OZAMIZ City--At least six (6) more dead human bodies in advanced stages of decomposition were recovered from the shores of Misamis Occidental while nine (9) others in the same condition were recovered from the shores of Zamboanga del Norte, days after the onslaught of Typhoon Sendong. This brings up to 1,388 the number of accounted dead bodies who were believed victims of 'Sendong,' of which only 837 were identified, as of Jan. 12, Regional Director Ana Caňeda of the Office of Civil Defense (OCD), region 10, said.
Data gathered by the Regional Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (RDRRMC), region 10, also show that 737 of the dead bodies were from Cagayan de Oro City, 693 were from Iligan City and 45 were from Bukidnon. Caňeda, who is the Chairperson of RDRRMC-10, said their data also show that 5,889 were injured during the onslaught of TS Sendong, but only 138 of them were identified. Meanwhile, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) has been cited as government cluster lead, with Dr. Tammy Uy as focal person, in the Disaster Victims Identification (DVI) Cluster.
As of Jan. 5, the DVI Team has taken a total of 243 specimens for DNA testing, gathered 214 specimens for ante mortem data and processed and buried 200 unidentified bodies in Cagayan de Oro City. It has also taken a total of 121 specimens for DNA testing, gathered 118 specimen for ante-mortem data and processed and buried 128 unidentified bodies in Iligan City, as of the period. PIA-10
Tuesday, 17 January 2012 00:00
http://www.goldstardailynews.com/northern-mindanao-%7C%7C-x/7575-more-dead-bodies-recovered-in-misamis-occidental-shores.html
Compilation of international news items related to large-scale human identification: DVI, missing persons,unidentified bodies & mass graves
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Tuesday, 17 January 2012
Concordia Disaster: Five More Bodies Found
The Italian coast guard has said five more bodies have been found inside the capsized Costa Concordia - taking the total number of dead to 11.
The bodies of four men and one woman in their 50s and 60s, all wearing lifejackets, were found together below the waterline at the front of the ship.
Filippo Marini, a coast guard spokesman, said: "The bodies were found close to where the bodies of two other victims were discovered. They were in a submerged section of the ship at the back."
Earlier authorities said that 29 people are still not accounted for, including 14 German tourists.
Rescuers are also searching for six Italians, four French citizens, two Americans and three people from Peru, India and Hungary.
Four of those missing are crew members and the rest are passengers.
Search teams have been using explosives to blast holes in the half-submerged cruise ship but time is running out in the search for survivors.
Following the evacuation of the vessel on Friday night, US authorities have been appealing for information about a couple from Minnesota.
Jerry and Barbara Heil, from White Bear Lake, were on a 16-day once-in-a-lifetime holiday.
The couple, aged 69 and 70, are devout Catholics who spend much of their time volunteering at their local church.
Fox News reports that their daughter Sarah Heil told WBBM radio in Chicago they had been looking forward to their trip.
"They raised four kids and sent them all to private school, elementary to college, so they never had any money," Sarah Heil said.
"So when they retired, they went travelling. And this was to be a big deal - a 16-day trip. They were really excited about it."
A Peruvian crew member listed as missing has been named as tourism student Erika Soria.
The 26-year-old's father Saturnino told Peruvian TV: "My concern is that the authorities intensify their search and find my daughter wherever she is.
"She has to be found, dead or alive. The pain of not knowing what's happened to her is killing us. I haven't given up hope of seeing her alive again."
Italian Maria D'Introno, 30, had boarded the ship along with her new husband Vincenzo Rosselli, 40, and several members of their families to celebrate both their marriage and also a 50th wedding anniversary.
All apart from Ms D'Introno reached the safety of the shore by jumping into the water and swimming to a nearby headland while wearing life jackets.
She has not been seen since Friday night.
Besides the honeymooning bride, five-year-old Dyana Arlotti and her father William from the Italian seaside resort of Rimini are also missing - they were last seen clutching onto a rope as Friday's chaotic evacuation took place.
And the widow of a Frenchman who died in the ship has described how her husband sacrificed himself by giving her the only life jacket they had.
Nicole Servel, 61, said that as she jumped into the icy waters off the coast of Tuscany, her husband Francis shouted to her not to worry and that he would be all right.
His body was later found in the wreckage.
Mrs Servel said: "I owe my life to my husband. He said to me 'jump, jump'. And as I don't know how to swim, he gave me his life jacket."
The ship's captain Francesco Schettino, 52, has been in custody since Saturday on suspicion of multiple manslaughter and abandoning the Concordia when dozens of passengers were still onboard and had not been safely evacuated.
He faces a maximum of 15 years in jail if convicted.
3:08pm UK, Tuesday January 17, 2012
http://news.sky.com/home/world-news/article/16150728
The bodies of four men and one woman in their 50s and 60s, all wearing lifejackets, were found together below the waterline at the front of the ship.
Filippo Marini, a coast guard spokesman, said: "The bodies were found close to where the bodies of two other victims were discovered. They were in a submerged section of the ship at the back."
Earlier authorities said that 29 people are still not accounted for, including 14 German tourists.
Rescuers are also searching for six Italians, four French citizens, two Americans and three people from Peru, India and Hungary.
Four of those missing are crew members and the rest are passengers.
Search teams have been using explosives to blast holes in the half-submerged cruise ship but time is running out in the search for survivors.
Following the evacuation of the vessel on Friday night, US authorities have been appealing for information about a couple from Minnesota.
Jerry and Barbara Heil, from White Bear Lake, were on a 16-day once-in-a-lifetime holiday.
The couple, aged 69 and 70, are devout Catholics who spend much of their time volunteering at their local church.
Fox News reports that their daughter Sarah Heil told WBBM radio in Chicago they had been looking forward to their trip.
"They raised four kids and sent them all to private school, elementary to college, so they never had any money," Sarah Heil said.
"So when they retired, they went travelling. And this was to be a big deal - a 16-day trip. They were really excited about it."
A Peruvian crew member listed as missing has been named as tourism student Erika Soria.
The 26-year-old's father Saturnino told Peruvian TV: "My concern is that the authorities intensify their search and find my daughter wherever she is.
"She has to be found, dead or alive. The pain of not knowing what's happened to her is killing us. I haven't given up hope of seeing her alive again."
Italian Maria D'Introno, 30, had boarded the ship along with her new husband Vincenzo Rosselli, 40, and several members of their families to celebrate both their marriage and also a 50th wedding anniversary.
All apart from Ms D'Introno reached the safety of the shore by jumping into the water and swimming to a nearby headland while wearing life jackets.
She has not been seen since Friday night.
Besides the honeymooning bride, five-year-old Dyana Arlotti and her father William from the Italian seaside resort of Rimini are also missing - they were last seen clutching onto a rope as Friday's chaotic evacuation took place.
And the widow of a Frenchman who died in the ship has described how her husband sacrificed himself by giving her the only life jacket they had.
Nicole Servel, 61, said that as she jumped into the icy waters off the coast of Tuscany, her husband Francis shouted to her not to worry and that he would be all right.
His body was later found in the wreckage.
Mrs Servel said: "I owe my life to my husband. He said to me 'jump, jump'. And as I don't know how to swim, he gave me his life jacket."
The ship's captain Francesco Schettino, 52, has been in custody since Saturday on suspicion of multiple manslaughter and abandoning the Concordia when dozens of passengers were still onboard and had not been safely evacuated.
He faces a maximum of 15 years in jail if convicted.
3:08pm UK, Tuesday January 17, 2012
http://news.sky.com/home/world-news/article/16150728
Haiti lorry carnage: 26 killed in Port-au-Prince
Haiti - Social : Traffic accident in Delmas 33, Martelly calls for solidarity
Michel Martelly, the President of the Republic, went, on the evening of Monday, January 16, 2012, to the Television Nationale d'Haiti (TNH) in Delmas 33, to see the extent of damage caused by a terrible traffic accident.
Around 10 pm, a truck [ZA 12655], whose brakes apparently dropped, hit in its path pedestrians, vehicles, motorcycles, among others, before finishing its run in the premises of the State television. The first findings gave to count, several casualties and wounded. [according to the latest information that accident would have been 26 victims and 56 wounded].
"It appears that the driver lost control of the vehicle, claiming the lives of many merchants which offer food on the sidewalks and many passers-by, before finishing his wild ride in the premises of the National Television of Haiti," indicated the National Director of Traffic Services, Will Dimanche.
Arrived on site, the Head of State quickly issued a call for solidarity of emergency to the medical staff (doctors and nurses) to go to the Hospital of the State University of Haiti (General Hospital) OFATMA hospital, Doctors Without Borders (Sartre) and the hospital La Paix, in order to help the victims.
The President of the Republic while deploring the unfortunate events that once again mourning the Haitian families, renews its commitment to work to correct a set of behaviors and practices often very damaging to the community.
HL/ HaitiLibre
Haiti - Social : Traffic accident in Delmas 33, Martelly calls for solidarity
17/01/2012 08:00:49
http://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-4730-haiti-social-traffic-accident-in-delmas-33-martelly-calls-for-solidarity.html
Michel Martelly, the President of the Republic, went, on the evening of Monday, January 16, 2012, to the Television Nationale d'Haiti (TNH) in Delmas 33, to see the extent of damage caused by a terrible traffic accident.
Around 10 pm, a truck [ZA 12655], whose brakes apparently dropped, hit in its path pedestrians, vehicles, motorcycles, among others, before finishing its run in the premises of the State television. The first findings gave to count, several casualties and wounded. [according to the latest information that accident would have been 26 victims and 56 wounded].
"It appears that the driver lost control of the vehicle, claiming the lives of many merchants which offer food on the sidewalks and many passers-by, before finishing his wild ride in the premises of the National Television of Haiti," indicated the National Director of Traffic Services, Will Dimanche.
Arrived on site, the Head of State quickly issued a call for solidarity of emergency to the medical staff (doctors and nurses) to go to the Hospital of the State University of Haiti (General Hospital) OFATMA hospital, Doctors Without Borders (Sartre) and the hospital La Paix, in order to help the victims.
The President of the Republic while deploring the unfortunate events that once again mourning the Haitian families, renews its commitment to work to correct a set of behaviors and practices often very damaging to the community.
HL/ HaitiLibre
Haiti - Social : Traffic accident in Delmas 33, Martelly calls for solidarity
17/01/2012 08:00:49
http://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-4730-haiti-social-traffic-accident-in-delmas-33-martelly-calls-for-solidarity.html
[Article] Estimating human age from T-cell DNA rearrangements
(Zubakov, D. et al. Current Biol. 20, R970–R971 (2010).
This paper describes a method for predicting the age of an individual from human blood. During immune system development, the rearrangement of T cell receptor loci produces episomal DNA molecules, the levels of which are known to decrease with age. Zubakov and colleagues show that quantification of these molecules by PCR can accurately predict the age of a sample donor, even with degraded or very small samples. This approach should be useful for identifying disaster victims or providing leads from crime scenes.
This paper describes a method for predicting the age of an individual from human blood. During immune system development, the rearrangement of T cell receptor loci produces episomal DNA molecules, the levels of which are known to decrease with age. Zubakov and colleagues show that quantification of these molecules by PCR can accurately predict the age of a sample donor, even with degraded or very small samples. This approach should be useful for identifying disaster victims or providing leads from crime scenes.
Mt. Lebanon Fire Department has bracelets to help locate missing people
Jan 12, 2012 (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Mt. Lebanon Fire Department is accepting applications for a set of cellular-based tracking bracelets that help locate missing people almost anywhere in the country.
The $200 device made by Texas-based EmFinders is designed for people with Alzheimer's, dementia, autism and other conditions that can cause them to wander and make communicating their whereabouts difficult.
To gauge interest, the municipality has purchased 10 devices to start through a donation from the Mt. Lebanon Partnership.
"There was a group of parents who came and said this was a concern of theirs," said Commissioner Kelly Fraasch, who is part of the committee that worked to obtain the devices and will decide which applicants receive them.
The individual can wear the device, which looks like a wristwatch with a large face, 24 hours a day or as often as necessary. If the person is missing, the family should report it to local emergency authorities, then contact EmFinders to activate the device.
The device itself makes a 911 call and provides the person's location to local dispatchers.
According to the EmFinder website, 98 lives have been saved since the product debuted in 2009, up four from a few days ago. Missing persons are usually found within 30 minutes after the EmFinder bracelet is activated, police spokesman Lt. Aaron Lauth said in a statement.
Police Chief Coleman McDonough said the committee looked at several options but settled on this cellular-based tracking because of its extended range and reliability compared with radio-based or global positioning systems that can experience interference.
The device also will store information specific to the individual, such as medical history, and the fire department will update its database with that information, Chief McDonough said.
Families selected to receive the device will pay only a $25 monthly service fee. Members of the fire department will deliver the devices and help set them up.
The application is on the fire department website, mtlfd.org.
The devices also may be purchased directly from the EmFinders website.
Molly Born: mborn@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1944.
___ (c)2012 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Visit the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at www.post-gazette.com Distributed by MCT Information Services
http://satellite.tmcnet.com/news/2012/01/12/6051743.htm
The $200 device made by Texas-based EmFinders is designed for people with Alzheimer's, dementia, autism and other conditions that can cause them to wander and make communicating their whereabouts difficult.
To gauge interest, the municipality has purchased 10 devices to start through a donation from the Mt. Lebanon Partnership.
"There was a group of parents who came and said this was a concern of theirs," said Commissioner Kelly Fraasch, who is part of the committee that worked to obtain the devices and will decide which applicants receive them.
The individual can wear the device, which looks like a wristwatch with a large face, 24 hours a day or as often as necessary. If the person is missing, the family should report it to local emergency authorities, then contact EmFinders to activate the device.
The device itself makes a 911 call and provides the person's location to local dispatchers.
According to the EmFinder website, 98 lives have been saved since the product debuted in 2009, up four from a few days ago. Missing persons are usually found within 30 minutes after the EmFinder bracelet is activated, police spokesman Lt. Aaron Lauth said in a statement.
Police Chief Coleman McDonough said the committee looked at several options but settled on this cellular-based tracking because of its extended range and reliability compared with radio-based or global positioning systems that can experience interference.
The device also will store information specific to the individual, such as medical history, and the fire department will update its database with that information, Chief McDonough said.
Families selected to receive the device will pay only a $25 monthly service fee. Members of the fire department will deliver the devices and help set them up.
The application is on the fire department website, mtlfd.org.
The devices also may be purchased directly from the EmFinders website.
Molly Born: mborn@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1944.
___ (c)2012 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Visit the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at www.post-gazette.com Distributed by MCT Information Services
http://satellite.tmcnet.com/news/2012/01/12/6051743.htm
Identifying the unknown dead: New system cross-checks missing person cases with unidentified bodies
He was a black man, probably in his 30s or 40s, when someone robbed him of his life — and his name — more than 30 years ago.
His body was left in a heavily wooded area of Mascot, covered with leaves, brush and limbs freshly cut from a nearby tree. Animals had brushed the vegetation aside. His skeletal remains were found on Jan. 12, 1982, about 600 yards off Clear Springs Road near Mine Road, a remote site probably known to whoever dumped the body, investigators theorize.
In life, the victim had stood about 5-feet-10. In death, he wore a blue pullover shirt, dark trousers, red and white socks. There was a pair of size nine zip-up shoes on his feet. There was a 38-caliber bullet wound in the back of his head. He had no identification or possessions.
Body decomposition indicates he was most likely killed sometime between March and June of 1981. Today, the best hope for identifying him lies with the relatively new National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, known by the acronym NamUs.
"It is a perfect example of a case that NamUs has the potential to help resolve," said Amy Dobbs, criminal analyst for the Knox County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Squad. She is one of the state's five key NamUs associates.
NamUs is a dual database system that offers a quick way to compare large numbers of cases of unidentified human bodies with reports of missing people.
"It is the only system like that, where you can cross-check these cases," Dobbs said.
Later, NamUs will feature a publicly searchable database of dead people who have been identified but for whom no family member has been located.
