Ed. 12, 7 April 2023

Amongst other projects, Andrzej has worked on finding more than 12000 victims of the Second World War and the post-war period all over Europe, and identified over 1000 of them. As creator of the PBGOT’s, Andrzej's mission was to identify victims buried in hidden mass graves at the Powązki Military Cemetery in Warsaw. In an eight-year period between 1948 and 1956, hundreds of anti-communist fighters were sentenced to death by military tribunals, mass executed, and buried at the cemetery in hidden graves. The PBGOT team carried out archaeological exhumations that resulted in the recovery of skeletal remains of 212 victims in several mass graves. Of the 212 remains, 76 victims have been successfully matched to their families and identified through genetic evidence. Ironically, the Powązki Military Cemetery was also the final resting place for high-ranking Polish military officials of Communist regime some of whom were buried above the mass graves of their victims.

For victims of earlier conflicts (such as WWII era) the main difficulty for forensic geneticists was extracting enough DNA of a quality suitable for STR testing. By 2013, however, techniques for extracting genetic material from skeletal remains had advanced to the point that reliable matches with tissue samples of the victims’ nearest living relatives were finally possible.

We asked Andrzej to tell us more about the PBGOT project here

Most of us will remember waking up to the shocking news of hearing of the second Malaysian Air disaster within a few months of the disappearance of flight MH370 on March 8, 2014.

In the second incident, Flight MH17 crashed and burned in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014. All 298 people on board died in the crash. An inquiry into the crash determined that the aircraft was shot down by a Russian-made surface-to-air missile.

Leading the antemortem DVI team in Malaysia was Nor Aidora Binti Saedon, Director of the Forensic DNA Division at the Centre of Analysis for Forensic Science, Malaysia Department of Chemistry. Aidora also travelled to Cairo for the HIDS2023 filming where she shared the planning and processes that were behind the retrieval and identification of the victims of the air-crash in Ukraine and spoke about what was going on back in Malaysia during this time with the antemortem team, how long it took to get familial reference samples as well as which DNA analysis techniques were used.

Don't miss the chance to watch this riveting account of the MH17 disaster victim identification project as told by Aidora. Add it to your calendar today!

EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA**
TUESDAY, MAY 23 2023

1:20 PM (GMT) - Identifying the Victims of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17

**this interview will be broadcast in three different time zones, so be sure to check the agenda to add your time zone to the calendar.

The dynamic Dr. Kizzie Shako (Police Surgeon and Senior Medical Officer
Ministry of Health, Forensic and Pathology Services, Kenya), recently travelled with Vanessa to Cairo, Egypt for the filming of HIDS 2023 to feature our SAK Global Donation Project which is aimed at improving the Survivor’s Journey to Justice in Africa. It is also where Vanessa co-hosted the exciting 2023 DNA Hit of the Year series which showcases six new and unique cases from around the world, ranging from traditional database matches to emerging applications such as forensic genetic genealogy and familial searching against criminal databases. You can watch all of this and more between the 23-25 May 2023 by simply registering for the HIDS 2023 Conference here. It's virtual, it's free and it's not to be missed.

Pictured above, Stephen Fonseca, Head of the African Centre for Medicolegal Systems at ICRC doing some field work involving the recovery of human remains caused by flooding. 

Why is protecting and preserving the dead is so important to you?

I help people to understand why this is so important - if there isn’t a structured programme identifying the bodies of loved ones, and preferably informing them of the fate and whereabouts  of their loved one, the whole social structure falls apart for that family. Every person has the right to be identified in death and respected by way of their body being treated according to their cultural rites and religion. Families have a right to mourn their loss and pay final respects to those lost. Many missing persons cases continue to remain unresolved because the dead were not professionally managed and the needed information and samples collected for comparison before being buried, or even worse, cremated.
 
Purpose of military identification?

Failure to develop military identification programmes contributes significantly to dead combatants being misidentified or not identified at all. Using medico-legal assessments and observations, we realised there is no military programme or guidelines, especially in Africa, that explains how soldiers need to be searched for, recovered, examined, stored and ultimately identified, by comparison to what was collected before going to war. Combatants’ families may be asked to provide DNA samples and other forensically useful information for information, an unnecessary distress to the family, had this been taken from the combatant in life and properly stored in the event of the combatant going missing or dying.  
 
Simply put, there are insufficient preliminary steps taken to identify soldiers before they are sent to conflict areas. 
 
Give me something human — material or elements — and I’m going to find a way to develop a DNA profile and other descriptive features! But, it's useless if I don’t have something to compare it with. This is why a structured identification (including DNA profiling) programme for combatants is crucial. 
 
Your vision for this programme?

To collaborate with non-state and state military groups to establish military identification programs   for combatants before they are sent to battle. This includes creating the necessary identification on the combatants person, such as dog tags and formal personal identification, a centralized repository that holdS all identifiable information (including the location of available DNA samples) of combatants, and proper Standard Operating Procedures that address the professional management of missing and dead combatants to ensure that the missing are located, the dead are identified, and the families are informed and are provided the necessary bereavement-related support.  

READ MORE HERE

Follow Stephen's work here

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