KOSOVO MISSING PERSONS FORENSICS HAMPERED BY LACK

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 PRISTINA 000608

SIPDIS

SENSITIVE
SIPDIS

DEPT FOR DRL, INL, EUR/SCE
NSC FOR BRAUN
USUN FOR DREW SCHUFLETOWSKI
EUR/ACE FOR DROGERS, MOKEEFE

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PREL KCRM PGOV PINR KDEM UNMIK YI KJUS EAID
ICTY
SUBJECT: KOSOVO MISSING PERSONS FORENSICS HAMPERED BY LACK
OF FUNDING

REF: A. PRISTINA 584

B. PRISTINA 480

C. PRISTINA 265

PRISTINA 00000608 001.2 OF 004


SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED, PROTECT ACCORDINGLY


1. (SBU) SUMMARY. UNMIK's Office of Missing Persons and
Forensics (OMPF) is faces severe staffing and funding
shortages which are hampering its ability to resolve cases of
missing persons. Despite fewer leads on potential new grave
sites, OMPF is still very busy with a few ongoing exhumations
and dealing with remains returned from Serbia on June 30.
OMPF will soon bring in an additional short-term forensics
pathologist, in the hope that money requested from
international donors will materialize. END SUMMARY.

OMPF URGENTLY NEEDS A SHORT-TERM FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST
-------------- --------------


2. (SBU) During a July 12 visit to the Office of Missing
Persons and Forensics morgue in Rahovec/Orahovac, Acting OMPF
Director Valerie Brasey told PolOff that OMPF will use
remaining USG funding from 2005 to hire an additional
forensic pathologist on a short-term (several months)
contract to perform autopsies, write autopsy reports,
determine causes of death and issue death certificates on the
140 - 150 bodies repatriated from Serbia on June 30 (Ref A).
She said OMPF's one local and two international forensic
pathologists are over-stretched, because in addition to their
work on repatriated bodies (the condition of which she
described as "a mess"),they must also handle fresh death
cases, sexual assaults, testify in court, train local staff
and assist with exhumations. She said that if there is an
exhumation or one of the doctors is called to testify in
court (as frequently happens),the work on the repatriated
bodies must halt, which further delays their identification
and return to families. She said OMPF has requested
assistance from the UK government, but said that even if that
funding is approved, it will not arrive for at least several
months.

REMAINS FROM SERBIA NOT EXHUMED PROFESSIONALLY
-------------- -


3. (SBU) OMPF forensic anthropologist Oran Finegan said the
condition of the remains repatriated on June 30 shows that
the Serbian government did not conduct the exhumations
professionally. As a result many of the skeletons are
commingled. He told PolOff that usually two forensic
anthropologists and two forensic pathologists would work
together on a team to do the type of painstaking work he is
currently doing with the bodies repatriated from Serbia. He
said he must reconstruct each individual skeleton to
determine which bones go to which body, and separate those
that have been identified from those that have not. He said
he x-rays each body for bullet fragments, finds and analyzes
bullet entry and exit points and reconstructs bone fractures
to identify injuries to the body. He said the vast majority
of the bodies from Serbia have bullet wounds and evidence of
blunt force trauma.


4. (SBU) Finegan said Serbian officials sent bone samples
from many, but not all, of the repatriated bodies to the
International Commission for Missing Persons (ICMP) in
Sarajevo for DNA extraction, analysis and identification. He
is now working to ascertain which are which, and said he has
so far sent 8 or 9 additional bone samples to ICMP for
analysis.


5. (SBU) Finegan said many of the bags contain assorted
parts that he now needs to try and match to either bodies
that have already been identified and returned to their
families, or to any of the over 500 unidentified bodies OMPF

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is already holding in six refrigerated storage containers
outside the morgue. (NOTE. Finegan said that the
refrigeration is not strong enough to keep the bodies from
decomposing, since the decomposition process generates its
own heat. END NOTE) Brasey said one of the bags Serbia
returned contained as many as 14 identified right femurs that
could match bodies OMPF already previously identified and
returned to families or is holding in the morgue at the their
request.

NO POINT TO EXHUMATIONS WITHOUT FORENSICS WORK
-------------- -


6. (SBU) Finegan and Brasey both said that the forensic work
is an integral part of the exhumation process, since there is
no point in exhuming bodies if they cannot then do the work
necessary to identify the bodies and return them to their
families. Finegan said that while he can put the bodies back
together, he is not legally qualified to write autopsy
reports, make a final determination on cause of death, and
sign death certificates. He said only a forensic pathologist
can carry out those functions.


7. (SBU) Brasey said that OMPF has a forensic pathologist on
standby in Sri Lanka, ready to come for two to three months
(Ref B). She said that OMPF pays forensic pathologists 4,000
euros per month (which, she added, is one quarter of what
they make in Europe). She said that OMPF already has
salaries budgeted for Finegan and the forensic photographer
through October out of the USG funding they have already
received. Finegan added that although he has worked for OMPF
since 2002 (and previously for the ICTY),he is planning to
leave Kosovo when his current contract expires in October,
and he cited uncertainty about funding as one of the reasons
for his departure.

