Variation of gunshot injury patterns in mortality associated with human rights abuses and armed conflict: an exploratory study
Introduction
A large body of evidence presented in Courts or Commissions of Enquiry during the past twenty years in different jurisdictions has attested to human rights abuses in various countries [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10]. Investigations of such abuses combine witness testimony with forensic evidence such as the context in which human remains were found and the distribution of injuries that resulted in the death of victims. However, no investigation has focused on whether the bodily distribution of injuries in itself may assist to suggest whether people died in battle or if they were subject of human rights abuses, irrespective of time frame and geography. This is a particularly poignant fact in such cases as they typically involve not one but hundreds or thousands of victims in a single case such as Srebrenica [25], [29], [30], [31], [58].
While many tools are presently available for investigators to establish the extent to which “collateral” damage to civilian populations may constitute war crimes [2], [3], [4], little has been achieved interpreting data derived from human remains recovered from mass graves or clandestine burials associated with human rights abuses. Also recently, “revisionist” theories attempting to challenge the occurrence of proven crimes categorised, in some instances as Genocide, have proliferated [16], [17]. Such challenges do not only concern the number of mortal victims but the way in which they died, in other words, whether they were casualties of war or the result of extrajudicial killings. Perhaps the most important question to be asked is whether extrajudicial killings can take place within the context of war and whether those deaths are significantly different from mortality in war. Coupland and Meddings [5] proposed the term “weapons of volition” for firearms implying the distribution of injuries in the body reflects the will of the shooter in aiming at specific parts of the body; unlike the use of fragmenting ammunition in which the outcome is less predictable. No study has yet attempted to establish what characterises the distribution of injuries caused by firearms in the context of armed conflict or internal unrest in cases of proven violations against International Human Rights Law (IHRL) or International Humanitarian Law (IHL). This exploratory study presents a comparison between injury data extracted from postmortem examination of remains from victims of human rights abuse from countries in three geographically distinct areas of the world and injury data derived from contemporary conflicts. The objectives are to determine whether differences in injury patterns between human rights and contemporary conflict exist, and whether differences between and amongst geographically different sites are also present.
Section snippets
Material and methods
Injury data was extracted from autopsy reports on 1069 cases corresponding to an equal number of individuals from 33 sites in Bosnia, Kosovo, Somaliland and Peru (Table 1). The remains at the time of analysis were in various states of preservation ranging from saponified through skeletonised. Only injuries with obvious traumatic stigmata in which the causative mechanism was established as gunshot during postmortem examination were included in the study reducing the sample to 777 cases from 31
Results
Table 1 shows demographic data for all sites used in the analysis. In the majority of sites, irrespective of geographical location, victims are post-adolescent males; in a few cases, females are also represented and, in two specific sites from Peru (Putis and Putca), the number of children (below 13 years of age) is high.
Principal Component Analysis (PCA) with Varimax and Oblimin rotation reduced the data to three components accounting for 82.94% of variance and did not show any differences
Discussion
As shown in the cluster analysis, injuries to the head and chest (centre of mass) with a variable presence of injuries to the extremities predominate. Such patterns occur in all sites irrespective of geographic origin or the type of incident. Considering that all cases presented in this study correspond to human rights abuses, and constitute extrajudicial killings occurred in the context of counterinsurgency operations (Peru, Kosovo, Somaliland), internal conflict (Bosnia), or attacks by
Conclusions
In combat operations, fragmenting ammunition is the first cause of mortality/morbidity to both combatants and non-combatants [11], [12], [13], [14], [68], [69], [70], [71], [72]. In contrast, in most human rights abuses within the context of armed conflict, gunshot injuries tend to be the most common mechanism of injury [15]. Injury patterns associated with “weapons of volition,” [5] such as firearms, prove to be determinant in demonstrating that individuals were intentionally targeted.
Key messages
- •
In most human rights abuses within the context of, or associated to, armed conflict, gunshot injuries tend to be the most significant mechanism of injury.
- •
In a sample of 1069 individual cases of human rights abuses in various countries across the world, a sub-sample of 777 cases showed gunshot injuries affecting the skeleton predominated in the head and neck, thorax and abdomen and extremities, respectively.
- •
Unlike data derived from contemporary conflicts, in human rights abuses discrete body
Acknowledgements
I thank Prof. Miguel Botella (University of Granada), Prof. Concepcion de la Rua (University of the Basque Country), Prof. Jorge Gomez-Valdez (Autonomous University of Mexico), Andrew Thomson MD, Dr. Erin Kimmerle and Lic. Yamileth Flores for commenting on earlier versions of this manuscript. Rebecca Blackwell assisted with editing this document. Finally I would like to thank three anonymous reviewers for their input in improving the quality of this manuscript.
References (75)
- et al.
Battlefield extremity injuries in Operation Iraqi Freedom
Injury
(2009 Jul) - et al.
Circumstances around weapon injury in Cambodia after departure of a peacekeeping force: prospective cohort study
BMJ
(1999 Aug 14) - et al.
Tracking civilian casualties in combat zones using civilian battle damage assessment ratios
Br. Army Rev.
(2009) - et al.
The Dirty War Index: a public health and human rights tool for examining and monitoring armed conflict outcomes
PLoS Med.
(2008) The Dirty War Index: statistical issues, feasibility, and interpretation
PLoS Med.
(2008 Dec 16)- et al.
Mortality associated with use of weapons in armed conflicts, wartime atrocities, and civilian mass shootings: literature review
BMJ
(1999 Aug 14) - et al.
Ningun Nombre: investigation of human remains of the “Disappeared” in Argentina
Am. J. Forensic Med. Pathol.
(1984 Dec) - et al.
Disappearance, torture and murder of nine individuals in a community of Nebaj, Guatemala
- et al.
Tyranny and torture in the Republic of Panama
- et al.
A Khmer rouge execution method: evidence from Choeung Ek
Firefight in Lima: wounded/killed ratio analysis of MRTA casualties in the 1997 hostage rescue operation at the Japanese Embassy
United States Army Rangers in Somalia: an analysis of combat casualties on an urban battlefield
J. Trauma
A profile of combat injury
J. Trauma
Wounding patterns of United States Marines and sailors during operation Iraqi freedom: major combat phase
Forensic anthropology and the most probable cause of death in cases of violations against international humanitarian law: an example from Bosnia and Herzegovina
J. Forensic Sci.
Deconstruction of a Virtual Genocide: An Intelligent Person's Guide to Srebrenica. Den Haag-Belgrade 2011
Radislav Krstic [Internet] The Hague (Netherlands): Krstic [cited 2011 September 21]
Judgement Summary for Vlastimir Đorđević [Internet] The Hague (Netherlands): Đorđević [cited 2011 February 23]
Milovan Stakic [Internet] The Hague (Netherlands): Stakic [cited 2011 September 23] Testimony of investigator Nicholas Sebire, esq
Vlastimir Djordjevic [Internet] The Hague (Netherlands): Djordjevic [cited 2011 September 23] Testimony of Jose Pablo Baraybar, esq
Prosecutor v. Vidoje Blagojevic, Dragan Jokic [Internet] The Hague (Netherlands): Blagojevic, Jokic [cited 2011 September 24]
Vinko Pandurevic [Internet] The Hague (Netherlands): Popovic, Beara, Nicolic, Borovcanin, Miletic, Gvero, Pandurevic. [cited 10 June 2011]
2.11. Ejecuciones extrajudiciales comprobadas en las fosas de Pucayacu (1984)
Tomo VII, capitulo 2
2.9. Desapariciones, torturas y ejecuciones extrajudiciales en la base militar de los Cabitos (1983–1985)
Tomo VII, capitulo 2
2.14. Ejecuciones extrajudiciales en Putis (1984)
Tomo VII, capitulo 2
2.26. Desapariciones en la base militar de Santa Rosa (Checcasa) (1988)
Tomo VII, capitulo 2
Formation and recognition of New States: Somaliland in contrast to Eritrea
Rev. Afr. Polit. Econ.
Calculation of the minimal number of individuals exhumed by the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia between 1996 and 2001
Summary findings at the secondary mass grave site of Jakarina Kosa, Northwestern Bosnia i Herzegovina
Summary findings on the forensic inspections carried out by the office on missing persons and forensics (OMPF) on the human remains found in three mass grave sites in Serbia after their transfer to Kosovo
Equipo Forense Especializado
Informe Antropológico Forense Caso Cabitos
Torture and extra-judicial execution in the Peruvian Highlands: forensic investigation in a military base
Informe Perical de Análisis de Restos y Elementos Asociados Caso Santa Rosa Investigación No. 136 – 2007
Resultado de los análisis de los restos óseos con códigos CU-CL-PI-SR01, Pichari
Dictamen pericial del examen de los restos recuperados en el cementerio general de Huanta, Provincia de Huanta, Ayacucho. Caso Pucayacu. Resolución No. 77-2009-MP-FSPA-01
Dictamen pericial de los restos humanos del caso Chaupiorcco (Apurimac)
Cited by (8)
Addressing the Lack of Forensic Scientific Evidence and Expertise in the “Trigger Mechanisms” of Genocide Investigations
2020, Forensic Science InternationalCitation Excerpt :Examination of victim injuries, aggression patterns, victimology and other contextual elements provides information as to the perpetrators’ intentions and goals [48,49]. Injury assessment can also help identify false memories in victims and provide credible preliminary evidence regarding dates, places, preferred targets, wound-to-kill ratios and other relevant epidemiological clues as to intent [50–52]. Finally, competent assessment of the circumstances surrounding a victim’s death can differentiate homicidal actions from the high percentage of post-conflict suicides seen among surviving victims [53].
Blast injury prevalence in skeletal remains: Are there differences between Bosnian war samples and documented combat-related deaths?
2017, Science and JusticeCitation Excerpt :In a previous study, general patterns of gunshot-related trauma and injury were used to indicate forensic differences between remains found in Bosnian mass graves and remains from other combat situations [5]. A review of literature indicates combat-related injuries are often characterised by the presence of shrapnel and blast-related injuries [5,6], but assessments are complicated by the lack of standard classification and description of blast-related fractures in the human skeleton. Previously, most of the available information was presented in a medical management context rather than an osteological one [5], however, a number of publications have now detailed the anthropological aspects of the study of blast injury [7–9].
The virtual approach to the assessment of skeletal injuries in human skeletal remains of forensic importance
2017, Journal of Forensic and Legal MedicineCitation Excerpt :The defect is relatively small, with its sharp rim lacking evidence of the outer table dislodging as the bullet exited the bone. An entrance wound at the occipital would suggest an execution-style wound associated with extra-judicial killing.62 It is, however, more likely that the exit wound has taken on an appearance of the entrance, which is known to occur,63 and appears even more frequently when an impact is located at the location of sutures.64,65
Evaluation of trauma patterns in blast injuries using multiple correspondence analysis
2016, Forensic Science InternationalCitation Excerpt :This presentation actually differs from that seen in other studies of terrorist gunshot related trauma patterns, which show that the chest, spine and abdominal areas are affected [27,28]. A recent study of human rights cases of gunshot related trauma showed that injuries to the head and torso predominate [46]. This differs from our study showing predominance of gunshot wound related fractures in the head area, but not in the torso.
The anthropology of violent death and the treatment of the bodies: An introduction
2023, Anthropology of Violent Death: Theoretical Foundations for Forensic Humanitarian Action