'There's an overpowering smell of decomposition down there': Divers reveal 'unbreathable air' in Costa Concordia search as death toll rises to 15

Teams of naval officers, firefighters and coastguards said the air inside the ship, which capsized off an Italian island, was 'unbreathable'.
Fire chief Enio Aquilino said: 'Imagine the scene if you went on holiday and you came back to find the fridge had switched itself off. The divers are working in those conditions.’

The grim conditions inside the vessel were revealed as two more bodies were recovered from the Costa Concordia today, bringing the confirmed death toll to 15.
The two women were found in a submerged section of the ship, in the internet cafe and were located after further holes had been blown into the superstructure of the Concordia by navy divers.

Tonight it emerged that one of the bodies found was that of Italian honeymooner Maria D'Introno, 30, who was on the cruise with her new husband Vincenzo Roselli and her in-laws, who were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary.
Maria, who could not swim, was thought to have jumped in the water with Vincenzo but tonight family friend Carlo Cabrio said: 'They were holding hands when they jumped in but we now think she climbed back up the rope ladder. She was terrified of the water.'
News of the discovery was broken minutes after Franco Gabrielli, the commissioner in charge of the rescue effort focusing on the 114,000-ton super liner, said that the ship was stable and there was no danger of it slipping from the rock shelf it is balanced on.

It means the search continue alongside efforts to siphon off 500,000 gallons of fuel.
Searching has stopped several times since the disaster on 13 January after movement was detected by state of lasers pointed onto the ship from boats anchored close by.

Mr Gabrielli also added that there was no need to secure the Concordia where navy, coastguard and firefighting diving teams are searching for the bodies of at least ‘24 or 25 people’.
This appears to confirm an earlier line of inquiry that some of the missing passengers may not have been registered. Among them was a woman, thought to be Hungarian, who was found yesterday.

Until last night, there had been 19 people officially unaccounted for.
But with the two bodies discovered this morning - reducing that figure to 17 - it means as many eight victims may have been unregistered passengers.

Speaking at a press conference on the island of Giglio he said: 'Having spoken with a team of experts the search and the removal of the fuel can proceed at the same time.
‘The search will continue as long as possible and if there are bodies between the ship and the bottom of the sea these will recovered when the ship is straightened.’

Mr Gabrielli said that he had also asked Costa Cruises about the possibility of salvaging the Concordia which is lying on a rock shelf just outside the part of Giglio where it came to rest after hitting rocks ten days ago two hours after leaving port on a week long Mediterranean cruise.


Costa have not said yet what exactly will happen to the Concordia but salvage experts say the most likely outcome is that it will be cut into huge sections and taken away for scrap - that and the fuel removal operation are expected to last at least three months.
There were fears that the Concordia's double-bottom fuel tanks could rupture in case of sudden shifting, spilling 2,200 tonnes of heavy fuel into pristine sea around Giglio.
The island is part of an archipelago in some of the Mediterranean's clearest waters and a prized fishing area.

The search had been halted for several hours yesterday, after instrument readings indicated that the Concordia had shifted on its precarious perch on a seabed just outside Giglio's port.
A few yards away, the sea bottom drops off suddenly, by some 65-100 feet, and if the Concordia should abruptly roll off its ledge, rescuers could be trapped inside.

When instrument data indicated the vessel had stabilised again, rescuers returned, but explored only the above-water section and evacuation staging areas where survivors indicated that people who did not make it into lifeboats during the chaotic evacuation could have remained.
Authorities are also trying to identify five corpses which are badly decomposed after spending a long time in the water.

Mr Gabrielli said the other eight bodies: four French, an Italian, a Hungarian, a German and a Spanish national, had been identified .
The missing include French passengers, an elderly couple from Minnesota, a Peruvian crew member and an Indian crewman and an Italian father and his five-year-old daughter.
Some of their relatives toured the wreckage yesterday and also met Pierluigi Foschi chief executive of Costa Crociere, the ship's operator, who viewed the crippled cruise liner from a boat.

France's ambassador to Italy, Alain Le Roy, recounting Mr Foschi's visit, said: "He came to see the families, all families. He met the French family. He met the American family.
'I am sure he is meeting other families, mostly to express his compassion ... to say that Costa will do everything possible to find the people, to compensate families in any way.’
Passengers were dining at a gala supper when the Concordia sailed close to Giglio and struck the reef, which is indicated on maritime and even tourist maps.
The liner's Italian captain, Francesco Schettino, is under house arrest as prosecutors investigate him for suspected manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning the ship while many were still aboard.
Costa Crociere, a subsidiary of US-based Carnival Cruise Lines, has said Schettino had deviated without permission from the vessel's route in an apparent manoeuvre to sail close to the island and impress passengers.

Firefighters hang scuba gear out a chopper as they prepare to descend to the Costa Concordia
Schettino, despite audiotapes of his defying coastguard orders to scramble back aboard, has denied he abandoned ship while hundreds of passengers were desperately trying to get off the capsizing vessel.
The 52-year-old has said he co-ordinated the rescue from aboard a lifeboat and then from the shore.

He claims he sailed his ship too close to the coast because he was asked to do so by his bosses.
Francesco Schettino said the ‘sail by salute’ was ‘arranged and wanted’ by Costa Cruises chiefs for publicity reasons, according to details of his police questioning leaked to the Italian media.


By NICK PISA
Last updated at 10:04 PM on 23rd January 2012

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2090664/Costa-Concordia-death-toll-rises-15-divers-reveal-unbreathable-air-search.html#ixzz1kKHN83ti

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Costa Concordia disaster: Eight dead identified

Eight of the 12 people known to have died when the Costa Concordia cruise ship was wrecked last week have been identified, Italian officials say.

Four of the victims were French, one was Italian, one Hungarian, one Spanish and one German, they added.

Rescuers have resumed their search of parts of the ship above water, but choppy seas have prevented diving.

At least 20 people are still missing. Officials say some people may have been on board without registering.

The latest discovery was the body of a woman found on Saturday by divers on the fourth deck.

The head of the Civil Protection Agency, Franco Gabrielli, said the woman had not been identified but may be a Hungarian who was not on the embarkation list.

There could have been more "illegals" on board, he said, referring to people who had not registered to be on the ship.

There were known to be 4,200 people on the cruise ship, which struck a rock in shallow waters on 13 January off Tuscany's Giglio island.

The captain, Francesco Schettino, is being investigated for manslaughter, which he denies, and is under house arrest.

He is accused of multiple manslaughter, causing a shipwreck, and abandoning ship before all passengers were evacuated.

Prosecutors say the 57-year-old was sailing too close to Giglio on an unauthorised course in order to perform a "salute" - a greeting to islanders.

However, the Italian media have released a new recording in which Capt Schettino appears to say he will be the last to leave the ship.

Time pressures
Coastguard and navy divers resumed their search on Saturday, blasting their way into submerged areas of the vessel using explosives in an effort to find those unaccounted for.

Rescue officials said on Saturday they would not end the search until the whole ship had been examined, but it was suspended as weather conditions worsened.

On Sunday, civil protection officials said divers would not be allowed into the submerged part of the vessel until the sea was calmer. Rescuers continued their work above the water line.

Correspondents say they are under time pressure, amid fears the ship could slip off a ledge into deeper water with a risk of fuel tanks being ruptured.

One official says swift action needs to be taken to remove the fuel that is on board. An Italian naval vessel is on standby as a precaution should there be an oil leak.

22 January 2012
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16670412

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Official: possibility of unregistered passengers

GIGLIO, Italy (AP) — Unregistered passengers might have been aboard the stricken cruise liner that capsized off this Tuscan island, a top rescue official said Sunday, raising the possibility that the number of missing might be higher than the 20 previously announced.
Rescuers, meanwhile, resumed searching the above-water section of the Costa Concordia but choppy seas kept divers from exploring the submerged part, where officials have said there could be bodies.

"There could have been X persons who we don't know about who were inside, who were clandestine" passengers aboard the ship, Franco Gabrielli, the national civil protection official in charge of the rescue effort, told reporters at a briefing on the island of Giglio, where the ship, with 4,200 people aboard rammed a reef and sliced open its hull on Jan. 13 before turning over on its side.

Gabrielli said that relatives of a Hungarian woman have told Italian authorities that she had telephoned them from aboard the ship and that they haven't heard from her since the accident. He said it was possible that a woman's body pulled from the wreckage by divers on Saturday might be that of the unregistered passenger.

But the identity of that body and of three male bodies, all badly decomposed after days in the water, have yet to be established. Gabrielli said they have identified the other 12 bodies: four French, an Italian, a Hungarian, a German and a Spanish national.

Until Sunday, authorities had said that 20 people are still missing.

The search had been halted for several hours early Sunday, after instrument readings indicated that the Concordia has shifted a bit on its precarious perch on a seabed just outside Giglio's port. A few meters (yards) away, the sea bottom drops off suddenly, by some 20-30 meters (65-100 feet), and if the Concordia should abruptly roll off its ledge, rescuers could be trapped inside.

When instrument data indicated the vessel had stabilized again, rescuers went back in, but only explored the above-water section. Choppy seas kept divers from exploring the submerged part of the ship, including the restaurant and evacuation staging areas where survivors have indicated that people who did not make it into lifeboats during the chaotic evacuation could have remained.

Passengers were dining at a gala supper when the Concordia sailed close to Giglio and struck the reef, which is indicated on maritime and even tourist maps.

There are also fears that the Concordia's double-bottom fuel tanks could rupture in case of sudden shifting, spilling 2,200 metric tons (almost 500,000 million gallons) of heavy fuel into pristine sea around Giglio, which is part of a seven-island archipelago in some of the Mediterranean's most pristine waters and a prized fishing area.

But Gabrielli said pollutants found near the ship have been detergents and other substances, including chlorine, apparently from the wreck of the ship, which carried some 3,200 passengers and a crew of 1,000. Any fuel traces found were "compatible with what you find in a port," he said.

Ferries and cargo ships regularly call at Giglio's port.
Sophisticated oil-removal equipment has been standing by, waiting for the search-and-rescue operations to conclude before workers can start extracting the fuel in the tanks.
The Italian captain, Francesco Schettino, is under house arrest as prosecutors investigate him for suspected manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning the ship while many were still aboard.

