World War I diggers named

Nine more World War I diggers have been identified out of more than 250 found in a mass grave at Fromelles, along with two Australian special forces troops killed in the Dutch East Indies in World War II.

Revealing the names of the soldiers in a statement on Saturday, Veterans Affairs Minister Warren Snowdon said the total number of those identified from the Battle of Fromelles now stood at 119.

A further 92 Australians remain unidentified, along with two British soldiers and a further 37 whose graves are marked 'Unidentified Soldier of the Great War'.

'We are encouraged by the success, made possible by the large number of extended family members, both in Australia and Britain, who have provided DNA samples to assist with identification,' Mr Snowdon said.

Fromelles was the first major action involving Australian troops in France in World War I. It was fought over July 19-20, 1916 and resulted in more than 5500 Australian casualties. Many of the fallen were never found. The battle is regarded as one of the worst days in Australian military history.

In 2009 a mass grave was located in Pheasant Wood, on the battle site where German soldiers had buried Australian and British dead.

All the bodies have now been reburied in the new Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Military Cemetery.

Mr Snowdon said the latest identification project has now ensured privates Leonard Broadhurst, Robert Carrington Forland, John Robertson Forrest, John Joseph Goulding, William Alexander Jamieson, Arthur Joseph Johnson, Claude Ward, John Cyril Wynn and Corporal Alfred George Tuck are known by name where they lie in Fromelles.

Army chief Lieutenant General David Morrison said in a statement that 3000 family members had become involved in the identification process 'but we still need more', he added.

'If you think you might be related to a soldier who remains unaccounted for from the Battle of Fromelles, please get in contact with the army,' Lt Gen Morrison said.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission will erect new headstones each nearing the identified men's details. They will be dedicated on July 20 during the annual commemoration of the battle.

Along with the Battle of Fromelles soldiers, two Australian special forces troops killed in the Dutch East Indies at the tail end of World War II have been identified after 67 years.

Mr Snowdon said the two had been named as Lieutenant Scobell McFerran-Rogers and Private John Whitworth of the Australian Z Special commando Unit.

Also identified was their Timorese interpreter, Roestan.

They were participating in Operation Raven, a search and recovery party sent to find and determine the fate of a US aircrew shot down over Celebes in the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia, in 1945.

The army's Unrecovered War Casualties Unit said the group landed on the island, today called Sulawesi, on June 19, 13 days after the first plane was shot down.

A day later while waiting to be evacuated by floatplane, they encountered a Japanese patrol. Two of the team - Mr Roestan and Lieutenant McFerran-Rogers - were killed during the initial fire fight. Private Whitworth was believed to have been wounded and later captured.

A war graves registration team found their remains after the war but they were not identified. They were reburied in the Bomana War Cemetery at Port Moresby as 'known only to God'.

Last year, family members of Private Whitworth approached the Unrecovered War Casualties Unit seeking to determine his fate, plus that of the others lost on Operation Raven.

Mr Snowdon said he hoped this would bring some closure to the families.

'The Commonwealth War Graves Commission has received the army's recommendations and new headstones will be installed in the coming months. I hope we will be able to dedicate those headstones during the 70th-anniversary commemorations of the Kokoda and Milne Bay campaigns,' he said.

Sat, 31 March 2012

http://www.skynews.com.au/world/article.aspx?id=734940&vId=

continue reading

Government to Hold Mass Burial For Sinai Victims

A mass burial will be held next week for the Sinai fire victims who were burnt beyond recognition.

The unidentified bodies and those burnt beyond recognition will be interred at the Lang’ata cemetery.

The DNA testing of the victims was conducted against samples of the people who lost their loved ones.

Speaking to media on Friday, Special Programmes PS Andrew Mondoh said that 15 bodies have so far been positively identified and will be given to family members for burial.

“So far because of the severity of the burns and the inhalation injury in burns some of the survivors have become so sick, we lost five more survivors on Wednesday night,” she said.

15 bodies have been positively identified and the families will be given the go ahead to burry them although the government will meet the all the costs of transporting the bodies and the burial.

More than 90 patients are nursing injuries at the Kenyatta National Hospitals and other hospitals within the city.

Experts from India will also be flow into the country by the national carrier Kenya Airways to help administer specialized care to the burn victims.

Sat, 31 March 2012

continue reading

Witness Details Srebrenica Mass Graves Study

Former investigator describes complexities of identifying human remains from various sites.

The trial of former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic continued this week with testimony from a former prosecution investigator about the research done on mass graves dating from the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995.

Karadzic is accused of planning and overseeing the murder of some 8,000 Bosniak men and boys at Srebrenica in July 1995. The indictments against him include genocide, extermination, murder, persecutions and other crimes against humanity and war crimes.

A high percentage of the Srebrenica victims have been identified from the remains found in mass graves.

This week’s witness, Dusan Janc, is a police inspector in Slovenia. As he told the court this week, between 2006 and 2009, he served as an investigator the Hague tribunal’s Office of the Prosecutor, studying mass graves and the Srebrenica victims they contained.

