Prof. dr. G.J.R. Maat

The Tripoli Airplane Crash 2010. How to identify the mutilated victims?

Workshop Leader: Prof. dr. G.J.R. Maat

Department: Forensic Anthropology, Leiden University Medical Center

On the 12th of May 2010 an Airbus A 330 crashed into the Libyan Desert in the vicinity of the City of Tripoli. Except for one child, all passengers died. After local recovery of the corpses and their separated body parts, the human remains were transported to the ‘Tripoli Medical Centre’ and the ‘Central Hospital’.

In the meantime, the Libyan authorities requested specialized forensic assistance by the Dutch Disaster Victim Identification Team of the National Team for Forensic Investigations (DVI / LTFO). Within 48 hours the team left for Libya to start with their task. The so-called postmortem part of the investigations was completed in four weeks time.

At the symposium the complexity and the details of the investigation process will be presented step by step.