A TOTAL of 321 identifications of missing persons in Cyprus have been completed since 2007, out of which 66 were Turkish Cypriots, the Greek Cypriot member of the Committee on Missing Persons (CMP) Aristos Aristotelous said yesterday.
To date, the remains of 853 individuals have been exhumed from different burial sites located across the island.
Over 588 burial sites have been visited and opened by the CMP, including 350 that contained no human remains.
Aristotelous was speaking at an extraordinary meeting of the Pancyprian Committee of Relatives of Undeclared Prisoners and Missing Persons which convened to discuss the latest developments in the issue, following a decision by the CMP to terminate its cooperation with the Cyprus Institute of Neurology and Genetics (CING) and to conclude a contract with the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) bases in Bosnia.
Aristodelous said that in 2007 56 identifications were confirmed, 53 in 2008, 83 in 2009, 71 in 2010, 51 in 2011, but only seven this year due to the dispute with CING.
Presidential Commissioner George Iacovou who was also at the meeting yesterday, expressed the conviction that the problem which arose with regard to the identification process after the termination of the cooperation between the CMP and the Institute would ultimately be resolved.
He also said that the fact that the project for identifying the remains would be carried out by a foreign lab was “a traumatic experience” for him as he was the one in the middle of the dispute trying to sort it out.
The issue of a new contract between CING and the CMP was on the table for at least three years.
The CMP started discussions with the institute on introducing new, stricter standards in the identification process from 2008. While some demands were met, disagreement remained on a large number, including the requirement to hand over copies of the genetic profiles of relatives of the missing, and carry out “blind testing” in the DNA matching process.
In May 2011, the contract between the UNDP and CING expired. It was renewed for two more months, after which, no more remains were sent to the institute. Since then, CING had been working on identifying the backlog of remains sent before the contract’s expiration.
During the next six months, further negotiations were held to reach an agreement that would keep the programme in Cyprus, a target for which the three-member CMP unanimously agrees on.
After failing to make progress, the UN decided to invite bids in an international tender process for the identification of the remains in February. A month later the UN awarded the project to a lab in Bosnia.
According to the CMP website there are 1,464 Greek Cypriots listed as missing persons and another 703 additional cases from the other categories, which were not specified.
The official number of Turkish Cypriot missing persons is 494, and another 33 from other categories. The majority of Turkish Cypriot missing persons date from the intercommunal trouble in 1963-1974.