Group uncovering mass graves needs tech help

BERUIT» Syrians working to uncover mass graves in an area once ruled by the Islamic State group need help to preserve evidence, identify human remains and shed more light on the horrors perpetrated by the militants, an international watchdog said Tuesday.

Human Rights Watch said thousands of bodies — of civilians slain by the extremists, residents killed in airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition and of IS fighters — remain to be recovered in several mass graves in and around the city of Raqqa. The appeal came in a report released Tuesday by the New York-based group.

Local members of the Raqqa Civil Council, a governing body set up by U.S.-backed and Kurdishled forces, are “struggling to cope with the logistical challenges of collecting and organizing information” on the bodies uncovered and providing it to families searching for missing or dead relatives, Human Rights Watch said.

Raqqa was the extremists’ de facto capital and the seat of their self-proclaimed caliphate, which at the height of their power in 2014 stretched across a third of Syria and Iraq. Since then an array of Syrian and Iraqi forces have driven IS from virtually all the territory it once held, but the group is still present in remote areas along the border.

The extremist group carried out mass killings and other atrocities, including public beheadings. Women and men accused of adultery were stoned to death, while men believed to be gay were thrown from the tops of buildings and then pelted with stones.

Human Rights Watch said identifying missing people and preserving evidence for possible prosecutions is critical for Syria’s future.

“Raqqa city has at least nine mass graves, each one estimated to have dozens, if not hundreds, of bodies, making exhumations a monumental task,” said Priyanka Motaparthy, acting emergencies director at Human Rights Watch .

“Without the right technical assistance, these exhumations may not provide families with the answers they have been waiting for and could damage or destroy evidence crucial to future justice efforts,” she added.

Human Rights Watch quoted Yasser al-Khamis, head of first responders in Raqqa, as saying that land mines further complicate exhumations.

Recovery and analysis of remains from mass graves is a complex process that requires a high level of expertise. Exhumations carried out without forensic experts can destroy critical evidence and complicate the identification of bodies, the report said.

The team in Raqqa, for instance, didn’t take photographs of bodies in accordance with international forensic standards, which is important in documentation, Human Rights Watch said.

Ibrahim al-Hassan, the head of the U.S.-backed Raqqa Reconstruction Committee, said the enormity of the task only became clear after the team of first responders began its work.

“We didn’t expect to have that many graves, and there could be even more,” he said.

The first responders prioritize emergency and rescue work but have expanded their ranks in order to deploy forensics teams to excavate mass graves.