RELATIVES of the victims of the Helios crash yesterday accused the Greek authorities of negligence and ineptitude after reports that the 23 bodies flown back to Cyprus had not been properly refrigerated and were in a state of decomposition.
Some relatives who travelled to Athens to identify their family members claim the authorities there were trying to keep the bodies cool with mere icepacks.
A source who wished to remain anonymous told the Cyprus Mail that the coffins did not have any handles, which are needed to facilitate transport, and were not sealed as they should have been. He also alleged that the bodies had not been properly treated or refrigerated in Athens and as a result smelled.
Many of the relatives confided what they had seen in Athens to former state pathologist Marios Matsakis. Matsakis told the Cyprus Mail yesterday that the bodies were delivered to Cyprus “in a state of early decomposition. This means that they were not properly kept and transported.”
“This all has to do with the Greek authorities”, said Matsakis, who was also critical of the coroners in the way they conducted the autopsies in the Athens Goudi morgue. “I’m not so happy about it [the forensic handling]. In fact my trust has been lost. The whole handling of the case has been incorrectly done.”
Matsakis also disagreed with the declarations that the Greek coroners made about the state of the patients during the flight:
“I have expressed my concerns about the fact that they [the coroners] should never have said that they [the passengers] were alive upon impact because that cannot be proven. They should never have said that a child was alive and died after impact.”
Matsakis also noted that he had called upon authorities to create “an investigative team from the European Union with experts in such disasters to take over. My advice has not been taken up. This is in my view regrettable.”
The state mortuary at the Nicosia General Hospital does not have the space to accommodate the corpses that are being flown in from Athens so the government is turning the bodies over to a private funeral home, Archangelos, which will embalm and store the bodies in refrigerated quarters until the relatives come to pick them up.
The two brothers who run Archangelos are graduates from the Mortuary Science Programme of the Mesa Community college of Arizona and are licensed by the International Conference of Funeral Service Examining Boards, the agency that inspects all mortuary programs in the US.
A member of the Archangelos staff confirmed that the funeral home would handle all of the bodies that are flown back from Athens. He said that his company was selected “because we have the facilities”.
Depending on what best accommodates the relatives, the bodies are being delivered to one of the two Archangelos sites in Limassol or Nicosia.
The government will assume all costs for Archangelos’ services. When asked what the fee was, the Archangelos staff replied: “That I cannot disclose. That’s between us and the government.”
The Health Ministry announced yesterday that it has set up a Co-ordinating Committee for Support to Relatives of the Victims of the Airline Tragedy, made up of psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses and doctors to provide emotional or other support to families.
The Committee will also be responsible for working with the police in handling the corpses once they arrive at the Larnaca airport and in transporting them to the mortuary.