NamUs is less than three years old. Many police remain unfamiliar with it. Dobbs and some of her colleagues around the country offer training sessions.
Part of NamUs is available to the general public. It's website, www.namus.gov, is available free of charge to them as well as police departments. Anyone can view the cases or even add a missing person to the system once the information is verified by a NamUs case manager, Dobbs said.
Dobbs also is available to make educational presentations to organizations such as civic clubs and school groups, although those sessions will differ from the ones given to law enforcement.
"The more people you have searching, the better chance you have of finding something," said David Davenport, a retired TBI agent and former Jefferson County sheriff who heads up KCSO's Cold Case unit. "Up until just a few years ago, there was a void because there was no central depository of information that let you compare these cases, so a lot of them got lost in the shuffle. I think NamUs can help us put an end to that."
Cold Case Squad Criminal Analyst Amy Dobbs discusses the new National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) last month at the Knox County Sheriff's Office. She hopes the new law enforcement tool will help crack old cases such as the 1982 discovery of a man found shot to death in Mascot. (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL)
Photo by Michael Patrick, copyright © 2011
Buy this photo »
Cold Case Squad Criminal Analyst Amy Dobbs discusses the new National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) last month at the Knox County Sheriff's Office. She hopes the new law enforcement tool will help crack old cases such as the 1982 discovery of a man found shot to death in Mascot. (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL)
"NamUs is my dream come true for a publicly accessible database (of cases of both) missing people and unidentified dead," said Dr. Kenna Quinet, professor of criminology at Indiana University and Purdue University. "I think law enforcement will begin to participate in bigger numbers" when they realize that confidential case information will not be part of the public access.
NamUs grew out of a 2005 conference of law enforcement officials, forensic scientists, criminologists and victim advocates to discuss the need for a central source of information for unidentified dead body cases. In 2007, the database for unidentified body cases was set up. In July 2009, the missing people database and the ability for cross-checking was set up.
But there are still many more cases not in NamUs than are in it.
Many agencies have yet to enter their cases into NamUs. And cases entered into the FBI's National Crime Information System are not automatically made available to NamUs because the FBI has a different set of rules for sharing information, Dobbs said.
Federal legislation is pending to allow NCIC to share information with NamUs, and to prompt local law enforcement agencies to enter cases into NamUs. It is called "Billy's Law" for William Smolinski Jr., a Connecticut man who disappeared in 2004 and whom police now believe was murdered.
Cases do not always involve foul play or tragedy. Dobbs recently located a woman, reported missing 30 years from St. Louis, Mo., alive in the Knoxville area. She had simply decided to leave her family.
"It is not a crime for an adult to simply disappear, and she was not wanted for anything," Dobbs said. "All we could do in this case was notify her family that we had found her alive and OK." Dobbs said the woman was told how she could contact family members if she wants to.
Given the sheer volume of unidentified body and missing person cases around the country, a sudden tidal wave of solutions to cases is unlikely.
The NCIC, at the end of 2010, had records of 85,820 missing person cases still listed as "active."
NamUs estimates there are about 40,000 unidentified body cases around the nation. Of 4,400 new unidentified body cases each year, about 1,000 are still unidentified a year later.
But only a fraction of either type of those cases are so far entered in NamUs.
As of mid-December 2011, there were 9,350 missing person cases in Namus, including 155 from Tennessee. The 8,621 unidentified body cases in NamUs include 92 bodies found in Tennessee.
"NamUs, police, medical examiners will always be strained to give these cases the detailed attention they deserve," Quinet said.
And there is the added problem of what she calls the "missing missing:" those people whose disappearances are never reported. Many are prostitutes, homeless, repeat runaway kids and drug addicts — all perfect prey for serial killers, Quinet said.
"Potentially (any) unidentified dead case in NamUs could be a 'missing missing,'" she said.
Nevertheless, Quinet is enthusiastic about NamUs and its potential. "We have only seen the tip of the iceberg for what it can do," she said.
Ultimately, NamUs' effectiveness will depend on the volume and quality of information it contains, Dobbs said. Again, she points to the John Doe found in Mascot.
Even if he is a "missing missing," Dobbs said, "He has to have family somewhere. And there is always a chance that someone has reported him missing."
But if there is a missing-person report, for him, KCSO has no name to check. And DNA testing was not available when John Doe was killed. Many people who disappeared before the age of DNA remain missing.
"You can't compare something if you have nothing to compare it with," Dobbs said.A dental chart of John Doe's teeth, a forensic artist's rendition of what he probably looked like, and DNA extracted from his body have all been placed in NamUs.
And around the country, NamUs operatives are available to take DNA samples from family members of missing people to place in the system.
It is Dobbs' hope that someday, somewhere, someone in John Doe's family may give NamUs a DNA sample. That could give back to him his real name. And ultimately, that could lead to his killer.
Anyone with information about this case, and anyone interested in a presentation or training session about NamUs, can contact Dobbs at 865-215-3705, or amy.dobbs@knoxsheriff.org (cq both)
By Jim Balloch
Posted January 15, 2012 at 4 a.m.
2012, Knoxville News Sentinel Co
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2012/jan/15/identifying-the-unknown-dead-new-system-that-to/
His body was left in a heavily wooded area of Mascot, covered with leaves, brush and limbs freshly cut from a nearby tree. Animals had brushed the vegetation aside. His skeletal remains were found on Jan. 12, 1982, about 600 yards off Clear Springs Road near Mine Road, a remote site probably known to whoever dumped the body, investigators theorize.
In life, the victim had stood about 5-feet-10. In death, he wore a blue pullover shirt, dark trousers, red and white socks. There was a pair of size nine zip-up shoes on his feet. There was a 38-caliber bullet wound in the back of his head. He had no identification or possessions.
Body decomposition indicates he was most likely killed sometime between March and June of 1981. Today, the best hope for identifying him lies with the relatively new National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, known by the acronym NamUs.
"It is a perfect example of a case that NamUs has the potential to help resolve," said Amy Dobbs, criminal analyst for the Knox County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Squad. She is one of the state's five key NamUs associates.
NamUs is a dual database system that offers a quick way to compare large numbers of cases of unidentified human bodies with reports of missing people.
"It is the only system like that, where you can cross-check these cases," Dobbs said.
Later, NamUs will feature a publicly searchable database of dead people who have been identified but for whom no family member has been located.
NamUs is less than three years old. Many police remain unfamiliar with it. Dobbs and some of her colleagues around the country offer training sessions.
Part of NamUs is available to the general public. It's website, www.namus.gov, is available free of charge to them as well as police departments. Anyone can view the cases or even add a missing person to the system once the information is verified by a NamUs case manager, Dobbs said.
Dobbs also is available to make educational presentations to organizations such as civic clubs and school groups, although those sessions will differ from the ones given to law enforcement.
"The more people you have searching, the better chance you have of finding something," said David Davenport, a retired TBI agent and former Jefferson County sheriff who heads up KCSO's Cold Case unit. "Up until just a few years ago, there was a void because there was no central depository of information that let you compare these cases, so a lot of them got lost in the shuffle. I think NamUs can help us put an end to that."
Cold Case Squad Criminal Analyst Amy Dobbs discusses the new National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) last month at the Knox County Sheriff's Office. She hopes the new law enforcement tool will help crack old cases such as the 1982 discovery of a man found shot to death in Mascot. (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL)
Photo by Michael Patrick, copyright © 2011
Buy this photo »
Cold Case Squad Criminal Analyst Amy Dobbs discusses the new National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) last month at the Knox County Sheriff's Office. She hopes the new law enforcement tool will help crack old cases such as the 1982 discovery of a man found shot to death in Mascot. (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL)
"NamUs is my dream come true for a publicly accessible database (of cases of both) missing people and unidentified dead," said Dr. Kenna Quinet, professor of criminology at Indiana University and Purdue University. "I think law enforcement will begin to participate in bigger numbers" when they realize that confidential case information will not be part of the public access.
NamUs grew out of a 2005 conference of law enforcement officials, forensic scientists, criminologists and victim advocates to discuss the need for a central source of information for unidentified dead body cases. In 2007, the database for unidentified body cases was set up. In July 2009, the missing people database and the ability for cross-checking was set up.
But there are still many more cases not in NamUs than are in it.
Many agencies have yet to enter their cases into NamUs. And cases entered into the FBI's National Crime Information System are not automatically made available to NamUs because the FBI has a different set of rules for sharing information, Dobbs said.
Federal legislation is pending to allow NCIC to share information with NamUs, and to prompt local law enforcement agencies to enter cases into NamUs. It is called "Billy's Law" for William Smolinski Jr., a Connecticut man who disappeared in 2004 and whom police now believe was murdered.
Cases do not always involve foul play or tragedy. Dobbs recently located a woman, reported missing 30 years from St. Louis, Mo., alive in the Knoxville area. She had simply decided to leave her family.
"It is not a crime for an adult to simply disappear, and she was not wanted for anything," Dobbs said. "All we could do in this case was notify her family that we had found her alive and OK." Dobbs said the woman was told how she could contact family members if she wants to.
Given the sheer volume of unidentified body and missing person cases around the country, a sudden tidal wave of solutions to cases is unlikely.
The NCIC, at the end of 2010, had records of 85,820 missing person cases still listed as "active."
NamUs estimates there are about 40,000 unidentified body cases around the nation. Of 4,400 new unidentified body cases each year, about 1,000 are still unidentified a year later.
But only a fraction of either type of those cases are so far entered in NamUs.
As of mid-December 2011, there were 9,350 missing person cases in Namus, including 155 from Tennessee. The 8,621 unidentified body cases in NamUs include 92 bodies found in Tennessee.
"NamUs, police, medical examiners will always be strained to give these cases the detailed attention they deserve," Quinet said.
And there is the added problem of what she calls the "missing missing:" those people whose disappearances are never reported. Many are prostitutes, homeless, repeat runaway kids and drug addicts — all perfect prey for serial killers, Quinet said.
"Potentially (any) unidentified dead case in NamUs could be a 'missing missing,'" she said.
Nevertheless, Quinet is enthusiastic about NamUs and its potential. "We have only seen the tip of the iceberg for what it can do," she said.
Ultimately, NamUs' effectiveness will depend on the volume and quality of information it contains, Dobbs said. Again, she points to the John Doe found in Mascot.
Even if he is a "missing missing," Dobbs said, "He has to have family somewhere. And there is always a chance that someone has reported him missing."
But if there is a missing-person report, for him, KCSO has no name to check. And DNA testing was not available when John Doe was killed. Many people who disappeared before the age of DNA remain missing.
"You can't compare something if you have nothing to compare it with," Dobbs said.A dental chart of John Doe's teeth, a forensic artist's rendition of what he probably looked like, and DNA extracted from his body have all been placed in NamUs.
And around the country, NamUs operatives are available to take DNA samples from family members of missing people to place in the system.
It is Dobbs' hope that someday, somewhere, someone in John Doe's family may give NamUs a DNA sample. That could give back to him his real name. And ultimately, that could lead to his killer.
Anyone with information about this case, and anyone interested in a presentation or training session about NamUs, can contact Dobbs at 865-215-3705, or amy.dobbs@knoxsheriff.org (cq both)
By Jim Balloch
Posted January 15, 2012 at 4 a.m.
2012, Knoxville News Sentinel Co
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2012/jan/15/identifying-the-unknown-dead-new-system-that-to/
NamUs Missing Person Database Goes Unused by 93 Percent of Law Enforcement
Since 2009, families and medical examiners have had access to a free online database that's designed to assist in the identification of more than 40,000 sets of unidentified remains across the country. Dubbed "NamUs," short for the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, the program allows both parties to enter identifying characteristics of a missing person or unidentified body in the hopes that this information exchange will help match a face to a fate.
It's a grim consolation for those whose friends or families have been affected by violence or accidents. Nevertheless, the Associated Press reports that the free service has helped solved 16 cases since the cross-matching feature went live in July of last year. The numbers don't end there: the service is home to around 6,200 unidentified sets of remains, 2,800 missing people, and--according to The Crime Report--has been accessed (on the missing persons front) by more than 185,000 people as of January 2009.
What's the problem? According to the AP, only 1,100 of the nation's 17,000 law enforcement agencies, or 6.5 percent, are registered with the service. That's partly a publicity issue, as numerous law enforcement agencies simply don't know the service exists. Others are more leery about using limited resources to participate in the service.
That doesn't sit well with Janice Smolinski, sponsor of the "Billy's Law" bill that aims to encourage wider use of the NamUs system. If passed--it's already received House approval and remains pending in the Senate--the bill would generate $10 million in annual grants for law enforcement agencies to both train new users and help them resource the data entry process of adding new details to the system. The bill would also allow for an annual grant of $2.4 million to keep NamUS, as a whole, up-and-running.
As for how the system actually works, NamUs profiles are rated based on a one-to-five star system. A one-star profile contains scant details about a person: perhaps a name, or the location where they disappeared, but that's it. A five-star profile is the whole kit-and-caboodle, with a full swath of details and identifying characteristics, as well as a picture or rendering of a person's likely image.
According to The Crime Report, there's currently no mandate that forces law enforcement to database details about a 21-or-over missing adult. Billy's Law won't change that aspect of the system, but it will allow the database to link up with the National Crime Information Center Missing and Unidentified Person File database in hopes that this could increase the detail of NamUS profiles (or, conversely, fill out the system with more.) Similarly, law enforcement will be required to submit missing persons reports for children (21-and-under) to the NamUs database.
For Smolinski, the legislative victory would be bittersweet. She remains confident that the NamUs database will give her the details she needs to close her own case--that of her son, Billy, who went missing in Connecticut in 2004.
David Murphy By David Murphy
March 7, 2010 08:07pm EST
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2361037,00.asp
It's a grim consolation for those whose friends or families have been affected by violence or accidents. Nevertheless, the Associated Press reports that the free service has helped solved 16 cases since the cross-matching feature went live in July of last year. The numbers don't end there: the service is home to around 6,200 unidentified sets of remains, 2,800 missing people, and--according to The Crime Report--has been accessed (on the missing persons front) by more than 185,000 people as of January 2009.
What's the problem? According to the AP, only 1,100 of the nation's 17,000 law enforcement agencies, or 6.5 percent, are registered with the service. That's partly a publicity issue, as numerous law enforcement agencies simply don't know the service exists. Others are more leery about using limited resources to participate in the service.
That doesn't sit well with Janice Smolinski, sponsor of the "Billy's Law" bill that aims to encourage wider use of the NamUs system. If passed--it's already received House approval and remains pending in the Senate--the bill would generate $10 million in annual grants for law enforcement agencies to both train new users and help them resource the data entry process of adding new details to the system. The bill would also allow for an annual grant of $2.4 million to keep NamUS, as a whole, up-and-running.
As for how the system actually works, NamUs profiles are rated based on a one-to-five star system. A one-star profile contains scant details about a person: perhaps a name, or the location where they disappeared, but that's it. A five-star profile is the whole kit-and-caboodle, with a full swath of details and identifying characteristics, as well as a picture or rendering of a person's likely image.
According to The Crime Report, there's currently no mandate that forces law enforcement to database details about a 21-or-over missing adult. Billy's Law won't change that aspect of the system, but it will allow the database to link up with the National Crime Information Center Missing and Unidentified Person File database in hopes that this could increase the detail of NamUS profiles (or, conversely, fill out the system with more.) Similarly, law enforcement will be required to submit missing persons reports for children (21-and-under) to the NamUs database.
For Smolinski, the legislative victory would be bittersweet. She remains confident that the NamUs database will give her the details she needs to close her own case--that of her son, Billy, who went missing in Connecticut in 2004.
David Murphy By David Murphy
March 7, 2010 08:07pm EST
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2361037,00.asp
El Salvador head apologises for 1981 El Mozote massacre
President Mauricio Funes wipes a tear while apologizing for the massacre of El Mozote on 16 January 2012. An emotional President Funes recalled the terror perpetrated in El Mozote
El Salvador's President Mauricio Funes has sought forgiveness for what he called "the worst massacre of civilians in contemporary Latin American history".
