Bosnia's Million Bones: Solving the World's Greatest Forensic Puzzle

by Christian Jennings

The extraordinary story of how a team of international forensic scientists pioneered ground-breaking DNA technology to identify the bodies of thousands of victims of the Yugoslav Wars, and how their work is now giving justice to families from Iraq to Bosnia

What would it be like to be tasked with finding, exhuming from dozens of mass graves, and then identifying the mangled body-parts of an estimated 8,100 victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in eastern Bosnia? A leading forensic scientist likened it to "solving the world's greatest forensic science puzzle," and in 1999 one DNA laboratory, run by the International Commission on Missing Persons in Sarajevo, decided to do just that. Thirteen years on, the ICMP are the international leaders in using DNA-assisted technology to assist in identifying the thousands of persons worldwide missing from wars, mass human-rights abuses and natural disasters. Christian Jennings, a foreign correspondent and former staffer at the ICMP, tells the story of the organization, and how they are now gathering forensic evidence of those killed in Libya and Iraq, and tracing the victims of brutal regimes in Chile and Colombia. He describes too how they helped identify the victims of Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean tsunami , in this moving and fast-paced story about the power of science to bring justice to broken countries. Now used as evidence at war crimes trials in The Hague, the technology described in Bosnia's Million Bones is an amazing story of modern science, politics, and the quest for truth. It is real-life CSI in action.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, True Crime, Science, Crime

241 pages, Hardcover

First published October 22, 2013

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Christian Jennings does as good a job as anyone in explaining the shit show that was the former Yugoslavia. He starts out by explaining how the residents of a region that was so peaceful that it had recently hosted the Olympic Games split into ethnic factions and started killing the hell out of each other. As we all know, this resulted in the breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The worst kind of mayhem ensued, unarmed civilians were shot down by masked monsters while the United Nations troops, for the most part, stepped aside and allowed it to happen. The lackwits committing the murders were just bright enough to grasp that killing unarmed civilians wouldn't be considered fair play by most of the world and resorted to mass graves to cover up evidence of their wrongdoing.

Enter the International Commission on Missing Persons (hereinafter referred to as ICMP). This organization meant to resolve missing persons cases by means of DNA matches, and to this end obtained DNA samples from relatives of missing persons. The job awaiting the ICMP was a bit more complicated than it sounds because the murderers, anticipating the investigation, returned to the burial sites and removed the bodies. Well, some of the bodies...it turns out that they used some heavy earth-moving machinery, probably along the line of backhoes, to dig up the graves. Naturally, many of the bodies would have been severely mangled, and the job was sloppy enough that some body parts were left at the site of the initial burial. Sometimes the second burial site was also dug up and the bodies re-interred elsewhere, thereby chopping up the mortal remains even more. The ICMP workers were very diligent and eventually made matches to bring closure to relatives of the missing and provide evidence at the trials of the accused.

Jennings expands on the role of the ICMP in other parts of the world where their expertise can be put to use identifying the remains of murder victims or casualties of natural disasters. The organization is probably the only positive thing to come out of the Bosnian circus. I found this to be an interesting read, but not particularly enjoyable. I fully understand an armed man having to kill an armed man, or even (in these enlightened times) an armed woman, but I'm damned if I can see how anyone justifies torturing and killing non-combatants.

[Jeanette · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was more than a 3 star for me, 3.5. It's rather off in the title because it has a much wider base of information than only the horrendous forensics task of identification for the 8,000 to 10,000 killed during the July 1995 Srebrenica Bosnia massacre. Not that it doesn't investigate myriad aspects of how those people were killed, buried, dug up and reburied to hide the original locations etc.

But is actually would have been better named to cite the book as the ICMP related forensics efforts of long term effect. Not only in Bosnia, Serbia, Congo, Iraq, and several other locations of war and natural disaster fall outs. One of the most interesting detailed was in the Philippines after a ship related tragedy in which nearly 1,000 were (over a long period of time) located, identified by DNA and committed to relatives.

