SkyLink Airlifts Home Remains of 300 Kurdish Victims of Saddam

TORONTO, Oct. 12 /CNW/ - Toronto-based SkyLink Aviation announced today that it has successfully transported back to Kurdistan the remains of more than 300 Kurdish people who were executed by the Saddam regime during the 1980's and buried in mass graves in the Western Desert of Iraq.

"We were requested by President Barzani and the Kurdish Government to provide critical assistance when it became clear that they had difficulties moving these bodies from the Southern part of Iraq back to Kurdistan," said Walter Arbib, President of the company.

"This story is a remarkable result of almost 23 years of investigation by Dr Mohammed I. Sulvani, a leading legal and humanitarian investigator and Minister of Human Rights of the Kurdistan Government," said Arbib. SkyLink provided an AN-26 to transport the excavation team and its AN-12 to transport the human remains from Basrah back to Arbil, Kurdistan, and
coordinated all the logistics and special loading of the human remains.

"We have received personal thanks from the very highest levels within the Iraqi Government for doing this mission and a special ceremony will be conducted in Arbil on October 17th and a tribute will be made to SkyLink for making this possible. All of us who were in Arbil today saw how much this has meant to the Kurdish people and even though it does not answer for the 8,000 people taken during this particular incident, I believe it is an extremely important symbol of evidence of the suffering of the Kurdish population," said Mike Douglas, Managing Director of SkyLink Arabia, a member of SkyLink Group
of Companies.