NSW: Diplomat mistook body despite having photo, inquiry told

AAP General News (Australia)
08-04-2006
NSW: Diplomat mistook body despite having photo, inquiry told

SYDNEY, Aug 4 AAP - A senior Australian diplomat mistook the body of a Bosnian carpenter
for that of Private Jake Kovco despite having a photograph of the Victorian soldier, an
inquiry has been told.

The inquiry at Victoria Barracks in Sydney was told the mistake in identifying the
young soldier who had died in Iraq could have helped contribute to the bungle over his
repatriation to Australia.

Royal Australian Air Force Warrant Officer Chris Hunter said the Kuwait Australian
Embassy's first secretary Alastar (Alastar) Adams had been at the civilian morgue in Kuwait
where the final identification checks were carried out on what was believed to be Pte
Kovco's body.

Mr Adams had a copy of a photograph from Pte Kovco's passport with him and used it
to check against the body shown to him at the morgue, WO Hunter said.

After Mr Adams had checked the body with the photograph, he had stamped a wax seal
on the coffin with the Australian embassy emblem.

WO Hunter said the photo from Pte Kovco's body showed him without a moustache, as did
other photographs of his body taken by military police.

But there was a moustache on the man whose body was shown to Mr Adams and the escort,
known as soldier 2, who was charged with bringing Pte Kovco's body home to Australia.

"He had a copy of the passport photograph and he was looking in the body bag," WO Hunter said.

"Both soldier 2 and Mr Adams did have a look at what was in the body bag and said something
along the lines of yes, yep.

"That would indicate to me that they were doing an identification."

Pte Kovco died on April 21 after being shot in the head while inside his Baghdad barracks
with his two roommates.

However, his body was left behind in Kuwait while that of a Bosnian carpenter, Juso
Sinanovic, was sent back to Australia.

WO Hunter told the inquiry he believed the body mix-up could have been prevented if
the civilian morgue had not been used.

"It's my personal belief it wouldn't have happened," he said.

He said Pte Kovco's body had been transferred from a professional and clean mortuary
facility in Baghdad run by American troops to what he believed to be a run-down morgue
in Kuwait.

"It was at best very run-down, probably what a lot of people would imagine a third
world country hospital would look like," he said.

"It looked abandoned to me when we first got there."

WO Hunter said he stopped eight of Pte Kovco's soldier mates, who had accompanied the
body to Kuwait as a bearer party, from going into the morgue.

He said he feared they would be outraged at what they saw.

"I just didn't want them to be seeing how awful the mortuary was ... I believed if
the guys had seen that there may have been a riot," he said.

Once it was realised there had been a mix-up with the bodies, WO Hunter went back to
the morgue to find out where Pte Kovco's body was.

He said when he saw the body it did not look anything like Pte Kovco's passport photograph.

However, he said he knew it was the right body because it matched photographs taken
of Pte Kovco's corpse by military police a few days earlier at the US mortuary facility.

The inquiry continues.

AAP bt/was/grc/bwl

KEYWORD: KOVCO INQUIRY

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