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