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AMMAN (AFP) -
Iraq announced it plans to open a national center to
track down people who went missing during the regime
of Saddam Hussein and to identify tens of thousands
of bodies discovered in mass graves since his
overthrow.
Iraqi Human Rights Minister Bakhtiar Amin also
reiterated an appeal for international help in
identifying bodies found in mass graves, saying his
country lacked the necessary expertise.
"We have located 290 mass graves, but our technical
equipment and scientific forensic knowledge is very
weak... we do not have DNA labs, and also we do not
have sufficient number of forensic pathologists,"
Amin told AFP in Amman.
The graves uncovered since Saddam's downfall in
April 2003 contain the bodies of 300,000 people
believed to have been killed under his regime,
although Amin said that the total number of missing
could be close to one million.
Amin was in Amman for a seminar organised by his
ministry and the UN Human Rights Commission to
discuss the creation of the missing persons center,
which he said will initially have three branches in
the northern Kurdistan region and in central and
southern Iraq.
Amin, who last year visited Bosnia and Kosovo to
draw on the former Yugoslavia's experience in
exhuming mass graves, said that among the missing
were nationals from 12 other countries, including
neighbouring states and Asian nations.
Saddam, currently in a US detention centre in Iraq,
faces seven charges of crimes against humanity
including a 1987-1988 offensive that saw Kurdish
villages razed and the gassing of the village of
Halabja that left 5,000 people dead.
AFP
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