Operator Costa Crociere, a subsidiary of U.S.-based Carnival Cruise Lines, has said that Capt. Schettino had deviated without permission from the vessel's route in an apparent maneuver to sail close to the island and impress passengers.
Schettino, despite audiotapes of his defying Coast Guard orders to scramble back aboard, has denied he abandoned ship while hundreds of passengers were desperately trying to get off the capsizing vessel. He has said he coordinated the rescue from aboard a lifeboat and then from the shore.

By FRANCES D'EMILIO - 22 January 2012
The Associated Press

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Traditional Physical Autopsies – Not High-Tech 'Virtopsies' – Still the Gold Standard for Determining Cause of Death, Experts Claim

ScienceDaily (Jan. 16, 2012) — TV crime shows like Bones and CSI are quick to explain each death by showing highly detailed scans and video images of victims' insides. Traditional autopsies, if shown at all, are at best in supporting roles to the high-tech equipment, and usually gloss over the sometimes physically grueling tasks of sawing through skin and bone.

But according to two autopsy and body imaging experts at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, the notion that "virtopsy" could replace traditional autopsy -- made popular by such TV dramas -- is simply not ready for scientifically vigorous prime time. The latest virtual imaging technologies -- including full-body computed tomography (CT) scans, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), ultrasound, X-ray and angiography are helpful, they say, but cannot yet replace a direct physical inspection of the body's main organs.

"The traditional autopsy, though less and less frequently performed, is still the gold standard for determining why and how people really died," says pathologist Elizabeth Burton, M.D., deputy director of the autopsy service at Johns Hopkins.

Burton and Johns Hopkins clinical fellow Mahmud Mossa-Basha, M.D., in an editorial set to appear in the Annals of Internal Medicine online Jan. 17, offer their own assessment of why the numbers of conventional autopsies have steadily declined over the past decade and why, despite this drop, the virtopsy is unlikely to properly replace it anytime soon.

Burton, who has performed well over a thousand autopsies, says current imaging technologies can help tremendously when used in combination with autopsies. "It's not a question of either traditional autopsy or virtopsy," she says, "it's a question of what methods work best in determining cause of death."
The Johns Hopkins experts base their claims on evidence, some of which will also be published in the same edition of Annals, that some common diagnoses are routinely missed when imaging results are compared to autopsy findings, and there is no proof that virtopsy is a more reliable alternative to conventional autopsy, at least, for now.

According to Burton, a visiting associate professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, hospital autopsy rates in the United States -- for patients who die of natural causes in hospitals -- whose bodies do not have to be examined by the local medical examiner or coroner -- have fallen from a high of about 50 percent in the 1960s to about 10 percent today. At The Johns Hopkins Hospital, she says, the rate remains close to a once-required standard for hospital accreditation of 25 percent, set as an appropriate goal for teaching medical residents and fellows, and auditing clinical practice.

Burton says many reasons are behind the drop in conventional autopsy rates. Medical overconfidence in diagnostic imaging results partly explains the decline, but is also to blame for the high number of diagnostic errors.
"If we chose the right test at the right time in the right people, and followed clinical guidelines to the letter, then modern diagnostic tests would produce optimal results. But we don't," says Burton.

Burton says such misinterpretations of images, lab results, and physical signs and symptoms, help explain the roughly 23 percent of new diagnoses that are detected by autopsy.
She acknowledges that it also is easier for physicians to rely on existing diagnostic techniques to determine the cause of death than to go through the often uncomfortable task of asking grieving family members for permission to perform a conventional autopsy to confirm the cause of death. Making the process more difficult is that many physicians simply don't know what steps to take, including the paperwork and approvals, to get an autopsy performed.

For many families, dissuading factors include the prospect of delaying funeral arrangements, possible disfigurement to a loved one's body as well as the stress in coping with their loss, and the cost of an autopsy, which can run upwards of $3,000, unless the hospital offers to do it at no charge for teaching or its own auditing purposes.

While diagnostic overconfidence, changing cultural norms and cost may depress autopsy rates, Burton says, overreliance on technology underscores an inherent flaw in switching to virtopsy.
In a German study that accompanies the Hopkins editorial, conventional autopsy and imaging results, as would be seen in virtopsy, were compared for accuracy in 162 people who died in hospital. Some had just virtopsy, while the others had both virtopsy and conventional autopsy. In the 47 who underwent both procedures, 102 new diagnoses were found; while in comparison, 47 new diagnoses were found among the 115 who underwent virtopsy alone. Study results also showed that virtual autopsy by CT scan failed to pick up 20.8 percent of the new diagnoses, while conventional autopsy missed only 13.4 percent.

Medical problems most commonly missed or not seen by autopsy included air pockets in collapsed lungs (which could have impeded breathing) and bone fractures, and the most common diagnoses missed by imaging were heart attack, pulmonary emboli and cancer.

Burton says the study findings are not surprising because, for example, a tumor nodule in the lung could appear on any scan or X-ray image as a small, dense, white spot or so-called coin lesion that could easily be interpreted as a fungal infection, tuberculosis-related granuloma or benign tissue mass. But until the tissue is physically examined in a lab, after biopsy or during traditional autopsy, "there's no way to know the diagnosis with 100 percent certainty."
In addition to diagnostic weaknesses, Mossa-Basha says that perhaps the biggest hurdle for proponents of the virtopsy alternative is the high cost of imaging. Modern ultrasounds and MRI scanners cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, with the most advanced CT scanners needed for the most detailed imaging priced well in excess of a million dollars. Full-body CT scans, he says, run about $1,500 each, which, when added to device purchasing and maintenance fees, make vitropsy an expensive option.

Mossa-Basha says major advances in scanning devices make some forensic aspects of autopsy easier when keeping the body closed protects physical evidence from being destroyed, such as tracking bullet trajectories in gun victims.

"Steady progress in imaging technology is refining conventional autopsy, making it better and more accurate," says Mossa-Basha, a clinical fellow in neuroradiology at Johns Hopkins. "Physicians really need to be selective and proactive -- even before a critically injured patient in hospital dies -- in deciding whether an autopsy is likely to be needed and, if so, whether to approach the family in advance. Only in this way do we ensure that we are using the latest scanning devices appropriately during autopsy and when it is most effective in producing the most accurate-as-possible death certificates."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120116200602.htm

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Health-Based Approach May Help ID Groups at Risk of Genocide

ScienceDaily (Sep. 19, 2011) — Researchers from North Carolina State University are proposing a health-based approach to identifying groups at high risk of genocide, in a first-of-its-kind attempt to target international efforts to stop these mass killings before they start.

Genocide, or the willful attempt to exterminate a specific population, is a violation of international law. In recent years, international discussion of genocide has focused in part on finding ways to identify populations at risk in order to prevent a problem before it starts.
Some risk factors have already been identified, such as severe state oppression of a group or a regional history of genocide. Now researchers are offering a new risk factor for consideration: a population's health and its track record of prenatal care.

"This is a data-driven approach that we developed by analyzing the remains of genocide victims. There can be no confusion or claims of inaccurate reporting from third parties. The bodies of the victims speak for themselves," says Dr. Ann Ross, professor of anthropology at NC State and co-author of a paper on the research and proposed risk factor. This effort marks the first time researchers have used skeletal analysis to assess the overarching health of genocide victims before their murder.

Ross and her co-author, former NC State graduate student Ashley Maxwell, began by analyzing remains of Bosnian Muslims from the Srebrenica massacre -- where 8,000 men and boys were killed in 1995. Ross is a forensic anthropologist and worked extensively in the Balkans during the late 1990s to help identify the remains of genocide victims.

The researchers found that the Srebrenica victims had an unusually high frequency of malnutrition, poor health and inadequate prenatal care. For example, the victims had a high rate of spina bifida, which is directly related to poor nutrition and prenatal care.
"These conditions are good indicators of genocide risk because they illustrate the population's marginalized status," Ross says.

The researchers also examined epidemiological data from the World Health Organization on the general health of refugees from Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Those data were consistent with the forensic assessment of the Srebrenica victims.

"This gives politicians and international bodies another tool that can be used to identify -- and protect -- populations facing genocide," Ross says. "We need to prevent these mass murders, not sit on our hands wondering when to take action."

The paper, "Epidemiology of Genocide: An Example from the Former Yugoslavia," will be published in the fall issue of Forensic Science Policy and Management.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110919101926.htm

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3 bodies exhumed in Turkey during investigation into alleged extrajudicial killings

ANKARA, Turkey - Authorities have exhumed the bodies of three Kurds as part of their investigation into alleged extrajudicial killings by Turkish security forces in the 1990s.

The bodies were found Thursday in a village in southeast Turkey.

Earlier this month, authorities made two other grim discoveries in the region: at least 15 skulls in a suspected mass grave at a military unit and former prison, and bones that appear to be those of humans buried at an operating Turkish military outpost.

The nation's government has vowed to shed light on the alleged extrajudicial killings that occurred at the height of clashes with autonomy-seeking Kurdish rebels, mostly in the southeast, in the 1990s.

Human right groups believe many of the hundreds of Kurds and leftists who disappeared in the 1990s were victims of summary executions by government forces, but there have been few prosecutions. Turkey has been excavating alleged mass graves for the past two years, though no bodies have been identified yet.

The fighting between the Kurdish rebels and the Turkish security forces has left tens of thousands of people dead since 1984.

"Extrajudicial killings, which are the shame of an era, are now being seriously investigated," Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said Thursday. "Some crimes which could not be talked about in the past are now on the way to being solved."

Turkey has conducted reforms as part of its European Union membership bid, clearing the way for families of the disappeared to pursue the cases.

Lawyer Ridvan Dalmis, who witnessed Thursday's excavation of the three bodies near the village of Yagizoymak, said the remains allegedly are those of civilians who were killed by security forces in June 1993 and hastily buried by Kurdish villagers before they were forced to evacuate the area.

"They were buried with their clothes and there were clear signs of bullet holes on their bones," Dalmis said in a telephone interview on Friday. "Their families identified them from their clothing, but still DNA tests will be conducted."

