The discovery of two more human skeletons and the remains of combat attire raised hopes on Thursday that experts have managed to locate a mass grave in the north, thought to contain the bodies of Greek Cypriots missing since the Turkish invasion in July 1974.
Nestoras Nestoros, the Greek Cypriot member of the Committee on Missing Persons (CMP) said two skeletons were discovered on Wednesday and two on Thursday.
They were found in grave near the Turkish Cypriot prison in the area of Trahonas in Nicosia.
“We are talking about complete skeletons,” he said. “It appears that the bodies were dumped on top of each other.”
Nestoros said military clothing was also located in the grave, a sign that experts may have located the site where 40 to 50 Greek Cypriots killed in the Nicosia areas of Kaimakli, Trahonas, and Omorphita in July 1974 were buried.
This was the 12th attempt to find the grave in question.
In 1977, Turkey filed a document at the Council of Europe claiming that around 200 bodies had been collected by Turkish Cypriot forces from those areas, loaded on trucks and taken to the Ledra Palace hotel to be handed over to the Greek Cypriot side for burial.
But the bodies were not received and were eventually buried in a mass grave, the document said.
This has never been confirmed and the Turkish side has since revised the number downwards.
Meanwhile, work continued at a military cemetery in Makedonitissa to locate the remains of Greek airborne commandos sent to Cyprus to assist the National Guard in July 1974.
The commandos were buried along with the remains of their Noratlas transport plane, shot down by friendly fire over Nicosia airport on July 22.
Some human remains have been found and experts are being extra cautious since the aircraft was also carrying explosives.
The exhumation is expected to be completed by November.
Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides visited the site and was briefed on the progress.
It was not important to report where we are every day, he told reporters.
“We are doing our duty, even if belatedly, to hand over all the identified remains we have to the Greek government and from there to the relatives,” Kasoulides said.
Asked why it took such a long time for the process to be undertaken, Kasoulides said it was never too late when performing a duty.
The minister noted that the effort started late in 1999, during Glafcos Clerides’ second term in power.
It was a unilateral decision based on humanitarian reasons.
“The whole story started to break the taboo… of having dead individuals considered missing,” Kasoulides, who was again the foreign minister at the time, said.
The exhumations started at the Lakatamia military cemetery and moved to Constantinou and Elenis.
The minister added that science at the time was not as advanced as now.
The aircraft carried 28 commandos and four crew. Only one commando survived after he jumped out of the flaming transport plane before it crashed.
The remains of 12 others killed in the incident have been identified through DNA tests but 19 are still missing, believed to have been buried along with the aircraft’s fuselage.
However, further delay in locating and identifying the remains would have got Cyprus in trouble as the families of two Greek commandos – Stephanos Tzivelakis and Kosmas Yiannakakis — had sought recourse before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
According to a February 2014 foreign ministry document, in 1979, Cyprus returned what were thought to be the remains of Stephanos Tzivelakis to his family. They were buried at Lakatamia cemetery.
But in 2003, the family was asked to return the remains so that they could be re-examined using DNA testing.
It turned out that the family had been given the wrong remains in 1979. Part of Tzivelakis’ remains were found during the later exhumations.
No remains belonging to Yiannakakis had been found, the document said.
On February 7, 2014, the ECHR asked Cyprus to say when it was planning to exhume the aircraft.
The foreign ministry warned that further delay could have negative consequences, including a conviction for Cyprus and payment of compensation.
