Experts (known as the Argentine team) plan to visit Sudan to autopsy the bodies of killed protesters

Al-Yarea – (Al-Quds Al-Arabi) – The legal adviser to the families of those missing in the demonstrations since 2019, Othman Al-Basri, announced the start of procedures for the entry of an international autopsy team coming from Columbia University to Sudan to autopsy the bodies piled up in all morgues of the country.
Al-Basri confirmed to the London-based (Al-Quds Al-Arabi) newspaper that the families of the missing and the campaign “Burial without Justice – Loss for the Missing”, which was recently formed to pressure the authorities on the case, agreed with Attorney General Khalifa Ahmed Khalifa,and the United Nations agencies and some parties interested in the issue of the accumulation of bodies in morgues on “the need to use the team consisting of international experts to carry out the task of autopsy, writing reports and burying the bodies in accordance with known international protocols.”
He revealed that they had communicated with a foreign team (better known as the Argentine team) who welcomed his acceptance to carry out the autopsy mission.
He pointed out that the team, which is affiliated with Columbia University in the United States, carried out autopsies in 50 countries, and was named «Argentine» for inspecting mass graves of the Argentine war.
Over the past years, government authorities have obstructed the entry of this team.
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Since the outbreak of the December revolution in 2019, morgues have been piled with bodies, especially in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, where many have been killed anonymously.
Al-Basri pointed out that in coordination with the Attorney General’s Office, they sent a list of the names of the 36 experts, to the Sudanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to speed up the procedures for the team’s entry into the country to carry out the autopsy and bury the bodies piled in morgues in accordance with international protocols in order to preserve their rights and preserve their human dignity.
Following the coup d’état of 25 October 2021, the authorities issued a decision to bury the bodies in morgues.
According to al-Basri, the authorities wanted to empty the morgues of corpses, noting that the families of the missing refused to have the Sudanese Medico-Legal Supervisory Authority supervise the autopsies.
“We pushed a warrant to the Public Prosecutor to stop the burial under the supervision of the Medico-Legal Authority,” he said.
He pointed to the organization of a campaign (burial without justice) vigils, and that the committee communicated with the Public Prosecution on the need for the presence of a foreign team, pointing to «communication then with the Argentine team that expressed its approval, in addition to their meeting with the Public Prosecution and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to complete the procedures for the team’s entry into the country».
He pointed to the prosecution’s request to provide it with a list of experts, noting that the team consists of 36 experts, and that the Attorney General attached the attachments with a letter to the Foreign Ministry to complete the procedure.
He added: «Then the date of his attendance will be determined, and the delegation will come and the stages begin to protect the bodies and sorting and the stages will continue»
He continued: «The Committee of the Missing found within its investigations that the forensic groups are unreliable due to the conflicting reports submitted to the bodies themselves, in addition to providing misleading information and what the investigations revealed about the sale of bodies inside morgues».
The number of bodies in morgues exceeds 3,000, including hundreds during the period of dispersal of the sit-in and the events that followed, but the “Missing” initiative, which works to monitor the missing of the Sudanese revolution, said that it received only about 30 reports from the families of the missing during the period of the dispersal of the General Command sit-in, and 5 in the period after.
Al-Basri attributed this to the fact that “many of the missing live in areas far from the capital Khartoum and the areas of work of the initiative, in addition to many of the unsupported (homeless) who were present at the moment of the dispersal of the sit-in, adding that “the number of bodies is very large.”
In light of the poor conditions in which the bodies are kept, Al-Basri said: “We briefed the team on the situation, where work will be done to sort the bodies so that they do not decompose, in addition to extracting samples, followed by the stage of protecting the bodies for as long as possible.”
The representative of the families of the missing, Somaya Othman, also told the newspaper that they hold the authorities, those in charge of morgues and forensic medicine, and the medical advisory board responsible for what happened to the bodies.
While speaking of “deliberate misinformation”, she said: “We want to know the whereabouts and fate of our sons who have been missing since 2019.”
She added: “The families of the missing asked for the Argentine team, specifically for the accumulated experience it has in working in situations similar to those in Sudan.”
She pointed out that «the team began work before and met the families of the missing and listened to the circumstances of the disappearance of our sons», stressing «their strong refusal to be autopsies in morgues, which are suspected to be missing from the dispersal of the sit-in of the General Command of the Armed Forces by the Sudanese Medico-Legal Authority, and that they as families of missing were misled and received conflicting reports from the competent authorities in Sudan, which made them distrustful of the work of those bodies».
“There may be some honest people among the forensic medicine and morgues, but they kept silent about all the abuses that took place, so we also consider them partners by virtue of our experiences with them as families,” she said.
“They denied that they had bodies, when we were looking for our sons, and then they misled us in reports about the bodies, they matched us as families of missing persons, rotten samples. “We have lost confidence in local anatomy experts because of our experiences with them.”
“The Medical Advisory Board wanted to bury the bodies, despite their knowledge that burying them meant obliterating the evidence,” she said.
She stressed that «the families of the missing will not rest until they know the fate of their children», stressing that all that happened to the bodies in the morgues of obliteration of evidence, «intentional so that we do not know the details of what happened, we want to know whether our sons are among the bodies in the morgues or elsewhere, are they dead or alive, the arrival of this specialized international team represents half the way to reach those facts».
“We must know the fate of every missing person so that every violator knows that we will not be silent about the disappearance of any missing person,” she said.