![]() It seems clear, from the quantity of bone recovered, that the activists’ ashes were not thrown into the Fish River, as the security police maintained at their TRC hearings. Some of the families have said they would be happy to have only one bone to bury all Mthimkulu’s mother has so far been able to bury is some of his hair, which fell out after he was secretly poisoned by the police.įullard said though the probe is still in an investigation phase, and has drawn no conclusions, several discrepancies have come to light. One of the team’s main goals is to recover identifiable remains for families to bury. ”At this stage we don’t have anything to contradict that,” she said. If the results of the bone examination are consistent, there will be a ”strong case” that the remains are those of the slain activists. However, the remains were uncovered at the site pointed out to the TRC by the perpetrators. ”So it’s probably not a very hopeful scenario,” she said. The bone examination is being done by experts, including forensic anthropologists Claudia Bisso - an Argentinian who has been involved in locating remains of victims of state death squads in that country - and Steven Symes, from the United States, an expert on trauma in bone.įullard said the result of the odontological report and the bone findings will be discussed with the family members of the slain activists before they are made public.Īsked when this will be, she said: ”We anticipate within weeks.”īut it could be longer if the team decides to attempt DNA analysis of some of the bones.įire has a destructive effect on DNA in bones, and testing in a similar case, that of the Mamelodi Ten, has so far been ”mixed and inconclusive”. Over 60 teeth have already been examined by a forensic odontologist, or tooth expert, who has submitted his report. The collected bone is now being examined in an attempt to link it with individual activists, or at least to say how many people it came from. ”We’re still kind of in shock that we found these remains at all,” Fullard said. Once this had been sorted by hand, they were left with just over 12kg of burnt bone - a major surprise to the team members, who had been expecting at most a small bone or tooth that the killers missed when cleaning up after their grisly deed. This included charcoal, fragments of burnt tyres and bone, as well as bullets and a bunch of keys. Team leader Madeleine Fullard told journalists at a briefing at the medical school on Wednesday that the investigators, who include archaeologists and forensic anthropologists, removed about 260kg of material from the site for closer examination. In 2007 the NPA’s missing persons task team oversaw an excavation of the site of the fire, and also drained a nearby septic tank. ![]()
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