In 1981, soldiers killed some 1,000 people, nearly half of them children, in the town of El Mozote.
They had been accused of collaborating with left-wing guerrillas.
Mr Funes made his emotional apology on the 20th anniversary of peace accords that ended the nation's civil war.
The president travelled to El Mozote, some 200km (120 miles) from the capital, San Salvador, near the border with Honduras.
"For this massacre, for the abhorrent violations of human rights and the abuses perpetrated in the name of the Salvadoran state, I ask forgiveness of the families of the victims," he said on Monday.
Breaking at times into tears, Mr Funes said: "In three days and three nights, the biggest massacre of civilians was committed in contemporary Latin American history".
No trial
Between 11-13 December, 1981, soldiers from a now-banned battalion, the Atlacatl, shot dead residents of El Mozote suspected of sympathising with left-wing rebels.
It was the bloodiest single episode of El Salvador's 12-year civil war that that left some 75,000 dead.
map
Those responsible were not put on trial as the authorities agreed a general amnesty in 1992, as part of negotiations to end the civil war.
President Funes said the country's armed forces, 20 years on from the peace accords, were very different, "democratic and obedient to civilian power".
He called on the army to revise its history to avoid honouring those responsible for human rights abuses.
Mr Funes made the first apology for civil war-era atrocities in 2009 and last December the government asked for forgiveness for the massacre of El Mozote.
He was elected president in 2009, the first leftist leader in El Salvador for 20 years.
His party, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) was founded by Marxist guerrillas who fought the US-backed government in the 1980s.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-16589757
El Salvador's President Mauricio Funes has sought forgiveness for what he called "the worst massacre of civilians in contemporary Latin American history".
In 1981, soldiers killed some 1,000 people, nearly half of them children, in the town of El Mozote.
They had been accused of collaborating with left-wing guerrillas.
Mr Funes made his emotional apology on the 20th anniversary of peace accords that ended the nation's civil war.
The president travelled to El Mozote, some 200km (120 miles) from the capital, San Salvador, near the border with Honduras.
"For this massacre, for the abhorrent violations of human rights and the abuses perpetrated in the name of the Salvadoran state, I ask forgiveness of the families of the victims," he said on Monday.
Breaking at times into tears, Mr Funes said: "In three days and three nights, the biggest massacre of civilians was committed in contemporary Latin American history".
No trial
Between 11-13 December, 1981, soldiers from a now-banned battalion, the Atlacatl, shot dead residents of El Mozote suspected of sympathising with left-wing rebels.
It was the bloodiest single episode of El Salvador's 12-year civil war that that left some 75,000 dead.
map
Those responsible were not put on trial as the authorities agreed a general amnesty in 1992, as part of negotiations to end the civil war.
President Funes said the country's armed forces, 20 years on from the peace accords, were very different, "democratic and obedient to civilian power".
He called on the army to revise its history to avoid honouring those responsible for human rights abuses.
Mr Funes made the first apology for civil war-era atrocities in 2009 and last December the government asked for forgiveness for the massacre of El Mozote.
He was elected president in 2009, the first leftist leader in El Salvador for 20 years.
His party, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) was founded by Marxist guerrillas who fought the US-backed government in the 1980s.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-16589757
Evidence mounts against military over asylum shipwreck
Indonesian police say there is mounting evidence military personnel were involved in arranging the boat which capsized last month, killing around 200 asylum seekers.
Indonesian and Australian Federal Police are investigating the sinking of the overloaded boat, which went down about 40 nautical miles off East Java with around 250 asylum seekers on board.
The boat was reportedly en route to Australia.
Shortly after the sinking, three soldiers were detained and accused of organising the final stages of the voyage. A civilian defence employee was also arrested.
But ABC TV's 7.30 has learned the military's involvement in the smuggling has become a widening scandal as two more soldiers have been implicated and brought in for questioning.
The military command in East Java, led by Major-General Murdjitok, has pledged full cooperation.
"Who wouldn't be unhappy to uncover the syndicate? That's what we are trying to do right now," he said.
"We need complete and comprehensive coordination, but for the time being, we are dealing with our people."
But Indonesian police fear they will be blocked from pursuing inquiries which lead up the chain of command.
They say the soldiers are being held by military police and most of the progress in the case has come from civilian investigators.
Investigators argue the low-ranked soldiers are unlikely to have been involved without the consent of their superiors, who were probably also paid.
Macabre identification
Meanwhile, survivors and relatives of those who died in the disaster have spoken of their frustrations at not being able to identify those who perished.
While 103 corpses were recovered from the disaster, only 23 have been identified and now Indonesian authorities say they will bury the rest in less than a week.
The bodies are now being stored in a shipping container with intermittent refrigeration.
The victim ID teams have resorted to posting up pictures of items recovered from the dead in the hope a family member will recognise something decisive.
Ali Poya, a Hazara refugee who has made his life in Perth, is still looking for his two cousins, but he identified his brother Azatula thanks to a macabre slideshow on the computer.
"I saw the pictures they pull out from his pocket, you know, from his property," he said.
"I saw my dad's picture and I saw his daughter's picture as well and I saw some numbers that match up with my family and I'm sure he is my brother's body."
Habib Isaac, a Hazara refugee living in Adelaide, is another engaged in this agonising search.
He has identified four cousins but the fate of three others remains a mystery.
"It is so undignified. Every time, every day, they open the gate and the smell of the dead bodies goes all around the hospital and you know that your loved ones are in that container and they are actually suffering," he said.
Other survivors have also complained of beatings from guards at the detention centre where they are being held.
Ali Mohammad and his friends broke out, determined to find another boat to Australia despite the risks.
But Mr Mohammed was recaptured and as his mobile phone footage shows, he was bashed before he was brought back to his cell.
"The immigration officers and local people, they fastened my wrists and my feet as well. Then they hit me with a baton on my head while bringing me through the front gate," he said.
The camp guards say the detainees are dangerous and violent. The head of the detention centre declined an interview.
By Indonesia correspondent Matt Brown
Posted January 17, 2012 22:31:45
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-01-17/indonesian-military-accused-of-involvement-in-asylum-boat-sinki/3779286?section=world
Indonesian and Australian Federal Police are investigating the sinking of the overloaded boat, which went down about 40 nautical miles off East Java with around 250 asylum seekers on board.
The boat was reportedly en route to Australia.
Shortly after the sinking, three soldiers were detained and accused of organising the final stages of the voyage. A civilian defence employee was also arrested.
But ABC TV's 7.30 has learned the military's involvement in the smuggling has become a widening scandal as two more soldiers have been implicated and brought in for questioning.
The military command in East Java, led by Major-General Murdjitok, has pledged full cooperation.
"Who wouldn't be unhappy to uncover the syndicate? That's what we are trying to do right now," he said.
"We need complete and comprehensive coordination, but for the time being, we are dealing with our people."
But Indonesian police fear they will be blocked from pursuing inquiries which lead up the chain of command.
They say the soldiers are being held by military police and most of the progress in the case has come from civilian investigators.
Investigators argue the low-ranked soldiers are unlikely to have been involved without the consent of their superiors, who were probably also paid.
Macabre identification
Meanwhile, survivors and relatives of those who died in the disaster have spoken of their frustrations at not being able to identify those who perished.
While 103 corpses were recovered from the disaster, only 23 have been identified and now Indonesian authorities say they will bury the rest in less than a week.
The bodies are now being stored in a shipping container with intermittent refrigeration.
The victim ID teams have resorted to posting up pictures of items recovered from the dead in the hope a family member will recognise something decisive.
Ali Poya, a Hazara refugee who has made his life in Perth, is still looking for his two cousins, but he identified his brother Azatula thanks to a macabre slideshow on the computer.
"I saw the pictures they pull out from his pocket, you know, from his property," he said.
"I saw my dad's picture and I saw his daughter's picture as well and I saw some numbers that match up with my family and I'm sure he is my brother's body."
Habib Isaac, a Hazara refugee living in Adelaide, is another engaged in this agonising search.
He has identified four cousins but the fate of three others remains a mystery.
"It is so undignified. Every time, every day, they open the gate and the smell of the dead bodies goes all around the hospital and you know that your loved ones are in that container and they are actually suffering," he said.
Other survivors have also complained of beatings from guards at the detention centre where they are being held.
Ali Mohammad and his friends broke out, determined to find another boat to Australia despite the risks.
But Mr Mohammed was recaptured and as his mobile phone footage shows, he was bashed before he was brought back to his cell.
"The immigration officers and local people, they fastened my wrists and my feet as well. Then they hit me with a baton on my head while bringing me through the front gate," he said.
The camp guards say the detainees are dangerous and violent. The head of the detention centre declined an interview.
By Indonesia correspondent Matt Brown
Posted January 17, 2012 22:31:45
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-01-17/indonesian-military-accused-of-involvement-in-asylum-boat-sinki/3779286?section=world
Changing weather patterns 'could trigger flu pandemics' by altering flight path of migratory birds
A weather pattern cycle that leads to a drop in the sea surface temperature across the tropical Pacific Ocean, could be responsible for spreading deadly influenza.
Scientists found that these La Nina events - when the sea temperature cools three to five celsius lower than normal - preceded the last four worldwide flu pandemics in 1918, 1957, 1968 and 2009.
The team, from Columbia University and Harvard School of Public Health, said the La Nina pattern is known to alter the migratory patterns of birds, which are thought to be a primary reservoir of human influenza.
They theorised that altered migration patterns promote the development of dangerous new strains of influenza.
The flu pandemics have varied greatly in intensity - thanks in part to modern drugs and isolation policies.
While the 'Spanish influenza' of 1918 caused an estimated 50 to 100million deaths, the latest swine flu pandemic of 2009 claimed around 20,000 lives.
To examine the relationship between weather patterns and influenza pandemics, the researchers studied records of ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific in the fall and winter before the four most recent flu pandemics emerged.
They found that all four pandemics were preceded by a cool water anomaly off the east coast of Papua New Guinea - consistent with the La Nina phase of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation.
However, they cautioned that many La Nina events - that occur cyclically every two to seven years - have not seen novel flu strains spread across the world.
La Nina: The cool-water anomaly occupied the tropical Pacific Ocean (east of Indonesia) throughout 2007 and early 2008
The cooler waters of La Nina - as seen as the long blue patch east of Indonesia - remained throughout 2007 and early 2008. There was a flu pandemic in 2009
A health worker gives vaccinations to chickens at a house in Egypt: La Nina may help spread bird flu by altering migratory patterns
A health worker gives vaccinations to chickens at a house in Egypt: La Nina may help spread bird flu by altering migratory patterns
The authors cite other research showing that the La Nina pattern alters the migration, stopover time, fitness and interspecies mixing of migratory birds.
These conditions could favour the kind of gene swapping - or genetic reassortment - that creates novel and therefore potentially more variations of the influenza virus.
Co-author Dr Jeffrey Shaman from Columbia University, said: 'We know that pandemics arise from dramatic changes in the influenza genome.
'Our hypothesis is that La Nina sets the stage for these changes by reshuffling the mixing patterns of migratory birds, which are a major reservoir for influenza.'
Changes in migration not only alter the pattern of contact among bird species, they could also change the ways that birds come into contact with domestic animals like pigs. Gene-swapping between avian and pig influenza viruses was a factor in the 2009 swine flu pandemic.
The study findings are currently published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
By Claire Bates
Last updated at 10:06 AM on 17th January 2012
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2087717/La-Nina-weather-pattern-increase-risk-flu-pandemics-altering-flight-path-migratory-birds.html#ixzz1jiLnRWBD
Scientists found that these La Nina events - when the sea temperature cools three to five celsius lower than normal - preceded the last four worldwide flu pandemics in 1918, 1957, 1968 and 2009.
The team, from Columbia University and Harvard School of Public Health, said the La Nina pattern is known to alter the migratory patterns of birds, which are thought to be a primary reservoir of human influenza.
They theorised that altered migration patterns promote the development of dangerous new strains of influenza.
The flu pandemics have varied greatly in intensity - thanks in part to modern drugs and isolation policies.
While the 'Spanish influenza' of 1918 caused an estimated 50 to 100million deaths, the latest swine flu pandemic of 2009 claimed around 20,000 lives.
To examine the relationship between weather patterns and influenza pandemics, the researchers studied records of ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific in the fall and winter before the four most recent flu pandemics emerged.
They found that all four pandemics were preceded by a cool water anomaly off the east coast of Papua New Guinea - consistent with the La Nina phase of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation.
However, they cautioned that many La Nina events - that occur cyclically every two to seven years - have not seen novel flu strains spread across the world.
La Nina: The cool-water anomaly occupied the tropical Pacific Ocean (east of Indonesia) throughout 2007 and early 2008
The cooler waters of La Nina - as seen as the long blue patch east of Indonesia - remained throughout 2007 and early 2008. There was a flu pandemic in 2009
A health worker gives vaccinations to chickens at a house in Egypt: La Nina may help spread bird flu by altering migratory patterns
A health worker gives vaccinations to chickens at a house in Egypt: La Nina may help spread bird flu by altering migratory patterns
The authors cite other research showing that the La Nina pattern alters the migration, stopover time, fitness and interspecies mixing of migratory birds.
These conditions could favour the kind of gene swapping - or genetic reassortment - that creates novel and therefore potentially more variations of the influenza virus.
Co-author Dr Jeffrey Shaman from Columbia University, said: 'We know that pandemics arise from dramatic changes in the influenza genome.
'Our hypothesis is that La Nina sets the stage for these changes by reshuffling the mixing patterns of migratory birds, which are a major reservoir for influenza.'
Changes in migration not only alter the pattern of contact among bird species, they could also change the ways that birds come into contact with domestic animals like pigs. Gene-swapping between avian and pig influenza viruses was a factor in the 2009 swine flu pandemic.
The study findings are currently published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
By Claire Bates
Last updated at 10:06 AM on 17th January 2012
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2087717/La-Nina-weather-pattern-increase-risk-flu-pandemics-altering-flight-path-migratory-birds.html#ixzz1jiLnRWBD
WTC Bone Fragments Still Surface a Decade After 9/11
A recent New York Times article revealed that a decade after 9/11, small fragments of human remains from victims from the World Trade Center towers are still being identified. This adds to the documented evidence of the severe destruction of the bodies of WTC victims, a phenomenon that could only have been caused by explosives.
According to the NYC medical examiner’s office, remains are being identified almost every day.
This excerpt from the article reveals how harrowing the recovery of destroyed human remains has been on the families of 9/11 victims:
When Sean Tallon, a firefighter, was identified, his family never considered the possibility that there might be additional calls.
“We were so relieved to have part of him to put in the coffin that it didn’t matter how much it was at that stage,” Mr. Tallon’s sister, Rosaleen Tallon, said. But for three years, the family received calls from the medical examiner’s office as more of his remains were identified.
“I had a cry” after each call, Mr. Tallon’s mother, Eileen Tallon, said. The family eventually conducted a second funeral, opening the grave and placing the new remains in a small wooden box just above his coffin.”
Firefighter Sean Tallon is just one of many WTC victims whose destroyed remains are being continuously identified
This is only one of hundreds of news articles that have reported on the recovery and identification of WTC bone fragments and other human remains from Ground Zero over the last ten years.
For example, a search in 2010 found 76 more fragments of remains on the roof of the 40-story Deutsche Bank building 250 feet from the South Tower. Previously, over 750 human bone fragments, each less than a half-inch long, were collected from this roof.
Amidst the ongoing efforts to collect and identify these remains, there is one important question that investigators have neglected to ask: How were the victims’ remains pulverized?
• Around 22,000 individual fragments of human remains have been found. • 9,000 remains have yet to be connected to a victim.
• Approximately 6,000 pieces recovered were small enough to fit into the test tube. • In one case, more than 300 pieces found were from one single victim. • Fewer than 300 victims were found intact. • No remains have been found for 1,121 WTC victims.
