Elsevier

Science & Justice

Volume 55, Issue 5, September 2015, Pages 355-362
Science & Justice

Variation of gunshot injury patterns in mortality associated with human rights abuses and armed conflict: an exploratory study

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scijus.2015.03.003Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Unlike combat, in HR abuses gunshot tends to be the main mechanism of injury.

  • Injury patterns caused by firearms are different in combat and HR abuses.

  • In HR abuses discrete body areas and centre of mass are preferred over extremities.

Abstract

The analysis of the distribution of gunshot injuries in a sample of 777 sets of human remains of proven human rights abuse from Somaliland, the Balkans and Peru is compared to frequencies of injuries sustained by combatants in contemporary conflicts reported in the literature. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) reduced the data to three components accounting for 82.94% of the variance. The first component with 38.31% of variance shows segments Arms and thorax/abdomen to be positively correlated (0.887 and 0.662, respectively); the segment head/neck is strongly correlated (0.951) to the second component while the segment thorax/abdomen shows a low, negative correlation (− 0.388). Finally in the third component only the legs are strongly correlated (0.991). Data was further subjected to a K-means cluster analysis to determine the likely groupings combining the four types of injuries. Each of the three clusters reproduced similar patterns observed in the PCA: Cluster 1 shows the prevalence of injuries to the thorax/abdomen and extremities in addition to injuries to the head/neck; Cluster 2 shows injuries to the head/neck and Cluster 3 injuries to the thorax/abdomen and a lower representation of the arms and legs. Most of the cases (70.5%), irrespective of geography and type of site (attack or detention), were grouped into Cluster 2. Such comparison shows that in human rights abuse, irrespective of their geography, gunshot injuries tend to follow a pattern favouring the head/neck and thorax/abdomen areas over the extremities, the reverse pattern observed in contemporary combat operations. In those settings gunshot wound trauma is the second cause of mortality/morbidity (after fragmenting ammunition) and its distribution concentrates on the extremities, thorax/abdomen and head; following the pattern of protective armour when it is used. Considering that human rights abuses are often presented as encounters between two armed groups in the context of counter-insurgency operations, a careful analysis of gunshot injury patterns could serve as an indicator that in fact murder, rather than combat, took place and the intention was to kill rather than to maim or render people unfit for battle.

Objective

To compare the variation of gunshot injury patterns between mortality associated with human rights abuses and armed conflict in selected samples from different countries.

Design

Literature review and case analysis.

Settings

Original statistical analysis of gunshot injuries on human remains (n = 777) recovered from mass or clandestine graves associated with human rights abuses in countries in Somaliland, the Balkans and Peru (1983–1995) and literature review of mortality caused by armed conflicts.

Main outcome measure

Mechanism of gunshot injury and wound distribution pattern in geographically diverse samples of human rights abuse.

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.

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