DPA
Phnom Penh - Human remains unearthed under controversial circumstances in Cambodia last month are not thought to be those of Sean Flynn, the son of Hollywood icon Errol Flynn and a US war photographer who disappeared in Cambodia 40 years ago, the US embassy in Phnom Penh said Monday.
Spokesman John Johnson said an analysis undertaken by the Hawaii-based Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, whose task is to determine the fate of US military personnel who are listed as prisoners of war or missing in action, suggested the remains "may be indigenous."
"Further testing is under way," Johnson said, adding that the remains "are badly fragmented due to the manner in which they were recovered."
The remains were dug up by Australian Dave MacMillan, 29, and Briton Keith Rotheram, 60, in the south-eastern Cambodian province of Kampong Cham and eventually handed over in late March to the US embassy.
The pair made world news after claiming they had found Flynn's remains. They admitted to using heavy earthmoving equipment to conduct part of the dig, a technique that was widely criticized because it damaged the site that the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command subsequently investigated.
MacMillan told dpa in March that the team had "used some not-so-obvious techniques you wouldn't see in a forensics handbook" during its three-month dig.
Neither MacMillan nor Rotheram could be reached for comment Monday.
Flynn was in Cambodia on assignment for Time magazine covering its civil war when he and fellow American Dana Stone, a photojournalist with CBS News, went missing on April 6, 1970, after they drove out of Phnom Penh on the main road to Vietnam.
Flynn was 28 and Stone was 31 when they disappeared, and neither was heard from again. It is thought they were kept alive for a year before being killed, either by the Khmer Rouge or by Vietnamese communist forces.
The announcement by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command followed the conclusion last week of the first Phnom Penh reunion of journalists and photographers who covered the war in Cambodia in the early 1970s.
Flynn and Stone were among at least 37 foreign and local journalists who died or disappeared while covering the Cambodia conflict, which ended on April 17, 1975, when Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge forces took Phnom Penh and instituted their four-year-long genocidal regime known as Democratic Kampuchea.
Around 2 million Cambodians are thought to have died under the Khmer Rouge. A UN-Cambodian court in Phnom Penh has been established to try the movement's surviving leaders.
Spokesman John Johnson said an analysis undertaken by the Hawaii-based Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, whose task is to determine the fate of US military personnel who are listed as prisoners of war or missing in action, suggested the remains "may be indigenous."
"Further testing is under way," Johnson said, adding that the remains "are badly fragmented due to the manner in which they were recovered."
The remains were dug up by Australian Dave MacMillan, 29, and Briton Keith Rotheram, 60, in the south-eastern Cambodian province of Kampong Cham and eventually handed over in late March to the US embassy.
The pair made world news after claiming they had found Flynn's remains. They admitted to using heavy earthmoving equipment to conduct part of the dig, a technique that was widely criticized because it damaged the site that the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command subsequently investigated.
MacMillan told dpa in March that the team had "used some not-so-obvious techniques you wouldn't see in a forensics handbook" during its three-month dig.
Neither MacMillan nor Rotheram could be reached for comment Monday.
Flynn was in Cambodia on assignment for Time magazine covering its civil war when he and fellow American Dana Stone, a photojournalist with CBS News, went missing on April 6, 1970, after they drove out of Phnom Penh on the main road to Vietnam.
Flynn was 28 and Stone was 31 when they disappeared, and neither was heard from again. It is thought they were kept alive for a year before being killed, either by the Khmer Rouge or by Vietnamese communist forces.
The announcement by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command followed the conclusion last week of the first Phnom Penh reunion of journalists and photographers who covered the war in Cambodia in the early 1970s.
Flynn and Stone were among at least 37 foreign and local journalists who died or disappeared while covering the Cambodia conflict, which ended on April 17, 1975, when Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge forces took Phnom Penh and instituted their four-year-long genocidal regime known as Democratic Kampuchea.
Around 2 million Cambodians are thought to have died under the Khmer Rouge. A UN-Cambodian court in Phnom Penh has been established to try the movement's surviving leaders.
1 comment:
WHY THE FUCK DO WE CARE SO MUCH ABOUT AN AMERICAN WHEN MILLIONS OF OUR PEOPLE DIED AS WELL?
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