Edhi buries 200,000th unidentified body as govt apathy to issue persists

KARACHI, Oct 26: The number of unidentified bodies buried by the Edhi Foundation crossed the 200,000th mark earlier this month, as the police and other relevant authorities have failed to devise a system to identify unclaimed corpses despite advanced technological facilities.

The Edhi Foundation said it started the job in the mid-1980s after its founder Abdul Sattar Edhi felt the need for a place where unclaimed bodies could be buried with all religious rituals.

The country’s largest charity since then has buried more than 200,000 bodies at its Mowachh Goth graveyard and the number of deaths in different incidents and accidents has kept growing.

“We started the job in 1984-85,” said Anwar Kazmi, the administrator of the Edhi Foundation. “The then Karachi mayor Abdul Sattar Aghani provided us with a 10-acre piece in the Mowachh Goth area. The need further grew and the authorities gave us two more pieces of land, 10 acres each.”

Since no other system exists, he said, the Edhi Foundation buried every unclaimed body after keeping it for three days at the morgue in Sohrab Goth. A photograph was also taken of the dead to be shown to people visiting the facility in search of their relatives, he said.

“After waiting for three days for claimants, we bury the body in the Mowachh Goth graveyard. Earlier this month we buried the 200,000th body and the number has kept growing. If anyone recognises his or her loved one through the photograph after burial, it’s up to them to shift the body anywhere else.

However, most people do not go for that process and we for their satisfaction remove the number allotted to the grave and put the deceased’s name there,” added Mr Kazmi.

He deplored that despite several attempts by the charity, no system had been developed to identify the bodies. He said the charity reached an agreement with the National Database Registration Authority (Nadra) a couple of years back to trace the family links of the unclaimed bodies after obtaining their fingerprints, but the idea did not materialise.

While the police have been implementing a range of projects costing billions of rupees, ranging from an e-policing programme to an upgrade of the forensic investigations system, they have so far ignored the issue of unidentified bodies, which requires no more complicated a system than a mechanism whereby the fingerprints of the body are taken soon after finding it and matched with a Nadra record.

The authorities recognise that it only takes a few seconds to determine the family links of an individual registered with Nadra, but take no interest in the project.

“In this high-tech era, it’s a simple task and we have all due resources to execute that job,” said Muneer Sheikh, AIG for the forensic division.

“The Sindh police’s forensic division has all the resources through which it can trace family links of any unidentified deceased person. We have identified some eight unclaimed bodies at different times.”

He said under the rules the respective police station should inform the forensic division that was bound to take fingerprint of every unidentified body. The Sindh police authorities had notified the regulations, but they were not being followed, he added.

“If the fingerprints are acquired of each body, we have ample resources to trace the deceased’s family links. It just takes a phone call to the forensic division by the investigation office of the respective police station, but unfortunately there is a sheer lack of seriousness on part of the officers,” added AIG Sheikh.

Saturday 27 October 2012

http://dawn.com/2012/10/27/edhi-buries-200000th-unidentified-body-as-govt-apathy-to-issue-persists/

continue reading

Nermin Sarajlic: Hunt for Missing Gets Harder Each Year

Nermin Sarajlic, a forensic pathologist and head of the Forensic Department of the Medical Faculty in Sarajevo - who has worked for the International Commission for Missing Persons, ICMP, in Bosnia for years - says the search missing persons is becoming harder as time elapses.

According to the ICMP figures, around 30,000 people were missing, presumably dead, at the end of the 1992-5 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. To date, two thirds of those have been found and identified. Around 10,000 people are still missing.

“A few years after the war we discovered a mass grave with the remains of a wife, mother and two sons,” Sarajlic recalls.

“They were killed near their home but the man managed to escape. He came back the following day and buried them near the house.”

“We came with him and looked for this grave all day. We barely managed to find it. I use this example to show how difficult it can be to find a grave, even when you have all the facts to hand, so imagine what it’s like today, when there are fewer witnesses and the terrain has changed,” Sarajlic told BIRN.