Authorities, meanwhile, were preparing to expand an excavation in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir after unearthing at least 15 skulls and human bones over the past 10 days at the site of a former prison and military unit, said Emin Aktar, head of the Bar Association in Diyarbakir.

The bones were found by workers restoring the prison, said Aktar. The prison, notorious for alleged torture, was closed down in 2009.

"At least 27 families have petitioned authorities, saying they might be the remains of their missing loved ones," Aktar said by telephone on Friday. "We don't know yet whether they were buried in the 1990s or earlier."

Earlier this week, authorities discovered some buried bones near a helicopter landing zone of a military outpost close to the village of Gorumlu near the Iraqi border, but it was not clear if they were human bones, said Nusirevan Elci, head of the Bar Association in the town of Sirnak.

"The excavation in Gorumlu was launched following confessions of a soldier who served there in 1993," Elci said Friday. "The soldier said that he had a guilty conscience for 19 years."

Article by: SELCAN HACAOGLU , Associated Press Updated: January 20, 2012

http://www.startribune.com/world/137754038.html

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Turkey exhumes bodies of three Kurds for probe

ANKARA: Authorities have exhumed the bodies of three Kurds as part of their investigation into alleged extrajudicial killings by Turkish security forces in the 1990s. The bodies were found on Thursday in a village in southeast Turkey.

Earlier this month, authorities made two other grim discoveries in the region: at least 15 skulls in a suspected mass grave at a former prison and Turkish military unit, and bones that appear to be those of humans buried at an operating Turkish military outpost.

The nation’s government has vowed to shed light on the alleged extrajudicial killings that occurred at the height of clashes with autonomy-seeking Kurdish rebels, mostly in the southeast, in the 1990s.

Human right groups believe many of the hundreds of Kurds and leftists who disappeared in the 1990s were victims of summary executions by government forces, but there have been few prosecutions. Turkey has been excavating alleged mass graves for the past two years, though no bodies have been identified yet.

The fighting between the Kurdish rebels and the Turkish security forces has left tens of thousands of people dead since 1984.

“Extrajudicial killings, which are the shame of an era, are now being seriously investigated,” Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said on Thursday. “Some crimes which could not be talked about in the past are now on the way to be enlightened.”

Lawyer Ridvan Dalmis, who witnessed Thursday’s excavation of the three bodies near the village of Yagizoymak, said the remains allegedly are those of civilians who were killed by security forces in June 1993 and hastily buried by Kurdish villagers before they were forced to evacuate the area.

“They were buried with their clothes and there were clear signs of bullet holes on their bones,” Dalmis said in a telephone interview on Friday. “Their families identified them from their clothing, but still DNA tests will be conducted.”

Authorities, meanwhile, were preparing to expand an excavation in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir after unearthing at least 15 skulls and human bones over the past 10 days at the site of a former prison and military unit, said Emin Aktar, head of the Bar Association in Diyarbakir.

Associated Press - January 21, 2012

http://gulftoday.ae/portal/8c3cd9b4-31cc-409d-b7b8-271e39533d98.aspx

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Mangalore Air India Express crash victims bodies were misidentified - 8/8/2010

Thiruvananthapuram: The bodies of several of those who died when the Air India Express flight from Dubai crashed at the Mangalore airport on May 22 may have been misidentified by relatives, according to a paper published in the journal Current Science.

The finding by scientists at the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics in Hyderabad substantiate reports that have appeared in the media about such misidentification.

The air disaster had claimed 158 lives, including the passengers and crew. The remains of 136 persons were handed over after close relatives identified them. But the remaining 22 victims could either not be identified or had rival claimants.

The Centre, which had rushed two experts down to Mangalore on its own initiative and who used technique of genetic analysis to quickly put names to these as yet unidentified individuals.

There was considerable pressure on us to deliver results because everybody was waiting, said J. Gowrishankar, the Centre's director. There were grieving relatives who wanted the identification process over and done with. The district administration was concerned because there were no proper facilities in Mangalore to store bodies, which had begun to decompose. There was pressure from Air India too three of whose flight crew were among those unidentified.

DNA profiling involves picking up telltale genetic signatures carried in human chromosomes. Identifying a person is based on similarities in their genetic signature with those of a close blood relative, typically a parent, child or sibling.

The Hyderabad laboratory needed to produce DNA profiles from the body samples of 22 victims and match them with those from the blood samples of 32 relatives.

Identities of 10 persons could be established within three days of the samples reaching Hyderabad, say the Centre's scientists in their Current Science paper.

Further genetic testing, which took more time, conclusively showed that the remaining 12 bodies were not related to any of the claimants. That came as a surprise, since all those on the ill-fated aircraft were listed in the flight manifest.

It indicated that several bodies had been mistakenly identified by relatives, who needed to rely on a persons features and personal effects to do so, observed the scientists.

They suggested that when handling similar events in the future, the mortal remains of victims be released to families only after suitable and authentic identification was completed. If that was not practical, tissue samples must be taken at the time of autopsy for retrospective DNA analysis. Arrangements should be made, such as by using portable refrigerated caskets, to preserve human remains till the identification process ended.

Procedures for DNA-based victim identification should be incorporated as standard operating protocol in all disaster management plans.

They went on to point out that this would also require substantial expansion of the volume of routine DNA profiling activities being done in the country at present, so that adequate resources and personnel could be requisitioned in an emergency.

There are not enough trained DNA examiners in the country currently, explained Dr. Gowrishankar, one of the authors of the paper. It would be possible to expand their numbers substantially only if the State police forces across the country began using such genetic techniques far more extensively for various criminal investigations. The police, in turn, faced financial constraints as well as the lack of sufficient numbers of trained scientific personnel. Ways must be found to address both problems.

The full paper can be found on the Current Science website http://www.ias.ac.in/ currsci/

http://www.sfxkutam.com/news_index_arch3.asp?offset=860

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Canadian hair database will help forensic investigators identify bodies

University of Ottawa researchers Gilles St-Jean and Michelle Chartrand have spent years collecting and analyzing hair from across the country to build a database that will help forensic investigators identify unidentified remains. They hope to have the database up and running by the end of 2012.

On television crime shows, there is already a database for everything, Chartrand says. “In reality, those databases don’t exist. That’s what we’re trying to build here.”

And the clues to building this database are in the water.

When water is consumed, it leaves a chemical fingerprint in hair. And because people tend to drink and cook with their local water, which can vary by region, the signature left on the hair will be geographically unique.

“This is a new tool to help investigators who’ve hit a wall. Sometimes they have no idea where to look,” says St-Jean. “You can get DNA from a body that you’ve found, but if that person never wound up in a DNA database, it’s a useless piece of information.”

Researchers can tell where a person has been by studying the hydrogen and oxygen in the hair. Specifically, they analyze stable isotopes — different forms of the same chemical element — in the hair.

Because hair retains isotopic information, and grows about one centimetre each month, it can provide a personal chronology of where a person has been. If a person moves across the country over the course of a year, that movement will be reflected in the last 12cms of hair growth.

The longer the hair, the longer the trail of footsteps. It’s like having a passport that’s been stamped along the way.

So if an unidentified body is found in downtown Toronto, the person’s hair may indicate they’re not from the city, but a resident of a remote community in northern Ontario — a detail that could prove useful to investigators.

“What stable isotope analysis can do is help us focus our investigation,” says Superintendent John House of the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary. “With a lot of these cases, we have no idea who they are. We don’t know if they’re transients who’ve come in or even if they’re foreigners.”

As of Dec. 1, 2011, there were 205 unsolved unidentified bodies in the OPP database and about 600 unidentified bodies in Canada.

A national database, “would be a very important tool for police,” says House.

The science behind St-Jean and Chartrand’s research has already been applied in Canadian cases. Back in 2006, House suggested stable isotope analysis be used for the first time in a Newfoundland cold case: the Minerals Road skull.

In 2001, hikers trekking through the woods of Conception Bay South, NL, stumbled upon a human skull, wrapped in a plastic bag. Investigators were stumped, despite exhausting many investigative procedures.

After learning about researchers in Europe doing stable isotopic analysis, House sent them samples of the skull and hair, which was 17cms long.

Scientists determined the male victim had lived for extended periods in southern Ontario or southern Quebec, and/or Atlantic Canada. Or, the north-eastern United States. They also noted a blip in the isotopic signature, suggesting he had visited Newfoundland for a brief period about 13 months prior to his death.

Other testing helped estimate the man’s age — he had been born between 1955 and 1961 — and decapitated between 1995 and 1997.

The tests generated new leads, but not enough to crack the case. The Minerals Road skull remains unidentified.

Although the Ottawa scientists are still finalizing their research, they’ve already worked a handful of cold cases with the RCMP and provincial police forces in Ontario and Quebec.

Among the cases is that of so-called Madame Victoria.

In 2001, a badly-decomposed body of a woman in her 50s was found in a wooded area near Montreal’s Royal Victoria Hospital. It’s believed her remains were there for two years.

In January 2010, the coroner’s office sent Chartrand samples of the woman’s hair — It was 43 cms-long, providing 43 months of information. With the hair, Chartrand discovered the woman had moved to seven different locations in the last 43 months of her life, travelling from northern Ontario or Quebec and moving south to Montreal. The longest time she had spent in one place was seven months.

The hair also revealed that in the last five months of her life, she may have been extremely ill, and had likely lost a great deal of weight — a telling detail that helped the facial reconstruction artist.

While the hair analysis didn’t crack the case, Chartrand provided investigators with some insight into Madame Victoria’s movements, diet and health.

To build a database, showing the isotopic components in hair found from coast to coast, Chartrand spent four years travelling across Canada. She collected about 600 different locks of hair, along with samples of the local tap water. In order to obtain a stable signal specific to the region, she sought participants who rarely, if ever, travelled.

This way, when an unidentified body is found the individual’s hair can be compared against the database to try and determine where he or she may have come from.

“We’re always interested in anything that can provide additional information to help investigators,” says RCMP forensic scientist Ron Fourney, who says that even though isotopic hair analysis is still in the early stages of research, “It’s very exciting.”

“It’s another tool in the forensic tool box, a very important one and one that we haven’t seen before,” says Fourney, director of National Services and Research, which falls under the Forensic Science and Identification Services of the RCMP. The agency is working with the scientists to build the database, a project that is being funded by the government agency Centre for Security Science.