What makes the history at length so integral to the book (others have posted they feel this is without significant intersect as they only felt they needed far more of the forensics)- is that if you don't understand the terrible, terrible circumstances of sequences? You just won't understand how one single man's various body parts could be located in 4 different body soils of various distances from each other. DNA of each particular bone, tooth, hair section found to be treated as a separate and bar coded "piece" to combine for a whole.

It was intensely brought home with the story of the Bosnian widow who had 2 brothers, 1 husband, 1 son and 1 uncle at different times in the ICMP mortuary over a period of 15 years. One of her brothers had a body and waited nearly a decade before she buried the remains, before they located his head.

Many of these victims had no more than 40% of the remains ever recognized to bury or commit to relatives. But at least they had been sectioned to have all the remains of one person bagged and kept in tray together over/for eventual internment.

The work of the ICMP, how that operates. It was worth the read. I C M P - International Commission on Missing Persons

All the underpinning for the hate, the divisions the war criminals trials at the Hague- all of that WAS broad. But it was necessary to understand the mind set then, after, now. And still. Especially for the trial of Mladic- because even with the passage of so many years this issue of his being a "hero" to groups! More tragedy to ensue.

I learned several entire scenarios that I had never known. That there existed Norwegian SS and that they all fought to the death and were left in the woods completely exposed for nearly 50 years and then DNA identified and returned to their relatives in Norway. That in Iraq so many were massacred under S. Hussein that were under the impression that they were being transported and that the bullets came as complete surprise (as the 6 year old girl with her airline bag filled with her stuff still in her hand decades later). And also how some fabrics hold the body together so that the torso and legs do not separate- especially heavy denim material. Or how acids make such a difference that in certain acidic to water areas the entire body, including the bones, completely dissolves in many years fewer than previously thought.

I'll remember this book the most for all of those watches that had stopped on the same date listing and within hours of the same time.

And also for this Bosnian quote of a common joke:

"To qualify for entry to the European Union, Albania, Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia have to come up with a workable, multi-ethnic space program, democratically focused and in keeping with all of the endless standards of sustainability, gender mainstreaming, and diversity quotas that Brussels bureaucrats always seem to insist on. So a spaceship is built and the mission launched. And one Sunday, the four men land on Mars. The Albanian is first out of the door. He takes one look at the landscape, the hills and rocks, and immediately proclaims that it looks like central Albania, and therefore Mars much thenceforth belong to his country. The Bosnian looks at the rocky features of the red planet, comments immediately that it looks like rocky Herzegovina, and therefore must be Bosnian. The Croat sniffs, sees there is no Catholic church in sight, and gets back in the spaceship. Meanwhile, the Serb looks around, stretches, and pulls a knife out of his pocket. Stabbing himself in the chest, he watches the blood dribble down onto the rocks.
"Ha!" he cries. "It's simple. Srpska zemlja! Wherever Serbian blood is shed, then that is Serbian land!"

People laughed, but it was true.

Having known Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian in my own life- all in fall outs from Kosovo or environs, they truly are the least PC speakers I have ever meet.

That quote was a mild example of their humor.

This book, in the story of the Dutch and other UN participants throughout all this and in some of the other genocide cases! Truly, it leaves me speechless- or in this case, postless. What good is waiting 3 days for paperwork when all the fields are suddenly empty. Words DO NOT matter when actions are required quickly.

[Julian Douglass · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice book describing not only the Bosnian War, but the aftermath as well. I am sure there are more detailed accounts of the war, but Mr. Jennings summarizes it nicely. I love the way he describes the technologies and how they were able to solve one of the greatest crimes against humanity in the 1990's. Forensic science is a fascinating field and had it not been for a weak stomach, I might have gotten into it.

[Gail · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received a review copy of this book.

I had hoped this book would simply focus on the forensic work in Bosnia and the specialty that the work there has advanced. But instead it tried to give the reader a little of everything, the history of the conflict, the commission of the atrocities themselves, the moving around of the bodies, the trials, the history of Serbia since the conflict, etc, etc. Too much, too broad in some cases, too much detail in others.

The prose style was dry. It was hard for me to keep focused on the story or the information presented. I think the author has much personal experience and has done the necessary research, but couldn't put it all together for the general reader. I'm sorry to be negative since this is an important and fascinating topic, but unfortunately this book did not do it justice.