As a forensic pathologist, Sarajlic is the first on the scene when a mass grave is found. He says many problems slow down the identification of remains, ranging from the type of grave to issues of staffing.

If the mass grave is of a secondary or tertiary type, which means that the bodies have been moved from one grave to another, the remains will be mixed up, Sarajlic says. This makes the exhumation difficult, but it is also makes the forensic work and the task of identifying the victims hard as well.

“I am aware that this process seems long and too long to some, but it’s quite common to assemble a single body after conducting as many as eight DNA tests on body parts found in different graves - up to four graves in some cases, where bodies have been moved,” he explains.

Sarajlic says that there are cases when it is impossible to isolate the DNA, for instance when the remains have been burnt.

Another issue slowing the search for missing persons, Sarajlic says, is a combination of poor data about the locations of mass graves and lack of expert forensic pathologists.

“The conditions we work in are poor. The media only cover exhumations, and what comes later, in terms of the identifying and piecing the bodies back together, just isn’t covered. There are only 12 or 13 forensic pathologists in the whole of Bosnia and only seven or eight are working on these issues,” he says.

“It’s not only overall numbers, it’s that we all have other work to do. There is not a single forensic pathologist who is solely dedicated to the work of exhuming and identifying missing persons,” Sarajlic notes.

He blames the Bosnian authorities for not recognizing the need to form centres for forensic pathology.

“I feel that the state has not shown interest. From the very start, the existing forensic departments within medical faculties should have been upgraded. There was an opportunity when the Institute for Missing Persons was formed, to create a forensic division within it, but it wasn’t done. That is why we have such a small number of experts today,” he believes.

Although his job entails engaging with horrific scenes of graves and remains, Sarajlic derives deep satisfaction from the belief that he is helping victims and their families.

“All I can say is that I am trying to do my best,” he says.

“The way I see it, if I do my job well – identifying victims, piecing together bodies – then I am helping people and victims in the only way that they can still be helped. I am trying to focus on getting the job done, but it is never easy,” Sarajlic concludes.

Wednesday 27 October 2012

http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/nermin-sarajlic-hunt-for-missing-gets-harder-each-year/btj-topic-missing-persons-latest-headlines/3

continue reading

2 dead in boat adrift in Alboran sea

Another immigrant tragedy took place in the Alboran sea between Morocco and Spain. Two bodies were recovered on Friday from a boat adrift with 49 immigrants on board.

The boat was rescued by Moroccan gendarmerie patrol boat assisted by Spanish sea rescue workers, Spanish ministerial sources said. The drama took place on the heels of the capsizing of a motorized dinghy, overloaded with immigrants, off the coast of the Moroccan city of Al Hoceima on Thursday. Fourteen people of Sub-Saharan origin died in Thursday's accident. Seventeen survivors were found, and at least 40 passengers remain missing. The boat found Friday held 36 men and 12 women in addition to the victims. It had set off at one o'clock in the morning from the shore of Al Hoceima. A search began ten hours later when coastal authorities picked up a distress signal from the boat. The Spanish patrol boat Salvamar Hamal, based in Motril, Granada, and the Serviola 302 airplane, based in Almeria, participated in the search. A Moroccan crew rescued the immigrants from the sea.

Saturday 27 October 2012

http://www.ansamed.info/ansamed/en/news/nations/spain/2012/10/26/Immigration-2-dead-boat-adrift-Alboran-sea_7698892.html

continue reading

Mother who spent 32 years tending son's grave despite doubts it was his body is finally vindicated after DNA proves remains of John Wayne Gacy victim are NOT her boy

As Sherry Marino made her way to the cemetery on Wednesday to tend the grave marked with her son’s name, she got a call from her lawyers - the body wasn't his.

It was the news she had been waiting more than 30 years to hear. Tests had confirmed that the remains of one of John Wayne Gacy’s victims which police told her in 1980 were her missing son Michael Marino did not match her DNA.

In 1978, police identified one of the bodies found on Gacy’s property in Norwood Park Township, Illinois as her son. He was 14 when he disappeared in 1976 and investigators had used dental records to identify him in 1980.

