,” he said. With so many crimes unsolved, police cannot identify if many of the victims were actually criminals killed over the fight to smuggle drugs or simply civilians caught up in the bloodshed. “The government gives a simplistic explanation that this is just criminals killing criminals. But how do they know, if they don't solve the crimes?” asked Indira Kempiris, a human rights activist in Monterrey. “Many of the victims are from the most vulnerable sections of society with no means to seek justice.” A day after the 49 bodies were dumped, police said they had not yet identified any victims nor had reports of a mass disappearance lately, signaling the victims may have been foreign migrants passing through Mexico to the United States. Graffiti at the crime scene bore the letter “Z”, a symbol for the Zetas drug cartel, known to dominate the area. As well as from drugs, the Zetas make money from human trafficking and extorting migrants, and have murdered many who fail to pay them. In 2009, the Zetas were blamed for a massacre of 72 foreign migrants, again in San Fernando. With many families of victims living in poor communities in Central and South America, it is even harder to identify them. Many of them are undocumented migrants, further complicating their identification. The continued failure to put names on so many victims leads to a vicious circle, in which gangs are encouraged to think that they can get away with murder, said Victor Clark-Alfaro, director of the Bi-national Centre for Human Rights in Tijuana. “Over the years, the state has accumulated a huge sack of dead people on its back without resolving the cases or punishing those responsible for them,” he said. - Reuters Tuesday, 15 May 2012 http://www.iol.co.za/news/world/8-000-corpses-still-unidentified-in-mexico-1.1296689

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Russia’s top DNA profiler to assist Sukhoi’s victims’ identification

Russia’s leading DNA expert, Pavel Ivanov, is slated to arrive in Jakarta on Tuesday to help the National Police’s Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) unit in identifying the victims of Russian-made Sukhoi Superjet 100 that crashed on Mt. Salak, West Java last week. An official from Raden Said Sukanto National Police Hospital in Kramat Jati, East Jakarta, said late on Sunday that Ivanov would help analyze the remains of the ill-fated aircraft’s victims. “Ivanov will help the DVI unit to identify the victims through DNA profiling,” said the hospital’s medical and health division chief, Mussadeq Ishaq, as quoted by tribunnews.com. Ivanov is a Russian geneticist from the Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, and is one of the experts who investigated the remains of Russia’s slain royal family Romanov through DNA analysis. According to Mussadeq, Indonesia’s forensic teams hoped that the helping hands from the Russian teams would make the identification process easier. Separately, Russian forensic expert Andrey Kovalev said that the Russians would conduct their jobs in accordance with Interpol standards. Previously, officials prepared six teams comprising 60 experts in forensic medicine, fingerprint identification, and DNA analysis to identify victims’ remains. The team consists of experts from Gadjah Mada University (UGM) in Yogyakarta, Airlangga University in Surabaya, East Java, and the University of Indonesia in Jakarta. As of Sunday morning the hospital had received 18 body bags that were sent directly to forensics teams for identification. (asa) Mon, 05/14/2012 http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2012/05/14/russia-s-top-dna-profiler-assist-sukhoi-s-victims-identification.html

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Police identify 22 fingerprints of the ill-fated Sukhoi’s victims

A total of 22 fingerprints of the ill-fated Russian-made airliner’s victims have already been identified by the National Police’s Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) unit, a spokesman says. The National Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Boy Rafli Amar was quoted by tempo.co on Tuesday as saying that the 22 fingerprints were identified from the 18 body bags that had been received by the victims’ identification team. As of Monday, a total of 25 body bags had been sent to the officials at R. Sukanto National Police Hospital in Kramat Jati, East Jakarta. Four out of 25 body bags contained victims’ personal items, such as wallets, ID cards, shoes and electronic gadgets. The forensics team helping to identify victims remains has examined 18 body bags of remains, while three additional body bags arrived to the hospital on Monday and currently undergoing testing. DVI chief Sr. Comr. Anton Castilani said that the 22 fingerprints would be cross-referenced with the DNA data that was submitted from the victims’ families. He added that the team had yet to sort out which partial remains belonged to Indonesians or to foreign citizens. The Russian-made aircraft Sukhoi Superjet 100, with 45 people onboard, disappeared from radar screens last Wednesday before an Air Force helicopter spotted its wreckage at an altitude of 5,800 feet in the foothills of Mt. Salak’s in Cidahu, Sukabumi, the day after. Search and rescue teams found that the bodies of the Sukhoi passengers were no longer intact. Eight Russian crew members, one American citizen and one French passenger were onboard along with 35 Indonesians. (asa) Tue, 05/15/2012 http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2012/05/15/police-identify-22-fingerprints-ill-fated-sukhoi-s-victims.html

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