Mass Graves, Truth and Justice: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Investigation of Mass Graves eds. by Ellie Smith & Melanie Klinker (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Mass Graves, Truth and Justice: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Investigation of Mass Graves eds. by Ellie Smith & Melanie Klinker Eric Stover (bio) Ellie Smith & Melanie Klinker eds., Mass Graves, Truth and Justice: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Investigation of Mass Graves (Edward Elgar Publishing 2023), ISBN 9781800882379, 186 pages. Ellie Smith and Melanie Klinker, a researcher and law professor respectively at Bournemouth University, have edited an excellent volume on how forensic scientists, judges, and court investigations have conducted mass grave investigations and interacted with families of the disappeared since the early 1980s. The volume offers an interdisciplinary examination of all states of a mass graves investigation from discovery of a site to the process of investigation and the conduct of commemoration activities.1 As someone who has been a participant or close observer of forensic investigations of mass graves in Argentina, Guatemala, Rwanda, Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, and the United States, I admire the care that the editors and authors have taken not to oversimplify what can be a highly complex investigatory process from a legal, forensic, and psycho-social perspective. Forty years ago, my colleague forensic anthropologist Clyde Snow advocated that the search for the disappeared must be conducted for three reasons: to locate, identify, and return the remains of the disappeared to family members [End Page 739] for proper burial; to gather evidence to hold perpetrators accountable; and to set the historical record straight. While Snow's objectives still hold true today, it must also be recognized that the quest to equate truth to identification and justice to perpetrator accountability can be both distinctive and challenging. As the book's editors, Smith and Klinker—who also are co-authors of the 2020 Bournemouth Protocol on Mass Grave Protection and Investigations—caution there is no such thing as a "standard" or "typical" mass grave.2 Each site is "highly context-specific" and "the way in which sites are handled will necessarily vary accordingly."3 So, what are the factors that can determine how a mass grave site will be located and investigated? To begin with, perpetrators often make every effort to hide mass graves, and with the passage of time, vegetation can spread and make locating the sites even more difficult. Access to mass graves can also be delayed during and after armed conflicts. For example, during our investigations of mass graves in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, Snow and I were accompanied by United Nations deminers to sweep potential mass grave sites for explosive ordnance, including bobby traps and landmines. (This practice became a standard operating procedure during the mass graves investigations in the former Yugoslavia for years to come.) On one occasion Serb forces expelled our team, comprised of forensic scientists from around the world, from a mass grave in eastern Croatia even though we were working under a UN mandate. Even when peace arrives, some armed factions will do everything in their power to prevent access to or hide mass graves sites. As Ian Hanson notes in his chapter on the exhumation of mass graves from 1997 to 2016 near the town of Kozluk in Bosnia and Herzegovina, forensic investigators found evidence that Bosnian Serb forces had used heavy machinery to remove and redeposit bodies from one or more sites (primary graves) and rebury them in another location (secondary graves) in what appeared to be an attempt to cover up a mass execution during the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995. Archeological and DNA evidence linked the primary and secondary graves and was later presented as evidence in war crimes trials at the International Criminal Tribunal of the former Yugoslavia.4 Despite efforts to hide mass graves, their very existence has a "strong awarenessraising effect," according to Howard Morrison, a judge at the International Criminal Court who was interviewed by the book's editors. "When [perpetrators dig] a mass grave," he says, "they [do] it to hide the bodies, not to raise awareness. But the lasting effect is that it does raise awareness at the same time."5 Forensic investigations of mass graves also require significant national and international resources, as well as stable governments and judiciaries to oversee the operations. This is particularly...