PHUKET: In the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami, quite a few families were handed back the wrong bodies. Even with husbands looking at the faces of wives, mothers looking at children, misidentifications were made, not just once but quite often.

The resulting sad confusion took some sorting out. Years later, Phuketwan went to the cremation of a man's wife - for the second time. On the first occasion, a woman who had not been his wife had been cremated.

These errors, hushed up then, caused huge confusion to the identification process. Many of the errors were made because relatives, grieving and deeply traumatised, are not always able to make accurate identifications.

This is one of the reasons why international standards require 99.9 percent certainty of identification, and why there are only three ways of achieving this: through dna matching, through dental records, or through fingerprints.

Identification from photographs or from items of clothing and even from tattoos is a useful aid, but experts do not accept these pointers as conclusive proof.

Many of the families of British victims of the tsunami especially wanted their dead relatives returned, and told the British media how they felt.

But the families were obliged to wait until authorities were able to confirm with absolute certainty, using dna, dental records or fingerprints, that the bodies were the correct ones.

The same certainty will be required in the case of Mark Robson, 27, a missing South African who was travelling on his British passport when he vanished on Phuket last month.

His family in South Africa now believes, on the basis of similarities and at least one photograph, that a dead man found hanged near Freedom beach is their son.

Problems of the kind experienced during the tsunami are now surfacing. The headline in one online outlet today says: 'Slain man's family slams Thai officials.'

It reports Mr Robson's sister as saying: ''There is a lot going on at the moment and we do not even know where the body is.

''Thai authorities have been giving us the run-around. All we know is that the body is at one of the police stations.''

Having spoken to officials on Phuket who say they have been in regular contact with the family, the Robsons should be reassured that all is being done to speed the process.

Phuketwan has been told the body of the hanged man is still in the province of Surat Thani, where it was taken for autopsy - there are no autopsy facilities on Phuket - and where the match from dna, dental records or fingerprints will eventually determine whether it is Mark Robson.

Until then, sad though it may seem, patience is essential.