Black boxes found from Libyan plane crash in Tunisia

Tunisian searchers have found and handed over to Tripoli the black boxes from a Libyan military plane that crashed Friday, killing 11 including a top former jihadist, the government said.

"The transport ministry announces that the two black boxes from the Libyan military aircraft that crashed yesterday in the Grombalia region have been found," a statement on Saturday said.

The ministry said in a second statement Tunisian authorities had handed over the black boxes to Tripoli to help them investigate why the military hospital plane had crashed.

The aircraft came down at about 1:30 am (0030 GMT) on Friday in a field on the edge of Nianou village, around 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the capital Tunis.

It had been transporting Meftah al-Mabrouk Issa al-Dhawadi to Tunis from a military airfield near Tripoli for medical treatment, the Libyan government said in a statement.

Sofiene Bejaoui, an air traffic control official at Tunis-Carthage airport, where the plane had been heading, said on Friday "the pilot's last message was: 'engine on fire'".

All 11 on board were killed. In addition to Dhawadi and another unidentified patient, the dead were three medics and a crew of six.

The transport ministry also said on Saturday that the bodies of those killed in the crash would be handed back to Tripoli after DNA identification was completed, set to take place on Sunday.

Dhawadi was a leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) -- a now disbanded movement with alleged links to al-Qaida which joined the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that overthrew dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

Several members of the group served in the transitional government of Abdelrahim al-Kib, which held power for a year from November 2011.

Dhawadi was undersecretary at the ministry of martyrs and missing persons.

The aircraft that crashed was a Libyan air force Russian-made Antonov-26, a twin-engine turboprob.

Sunday 23 February 2014

http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/119776-black-boxes-found-from-libyan-plane-crash-in-tunisia

The missing Israelis who never return

A retired member of the Israel Police elite anti-terror squad called the national emergency number around two years ago, to report a barefoot young man wandering around a highway. The officer was the last known person to see Shlomi Ariel alive. Ariel, 32, from the central-Israel town of Yehud, had left home early that morning in what his family described as a psychotic state. He walked a few kilometers, to a quarry near Shoham and Rosh Ha’ayin, and was never seen again.

The former officer’s report did not reach his family for 48 hours. During this time, they had mobilized a small army of people to search for him, and did everything they could – but as it turned out, they were looking in the wrong areas.

Around 500 Israeli families have similar stories. Unlike most of them, Ariel’s family had significant resources at its disposal. His sister Sima describes a wide-scale operation, made possible mainly due to connections and media support, involving people on horseback, trained dogs, jeeps and even a helicopter. They searched everywhere and checked every security camera in the area.

Unlike most of the families we interviewed, she praised the police, who went into action 48 hours after Ariel was reported missing. But even though the local police chief maintained close contact with the family and even took part in the search, experts in finding missing persons said that in addition to the delay of the police in responding to the missing-person report, the means they employed in the search were meager and unprofessional. Most of the other families can identify with that component of their ordeal.

Every year between 20 and 30 people in Israel are added to the list of people who have gone missing and have not been found. Some are young people with mental health issues, others are individuals “known to the police.” There are foreign tourists, people looking to disappear and make a new life for themselves, and some who were on their way home and never arrived. But for all of their families, their disappearance is an unsolved mystery that continues to haunt them.

A recent State Comptroller’s report and a Knesset committee debate last week revealed the extent of the phenomenon. Every year the police process around 5,000 reports on missing persons. About 99.99 percent of these cases are closed very quickly, usually when the missing person shows up at home. The rest join the list of the permanently missing.

According to last year’s State Comptroller’s report, at the time of publication there were 508 missing persons and 481 unidentified bodies. A joint project of the police and the Abu Kabir Institute of Forensic Medicine to identify the unidentified bodies and locate the missing resulted in the identification of 38 bodies between 2010 and August 2012.

At a meeting of the State Control Committee last week, chairman MK Amnon Cohen and others criticized the incomplete nature of the database of the missing persons and the unidentified bodies, which the report said often lacked DNA samples, fingerprints and photographs. While the comptroller’s report focuses mostly on the establishment of a genetic database, which was initiated three years ago by the police and Abu Kabir, and its funding, Cohen focused on the families who still hoped to find their loved ones alive. He said the police were insufficiently responsive and that the success of the search seemed to depend entirely on the good will of the local station chief.

The latter, at least, is largely true.

A senior police officer who was interviewed for this report on the condition of anonymity said he wanted to dispel the myth that the police only go into action after 24 hours have passed. Every case is examined and no one has instructions to wait 24 hours, he said. There are regulations defining cases that must be addressed immediately, including children under age 12, anyone over 70, sick or disabled people who need treatment or hospitalization, the mentally ill, members of the security forces and “any person whose life is at risk.”

In all other circumstances, the officer receiving the missing persons report must decide within 48 hours how to proceed.

