The remains of 140 missing persons were identified during 2013, the Greek Cypriot member of the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus (CMP) Theophilos Theophilou said on Monday, adding that this number constitutes a record since the beginning of the identification process and is expected to further rise in 2014.

Theophilou also said that till now the remains of 900 missing persons have been exhumed and 405 remains have been identified.

Theophilou who holds meetings with political parties asking for their contribution in the Committee’s work, Theophilou noted that “everyone must contribute in speeding up the process for establishing the fate of the missing persons and identifying their remains.”

He said that the issue of missing persons “is an open wound which is bleeding and which we must heal the soonest without any further delay.”
Theophilou, who met on Monday with the Ecologists Movement, said that they are aiming at further accelerating the whole process of identifications by expanding the anthropological laboratory,  outgrowing its premises and increasing its scientific staff.

Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkish troops invaded and occupied its northern third. Since then, the fate of hundreds of people remains unknown. The CMP was established in April 1981 by agreement between the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities under the auspices of the United Nations, with the scope of exhuming, identifying and returning the remains of missing persons to their relatives.

In 2006, the climate was ripe for the CMP to begin excavations and exhumations on both sides of the island. In order to provide the required expertise, archaeologists and anthropologists from the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF) were brought in to coordinate and train a bi-communal team of Cypriot scientists involved in exhumations and anthropological analysis. An anthropological laboratory was set-up in the United Nations Protected Area in Nicosia.

Since 2008, the CMP bi-communal forensic team has been carrying out exhumations autonomously. EAAF forensic experts continue to be involved in the project for quality control purposes.