39 Mosul hostages ‘shot dead more than a yr ago’

NEWDELHI: The 39 Indian workers who were killed after being kidnapped in 2014 by the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq’s Mosul were shot dead, most of them in the head, the process of DNA tests has confirmed.

Iraq’s Department of Forensic Medicine conducted the tests on the bodies that had been exhumed by Martyrs Foundation from a mound in Badush, near Mosul. Dr Zaid Ali Abbas, head of the department, said over the phone from Baghdad that “most of the bodies had gunshot wounds on the head”. “When the remains came to us, they were just skeletons, only bones. They had no muscle or tissue. I can confirm that they definitely died over a year ago. Forensically, one can only put the time of death at either less than a year or over a year,’’ Abbas said.

External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj had told Parliament of the death of the 39 workers. When asked how they had been killed and if they had been shot, Swaraj had said at a presser: “Whether they were killed 6 months ago or 2 years ago becomes irrelevant because the search for the bodies could not have commenced until Mosul was liberated. Mosul was liberated on July 9 and on July 10 Gen [VK] Singh was sent there...

“So far as to as when they were killed, it cannot be ascertained, but the second thing that you asked, it is possible that when the certificates of Martyrs Foundation come, it might have something about how they were killed, whether by a bullet or how. When we will see the DNA profiling then we might find the answer to this question, but when were they killed, it has become irrelevant today because the dead bodies could be found only after that, earlier.”

THE HEAD OF IRAQ’S FORENSIC MEDICINE DEPARTMENT SAID MOST OF THE BODIES HAD GUNSHOT WOUNDS ON THE HEAD