About 8,000 boys and men were executed in five days. Gordon Bacon, a former murder squad detective in Durham and head of this investigation, walks along row after row of nameless victims heaped on stainless steel trays. Yet when Whitehall was asked last month to donate money, the Foreign Office sent a cheque for just 10,000 to solve the world's biggest forensic puzzle. Even Iceland has given three times as much as Britain. At his desk, a weary-looking Dr Rifat Kesetovic says that the money would have produced results because of new DNA techniques they are perfecting at two new laboratories in Bosnia.
Scientists can map the human gene and, by the same means, map genocide.
The forensic pathologist demonstrates how a one-inch sample cut from a thigh bone of each victim can be instantly matched against blood samples from family members who are missing loved ones from Bosnia's war. Dr Kesetovic says that there are anything from 25,000 to 30,000 people still missing. While a handful of teams search for where they are buried, Institute staff are trying to track down the next of kin, around 100,000 of them, to take a pin-prick of blood. Some who need to be traced are refugees living abroad. Besides the warehouse, there is also a disused salt mine where hundreds more body bags are packed on to wooden shelves, waiting for identification.