The witness described his role as being to prepare reports about the investigation and identification process, including a document he drafted for the Karadzic trial. These reports were based on data collected by “a team of international experts working in the field in eastern Bosnia”.

Janc explained that his latest report had been updated in certain areas, “including a more current representation of the number of victims found so far”.

He said specified during the main examination that the International Commission on Missing Persons, which provided the basic data for his reports, had identified 5,977 of the Srebrenica victims as of the end of 2011. A further 260 sets of remains had been located “without their identity having been determined”, he said. This, he added, was because there was no comparable DNA material available from family members.

“Another difficulty was obviously the fact that many people had a very similar DNA structure, including brothers or even twins, which made it difficult for the identification,” he continued.

The witness said his latest report, completed in January, included “new data about previously unknown locations for mass graves, and had also more broadly considered the issue of mortal remains found on the surface”.

In his testimony, Janc explained the concept of “primary” and “secondary” mass graves – the latter being sites “where the bodies were taken from locations they were originally buried at, in order to cover up the crime”.

As an example of relocation, he said that “in an extreme case, one man’s remains were found in three mass graves, whereas five body parts of the same person were found in two mass graves”, located far apart from each other.

Janc noted that a peculiar feature of some locations of killings was that similar numbers of victims were found to have died.

“There were three sites in the broader Srebrenica region at which slightly over 800 people were killed, he said, citing a figure of 815 bodies at Kozluk, for example.

“This proves that somehow the number 800 was a ‘threshold’,” he said. “Perhaps it was the transport capacity of the VRS [Bosnian Serb Army], or a temporary accommodation capacity.”

During cross-examination, Karadzic asked the witness whether his task was “to support the prosecution”. The witness answered in the affirmative, but rejected the assertion that this meant he was biased.

Karadzic suggested that the witness simply accepted data from reports by international experts without “checking what was being written and who was writing them”.

The witness replied that he had acquired sufficient evidence from many different and objective researchers to be able to draw valid conclusions, without having to look into “points of research made by individuals”.

Janc said he was “ready to discuss concrete measures or mistakes if the defendant wished to ask any questions”.

Karadzic said he would not be doing so, due to lack of time.

He went on to put it to the witness that “victims also came from different time periods, months or maybe years before”.

Janc replied that there was a “complex set of criteria used to connect them to the events in July 1995, including the way of death, the locations, or the objects found with the victims in the mass graves”.

“There was only one mass grave, at Biljeceva, in which the remains of the Srebrenica victims were mixed up with older remains,” he added.

Karadzic continued the same line of questioning, referring to Baljkovice – an area the witness mentioned in his report. He argued that this was the scene of intense combat between Bosnian Serb forces and the Bosnian government army, as a result of which “a very large number – hundreds – of Muslim soldiers were killed”.

The bodies of these combat victims, Karadzic said, were “properly picked up during the clearing up of the terrain, buried in mass graves”, and therefore could not be regarded as victims of the July 1995 events in Srebrenica. “In fact, the clearing up was properly ordered on July 20, 1995,” he added.

The witness answered that experts had not found “any mass grave with hundreds of bodies in that area”.

“While a few mass graves were found in that area, [there were] small ones which obviously did have a few fighting-related remains [but] none of these were included in my report,” Janc explained, adding the caveat that “there may be further mass graves which were as yet unfound” and that “any effort on supporting the discovery of additional mass graves would be welcome”.

“Regarding the clearing up, I wish to repeat that the evidence we have – aerial photography, but also testimonies from different involved people – confirm the contrary; that there was no clearing up of the terrain, but that the mass graves were rather hastily and unsystematically dug,” he concluded.

The trial continues next week.

30 March 2012

http://iwpr.net/report-news/witness-details-srebrenica-mass-graves-study

continue reading

Thirteen dead in new Honduras prison fire

Tegucigalpa. At least 13 people were killed Thursday in a fire at a prison in Honduras, officials said -- less than two months after a deadly prison blaze killed more than 350, AFP informs.

"There are 13 bodies. We have not yet been able to identify the circumstances of the incident" at the San Pedro Sula prison in the north of the country, said Marleny Vanegas of the city prosecutor's office.

"We will have to await the results of the investigation."
Earlier, police spokesman Walter Amaya had put the death toll at one. Officials said the fire was rapidly brought under control.

Security Minister Pompeyo Bonilla said the fire at the facility -- which was built for 800 inmates but which currently has 2,250 -- had "once again highlighted the critical situation" in the country's prisons.

A horrific fire erupted on February 14 at a prison in Comayagua, some 90 kilometers (55 miles) north of the capital Tegucigalpa.

The incident, in which 361 people were killed, was one of the world's deadliest prison blazes, and highlighted the problem of overcrowding in Latin American jails.

Agents from the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) concluded that the fire was accidental, but the US ambassador to Honduras also said official negligence was to blame, due to overcrowding at the facility.

