July 26, 2007	Thursday	Rajab 10, 1428

ISLAMABAD, July 25: Search for those who went missing in the Lal Masjid operation is leading the grieving families to the H-11 graveyard, and some among them to a DNA testing facility.

Officials say about 12 of the 70 bodies interned there were completely unrecognisable and only DNA matching could establish their identity.

Scores of families have been searching for their loved ones at the Facilitation Centre set up at the Sports Complex with the help of photographs and personal details of the missing person.

Five bodies thus recognised were handed over to families for burial at their hometowns. A few of the empty graves have already been filled by fresh, normal arrivals, according to undertakers at the H-11 graveyard.

For Muhammad Nazir, however, the search for his 21-year-old nephew Fayaz Ahmad is proving too tiresome. After spending two weeks camping outside Sports Complex, he gave his DNA sample and is waiting for the result.

Nazir has no shelter. He had been sleeping in mosques or under the open sky in front of the Sports Complex. Like others who left disheartened, he too is on the verge of giving up.

“I’m tired and want to return home. Why don’t they just hand over my nephew’s body so that I can take him back home for a proper burial? His mother is very sad and is waiting for him,” Nazir told Dawn, wiping sweat from his forehead.

Like everybody else Nazir searched everywhere - jails, hospitals and scanned lists of the Lal MAsjid dead and injured.

It took him to the newly built H-11 graveyard twice where more than 70 graves have no tombstones, just numbers, starting from 104 onwards.

No. 115 contains the body of Hassan, son of Maulana Abdul Aziz of Lal Masjid, according to the security guard of the graveyard, Ghulam Mustafa.

It is one of the darkest places for a graveyard. With air heavy and the earth hiding the grisly evidence of Lal Masjid bloodshed.

Nobody knows who is buried there. Relatives of the dead have to run a marathon to identify those lying inside. They are guided through police stations where pictures of the bodies taken before their burial are shown to them. If recognised, the relative is provided the coffin number.

For the ‘lucky ones’ the agony ends there. But for others the torture lingers on. They have to queue up for DNA testing. For them there is no other hope.

Such unfortunate include the relatives of late Abdul Rashid Ghazi’s uncle Haji Muhammad and his cousin, Muhammad Ayub Mazari. Haji Muhammad’s son Atta Muhammad and his sister Sahiba Khatoon, Ghazi’s mother, are still unaccounted for.

“I want to take my son back with me to our village in D.I. Khan. But I want my sister to be buried in Jamia Faridia, just like she had wished. We will bury her there and nowhere else,” said one relative.