The bone fragments found on the Deutsche Bank building could not have been generated from the plane impacts. The plane that hit the nearby South Tower flew over the Deutsche bank building – sending its ejections toward WTC 7.
These horrible facts do not support the official theory that the Twin Towers suffered a “gravitational” collapse. One would expect in such a theoretical collapse scenario to find most of the bodies trapped, and certainly “mangled”, between 110 floors. Instead, both the floors and the bodies were pulverized and violently ejected hundreds of feet in all directions.
The documented extreme pulverization of the victims’ bodies can only be explained by tremendous explosive force –the type of explosive force that destroyed the Twin Towers, by means of pre-planted explosives and incendiaries. As terrible as it is to contemplate, this explosive evidence of pulverized human remains underscores the need for a real 9/11 investigation.
Family members of the victims of the WTC catastrophe also have also signed the AE911Truth petition and spoken out along with us for a new WTC investigation. You will find their stories in our new documentary “9/11: Explosive Evidence – Experts Speak Out”:
Bob McIlvaine
“My name is Bob McIlvaine. I’m from right outside the Philadelphia area. I’m the father of Bobby McIlvaine, who was killed in the lobby of the North Tower on September 11th, 2001. I’ve been searching to get the truth of exactly what happened to Bobby.”
“Bobby was one of the first ten bodies found. We took him home that week. We were one of the few. I finally found the doctor who examined him. He gave me an outline of a body, and he described all the injuries he had. But the fact is that all his injuries were in the face, the front of his face, his face was blown off, massive cuts in his chest, and his right arm were blown off. To me, that means explosion.”
Jane Pollicino
“My husband Steve was 48 years old when he was killed on September 11th. I have no identification. Why is that? It seems to me we should know why for over 1000 victims there are no trace for and no identification… of over 1000 victims. We should know why there are over 700 bone fragments found on the top of Deutsche Bank building less than a half an inch long, we should have that information, why were they up there, why weren’t they found? What kind of explosion was there?”
Michele Little
My brother was my best friend. David has always been a fire fighter, my brother went in to save people’s lives. I’m a family member trying to find out the answers to the murder of 3,000 plus people.
Just a few years ago they were still finding body parts on the roofs of buildings. What is that?
The family members deserve the truth about the murder of their loved ones. Help them by joining us in calling for a real investigation of the explosive evidence. Do whatever you can do. Take local action now in your community. We cannot achieve massive public awareness without your involvement. With your active participation, this grassroots movement will indeed take hold in our country and across the world.
January 14, 2012
http://www.wnytruthers.com/archives/8977
According to the NYC medical examiner’s office, remains are being identified almost every day.
This excerpt from the article reveals how harrowing the recovery of destroyed human remains has been on the families of 9/11 victims:
When Sean Tallon, a firefighter, was identified, his family never considered the possibility that there might be additional calls.
“We were so relieved to have part of him to put in the coffin that it didn’t matter how much it was at that stage,” Mr. Tallon’s sister, Rosaleen Tallon, said. But for three years, the family received calls from the medical examiner’s office as more of his remains were identified.
“I had a cry” after each call, Mr. Tallon’s mother, Eileen Tallon, said. The family eventually conducted a second funeral, opening the grave and placing the new remains in a small wooden box just above his coffin.”
Firefighter Sean Tallon is just one of many WTC victims whose destroyed remains are being continuously identified
This is only one of hundreds of news articles that have reported on the recovery and identification of WTC bone fragments and other human remains from Ground Zero over the last ten years.
For example, a search in 2010 found 76 more fragments of remains on the roof of the 40-story Deutsche Bank building 250 feet from the South Tower. Previously, over 750 human bone fragments, each less than a half-inch long, were collected from this roof.
Amidst the ongoing efforts to collect and identify these remains, there is one important question that investigators have neglected to ask: How were the victims’ remains pulverized?
• Around 22,000 individual fragments of human remains have been found. • 9,000 remains have yet to be connected to a victim.
• Approximately 6,000 pieces recovered were small enough to fit into the test tube. • In one case, more than 300 pieces found were from one single victim. • Fewer than 300 victims were found intact. • No remains have been found for 1,121 WTC victims.
The bone fragments found on the Deutsche Bank building could not have been generated from the plane impacts. The plane that hit the nearby South Tower flew over the Deutsche bank building – sending its ejections toward WTC 7.
These horrible facts do not support the official theory that the Twin Towers suffered a “gravitational” collapse. One would expect in such a theoretical collapse scenario to find most of the bodies trapped, and certainly “mangled”, between 110 floors. Instead, both the floors and the bodies were pulverized and violently ejected hundreds of feet in all directions.
The documented extreme pulverization of the victims’ bodies can only be explained by tremendous explosive force –the type of explosive force that destroyed the Twin Towers, by means of pre-planted explosives and incendiaries. As terrible as it is to contemplate, this explosive evidence of pulverized human remains underscores the need for a real 9/11 investigation.
Family members of the victims of the WTC catastrophe also have also signed the AE911Truth petition and spoken out along with us for a new WTC investigation. You will find their stories in our new documentary “9/11: Explosive Evidence – Experts Speak Out”:
Bob McIlvaine
“My name is Bob McIlvaine. I’m from right outside the Philadelphia area. I’m the father of Bobby McIlvaine, who was killed in the lobby of the North Tower on September 11th, 2001. I’ve been searching to get the truth of exactly what happened to Bobby.”
“Bobby was one of the first ten bodies found. We took him home that week. We were one of the few. I finally found the doctor who examined him. He gave me an outline of a body, and he described all the injuries he had. But the fact is that all his injuries were in the face, the front of his face, his face was blown off, massive cuts in his chest, and his right arm were blown off. To me, that means explosion.”
Jane Pollicino
“My husband Steve was 48 years old when he was killed on September 11th. I have no identification. Why is that? It seems to me we should know why for over 1000 victims there are no trace for and no identification… of over 1000 victims. We should know why there are over 700 bone fragments found on the top of Deutsche Bank building less than a half an inch long, we should have that information, why were they up there, why weren’t they found? What kind of explosion was there?”
Michele Little
My brother was my best friend. David has always been a fire fighter, my brother went in to save people’s lives. I’m a family member trying to find out the answers to the murder of 3,000 plus people.
Just a few years ago they were still finding body parts on the roofs of buildings. What is that?
The family members deserve the truth about the murder of their loved ones. Help them by joining us in calling for a real investigation of the explosive evidence. Do whatever you can do. Take local action now in your community. We cannot achieve massive public awareness without your involvement. With your active participation, this grassroots movement will indeed take hold in our country and across the world.
January 14, 2012
http://www.wnytruthers.com/archives/8977
Learn the lessons of earthquakes, for big ones will happen again
Tuesday marks the 17th anniversary of the Great Hanshin Earthquake--a day to pray for the repose of the souls of people killed by the catastrophic earthquake.
We believe that this year, people will also pay tribute to the victims of the Great East Japan Earthquake that hit the Tohoku region 10 months ago, and wish for steady progress toward reconstruction from the disaster.
There is one thing we need to think about on this occasion. Have we applied the lessons of the Jan 17, 1995, disaster to the March 11 disaster?
The Hanshin earthquake found most people living in the disaster-hit areas unprepared. Residents and local governments lacked sufficient provision for major earthquakes as they shared the notion that the Kansai region was safe from such events.
Many buildings, especially old wooden houses, lacked reinforcement against major earthquakes. Over 6,000 people were killed by the Hanshin earthquake, with more than 80 per cent of the deaths caused by collapsed houses or toppled furniture. The local governments' negligence in taking adequate measures in areas heavily crowded with buildings and houses resulted in the spread of fire caused by the earthquake.
What the Hanshin quake tells us
Three years ago, the Hyogo prefectual government published a book called "Tsutaeru Hanshin-Awaji Daishinsai-no Kyokun" (Passing on the lessons of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake), which identified 100 lessons to be learned from the earthquake. The lessons were gleaned from the process of post-disaster reconstruction.
The book says that immediately after disasters, it is important for residents to cooperate with firefighters and police to rescue people trapped in houses. The book also stresses the importance of offering help to the elderly and others who need particular assistance ahead of other people in confirming their safety and in evacuation.
The prefectural government points out in the book the necessity of joint academic, industrial and government efforts to create new industries during reconstruction. The book also says the early resumption of company activities at this stage will lead to job security.
The Law on Support for Reconstructing Livelihoods of Disaster Victims, which was enacted three years after the Hanshin earthquake, enabled the central government to subsidise the reconstruction of houses damaged by the earthquake, overcoming a basic barrier to public funding--the fact that houses are private property. The book says that the law has made it easier for people to rebuild their homes, which was one of the most difficult tasks after the earthquake.
These issues, addressed in the book, are similar to the tasks now being faced by the areas hit by the March 11 disaster. The book would be a good reference for local governments nationwide in drawing up disaster prevention plans, as well as working out reconstruction measures for when disaster strikes.
It took about four hours for the governor of Hyogo Prefecture to ask the Self-Defence Forces to mobilise for disaster aid after the Hanshin earthquake. In the case of the March 11 earthquake, governors began asking the SDF to dispatch troops from six minutes after the quake. We can say the lessons of the Hanshin earthquake were applied to the March 11 earthquake in this regard.
Expect the 'unexpected'
The size of the earthquake and the height of the tsunami on March 11 were both far beyond the estimates made before the disaster. Regions hit by the tsunami had applied antiquake measures to buildings and made hazard maps based on the experience of tsunamis that hit the regions in the past. The municipalities had also conducted emergency drills periodically. However, all these measures proved ineffectual in situations beyond their expectations.
The unexpected situations included secondary disasters such as vehicles and houses catching fire as they were carried away by tsunami and soil liquefaction extending over a wide area. Another example is the nuclear accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, caused by a total loss of power in the plant itself after the disaster.
It is said that the Japanese archipelago has entered a period of brisk seismic activity. An earthquake with an epicenter directly below the Tokyo metropolitan area will definitely occur in the future, just as it is nearly certain that the anticipated Tokai, Tonankai and Nankai major earthquakes will occur simultaneously.
To minimise damage from such earthquakes, we need to learn various lessons from the Hanshin earthquake and the March 11 disaster. We should continue reforming our disaster prevention schemes, bearing in mind that things beyond our expectation do occur. Each individual also needs to renew their awareness--on this important day--that we live on an archipelago prone to disasters.
Editorial Desk
The Yomiuri Shimbun
Publication Date : 17-01-2012
http://www.asianewsnet.net/home/news.php?id=26520&sec=3
We believe that this year, people will also pay tribute to the victims of the Great East Japan Earthquake that hit the Tohoku region 10 months ago, and wish for steady progress toward reconstruction from the disaster.
There is one thing we need to think about on this occasion. Have we applied the lessons of the Jan 17, 1995, disaster to the March 11 disaster?
The Hanshin earthquake found most people living in the disaster-hit areas unprepared. Residents and local governments lacked sufficient provision for major earthquakes as they shared the notion that the Kansai region was safe from such events.
Many buildings, especially old wooden houses, lacked reinforcement against major earthquakes. Over 6,000 people were killed by the Hanshin earthquake, with more than 80 per cent of the deaths caused by collapsed houses or toppled furniture. The local governments' negligence in taking adequate measures in areas heavily crowded with buildings and houses resulted in the spread of fire caused by the earthquake.
What the Hanshin quake tells us
Three years ago, the Hyogo prefectual government published a book called "Tsutaeru Hanshin-Awaji Daishinsai-no Kyokun" (Passing on the lessons of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake), which identified 100 lessons to be learned from the earthquake. The lessons were gleaned from the process of post-disaster reconstruction.
The book says that immediately after disasters, it is important for residents to cooperate with firefighters and police to rescue people trapped in houses. The book also stresses the importance of offering help to the elderly and others who need particular assistance ahead of other people in confirming their safety and in evacuation.
The prefectural government points out in the book the necessity of joint academic, industrial and government efforts to create new industries during reconstruction. The book also says the early resumption of company activities at this stage will lead to job security.
The Law on Support for Reconstructing Livelihoods of Disaster Victims, which was enacted three years after the Hanshin earthquake, enabled the central government to subsidise the reconstruction of houses damaged by the earthquake, overcoming a basic barrier to public funding--the fact that houses are private property. The book says that the law has made it easier for people to rebuild their homes, which was one of the most difficult tasks after the earthquake.
These issues, addressed in the book, are similar to the tasks now being faced by the areas hit by the March 11 disaster. The book would be a good reference for local governments nationwide in drawing up disaster prevention plans, as well as working out reconstruction measures for when disaster strikes.
It took about four hours for the governor of Hyogo Prefecture to ask the Self-Defence Forces to mobilise for disaster aid after the Hanshin earthquake. In the case of the March 11 earthquake, governors began asking the SDF to dispatch troops from six minutes after the quake. We can say the lessons of the Hanshin earthquake were applied to the March 11 earthquake in this regard.
Expect the 'unexpected'
The size of the earthquake and the height of the tsunami on March 11 were both far beyond the estimates made before the disaster. Regions hit by the tsunami had applied antiquake measures to buildings and made hazard maps based on the experience of tsunamis that hit the regions in the past. The municipalities had also conducted emergency drills periodically. However, all these measures proved ineffectual in situations beyond their expectations.
The unexpected situations included secondary disasters such as vehicles and houses catching fire as they were carried away by tsunami and soil liquefaction extending over a wide area. Another example is the nuclear accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, caused by a total loss of power in the plant itself after the disaster.
It is said that the Japanese archipelago has entered a period of brisk seismic activity. An earthquake with an epicenter directly below the Tokyo metropolitan area will definitely occur in the future, just as it is nearly certain that the anticipated Tokai, Tonankai and Nankai major earthquakes will occur simultaneously.
To minimise damage from such earthquakes, we need to learn various lessons from the Hanshin earthquake and the March 11 disaster. We should continue reforming our disaster prevention schemes, bearing in mind that things beyond our expectation do occur. Each individual also needs to renew their awareness--on this important day--that we live on an archipelago prone to disasters.
Editorial Desk
The Yomiuri Shimbun
Publication Date : 17-01-2012
http://www.asianewsnet.net/home/news.php?id=26520&sec=3
Mine body recovery ‘two to four years’ away
Grey District Mayor Tony Kokshoorn is due to fly to Wellington in the next few weeks to meet the Prime Minister and Pike River Mine receivers in a further bid to secure funds for the body retrieval.
“We have brought home everybody from many mine disasters over 150 years of coal mining on the West Coast,” Mr Kokshoorn said today. “The exception is two men from the 1967 Strongman Mine disaster, where 19 miners were killed by an explosion.”
However, Pike River receiver John Fisk tempered the Mayor’s expectations, saying it would two to four years before the bodies could be recovered.
Mr Kokshoorn started preliminary talks with John Key when he was in Greymouth for the one-year memorial service.
He will ask the Government, receivers and future mine owners to contribute funds to the recovery effort, and a separate trust will probably be set up.
On site at Atarau, a 100m vertical borehole down into the mine where the 29 victims of the November 2010 explosion still lie, is expected to be completed this week. Workers are expected to arrive on Saturday to complete the seal. A rapidly expanding grout, which sets like concrete, will be poured down to seal the main drive tunnel. The sealed off tunnel now contains less than 1% oxygen, which is outside the explosive range. There is no heating or fire underground.
Once the new seal is in place, the main tunnel can be reventilated to allow Mines Rescue volunteers to walk the 2.3km into the mine as far as the seal.
Work can then start on how to get around the large rockfall just beyond the seal.
Mr Kokshoorn said progress was about to be made, but “it will take time getting into the mine”.
“It has been a frustrating time for everyone involved in the recovery, let’s keep moving forward.”
By Laura Mills
17 January 2012
http://www.greystar.co.nz/content/mine-body-recovery-%E2%80%98two-four-years%E2%80%99-away
“We have brought home everybody from many mine disasters over 150 years of coal mining on the West Coast,” Mr Kokshoorn said today. “The exception is two men from the 1967 Strongman Mine disaster, where 19 miners were killed by an explosion.”