[Fran Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This excellent book details how forensic science has brought a measure of closure to relatives by identifying bodies of their loved ones. In the process of identifying the remains of the thousands of men and boys who were murdered in Srebrenica, Bosnia, ground breaking technology was developed. This technology has now helped in identifying victims in Libya, Iraq, Chile as well as missing persons from Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean Tsunami. It's an extraordinary story that combines history with modern forensic science.

[Caitlin Doberer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slightly left field for me, but this book was at our accommodation and as we are about to head into Bosnia, I thought, why not?

I had some knowledge of Bosnia’s past, but it was nothing compared to what I have now learnt in this book. I will never not be shocked at the atrocities humans inflict on one another. This was a harrowing but important read for me, and I now go into Bosnia with more of an understanding about its past and how that will have shaped the country today.

I really loved this paragraph below and feel like it is so so relevant in today’s world, especially when it comes to discourse online about current events (which let’s be real, are never balanced or spoken about with nuance).

“The conspiratorial mindset described above is an example of binary thinking - a phrase often deployed in comparative discussions about genocide - that says every event or argument has to be reduced to two ways of thinking: good and bad, black and white, heroic or evil. It is an argumentative technique that does not allow for the existence of two varying degrees of right or wrong, or varying degrees of anything. It certainly does not allow for the existence of a middle ground of reason or compromise, the latter being seen to be akin to raising the white flag of surrender. If my truth is greater than your truth, then what on earth could there possibly be to compromise about?”

4 stars only due to the forensic side of things which probably went over my head a bit.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heavy.

[Katherine Addison · Rating 2 out of 5]

What this book promises to be, in its subtitle "Solving the World's Greatest Forensic Puzzle," is a book about the forensics of exhuming the mass graves in Bosnia and putting dismembered body parts back together in the right way. What this book actually IS is a book about the institutional history of the ICMP (International Commission on Missing Persons). It is an interesting book, and I learned a lot about Bosnia and Serbia that I had not known, but it is not actually the book I signed up for.

Also, when I say it is an interesting book, I mean that the subject matter is interesting. Jennings is a dull writer, and his institutional history of the ICMP feels very institutional, and kind of just barely this side of PR put out by the ICMP itself. (Full disclosure: Jennings' bio says he is a former communications staffer of the ICMP.) I finished it largely because I kept hoping there would be more forensics in it somewhere and because the horrorshow of what happened in Bosnia is in its own dreadful way very compelling.

[Patricia Jäger · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book taught me a bit more about the conflict in the former Jugoslavia and a lot more about the ICMP. I found the subject matter very interesting. I also believe that Jennings is a gifted writer when it comes to the journalistic style and the personification of people. However, I don't think that this style suits a book especially of this subject matter. The writing jumped too fast from one subject to the other. At one point the situation in Bosnia is described, then someone sits at a very full desk and suddenly we are talking about Afghanistan. I liked the book but I expected it to give far more details about the work and the techniques involved rather than providing a historic, legal and global account at the same time. I am still glad I read it but I wish it would have been more detailed, stayed more closely within the topic and included a more critical discussion.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was very informational in terms of how the missing Bosnians of the war / Srebrenica were identified, but it was very dry and poorly organized chapter-wise. I was disappointed mostly in the organizational aspect of the book- which made it feel like you were all over the place in time, location, and theme. Though I learned a lot while reading this book, it would be a hard one to recommend.

[Laura B · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the book had some good insights into the development of the ICMP and its mission, I felt like it was a bit all over the place in how it was written.

[Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

Worth a read for anyone interested in the subject matter. The author's metaphors and imagery are terrible, but his knowledge of the subject matter redeems him. Accessible to those who know little or nothing about the genocide in Bosnia and the Balkan conflicts post-Yugoslavia.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book captures the tragedy of the genocide committed during the 1992-95 Bosnian War, most notably the July 1995 massacres of the Muslim men and boys of Srebrenica and the subsequently hidden mass graves. This is also an account of the establishment of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), a team of experts who established a laboratory and used (at that time cutting-edge) forensics techniques to process DNA and identify the victims. The ICMP is one of the legacies of the Bosnian War that has gone on to benefit not only that region of the world, but also others--whether the identification is needed as a result of war, crashing planes, sinking ships, or natural disaster. Their DNA matching has not only returned remains to the families for burial, but has also brought war criminals to justice within the court system and undermined attempts by guilty parties to deny or recast historical facts.

