The Committee on Missing Persons (CMP) has pledged to continue working to ascertain the fate of the persons listed as missing.
In a press conference on Monday, the three members, Greek Cypriot Leonidas Pantelides, Turkish Cypriot Hakkı Müftüzade and Third Member Pierre Gentile outlined the strategy for 2025-2030 and recalled the work done during the previous strategy.
According to a report handed out, the CMP exhumed 1,707 remains between 2006 until early May 2025. All in all, from 2002 missing persons, for whom the families had no news after the events of 1963/64 and 1974, as well as during the intervening period, 1,054 were identified.
The “CMP strongly believes it can solve a substantial number of cases and bring answers to many families in the coming years”. It recognizes that it needs to work at a more intensive rate, as families and witnesses are getting older and some have already passed away. Regular consultations with partners, as well as within CMP, in the preparation of this strategy highlighted the necessity to reflect on efficiency and cost effectiveness to enhance recovery and identification”. These two notions, it was noted, “are largely reflected in several concrete objectives and enabling actions of this strategy”, the report said.
In remarks, Gentile said the vision for the next period can be summarized “into two sentences, the committee’s vision is to improve efficiency and the cost effectiveness in all areas of work and to speed up the project and provide answers to as fast as possible to the families”.
The existing challenges the committee is facing are lack of precision on possible burial sites, relocation of remains, complex burial patterns, managing the health and safety risks for CMP teams, remains that could not be identified and sustained funding, noting that now the CMP is working with a deficit.
Among the issues which the CMP has acknowledged as a positive outcome of the previous strategy is testing new technology, developing new procedures and forcing new partnerships.
To a question as to how many years will the CMP continue, Pantelides said “the answer is we will never stop until the fate of the last missing person on our list is established”.
He said it is a matter of principle, adding that if one day the political situation changes and we have a unified federal government and the CMP perhaps changes its format, “I think it should remain open, it is very important that we stand on this line of principle”.
Pantelides acknowledged “we will not be able to find all of them because so much time has passed and a lot of disturbance of graves has occurred, some intentional some unintentional, there is a lot of development and so on, grave locations are now under buildings, schools and hospitals, so very likely we will not be able to access them”.
Muftuzade said the CMP is using new technology and we “are hopeful that we will be able to reach difficult” areas. He said two professors are arriving to the island next week and “will be testing their technologies” and will have a better idea after those tests and more technologies to come so “that gives us hope for the future”.
In his remarks, Müftüzade described the work of the Committee as “very difficult, delicate and we regard what we do as holy as it touches upon the hearts of families”, adding “we are fully aware of our duty that we need to fulfil”.
He said the missing persons issue is sometimes politicised and for this reason they are trying to shield the work of the committee, underlining that the committee is restricted by its terms of reference. Its number one rule is to hand over the remains to the families of the missing and to contribute to Confidence Building Measures.
“We do not politicise the issue, we just concentrate on what we are doing and that contributes to CBM. Of course, solving the Cyprus problem is for the politicians…if we politicise this issue, it prevents us from progressing…” he added and criticized the politicians who politicise the issue.
Muftuzade said the Committee is feeling positive as it is on the verge of locating more remains.
Asked about reports of prisoners still alive in Turkey, Muftuzade said that according to the Red Cross, “all prisoners that were taken to Turkey have returned. So, we don’t have any cause to believe that there are any prisoners in Turkey. Gentile added that there is no credible information that anyone is in prison.
Pantelides said the committee works on the basis of information. “If someone approaches us with information that they saw someone alive somewhere, I confirm we will investigate this information. We are not prejudging that everybody is dead. But now we do not have reliable information that people are alive. What we have is a lot of information about people witnessing certain activity which is of interest to us. We try to establish the information and then go and look for them. We are not interested in the narrative, we are not interested in who is responsible or not, we are only interested in is where the people that are on our list maybe located”.
What we do is impossibly difficult, yet we manage to do it because we have established a certain way to go over it. This is an example that the two communities can do things together, said Pantelides.
Asked about the obstacles faced due to the Turkish military areas in the occupied north, Muftuzade said that the CMP has an agreement with the military to excavate in ten military sites per year. And when the areas finish in one year, we go on to the next year.
To a question if they still get calls on the hotline from people with information, Pantelides said CPM is still getting information.
Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkish troops invaded and occupied 37% of its territory. Since then, the fate of hundreds of people remains unknown.
A Committee on Missing Persons has been established, upon agreement between the leaders of the two communities, with the scope of exhuming, identifying and returning to their relatives the remains of 492 Turkish Cypriots and 1,510 Greek Cypriots, who went missing during the inter-communal fighting of 1963-1964 and in 1974.