However, Pike River receiver John Fisk tempered the Mayor’s expectations, saying it would two to four years before the bodies could be recovered.
Mr Kokshoorn started preliminary talks with John Key when he was in Greymouth for the one-year memorial service.
He will ask the Government, receivers and future mine owners to contribute funds to the recovery effort, and a separate trust will probably be set up.
On site at Atarau, a 100m vertical borehole down into the mine where the 29 victims of the November 2010 explosion still lie, is expected to be completed this week. Workers are expected to arrive on Saturday to complete the seal. A rapidly expanding grout, which sets like concrete, will be poured down to seal the main drive tunnel. The sealed off tunnel now contains less than 1% oxygen, which is outside the explosive range. There is no heating or fire underground.
Once the new seal is in place, the main tunnel can be reventilated to allow Mines Rescue volunteers to walk the 2.3km into the mine as far as the seal.
Work can then start on how to get around the large rockfall just beyond the seal.
Mr Kokshoorn said progress was about to be made, but “it will take time getting into the mine”.
“It has been a frustrating time for everyone involved in the recovery, let’s keep moving forward.”
By Laura Mills
17 January 2012
http://www.greystar.co.nz/content/mine-body-recovery-%E2%80%98two-four-years%E2%80%99-away
Mine inferno
The Pike River Mine has turned into a “blast furnace” with temperatures possibly reaching a constant 1000degC, after a fourth explosion deep inside the deadly pit.
Exhausted relatives of the 29 men who perished in the first explosion on November 19 have now been told grimly that forensics may be needed to identify the remains of their loved ones.
Police briefed families last night about the process under way known as disaster victim identification (DVI). DVI is a worldwide standard of positively identifying victims in a multiple casualty event.
Primary methods of identification include fingerprints, dental records and DNA.
After the 1967 Strongman Mine disaster, all but two coffins had to be sealed.
Flames were last night shooting from the top of a 108m ventilation shaft. No flames had been visible until now, even during the initial methane explosion.
The fourth explosion was heard at Atarau, 12km away, and plumes of smoke were visible from there.
It is now feared the coal itself is on fire, and parts of the roof of the tunnel may have collapsed.
Hopes of getting to the bodies were further hampered this morning, when foam being used to seal the mine entrance also caught fire. No one was hurt, but it meant the portal needed to be cooled down before a jet engine could start pumping gases inside in an attempt to neutralise the lethal methane and subdue the fire. Management expected it may be able to start that job this evening.
University of Canterbury geologist David Bell said temperatures would have reached about 1000degC underground.
“The question is, how extensive the fire is, it’s got to be burning coal.”
Sealing the mine was an option as it was a fairly new mine with only an entrance, ventilation shaft and bore holes, but “when the temperature’s up and there are flames coming out...”
“They had no option but to concede (parts had collapsed), it’s pretty damn messy.”
Pike River Coal chief executive Peter Whittall said today it could be weeks before it was safe for recovery teams to get into the mine to attempt to recover the bodies.
Grey District Mayor Tony Kokshoorn said it was now a “blast furnace — this is their worst nightmare coming true”.
Relatives were entitled to hold on to all hope, but the numbers attending the early evening family meetings in Greymouth had dropped from 320 to 150 and the mood was now very subdued.
“They are quiet, absolutely worn out. This is day 11. There is hope, but never any good news.”
Mr Kokshoorn has also requested the family meetings be moved out of the Civic Centre to a more private, intimate venue.
Even if the Gorniczy Agregat Gasniczy jet machine got up and running today, it may take weeks to make the mine safe. The mine first needed to be sealed so air did not get in after the machine had been used.
It had been hoped it would be sealed last night but gas fluctuations were detected and work had to be stopped for several hours overnight.
Workers were up to the last stage of sealing the mine — putting in shotcrete, or liquid concrete.
Mr Whittall said it was likely parts of the mine had collapsed after the third explosion, after which black smoke could be seen coming from the shaft.
The black smoke showed coal was burning and the fire was probably being fed by coal that had collapsed from the roof.
“For it to be an active fire now, the most likely way it got its initial feed is from a roof collapse.”
The Strongman Mine, where 19 men died, continues to burn after 43 years but Pike River has no surface cracks to let fresh air in.
The portal fire happened just after 6.30am today, when the foam being used to seal the mine self-combusted. It was unrelated to the fire burning inside the mine.
Reports of a fifth explosion were wrong, Mr Whittall said.
(Photo: TV3)
By Laura Mills and NZPA
http://www.greystar.co.nz/content/mine-inferno
Exhausted relatives of the 29 men who perished in the first explosion on November 19 have now been told grimly that forensics may be needed to identify the remains of their loved ones.
Police briefed families last night about the process under way known as disaster victim identification (DVI). DVI is a worldwide standard of positively identifying victims in a multiple casualty event.
Primary methods of identification include fingerprints, dental records and DNA.
After the 1967 Strongman Mine disaster, all but two coffins had to be sealed.
Flames were last night shooting from the top of a 108m ventilation shaft. No flames had been visible until now, even during the initial methane explosion.
The fourth explosion was heard at Atarau, 12km away, and plumes of smoke were visible from there.
It is now feared the coal itself is on fire, and parts of the roof of the tunnel may have collapsed.
Hopes of getting to the bodies were further hampered this morning, when foam being used to seal the mine entrance also caught fire. No one was hurt, but it meant the portal needed to be cooled down before a jet engine could start pumping gases inside in an attempt to neutralise the lethal methane and subdue the fire. Management expected it may be able to start that job this evening.
University of Canterbury geologist David Bell said temperatures would have reached about 1000degC underground.
“The question is, how extensive the fire is, it’s got to be burning coal.”
Sealing the mine was an option as it was a fairly new mine with only an entrance, ventilation shaft and bore holes, but “when the temperature’s up and there are flames coming out...”
“They had no option but to concede (parts had collapsed), it’s pretty damn messy.”
Pike River Coal chief executive Peter Whittall said today it could be weeks before it was safe for recovery teams to get into the mine to attempt to recover the bodies.
Grey District Mayor Tony Kokshoorn said it was now a “blast furnace — this is their worst nightmare coming true”.
Relatives were entitled to hold on to all hope, but the numbers attending the early evening family meetings in Greymouth had dropped from 320 to 150 and the mood was now very subdued.
“They are quiet, absolutely worn out. This is day 11. There is hope, but never any good news.”
Mr Kokshoorn has also requested the family meetings be moved out of the Civic Centre to a more private, intimate venue.
Even if the Gorniczy Agregat Gasniczy jet machine got up and running today, it may take weeks to make the mine safe. The mine first needed to be sealed so air did not get in after the machine had been used.
It had been hoped it would be sealed last night but gas fluctuations were detected and work had to be stopped for several hours overnight.
Workers were up to the last stage of sealing the mine — putting in shotcrete, or liquid concrete.
Mr Whittall said it was likely parts of the mine had collapsed after the third explosion, after which black smoke could be seen coming from the shaft.
The black smoke showed coal was burning and the fire was probably being fed by coal that had collapsed from the roof.
“For it to be an active fire now, the most likely way it got its initial feed is from a roof collapse.”
The Strongman Mine, where 19 men died, continues to burn after 43 years but Pike River has no surface cracks to let fresh air in.
The portal fire happened just after 6.30am today, when the foam being used to seal the mine self-combusted. It was unrelated to the fire burning inside the mine.
Reports of a fifth explosion were wrong, Mr Whittall said.
(Photo: TV3)
By Laura Mills and NZPA
http://www.greystar.co.nz/content/mine-inferno
Setting up an off-site emergency mortuary facility (EMF) to deal with a DVI incident: disaster victim management (DVM)
(Forensic Science, Medicine, and Pathology Online First DOI: 10.1007/s12024-011-9310-1 David Eitzen and Alex Zimmermann)
Forensic mortuaries in all Australian jurisdictions are dealing with increasing workloads, with routine cases regularly occupying greater than 50%, and often as much as 85%, of existing cold room body storage capacity, particularly over long weekends and during seasonal increases in respiratory infections. Hence the need to deal with a sudden influx of deceased persons or multiple body parts in a mass fatality incident would overwhelm most Australian forensic mortuaries, thereby requiring other means of body storage and processing. Exercise “Construct” was a joint South Australian Police (SAPol) and Forensic Science South Australia exercise designed to practice the establishment and construction of an emergency mortuary facility (EMF) to deal with a mass fatality incident and the subsequent disaster victim identification process. The aims of the exercise were to test preparedness, activation and construction processes relative to the establishment of an EMF. The exercise provided the opportunity to identify gaps in the capacity to successfully complete the tasks within the allotted time frames. The exercise reinforced the need to have a comprehensive and clearly documented process which must include a current list of suppliers who can deliver goods and services in a timely manner. The aim of this paper is to report on the exercise findings and share the experience with other jurisdictions. It will also provide other jurisdictions with the opportunity to consider whether the South Australian model will be useful to them in improving their own response when confronted with a mass fatality incident that may overwhelm existing local mortuary capacities and capabilities.
Forensic mortuaries in all Australian jurisdictions are dealing with increasing workloads, with routine cases regularly occupying greater than 50%, and often as much as 85%, of existing cold room body storage capacity, particularly over long weekends and during seasonal increases in respiratory infections. Hence the need to deal with a sudden influx of deceased persons or multiple body parts in a mass fatality incident would overwhelm most Australian forensic mortuaries, thereby requiring other means of body storage and processing. Exercise “Construct” was a joint South Australian Police (SAPol) and Forensic Science South Australia exercise designed to practice the establishment and construction of an emergency mortuary facility (EMF) to deal with a mass fatality incident and the subsequent disaster victim identification process. The aims of the exercise were to test preparedness, activation and construction processes relative to the establishment of an EMF. The exercise provided the opportunity to identify gaps in the capacity to successfully complete the tasks within the allotted time frames. The exercise reinforced the need to have a comprehensive and clearly documented process which must include a current list of suppliers who can deliver goods and services in a timely manner. The aim of this paper is to report on the exercise findings and share the experience with other jurisdictions. It will also provide other jurisdictions with the opportunity to consider whether the South Australian model will be useful to them in improving their own response when confronted with a mass fatality incident that may overwhelm existing local mortuary capacities and capabilities.
Costa Concordia: divers blow holes in cruise liner
Rescuers try to access flooded lower cabins as number of passengers missing on stricken vessel stands at 29
Amid growing confusion over the number of passengers still missing from the Costa Concordia, navy explosives experts have blown a series of holes in the hull of the stricken cruise liner to allow divers searching for passengers better access to flooded lower cabins.
After local officials raised the tally of missing passengers from 16 to 29, the divers blew a first hole in the landward side of the vessel at 7.40am local time on Tuesday, a second at 8.05am and a third at 8.40am.
Officials have said four holes were planned along the 290m (950ft) length of the ship, which will give divers who are searching deep inside the submerged part of the liner a quick escape route if the vessel slips into deeper waters.
Divers were evacuated from the ship on Monday as it shifted a few centimetres in rough seas. Grounded on its side on granite rock yards from the shore of the Tuscan island of Giglio, the Costa Concordia stands in 37m of water, but 30m further out to sea the seabed falls away to 70m.
Divers in two dinghies were working in calmer conditions on Tuesday, but rougher weather is forecast for Wednesday.
The navy has created a 100m exclusion zone around the ship while using the charges.
Three bodies have so far been found on board and three passengers were found drowned at sea. Three survivors were taken off the ship at the weekend after the 114,500-tonne vessel grounded after smashing into rocks on Friday night.
On Monday night an Italian coastguard official dramatically revised the number of passengers missing from 16 to 29, reflecting confusion over passenger lists and tallies of survivors who were ferried to different locations. The German government has meanwhile said that around a dozen German passengers are still unaccounted for.
That could complicate the work of divers, who have used cabin lists to focus their searches on where missing passengers were sleeping.
Concerns have also been raised about security around the vessel amid fears that cash and valuables left on board by the thousands of passengers may attract looters.
A judge is due to decide on Tuesday if the ship's captain, Francesco Schettino, should remain in custody, after details emerged of his decision to take the liner just 150m from the coast of Giglio, causing it to hit a rock that tore a hole in the hull. Prosecutors say they fear he would try to flee if released.
Schettino reportedly sailed so close to the island in a form of salute to the island for the benefit of an islander working on the crew.
As 300 rescue workers crammed into the tiny port of Giglio on Tuesday, one source said a salvage vessel that could be used to refloat the Costa Concordia had docked at the island of Elba to pick up supplies en route to Giglio.
The deputy mayor, Mario Pellegrino, said Micky Arison, the CEO of Carnival Corp – the owner of the ship's operator, Costa Crociere – was expected on Giglio on Tuesday to hold a press conference and view the vessel.
Tom Kington in Giglio
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 17 January 2012 08.47 GMT
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/17/costa-concordia-divers-blow-holes
Amid growing confusion over the number of passengers still missing from the Costa Concordia, navy explosives experts have blown a series of holes in the hull of the stricken cruise liner to allow divers searching for passengers better access to flooded lower cabins.
After local officials raised the tally of missing passengers from 16 to 29, the divers blew a first hole in the landward side of the vessel at 7.40am local time on Tuesday, a second at 8.05am and a third at 8.40am.
Officials have said four holes were planned along the 290m (950ft) length of the ship, which will give divers who are searching deep inside the submerged part of the liner a quick escape route if the vessel slips into deeper waters.
Divers were evacuated from the ship on Monday as it shifted a few centimetres in rough seas. Grounded on its side on granite rock yards from the shore of the Tuscan island of Giglio, the Costa Concordia stands in 37m of water, but 30m further out to sea the seabed falls away to 70m.
Divers in two dinghies were working in calmer conditions on Tuesday, but rougher weather is forecast for Wednesday.
The navy has created a 100m exclusion zone around the ship while using the charges.
Three bodies have so far been found on board and three passengers were found drowned at sea. Three survivors were taken off the ship at the weekend after the 114,500-tonne vessel grounded after smashing into rocks on Friday night.
On Monday night an Italian coastguard official dramatically revised the number of passengers missing from 16 to 29, reflecting confusion over passenger lists and tallies of survivors who were ferried to different locations. The German government has meanwhile said that around a dozen German passengers are still unaccounted for.
That could complicate the work of divers, who have used cabin lists to focus their searches on where missing passengers were sleeping.
Concerns have also been raised about security around the vessel amid fears that cash and valuables left on board by the thousands of passengers may attract looters.
A judge is due to decide on Tuesday if the ship's captain, Francesco Schettino, should remain in custody, after details emerged of his decision to take the liner just 150m from the coast of Giglio, causing it to hit a rock that tore a hole in the hull. Prosecutors say they fear he would try to flee if released.
Schettino reportedly sailed so close to the island in a form of salute to the island for the benefit of an islander working on the crew.
As 300 rescue workers crammed into the tiny port of Giglio on Tuesday, one source said a salvage vessel that could be used to refloat the Costa Concordia had docked at the island of Elba to pick up supplies en route to Giglio.
The deputy mayor, Mario Pellegrino, said Micky Arison, the CEO of Carnival Corp – the owner of the ship's operator, Costa Crociere – was expected on Giglio on Tuesday to hold a press conference and view the vessel.
Tom Kington in Giglio
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 17 January 2012 08.47 GMT
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/17/costa-concordia-divers-blow-holes
Rescuers Use Explosives In Cruise Ship Search
Rescuers searching for those still missing from the cruise liner that capsized after crashing into rocks in Italy have begun using explosives to blast holes in the vessel.
It comes as Italian emergency services deny reports in La Stampa newspaper that a seventh body has been found on the Costa Concordia.
The increased death toll was reported in the Italian media after "black box" recordings showed the ship's captain ignored an order to get back on board.
Taped telephone conversations released by authorities suggest Francesco Schettino was evasive when ordered by a port official to supervise the rescue.
Officials said last night a total of 29 people remained missing, while six have been confirmed dead after the cruise liner collided into a reef off the Tuscan coast near the island of Giglio.