OMPF WORKING TO RETURN REMAINS TO FAMILIES
--------------


8. (SBU) Brasey said OMPF's first priority is to return
those 16 bodies (eleven from mass graves in Batajnica and
five from Perucac) that were already identified while in
Serbia to their families. She said OMPF has prepared the
death certificates, autopsy reports and certificates of
identification and "neutral" DNA match reports (per ICMP
specifications),which will be given to the family along with
the remains. She said the outreach team is currently in the
process of notifying the relevant family member associations
in Vushtrri/Vucitern, Gjakova and Meja in order to arrange
handovers.

BACKLOG OF UNIDENTIFIED REMAINS HELD IN STORAGE
-------------- --


9. (SBU) Brasey said the ICMP has processed all of the bone
samples that the Serbian government sent to them, but only
about 30 of them (16 sets of remains plus 14 femurs)
generated identification "matches" and the rest ICMP returned
as "unmatchable." She said OMPF does not have a clear
understanding of what that means, but thinks it means that
either the bone sample did not match any of the blood samples
in the database, or it did not reach ICMP's minimum
"threshold" of probability, which is 99.99%. Brasey (a
mathematician by training) said that if only one family
member gave a blood sample to ICMP, it is technically
impossible for a bone sample to match the blood at the 99.99%
threshold. She lamented that OMPF probably has bodies in
storage that fit that category, and could be identified and
returned to their families if the threshold could be lowered.
Brasey said OMPF is trying to clarify these issues with ICMP
at the sub-working group level (Ref C).


10. (SBU) Brasey said that OMPF continues to receive a slow

PRISTINA 00000608 003.2 OF 004


but steady trickle of DNA match reports from ICMP that
provide DNA identifications for some of the bodies OMPF
already had in storage (pre-dating the latest repatriation).
She showed PolOff a random sample of the most recent batch of
DNA match reports that OMPF has gotten back from ICMP, and
the three reports showed that OMPF had submitted the bone
samples to ICMP in December 2003, November 2002 and October

2003. She said she did not understand what criteria ICMP
uses to determine which samples are tested first, or why it
takes so long to get the results.


11. (SBU) She said that OMPF is currently processing the
approximately 50 match reports that OMPF received from ICMP
in the past month. She said that every match must be
analyzed by the OMPF forensic anthropologist assigned to
identifications, who compares the report to the post-mortem,
ante-mortem, and forensic autopsy reports in order to issue
an identification certificate. Once he certifies the
identification, the outreach division of OMPF approaches the
family members through the family associations to organize a
handover of the remains.

OMPF CONTINUES WITH EXHUMATIONS
--------------


12. (SBU) Despite a shortage of leads on locations of
possible gravesites, OMPF continues to conduct exhumations.
Brasey said they have solid leads on an gravesite in the
Raska region of Serbia, along the administrative boundary
line buffer zone across from Leposavic, and said OMPF plans a
joint preliminary assessment of the site with Serbian
authorities on July 28. She said they also have several
small sites that are ready for exhumation, but OMPF is too
busy right now dealing with the repatriated bodies to be able
to deal with them. Brasey provided PolOff with OMPF reports
on two recent exhumations, showing that OMPF exhumed a Kosovo
Serb in Dojnice village in Prizren on May 12, and some
remains suspected to be from Kosovo Albanians the village of
Shushice, outside Gracanica in January 2006.


13. (SBU) On June 26 OMPF exhumed two sites adjacent to the
cemetery on Dragodan Hill (close to USOP),but found no human
remains. OMPF Forensic Anthropologist Oran Finegan told
PolOff that several sources have verified that 12 Kosovo
Serbs from Pristina are buried in the vicinity of the
cemetery, but so far several exhumations have failed to
pinpoint the location. Nikolov told PolOff OMPF discovers
human remains at approximately 50% of its exhumations.

RE-EXHUMATIONS NEEDED FOR DEATH CERTIFICATES
--------------


14. (SBU) Finegan said that OMPF is also assisting Kosovo
Albanian family members who request re-exhumations and
autopsies of conflict victims who were buried immediately
after the war without concrete identification and for whom no
death certificates were issued. He said that the families
need death certificates to sell property and to obtain war
victim's benefits.


15. (SBU) COMMENT. Despite a shortage of new leads, OMPF is
very busy making slow but steady progress on resolving
missing persons cases. However, exhuming the bodies is only
the first step. The bodies must be identified and returned
to their families, and this requires intensive advanced
forensics work. Without that work, the backlog of over 500
unidentified bodies being held at the morgue continues to
grow, which only serves to upset the very families this
process is designed to help. USG funding is targeted for
both exhumations and forensics work on missing persons cases.
This forensics work will include autopsies and
identifications on bodies returned from Serbia as well as
those exhumed in Kosovo. OMPF is doing crucial work at a

PRISTINA 00000608 004.2 OF 004


crucial time, and returning the bodies of the missing to
their families gives them some closure on the past and the
opportunity to look towards the future. It is an essential
pre-requisite to inter-ethnic reconciliation in Kosovo. END
COMMENT.


16. (U) Post clears this message in its entirety for
release to Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari.
MCBRIDE