ISRAEL: Israel's national forensic laboratory is in trouble over its bizarre post-mortem practices, reports David Horovitz
Orah Berez was just leaving home last Tuesday to visit the grave of her daughter, Tamar, murdered in a brutal attack five years ago, when the phone rang.
On the line was a government social worker, informing her, in effect, that the grave she was going to visit did not contain Tamar's entire corpse. Parts of her daughter's body, she learned, had secretly been retained at Israel's national Abu Kabir forensic laboratory in Tel Aviv, where Tamar's post-mortem had been performed.
Those remains had now been temporarily buried elsewhere, along with body parts from other corpses. Orah was now being asked whether she wanted to reopen her daughter's grave and insert the missing parts, or leave them where they were.
Tearfully discussing the case with a reporter from the Israeli daily Ma'ariv, Orah said: "What are we supposed to do now? Have two graves? I can't stop crying. I don't want them to open Tamar's grave. Absolutely not. But all of the parts of the body must be buried together, in one place."
The Berez family is only one of dozens of Israeli families plunged into new trauma over the deaths of their loved ones because of revelations of bizarre practices at Abu Kabir, the institute that also carries out post-mortems on some Palestinians killed in intifada violence.
The institute has been under investigation for the past year, caught up in a slew of accusations regarding the wrongful retention of body parts after post-mortems, and was even raided last spring by the Health Ministry that oversees it.
Last week, it transferred to the army parts from four dead soldiers, and indicated that it was holding no more. This week, it has acknowledged that it retains tissue and other samples from dozens of other soldiers, and parts from no fewer than 81 civilians.
The way Abu Kabir's veteran director, Prof Yehudah Hiss, tells it, neither he nor his institute have anything to hide or apologise for. At a press conference on Tuesday, Prof Hiss put the spate of critical headlines - and the calls for his resignation - down to "misunderstandings about the normal procedures" that apply in post-mortems.
"The failure is one of public relations alone," he said, noting that all post-mortems required the removal of tissue and other samples. In cases where the institute had retained organs and other major body parts, this had been done in accordance with the needs of ongoing legal or medical investigations or with the families' consent, for medical research.
According to Ronen Bergman, the journalist from the Yediot Ahronot tabloid that first raised questions about procedures at Abu Kabir, however, Prof Hiss has much to apologise for and ought, at the very least, to suspend himself until the matter is resolved.
According to Bergman, an earlier inquiry into Abu Kabir's practices had already established "that tens of thousands of organs have been removed from bodies for research and teaching purposes, without the families' consent, in breach of the law". The institute had often received payment for such organs, he added.
And the removal of such organs has been concealed in the most deplorable manner imaginable: "Feet, hands, testicles, breasts, eyes" and more have been removed, Bergman noted.
"And in their place, the institute has been known to insert pipes, plaster, toilet paper, rags - anything to give the body an appearance that would prevent the families' suspicions being aroused." Officials from the Health Ministry have been holding urgent consultations with the Justice Ministry on ways to prevent a slew of lawsuits.
The Health Minister, Nissim Dahan, would evidently like to fire Prof Hiss, but apparently cannot - for now. Israel's attorney-general told him last year that Prof Hiss could not be dismissed or even suspended so long as he was not under criminal investigation.
Given the latest revelations in the case, that investigation may now be imminent.