For years Marino had fought to have the grave exhumed and now almost 36 years after her son first disappeared her long-held misgivings were proved to be well-founded.

Scientists at a North Carolina laboratory compared bone DNA of the victim to that provided by Sherry Marino and determined that they could not be related.

'We are very happy that we followed through because her suspicions were 100 percent correct,' Steven Becker, who represents Sherry Marino, told the Chicago Sun-Times.

'She hopes the information about his misidentification will bring more leads to find Michael.'

After years of tending the grave, but convinced that it wasn't Michael, Marino approached Becker and Robert Stephenson of Becker Stephenson, who agreed to work on her behalf, pro bono.

After fighting bureaucracy, they succeeded in finally having the body unearthed.

Late last year, Sherry Marino requested that the body, one of more than two dozen found in the crawlspace of Gacy's home in late 1978, be exhumed to determine if the remains buried at the cemetery were her son's.

Days later, the Cook County Sheriff's department said it had exhumed the remains of several young men believed to be, but never identified, as Gacy victims.

During last year's hearing, Sherry Marino's attorneys said she wondered why the clothes on the remains did not match the clothing she remembers seeing her son wear the day he disappeared.

Further, they said she never understood why it took more than three years to identify her son, despite the fact that she provided dental records shortly after the bodies were discovered.

Even her attorneys has acknowledged that there was strong circumstantial evidence that the remains - identified as 'body 14' - were those of Michael Marino, including that the remains were found in Gacy's crawl space next to those of Marino's friend, Kenneth Parker, who disappeared the same day.

The orthodontist who initially examined Gacy's victims remains convinced his findings are correct.

'The dental identification is just 100 percent solid, absolutely no question,' said Dr. Edward Pavlik. 'We compared 32 teeth, probably half a dozen of them had very distinct fillings and every tooth was consistent with the dental records of Michael Marino.'

The attorneys said Thursday that the lab's findings do not necessarily mean Marino was not a Gacy victim, but that it raises questions, such as whether other victims may have been misidentified.

'We don't know where Michael Marino is but what we do know is he's not buried in Queen of Heaven Cemetery under a tombstone that says "Michael Marino,"' Becker said.

Gacy, a building contractor and amateur clown, was convicted of luring 33 young men and boys to Chicago-area home and strangling them between 1972 and 1978, sentenced to death and executed in 1994.

Saturday 27 October 2012

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2223575/DNA-proves-remains-John-Wayne-Gacy-victim-Michael-Marino-NOT-his.html

continue reading

‘Disappeared’ in Kashmir

It is not surprising at all that the chief minister of Indian Kashmir, Omar Abdullah’s written statement on the disappeared persons, in the assembly on Oct 8 should have been received with complete disbelief.

He said, “Till ending July 2012, 2,305 persons have been declared missing.” FIRs were lodged only in 182 cases. In the rest of the cases, “missing reports and complaints have been lodged”.

Sana Altaf of the Srinagar daily Greater Kashmir noted “even after 23 years of armed conflict, no authentic official data exists on the number of disappeared persons in Kashmir valley while successive governments continue to come up with contradictory figures”.

According to the National Conference government headed by Farooq Abdullah the official figure of disappeared persons stood at 3,184. The then People’s Democratic Party government headed by Mufti Sayeed informed the assembly in February 2003 that 3,744 persons went missing between 2000 and 2002.

According to the Srinagar-based Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) which has rendered yeoman service all these years, at least 8,000 persons have disappeared since the militancy began in 1989. Punjab witnessed a similar pattern of abuse and cover-up during the counter-insurgency operations from 1984 to 1995.

An inquiry by the police investigation team of the Jammu and Kashmir State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) has found 2,730 bodies dumped into unmarked graves in four districts.

The Inquiry Report of Unmarked Graves in north Kashmir, submitted by the investigating police team to the SHRC on July 2, 2011, said that the unidentified bodies had been buried in 38 sites in the Baramulla, Bandipora, Handwara and Kupwara districts. At least 574 were identified as the bodies of local Kashmiris. The government had previously said that the graves held unidentified militants.

Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said: “For years, Kashmiris have been lamenting their lost loved ones, their pleas ignored or dismissed as the government and army claimed that they had gone to Pakistan to become militants. But these graves suggest the possibility of mass murder. The authorities should immediately investigate each and every death.”

The Inquiry Report recommended that the SHRC call for immediate DNA sampling and other forensic tests to try to identify the bodies by matching them with the next of kin of the people who have disappeared. Seventeen of the bodies found in the four districts have already been reburied by relatives in family graveyards. The investigation found that 18 of the graves contained more than one body. But the Kashmir government has refused to conduct DNA tests to identify the bodies.

New terms have come into vogue. The wife of a ‘disappeared’ man is called ‘half-widow’. International law, especially international humanitarian law, has begun to grapple with the problem. For long the chairperson of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances studied the record in some countries and reported to the then UN Human Rights Commission at Geneva now replaced by the Human Rights Council.

The International Convention on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances defines enforced disappearances as “the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the state or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorisation, support or acquiescence of the state, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which place such a person outside the protection of the law”.

The convention grants all persons directly harmed by an enforced disappearance, such as family members of the disappeared, a “right to know the truth regarding the circumstances of the enforced disappearance, the progress and results of the investigation and the fate of the disappeared person”. India signed the convention in 2007 but has not ratified it.

The convention prohibits states from claiming a lack of resources to justify refusing to investigate a possible enforced disappearance by placing a duty on states to guarantee those resources. ‘Security’ cannot justify refusal to release information related to enforced disappearances. No “exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for enforced disappearance”.

Mr Ravi Nair, executive director of the South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre in New Delhi, to whom this writer is much indebted for his assistance, rightly holds that the law is violated if governments impose on the families of the victims the burden to provide information before attempting to identify whether any of the bodies belong to disappeared persons.

The UN Human Rights Committee places the burden of implementing the right to the truth on the state, not the victim’s family: “In cases where allegations are corroborated by credible evidence … and where further clarification depends on information exclusively in the hands of the state party, the committee may consider … allegations substantiated in the absence of satisfactory evidence or explanations to the contrary presented by the state.”

Disappearances blight the lives of whole families. In Kashmir they spread what The Economist aptly called “a war-borne epidemic of mental illness”.

Saturday 27 October 2012

http://dawn.com/2012/10/27/disappeared-in-kashmir/

continue reading

Hurricane Sandy kills 21 in Cuba, Haiti and Jamaica

At least 21 people have been killed in the Caribbean as Hurricane Sandy pummeled the Bahamas in the Atlantic Ocean.

Now upgraded to a massive Category-2 storm, the hurricane swept over Jamaica, Cuba, the Bahamas and Haiti, damaging hundreds of homes, ruining crops and killing 11 people in eastern Cuba.

According to Cuban media reports, nine deaths occurred in Santiago de Cuba Province on Thursday while two bodies were recovered in Guantanamo state, killed by falling trees.

Cuban President Raul Castro is slated to travel to Santiago de Cuba, the country’s second largest city, on Friday to survey the damage.

On Wednesday, Sandy hammered Jamaica, where one person died, and it also unleashed its wrath on Haiti, where nine people were killed and three others were reported missing.

The Bahamas is also largely affected by the storm, with power and phone lines downed, tourists stranded and trees uprooted. Schools, government offices, airports and bridges were to be closed Thursday and Friday.

Forecasters have warned that Hurricane Sandy could combine with North American weather systems and change into a powerful hybrid that media in the United States have dubbed a “Frankenstorm.”

According to predictions of forecast models, the hurricane could collide with a seasonal “nor’easter” weather system before zeroing in on the US East Coast with potentially destructive ferocity.

“The high degree of blocking from eastern North America across the entire Atlantic Basin is expected to allow this unusual merger to take place,” said the Florida-based US National Hurricane Center (NHC).

In Florida, authorities have been already on alert for tropical storm conditions, warning residents to prepare an emergency plan and supplies.

Saturday 27 October 2012

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/10/26/268796/hurricane-sandy-kills-21-in-caribbean/

continue reading