[Oltre ai dispacci di agenzia riportati qui sotto sui cadaveri riesumati negli ultimi mesi da fosse comuni in Bosnia, si possono consultare sul caso di Srebrenica i seguenti siti web: http://ds.dial.pipex.com/srebrenica.justice/ ; http://www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/srebrenica/srebrenica.html ; http://www.domovina.net/index_srebrenica.html ; sui recenti ritrovamenti si veda anche la faxletter dello Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina in: http://www.bh-hchr.org]

Bosnian Mass Grave Victims Reburied

The Associated Press Wednesday, Nov. 17, 1999; 10:33 a.m. EST

MEMICI, Bosnia-Herzegovina –– Several thousand people gathered at a funeral today for victims exhumed from the biggest mass grave discovered so far in Bosnia.

Local forensic experts, helped by the Boston-based Physicians for Human Rights, uncovered 274 bodies in a mass grave in the village of Donja Glumina, about 22 miles east of Tuzla in an area controlled by Bosnian Serbs.

The bodies, unearthed in October 1998, are believed to be those of Bosnian Muslims killed at the beginning of the 1992-1995 war. The grave was found with the aid of witnesses who reported they saw former Yugoslav Army troops burying the remains.

Next to Camp Dobol in northeast Bosnia, a base for U.S. soldiers serving in the NATO-led mission, local government officials created a new cemetery, in which the 159 identified bodies and 102 unidentified bodies were interred. The other 13 bodies recovered from the mass grave were buried earlier by family members.

"The victims were mostly young men whose only fault was that they were not of the same nationality as their murderers," Tarik Arapcic, a local official, told those attending the ceremony.

For months, relatives of many of those missing in Bosnia filed through a makeshift morgue in Tuzla, trying to recognize bodies of their loved ones.

With the help of local pathologists, more than half of the bodies were identified. Pathologists preserved tissue samples of others who might later be identified.

Despite the signing of the Dayton Peace Accord four years ago, many refugees have not been able to return to their prewar homes. Because the mass grave was found in a Serb-held area, the bodies were reburied in the half of the country controlled by the Muslim-Croat federation.


BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Oct 8 (AFP) - The bodies of 59 Muslims were found in a newly discovered mass grave in the northwestern Bosnian Serb town of Bosanski Novi, a UN spokesman said here Friday. The bodies were removed for autopsy and identification, Alun Roberts, the UN International Police Task Force (IPTF) spokesman, told a press conference. The mass grave in Bosanski Novi, 94 kilometers (58 miles) northwest of the Bosnian Serb capital Banja Luka, is one in a series of graves discovered on Republika Srpska territory during the past three weeks. Citing security reasons, Roberts said the exact location of the graves was known only to police, the IPTF, commissions for exhumations and relatives of victims believed to be buried in them. He added that at the same time exhumations of mass graves in which Serb victims were buried were going on in Bosnia's Muslim-Croat Federation, without giving any figures.



SARAJEVO, Oct 28 (AFP) - Bodies of 52 Muslim civilians killed in 1992 have been exhumed in the Bosnian village of Jelec, the head of the Muslim-led State Commission for Missing persons said Thursday. Bodies of men and women were exhumed from two mass graves and individual graves in Jelec, near the southeastern town of Foca, Amor Masovic said. Jelec was a Muslim-populated village before the 1992-95 war. Masovic said that the work would continue for at least a week, adding that according to the testimonies of eyewitnesses, between 80 and 90 bodies were expected to be exhumed. These are the first exhumations in the Foca area since the war ended in 1995, Masovic said. He said about 1,000 Muslim civilians were believed to have been executed by Serb forces in 1992 in and around Foca.


MOSTAR, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Oct 30 (AFP) - A memorial ceremony was held in a cemetery here Saturday for 104 Bosnian Muslims killed by Serb forces in 1992, many of whom had been buried in mass graves. Bodies of the 104, most of them exhumed from mass graves in the past two months for identification, were then transported to their home villages for burial. Several hundred family members attended the ceremony in Mostar for the Muslims from the Gacko region, some 100 kilometers (65 miles) east of Mostar. "We are saying goodbye today to those who were found at Gacko, but a large number of our brothers and sisters have still not been found and we as yet know nothing of their fate," said Muslim cleric Hadzi Hafiz Ismet Efendija Spahic. The 104 were killed in the early days of the 1992-1995 conflict by Serb forces.


For more information on PHR's Bosnia Projects, please visit www.phrusa.org.