Fri 30 March 2012

http://www.focus-fen.net/index.php?id=n274485

continue reading

Documents show debate over handling of 9/11 remains

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cremated remains that may have included those of victims of the September 11 attacks were incinerated and sent to a landfill despite an internal debate in which some officials at the main U.S. military mortuary recommended the ashes be dispersed at sea.

Documents released on Friday show that nearly one year after the September 11, 2001 attacks, military and civilian personnel responsible for the mortuary at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware engaged in an lengthy e-mail exchange over what to do with 1,321 portions of remains.

The fragmentary remains, which were categorized as "Group F," were unidentified and could not be linked to any specific victim of the September 11 attack on the Pentagon.

They were mixed in with debris from the building and airplane, and could have included remains of the hijackers as well, an official said on Friday, adding that it was not even certain they were human.

"They could have been anything biological. So there may have been human, but it could have been something from someone's lunch, anything that would be of a biological nature," said Jo Ann Rooney, acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness.

Navy Captain Craig Mallak, the Dover medical examiner, said the mortuary encourages workers at the scene of a mass disaster to collect anything they think might be a sample that would help to identify a victim. He said thousands of unidentified samples sometimes remain at the end of an investigation.

The Pentagon released about 2,000 pages of documents on Friday that were gathered as part of an investigation into allegations that the Dover mortuary mishandled the remains of war dead. That investigation revealed that some remains from September 11 had been incinerated and sent to a landfill.

The discovery raised concerns among the families of the September 11 victims. Rooney said she had met with representatives of the families on Friday to assure them the bodies of their loved ones had been treated with dignity and respect.

But an e-mail among the released documents showed that many officers who debated how to dispose of the Group F remains believed they should have been treated as if they belonged to the victims of the September 11 attack.

One military officer suggested that once remains were cremated, the ashes should be dispersed at sea. His name, like all others in the e-mail exchange, were redacted.

Another officer agreed and suggested, "it may be appropriate for us to witness and perhaps even have a chaplain present."

"I do like the idea of spreading the ashes at sea in that it's a neutral arena, it should represent an area readily agreeable to all parties," a colonel added.

But another, evidently senior, official objected, saying the remains being disposed of were considered "medical waste" and the contractor responsible for the cremation "should not return any medical waste back to the military service."

"Powder and ashes from the incineration of the material and the containers that were used for the burning is to be disposed of as normal waste," the official wrote.

"We shouldn't attempt to spread the residue at sea, as it could possible (sic) send a message to the next of kins (sic) that we are disposing human remains, and that is not the case," the official wrote. "Please have the contractor responsible for the incineration 'immediately' dispose of all residual materials."

A colonel agreed to do as directed, saying he assumed headquarters had been consulted, but he noted: "My point, as you are aware, is that Group F is not your normal set of medical waste."

The official replied "understand Group F was special," but added that the decision had been coordinated with other senior officials responsible for the mortuary.

The colonel then agreed to do as directed and forwarded the e-mail to another colonel, saying: "Dispose of Group F as stated and keep this email as proof of our coordination."

The practice of incinerating partial remains as "medical waste" and disposing of them in a landfill was discontinued in 2008. They are now buried at sea.

Fri Mar 30, 2012

http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCABRE82T1EX20120330?pageNumber=3&virtualBrandChannel=0

continue reading

Seven soldiers die in Venezuela helicopter crash

CARACAS, VENEZUELA (BNO NEWS) — A military helicopter crashed Thursday morning during an operation against drug traffickers in southwest Venezuela, killing all seven crew members on board, officials at the country’s Ministry of Defense said.

The accident happened at around 5:15 a.m. local time when the Super Puma 2216 aircraft, belonging to the Venezuelan Air Force, went down in a field near Yagual in the country’s state of Apure near the border with Colombia, approximately 600 kilometers (372 miles) southwest of Caracas.

The press office of the Venezuelan Ministry of Defense confirmed all seven crew members were killed in the crash, which happened while the helicopter was taking part in a military operation against drug traffickers in the region. The cause of the accident was not immediately known.

The victims were identified as pilot Captain José Ramón Garrido Salcedo, co-pilot Lieutenant Carlos Eduardo Martínez Salvatierra, Major Joel Lamuño Rojas, Freddy Vásquez Carrasquero, Víctor Barrios López, José Yrumba Chávez and Alexis Montevideo Córdova.

A committee has been formed to investigate the circumstances of the accident. Both President Hugo Chávez and Defense Minister Henry Rangel Silva expressed their condolences after the accident. “Eternal life to those who gave their lives for their country,” Chávez said.

On January 19, five people were killed when a Bell Long Ranger 206 helicopter crashed on the Auyantepui Mountain peak in Canaima National Park in the state of Bolivar. The mountain is famous for Angel Falls, the world’s highest waterfall, which was discovered by U.S. pilot Jimmie Angel in the 1930s when his plane crashed on Auyantepui.

Fri 30 March 2012

http://earththreats.com/2012/03/seven-soldiers-die-in-venezuela-helicopter-crash/

continue reading