A number of nonprofit organizations and private investigators have stepped in to fill the vacuum left by the police, as the families see it. Yekutiel “Mike” Ben Yaakov, a volunteer who heads a canine search unit, is one of the best known. He has plenty to say about the police’s handling of such cases and the lack of means available to police investigators. Ben Yaakov told the State Control Committee that the police respond with “extreme delay” to missing persons reports, and as a result waste valuable time. He spoke about the unprofessional use of dogs for tracking, a delay in using cellphone tracking and the ignoring of evidence such as footprints or indications from the dogs.

Last year Ben Yaakov’s team handled 20 cases, Some of the missing were found alive, others were found dead and the rest are still a mystery. In most cases the frustrated families turn to Ben Yaakov too late.

Maj. Gen. Menachem Yitzhaki, the head of the police investigations and intelligence branch, denied the accusations and told the committee of a case in which 1,000 police and volunteers searched Jerusalem’s Ramot Forest for a missing girl. There is an orderly process and it is conducted quickly, he said. He agreed the police need additional technical equipment, but said this is expensive. He noted that the police lack direct access to the army’s genetic database, adding that legislation for this was in the works.

If the person is not found or an unidentified body is not identified after five years, the case is archived. Regulations stipulate that after 50 years the file is to be removed. But no missing persons file has ever been closed in such a fashion in Israel, although the police admit that not everyone can be found, especially someone who doesn’t want to be found.

Sunday 23 February 2014

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.575812

Ghosts of Srebrenica

The call had come from the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP). We have found and identified Ekrem, one of your brothers, the caller told the Bosnian Muslim woman, before delicately explaining that unfortunately they had not been able to find the dead man's head among his remains.

Eight years earlier during the Bosnian War, Ekrem, along with another brother Mustafa, Kada's husband Sejad and her son Samir were among the 8000 men and boys rounded up and killed at Srebrenica, the worst atrocity on European soil since the Second World War.

It was in July 1995 that Serbian forces commanded by General Ratko Mladic and his paramilitary units systematically massacred the menfolk of Srebrenica. Most were killed with bullets or grenades in fields, warehouses, and football pitches. Their bodies, many dismembered and mutilated, were piled into mass graves and almost 20 years later are still being uncovered.

Last week, at the Potocari Memorial Centre that houses the huge cemetery for the victims of Srebrenica, I listened as Kada recounted horrific memories of those dark days in July 1995.

"I know that Samir, along with other boys, was tied and probably kept waiting a long time to be killed," said Kada. "It was a very hot day - so hot that some of the Serb soldiers couldn't keep up with the pace of the shooting," Kada continued, standing among the rows of white headstones four of which belong to the men of her family.

"As the boys waited to be shot one Serb woman seeing they were so thirsty stepped forward to offer them some yoghurt, but was prevented by a Serb soldier who then also pushed her into the line to be killed simply for offering a drink." Looking out over the rows of headstones, the scale of the Srebrenica massacre moves from being a cold statistic to reveal its human proportions.

As a journalist who covered the war in the former Yugoslavia, I am returning now as part of a Scottish delegation representing the UK charity initiative, Remembering Srebrenica, whose aim is to raise awareness of the massacre and learn from the genocide to help work towards a rejection of the racism, hatred and extremism that underpinned it.

Headed by Angus Robertson, the leader of the SNP's Westminster group, other delegates include the Reverend Lorna Hood, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and its head of communications, Seonag MacKinnon, Ann McKechin, MP for Glasgow North, and Sergeant David Hamilton, who, prior to his time as chairman of the Scottish Police Federation (North Area), helped drive truckloads of humanitarian supplies during the Bosnian War for the charity Edinburgh Direct Aid.

During our time in Bosnia, we were to hear from fellow Scots who have played a significant role in solving what has been described as the "world's greatest forensic puzzle" - the exhumation and identification of the remains of the tens of thousands who were victims of ethnic cleansing and genocide in the former Yugoslavia.

Like countless more relatives of the victims of Srebrenica, Kada Hotic owes an immense debt of gratitude to the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP). Along with other members of the Mothers of Srebrenica who we were to meet at Potocari Memorial Centre, Kada Hotic even went as far as to say that ICMP director general Kathryne Bomberger was worthy of nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Bomberger's husband, Adam Boys, a Scot, originally from Glasgow and now director of international programmes at ICMP, has lived in Bosnia for going on 20 years, during which time he has seen the organisation rise to become a global leader in dealing with missing persons.

"We currently operate the world's largest DNA human identification facility," says Boys, who went on to explain how ICMP employs archaeology, anthropology and pathology to identify human remains in places like Srebrenica.

