MILAN (AP) --
Adal Neguse, an Eritrean immigrant whose brother drowned in a
smuggler's boat while trying to reach Italy in 2013, knows all too well
what might be in store for the relatives of those dying now in similar
accidents in the Mediterranean.
Months of anguish over whether their loved one's body will be found.
The emotional pain of looking at photos of badly disfigured corpses.
Red tape and wasted time with bureaucrats who "just talk and talk" but don't keep their promises.
As
record numbers of desperate people from the Middle East, Africa and
Asia flood into Europe, hundreds are also dying in risky journeys
arranged by unscrupulous smugglers, and authorities are struggling to
identify those victims.
When the body of
3-year-old Aylan Kurdi washed up on a Turkish beach along with those of
his mother and brother, he came to represent others who also have
perished trying to seek a better life. But unlike the young Syrian
refugee, many of them remain anonymous and unclaimed.
As
of Sept. 1, at least 364,000 people have crossed the Mediterranean to
Europe this year. More than 2,800 have died, or are lost and presumed
dead, according to the International Organization for Migration.
Only
about a third of the bodies recovered are ever identified, said Frank
Laczko, head of the IOM's Global Migration Data Analysis Center in
Berlin.
"If each person has 10 relatives,
that's close to 30,000 people who are affected," Laczko said. Besides
the emotional pain, survivors must cope with legal issues such as
property ownership to the right to remarry.
When
Austrian authorities opened a truck apparently abandoned by smugglers
on a highway near Vienna on Aug. 27, they discovered 71 badly decomposed
bodies of men, women and children, and officials said some may never be
identified. Another tragedy that same day left Libyan authorities with
the task of identifying scores of bodies from two boats that sank off
the coast.
In a commercial disaster like a
plane crash, authorities have passenger manifests, electronic tickets,
credit card records and data from travel agencies to work with. But
human traffickers understandably usually keep no records when they
arrange passage to Europe for those paying cash, so there are no
emergency contacts and no way to contact relatives. And many refugees
carry no ID.
Laczko said his agency wants a
Europe-wide database for families to provide information about missing
relatives and for authorities to distribute details about bodies they
have found. He also wants far more attention paid to mining data from
cellphones found on victims.
In the case of
the truck ditched in Austria, experts are studying documents found with
the dead but also have taken their fingerprints, DNA samples and dental
information, in addition to data from 10 cellphones, police spokesman
Helmut Marban said.
A hotline with Arabic,
English and German speakers received more than 100 calls in its first
two days. The victims included Syrian, Iraqi and Afghan refugees, police
said Friday, but no identities have been established. Marban would not
disclose if any relatives have been located, citing an ongoing criminal
investigation.
Some 2,576 people, mostly
Eritreans and other sub-Saharan Africans, have died or are missing this
year in the longer and more hazardous sea route from Libya to Europe,
and most of the estimated 600 bodies recovered have ended up in Libya or
Italy, according to the IOM. At the same time, about 116,649 have
arrived safely in Italy.
Greece has logged
245,274 arrivals via the shorter route from Turkey, with 102 people dead
or missing.
Sixty of those bodies were recovered and most of them were
brought to Greece, while some were sent to Turkey, the IOM said.
When
the bodies end up in Italy, its main forensics team, based in Sicily,
gathers what information it can: fingerprints, a DNA sample, dental
information and a list of tattoos and any other distinguishing marks.
Italy
has plenty of experience, dealing with maritime disasters involving
smugglers' boats for years. But two tragedies in 2013 off Lampedusa, a
tiny island 70 miles (115 kilometers) closer to Africa than the Italian
mainland, changed much about how the world views the waves of migrants.
On
Oct. 3, 2013, a trawler sank near the island, and authorities recovered
368 bodies, mostly of Eritrean refugees. Eight days later, there was
another shipwreck south of Lampedusa in which nearly 200 people are
believed to have drowned.
Until recently, the
bodies found were recorded in Italy's missing persons' register sparely:
"African ethnicity," or even "shipwrecked." The minimal descriptions
belied an official view of the futility of ever getting a positive
identification.
"Before there was the view
that we only needed to identify Italians. In reality, that's not the
case," said Vittorio Piscitelli, who took over the government office for
missing people in 2013.
The office recorded
1,300 missing people through June 30, 2014, most of them Italians and
some dating back decades, but also including hundreds of migrants. From
Oct. 18, 2013, through Aug. 26, 2015, Italy has received a total of 382
bodies, the Interior Ministry said.
Piscitelli
and his team joined with other organizations to create a protocol for
identifying the dead from the October 2013 tragedies. This year, they
began reaching out to migrant and refugee communities in Europe to find
relatives to help with the process. North America is next.
The
physical descriptions in the Italian missing persons' ledger have grown
more robust, and DNA samples were taken of all the October 2013 victims
to help resolve more cold cases.
So far, the
official protocol applies only to the October 2013 shipwrecks. DNA
samples were not typically taken of migrant victims prior to those
tragedies, and the identification process is otherwise handled by local
police, meaning relatives must figure out which jurisdiction to contact.
Piscitelli hopes to be able to expand it to apply to more recent
wrecks.
Of the 368 bodies recovered from the
Oct. 3, 2013, sinking and the 21 bodies in the second shipwreck, 195
were identified right away, Piscitelli said. Under the new protocols,
nine more bodies have been identified, with tentative IDs on another 19.
One of the dead from Oct. 3 was the 26-year-old brother of Neguse, the Eritrean immigrant.
Neguse considers himself "the lucky one" to have his brother Abraham identified.
In
an interview in a park near his Stockholm home, Neguse said the process
took 18 agonizing months - from the moment smugglers in Libya confirmed
his brother was aboard to the final DNA confirmation.
He
went to Lampedusa immediately to seek information about his brother's
fate, looking at hundreds of photos of the dead and eventually giving up
under the emotional strain of seeing so many badly disfigured faces.
"I
was there one week, and I couldn't find him. But I talked to his friend
who was there. He told me ... he drowned. But I didn't get an official
answer to my questions," Neguse said.
No one
took a DNA sample from him on that visit. He finally gave one when he
was there again for a memorial on the tragedy's anniversary. While
there, he was told results would come in a month; the positive
identification actually took six months.
"They promised a lot of things, but they don't keep their promises," he said.
Neguse said officials told him that Abraham is buried in Sicily in a grave that is marked with a number but not a name.
Piscitelli
said identifying the remaining bodies from the October 2013 wrecks will
require help from relatives, many of whom are out of reach inside
oppressive nations or in conflict zones.
A
group called the Oct. 3 Committee, meanwhile, works with the Eritrean
diaspora in Europe, seeking both DNA samples and documents.
Gergishu
Yohannes, an Eritrean living in Germany for 30 years, assists others
who are struggling with the uncertainty of a vanished relative.
She
is motivated by the loss of her brother, Abel, who disappeared in 2009
while on a small boat from Libya to Italy and has never been found.
The
craft, carrying 85 people, ran out of fuel near Malta. Adrift and out
of food and water, the passengers began dying one by one, and their
bodies were thrown overboard. When Italians finally rescued three weeks
after they had set off, only five remained alive, Yohannes said.
She helps others, she said, "so that they won't have a fate like me, waiting every day, and can identify their loved ones."
Until her brother's body is found, Yohannes said she cannot rest.
"One waits every day, and I'm still waiting today," she said. "I cannot give it up."
as residents of the city left town and schools and offices closed a
couple of days before Pope Francis arrived.
