Exhumation deal likely next week

INTERNATIONAL experts are expected on the island next week to sign a deal with the government to begin exhumation of graves which could contain the remains of some of the missing.

According to Church-owned TV station Logos last night, the government is at the last stages of the agreement with the three experts who have extensive UN experience.

Work is expected to being to open the 65 unmarked graves at the cemetery in Lakatamia, long believed to hold the remains of many of the 1,619 missing persons, mostly soldiers who were reported missing after the Turkish invasion in 1974.

Last year two Greek Cypriot women began digging up graves at a Nicosia cemetery convinced their husbands were buried there.

The two men were listed on the catalogue of missing persons even though they were confirmed as dead by police.

Files relating to the whereabouts of some 400 Greek Cypriots and 200 of the 803 Turkish Cypriots missing were exchanged between the two sides at a meeting in January 1998 in line with an agreement between the two leaders the previous July.

But even though the agreement collapsed within the wide framework of a stalemate in the Cyprus problem, the Greek Cypriot side has said it is ready to proceed with the exhumation of the bodies.

After remains are exhumed they will be DNA tested at the Institute of Neurology and Genetics which has been gathering data from relatives of the missing for its DNA bank for over a year.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.