As a forensic anthropologist, Ewa Klonowski has seen many families face the dilemma of whether to agree to another identification process. As we drive toward the ossuary at the cemetery in the town of Visoko, she recalls her work in other morgues and ossuaries, as well as at burial sites during exhumations.
The morgue in Visoko is a cold place, and, because of its purpose, seems even colder than it is, especially in winter. In the white-tiled morgue, the windows are slightly open. Bags of bones lie on metal grey tables. In the next room, entered through a heavy metal door, there are remains lying on shelves.
Klonowski is used to this environment. She says there are currently about 2,000 remains lying in morgues across Bosnia that have DNA profiles but no matches to families. From 1995 to 2003, about 8,000 remains were identified using the classical method, she adds.
She recalls the situation at Kurevo, near Prijedor, northwest Bosnia, where a young man was exhumed and his mother said she recognised him from his sweater. She was convinced it was a sweater she had knitted herself. But when the DNA results arrived several years later, it was determined that the remains were not in fact her son’s. When another family arrived, a second mother also claimed to recognise the same sweater.
“Both mothers said that they knitted this sweater,” Klonowski recalled.
“In Hrastova Glava, we had two families who wanted one body. But we can only give it to one family. And only DNA can tell us with 100 per cent certainty,” she added.
Gjuderija says there are around 6,000 classical identifications in which misidentification may have occurred. Some 50 to 100 cases are tested annually with the new method, to reliably determine their identity.
Classical identification was the usual method before the introduction of DNA analysis, explains Samira Krehic, head of the International Commission on Missing Persons programme for the Western Balkans, and it lasted until the early 2000s, when the ICMP opened its own DNA analysis laboratories.
Krehic emphasised that resolving issues of misidentification depends entirely on the goodwill and solidarity of the families who have identified their missing using the traditional method.
“It would happen that a body was exhumed and sampled, and the DNA matched a blood reference, but the family had misidentified someone else – so there were scenarios in which, by resolving one misidentification, three correct identities were obtained. It’s a domino system,” Krehic noted.
Klonowski explained that while it’s never too late, families can refuse to donate blood.
“A family can say: ‘I’ve been going to the cemetery, to the grave for years, for years, that’s my son. I feel that’s my son. I know in my heart that’s my son.’ So, what then? What can the person who wants to solve the problem do?” she said.