Two controlled explosions were carried out early this morning to allow firefighters and scuba divers to enter parts of the ship that they had not yet been able to search.
What are you doing? Are you abandoning the rescue? Captain, this is an order, I am the one in charge now. You have declared abandoning ship, There are already bodies.
Coastguard official's instructions to Francesco Schettino
The number of those still being sought - 25 passengers and four crew members - rose after authorities revealed some of those previously counted as safe had still not contacted family members.
At least three Italian families have said that although their loved ones were listed among those safely evacuated, they had not heard any word from them.
About 10 Germans are thought to be among those unaccounted for.
And while coast guard official Marco Brusco said he held a "glimmer of hope" that more survivors may still be found, Giglio Mayor Sergio Ortelli said earlier that hopes of finding any of them alive were minimal.
Schettino is due in court later charged with manslaughter, abandoning ship and causing a shipwreck - all of which he denies.
A conversation between the captain and a coastguard official recorded on one of the ship's "black boxes" was revealed through the release of a transcript.
Costa Concordia
A total of 4,200 people were on board the Costa Concordia when it crashed
"Now you go to the bow, you climb up the emergency ladder and co-ordinate the evacuation," the official reportedly tells him.
"You must tell us how many people, children, women and passengers are there and the exact number of each category.
"What are you doing? Are you abandoning the rescue? Captain, this is an order, I am the one in charge now. You have declared abandoning ship, There are already bodies."
"How many?" Schettino says, to which the official responds: "That is for you to tell me, what are you doing? Do you want to go home?"
Schettino said in an earlier telephone call that "(We) cannot get on board because the rear of the ship is keeling over."
Costa Concordia ship route
ANSA news agency also said there was a kind of "mutiny" among the crew which decided on an evacuation before being given formal orders by the captain.
Schettino has been accused by the vessel's owner, Costa Cruises, of sailing close to land to "make a salute".
Meanwhile, it has emerged that in 2010 Schettino gave an interview to a Czech newspaper where he said he never wanted to face a scenario like the Titantic.
He told Dnes: "I wouldn't like to be in the role of the captain of the Titanic, having to sail in an ocean of icebergs.
"But I think that thanks to preparation, you can handle any situation and deal with potential problems."
Costa Cruises chairman Pier Luigi Foschi has apologised for the tragedy, which has left dozens of the 4,200 people on board injured and the 114,000-tonne ship lying on its side off Tuscany.
:: Click here for our graphic sequence to find out how the cruise liner ended up on its side
Antonello Tievoli
Antonello Tievoli, the Concordia's maitre d' - the sail past was said to be a favour for him
And Clarence Mitchell, who is representing Costa Cruises, said: "Mr Foschi confirmed the captain had been approaching the island of Giglio to 'make a salute'.
"The company says this (incident) was caused by an attempt by the captain to show the ship to the port.
"But there's a criminal investigation going on and we're not going to say anything that's going to compromise that or the captain's case."
Prosecutor Francesco Verusio said the captain's alleged conduct was "inexcusable."
"We are struck by the unscrupulousness of the reckless manoeuvre that the commander of the Costa Concordia made near the island of Giglio."
It comes after some of the 35 Britons on board described the panic that ensued after the ship collided with rocks.
The tragedy could also become an environmental crisis as rough seas battering the ship have raised fears fuel might leak into waters that are part of a protected sanctuary for dolphins, porpoises and whales.
9:44am UK, Tuesday January 17, 2012
http://news.sky.com/home/world-news/article/16150533
It comes as Italian emergency services deny reports in La Stampa newspaper that a seventh body has been found on the Costa Concordia.
The increased death toll was reported in the Italian media after "black box" recordings showed the ship's captain ignored an order to get back on board.
Taped telephone conversations released by authorities suggest Francesco Schettino was evasive when ordered by a port official to supervise the rescue.
Officials said last night a total of 29 people remained missing, while six have been confirmed dead after the cruise liner collided into a reef off the Tuscan coast near the island of Giglio.
Two controlled explosions were carried out early this morning to allow firefighters and scuba divers to enter parts of the ship that they had not yet been able to search.
What are you doing? Are you abandoning the rescue? Captain, this is an order, I am the one in charge now. You have declared abandoning ship, There are already bodies.
Coastguard official's instructions to Francesco Schettino
The number of those still being sought - 25 passengers and four crew members - rose after authorities revealed some of those previously counted as safe had still not contacted family members.
At least three Italian families have said that although their loved ones were listed among those safely evacuated, they had not heard any word from them.
About 10 Germans are thought to be among those unaccounted for.
And while coast guard official Marco Brusco said he held a "glimmer of hope" that more survivors may still be found, Giglio Mayor Sergio Ortelli said earlier that hopes of finding any of them alive were minimal.
Schettino is due in court later charged with manslaughter, abandoning ship and causing a shipwreck - all of which he denies.
A conversation between the captain and a coastguard official recorded on one of the ship's "black boxes" was revealed through the release of a transcript.
Costa Concordia
A total of 4,200 people were on board the Costa Concordia when it crashed
"Now you go to the bow, you climb up the emergency ladder and co-ordinate the evacuation," the official reportedly tells him.
"You must tell us how many people, children, women and passengers are there and the exact number of each category.
"What are you doing? Are you abandoning the rescue? Captain, this is an order, I am the one in charge now. You have declared abandoning ship, There are already bodies."
"How many?" Schettino says, to which the official responds: "That is for you to tell me, what are you doing? Do you want to go home?"
Schettino said in an earlier telephone call that "(We) cannot get on board because the rear of the ship is keeling over."
Costa Concordia ship route
ANSA news agency also said there was a kind of "mutiny" among the crew which decided on an evacuation before being given formal orders by the captain.
Schettino has been accused by the vessel's owner, Costa Cruises, of sailing close to land to "make a salute".
Meanwhile, it has emerged that in 2010 Schettino gave an interview to a Czech newspaper where he said he never wanted to face a scenario like the Titantic.
He told Dnes: "I wouldn't like to be in the role of the captain of the Titanic, having to sail in an ocean of icebergs.
"But I think that thanks to preparation, you can handle any situation and deal with potential problems."
Costa Cruises chairman Pier Luigi Foschi has apologised for the tragedy, which has left dozens of the 4,200 people on board injured and the 114,000-tonne ship lying on its side off Tuscany.
:: Click here for our graphic sequence to find out how the cruise liner ended up on its side
Antonello Tievoli
Antonello Tievoli, the Concordia's maitre d' - the sail past was said to be a favour for him
And Clarence Mitchell, who is representing Costa Cruises, said: "Mr Foschi confirmed the captain had been approaching the island of Giglio to 'make a salute'.
"The company says this (incident) was caused by an attempt by the captain to show the ship to the port.
"But there's a criminal investigation going on and we're not going to say anything that's going to compromise that or the captain's case."
Prosecutor Francesco Verusio said the captain's alleged conduct was "inexcusable."
"We are struck by the unscrupulousness of the reckless manoeuvre that the commander of the Costa Concordia made near the island of Giglio."
It comes after some of the 35 Britons on board described the panic that ensued after the ship collided with rocks.
The tragedy could also become an environmental crisis as rough seas battering the ship have raised fears fuel might leak into waters that are part of a protected sanctuary for dolphins, porpoises and whales.
9:44am UK, Tuesday January 17, 2012
http://news.sky.com/home/world-news/article/16150533
Vanishing victims: The ‘open wounds’ of Mexico’s drug war
Mexico City (CNN) — The blue plastic envelope is packed with papers: security camera photos, cell phone records, business cards and letters asking for help.
“My folder, this is my son,” Alfonso Moreno says.
The young man left Mexico City on a road trip to Texas last January. His parents say 33-year-old Alejandro, a computer systems engineer, vanished just an hour away from the U.S.-Mexico border.
They have been searching for him ever since.
On this day, a wood-paneled meeting room at a Mexico City peace foundation is the next step in their hunt. They sit at a table with parents of a street performer, a real estate agent and a group of gold salesmen.
A year ago, they all were strangers. Now, they greet each other like old friends, with smiles and warm embraces.
A brutal drug war has brought them together.
Their children are among more than 5,300 people who have gone missing in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon began a crackdown on cartels five years ago, according to the country’s National Human Rights Commission. Officials fear the total number could be far higher, because many disappearances go unreported.
The drug war’s mounting death toll grabs international attention, but forced disappearances are one of the most troubling problems that Mexico faces, says Rodrigo Escobar Gil, a human rights representative for the Organization of American States.
As the number of cases grows, Moreno and other parents of the missing have become vocal members of the country’s high-profile Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity, which has staged nationwide protest marches demanding a new drug war strategy, better treatment of victims and greater efforts to find the missing.
Hope that their loved ones may be found alive fuels their fervor.
Moreno says he and his wife, like many who are frustrated by sluggish responses and scarce results from officials, felt forced to launch their own investigation. Their search for clues has taken them from the quiet confines of their gated community in Mexico’s capital into some of the country’s most dangerous areas.
“I have more than the authorities do,” he says. “Unfortunately, organized crime is organized. Our authorities aren’t.”
Retracing the trail
This is what Alfonso Moreno knows: His son Alejandro climbed into a red Mazda 3 and left Mexico City at 7 a.m. on January 27, 2011. Late that night, he planned to reach Laredo, Texas, visit a friend and pick up a new computer.
Alejandro never made it to the border. He disappeared. So did his car.
But he left a trail. A systems engineer for IBM and lifelong technology lover, he sent regular updates throughout his journey, firing off text messages and posting details about his location on Foursquare and Facebook.
“I just passed the Tropic of Cancer,” he wrote on Facebook as he drove through the central Mexican state of San Luis Potosi.
A few hours later, another status update compared rush hour in the northern industrial city of Monterrey with traffic jams in the nation’s capital.
Just before 7:30 that night, his mother sent him a text message: “Where are you, son?”
“I’m in Monterrey,” he replied.
At 8:55 p.m., he posted on Foursquare that he was at a toll booth 107 kilometers (about 65 miles) away from the industrial city, in the town of Sabinas Hidalgo.
Just after 9 p.m., he posted his location again. There was no message — just his coordinates. His parents suspect he sent them when he spotted something suspicious along the highway.
He hasn’t been heard from since.
Time and time again, Alfonso Moreno and his wife, Lucia Baca, have flown to Monterrey and retraced their son’s path. But they can only go so far. Officials have warned them to stay out of nearby towns in the area, a stronghold of the Zetas drug cartel.
“I wanted to go looking for him,” Moreno says, “but the authorities told me, ‘No, if you go in, you won’t come out.’ ”
This is what the father keeps in his blue folder: a grainy toll booth security camera photo that shows his son’s hand, reaching out to pay 186 pesos in Sabinas Hidalgo, Nuevo Leon. Business cards of lawmakers, journalists and human rights organizations who’ve listened to the family’s story. Pictures and descriptions of others who disappeared the same way — driving on highways near the northern city of Monterrey.
He knows their stories as well as his son’s. Off the top of his head, he rattles off the dates they went missing.
This is what Alfonso Moreno said when he met their families: Go to the toll booths now, because they only save the security camera photos for two months.
A growing problem
In October, Mexico’s president said the “very high” number of missing people was a growing concern. He listed them among the victims of violence that he described as “open wounds” in Mexican society.
“We don’t know the size of the problem,” Calderon said during a speech inaugurating a new prosecutor’s office aimed at helping victims.
“There are different statistics,” says Gil of the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, “but what is certain is that this is a massive phenomenon in which a very high number of people are victims of this scourge. … It consumes family and friends and the whole community with anguish and uncertainty.”
Mexico’s Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity has documented 600 recent cases of “forced disappearances” as demonstrators from the group travel across the country, protesting violence and collecting victims’ stories.
There are thousands more, says Valentina Peralta, who keeps track of information about victims’ cases for the movement.
For every death reported, she hears of at least eight other disappearances. But fear stops many from turning to authorities for help.
“They tell us, ‘We don’t want to file a complaint, because they’ll kill us,’ ” Peralta says.
Some who do go public have managed to wrangle meetings with Calderon and other top Mexican officials
“Thanks to the movement, doors have been opened,” Moreno says. “We are no longer invisible victims.”
But the burdens they carry are often hidden from view, masked by the steely determination of their fight for justice.
A father closes his family business. A mother eyes the world with distrust. A grandmother fears for her grandchildren’s future. For Moreno, old friendships faded. Acquaintances find it too difficult to ask about a missing child.
“A family of pain has been born,” Moreno says. “All, all, all hope and pain.”
A father’s financial struggle
Melchor Flores Landa used to buy and sell homewares in the town of Nextlalpan. Now his search for his son and protest marches against the drug war consume his life. His business is shuttered, and money is tight.
Pain is the only constant. Everything else is in flux — mentally, physically and financially.
“It’s like a waterfall, all going down,” he says. “You don’t know when you’re going to reach the bottom.”
Like the Moreno family, his son disappeared in the Monterrey area. He travels the 10-hour bus ride there as often as he can, searching for information. He says his son, a street performer known as “The Galactic Cowboy,” hasn’t been seen since local police detained him three years ago.
Flores worries authorities will forget about the case if he doesn’t show up in person. It costs thousands of pesos (hundreds of dollars) every time he makes the trip.
One recent afternoon, his young daughter asked for 80 pesos ($6) to buy a book.
“I didn’t have enough,” he says. “If I give her the money, I can’t come here.”
A grandmother’s fear for the future
When Maria Herrera Magdalena gives her grandson a bath, one thought passes through her mind. He is just like his father — the way he moves, the words he says.
But for this grandchild and several others, having a father is a distant memory.
Four of Herrera’s eight children disappeared on gold-buying trips — a business for which their small town of Pajacuaran in the central Mexican state of Michoacan is known. Three of them left behind young children who still cry out for their fathers.
“To this date they don’t understand what’s going on. They think they were abandoned,” says Herrera, 63. “We haven’t wanted to tell them yet. The truth is that I don’t feel strong enough.”
Fear has taken her sons’ place — at the dinner table, on the street.
Herrera suffers from constant pain, but she knows her grandchildren will feel the deepest consequences.
“They are not going to grow up, nor can they be, like other children. We do not know what future we can give them. … The love and security that a family has, I know that no one can give it to them,” she says.
Tears stream down Herrera’s face.
“When I start to talk about my sons, I can’t stop crying.”
A mother’s life in limbo
Other members of the peace movement do a better job of staying composed, Herrera says. She points across the conference room to 54-year-old Julia Alonso, whose son, a real estate agent, disappeared while on vacation outside Monterrey in 2008.
Alonso says remaining focused on the search for her son is a struggle for her, too. Sometimes, hatred overwhelms her. She invites no one into her home. She doesn’t give information out over the phone. She fears her son’s trusting nature may have contributed to his demise.
“It’s as if they stole half your life. Now you don’t trust people’s intentions,” she says.
Despite her inner turmoil, Alonso says she’s vowed not to cry until she finds her son and learns his fate.
“The only way I stay this way, when there are 10,000 ideas running through my mind, immediately I run somewhere quiet, I breathe, I wait for the light to reach my heart, and I know I have to live,” she says.
Searching for her son keeps her going, even in her darkest hours.
“For family members of victims who have died, at least they know that they are dead,” she says. “We are anxious. It is a situation of not knowing. … We are the ones that push the most because we have the illusion that they will be found alive.”
Moreno says some authorities have told him that could be the case, suggesting that cartels kidnap people to strengthen their own operations, putting them to work.
“The car will appear on a ranch in the area at any moment,” one official in Nuevo Leon state told him, noting that his son’s advanced computer skills could be valuable. “They must be using him.”
In October, Mexican troops freed more than 60 people in the neighboring state of Coahuila. The victims told authorities they had been abducted in various locations throughout the country and forced to work for drug gangs.
Reports of unmarked mass graves have also become increasingly common in the region.
A year after his son’s disappearance, Moreno says authorities haven’t come up with any leads. He and his wife are waiting for answers, and praying that their son will be released by his captors.
