Europe, Headlines, Human Rights

POLITICS: 10 Years On, Lab Works to Heal Bosnian Families

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

TUZLA, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Jul 7 2005 (IPS) - Like many Bosnian Muslims living abroad, Eldvin B leaves his current home each summer to return to his native Bosnia-Herzegovina.

But his visits from the U.S. state of Arizona are not for the usual reunification with his family living at home. Eldvin, 27, who insisted on giving only his first name, wants to find out what happened to his younger brother Samir, "who did not make it in July 1995", as he puts it.

Eldvin and Samir were among some 10,000 men fleeing the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica as it was overrun by the Bosnian Serb Army on Jul. 11, 1995, in the final days of the three-year war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

By chance, Eldvin escaped unhurt but his brother did not. Samir was executed, together with almost 8,000 boys and men of Srebrenica, in the days following the fall of the town into Bosnian Serb hands. His body was never found, but Eldvin and his parents have not given up the search.

Their hope rests with the blood samples they have provided to the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) laboratory in the central Bosnian town of Tuzla, and the scientists there who might help them identify the remains of Samir, so they can bury him properly.

"It will mean closure," Eldvin told IPS. "We’ll finally come to terms with what happened to Samir."

Blood samples from Eldvin and his family are among the more than 71,000 stored in the Tuzla DNA lab, where state of the art equipment helps find positive matches between surviving family members and remains of the victims of Srebrenica.

Thousands of former inhabitants of the town moved to Tuzla 10 years ago, as it was the nearest Muslim controlled centre to Srebrenica during the war.

DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is the material inside the nucleus of the body’s cells that carries genetic information.. During reproduction, it is replicated and transmitted to offspring, enabling scientists to "go back" and decipher a person’s genetic background.

Each blood sample in the Tuzla lab is identified with a bar code, which is translated into digital form. Wherever the sample is collected – and many are taken abroad as a large bulk of Srebrenica’s population left for third countries after the war – the information is transmitted to the central DNA computer in Tuzla.

Since 2001 when the lab opened, 2,079 victims, whose bodies were recovered from more than 40 mass graves in and around Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia, have been positively identified, ICMP Communications Officer Doune Porter told reporters Tuesday.

In a ceremony that will mark the 10th anniversary of the fall of Srebrenica on Jul. 11, 580 identified bodies will be buried at the memorial centre of Potocari, close to the town. More than 1,200 identified victims have been put to rest there so far, while hundreds were buried at different locations in Bosnia, where their families resettled in 1995.

Srebrenica was the Muslim enclave in eastern Bosnia, home to more than 40,000 people throughout the war. After its fall, Muslim women and children were expelled to Tuzla and other towns, and Bosnian Serb authorities brought Serbs from different parts of Bosnia to live in the area. Srebrenica now has a population of less than 10,000, most of them Serbs.

According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), 2,800 Muslims have returned to their pre-war homes, most of them to villages surrounding Srebrenica.

The ICMP was set up in 1996, following the wars in former Yugoslavia that left more than 250,000 dead and at least 40,000 people missing.

Initially, international and domestic forensic experts worked with remains discovered in mass graves to try and identify victims. That process led to the identification of only 52 victims by 2001, according to ICMP figures.

Because Bosnian Serbs buried and re-buried many victims several times, once the remains were taken to Tuzla they were sometimes beyond identification.

More than 3,500 body bags with remains of Srebrenica victims are still held in the huge refrigerating facilities in the city morgue of Tuzla, waiting for positive identification.

"The opening of the DNA lab four years ago speeded up the process," ICMP Programme Manager Zlatan Sabanovic told journalists in Tuzla. "It’s a giant scientific puzzle. The goal is to provide 99.99 percent confirmation for surviving relatives."

That is done by comparing the DNA samples of surviving relatives with the DNA tests of the remains. Such testing is easiest when the victims’ parents are alive and provide samples, which enable a 100-percent match.

But many victims were fathers, which cuts the odds that their own murdered sons can be identified. In many cases, all male members of entire families were killed and any surviving female members’ samples give no positive clues. A living daughter’s DNA cannot be used to identify a dead father, while a sister’s DNA sample cannot identify a dead brother.

"We still have a long way to go in this process," ICPM Chief Forensic Pathologist Rifat Kesetovic told journalists. "But we are proud with what has been done so far."

Experts from the ICMP lab helped to identify victims of the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States and those killed in the 2004 tsunami in Asia.

"The pain of relatives is the same everywhere and efforts to bring closure are the least one can do to help families," Nura Begovic, who heads the Tuzla-based non-governmental organization Mothers of Srebrenica, told reporters.

"The people who are trying to help us have become our friends."