In Canada, the hydrogen isotope signals in water vary according to latitude and altitude. As you move north, they tend to become less heavy — a signal that will be reflected in the hair of those who live there.

While this method of hair analysis is gaining popularity in forensic science cases where DNA testing and other traditional means of investigation have shed little light, it does have its own geographical limits.

Scientists can identify regions, but not cities. For instance, they can tell whether someone came from southern or northern Ontario, but can’t pinpoint Kitchener or Kapuskasing.

Also, areas in a region that get drinking water from the same source are lumped together. For instance, the hydrogen isotope signals in hair of people living in Hamilton, Toronto and Kingston will be similar because those cities all rely on Lake Ontario for water.

“When I moved from Toronto to Ottawa and started drinking the local water, my signal started to change immediately,” says Chartrand, explaining that Ottawa gets its drinking water from the Ottawa River, the source of which comes from the north.

Chartrand and St-Jean are still determining the impact hair dye has on isotope values. But, so far, research indicates there’s no change for hair that has been bleached or dyed blond. They’ll also need to analyze, what difference, if any, is there if someone drinks bottled water, or has a daily glass of say Australian wine.

Isotopic signals from other chemicals — carbon and nitrogen — reveal information about a person’s diet and health.

“Everything we consume goes into making our body tissue, including our hair,” says Chartrand. “It is very true that you are what you eat.”

Saturday, January 21, 2012

http://www.thestar.com/living/article/1118732--hair-database-will-help-forensic-investigators-identify-bodies

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No coherent mechanism used to identify crash victims bodies - 6/7/2010

MANGALORE: Twelve of the 158 passengers of the Air India Express flight killed in the May 22 crash here had to be buried in unmarked graves.

According to the district administration, the 12 bodies could not be identified because of a mix-up. Some families took away the bodies that did not belong to them in the confusion that prevailed after the crash. The body of Mohammed Zubair Ziad (4) was taken away by a family that believed that it was the body of an adult.

Tales of woe

Narrating a similar incident, Vidya Dinker, an activist who was involved in the relief operations, said: One family had identified their kin and filled the claims form at the Wenlock Hospital. They then moved to another hospital to look for other relatives. By the time they came back, somebody else had taken the body. There was no coherent mechanism to identify the bodies, and some junior policemen were handling the process. Whereas, a senior police officer was managing traffic, she claimed.

Disaster Victim Identification guidelines issued by the Interpol were not adhered to immediately. Guidelines

Despite the Interpol's warning that visual identification is notoriously unreliable and should be avoided at all costs, 136 of the 158 bodies were handed over on this basis alone.

The Interpol, instead, recommends the use of medical and forensic tests.

According to a senior district official, the Interpol's guidelines were referred to 10 days after the crash.

No alternative

Inspector-General of Police Gopal B. Hosur said that there was no other alternative. All the bodies could not have been identified by DNA tests. There was no way we could have waited for the DNA tests. Keeping so many bodies in our possession for so long could have created a law and order nightmare, he said.

District Health Officer H. Jagannath said as the district’s storage facilities were woefully inadequate, the bodies would have started decomposing.

Better management

Chief Fire Officer H.S. Varadarajan said that some of the bodies could not be identified because they were robbed of jewellery by some of those who posed as rescue workers at the crash site. The police should have cordoned off the area and allowed only fire tenders to do their job, he said.

Deputy Superintendent of Police S. Girish, who was in-charge of the crash site, said: There were only around 10 firemen and public support was necessary.

Several places

Dr. Jagannath said that a major reason for the mix-up was that all the bodies were not taken to one place for identification. Several bodies were taken to private medical colleges.

According to Mr. Varadarajan, there was nobody at the crash site to direct the ambulances carrying the bodies to the right place.

Mistake

By the time the district administration realised its mistake and ordered that all the bodies should be shifted to the Wenlock Hospital, 28 bodies had been taken away, District Medical Officer B. Saroja said.

http://www.sfxkutam.com/news_index_arch1.asp?offset=1120

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Woman's body found on cruise ship

Divers have found a woman's body in a submerged section of the grounded Costa Concordia, raising the death toll in the cruise liner tragedy to at least 12.

Italian Coast Guard Commander Cosimo Nicastro told The Associated Press that the body, wearing a life jacket, was found in a narrow corridor near an evacuation staging point at the rear of the ship.

The body was taken to Giglio, the Tuscan island where the vessel hit a reef and ran aground on January 14.

Twenty people are still missing.

Cmdr Nicastro said the woman's body was found during a particularly risky search.

"The corridor was very narrow, and the divers' lines risked snagging" on objects in the passageway, he said.

To help the coast guard divers get into the area, Italian navy divers had preceded them, setting off charges to blast holes for easier entrance and exit, he added.

The woman's nationality and identity were not immediately known.

Before the body was found, 21 people were listed as missing, one of them a Peruvian woman crew member, the others passengers.

Three bodies were found in the water near the ship in the first hours after the accident. Since then the other victims have all been found inside the Concordia, apparently unable to get off the ship during a chaotic evacuation via lifeboats and later by helicopters. Some survivors jumped off and swam to safety.

The Concordia hit a reef and ran aground a week ago, while passengers dined, about two hours after the ship had set sail from the port of Civitavecchia on the Tyrrhenian Sea.

Cruise company Costa Crociere has said the captain had deviated without permission from the vessel's course in an apparent manoeuvre to sail close to Giglio to impress passengers.

Search and rescue efforts for survivors and bodies have meant that an operation to remove heavy fuel from the Concordia's tanks has not yet begun, although specialised equipment has been standing by for days.

Today, light fuel, apparently from machinery on board the capsized Costa Concordia, was detected near the ship.

But Cmdr Nicastro said there was no indication that any of the nearly 500,000 gallons (2,200 metric tons) of heavy fuel oil has leaked from the ship's double-bottomed tanks.

He said the leaked substance appears to be diesel, which is used to fuel rescue boats and dinghies and as a lubricant for ship machinery.

There are 185 tons of diesel and lubricants on board the crippled vessel, which is lying on its side just outside Giglio's port.

Cmdr Nicastro described the light fuel's presence in the sea as "very light, very superficial" and appearing to be under control.

Although attention has been concentrated on the heavy fuel oil in the tanks, "we must not forget that on that ship there are oils, solvents, detergents, everything that a city of 4,000 people needs", Franco Gabrielli, the head of Italy's civil protection agency, told reporters in Giglio.

Mr Gabrielli, who is leading rescue, search and anti-pollution efforts for the Concordia, was referring to the roughly 3,200 passengers and 1,000 crew who were on board the cruise liner when it ran into the reef, and then, with sea water rushing into a 230ft (70m) gash in its hull, listed and finally fell on to its side.

Considering all the substances on board the Concordia, "contamination of the environment... already occurred" when the ship capsized, Mr Gabrielli told a news conference.

Vessels equipped with machinery to suck out the light fuel oil were in the area, officials told Italian TV.

Earlier today, crews removed oil-absorbing booms used to prevent environmental damage in case of a leak. Originally white, the booms were greyish.

Divers resumed their search of the wreckage today after data indicated that the ship had stabilised in the sea.

Italian news reports said divers were also trying to locate the captain's safe, in case it might contain documentation useful to the criminal probe.

The Italian captain of Concordia, Francesco Schettino, is under house arrest for investigation of alleged manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning the ship before all were evacuated.

He insists he helped co-ordinate the evacuation from Giglio's docks after leaving the ship when the Concordia lurched to one side.

The search was suspended yesterday after the Concordia shifted, prompting fears that it could roll off a rocky ledge and plunge deeper into the sea.

An abrupt shift could also cause a leak in the Concordia's fuel tanks, polluting the pristine waters around Giglio, part of a seven-island Tuscan archipelago.

AP - SATURDAY 21 JANUARY 2012

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/womans-body-found-on-cruise-ship-6292724.html
AP - SATURDAY 21 JANUARY 2012

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One day Nigeria Police will halt mass burial of disaster victims

Biometrics is essentially the best forensic method used by the police and disaster management agencies to identify people or victims of disaster. They are uniquely based upon one or more intrinsic physical or behavioural traits. In Nigeria, disaster victim identification based on biometrics is not applied by the police detectives and failure to know the exact identity of victims has led to mass burials in so many instances.

Inspector General of Police Ogbonna Onovo said during disaster victim identification training organised for the police by Germany in Abuja, that so many victims of disasters have been given mass burials as a result of lack of a method to trace their identities. “It is expected that after the training, there will not be any excuse for mass burial,” he said.

In 2002, 56 unidentified victims of a plane crash in Kano were given a mass burial. Red Cross officials had stated that death toll had hit 148. The 56 victims, comprising about 14 men and 42 women, were interred in Kano. Also, victims of the motor accident that claimed not less than 70 lives at Uromi Junction along the Benin-Asaba Expressway, Agbor, in Ika South Local government Area of Delta State recently were given a mass burial. Nevertheless, 380 victims of the sectarian violence in three communities in Shen village of Jos South Local Government Area were given a mass burial in Dogon Na Hauwa.

The Germans trained the police based on request made by Onovo when German diplomats visited him in Abuja. The diplomats had asked the police to identify areas which they required training.

The German Police Liaison Officer for West Africa, Dominic Muller, said police must be able to identify victims of disasters no matter how bad the bodies. He said police detectives should apply biometrics in post-mortem examinations to find the exact identity of people and avoid mass burials. The physical characteristics which could be relied upon include finger print, dental records, face recognition, DNA as well as hand and palm geometry. Ante mortem records such as x-rays and photographs could be compared to post mortem records to get an exact identity. “Where the body becomes difficult to recognise such as in inferno, plane crash or has decomposed, dental records could be used to give appropriate facts,” Muller said.

But in Nigeria, very few people keep their dental records, if any, as such police will have a problem finding exact facts. Muller said in other European countries including Germany people consult dentists often due to the nature of their diets and it is easier to get their dental records. Identification rates are highest among people from nations where dental and healthcare systems are of high quality.

