Editors --- "Forensics in Kosovo" [2001] AUFPPlatypus 14; (2001) 71 Platypus: Journal of the Australian Federal Police, Article 5

• The Forensic Exhumation Project in Kosovo, 2000
• The Reality of the Mission
• Physical stresses
• Mental stresses
• Emotional stresses
• References (History and Time Line):

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Forensic Science in a war-torn landscape

The Forensic Exhumation Project in Kosovo, 2000

As the sole Australian on the Forensic Exhumation Project in Kosovo during 2000, Federal Agent Justine Adamek spent seven months as a member of an international team of forensic experts whose task it was to determine the cause of death of the victims of the war in Kosovo.

Extremes in weather, difficulty with local customs and sheer enormity of the task were a constant test on the perseverance of the team members. Throughout the period of the project, team drew strength from each other and from the friendship of the locals.

Following similar forensic missions in Rwanda, Bosnia and Croatia, a project was initiated by the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The team for this project consisted of an international association of forensic expertise in the fields of archaeology, anthropology, pathology, odontology, crime scene investigators and photographers.

Participants in the forensic team were from a wide variety of United Nation member countries including Europe, the United Kingdom and the Americas. There was only one Australian employed on the team for the entire season.

The team travelled to Kosovo for the purpose of locating, exhuming, examining and determining the cause of death of the victims of the war in Kosovo. They were to provide independent forensic evidence to support the indictment of Slobodan Milosevic and his men for crimes against humanity in Kosovo. The forensic season started in April 2000, and was completed by November, with more than 2000 victims of the war exhumed, examined and returned to their families during the season. The majority of these victims were adults, but also included babies, children, teenagers and the elderly.

The forensic team was divided into two groups. One group was the field team, responsible for travelling throughout the province and attending identified or potential sites for assessment and exhumation. This group consisted of mainly archaeologists, anthropologists, crime scene investigators, photographers, and was supported by local labourers, interpreters and machine operators (bobcat and truck drivers). A Kosovo Forces (KFOR) military team for security and a de-mining team accompanied each field team daily.

Using the information provided by the investigators, the team went to each location. The majority of sites were in rural locations where entire villages had been annihilated. In most instances, the investigator met the forensic team at the site, to provide additional information. Once the site was established, the de-mining team cleared the site and a working area nearby. The labourers were used to move the soil until evidence – a coffin or human remains – was unearthed. An archaeologist or anthropologist would then replace the labourers, meticulously removing small trowel loads of soil from around the remains to preserve their integrity. Crime scene investigators and photographers would be responsible for recording the scenes, allocating individual identification numbers for the remains, continuity of evidence collected, and maintaining the documentation for each scene. All remains throughout the province were returned to the central morgue operating near the village of Orahovac.

The second half of the forensic team remained at the Orahovac morgue. This team consisted of pathologists, morgue technicians, odontologists, anthropologists, photographers, and crime scene investigators. This team was responsible for the forensic examination of each of the remains to determine identity and the cause of death. Samples were collected for DNA analysis from each of the remains. Teeth were charted, clothing removed, washed and recorded. Ballistic exhibits were removed and retained. Artefacts were collected and retained for return to the surviving family members.

The remains were delivered to the morgue and stored in refrigerated containers. They were generally examined site by site, in the order they were delivered by the field team, within several days of being delivered. The remains, stored in body bags, were opened on the morgue tables. Crime scene examiners and morgue technicians then removed all the clothing, taking care not to further damage the often shredded and burnt fabrics. All pockets were checked for artefacts. The people wearing these clothes were often wearing all they owned and fleeing in fear of their lives. Valuables were secreted into the linings, hems, pockets and in any place they could to avoid loss and/or detection. The clothing was later washed and hung out on clothes lines to dry, to be recorded. Clothing was often a source of identification to surviving relatives, and a confirmation of the cause of death, displaying the trajectories of bullets and shrapnel consistently through each layer.

The pathologist would then examine the remains. At this stage, some 18 months after the death of the first victims, the remains were decomposed. The manner of the death, how long after death the body was buried, where the body was buried and the manner of the burial all contributed to the condition it was in when it was forensically examined. The state of the remains ranged from fully fleshed and putrefied, to skeletal, with every possible state in between. A few were mummified. They all displayed a variety of trauma – crushed, burnt, and/or peppered with shrapnel. As such, great importance was placed upon the examination of the bones to assess damage, and the presence of ballistic evidence that may indicate the cause of death. The anthropologists laid the bones out on the examination table in order to conduct a full visual examination of all the present bones. In most cases, body parts were either completely absent, or shattered beyond repair. In many cases, the skull had sustained major trauma. In a significant number of cases, all that remained were the charred remains of a skull and limb, and some burnt fragments of clothing.

DNA samples were taken from the femur (thigh bones) rib, clavicle (collar bone) and, if present, the teeth. Ballistic evidence was retained. Artefacts were separately packaged. These artefacts, specifically retained by the person fleeing for their lives, were often simple luxuries that might be taken for granted – a razor and mirror for shaving, a comb, a lighter, a packet of cigarettes, a small toy. All were hidden meticulously within the folds of the layers of clothing.

Identification presented a challenge. In many instances, remains were exhumed from marked graves, with identity being established by the surviving relatives of villagers who had buried the dead in the graves that were nominated for exhumation. However, in about one fifth of the cases, the identity was not established until after examination.

