Forensic Science: Bodies of Evidence
Studying Disease Effects in Underserved Youths
Quality Management in Health-Care Settings
Changing the Cancer Treatment Paradigm
Unwrapping Secrets of the Ancient World
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Among the sadly numerous atrocities of the Bosnian War, the July 1995 massacre in Srebrenica stands out. Over the course of several days, Serbian forces rounded up and murdered more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims, mostly men and boys, solely on the basis of their identity. Most of the victims were fatally shot; some were simply buried alive. The Serbs initially deposited the bodies of the victims in mass graves. But a few months later, seeking to conceal the evidence of their wrongdoing, they unearthed the bodies and reburied them in secondary and tertiary gravesites. The bloodiest mass murder in Europe since World War II, the Srebrenica massacre was later ruled a genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
The bodies had already begun decomposing by the time the Serbs excavated and reburied them, and the military's use of heavy machinery to complete the grisly task shattered the victims' remains and commingled them, making identification of the dead extraordinarily difficult. With the end of the war came the creation of the International Commission on Missing Persons, an independent organization based in Sarajevo that works to identify those who have disappeared during armed conflict or as a result of human rights violations. ICMP's use of DNA samples has enabled the organization to identify more than 13,000 people whose remains were found in hidden graves, including nearly 3,000 victims of the Srebrenica massacre.
Morbid Puzzle
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Dijana Sarzinski '05 |
Dijana Sarzinski '05 is playing a role in the identification effort. As an osteologist with ICMP, Sarzinski conducts anthropological analyses of the bones and teeth recovered by archeological teams excavating the graves of victims killed in Srebrenica.
"It's like a morbid puzzle," Sarzinski says. "There are a lot of jumbled bones, and we can't determine to whom they belong. We clean them—try to remove all the non-osseous materials, the mummified elements—and then assess the age and sex. And we try to note every individual characteristic—for example, pre-mortem fractures."
After analyzing the bones, Sarzinski extracts DNA samples from them. Some bones, she explains, yield better results than others; teeth are best, followed by the long bones in the body: the femur, or thighbone, and the humerus, the bone in the upper arm. The samples are sent to an ICMP laboratory in Sarajevo, where researchers try to match them with other bones and teeth, which may have been recovered from separate gravesites, based on their DNA. The aim is to gather as many remains from an individual person as possible. Once this is done, the DNA is matched to a blood-donor database, a process known as "re-association," in the hope that a victim's identity may be ascertained.
Once a positive identification is made, ICMP notifies the victim's family. In some cases, family members will take possession of their relative's remains for reburial, according to Sarzinski. In other cases, family members opt to wait and see whether additional remains can be identified. Sarzinski's duties can be difficult. As the Sarajevo native points out, on any given day the Lukavac Reassociation Center, the ICMP forensic facility where she works, is processing the remains of 4,000 of her fellow Bosnians. Desensitization and dark humor have helped Sarzinski and her coworkers cope with their work. But there are times, Sarzinski says, when she works on her own to stay sane.
Documenting the Dead
Sarzinski majored in psychology at Bryn Mawr, but had a longstanding interest in forensics. When her U.S. student visa expired, she returned home to pursue her forensics work.
"Bosnia is a great place to study forensics, because, unfortunately, there are so many remains of thousands of people who were killed in the Bosnian wars here," she says. "We can't bring these people back, but we can at least identify who they were and reunite them with their families."
Sarzinski contacted ICMP's director of excavation and examination and landed an internship as a forensic osteologist. Within a couple of months, she was promoted to a full-time position. She will take a break from the job this fall to pursue a master's in forensic anthropology at the University of Central Lancashire, England. After that, Sarzinski plans to continue her duties with ICMP for a year or so, then study for a Ph.D. in forensic psychology.
There is both a personal and a political aspect to Sarzinski's efforts. Because Muslim and other religious traditions place a high value on having a gravesite at which to pray for the dead, Sarzinski finds it fulfilling to be able to bring peace to families of the Srebrenica massacre victims. And she takes pride in using her scientific training to testify to the world that something truly horrible happened on her home soil.
"Some people still deny the factual evidence that a massacre happened here—yet my work on a daily basis is a result of that massacre," Sarzinski says. "Other people still acknowledge only the possibility of the Srebrenica massacre, and I think, 'Just come to my office where I can show you something that might convince you.' It actually feels good to be doing this for my country, for my people."
Tom Durso writes about science, health care, and business for a variety of publications, including the Philadelphia Business Journal and Family Business magazine.