Italy varsities lend experts:
Forensics experts from universities across Italy will help identify hundreds of victims of a 2015 shipwreck, the interior ministry said Friday, as the navy prepared to recover their bodies from the bottom of the Mediterranean.
Over 700 people drowned last April when their boat sank after a collision at sea during the crossing from north Africa. The navy has so far recovered 169 bodies from near the wreck, which lies 380 metres (around 1,245 feet) down off Libya.
The recovery of the ship -- and the majority of the bodies, still trapped inside -- is expected late next month.
Italy’s missing person prefect Vittorio Piscitelli has been overseeing a project to catalogue the victims’ DNA and other distinguishing features in a database to help relatives track down their missing loved ones.
Now the herculean task of identifying the dead will be given a major boost by an agree- ment signed with the interior and education ministries, which has already seen over 20 universities pledge their support and assets.
The current collaboration with universities in Milan, Catania, Messina and Palermo will be extended to “the entire Italian university system”, with volunteers offering “skills in forensic medicine, forensic pathology and forensic genetics”, the interior ministry said in a statement.
Since the first large-scale migrant wrecks off Lampedusa island in 2013, Italy has been looking at ways to establish the names of all those who perish while fleeing war, poverty or persecution in Africa, the Middle East or South Asia.
But there are no passenger lists on crossings organised by traffickers, documents are quickly destroyed in water and many people are not reported missing because relatives fear repercussions from oppressive governments.