The science of forensics, popularised by TV programmes like CSI, is nowhere near as glamourous as Hollywood would have us believe. Especially when it comes to exhuming mass graves and recovering and identifying the victims of genocide.
This is a task all too familiar to forensic anthropologist Clea Koff, one of 16 scientists chosen by the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal to go to Rwanda to unearth evidence of genocide and crimes against humanity. Koff was in South Africa last week to present a lecture on her work at Sasol SciFest 2007 in Grahamstown.
In Rwanda in mid-1994, over a period of 100 days following the assassination of president Juvenal Habyarimana, more than 800 000 people were murdered, mostly with machetes and clubs. Koff and her colleagues were tasked with locating mass graves and exhuming the remains of those who were massacred.
Koff was studying anthropology at Standford University in the United States in 1984 when she became interested in human rights cases, inspired by a team of students who were working in Argentina to unearth the remains of those who had disappeared during the military junta of the 1970s and 1980s.
But she had always known that she wanted to work with human remains. In her bestselling book, The Bone Woman, Koff recalls how, as a child, she collected dead birds and buried them in plastic bags in the garden of her home in Washington DC so that she could dig them up later. “I was curious to see how long it took them to turn into skeletons. I took the stinking bags to my (somewhat horrified) science teacher for extracurricular and wholly self-motivated death investigations,” she writes.
Koff also wanted to use her skills to bring killers to justice. “In addition to helping authorities determine the identity of deceased people, forensic anthropology has a role in human rights investigations, because a dead body can incriminate perpetrators who thought they’d silenced their victim forever. This is the part of forensic anthropology that drives me, this ‘kicking of bad guy ass’ when they least expect it,” writes Koff in her book.
Koff’s chance to kick that ass came in the wake of the Rwandan genocide when she was sent to the first massacre site identified for investigation by the criminal tribunal at Kibuye. Here more than 7 000 people had been murdered in a church and their bodies buried in mass graves.
The science of identifying the remains relies heavily on analysis and meticulous examination of bones together with any residual flesh and clothing in an effort to find clues and important evidence.
Anthropological analysis of the skeletons consist of assembling the remains on a flat surface in anatomical position, then determining age, sex, stature and cause of death. The remains are photographed from every angle, with emphasis on areas giving clues to the cause of death, such as blunt-force trauma caused by heavy clubs or deep gashes (sharp-force trauma) caused by machetes.
Working in conjunction with forensic pathologists, Koff and her team excavated more than 500 bodies from the Kibuye grave. More than half of these were children.
After careful cataloguing of every item of clothing and personal effects found on each body, Koff’s team held “Clothing Days” at the Kibuye site, appealing to members of the public who knew of people killed in the massacre to come and try to identify items of clothing recovered from the grave.
With DNA testing of surviving relatives, the team was able to identify some of the remains and bring closure to some of those left grieving.
Koff says that her work has helped the victims of genocide to find a voice, and use that voice to condemn those that killed them. This, for her at least, has been an unexpected and most enlightening part of her career, and one which illustrates that science is a valuable humanitarian tool.
Koff’s work, and that of her colleagues, ensured that Clement Kayeshima, a doctor and governor of Kibuye, and Obed Ruzindana, a Kibuye businessman, were convicted of genocide, and sentenced to life imprisonment and 25 years’ jail respectively.
For Koff, her work as a scientist has helped to shape her as a human being, and vice versa. “As a forensic anthropologist I had always felt a duty to the dead to help them speak, but I hadn’t realised there would be a subsequent duty,” writes Koff in The Bone Woman.
“Through working with the UN tribunals I’ve helped their voices be heard in the courtroom and the history books, and it has been an honour to do so.”