He said it is important to trace identity so as to allay suspicion by family members and enable relatives claim insurance benefits. It is only when the real identity of the victims of disaster such as in plane crash is established that insurance monies will be given to families.

Muller said it is sad that in Nigeria disaster victims are given mass burials because of inability or failure of police and disaster management agencies to identify victims. “Ideally, it is the police who are to coordinate other agencies in disaster management and police detectives posted to such scenes must have the knowledge of disaster victim identification,” he said.

A senior police officer in Abuja said very few policemen have requisite knowledge to identify disfigured human bodies which was the reason for mass burial of victims.

But Muller said he and his German counterparts have taught a select group of policemen some disaster victims identification strategies among which dental records are more reliable. DNA test is also reliable but it takes time before the result is known which necessitates keeping the body in a temperature-controlled morgue to slow down decomposition. It is a sensitive technique with contamination problems.

Fingerprints information is also important but will have to be sent to experts who will input the information into automated Fingerprint Identification System which is rare in Nigeria. Fingerprints are unique but less obtainable from victims due to the fast decomposition.

Muller said there is no basis to give victims of disasters or accidents mass burial when physical pictures of victims can be used in identification. Photos can be taken of the victim, focusing on items like medical operations, jewellery, tattooing, scars, piercing, or eye and hair colour.

These distinguishing characteristics are not considered universal because they may not be present in every corpse. These features may also be disfigured for various reasons but even then, they have helped detectives in identification.

Written by Misbahu Bashir Sunday, 18 July 2010 05:36

http://sundaytrust.com.ng/?option=com_content&view=article&id=4242:one-day-nigeria-police-will-halt-mass-burial-of-disaster-victims&catid=41:latest-news&Itemid=26

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Kibwetere’s mass grave site becomes guest house

The house in which more than 150 bodies were discovered buried in a mass grave by followers of the self-styled cult leader, Joseph Kibwetere, 11 years ago, is under renovation to be turned into a commercial guest house.

Residents of Rubirizi town council, Rubirizi district, where the house is located, have shunned it for all these years, fearing that ghosts would haunt them if they occupied it. Kakuru Byamugisha, the area Local Council II chairperson, told The Observer that no one has occupied the house since the police retrieved the decomposing bodies from it.

Kibwetere, who was the leader of the shadowy ‘Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments’, duped hundreds of Ugandans into surrendering their possessions to his cult, and entering into a makeshift church in Kanungu in western Uganda, before they were locked inside and the church set ablaze. More than 500 cult members, including children, perished.

In the days that followed, police and local authorities exhumed hundreds of bodies of people that had been murdered by the cult and buried in different places.
According to pathologists who examined their remains, some had been poisoned, others strangled. Many had stab wounds and/or fractured skulls. The bodies were mostly buried in mass graves under the houses where they were discovered, the majority in present-day Rubirizi district.

Residents who talked to The Observer expressed fear that renovation of the house, in which many of their murdered relatives were found buried, could affect them psychologically.

Rosemary Kirabo, a resident of Rugazi town council who lost four relatives, says the government should have demolished the building.
“Government should have come in and demolished this house because whenever we look at it, it brings fresh sad memories of our people, she said.

Sunday, 06 November 2011 22:55
Written by Wilson Asiimwe

http://webmail.observer.ug/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=15790:kibweteres-mass-grave-site-becomes-guest-house&catid=34:news&Itemid=59

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Grave concerns over security laws in Kashmir

Two days into 2012, a student was killed and two more were injured in a village in North Kashmir when the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) guarding a hydroelectric plant opened fire on protesters, shattering a tenuous peace. In the recent past, (and most noticeably in 2010), students who have come out on to the streets chanting pro-freedom slogans – as part of a struggle for self determination whose roots go back further than Indian independence – have been fired upon and killed. This time, the protesters were merely demanding more electricity on an icy winter day during an acute power shortage. Chief Minister Omar Abdullah was quick to declare that the CISF did not come under the ambit of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) – an extraordinary and draconian piece of security legislation – and sought to raise the pitch for partial revocation of the law.

AFSPA was enacted in 1990, ostensibly to fight the insurgency and armed militancy that surfaced in the state of Jammu and Kashmir and in some parts of northeast India. Although the government admits that militancy has significantly reduced in Kashmir, the law has not been revoked. In October last year Abdullah began issuing statements to the effect that AFSPA must be partially revoked.
Trampling human rights

Activists say there are two disturbing aspects of the law that can grossly trample upon fundamental human rights. One is the de jure abrogation of constitutional guarantees – such as the right to life – because of the extraordinary and unbridled powers it bestows on security troops to arrest, detain, destroy property and even kill on the basis of ‘reasonable suspicion’.

The other is the shield of immunity whereby it is not possible to prosecute armed forces, even for the most heinous crimes, without the sanction of the Central Defence Ministry and the Home Ministry. The state of Jammu and Kashmir and the Indian government claim there are provisions within the law for punitive action. In practice, impunity is deeply rooted.

Under the guise of defending the nation’s sovereignty at any cost, the police and armed forces have perpetrated huge crimes

Khurram Parvez, a rights activist working with Jammu Kashmir Civil Society (JKCS), says that the complete lack of culpability has been so pervasive that it has permeated down even to the police, who do not come under AFSPA. He says that under the guise of defending the nation’s sovereignty at any cost, the police and armed forces have perpetrated huge crimes such as custodial killings, mass rapes and enforced disappearances. ‘But who in the past 22 years has been punished, even when indicted?’ he asks.
Kashmir Global under a CC Licence
Which way now for Kashmir? Kashmir Global under a CC Licence

On the contrary, he charges, the state’s policy of handing out incentives in the form of payments for encounter killings has exacerbated the scale of rights violations. A recent example is the Macchil case, when three youths from poor families were recruited by an army unit to work as high-altitude porters. They were cold-bloodedly killed on 30 April 2010 after being falsely labelled as militants. A member of the state’s human rights commission charged the offending army personnel of murdering them to gain ‘undue promotions, awards and rewards’.

Parvez says any talk of revocation of the law from parts of Kashmir is meaningless if the political will to end this culture of immunity is lacking. ‘The crux of the issue is not whether such security laws are good or bad, but that they have engendered complete lawlessness. Armed personnel have violated every standard operating procedure, even within this draconian law. For example, any person who has been picked up for interrogation must be presented before the magistrate within a day or two. This is never done. That is why you have at least 8,000 cases of enforced disappearances, a figure that has been arrived at by Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP),’ he adds.

The state has long denied these figures. It maintains that the missing youths crossed the border to Pakistan to train as militants. The state has also declared that many of the anonymous and unidentified graves that lie scattered all over Kashmir contain bodies of militants, mainly foreign fighters from Pakistan or Afghanistan who had infiltrated the state.
Cover up exposed

Significantly, in September 2011 this cover up was blown away. What had been an open secret well documented by rights groups was eventually acknowledged by the state’s human rights commission (SHRC). A team comprising 11 members and led by senior police officer Bashir Itoo admitted, to the state’s acute discomfiture, that graves in North Kashmir contained the remains of locals. There was every possibility they contained bodies of those who had suffered ‘enforced disappearances’.

The state team began in 2008 its investigation of anonymous graves in 38 sites in North Kashmir. Their report states that out of 2,730 unidentified bodies that were buried, 574 were later identified as locals. The report also notes that some of the bodies, besides bearing bullet injuries, were also defaced. At least 20 were charred and five comprised only of skulls. At least 18 graves contained more than one unidentified body.

A local Kashmiri daily recently reported that one of the mass graves in Bimiyar, Baramulla district, contained the bullet-riddled body of a six-month-old infant. Atta Mohammed Wali Khan, a local gravedigger who testified before the state’s inquiry team, confirms burying the baby. All the bodies had been brought in by the police.

It is not possible to prosecute armed forces, even for the most heinous crimes, without the sanction of the Central Defence Ministry and the Home Ministry

It is the norm for security troops to hand over to the police for burial the bodies of those killed in encounters with militants, or civilians caught in crossfire. It is mandatory for the police, in turn, to maintain proper identification profiles, taking photos of those killed and placing them in the public domain. Suspicious deaths, such as those with slit throats, strangulation marks or signs of visible torture, must be investigated. But, as the state report indicates, none of this had been adhered to.

Itoo, who led the investigations despite the challenges of ‘insufficient logistical support’, confirms that the local police did not keep any such identification profiles, and in ‘some cases police claims were falsified’.

Demands have now grown for the investigation into anonymous graves to be extended to the whole of Kashmir. There is scarcely a district that does not contain such graves. Many of them spring up in open spaces adjoining police stations or security forces’ camps. Human rights groups such as the JKCS and the state human rights commission have sought accountability by demanding that all the graves be examined and a comprehensive DNA data base established for crosschecking with DNA samples of the next of kin of people who have disappeared.
What reconciliation?

At least 14,123 families have agreed to such DNA testing in a bid to bring about closure and end the agonizing search for loved ones. ‘But how serious [about it] is the state?’ wonders Parvez. The APDP has expressed concern that although three months have passed since the SHRC’s findings and recommendations, the government has done nothing. The Chief Minister’s only response has been to call for a truth and reconciliation committee.

‘There is no talk about finding the perpetrators of the crimes: the army, paramilitary troops, officers and civil administrators who aided and abetted them. There is no talk of trying them and giving them appropriate, even exemplary punishment’

This leads Kashmiri writer, researcher and legal activist Arif Ayaz Parray to declare that what the state is doing in a ‘legalistic’ sense is replacing ‘justice’ with ‘acknowledgment’. He explains: ‘There is no talk about finding the perpetrators of the crimes: the army, paramilitary troops, officers and civil administrators who aided and abetted them. There is no talk of trying them and giving them appropriate, even exemplary punishment, not only for “disappearing” people, killing them in fake gun battles and dumping them in mass graves, but also for failing to maintain DNA profiles and pictures of those killed and sharing the records with the administration of Jammu and Kashmir, New Delhi and Islamabad.

‘The state is absolving itself by pleading the impossibility of such justice – conveniently choosing to gloss over the fact that it is the state itself which has made it impossible in the first place, as a matter of policy – and therefore offering “reconciliation” in its place. What reconciliation?’