Clothing played an important part of the identification process. The majority of the remains identified were those of simple villagers whose priorities in life did not extend to wearing the latest of fashions. Much of the clothing was either hand-made, or meticulously darned and mended to extend its life. The presence of one article of clothing that could be identified to a particular missing relative by a survivor, was not, in itself, evidence of identification. However, three layers of clothing – three pairs of trousers, long johns, undershirts, T-shirts, shirts, jumpers and jackets, all nominated as belonging to a particular person was much more indicative of identification. The identification of clothing, associated with previous medical evidence, dental records, artefacts, location of the remains and, if necessary, DNA, established the identity of those previously buried in unidentified graves.

Of the 2000 or so bodies exhumed throughout the season, only 164 were re-buried in a cemetery as “not yet identified”. Most of these were the charred fragments of bone and clothing which was all that remained of the person following their death. Work is still being conducted to establish the identity of these people so the remains can be returned to their families.

The Reality of the Mission

Participating as the only Australian forensic member on the team, and being one of only nine to complete the entire seven-month season in a war-torn province presented mental, physical and emotional challenges that could not be anticipated.

Physical stresses

There were a number of physical stresses that eventually took its toll on every team member. Each person was affected differently, although the stress factors were the same. These factors included:

• Working in diverse weather conditions: low temperatures, rain, high temperatures (up to 50 degrees Celsius).

• Seemingly endless travelling on heavily damaged and traffic-clogged roads. Due to the safety issues (most significantly, land mines), main roads were used by all types of traffic, which included tanks and other large military vehicles, over-laden trucks and buses, horses and carts and other farming vehicles, as well as the hundreds of different aid organisation vehicles within the province. Trips over short distances were delayed by the traffic and road conditions which sometimes turned an 8-hour day into a 16-hour day to travel just over 80km to and from a site.

• Food items for those with special dietary needs were not always available.

• Safety issues – land mines, curfews, political unrest, bombings and murders in the host towns, and an intense fascination by the local men towards female members of the team, all added to the physical dangers.

• Gastric complaints of varying degrees were experienced by more than 90 per cent of the team. These were prolonged among the team members who stayed for the entire seven months. Other medical conditions, a few broken bones and other complaints saw a number of the team spending several nights in the military hospital, throughout the season.

Mental stresses

The sheer enormity of the task was daunting in itself. But the fact that you were there as a matter of your own choice, placed pressure on everyone to be able to complete each day without being adversely affected by the work. However, even the most tried and true forensic expert could not help but be affected by the reality of the situation. It wasn't just the state of the remains, how they may have been disposed of, or the manner of death, it was the addition of the grieving relatives – the mothers clutching on to the head markers of their children's graves, crying for the loss of their family and the grief of the atrocities. The sights of the absolute devastation of the war, glimpses of the spirit of the normally stoic and proud people crushed, could not be ignored.

Survivors at each village were used to aid organisations coming and asking them to recount their experiences. As such, at each location there was always a story to be told, each one more horrific than the last. To see the children, with looks on their faces old beyond their years, seemingly no longer affected by the visions of death and destruction that existed all around them, was mentally taxing.

Emotional stresses

Being away from family, friends, the comforts of home (even the simple things in life), in an alien environment all affected the level of emotional well-being.

One of the methods of coping was by leaning on each other for support. Of course, it is recognised each person has their own individual methods of coping, but personally, being able to discuss things that were disturbing me with compassionate colleagues who were also involved, helped. I also kept a journal. I wrote about each day, what I saw, what I did, anecdotes, jokes, serious incidents, anything that left a memory in my mind for that day was recorded. The thoughts and memories recorded in seven months ran to more than 118,000 words. The journal was supported by more than 500 photographs and digital images captured to record both the beauty and the horror that existed in the province.

Small or seemingly insignificant factors took on mammoth proportions as the season wore on. Endurance was tested to the limit. Up to 20 days without running water and electricity, returning home from 16-hour days covered in sweat, the smell of putrefied body fluids, tired and hungry, yet unable to sleep because of the heat, or visions of what you experienced during the day, was enough to test even the most dedicated team members.

The negative incidents were counteracted by positive aspects of the mission. Personal and professional achievements were made throughout the season. Being the only Australian on the team, and having never been to Europe before, the onus was on me to learn about the history and cultures of not only the province I was living in, but also of the colleagues who were to become my friends and family for the next seven months.

Accommodation for the team was with local families in the southern town of Prizren. During a period of seven months, members of the forensic team, most of whom were transitional throughout the season, shared house with Albanian families in a residential part of the town. These families opened their doors to us and we became an integral part of each other's lives. Although there were some cultural barriers that could never be crossed our home life was a small oasis in the horror that was faced daily. (My hosts could not understand vegetarianism and continually insisted that the meat dishes the mother of the household had prepared, be eaten).

Living in the same town for seven months meant that not only did I learn my way around, but I became a familiar face to many of the locals. Towards the end of the seven months, a quick 10-minute walk into the UNMIK building to send an e-mail became a one hour affair. I was stopped along the way to have animated conversations in a mixture of English, Albanian and hand signals with many of the local inhabitants whom I could call friends.

Our work provided closure to many families who had become separated from their relatives during the war. Although the results of their searching for loved ones ended up in the acknowledgement of their death, it meant that they did not have to spend another day wondering and hoping that their brother, father, child or parent might walk through the village gates some time in the future.

I have a sense of pride that is not politically motivated, that I was given this opportunity and was able to carry out my duties in an independent forensic team to the best of my capabilities. I also have a sense of national pride that I was the only Australian, and only one of nine that completed the entire season under trying conditions that tested each of us to the limit of our endurance. I believe this experience, that I am unable to fully explain in words, has changed me positively and irrevocably.

References (History and Time Line):

• Jane's Sentinel web site www.janes.com/news/defence/

• CNN website www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1998/10/kosovo

• BBC website news.bbc.co.uk

• ABC Production The Big Picture The War in Europe parts 1-3