Журнал судебно-медицинских исследований

An Outstanding Success Story of Genetic Relatedness Search that Helped Unravelling the Mystery Surrounding Decapitated Bodies found in a Cave at the Lebanese Syrian Border

Abstract

Marc Obeid, Yara Abou Jawdeh and Issam Mansour

After the onset of the Syrian war in 2011, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have invaded a significant area of the country including a rural area at the north-eastern Lebanese-Syrian borders. Since then, there were several trials of invasion into the Lebanese territories until August 2014 when the north-eastern Lebanese town of Arsal was briefly invaded. During this invasion, 18 Lebanese Army soldiers were held hostage by ISIS and kidnapped out of the country into a no-mans-land at the Lebanese-Syrian borders.

In parallel, since the onset of the Syrian war, thousands of Syrians have been kidnapped and reported missing. Many of these crimes were especially committed against ethnic and religious minorities such as the Syrian Yazidi and Syrian Christians (Figure 1). These human rights violations are occurring on daily basis and led to thousands of mass graves, each having its characteristics, its difficulties and its mysteries that increase with the continuing war and the increasing number of missing individuals. However, the primary focus is to dedicate all the available means to determine the identity of each victim in order to return the remains to their families, in accordance with the Geneva conventions.