He likens this latest example of acknowledgment to a case of ‘double disappearance’. ‘Figuratively, the state took children from their mothers’ laps, killed them and buried them anonymously, creating a void which has hardened over many years. Now it wants to return the skeletons back to the mothers’ laps, force the void shut and claim that restorative justice has been delivered.’

Freny Manecksha is a freelance journalist.

Published on January 16, 2012

http://www.newint.org/features/web-exclusive/2012/01/16/security-laws-inquiry-kashmir/

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Forgotten: The stolen people of the Sinai

Thousands of poor migrants from across Africa are being kidnapped by Bedouin gangs. Refugees from sub-Saharan Africa are being kidnapped, tortured and ransomed for thousands of dollars in the Egyptian Sinai in what human rights activists say is the world's forgotten hostage crisis. Over the past year, thousands of desperate migrants from Eritrea, Sudan and Ethiopia have been kidnapped by Bedouin tribesmen who are taking advantage of continuing instability in Egypt to ramp up their lucrative trade.

Click Here to view 'Refugees on the move' graphic

Migrants have reported being rounded up by gang members and held in specially constructed jails where they are frequently tortured until relatives in Europe or Africa come up with thousands of dollars.

Testimony compiled by human rights groups reveals that torture with electric cables and molten plastic is routinely used against victims as they make desperate calls home to plead for cash. Many kidnap victims claim to have been raped by their abductors, and there are reports that captives who have been unable to raise funds have had organs removed for sale on the black market.

Critics have accused the international community of standing idle in the midst of a kidnapping scandal that has drawn little attention compared with Somali piracy, whose victims are often white employees of multinational corporations rather than poor Africans.

Father Mussie Zerai, an Eritrean priest based in Rome, receives regular calls to his Vatican office from the families of kidnapped migrants as they try to liaise with loved ones or kidnappers. "There are no real efforts being made to save these people," he told The Independent. "The inertia of the [international community] is a godsend for criminals who get rich. The millionaire business around this trafficking is forcing hundreds of families into debt for amounts that they will pay for decades, in order to save the lives of their son, daughter or husband. Many sell everything, or end up in the hands of usurers".

Most of the sub-Saharan migrants making their way to the Sinai desert are from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan – three impoverished African nations which have a history of persecuting political opponents and ethnic minorities. Most of those fleeing are hoping to reach Europe, where there are already sizeable populations from their countries.

Before the turmoil created by the Arab Spring, many migrants trekked through the Sahara to reach Libya, Algeria and Morocco in the hopes of finding work or catching a boat across the Mediterranean. Most now have no choice but to enter Europe via the Sinai and Israel, forcing them into the hands of Bedouin tribesmen who have long engaged in smuggling arms, drugs and people after years of chronic under-investment and prejudice from central government in Cairo.

Dr Khataza Ghondwe, an expert on sub-Saharan Africa working for the non-governmental organisation Christian Solidarity Worldwide, says the plight of kidnapped refugees has been ignored for too long. "The Sinai has been a pretty lawless place for years and [ousted President Hosni] Mubarak made no effort to halt the abuse of refugees by tribes there," she said. "But since the revolution things have got even worse. Their plight has slipped off the radar entirely."

She thinks people within Eritrea, and not just the Bedouin, could be benefiting from the smuggling routes. "I was in Kenya earlier last year speaking to an Eritrean man," she said. "As we were talking, he got a call from his brother who was being held in the Sinai and asked for him to send money as soon as possible. The bank details he gave were for a branch in Asmara [the capital of Eritrea], not Egypt."

According to a recent Israeli government report, an estimated 11,763 people were smuggled into Israel through the Egyptian border in 2010. Last week, the Knesset passed new legislation making it easier for the authorities to speed up deportations, leading to an outcry from human rights groups.

Doctors working for Physicians for Human Rights Israel, a charity which examines migrants on arrival, conducted interviews with 800 refugees, with 78 per cent reporting that they had been kidnapped, tortured or held for ransom at some point during their journey through the Sinai. A separate survey by the Hotline for Migrant Workers, based in Tel Aviv, found that 50 per cent of migrants had reported being raped in the Sinai, including many men.

Egypt's ability to police the Sinai has been historically hindered by its 1979 peace treaty with Israel, which limits the number of troops Cairo is allowed to place on the country's eastern flank. After a successful attempt by Islamist suicide bombers to infiltrate the Sinai border last August, Israel has allowed the Egyptians to increase troop numbers, but little of the extra resources have been put into tackling the human trafficking networks.

The migrants have given testimonies with detailed descriptions of where they were held. One group operating out of the Mansoura area is known to be run by a man called Abu Musa and his brothers Ali Hamed and Salim. They use two distinctive red houses with Chinese pagodas outside their gates to imprison their captives. The towns of Rafah, Mansoura and Al-Jorra are also known to contain purpose-built prisons for hostages. Despite the details provided, however, authorities are taking little action.

The most recent telephone call received by Father Zerai was last Thursday, when a woman said she was part of a group of 20 who had been taken captive, including six children. "The woman who called for help talks about continuous mistreatment, starvation and violence," he said. The kidnappers reportedly demanded $30,000 for each captive and threatened to remove organs from those who could not pay.

"The situation is getting worse and worse," added Father Zerai. "Something must be done."

Tortured in the desert: Smugglers' victims

TLS: A 19-year-old Eritrean woman

When I was still in Sudan, I agreed to pay the smugglers $2,500 to transfer me to Israel. When I arrived in Sinai, the smuggler sold me, along with a group of other people, to another smuggler named Abdullah. Abdullah demanded an additional $10,000 from me. I had no way to raise that sum of money. Abdullah raped me for five days and two other smugglers raped me as well. As a result of all these rapes, I got pregnant. Only after eight months was my father able to send the smugglers $5,000; they released me and allowed me to cross the border to Israel. I must have an abortion. My husband should not know what happened to me in the desert.

MN: A 35-year-old Sudanese man

The smugglers asked whether we knew anyone in Israel or Europe and asked for our relatives' phone numbers. They would call our relatives and then bring a stick and beat us so that we could be heard shouting and crying. They told our relatives that if the money arrived that day, we'd be in Israel the following day. Sometimes they asked for $2,500 and sometimes for an additional $3,000. The more someone cried when they were beaten, the more money their relatives would send.

AIS: A 21-year-old Eritrean woman

So that we would convince our relatives to send money, the smugglers beat our shins with a stick. They also burned our arms and legs with a plastic stick with hot metal at the end. I still have wounds and scars from the beatings and the burns. I was a virgin when I arrived in the desert. During the first few times that I was raped I cried and resisted, but that didn't help. They wouldn't leave me alone. After that I stopped resisting. Only when $2,800 arrived did the smugglers unchain me. They transferred me to someone named Ibrahim and he transferred me and 30 other people to the Israeli border.

Jerome Taylor - Friday 20 January 2012

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/forgotten-the-stolen-people-of-the-sinai-6292201.html

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Six US troops killed in Afghanistan chopper crash

(AFP) KANDAHAR — Six US troops were killed in a helicopter crash in southern Afghanistan, officials said Friday, indicating the incident was not believed to be the result of enemy fire.

The helicopter, a CH-53 Sea Stallion, went down in the volatile Helmand province, according to one US official who said: "Initial indications are that this was not hostile fire."

The dead were members of the US military, another US official told AFP.

In a brief statement, NATO's International Security Assistance Force said the cause of the crash was under investigation.

"However, initial reporting indicates there was no enemy activity in the area at the time of the crash," it said.

The helicopter came down in the Musa Qala district of Helmand province at around 10:00 pm (0530 GMT) on Thursday "due to technical failure", the provincial Afghan army corps commander Sayed Mulook told AFP.

Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, a spokesman for the Taliban militia, which is leading a 10-year insurgency against the Afghan government and tens of thousands of NATO troops, claimed the insurgents had shot down the helicopter.

Mulook rejected the claim.

The Sea Stallion is a heavy transport aircraft capable of carrying about 40 people. The US officials did not say whether anyone else was on board, other than the six victims.

An ISAF spokesman told AFP in Kabul that the crash occurred late Thursday.

He stressed that "there was no enemy around", but could not give further information such as the terrain at the crash site or the weather.

In August, 30 US troops were killed when Taliban insurgents shot down a Chinook helicopter, in the deadliest incident for US and NATO forces since the war in Afghanistan began in 2001.

The dead included 17 Navy SEALs and five other Navy sailors assigned to the SEAL unit. Seven Afghan troops and an interpreter were also killed.

Most of the Navy commandos came from the same SEAL team credited with killing Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in a May raid in Pakistan.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iT7hAofnZSneTdgkklCdPTGSIjFA?docId=CNG.b33187b031d09173f046e82e4b41c179.131

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Turkey - Deployment of disaster victims to containers has being promptly continued

With the purpose of providing convenient environment for disaster victims during the winter time, works has being intensely continued.

On this framework, 27.598 containers have been ordered for manufacturing and 23.291 of them have been transferred and more than 18.000 have been deployed to affected area. As a priority, these containers have supplied for victims whose buildings are collapsed or uninhabitable. It is planned 180.000 disaster victims to be relocated to these container cities which have more capacities to shelter than the population of any other provinces in our country.

21 points in Van City Center and 4 points in Erciş District have been identified as container areas. Provided the disaster victims’ needs such as electric, water, heating, education, clothing, meals,three times a day in container cities established, it has been performed psycho-social support services.

Within the framework of works to be relocated disaster victims’ permanent houses, 3.984 houses have been laid the foundation. Completed the rough construction of many disaster houses in a short time as a month; it is planned that houses will be supplied to disaster victims on the late of August. Moreover, the process is ongoing for tender offer of nearly 11.000 houses.

70 container offices have been manufactured for mukhtars of Van and Erciş settlements. All of them planned as working office for mukhtars have been deployed.

13.488 Citizens have been sheltered in 9 tent cities established in Van Center and 1.205 Citizens have been sheltered in Mevlana houses (a type of prefabricated house) in Erciş District.

As of today 35.976 disaster victims have been also transferred from disaster area to public facilities and their needs have being provided by our state.

The number is more than 50.000 included the Citizens, have applied to relevant Governorships after having departed to other provinces with their own facilities.

