Refugees give blood for use in DNA tests

DNA matches allow the bereaved to bury loved ones.
ST. LOUIS (AP) -- Sevko and Vahida Bektic haven't seen their fathers since the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, the worst slaughter of civilians in Europe since World War II.
The couple, Bosnian refugees who resettled in St. Louis seven years ago, presume their fathers are dead. But how and where they died remain a mystery and source of pain.
"I want to know what happened," said Vahida Bektic, her face red with tears. "I want to bring the body back so my children know their grandfather."
The Bektics took a step toward getting answers Friday by offering drops of blood for DNA testing in a bid to identify some of the thousands of remains from the war that tore apart the former Yugoslavia.
Hundreds of the 40,000 Bosnian refugees who have settled in St. Louis since the 1990s are expected to do the same in a blood-collection drive that runs through Monday. It's one of a dozen U.S. cities with large numbers of Bosnian refugees to hold the campaign.
Others are Syracuse, N.Y., Des Moines, Iowa; Atlanta; Chicago; Dallas; Hartford, Conn.; Erie, Pa.; Richmond, Va.; Jacksonville, Fla.; Grand Rapids. Mich.; and Bowling Green, Ky.
International campaign
The campaign is being conducted by the International Commission on Missing Persons, founded a decade ago to find Bosnia's mass graves.
As authorities exhumed the graves, filling hospital morgues with remains, it became clear that it would not be possible to identify them by traditional means, such as dental records or clothing, because they were too decomposed, said commission spokeswoman Doune Porter, speaking by telephone from Sarajevo.
In the late 1990s, the commission began isolating DNA from bones in the graves and created a database.
The group started taking blood samples from people who had lost loved ones in the war and created a second database of their DNA. By comparing the two, the organization has made 8,683 matches since November 2001.
Painful uncertainty
Porter said the process is important for families who "live every day in agony, over the uncertainty of the fate of the missing person."
For the Bektics, being able to bury their fathers' remains if DNA matches are made would be a way to finally say goodbye.
Vahida Bektic's father and brother, along with thousands of other Bosnian men, tried to escape Srebrenica to the free zone through the forest in July 1995. Her brother escaped, but her father never emerged.
Sevko Bektic tried to persuade his father to flee with him to Macedonia, but his father hesitated, perhaps fearful he would be killed in flight. The son traveled without his father and now feels guilty for having survived. He still has questions.
"Why did they kill everybody?" he asked. "Why are so many gone?"
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