WASHINGTON (AP) — The Air Force is acknowledging that the mortuary that receives America’s war dead and prepares them for burial lost portions of human remains. Two cases of missing remains from 2009 were among problems that led the Air Force to discipline three senior officials for “gross mismanagement.”
The cases involved deaths in Afghanistan where bodies were dismembered. Portions of the bodies were properly returned to the troops’ families, but small pieces went missing at Dover Air Base.
The Associated Press reviewed results of a year-long Air Force investigation prompted by whistleblower workers at the Delaware base where all war dead received from foreign battlefields are flown. The Air Force runs a special morgue at Dover where the bodies are identified, autopsied and prepared for transfer to families of the fallen troops.
