Forensic experts called upon to exhumations of missing
THE RED Cross is being asked to recommend a list of forensic experts that could help carry out exhumation work at sites all over the island, the tri-partite Committee for Missing Persons (CMP) announced yesterday.
Following its first meeting in four years, the CMP – comprising one member from each community plus an acting representative from the UN – announced it has already written to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to select a list of experts as soon as possible.
The CMP statement said the Greek and Turkish Cypriot members of the committee, Elias Georgiades and Rustem Tatar, had reaffirmed their “total commitment” and said their ultimate target was “to finally resolve the humanitarian problem affecting families of both communities alike”.
The Greek Cypriots claim over 1,500 persons still missing since 1974 and the Turkish Cypriot side some 500 missing, the majority from the period 1964 to 1974. Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash has repeatedly said that the Greek Cypriot missing persons were killed in revenge attacks after the 1974 invasion.
The government has already managed to identify through DNA testing, the remains of over 100 people on the list after it launched an exhumation project at two Nicosia cemeteries in the late nineties. It has also located a mass grave in the south which contains the remains of Turkish Cypriots. Exhumations have not started there as yet because not enough Turkish Cypriots have come forward to give blood samples.
The UN was initially reluctant to resume the CMP meetings without guarantees that there would be progress this time around.
But a source close to the CMP told the Cyprus Mail yesterday: “I would say that both (sides) have shown a constructive spirit so it’s encouraging.” The committee will meet again on Friday.
Nicos Theodosiou, the head of the committee for relatives of missing persons said yesterday it was too early to say if developments would finally lead to exhumations on the Turkish Cypriot side. “This is just the first step,” he said. “We have to give it a chance.”
One of the issues facing the CMP is the fact that the Turkish Cypriot side does not have any facilities to carry out DNA testing in the event exhumations went ahead in the north, and had asked to share the Greek Cypriot facilities as long as they had a say in the process.
Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat wrote to UN Secretary-general Kofi Annan at the weekend requesting that his side be allowed to jointly run the Institute of Neurology and Genetics, which carries out the DNA testing. The Institute was set up in 1990 as a bi-communal venture with American money but is currently being run by the Greek Cypriot side.
