RCMP creating DNA profiles to identify crash victims

Canada’s national police force is taking part in the massive effort to identify dozens of Canadians killed in last week’s plane crash in Iran.

While no RCMP officers are currently on the ground in Tehran, where the Ukrainian passenger jet was shot down by the Iranian military, a spokeswoman said the force is co-ordinating the crucial work of gathering physical material that will eventually be used to identify the remains of the 57 Canadian victims.

“On-site disaster victim identification assistance from Canada has not been requested at this time,” Catherine Fortin said in a statement. “The RCMP is currently creating DNA profiles here in Canada to assist Iran with Canadian victim identification.”

Much of that work, Fortin said, will involve gathering samples from family members of the plane crash victims. Of the 176 people killed in the crash, federal officials have said 138 were bound for Canada.

The Canadian Press has independently confirmed at least 89 victims with ties to Canada, many of them students and professors returning after spending the December break visiting relatives in Iran.

Fortin said the RCMP, which operates the Ottawa bureau of the global law enforcement organization Interpol, began supporting victim identification efforts at the request of the equivalent office in Tehran.

She said the RCMP will work with local police forces to contact relatives of Canadian plane crash victims.

“Some family members may therefore be asked to provide biological samples to assist with the identification of the victims,” Fortin said, adding those samples would then be used to generate a DNA profile that would later help identify remains.

Dr. David Sweet, professor of dentistry at the University of British Columbia and Interpol’s former chief scientific officer for disaster victim identification, said such material forms a vital part of all efforts to put names to those killed in large-scale tragedies.

He said the profiles generated in Canada will be compared to fragments of teeth, jaw bones and other tissues most likely to have survived the crash, which took place on Jan. 8 when the plane was hit by at least one surface-to-air missile fired by the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards.