Government officials were today trying to contact the families of soldiers killed in Afghanistan to inform them that body parts had been secretly stored.
An investigation was launched after the Ministry of Defence said six body parts and 50 tissue samples were found last month when a new manager was appointed at the Military Police’s Special Investigation Branch. The body parts were found at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford and the tissue samples at Bulford Garrison in Wiltshire.
The number of families affected is likely to be fewer than 60 as multiple samples were taken for each case. But a military source told the Daily Mail: “These have been retained illegally for no good purpose and should have been buried with their owners. There is a strict procedure for accounting for body parts needed for forensic testing, and this has clearly been ignored.”
An Army spokesman said: “There are occasions when it is necessary ... to retain slides of forensic material from individuals killed on operations ... However, there were a small number of cases where this had been done without the correct processes being followed to inform families.”
