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You
might call Melissa Connor an expert on man's
inhumanity to man.
Technically, she is a forensic archaeologist who has
done extensive work on battlefields — both recent
and historic — using archaeological techniques to
uncover physical evidence.
While battlefields aren't usually thought of as
crime scenes, Connor used her skills recently to
gather evidence from mass graves in Iraq on
potential war crimes, genocide or crimes against
humanity believed committed by former President
Saddam Hussein and his regime.
Connor spoke Thursday at the Nebraska Wesleyan
Forensic Science Symposium about her three-month
mission there. She returned to Lincoln in November.
She is an adjunct instructor for Wesleyan's forensic
science graduate program. She also is a Ph.D.
student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where
she has taught. She has worked on missions to such
places as Croatia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Rwanda and
Cyprus.
While she could not talk specifically about what the
team in Iraq found because it was part of a legal
investigation, she outlined the questions they went
there to answer.
During the past 20 years, an estimated 262,000
Kurds, Shiite Muslims and political opponents of
Saddam disappeared, were executed or deported from
Iraq, Connor said. About 250 mass graves have been
found.
Her job, and the task for the 20 experts on the team
in northern Iraq, was to help determine whether
crimes were committed, what they were, who the
victims were and who committed the crimes. The team
is compiling physical evidence from the remains
found in the mass graves, documents and the
testimony of witnesses.
"Witnesses and physical evidence are extremely
important," Connor said.
A huge number of available documents exist — the
equivalent of about 22 tons of paper, she said. They
include executive orders and lists of people who
were to be rounded up.
Of the 250 mass graves, only a small number will be
used for the trials to be conducted by an Iraqi
tribunal, she said.
One of the two she worked at contained the remains
of women and children, the other adult men. It was
believed, she said, that people in the graves could
have been abducted in one part of the country, then
taken about 100 kilometers away for interrogation
and execution.
As they worked, the team looked past the individual
homicides for patterns to prove mass homicide and
crimes against humanity.
Three crimes apply to mass murders, Connor said.
They are genocide, which could pertain to the deaths
of the Kurdish people; war crimes, which could
result from the alleged use of poison gas in Iran
and Kurdistan; and crimes against humanity, which
could include execution, deportation and torture of
large populations such as the Shiites and Kurds.
The team was seeking answers to these questions:
n Did the people in the graves belong to a specific
ethnic group? That could be proven through clothing,
documents and religious artifacts.
n Were the acts against the dead committed with
intent? How were they killed and was there a pattern
in the killings, such as firing lines?
n Were the victims civilians? That could be proven
by the numbers of women and children and how the
people were dressed.
Jessica Mondero, a Wesleyan forensic science student
from Hays, Kan., who accompanied Connor to Iraq,
worked with Iraqi nationals to catalog traditional
clothing that might be worn by Kurds and southern
Iraqis. They used the information to help identify
clothing on bodies found in the graves.
Those clothes included homemade dresses with special
sleeves, Mondero said Thursday from Hays Medical
Center, where she works as an emergency room nurse.
Other identifying items were fabric pockets with a
piece of the Quran, in the shape of a triangle or
rectangle, sewn into children's clothing to protect
them from evil.
The exhumations were done to confirm evidence given
by witnesses and documents, Connor said, and so that
remains could be returned to families for burial.
"It also can provide a strong historical record that
can separate the myth and legend (of Saddam Hussein)
from the reality," she said.
Connor's team stayed in large green tents at a
desert camp.
"Camp life was better than most of us anticipated,"
she said.
The team was escorted to and from the gravesites by
Army and private security.
A frequent question she has been asked is how she
stayed sane working with dead people every day.
"The answer lies in having a sense of humor," she
said, showing a picture of the group on "Funny Hat
Day."
"Wear Your Underwear Outside Day" was canceled, she
said, when water couldn't be delivered to the camp
and the laundry was shut down.
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