July 8, 1999

For Immediate Release

Contact: Caitriona Palmer (387) 90 164378 Barbara Ayotte (617) 695 0041 ext 210/

On Srebrenica Anniversary, Medical Group Reports Doubling of Identification Rate of Victims Despite Huge Obstacles

On the fourth anniversary of the fall of the UN safe enclave of Srebrenica, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) reports that the effort to identify victims of the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995 is beginning to yield results. In the first six months of 1999, PHR assisted in the identification of 28 individuals from Srebrenica. This figure contrasts sharply with 15 identifications in 1998 and five in 1997 and clearly demonstrates an increase in the identification rate. PHR is encouraged by these modest increases given the laborious nature of the work done over the past three years.


"The higher number of identifications this year speaks to the cooperation of our local partners in the work, the increased experience of the local PHR Identification staff (who follow leads on identifications and assist the relatives through every step of this difficult and sensitive process), and the recent successes of PHR's Antemortem Database," said Dr. Laurie Vollen, director of PHR's Bosnia Projects. "The database is uniquely designed to cross-match information on those missing from Srebrenica with postmortem information from exhumed remains."


After PHR staff spent two years obtaining information on over 8,100 missing individuals by interviewing thousands of relatives and collecting information for the AMDB, the database generated its first positive match in March 1999. Two individuals from Srebrenica have since been positively identified through the AMDB, and dozens of other leads have been generated. PHR believes that more identifications will soon follow.


"The work is long and tedious because of the large scale of the massacre and the fact that the killers removed most identification documents,"said Leonard Rubenstein, PHR's executive director. "The commitment to find some answers, however, is owed to the relatives of any large scale massacre."


Physicians for Human Rights is currently advising international agencies who are assisting families seeking to locate and identify individuals killed in Kosovo.


Over 7,500 Bosnian men and boys went missing in the three days following the fall of the eastern Bosnian town to Serb forces on July 11, 1995. The disappearance of so many individuals in such a short period of time continues to pose major difficulties to investigators trying to locate and then identify the remains of the missing.


PHR established the AMDB and Identification Projects in 1996 to focus primarily on Srebrenica identifications. PHR Identification case managers have developed strong connections with communities of displaced persons throughout Bosnia, helping them understand the complex identification procedure and to eventually find answers to the truth they have sought for so long.




In January 1999, with the support of the International Commission for Missing Persons (ICMP), PHR was instrumental in the creation of the Podrinje Project. Based at the Tuzla Commemorative Center, the Podrinje Project draws on the expertise of local authorities to enhance the identification process. Staffed by local professionals and directed by forensic pathologist Dr. Rifat Kesetovic, the project focuses primarily on identifying the dead and missing from Srebrenica and helps manage their remains. Podrinje Project staff work closely with PHR's Identification Project. A workspace at the Center allows Dr. Kesetovic and his team to analyze the over 1,000 remains housed in the Center, while additional office space allows the Podrinje team to consult case materials with PHR Identification staff members, and to officially notify families of the identification of their loved ones.




Despite these advancements, PHR and local authorities recognize that much more needs to be done to quicken the identification rate and address the needs of the thousands of families with missing relatives. Additional storage space to house the thousands of remains from Srebrenica is badly needed. Consequently, with the support of ICMP, confirmed plans are in place to oversee the construction of modern and dignified storage space for the remains of the victims of Srebrenica in Tuzla. PHR is also planning the construction of a system of DNA identification laboratories throughout the former Yugoslavia.


Teams of local forensic experts play a central role in exhuming bodies from mass graves but many lack important anthropological skills necessary for exhumation work. A complex professional and educational curriculum will be produced by PHR to help local forensic experts gain the skills necessary to continue working in the former Yugoslavia into the future.


As the commemoration of the fourth anniversary of Srebrenica demonstrates, the needs of Srebrenica's victims, both alive and dead, must be addressed long into the future. PHR hopes that the advancements made in the identification process will not only provide answers to the families of the missing, but will confirm that the thousands of missing persons from Srebrenica and elsewhere have not been forgotten.


The Boston-based health and human rights group has worked in the Balkans since 1992 and in Bosnia since 1996 to provide assistance for the exhumation and identification processes, and to help answer the many questions of families with missing relatives. PHR assembled a team of forensic experts in 1996 at the request of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to exhume four mass grave sites related to Srebrenica.


Based in Sarajevo and Tuzla, the PHR project works in tandem with local authorities through three projects – the Forensic Assistance Project (FAP), the Antemortem Database (AMDB) Project and Identification Project. Of these projects, the latter two deal primarily with Srebrenica identifications.


Physicians for Human Rights mobilizes the health professions and enlists the general public to protect and promote the human rights of all people. The organization shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for its role as a founding member of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. The group is headquartered in Boston, MA.


Barbara Ayotte Physicians for Human Rights 100 Boylston Street, Suite 702 Boston, MA 02116 Tel. (617) 695-0041 Fax. (617) 695-0307 Email: bayotte@phrusa.org http://www.phrusa.org