Foreign Office to issue death certificates for tsunami missing
The Foreign Office has announced that death certificates will be issued to the families of victims of the tsunami disaster even where no bodies are found.
The law requires seven years to pass before a missing person can be declared officially dead, leaving relatives unable to sell property, claim insurance or inheritance until then.
However, Foreign Office Minister Douglas Alexander said today that death certificates would be issued for those Britons reported missing in the Boxing Day disaster.
So far, 53 British citizens have been confirmed dead, with another 256 highly likely to be involved and 346 possibly involved.
Mr Alexander stressed that identification of the bodies of the victims was “our priority and continues to have our full attention”.
But he admitted the “sad and tragic reality” that some bodies would never be found or identified.
“In normal circumstances the foreign office would not issue death certificates in the absence of a body or local death certificate. We have been working to resolve this issue since the week of the tsunami,” he said.
“We have agreed, as a response to the exceptional circumstances we face, that the foreign office, at the request of families, will issue death certificates for missing British nationals, where no body has been found based on evidence provided by the British police.”
Certificates would only be issued where evidence existed “beyond reasonable doubt” that the missing person was in the affected region; that they were there when the tsunami struck; there had been no evidence of their being alive after that time; and there was no reason that they would want to disappear.
