Eight July Martyrs' bodies identified after exhumation

Bangla Press Desk: Chief Adviser's Press Secretary Shafiqul Alam on Thursday said that the bodies of eight July Martyrs, who were buried at Rayerbazar Graveyard in the city as unclaimed ones, have so far been identified after exhumation.

"The Ministry of Liberation War Affairs will inform media in detail on this matter very soon," he said at a briefing held at the Foreign Service Academy in the capital.

The press secretary said the families of the identified individuals have already been informed and the identification process has been completed.

The corpses of total 118 unclaimed people have been exhumed from the graveyard on suspicions they were killed by Awami League-backed forces during final days of the previous regime, and buried hastily to avoid domestic and international outcry.

The identification of eight of these unclaimed bodies was carried out through DNA sample analysis, Shafiqul Alam said on Thursday. Despite the complex and strenuous nature of the works, the government is committed to determining the identity of all the martyrs of the anti-fascist uprising, he said.

Several Bangladeshi personnel have been given training in this field to ensure that such identification processes do not become a challenge in the future, he added.

Referring to international experience, he said during the Bosnia war, around 10,000 people were killed by Serbian forces in Srebrenica, and their identification was carried out in a very detailed and painstaking manner.

The experts who had worked on that complex identification process were the same experts who provided training in Bangladesh, he added.

Deputy Press Secretary Mohammad Abul Kalam Azad Majumder and Senior Assistant Press Secretary Foyez Ahammad were present at the briefing