Because the book deals largely with the end result of the three-year siege of Srebrenica (meant to be a UN safe area during the conflict), interested readers might gain further context by reading War Hospital: A True Story of Surgery and Survival first. Such background reading is not entirely necessary, however, since the beginning of Jennings' book provides a basic historical context.

[Jamie Barringer (Ravenmount) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd heard of the forensic challenges surrounding the mass graves in Bosnia, and I've read and watched enough Bones stories (Kathy Reichs' books and the TV series based on them) to have some idea about forensic anthropology. So, it was interesting to read more about this gruesome and difficult puzzle. The author's writing is fairly easy to follow, mostly. His attempt at explaining how DNA matching works was awful, full of jargon and jumbled enough that even with my science background (I've studied some genetics in college) I still felt a bit lost trying to follow that bit of the text. There's a lot of repetition and quaint bad grammar of the sort I'm used to from writers for whom English is not their primary language.

Still, the story told in this book is interesting and engaging enough to make most of these wrinkles blend into the background. I really wished, though, that there were some images in the text- maps, photographs of locations mentioned a lot in the story, diagrams of equipment, etc.- that might have made the more fact-heavy sections easier to digest. Overall, though, this seems like it would be a book that readers without as much science education could follow, and the history of the war that created these thousands of unidentified human remains is one many people know very little about beyond what was covered on TV news shows during that conflict.

[Meaghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sort of combination true crime and science book, this is the story of attempts to identify the thousands of people who disappeared in the genocide in the former Yugoslavia. Employing Bosnian scientists and using DNA testing that was groundbreaking at the time, the International Commission on Missing Persons was successful at identifying loads of people, in spite of the fact that many of the bodies had been dismembered and buried in separate mass graves. (The same techniques would be used at the sites of 9/11, the Indian tsunami, New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and more.) The book also covers the activism on the part of survivors of the genocide, and the manhunt for those responsible.

I liked it, although not as much as I thought I would. The narrative skips around a great deal and sometimes it was hard to keep track of things.

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was okay. A lot (A LOT) of repetitive, bombastic journalistic language made me think this would have been better as a novella or long essay.

It does a great job of putting the science in context of all of the Balkan conflicts of the late 1990s and early 2000s. It would have been nice to focus a bit more on the science, and what was actually happening in the labs, and the people working there, rather than endlessly repeat the various goals of the forensic institutions.

[Sherrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book with the great hope that it would be completely about the forensic breakthroughs in the Bosnian genocides. Instead, it contained a little bit of everything--history, sociology, religion, politics, and even occasionally forensics. Too broad and too much. The parts about forensics were great, and there was nothing wrong inherently with the other subjects--they just didn't belong in this book.

[Marti · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but a little confusing at times (lots of abbreviations and some repetitions) . . . may have been better with a few more personal stories and a little less focus on the political gamesmanship afterwards.

[Caroline Cormack · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of how the International Commission on Missing Persons was set up in Bosnia and how they advanced the use of DNA testing to identify the remains found in mass graves in Srebrenica and elsewhere makes for fascinating and uncomfortable reading.

[James Lyon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great insider's view of the fascinating problems associated with identifying mass graves, and then piecing together DNA evidence to help identify the victims of Bosnia's genocide. The author is a friend of mine, and my only complaint is that it gets a bit repetitive in places.

[VENETTE TIVEY · Rating 2 out of 5]

Difficult book to read due to its content. Getting one's mind around the enormity of the subject alone was daunting. Knowing of it and reading page after page after page about it was difficult. Well organized and presented book but not one I would recommend to any but serious forensic people,

[Liz De Coster · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lacking in cohesion. Jennings pulls together many elements to the story, but I found the forensics was the weakest and least discussed element.

[Austin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but sometimes rambling.