EULEX organizing meetings with missing person families

A press release said that the sessions would be a platform for the families and EULEX experts to discuss the mission’s mandate, forensic work, the mission’s support to the Institute of Forensic Medicine (IFM) in finding, identifying, and handing over the remains of missing persons to their families.

The press release quoted EULEX Human Rights Advisor Valentina Vitali as saying that the families of missing persons are entitled to seek information from relevant institutions about their loved ones and adding that these institutions are obliged to provide information that this does not compromise the investigation.

IFM’s Deputy Director and EULEX forensic archeologist Javier Santana said his experts face a number of challenges including the fact that bodies were hidden, a lack of credible information on grave sites, misidentification and the fact that some families have not provided DNA samples.

EULEX Forensic Anthropologist Luísa Marinho said that mission experts conducted 725 filed operations and 197 exhumations to date and identified the remains of 332 missing persons.

EULEX said it would turn of the lights at its headquarters for 5 minutes at 8:30 pm on Thursday to show support for the families of missing persons on Kosovo Missing Persons day.