A Gruesome Task for Criminologists

No matter where a catastrophe strikes, when Germans are among its victims, the Identification Commission of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) is called into action -- the 1998 train disaster in Eschede, the 2000 Concorde crash in Paris and now the tsunamis in South Asia. Disasters that leave victims unrecognizable are the special focus of Germany’s forensic science team.

Victims from many nations

Since Dec. 29, the German identification commission has been deployed to Thailand where they are working around the clock to determine the identity of drowning victims, many of whom have been mutilated and dismembered by the torrential floods and distorted beyond recognition as their corpses begin to deteriorate in the tropical heat.

Even though time is of the essence – with each day, the number of new victims continues to grow while decay begins to set in – the forensic scientists could not begin their work until the start of the new year, after receiving the go-ahead from the Thai government. With experts from 19 different nations involved in the rescue and removal operation, it was crucial to coordinate methods. It is the first time so many victims from so many different countries needed to be identified.

The most difficult work for the criminologists will be in the tourist resorts of Phuket and Khao Lak, where a Buddhist temple has been converted into a makeshift morgue. More than 300 corpses are stacked in the temple awaiting identification. Some 20 percent are estimated to be those of foreigners.

“I fear it’s a very high number of German victims,” said Peter Finger, spokesman for the German embassy in Bangkok.

Identifying victims

According to Dirk Büchner, spokesman for the BKA, there are three key methods for determining the identity of a victim: fingerprints, dental analysis and DNA. But each of these requires a good deal of time and depends on comparing with available sample data from relatives.

“It could be a hair, a fingerprint or the x-rays from a dentist,” Büchner said. Serial numbers from pace makers or an artificial hip could help provide information on a victim’s identity as do eye color, the shape of earlobes, scars or tattoos.

If a victim cannot be immediately identified, the forensic scientists take a sample of DNA from the thigh bone and save it for later comparison. To keep track of individual corpses, an electronic chip is attached to the body.

Responding to fears that corpses could be buried or cremated before the criminologists had the chance to identify them, Thailand’s chief forensic scientist, Pornthip Rojanasunant, said that no foreign corpse would be deposed of before an expert had the chance to examine it.

Given the sheer numbers of victims and the difficulty of proving origin, the foreign teams of forensic scientists acknowledged that it would take weeks or even years before all the victims could be identified. The Thai government on Sunday said that it was quite possible that many of the corpses would remain forever unidentified.

30 years experience

The German Identification Commission was founded in 1972 after an airplane crash on the Canary Island of Teneriffa killed 155 people, many of them German tourists. Since then the commission has been involved in more than 24 missions both in Germany and abroad; 16 of which were airplane crashes.

In its three decades of experience, the team of 110 forensic scientists has so far been able to identify 1,316 disaster victims beyond a doubt. Working largely on a voluntary basis in a psychologically demanding field, the criminologists cooperate closely with forensic specialists throughout Germany.