This describes pretty well what I saw with my own eyes.
Bosnian DNA Labs Trying to End Search for Missing
http://www.balkantimes.com/html2/english/020405-BETH-001.htm
by Beth Kampschror for Balkan Times in Sarajevo - 05/03/02
Hasa Selimovic hasn’t seen her husband or her youngest son since Bosnian Serb soldiers took them off a truck leaving Srebrenica in July 1995. Another son, Amir, fled into a nearby forest. She never heard from them, or her brother Jusuf, again.
Last summer, after more than six years of hoping her family was still alive, Mrs. Selimovic gave a few drops of her blood to a DNA project overseen by the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP). Her DNA profile was put in a database, and it matched a profile in another database -- of bone DNA. It was her son Junuz.
"This one of my sons hadn’t yet finished eighth grade, the one that was found … I got the results around Ramadan, that was somewhere in the month of December. It was difficult," she said.
She lives alone in her fastidiously clean flat in Lukavac, a small town a few miles from Tuzla. On the wall above her scarf-covered head hangs a photo collage in black and white. It’s her, her husband Ismet, her son Amir and another son Mustafa, who was killed in 1993. "I don’t have one of that little one," she said. Sometimes she raised her voice and sometimes she cried. But she said she’d rather know the truth.
"I thank [the ICMP]," she said. "It’s better to know that the bones are resting somewhere than not to know. I’d like to find out about my husband, whether he’s alive or dead, let me find out. For my son, the same, and the same for my brother. They’ve done a good, good job."
The DNA identification project is trying to relieve the anguish of not knowing felt by Hasa Selimovic and the relatives of the about 30,000 missing persons in BiH. Two labs established last year in Sarajevo and Tuzla analyse, store and match DNA from blood and bone samples. A third lab in Banja Luka should be functional this year. Outside BiH, the ICMP collects blood in Kosovo and Serbia, and has several DNA labs in Croatia. US authorities are also using ICMP-donated software to help identify remains from the 11 September terrorist attacks.
No one has ever attempted such a large-scale identification project using this science. But the passage of years and lack of medical records in Bosnia has rendered classical forensics methods -- autopsies, clothing or dental records -- nearly useless.
Now families can give finger-stick blood samples at one of five centres in BiH, or to one of the five mobile teams in the field, and wait for a DNA match from recovered remains. Success depends on the number of bodies recovered and blood samples received. ID Coordination Head Adnan Rizvic said that ideally they’d like two to four relatives’ profiles in the database here in Tuzla -- up to 100,000 individual blood samples. Now they have 21,000. Thirty-eight have been matched using only the new in-country labs since the first case in November.
"This system is producing results," Rizvic said. "We doubled the cases for Srebrenica in only one year. This spring we’re expecting it to be bigger; we’ll have more samples, so it’s a bigger possibility to have a match."
Blood donors’ names, as well as the origin of bone samples, are masked by a bar code system. Rizvic pulled a few anonymous groups of 90 samples from a refrigerator. "Can you tell me who is this?" he asked. The local analysts working with the samples can’t tell either. Identity, which is the very reason these families are suffering in the first place, is confidential.
Remains recovered in Bosnia are known by a number until they are identified. Some will be buried that way. Across town from Rizvic’s office, about 1,780 remains in an enormous morgue with 4,408 white body bags -- all from Srebrenica exhumations, on rows and rows of ceiling-high metal shelves -- are ready for burial at the new memorial at Potocari. Only 168 of them have been identified.
"On the gravestone we’ll put our numbers," said Podrinje Identification branch project officer Zlatan Sabanovic. "We’ll continue the process and when we find them out, we’ll just take the number off and put the name on."
Until every numbered grave and bone sample has a name, families won’t give up. Thousands of them -- Croats, Muslims and Serbs -- belong to more than 50 associations throughout BiH, and the ICMP regularly grants them money for offices and helps organise conferences. Hasa Selimovic is active in Women of Srebrenica, which is seeking answers about the 8,000 Muslim men and boys that disappeared after Srebrenica fell.
"I’m looking for, and all of we mothers, are looking for brothers and husbands and children, all of ours, to find out, to find out the truth," she said. "What can we do? For us it’s clear that no one is alive … for so many years, you see, for seven years, none of them have got in touch with us."
Re......your Srebrenica article
It is interesting that the liberal HumWarriors always return to the Liberation of Srebrenica when confronted with the harsh reality of their pro-Iztbegovic stance.
And the HumWarriors always use the racist hate mongering tone in their articles when discussing the Liberation of Srebrenica. But the facts regarding Srebenica have been long out.
And those facts contradict the wild and crazy HumWarrior tale of conspircy, moving bodies, coded telephone calls, secret messages, private handshakes, and intrigue worthy of s BBC Mystery TV series.
Curious that the HumWarriors cling to their version of events in Srebrenica despite the mountains of evidence which tell us they are dead wrong. Every time another piece fo evidence is uncovered which contradicts the HumWarriors, they have to add another conpsircy, another plot twist, another bit of far-fetched mystery in order to make the facts fit their story
Here are the facts taken striaght from the article Bosnian DNA Labs Trying to End Search for the missing and the ICTY
1,780 bodies found........via article
at least 600 of those found were members of the 28th BiH killed in a fair fight We don't know how many of the rest were soldiers of the 28th BiH, because the forensic reports are kept under lock and key.........ICTY expert testimony in Krstic hearing
168 identified using DNA.........via artcile
21,000 samples taken.........via article
Now after 7 years of searching, 5 years of trying to id the bodies, doesn't it strike one as odd that they haven't id'd more bodies ? In all the rest of the Bosnian and Kosovo mass graves the forensic experts quickly are able to id 75% - 80% of thye bodies
Yet the Iztbegovic-Dole DNA analysis comes up with a 9% id rate. Hmmmmmm could it be that the 1,180 bodies not id'd are victims of Nasir Oric's exections squads ?
After all the other bodies were found in mass graves exactly were Nasir Oric's execution squads operated. These bodeis were not found where the HumWarriors tell us BSA units shot Bosnian POW's.
Hmmmm........could it be that those much publicized photos of bodies with their hands tied behind their back are actually those of victims of Nasir Oric ?
They haven't been id'd because perhaps the 21,000 DNA samples taken to find a positive match have been taken only from pro-Iztbegovic people in Tuzla. The DNA samples pointedly haven't been taken from the very villagers in whose villages the bodies were found.
It simply boggles the mind that anyone would still cling to the wild and contradictory conspricy tale told by the Iztbegovic regime regarding the Liberation of Srebrenica.