“We don’t lose faith,” he says. “We don’t get tired of looking.”
His wife smiles and hugs friends as the meeting draws to a close. Moreno holds the blue plastic folder in his hand.
01/15/2012 – CNN, Catherine E. Shoichet
http://neglectedwar.com/blog/archives/11351
“My folder, this is my son,” Alfonso Moreno says.
The young man left Mexico City on a road trip to Texas last January. His parents say 33-year-old Alejandro, a computer systems engineer, vanished just an hour away from the U.S.-Mexico border.
They have been searching for him ever since.
On this day, a wood-paneled meeting room at a Mexico City peace foundation is the next step in their hunt. They sit at a table with parents of a street performer, a real estate agent and a group of gold salesmen.
A year ago, they all were strangers. Now, they greet each other like old friends, with smiles and warm embraces.
A brutal drug war has brought them together.
Their children are among more than 5,300 people who have gone missing in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon began a crackdown on cartels five years ago, according to the country’s National Human Rights Commission. Officials fear the total number could be far higher, because many disappearances go unreported.
The drug war’s mounting death toll grabs international attention, but forced disappearances are one of the most troubling problems that Mexico faces, says Rodrigo Escobar Gil, a human rights representative for the Organization of American States.
As the number of cases grows, Moreno and other parents of the missing have become vocal members of the country’s high-profile Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity, which has staged nationwide protest marches demanding a new drug war strategy, better treatment of victims and greater efforts to find the missing.
Hope that their loved ones may be found alive fuels their fervor.
Moreno says he and his wife, like many who are frustrated by sluggish responses and scarce results from officials, felt forced to launch their own investigation. Their search for clues has taken them from the quiet confines of their gated community in Mexico’s capital into some of the country’s most dangerous areas.
“I have more than the authorities do,” he says. “Unfortunately, organized crime is organized. Our authorities aren’t.”
Retracing the trail
This is what Alfonso Moreno knows: His son Alejandro climbed into a red Mazda 3 and left Mexico City at 7 a.m. on January 27, 2011. Late that night, he planned to reach Laredo, Texas, visit a friend and pick up a new computer.
Alejandro never made it to the border. He disappeared. So did his car.
But he left a trail. A systems engineer for IBM and lifelong technology lover, he sent regular updates throughout his journey, firing off text messages and posting details about his location on Foursquare and Facebook.
“I just passed the Tropic of Cancer,” he wrote on Facebook as he drove through the central Mexican state of San Luis Potosi.
A few hours later, another status update compared rush hour in the northern industrial city of Monterrey with traffic jams in the nation’s capital.
Just before 7:30 that night, his mother sent him a text message: “Where are you, son?”
“I’m in Monterrey,” he replied.
At 8:55 p.m., he posted on Foursquare that he was at a toll booth 107 kilometers (about 65 miles) away from the industrial city, in the town of Sabinas Hidalgo.
Just after 9 p.m., he posted his location again. There was no message — just his coordinates. His parents suspect he sent them when he spotted something suspicious along the highway.
He hasn’t been heard from since.
Time and time again, Alfonso Moreno and his wife, Lucia Baca, have flown to Monterrey and retraced their son’s path. But they can only go so far. Officials have warned them to stay out of nearby towns in the area, a stronghold of the Zetas drug cartel.
“I wanted to go looking for him,” Moreno says, “but the authorities told me, ‘No, if you go in, you won’t come out.’ ”
This is what the father keeps in his blue folder: a grainy toll booth security camera photo that shows his son’s hand, reaching out to pay 186 pesos in Sabinas Hidalgo, Nuevo Leon. Business cards of lawmakers, journalists and human rights organizations who’ve listened to the family’s story. Pictures and descriptions of others who disappeared the same way — driving on highways near the northern city of Monterrey.
He knows their stories as well as his son’s. Off the top of his head, he rattles off the dates they went missing.
This is what Alfonso Moreno said when he met their families: Go to the toll booths now, because they only save the security camera photos for two months.
A growing problem
In October, Mexico’s president said the “very high” number of missing people was a growing concern. He listed them among the victims of violence that he described as “open wounds” in Mexican society.
“We don’t know the size of the problem,” Calderon said during a speech inaugurating a new prosecutor’s office aimed at helping victims.
“There are different statistics,” says Gil of the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, “but what is certain is that this is a massive phenomenon in which a very high number of people are victims of this scourge. … It consumes family and friends and the whole community with anguish and uncertainty.”
Mexico’s Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity has documented 600 recent cases of “forced disappearances” as demonstrators from the group travel across the country, protesting violence and collecting victims’ stories.
There are thousands more, says Valentina Peralta, who keeps track of information about victims’ cases for the movement.
For every death reported, she hears of at least eight other disappearances. But fear stops many from turning to authorities for help.
“They tell us, ‘We don’t want to file a complaint, because they’ll kill us,’ ” Peralta says.
Some who do go public have managed to wrangle meetings with Calderon and other top Mexican officials
“Thanks to the movement, doors have been opened,” Moreno says. “We are no longer invisible victims.”
But the burdens they carry are often hidden from view, masked by the steely determination of their fight for justice.
A father closes his family business. A mother eyes the world with distrust. A grandmother fears for her grandchildren’s future. For Moreno, old friendships faded. Acquaintances find it too difficult to ask about a missing child.
“A family of pain has been born,” Moreno says. “All, all, all hope and pain.”
A father’s financial struggle
Melchor Flores Landa used to buy and sell homewares in the town of Nextlalpan. Now his search for his son and protest marches against the drug war consume his life. His business is shuttered, and money is tight.
Pain is the only constant. Everything else is in flux — mentally, physically and financially.
“It’s like a waterfall, all going down,” he says. “You don’t know when you’re going to reach the bottom.”
Like the Moreno family, his son disappeared in the Monterrey area. He travels the 10-hour bus ride there as often as he can, searching for information. He says his son, a street performer known as “The Galactic Cowboy,” hasn’t been seen since local police detained him three years ago.
Flores worries authorities will forget about the case if he doesn’t show up in person. It costs thousands of pesos (hundreds of dollars) every time he makes the trip.
One recent afternoon, his young daughter asked for 80 pesos ($6) to buy a book.
“I didn’t have enough,” he says. “If I give her the money, I can’t come here.”
A grandmother’s fear for the future
When Maria Herrera Magdalena gives her grandson a bath, one thought passes through her mind. He is just like his father — the way he moves, the words he says.
But for this grandchild and several others, having a father is a distant memory.
Four of Herrera’s eight children disappeared on gold-buying trips — a business for which their small town of Pajacuaran in the central Mexican state of Michoacan is known. Three of them left behind young children who still cry out for their fathers.
“To this date they don’t understand what’s going on. They think they were abandoned,” says Herrera, 63. “We haven’t wanted to tell them yet. The truth is that I don’t feel strong enough.”
Fear has taken her sons’ place — at the dinner table, on the street.
Herrera suffers from constant pain, but she knows her grandchildren will feel the deepest consequences.
“They are not going to grow up, nor can they be, like other children. We do not know what future we can give them. … The love and security that a family has, I know that no one can give it to them,” she says.
Tears stream down Herrera’s face.
“When I start to talk about my sons, I can’t stop crying.”
A mother’s life in limbo
Other members of the peace movement do a better job of staying composed, Herrera says. She points across the conference room to 54-year-old Julia Alonso, whose son, a real estate agent, disappeared while on vacation outside Monterrey in 2008.
Alonso says remaining focused on the search for her son is a struggle for her, too. Sometimes, hatred overwhelms her. She invites no one into her home. She doesn’t give information out over the phone. She fears her son’s trusting nature may have contributed to his demise.
“It’s as if they stole half your life. Now you don’t trust people’s intentions,” she says.
Despite her inner turmoil, Alonso says she’s vowed not to cry until she finds her son and learns his fate.
“The only way I stay this way, when there are 10,000 ideas running through my mind, immediately I run somewhere quiet, I breathe, I wait for the light to reach my heart, and I know I have to live,” she says.
Searching for her son keeps her going, even in her darkest hours.
“For family members of victims who have died, at least they know that they are dead,” she says. “We are anxious. It is a situation of not knowing. … We are the ones that push the most because we have the illusion that they will be found alive.”
Moreno says some authorities have told him that could be the case, suggesting that cartels kidnap people to strengthen their own operations, putting them to work.
“The car will appear on a ranch in the area at any moment,” one official in Nuevo Leon state told him, noting that his son’s advanced computer skills could be valuable. “They must be using him.”
In October, Mexican troops freed more than 60 people in the neighboring state of Coahuila. The victims told authorities they had been abducted in various locations throughout the country and forced to work for drug gangs.
Reports of unmarked mass graves have also become increasingly common in the region.
A year after his son’s disappearance, Moreno says authorities haven’t come up with any leads. He and his wife are waiting for answers, and praying that their son will be released by his captors.
“We don’t lose faith,” he says. “We don’t get tired of looking.”
His wife smiles and hugs friends as the meeting draws to a close. Moreno holds the blue plastic folder in his hand.
01/15/2012 – CNN, Catherine E. Shoichet
http://neglectedwar.com/blog/archives/11351
Killers of Americans south of border rarely caught - More than 200 U.S. citizens killed in Mexico since '04
A 22-year-old man from Houston and his 16-year-old friend are hauled out of a minivan in Mexico, shot execution style by thugs in a black Lincoln Continental, and left dead in the dirt.
The body of a 65-year-old nurse from Brownsville is found floating in the Rio Grande after a visit to a Mexican beauty salon.
An American retiree, an ex-Marine, is stabbed to death as he camps on a Baja beach with his dog.
More than 200 U.S. citizens have been slain in Mexico’s escalating wave of violence since 2004 — an average of nearly one killing a week, according to a Houston Chronicle investigation into the deaths.
Rarely are the killers captured.
The U.S. State Department tracks most American homicides abroad, but the department releases minimal statistics and doesn’t include victims’ names or details about the deaths. The Chronicle examined hundreds of records to document the personal tragedies behind them.
“I’m no longer the same person,” said Paula Valdez, a Houston mother whose son was slain near her childhood home in Mexico’s Guerrero state in 2004.
More U.S. citizens suffered unnatural deaths in Mexico than in any other foreign country — excluding military killed in combat zones — from 2004 to 2007, State Department statistics show.
Most died in the recent outbreaks of violence in border cities — Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez and Nuevo Laredo.
Although, historically, even Mexico’s most violent urban centers had homicide rates below those of major U.S. cities, recent attacks and border violence driven by drug demand have escalated well beyond limited narco-executions.
Juarez last year ranked among the world’s most murderous cities.
The Chronicle analysis showed some American homicide victims were involved in organized crime. The dead include at least two dozen victims labeled hitmen, drug dealers, human smugglers or gang members, based on published investigators’ accusations. Others were drug users or wanted for crimes in the United States.
But in at least 70 other cases, U.S. citizens appear to have been killed while in Mexico for innocent reasons: visiting family, taking a vacation, or simply living or working there.
Locations and intentions
In an interview with the Chronicle, Mexican Congressman Juan Francisco Rivera Bedoya of Nuevo Leon, a former prosecutor who heads the national Public Safety Commission, said he believes most American victims get killed after crossing the border to participate in illegal activities or venturing into unsafe areas.
“Tourists visiting cathedrals, museums and other cultural centers are not at risk,” he said.
Across Mexico, more than 5,000 lives were taken last year, including police, public officials, journalists and bystanders, with seemingly little regard for age, social status or nationality, Mexican authorities report.
Mutilated bodies have been draped on highway overpasses or posed in schoolyards and public squares. Authorities have uncovered mass graves known as narcofosas and body disposal sites, where killers dissolved corpses in barrels of chemicals.
At least 40 Americans were among those killed and dumped in gruesome methods favored by cartel killers, the Chronicle found. Two Texan teens were victims of an American serial killer in Nuevo Laredo, who bragged to a friend in a recorded cell phone call that he stewed their remains in vats.
Recent border victims include at least 15 U.S.-born children and teenagers.
In 2008, Austin Kane Danielsen, an 18-year-old Kansan visiting Mexico for the first time, was attacked, beaten and kicked after leaving a disco in Matamoros. His attackers used a pickup to drag his brutalized body 30 yards and dumped it next to a railroad track.
In 2005, Eddy Vargas, an El Paso teen, was beaten to death on his way to a Juarez ice cream store. In 2004, two California-born women, Sandra Luz Castro Pelayo and Vividiana Estrella Martinez, both 18, were raped, murdered and thrown into a canal in La Rosita by gang members.
Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle
Published 06:30 a.m., Saturday, February 7, 2009
http://www.chron.com/news/nation-world/article/Killers-of-Americans-south-of-border-rarely-caught-1741056.php
The body of a 65-year-old nurse from Brownsville is found floating in the Rio Grande after a visit to a Mexican beauty salon.
An American retiree, an ex-Marine, is stabbed to death as he camps on a Baja beach with his dog.
More than 200 U.S. citizens have been slain in Mexico’s escalating wave of violence since 2004 — an average of nearly one killing a week, according to a Houston Chronicle investigation into the deaths.
Rarely are the killers captured.
The U.S. State Department tracks most American homicides abroad, but the department releases minimal statistics and doesn’t include victims’ names or details about the deaths. The Chronicle examined hundreds of records to document the personal tragedies behind them.
“I’m no longer the same person,” said Paula Valdez, a Houston mother whose son was slain near her childhood home in Mexico’s Guerrero state in 2004.
More U.S. citizens suffered unnatural deaths in Mexico than in any other foreign country — excluding military killed in combat zones — from 2004 to 2007, State Department statistics show.
Most died in the recent outbreaks of violence in border cities — Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez and Nuevo Laredo.
Although, historically, even Mexico’s most violent urban centers had homicide rates below those of major U.S. cities, recent attacks and border violence driven by drug demand have escalated well beyond limited narco-executions.
Juarez last year ranked among the world’s most murderous cities.
The Chronicle analysis showed some American homicide victims were involved in organized crime. The dead include at least two dozen victims labeled hitmen, drug dealers, human smugglers or gang members, based on published investigators’ accusations. Others were drug users or wanted for crimes in the United States.
But in at least 70 other cases, U.S. citizens appear to have been killed while in Mexico for innocent reasons: visiting family, taking a vacation, or simply living or working there.
Locations and intentions
In an interview with the Chronicle, Mexican Congressman Juan Francisco Rivera Bedoya of Nuevo Leon, a former prosecutor who heads the national Public Safety Commission, said he believes most American victims get killed after crossing the border to participate in illegal activities or venturing into unsafe areas.
“Tourists visiting cathedrals, museums and other cultural centers are not at risk,” he said.
Across Mexico, more than 5,000 lives were taken last year, including police, public officials, journalists and bystanders, with seemingly little regard for age, social status or nationality, Mexican authorities report.
Mutilated bodies have been draped on highway overpasses or posed in schoolyards and public squares. Authorities have uncovered mass graves known as narcofosas and body disposal sites, where killers dissolved corpses in barrels of chemicals.
At least 40 Americans were among those killed and dumped in gruesome methods favored by cartel killers, the Chronicle found. Two Texan teens were victims of an American serial killer in Nuevo Laredo, who bragged to a friend in a recorded cell phone call that he stewed their remains in vats.
Recent border victims include at least 15 U.S.-born children and teenagers.
In 2008, Austin Kane Danielsen, an 18-year-old Kansan visiting Mexico for the first time, was attacked, beaten and kicked after leaving a disco in Matamoros. His attackers used a pickup to drag his brutalized body 30 yards and dumped it next to a railroad track.
In 2005, Eddy Vargas, an El Paso teen, was beaten to death on his way to a Juarez ice cream store. In 2004, two California-born women, Sandra Luz Castro Pelayo and Vividiana Estrella Martinez, both 18, were raped, murdered and thrown into a canal in La Rosita by gang members.
Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle
Published 06:30 a.m., Saturday, February 7, 2009
http://www.chron.com/news/nation-world/article/Killers-of-Americans-south-of-border-rarely-caught-1741056.php
More bones at Diyarbakır mass grave
Republican People’s Party (CHP) Deputy Chairman Sezgin Tanrıkulu visits the site in Diyarbakır where 11 skulls have been found so far as the diggings continue. AA photo
The number human skulls found in the vicinity of a former gendarmerie building in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır has increased to 11 as the prosecutor’s office deepens the investigation.
“In the past, Turkey was proud of its underground mine treasures; now Turkey has more to be proud of, such as skulls and bones from unsolved murders,” Republican People’s Party (CHP) Deputy Chairman Sezgin Tanrıkulu said Jan. 15 during a visit to the area.
“This area must be researched entirely. The prosecutors held a declaration of secrecy but these kinds of investigations should be open to the public. Turkey does not need artificial agendas – Turkey’s main agenda should be human rights, justice and democracy,” he said.
Raci Bilici, the head of the Human Rights Association (İHD) Diyarbakır Branch, told the Hürriyet Daily News that the number of skulls found could increase since the place was once used for interrogations and because 18 families had informed the İHD about lost family members.
The skulls and bones were supposed to have been sent to the Istanbul Forensic Medicine Institute for DNA identification but were reportedly not.
“We did not receive the skulls and bones for the DNA test yet,” an official from the institute in Istanbul told the Daily News yesterday on condition of anonymity.
Ahmet Karaca, Diyarbakır’s deputy public prosecutor, said yesterday that they were experiencing some difficulties due to the status of the digging area as an archaeological site.
“We were only allowed to use a pickax and a scoop for digging,” Karaca was quoted as saying by Doğan news agency.
The head of the Cultural and Natural Heritage Preservation Board, Abdulselam Uluçam, said his body might hold an emergency meeting to remove the ban on digging with heavy construction equipment if needed.
The skulls and bones were found during restoration works of a building that was formerly used by the Gendarmerie Intelligence Anti-Terrorism Unit (JİTEM) in Diyarbakır.
JİTEM is an intelligence unit of the gendarmerie never officially recognized by the military.
The Diyarbakır Public Prosecution first conducted an investigation on Jan. 11 with excavations carried out by investigation teams, forensic medicine experts and archaeologists.
January/17/2012
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/more-bones-at-diyarbakir-mass-grave.aspx?pageID=238&nID=11630&NewsCatID=341
The number human skulls found in the vicinity of a former gendarmerie building in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır has increased to 11 as the prosecutor’s office deepens the investigation.
“In the past, Turkey was proud of its underground mine treasures; now Turkey has more to be proud of, such as skulls and bones from unsolved murders,” Republican People’s Party (CHP) Deputy Chairman Sezgin Tanrıkulu said Jan. 15 during a visit to the area.
“This area must be researched entirely. The prosecutors held a declaration of secrecy but these kinds of investigations should be open to the public. Turkey does not need artificial agendas – Turkey’s main agenda should be human rights, justice and democracy,” he said.
Raci Bilici, the head of the Human Rights Association (İHD) Diyarbakır Branch, told the Hürriyet Daily News that the number of skulls found could increase since the place was once used for interrogations and because 18 families had informed the İHD about lost family members.
The skulls and bones were supposed to have been sent to the Istanbul Forensic Medicine Institute for DNA identification but were reportedly not.
“We did not receive the skulls and bones for the DNA test yet,” an official from the institute in Istanbul told the Daily News yesterday on condition of anonymity.
Ahmet Karaca, Diyarbakır’s deputy public prosecutor, said yesterday that they were experiencing some difficulties due to the status of the digging area as an archaeological site.
“We were only allowed to use a pickax and a scoop for digging,” Karaca was quoted as saying by Doğan news agency.
The head of the Cultural and Natural Heritage Preservation Board, Abdulselam Uluçam, said his body might hold an emergency meeting to remove the ban on digging with heavy construction equipment if needed.
The skulls and bones were found during restoration works of a building that was formerly used by the Gendarmerie Intelligence Anti-Terrorism Unit (JİTEM) in Diyarbakır.
JİTEM is an intelligence unit of the gendarmerie never officially recognized by the military.
The Diyarbakır Public Prosecution first conducted an investigation on Jan. 11 with excavations carried out by investigation teams, forensic medicine experts and archaeologists.
January/17/2012
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/more-bones-at-diyarbakir-mass-grave.aspx?pageID=238&nID=11630&NewsCatID=341
Mass grave found in Vietnam
This land contains 30 corpses of North Vietnamese communist forces, who probably died during Tet war in 1968 Aggression.Simultaneous attacks on military bases in South Vietnam and the U.S. was a turning point in the Vietnam War.
This mass grave is located in Quang Tri province, central Vietnam. According to military commanders in Quang Tri, Tran Trong Trung, a mass grave was discovered accidentally by a resident when digging the soil to plant rubber trees.
In fact, according to Trung, Vietnam’s military before seeking the location of the grave for three years but to no avail. Their search was based on information provided by veterans of the Vietnam War from Americans who say there are about 158 soldiers who were buried in that place.
Currently the excavation is being conducted to search for more corpses in that location. None of the corpses are beyond recognition, identification is only done based on what they wear, such as watches, belts, or a raincoat. The soldiers were victims of attacks at Tet Aggression on January 30, 1968 to 1969. At that time, North Vietnamese troops by Vietcong guerrillas attacked a military headquarters in South Vietnam supported by the United States and its allies.
Aggression is called Tet because this attack begins coincides with Tet Nguyen Dan (Lunar New Year). Quang Tri Province is the front-line attack. Aggression Tet was the turning point of the Vietnam War. The attack was made the North Vietnamese and Vietcong forces gained the victory psychological and propaganda, causing massive loss of U.S. popular support for the Vietnam War and eventually U.S. troops were withdrawn.
The Vietnam War ended in 1975. Approximately 58 000 Americans and three million Vietnamese were killed in this war.
http://newstodaynews.com/mass-grave-found-in-vietnam/1273
This mass grave is located in Quang Tri province, central Vietnam. According to military commanders in Quang Tri, Tran Trong Trung, a mass grave was discovered accidentally by a resident when digging the soil to plant rubber trees.
In fact, according to Trung, Vietnam’s military before seeking the location of the grave for three years but to no avail. Their search was based on information provided by veterans of the Vietnam War from Americans who say there are about 158 soldiers who were buried in that place.
Currently the excavation is being conducted to search for more corpses in that location. None of the corpses are beyond recognition, identification is only done based on what they wear, such as watches, belts, or a raincoat. The soldiers were victims of attacks at Tet Aggression on January 30, 1968 to 1969. At that time, North Vietnamese troops by Vietcong guerrillas attacked a military headquarters in South Vietnam supported by the United States and its allies.
Aggression is called Tet because this attack begins coincides with Tet Nguyen Dan (Lunar New Year). Quang Tri Province is the front-line attack. Aggression Tet was the turning point of the Vietnam War. The attack was made the North Vietnamese and Vietcong forces gained the victory psychological and propaganda, causing massive loss of U.S. popular support for the Vietnam War and eventually U.S. troops were withdrawn.
The Vietnam War ended in 1975. Approximately 58 000 Americans and three million Vietnamese were killed in this war.
http://newstodaynews.com/mass-grave-found-in-vietnam/1273
Funerals of the Missing
THEMIS Vlamis from Voni village in Kythrea and Costas Siskos from Asha village in Famagusta, missing since the 1974 Turkish invasion, were given a proper burial yesterday in Limassol.
State spokesman, Stefanos Stefanou addressed the mourners at the funeral of Vlamis and spoke of his story.
Vlamis was a reserve soldier for the 305 infantry battalion which was sent to the One Milia area on August 14, during the Turkish invasion.
Once hemmed in by enemy forces, the Cypriot soldiers took refuge at Voni, where they dressed as civilians.
On August 15, Turkish forces rounded up all civilians of the village and executed them.
Vlamis’ remains were exhumed in 2005 from a mass grave in an area between Voni and the Turkish Cypriot village of Bekogiou.
Siskos’ remains were exhumed in 2008 from a mass grave in the village of Asha in Famagusta.
Cyprus Mail
Posted on January 16, 2012
http://www.parikiaki.com/archives/33334
State spokesman, Stefanos Stefanou addressed the mourners at the funeral of Vlamis and spoke of his story.
Vlamis was a reserve soldier for the 305 infantry battalion which was sent to the One Milia area on August 14, during the Turkish invasion.
Once hemmed in by enemy forces, the Cypriot soldiers took refuge at Voni, where they dressed as civilians.
On August 15, Turkish forces rounded up all civilians of the village and executed them.
Vlamis’ remains were exhumed in 2005 from a mass grave in an area between Voni and the Turkish Cypriot village of Bekogiou.
Siskos’ remains were exhumed in 2008 from a mass grave in the village of Asha in Famagusta.
Cyprus Mail
Posted on January 16, 2012
http://www.parikiaki.com/archives/33334
Discovery of mass grave unearths bitter legacy of Dersim massacres
The existence of a mass grave containing the bones of 95 victims of the Dersim massacres was announced Saturday by an Alevi activist in Erzincan province, a discovery the activist says should be followed by the opening of "the many mass graves of Dersim", Today's Zaman reported
The grave, which had remained unknown to locals of Erzincan province's Zini Gedigi district for 73 years, was documented by lawyer and Alevi advocate Cihan Soylemez last week after the topsoil that had covered it for decades washed away.
The exposed bones serve as testimony to one of the darkest chapters of the Turkish Republic's history, the 1937-38 military campaign that was approved by leading members of the state and saw the deaths of over 13,000 semi-autonomous Zaza and Kurdish-Alevi tribesmen.
The Zini Gedigi district is located on the border between Erzincan and the province historically known as Dersim, renamed Tunceli in the years following the massacres, and is only miles from the epicenter of the 1937-38 violence. Upon discovery of the grave, Soylemez called for a search for the many more unmarked mass graves that remain hidden in the hills of Dersim.
Soylemez stated to the press over the weekend: "There are many alive today who had loved ones, mothers, fathers who were buried in mass graves in the aftermath of the 1937-1938 military operation. Today, they expect the places where there are mass graves, the caves [villagers hid in] that became the scenes of massacres, to be made known by witnesses [of the massacre] and to be unearthed."
Progress significant, more needed
Activists like Soylemez have praised progress made by the government in recognizing the collective wrongs done to the country's 10 million Alevis, but also say that the state's continued dedication to unearthing bitter truths is vital.
A formerly taboo subject that stirred little but state denial or indifference, the massacres were brought into the spotlight in November of last year when Republican People's Party (CHP) deputy Huseyin Aygun told Today's Zaman that the government -- including Turkish founder Kemal Ataturk -- was responsible for planning the 1937 Dersim operation. Aygun's comments sparked widespread public debate and earned an unprecedented apology from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on behalf of the state.
"Dersim is among the most tragic events in our recent history. It is a disaster that should now be questioned with courage," the prime minister stated at the time.
If such questioning is to help reconcile the woes of the past, however, Soylemez says that it must now be followed up by answers. "At the very least, DNA tests could be run on the bodies in order to return them to the families," Soylemez stated.
So far, it is unknown if the state will make any promises, said Soylemez. "We applied to the prosecutors office [for the DNA tests], but unfortunately we have not heard any definitive reply."
16.01.2012 04:21
http://pda.trend.az/en/1980291.html
The grave, which had remained unknown to locals of Erzincan province's Zini Gedigi district for 73 years, was documented by lawyer and Alevi advocate Cihan Soylemez last week after the topsoil that had covered it for decades washed away.
The exposed bones serve as testimony to one of the darkest chapters of the Turkish Republic's history, the 1937-38 military campaign that was approved by leading members of the state and saw the deaths of over 13,000 semi-autonomous Zaza and Kurdish-Alevi tribesmen.
The Zini Gedigi district is located on the border between Erzincan and the province historically known as Dersim, renamed Tunceli in the years following the massacres, and is only miles from the epicenter of the 1937-38 violence. Upon discovery of the grave, Soylemez called for a search for the many more unmarked mass graves that remain hidden in the hills of Dersim.
Soylemez stated to the press over the weekend: "There are many alive today who had loved ones, mothers, fathers who were buried in mass graves in the aftermath of the 1937-1938 military operation. Today, they expect the places where there are mass graves, the caves [villagers hid in] that became the scenes of massacres, to be made known by witnesses [of the massacre] and to be unearthed."
Progress significant, more needed
Activists like Soylemez have praised progress made by the government in recognizing the collective wrongs done to the country's 10 million Alevis, but also say that the state's continued dedication to unearthing bitter truths is vital.
A formerly taboo subject that stirred little but state denial or indifference, the massacres were brought into the spotlight in November of last year when Republican People's Party (CHP) deputy Huseyin Aygun told Today's Zaman that the government -- including Turkish founder Kemal Ataturk -- was responsible for planning the 1937 Dersim operation. Aygun's comments sparked widespread public debate and earned an unprecedented apology from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on behalf of the state.
"Dersim is among the most tragic events in our recent history. It is a disaster that should now be questioned with courage," the prime minister stated at the time.
If such questioning is to help reconcile the woes of the past, however, Soylemez says that it must now be followed up by answers. "At the very least, DNA tests could be run on the bodies in order to return them to the families," Soylemez stated.
So far, it is unknown if the state will make any promises, said Soylemez. "We applied to the prosecutors office [for the DNA tests], but unfortunately we have not heard any definitive reply."
16.01.2012 04:21
http://pda.trend.az/en/1980291.html
Mass grave discovered in Afghanistan's Balkh
There has been over three decades of war here in Afghanistan . The Soviet occupation from 1979 to 1989, civil war among political groups and rise of the Taliban in 1919s and now the U.S-led war are the key wars.
Local people have suffered very much during these conflicts. housands of Afghans disappeared. And now shocking stories are emerging.
The discovery of this mass grave is one of them. It has been found in a military base.
These construction workers told us that they were digging here to build a parking lot when they were confronted this terrible scene.
The scene was very horrible to us too. The grave was filled with a substantial amount of fragments of human bones. The skeletons were in different states.
Some were tied behind their backs. Others had bullet holes. Women and children’s clothes were also in the grave. But exactly how many bodies are in it? And why were they dumped in this grave?
These questions have not been answered yet. This Afghan official said that the U.N is planning to launch an investigation into this incident soon. It is not an isolated discovery here.
It is a newly found mass grave here. Over the past ten years, many mass graves have been discovered, especially in the northern parts of this country. And each time, it has reminded Afghan people of their sad memories of the country’s bloody civil war.
Now here in Balk city, everyone wants to know who the dead ones are.
Some were talking about many such massacres in this city. Others were demanding justice. But will this time, the real killers would be identified and they would be put into trial, these people are skeptic.
Mon Jan 16, 2012 5:58PM GMT
Fayez Khorshid, Press TV, Balkh
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/221404.html
Local people have suffered very much during these conflicts. housands of Afghans disappeared. And now shocking stories are emerging.
The discovery of this mass grave is one of them. It has been found in a military base.
These construction workers told us that they were digging here to build a parking lot when they were confronted this terrible scene.
The scene was very horrible to us too. The grave was filled with a substantial amount of fragments of human bones. The skeletons were in different states.
Some were tied behind their backs. Others had bullet holes. Women and children’s clothes were also in the grave. But exactly how many bodies are in it? And why were they dumped in this grave?
These questions have not been answered yet. This Afghan official said that the U.N is planning to launch an investigation into this incident soon. It is not an isolated discovery here.
It is a newly found mass grave here. Over the past ten years, many mass graves have been discovered, especially in the northern parts of this country. And each time, it has reminded Afghan people of their sad memories of the country’s bloody civil war.
Now here in Balk city, everyone wants to know who the dead ones are.
Some were talking about many such massacres in this city. Others were demanding justice. But will this time, the real killers would be identified and they would be put into trial, these people are skeptic.
Mon Jan 16, 2012 5:58PM GMT
Fayez Khorshid, Press TV, Balkh
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/221404.html