I wanted a lock of his hair. When they opened the coffin his arms were gone

Mother demands answers from MOD after making the horrific

A MOTHER whose Guardsman son was killed by a Taliban bomb in Afghanistan has called for an inquiry after discovering parts of his body ‘went missing’ following his return to Britain.

Jacqui Janes believes 20-year-old Jamie’s arms and hands were retained without her permission.

When her son’s coffin was opened so she could take a lock of his hair, she was shocked to discover that his arms and hands had been replaced by padding under his uniform.

Yet a post-mortem report mentioned injuries to both arms and hands, and even noted a tattoo of his girlfriend’s name on one arm.

Mrs Janes, 49, has repeatedly raised her concerns with the Ministry of Defence over the past three years, but has never received the answers she desperately needs.

She has only broken her silence now that the Royal Military Police have admitted breaking rules and keeping the body parts of other dead soldiers at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford – where her own son’s post-mortem examination was held.

When Jamie died in 2009, then Prime Minister Gordon Brown famously misspelt his name in a handwritten letter of condolence to his mother. But the enduring question of why her son’s bomb-damaged hands and arms had been removed without permission has caused Mrs Janes far deeper anguish than the controversy over Mr Brown’s note.

Yesterday, the MoD announced that another soldier from Jamie’s unit, 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, was killed in Helmand Province on sentry duty.

Jamie – a soldier from the age of 16 – died on foot patrol in Nad e-Ali, central Helmand, on October 5, 2009, blown up by an improvised explosive device which also wounded three of his colleagues.

He was pronounced dead after failed resuscitation attempts on a rescue helicopter and at the field hospital at Camp Bastion.

Afterwards, his body was escorted by the military police’s Special Investigations Branch (SIB) from the operating theatre to the mortuary at Camp Bastion and on his repatriation flight to Britain, arriving on the morning of October 9. Once his body had been repatriated at RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire on the same day, it was transported by the SIB to the John Radcliffe Hospital.

The Mail on Sunday has seen documents confirming that a Sergeant Griffin of the SIB accompanied the remains in a sealed bag which was opened at the hospital and identified to Warrant Officer Andrew Bishop, of the SIB’s Forensic Department. The body was stored in a secure refrigerator, awaiting a post-mortem examination by Home Office pathologist Dr Nicholas Hunt.

Dr Hunt’s report of October 12, 2009 – seen by this newspaper – recorded multiple wounds and referred to Jamie’s hands and left arm being badly ‘disrupted’ – a medical term meaning the normal shape had been altered after layers of tissue were blown apart.

And in his ‘descriptions’ he makes note of ‘a tattoo which appeared to read “Kelly” running vertically down the outer aspect of the left upper arm’. There were also mentions of injuries to forearms, elbows, wrists and fingers.

Afterwards, Jamie’s body was photographed and routine DNA tests carried out. On October 16, SIB officers took the body to Albin International, a repatriation and funeral company contracted by the MoD.

There, Jamie was dressed in his