Up till today, included the emergency aid allowance transferred to Van total cost of humanitarian aid supplies is 380.327.869, 00 USD. Due to supply the needs in affected area, 75.546.448, 00 USD Emergency Aid Allowance has been transferred from resources of AFAD and Prime Ministry to Governorship of Van, Ministries, Public Facilities, Universities, Organizations and relevant Governorship for relocating.

In the context of the humanitarian aid campaigns launched by our Prime Minister H.E. Recep Tayyip ERDOĞAN, in the accounts of our Prime Ministry, The Presidency of Religious Affairs and Turkish Red Crescent 165.027.322, 00 USD have been collected.

Deep respect and appreciate.

Dr. Fuat OKTAY Director - General

http://reliefweb.int/node/471405

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Padiham Cemetery's memorial revamp for East Lancashire's Dan-Air disaster victims

A MEMORIAL to 45 air-crash victims from East Lancashire has been revamped thanks to a town mayor.

Lettering on the Padiham Cemetery monument to those who perished in the 1970 Dan-Air disaster had become indistinct.

And relatives of those killed in the incident, which saw a jet crash into a mountain range near Barcelona, were keen to see the area overhauled.

Now town mayor Coun Bob Clark has stepped in and arranged for a stonemason to retouch the inscription to the ill-fated passengers.

Parks department staff have also revamped the small garden, where the memorial stands, in the Blackburn Road cemetery.

All 112 people on board the plane were killed, including four players from the all-conquering Britannia Wanderers football team, based at the Guy Street pub of the same name.

The victims also included holidaymakers from Burnley, Nelson, Barnoldswick, Worsthorne and Ramsbottom, which had set off from Manchester Airport.

Coun Clark said: “The families are happy with the work which was been carried out and I was glad I was able to assist.”

Last year family and friends of the victims staged a memorial service to mark the 40th anniversary of the crash.

The memorial was unveiled following a fundraising campaign by the former Padiham Urban District Council, under the chairmanship of Sheila Maw.

An official report into the disaster concluded that the jet had been talked down to disaster after misleading information from the cock-pit and the mistaken identity of a mystery blip on the radar screen.

Thursday 19th January 2012

http://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/burnleypendlerossendale/9482129.Padiham_Cemetery_s_memorial_revamp_for_East_Lancashire_s_Dan_Air_disaster_victims/

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The Mexico drug war: Bodies for billions

(CNN) -- There are kingpins with names like the Engineer, head-chopping hit men, dirty cops and double-dealing politicians. And, of course, there are users -- millions of them.
But the Mexican drug war, at its core, is about two numbers: 48,000 and 39 billion.
Over the past five years, nearly 48,000 people have been killed in suspected drug-related violence in Mexico, the country's federal attorney general announced this month. In the first three quarters of 2011, almost 13,000 people died.

Cold and incomprehensible zeros, the death toll doesn't include the more than 5,000 people who have disappeared, according to Mexico's National Human Rights Commission. It doesn't account for the tens of thousands of children orphaned by the violence.
The guilty live on both sides of the border.

Street gangs with cartel ties are not only in Los Angeles and Dallas, but also in many smaller cities across the United States and much farther north of the Mexican border. Mexican cartels had a presence in 230 cities in the United States in 2008, according to the U.S. Justice Department. Its 2011 report shows that presence has grown to more than 1,000 U.S. cities. While the violence has remained mostly in Mexico, authorities in Arizona, Georgia, Texas, Alabama and other states have reportedly investigated abductions and killings suspected to be tied to cartels.

Mexican black tar heroin (so called because it's dark and sticky), is cheaper than Colombian heroin, and used to be a rarity in the United States. Now it is available in dozens of cities and small towns, experts say. Customers phone in their orders, the Los Angeles Times reports, and small-time dealers deliver the drug, almost like pizza deliverymen.

Traffickers are recruiting in the United States, and prefer to hire young. Texas high schools say cartel members have been on their campuses. Most notoriously, a 14-year-old from San Diego became a head-chopping cartel assassin.

"I slit their throats," he testified at his trial, held near Cuernavaca. The teenager, called "El Ponchis" - the Cloak - was found guilty of torturing and beheading and sentenced to three years in a Mexican prison.

For more than a decade, the United States' focus has been terrorism, an exhausting battle reliant on covert operatives in societies where the rule of law has collapsed or widespread violence is the norm. The situation in Mexico is beginning to show similarities. In many border areas, the authority of the Mexican state seems either entirely absent or extremely weak. In September 2010, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said cartel violence might be "morphing into or making common cause with what we would call an insurgency."

If cartel violence is not contained in Mexico, which shares a nearly 2,000 mile border with the United States, the drug war could threaten U.S. national security and even survival of the Mexican state.

How much is enough?

For most of us, Mexico is reduced several times a week to a sickening barrage of horror flick headlines. Thirty-five bodies left on the freeway during rush-hour in a major tourist city. A person's face sewn onto a soccer ball. Bodies found stuffed in barrels of acid. Heads sent rolling onto busy nightclub dance floors.

What could explain such savagery?

Traffickers don't have a political or religious ideology like al Qaeda.
The answer, some experts say, is a number. Something like $39 billion.
That's the top estimated amount Mexican and Colombian drug trafficking organizations make in wholesale profits annually, according to a 2009 Justice Department report, the latest year for which that calculation was available. The department's 2011 report said that Mexican traffickers control the flow of most of the cocaine, heroin, foreign-produced marijuana and methamphetamine in the United States.

There are seven cartels in Mexico vying for control of smuggling routes into the United States, a bountiful sellers' paradise. South of the border it costs $2,000 to produce a kilo of cocaine from leaf to lab, the DEA said. In the U.S., a kilo's street value ranges from $34,000 to $120,000, depending on the ZIP code where it's pushed.

"How much is enough to the cartels? How many billions justify how many deaths to them?" said DEA special agent and spokesman Jeffrey Scott. "Mexico is their home, too. Their families live there. At what point does the violence cripple their ability to conduct business?"

Scott has been with the DEA for 16 years. Between 2006 and 2011, he led a Tucson, Arizona, strike force that fought smugglers bringing tons of methamphetamine, marijuana, heroin and cocaine across the border. By the time the drugs reach the low-level street dealer, they have been through many middle managers in the cartels' purposely confusing web of workers.
"The people who are arrested will sometimes say, 'Sinaloa who?'" he said, referring to the cartel that originated in the Mexican Pacific Coast state and has the strongest presence in the United States.

Dealers usually don't know or care where their product comes from, Scott said. He said he doubts the tens of millions of Americans who use illegal drugs do, either.

Get Shorty
From foot to head he is short/But he is the biggest of the big
If you respect him, he'll respect you
If you offend him, it will get worse
-- Lyrics to narcocorrido "El Chapo" by Los Canelos de Durango

"El Chapo" (Shorty) is the boss of the Sinaloa cartel. In his last-known photo, the 5 foot 6 inch son of a poor rural family wears a schoolboy haircut and a plain-colored puff-coat. Despite having virtually no formal education, Forbes estimates Joaquin Guzman Loera is worth $1 billion. This month the U.S. Treasury declared him the most influential trafficker in the world. He has eluded capture for more than a decade, is known for coming up with original ways to smuggle, like putting cocaine in fire extinguishers, and is suspected of helping Mexicans and Colombians launder as much as $20 billion in drug profits.

The legend of "El Chapo" began to grow when he escaped, reportedly on a laundry cart, from a Mexican prison in 2001. He seemed even more untouchable last summer when his 20-something beauty queen wife (who has dual nationality) crossed into California to give birth to twins. The birth certificates leave blank the space for the father's name, and she apparently hustled back across the border.

It's anyone's guess where El Chapo is. Mexican President Felipe Calderon wondered last year if he was hiding out in the United States.
Guzman is the drug war. Perpetuating the image of the bulletproof bad guy keeps it alive.
YouTube is full of narco snuff. Those with weak stomachs should avoid the wildly popular El Blog del Narco, which posts gory photos of killings and confessions by drug lords. Cartels make their own movies, glorifying the business. The films are sold in street markets in Mexico and the United States.

Some say it's no coincidence that the first beheadings of Mexican police officers occurred in 2006, when videotapes of al Qaeda beheadings were shown on Mexican television.
Since then, headless corpses have become a cartel calling card. In a single week in September, a sack of heads was left near an Acapulco elementary school and a blogging reporter's headless corpse was dumped in front of a major thoroughfare in the Texas border town of Nuevo Laredo. Her head, along with headphones and computer equipment, was found in a street planter.
A note left at the scene, one of dozens of journalist killings in the past five years, read: "OK Nuevo Laredo live on the social networks, I am La Nena de Laredo and I am here because of my reports and yours ..."
The message was signed with several Z's, indicating the slaying was the work of another major cartel, the Zetas.

One of the first cartels to use the internet, the Zetas are perhaps the savviest propagandists in the drug war. They're known for effective recruitment tactics.
A few years ago, they appealed to the destitute in a nation where the minimum wage is $5 a day, but millions have no work.
Banners were dropped from bridges in major cities.
"Why be poor?" the signs said. "Come work for us."

The good old bad days
Desde que yo era chiquillo tenia fintas de cabron (Ever since I was a kid, I had the fame of a bad-ass)
ya le pegaba al perico, y a la mota (already hitting the parrot [cocaine] and doing dope [marijuana])
-- El Cabron, a legendary narcocorrido, or narco ballad, released in 2005.

Feeding addiction has long been a part of Mexico's relationship with the United States, first becoming a well-oiled operation during Prohibition when Americans crossed over to drink and get high and Mexicans sent marijuana and alcohol to speakeasies in the States.

During this era, narcocorridos, or drug pop ballads glorifying kingpins, became popular. The accordion-based anthems were danceable, fun. Today the songs are no longer so amusing.
Between 2006 and 2008, more than a dozen performers have been murdered. Cartels have held some balladeers hostage for days, forcing them to entertain partying crews. The Mexican government has tried to ban the music, but the effort has only made the songs sexier. They shake butts from Cancun to Culiacan, and across the United States from Los Angeles to New York. Slain narco singers have been nominated for posthumous Grammys. (Watch narco singer Valentín Elizalde's music video "A Mis Enemigos" which some speculate was an attack on the Gulf cartel and led to his murder.)

