He claims to be the survivor of a massacre near Glogovac. He was visiting the office of the Center for the Defense of Human Rights and Freedoms (CDHRF) in Kosovo. The CDHRF field offices are as much a place to complain, talk, and vent frustrations, as they are sources of information for the relatives of the missing.

The bodies of three Serb men lay in the bushes beside a vineyard near the village of Xrce.

Eqrem Hoti walks along the railroad tracks that run through the village of Krushe e Mahde in Kosovo, where more than fifty men were massacred by Serb paramilitaries in 1999.

The woman bought a letter from a Serb lawyer on the promise of seeing her missing husband in jail, in Serbia. When she arrived at the jail, her husband was not there. Such fraud is common, with desparate people paying over thousands of euros for such false promises.

The husband of an ethnic Albanian woman Krushe e Madhe is one of over 100 men who still missing and presumed dead.

Three teenage Ashkali boys were kidnapped from Djakovica/Gjakove, Kosovo, in 2000. Their families have heard nothing of them since. The Kosovar Albanians accuse Ashkali, along with other Roma, of collaborating with Serbs during the killings in 1999.

Families of the missing protest against the lack of information about their relatives outside the parliament building. There is not much information to be had, and communications between the many groups involved in the search for the missing is poor.

A family with missing men sits on their couch while visitors from the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) collects blood samples for DNA analysis from a family with missing members in the countryside of Kosovo. Behind them, on the television screen, is the trial of Slobodan Milosevic. The samples will be entered into a database, hopefully to be matched with samples from recovered bodies.

A page from a file on a missing person, from the U.N. Missing Persons Unit (MPU). The MPU handled all conflict-related missing persons cases between late 2001 and 2002. Files contain standard forensic evidence, including photos, charts, and witness testimony.

The International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) reburied many of the bodies it used for its investigations in ‘graveyards of the unidentified.’ A single grave might have 40 sets of remains, in decaying bags and boxes.

March 2002

After finding a booby-trapped body, all exhumations require that a NATO military demining team check the site for explosives each 10cm of digging, even in a reburial site. The International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) reburied many of the bodies it used for its investigations in ‘graveyards of the unidentified.’

U.N. diggers open a grave to recover the bodies within. The International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) reburied many of the bodies it used for its investigations in ‘graveyards of the unidentified.’ A single grave might have 40 sets of remains, in decaying bags and boxes.

Many of the bodies recovered by the U.N. Missing Persons Unit are actually just pieces of people, such as this unattached skull found at a reburial site. The International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) reburied many of the bodies it used for its investigations against Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic in mass graves but without having properly identified the corpses.

Wet and smelly bones of a partial skeleton, taken from a grave in a graveyard for soldiers of the Kosovo Liberation Army, in Landovice, Kosovo. The UN exhumation team was told of two men, but only one woman and half a man were found.

Bones are put into bags and brought to the morgue for autopsy, to gather information for identification and DNA testing. The Missing Persons Unit of the United Nations police in Kosovo digs up bodies for identification all over Kosovo. The International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) reburied many of the bodies it used for its investigations against Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic in mass graves but without having properly identified the corpses.

Forensic anthropologists at the morgue in Orahovac/Rahovec check bodies with an X-ray before working on them to look for evidence, such as bullets or shrapnel.

In the Pristina morgue Tarja Formisto, a Finnish forensic anthropologist with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), worked to identify bodies and establish the cause of death. Turf wars over control of the search for the missing inside the United Nations mission forced Formisto and other investigators to leave Kosovo.

Before examing the bones of this dead man, a UN forensic anthopologist scrubs them clean of flesh and mud, in the morgue at Orahovac/Rahovec, Kosovo.

A forensic anthropologist at the morgue in Orachovac, Kosovo, assembles a spinal column, while putting together a corpse for a war crimes case.

Forensic investigators at the morgue in Orahovac/Rahovec, Kosovo, search the remains for possible identifying information. This scrap of paper has a telephone number, and might lead to the person's identity.

A femure (thigh bone) set up for measurement, as part of the attempt to identify a body. The length of the femur indicates approximate age. UN forensic investigators at the morgue in Orahovac/Rahovec, Kosovo, are attempting to identify the body, possibly a victim of war crimes by the Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army.

Marek Gasior, a forensic anthropologist puts together a skeleton in the Orahovac/Rahovec morgue in Kosovo. Body bags often contain more than one body, so the investigators must piece them together to see how many they have found.

Marek Gasior (left) and Michael Warren (right) are forensic anthropologists, members of the Centre for International Forensic Assistance (CIFA) working for UN in Kosovo. They are assembling a skeleton in the morgue in Orahovac/Rahovec, Kosovo.

Bodies are stored in white body bags and cardboard boxes in refrigerated storage containers, awaiting identification or reburial.

Many of the men of Velika Krusa/Krusha e Madhe in Kosovo will never be identified because the bodies were too badly burned, but their bones are buried in graves near town.