ZAGREB, April 30 (Hina) - Croatian Vice Premier Ivica Kostovic, national coordinator for forensics, Davor Strinovic, anthropologist Mario Slaus and U.S. court anthropologist Douglas Owsley on Tuesday held a press conference in Zagreb
on the identification of remains from mass graves in Croatia.
ZAGREB, April 30 (Hina) - Croatian Vice Premier Ivica Kostovic,
national coordinator for forensics, Davor Strinovic, anthropologist
Mario Slaus and U.S. court anthropologist Douglas Owsley on Tuesday
held a press conference in Zagreb on the identification of remains
from mass graves in Croatia.#L#
Kostovic said there were four permanent groups of experts
working on the identification, adding that the exhumation of 634
individual and 37 mass graves was expected.
Since summer 1995, when most of Croatia's occupied territory
was liberated, 86 persons who had been buried in individual and 104
in mass graves have been identified. It was estimated that about
1200 persons were buried in some ten mass graves in Vukovar County,
currently under U.N. temporary administration, Kostovic said.
The national coordinator for forensics, Davor Strinovic, said
that Croatian experts had been cooperating closely with a group of
U.S. experts from the Smithsonian Institute, led by Douglas Owsley,
one of the world's most famous court anthropologists, who
identified the remains of U.S. soldiers after the Gulf War.
Owsley said that the bodies recovered so far would be
identified and the cause of death determined. The detailed data
gathered by the Commission for Missing and Imprisoned Persons was
very useful in the process of identification, Owsley said, adding
that cooperation with Croatian experts and groups on the field was
excellent.
This is the third time the U.S. experts are visiting Croatia
and their method of identification is very reliable. Among the
examples presented at the press conference, the separation of human
remains from the ashes of a house burnt to the ground attracted
most attention.
The horrific details presented today showed that the genocide
had been planned to the smallest detail. Namely, mass graves dug
out in exactly the same way had been found at three different sites
in Croatia. These graves had a special ditch supposed to drain all
human fluids from the grave, separate them from the bones of the
killed so as to render all attempts at identification impossible.
However, the experts said they were able to identify the victims
buried in such graves too.
(hina) ha jn
301926 MET apr 96