Since it was established in 1996 ICMP has taken 71,195 blood samples from the families of the missing. Matching blood and bone samples has become the only accurate way to identify the thousands of Bosnian bodies recovered from mass graves. This is no easy task when one considers that at the end of the Balkan wars as many as 40,000 people were estimated to have disappeared. At Srebrenica alone 91 mass grave-sites have been uncovered while the remains of many victims are also found in "surface sites" and in caves and rivers.

Making the job of the ICMP teams even more difficult is the incredible extent to which the perpetrators of the atrocities have tried to hide the evidence of their crimes. "We uncovered the remains of one man in four different grave sites, 50 kilometres apart, and had to carry out 13 separate DNA test to identify him," recalls Boys.

Given that many of the findings by ICMP are presented as evidence in war crimes cases and trials, great emphasis by the organisation is put on how such a complex scientific process has to work alongside a rule-of-law approach.

"The families are also the victims of the crime," insists Boys. "They have to be sure that their genetic data will be protected, that it will only be used for the purpose of identification, and that it will not be shared unless they give their permission."

Dr John Clark, a forensic pathologist for 30 years formerly based at the University of Glasgow, is also one of the ICMP team and has been the chief pathologist for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on numerous occasion during its operations in Bosnia.

At the ICMP Podrinje Identification Centre in the town of Tuzla, Dr Clark lifts a few human bones from one of the tables and explains in this instance what he believes happened to the victim.

"This is a bullet hole here in the pelvis which then probably moved around, causing wider damage", he says, fitting the bones together like a macabre jigsaw puzzle.

Currently, Clark is working in the Prijedor area of Bosnia where yet more mass grave-sites have been discovered. On eight occasions he has testified at the ICTY in various war crimes trials and twice in the Bosnian State Court.

Standing alongside Clark as he spoke was ICMP's Senior Forensic Pathologist at the Podrinje Identification Centre, Dragana Vucetic. A Serb from Belgrade, she is now 34 years old and says she was too young back during the war years to remember much about it.

I ask whether being a Serb has posed any problems for her, given that Serb soldiers and paramilitaries were responsible for most of the victims whose remains she deals with. "I came here as an anthropologist, not as a Serb," she replies, adding that she was at first greatly affected by what she had to deal with, having come straight out of university.

Fascinating and remarkable as the forensic science behind ICMP's work is, its specialists never forget that, ultimately, the stories they are uncovering are about lives lost and its emotional impact on those left with the legacy of war-time atrocities. Adam Boys is the first to admit admiration for the way the Mothers of Srebrenica like Kada Hotic have stayed committed to highlighting the horrors of what went on, something that becomes apparent as I talk with Kada among the grave-stones of her male relatives at the Potocari Memorial Centre.

"When I gave birth to my son, I was the happiest woman alive and now I think of him thirsty and afraid having to wait in line that day to be killed," Kada reflects, before telling me of another atrocity she herself witnessed at Srebrenica after the women were separated from their menfolk.

"As we waited for the buses that would take us away from the men, one woman gave birth on the ground right before my eyes," she begins her story.

"The baby just born not even a name and a Serb soldier came over and crushed it under his boot ... What can I say - genocide." Having witnessed such things and herself having suffered so much loss, grief, and pain I wondered if she could ever forgive those who had done such barbaric things. "To begin with, the perpetrators have not accepted or recognised their crime," she tells me with a shrug of her shoulders.

She adds: "I am not the owner of the lives of my husband, son and brothers, I have no right to forgive for their suffering. In many ways I feel sorry for those who did this and that they became like animals."

Today, Kada, at 69, suffers from rheumatoid arthritis but this has not prevented her and the other Mothers of Srebrenica from being as determined as ever to ensure justice is done and that the world should never forget the torture, brutality and killing during those days of the massacre.

Today, Kada and the others continue to battle with the Serb authorities in their efforts to have the old battery factory and other buildings adjacent to the cemetery made into a museum to commemorate the victims and highlight the issue of genocide. It was in these buildings that Dutch UN peacekeepers tasked with safekeeping the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica were stationed. To this day many here in Bosnia and around the world still hold the Dutch troops responsible for failing to intervene and protect the innocent civilians of Srebrenica. "If our loved ones could not live here alive, they can live here dead," insists Kada.

Having rebuilt her family home in Srebrenica, Kada says she continues to live in the area because of her "bloodymindedness" and determination to keep telling the world and those that visit about the uncomfortable reality of what Srebrenica represents.

As I accompany her from the grassy area of the cemetery that day, she asks me to ensure that I walk only along the base of the graves and not across the head as this would be disrespectful.

Passing each gravestone, she gently caresses the marble tops, stopping once to hug the stone above the grave of her son, Samir, as if it were the boy himself still here and alive.

It is a touching and poignant moment that I will always remember, just as all of us in the same way should never forget the evil that gripped Srebrencia those few short years ago.

Sunday 23 February 2014

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/ghosts-of-srebrenica.23509441