Identifying shipwreck victims no easy task

The Disaster Victims Identification Unit has undertaken the difficult task of identifying the 82 retrieved victims of the shipwreck of a fishing trawler in international waters off southwestern Greece.

According to survivors, there were at least 700 passengers on the trawler, all migrants with the exception of a reported 15 working for human traffickers. This means that there are over 500 people unaccounted for and, in many cases, the presence of people on the doomed ship is only surmised, not documented.

The unit, set up in 2018 to deal with victims of disasters exceeding 30 deaths, has a permanent staff of 20, mostly police officers. It has been augmented by several experts, such as forensic anthropologists and psychologists, the latter to deal with the families of the victims, documented or presumed.

For identification purposes, the unit relies on fingerprints, dental records and DNA samples; visual identification, even by close relatives, can be unreliable.