Disaster Victim Identification Assistance

Australian authorities recognised two immediate ramifications from the horrendous bombing incident in Bali, Indonesia. The first was that it was obvious that Australia, its citizens and its interests were not immune from terrorist attack and secondly the scale of the required post-bombing response would surpass anything most Australian law enforcement agencies had ever experienced.

Significant among the aftermath response was the task of identifying victims, an enormous responsibility made more onerous by the need for infallible accuracy, regardless of the atrocity's magnitude.

It was imperative that the Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) process be implemented and completed as quickly as possible to enable the deceased to be returned to Australia and released to grieving relatives.

The Commonwealth Government response, to alter Forensic Procedures aspects of the Crimes Act 1914 to allow CrimTrac's national DNA system to be used for DVI, commenced on 16 October and was completed by 23 October, including scrutiny by both Houses of Parliament.

Response

The Australian Federal Police (AFP), State and Territory police and CrimTrac immediately began cooperating to facilitate victim identification for the families of those killed or missing because it was realised that CrimTrac's National DNA system would provide a model and the technology to provide a fast and reliable way to identify human remains gathered from the blast site. Indonesia and other nations that lost citizens in the bombing could also use the DVI process.

Telephone numbers were established in each jurisdiction through which families could contact police to arrange DNA reference sample collection from personal items owned or used by missing persons, such as clothing and hairbrushes.

Material gathered was sent to the AFP Forensic Services laboratory in Canberra, where DNA material extracted was compared to DNA extracted from material gathered at the blast site. Each of Australia's police jurisdictions was represented in the AFP incident room in which material received was coordinated. (Some jurisdictions are processing material in their own labs to enable electronic on-line comparison with samples in Canberra.)

Operation

Significantly, the cooperative aspects of the task would not pose major problems because Australian police jurisdictions and CrimTrac had established secure and sound electronic communication links via the AFP communications network while collaborating on the national DNA system in the two years since CrimTrac was formed.

Initially, CrimTrac's DNA technology was adapted to a new database (called the DVI database) devoted solely to the demands of the Bali investigation and totally isolated from the national policing database.

While the computer matching codes were being adjusted to cater for specific requirements (primarily concerning what is called mismatch tolerances and match indices) legislative changes were being driven by Commonwealth officials and Ministers to allow information disclosure for matching profiles analysed in other jurisdictions.

Unfortunately DNA extraction, preparation and matching in such complicated circumstances can be time consuming but the understandable pressure from grieving relatives to finalise testing cannot be allowed to subsume the need for the usual degree of forensic precision. The DVI and investigation operations have the highest priority, which will continue for as long as is needed.

Of the 221 missing or deceased in Bali, 182 have been identified; including 88 Australians.

There were 115 people identified by methods including DNA, while 12 were identified using fingerprints. There were 100 identified by methods including dental records, and 7 identified by methods including medical records. There were 43 DNA matches obtained through the CrimTrac database, while 67 were made through the Kinship database (courtesy of Queensland Health), in which searches are made, using the DNA profile, for varying levels of kinship such as parents, children or siblings.