Narcocorridos have become death impersonating art, a symbol of just how unexpectedly dark the Mexican drug business has become.
The definition of a cartel is an agreement among competing firms. That was the old way for the Mexicans. Pay the cops and the politicians. Don't kill anyone unless absolutely necessary and don't make a mess of it.

Two scenarios made their thieves' agreement possible.
For decades, Mexicans mainly transported cocaine for the Colombians or the Colombians sent the cocaine directly into the United States on planes or speedboats.

That changed in the 1990s when the United States tightened its choke on Colombia's main smuggling point in the Caribbean and Florida and worked with the Colombian government to combat cartels and eliminate kingpins like Pablo Escobar.

The neutered Colombian cartels were then forced to rely on the Mexicans, who smuggled across much more vast and impossible to monitor areas like the border and the eastern Pacific Ocean.
Suddenly indispensable in their industry, the cartels in Mexico reacted like any ambitious corporation. They bought out every last possible competitor, ramping up bribes across the ranks of law enforcement and politicians. They advertised themselves to struggling working class people and the poor as a panacea amid all the government's failures: Cartels were the private-sector alternative.

Within a few years, they gained unrivaled dominance in the global illicit drug trade.
The second scenario helping the cartels, some experts say, was rampant corruption within the PRI, or the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ran Mexico for 72 years.
There were far fewer deaths and the cartels' bottom line wasn't threatened.
The PRI lost power in 2000 with the election of Vicente Fox, who led the opposition National Action Party.

Known for his cowboy hats, Fox made little of the cartels during his election campaign. But after meeting with American officials in the early days of his administration, he announced he wanted the traffickers gone.

The arrests of kingpins and key players followed, which prompted chaos within cartel ranks as commands were shaken. Cartel members fought amongst themselves and each other. The good old bad days ended.

A real war starts
La traicion y el contrabando (The treason and the contraband)
Son cosas incompartidas" (They are the same thing)
- Lyrics to "Contrabando y traicion" by Tigres del Norte
To understand the drug war, accept that it's impossible to keep track of all its players. Accept that there are no white hats or black hats. There's only grey. Fog.
There is, however, agreement among experts about when war was declared: In late 2004 in the border town of Nuevo Laredo, 10 minutes from Laredo, Texas.
The Sinaloa wanted this golden smuggling route.

Every year, more than 5 million cars, 1.5 million commercial trucks and 3.8 million pedestrians cross northbound from Mexico into the United States here, bringing with them a ton of hidden narcotics.

In 2004, Nuevo Laredo was controlled by the Gulf cartel, which was just as old and Corleone-esque as Sinaloa.
For help defending their turf, the Gulf hired a group of former Mexican special forces soldiers who called themselves Zetas after the federal police code for high-ranking officers, "Z1."
The Sinaloa clan hired their own protection, a gang named Los Negros led by a blond-haired, blue-eyed American from Laredo. The man's cohorts called him La Barbie.

The Zetas battled Los Negros with tactics befitting an elite military. They fired automatic weapons, launched RPGs and grenades. They shot at each other for more than a year. Local gangs jumped in. Civilians dropped.

Emboldened by their Nuevo Laredo victory, the Zetas formed their own cartel. As they went after other cartels throughout Mexico, the Zetas honed a reputation for sickening brutality, seeming to kill just because they can. They have been blamed for setting fire to a casino killing 52 people, shooting dead 72 migrants on a Tamaulipas farm in 2010, murdering and tossing into mass graves women and children and killing bloggers. In April 2011, the bodies of 190 people, some of them migrant workers, were found in a mass grave in the desert of Tamaulipas.
Officials say the Zetas have lobbed grenades into celebrating crowds and blown up a pipeline that sent "rivers of fire" into residential streets. They have terrorized cities that once seemed untouchable by the violence, including the port city of Veracruz and Mexico's richest city, Monterrey, home to many international companies.

As the Zetas enacted their terror, that blond-haired, blue-eyed American leading Los Negros got angrier. La Barbie was Edgar Valdez, a Texas high school football star who worked his way into the Mexican underworld as a pot dealer. In 2005, the Dallas Morning News reported on a video showing four bound and bloody men, suspected to be Zetas, being interrogated off camera by a man believed to be Valdez.

A pistol comes into the frame, goes off and one of the men slumps. The video went viral. People around the globe started asking what was really going on in Mexico.
Journalist Ioan Grillo has been to more murder scenes than he can recall. His new book, "El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency," includes interviews with hit men, gang members, government and law enforcement officials and people caught in the crossfire.

Grillo repeatedly returns to a single idea. Wars occur because people cannot feed their families. They happen because groups of people feel unimportant, disenfranchised, angry and broke. They want a piece of life. It only takes a few people with particularly hollow morals, capable of shutting off or suppressing guilt, to convince many that killing and dying in spectacular ways is tantamount to glory.

Jihadist groups, kamikaze squadrons, American street gangs, cartels. Their members were all kids at one point. Grillo writes that he has seen teenagers show up at murder scenes showing no grief. It has become routine. They pick up shell casings scattered on the ground and debate whether they've been fired from AK47s or M4s.

There are very few counselors in Mexico to help, and there is very little quality education outside the circles of the comparatively privileged few, he wrote.
Why wouldn't a kid take 50 pesos to be a lookout, or 1,000 pesos to kill someone?
"I would love to see more money spent on these concerns," Grillo said, "than on more military helicopters and soldiers gunning it out with the cartels."

Fighting back
After he was elected president in 2006, the PAN's Felipe Calderon took a page out of his predecessor's playbook and declared war on the cartels. He had the Mexican military fan out across the country and fired hundreds of corrupt police officers. He even disarmed an entire town, saying that most of its police force was working for the cartels.
Plenty of narcos were arrested, and some extradited to the United States, but many thousands of people died. They included cartel members, police and civilians who were caught in the middle of a gruesome war.

Calderon and President George W. Bush reached an unprecedented agreement to fight the cartels. The Merida Initiative (named after the Mexican city where the two met) included a U.S. pledge of $1.5 billion between 2008 and 2010. President Obama requested millions more for 2011 for the program. The program provides aircraft, inspection tools and other sophisticated drug-detecting technology to the Mexicans. It also funds drug counseling and prison rehabilitation programs.
To fight corruption, the United States has also pledged to give money to help train police in Mexico.

For its part, the Mexican government has passed legislation aimed at bolstering its judicial system, and in October 2010, Calderon formally requested a total reshaping of the police force in Mexico. The reform he proposed would create unified state police forces and eliminate municipal police, who federal officials have said are very susceptible to corruption because of their low salaries.

Observers say Calderon underestimated how many police and other law enforcement officers were on the cartels' payroll when he came to power. As of March 2008, 150,000 soldiers had deserted. Traffickers, experts say, spent the Fox administration hunkering down, ingratiating themselves to communities, buying food and paying for medical bills, offering restless young people a sense of identity and hard cash.

And as Grillo has written, many people didn't trust the police and the soldiers as they once did. Authorities were accused of widespread human rights abuses while on anti-cartel missions. Jose Luis Soberanes, president of the Mexican Human Rights Commission, testified in 2008 that his office had received complaints that police and soldiers had entered towns to rape and torture and kill, including shooting dead two women and three children in Sinaloa state.
The cartels had become Robin Hood to many, similar to Colombia kingpin Escobar. In his impoverished Medellin, Escobar built a soccer field and a school. He died in a gunbattle with agents in 1993. At the church Escobar built, some Colombians still come to worship him like a saint.

A Barbie, a fox and some piggies
"La Barbie" was arrested in August 2010 in Mexico, and smiled as he was paraded in front of the press. The green Ralph Lauren polo shirt he wore inspired an international fashion trend.
Calderon's administration trumpets his arrest and others, and vows to keep fighting the cartels. But the president is a lame duck. Term limits prohibit him from running again in 2012.
Many expect the PRI, Mexico's founding party that ruled for seven decades, to return to power in July's elections.

Whoever wins the election will have to answer a critical question: whether to appease the cartels and try to negotiate with them or continue the all-out assault that Calderon launched.
Negotiating with traffickers played a role in Colombia, where religious figures and former guerillas led the talks, experts said.

But they also stress that Mexico is not Colombia, and this is not the late 1980s. Crime syndicates operate differently. Key players on both sides of the border have considerations unlike those during the Colombian crisis. Mexico, they contend, is far less likely to welcome close foreign involvement than Colombia did.

A solution also cannot come from only one side of the border. Former President Fox and other experienced leaders in Latin America have advocated legalizing the consumption of marijuana, saying it would cut the value of the cartels' product. In 2011, the U.N.'s Global Commission on Drug Policy, which included Fox, recommended that governments experiment with drug legalization, especially marijuana.

Last fall, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a candidate for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, said he thought the drug war violence had become so dire that U.S. troops could be sent into Mexico. Drug trafficking in Mexico, he and others have said, fuels criminal organizations around the globe and feeds human and arms trafficking.

Perry had barely finished his thought before being pounced on by critics, many within his own party and especially his opponents: How would a limping U.S. economy pay for that? The United States was already involved in two wars.

Mexico has historically been highly averse to allowing a foreign force to fight on its soil, experts said. The idea of Team America swooping into its sovereign neighbor is offensive to many Mexicans. Consider the country's national anthem, written after the 1840s Mexican-American War in which Mexico lost half its territory.
If some enemy outlander should dare
to profane your ground with his sole,
think, oh beloved Fatherland, that heaven has given you a soldier in every son
In 2009, the group Los Tigres del Norte were banned from performing a popular song titled "La Granja" at an awards ceremony in Mexico City.

The lyrics blast the Mexican government's strategy against the cartels, a "Fox" who came to break plates on a farm. The animals got out "to create a big mess."
The lyrics also suggest that America, Mexico's No. 1 drug customer, is just as dirty.

The piggies helped out
They feed themselves from the farm
Daily they want more corn
And they lose the profits
And the farmer that works
Does not trust them anymore

By Ashley Fantz, CNN
January 18, 2012 -- Updated 1553 GMT (2353 HKT)

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/15/world/mexico-drug-war-essay/index.html

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