Committee on Missing Persons meet with CFCyprus

The Committee on Missing Persons (CMP) in Cyprus met with the Conservative Friends of Cyprus at a meeting held in Portcullis House earlier this week to provide an update on their important work in exhuming, identifying and returning the remains of missing persons to their relatives. The meeting followed a visit to the CMP Laboratory in Nicosia during a CFCyprus parliamentary delegation to the island in 2015, where Members of Parliament saw first hand the important work they carried out.

CMP Members Paul-Henri Arni, Gülden Plümer Kücük and Nestoras Nestoros met with the Rt Hon Theresa Villiers MP, Daniel Kawczynski MP, former CFCyprus Parliamentary Chairman David Burrowes and members of the CFCyprus executive team, and provided a helpful update on their work.

The CMP has so far identified 815 cases, out of which 622 are Greek Cypriots and 193 Turkish Cypriots. The remains of another 397 people are stored in CMP facilities, either because they are still being examined or because their identification has not been possible yet. Some of them have not been tested yet for DNA, while others comprise disputed findings, since they may be ancient skeletons.

Whilst in London held talks with officials from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Ministry of Defence and the National Archives to seek further cooperation from British authorities with regard to their Cyprus-related archives in order to prepare the ground for a forthcoming mission to London by the CMP Archival Research Team.

The CMP is a tripartite intercommunal investigatory committee comprising a representative of the Greek Cypriot community, a representative of the Turkish Cypriot community, and a Third Member nominated by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and appointed by the UN Secretary General.