Ben police f ind tombs dating back 1,500 years
BRITISH police investigating the disappearance of toddler Ben Needham have uncovered four tombs dating back 1,500 years.
Officers deployed to the Greek island of Kos to search for Ben, who vanished aged 21 months, happened upon the graves yesterday, which could contain up to five bodies.
It prompted fears that the investigation, which has received £1million in funding from the Home Office, could be hampered, after local authorities put a stop to searches being carried out in the area surrounding the graves.
It also emerged that officers were still trying to establish whether decomposed material found yards from a farmhouse near the village of Iraklis where Ben went missing could be linked to the toddler.
Ben, from Sheffield, was playing while his grandparents restored the
‘Prepare for the worst’
derelict farmhouse just before he vanished in July 1991.
Speaking at a briefing yesterday, Detective Inspector Jon Cousins, from South Yorkshire Police, said of the ancient graves found in a grove behind the house: ‘They are estimated to be about 1,500 years old.
‘It is something we’ve informed the family about, we’ve informed the archaeological society here on Kos in relation to it and they’ve put a stop to work in that area. So it might be that there is a still a lot of work to be done.’
He added: ‘It is a historical burial ground and it is not connected in any way to this investigation.’
DI Cousins also admitted police were still trying to ‘rule in or out’ whether the decomposed material – which consists of nutrients in the soil – could be related to the inquiry.
There is also a chance it could be human excrement but DI Cousins added that officers were keeping ‘an open mind’. He said of the unknown matter: ‘There’s another area of decomposition that has not been ruled out and that is what we are working on.
‘There are nutrients in the soil that are consistent with the decomposition of something. The scientists have been unable to determine what it is.’
The nutrients were found alongside two other traces of decomposition which turned out to belong to a bat and a dog.
Officers have broken open a cesspit and dug up an olive grove as part of their inquiries into the theory that Ben might have been killed and buried near the farmhouse.
Their search for a body came after a new witness came forward and claimed the boy had been crushed by local digger driver Konstantinos Barkas who had then buried his body. At the time of the revelations, Ben’s mother Kerry Needham was told to ‘prepare for the worst’.
Earlier yesterday, an officer wearing breathing apparatus was lowered into a cesspit, built after 1991, which has been opened in the hope of finding clues regarding Ben’s disappearance.
Officers will today begin their fifth day excavating the site as part of a probe which could last up to two weeks.