Search for `disappeared' in Cyprus mirrors Ireland

In a sun-bleached beige and dusty military cemetery at Lakatamia, on the outskirts of the Cypriot capital, a team of forensic pathologists from Physicians for Human Rights are digging for the remains of an unknown number of Greek Cypriots killed during the tragic summer of 1974.

A canopy has been strung up to provide protection from the hot summer sun and a site office set up in a ribbed metal shipping container. The heat is blistering to 35 Celsius here on the central plain, the Mesaoria.

The climate could not be much more different, but the scene is eerily reminiscent of the search for the "disappeared" in Ireland.

The gate to the cemetery is blocked by a mechanical shovel and the exhumation area is cordoned off by yellow police tape.

Fifteen experts from six countries yesterday began sifting the crumbly soil for bone fragments. Another five team members arrive this week. The scientists will also work across town at the main civilian cemetery, named for the Byzantine Emperor, Constantine, and his Empress, Eleni.

The Boston-based Physicians for Human Rights, which has worked in Bosnia and Croatia, Somalia and Rwanda, shared the 1997 Nobel Prize with another non-governmental organisation. Manpower is being provided by the Cyprus National Guard.

Some of the remains to be identified are those of 1,619 Greek Cypriots "missing" since Turkish troops invaded the island following the July 15th, 1974, coup by the military junta in Athens against the then president, Archbishop Makarios.

The scientists may also find remains of an additional 93 persons - policemen, presidential bodyguards and soldiers killed in the coup, whose names are not on the list of the missing, and of mainland Greek troops serving with the National Guard.

It has been known for many years that the headstones on 65 graves do not correspond to the remains buried beneath the earth, sharpening the anguish of the families of the missing.

A retired government official and Lakatamia resident, Mr Andreas Savva, said that as many as 200 people could have been buried without identification.

He claimed he had personally searched bodies with the aim of passing on information to their relatives. "They did not have to be unknown," he said.

His statement confirms information given to me by a doctor in Nicosia General Hospital at the time who said he had seen as many as 90 bodies in the morgue loaded into a truck and driven away.

Last year two women, convinced that the bodies of their husbands had been buried at Lakatamia, tried to open some of the wrongly marked graves with their bare hands. This demonstration of despair seems to have forced the authorities to act.

Dr William Haglund, the forensic team's leader, said the work "will take us a month to six weeks". The completion coincides with the 25th anniversary of the coup and invasion.

It is bitterly ironic that Dr Haglund's team will carry out preliminary tests at a temporary facility located at the former premises of Machi, the newspaper published by Mr Nikos Sampson, a right-wing political figure proclaimed president by the putsch participants but deposed a week later.

The material recovered will be transferred to the Cyprus Institute of Neurology, which has created a DNA bank containing samples from the relatives of the missing. Final identification could take up to three months.

The Cyprus government says it decided to have the bodies exhumed now because scientific advances make identification possible.

The Foreign Minister, Mr Ioannis Cassoulides, said the exhumations had nothing to do with a 1997 agreement providing for an exchange of information on missing persons. The Turkish side claims that 803 Turkish Cypriots went missing between 1963 and 1974.

In January 1998 there was an exchange of files locating the graves of 400 Greek and 200 Turkish Cypriots but the process was promptly suspended. The Turkish side insists that the Greek Cypriots must accept that all the missing are dead before the exchange resumes. The Greek Cypriots argue they cannot agree that all the missing are dead until proof of death is offered.

It is hoped that identification of the remains of persons on the list of missing Greek Cypriots will encourage the Turkish side to set aside its condition and resume implementation of the 1997 accord.