FIVE ARGENTINE SOLDIERS EXHUMED AT DARWIN CEMETARY
By J Brock (FINN)
A team from the International Committee of the Red Cross has been working for a week in the Darwin Cemetery to identify the bones buried in a multiple grave.
The remains of five former Argentine combatants were exhumed from a collective grave in the Darwin cemetery, as part of the identification work carried out by a team from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Samples will be taken from each one and then analyzed and compared with blood from relatives in the laboratory that the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF) has in Córdoba. Originally four bodies were expected in the multiple tomb and not five.
This was reported by an ICRC team in a virtual press conference, to which FINN was not invited, to give details of the second Humanitarian Project plan that began last month in Darwin Cemetery, with the aim of identifying the remains buried in the tomb. multiple called C 1 10.
These fieldworks are being carried out four years after the first project, which allowed the identification of 115 Argentine soldiers thanks to the blood samples provided by their relatives after 122 bodies had been exhumed from 121 graves.
From the islands, the head of the project, Laurent Corbaz; and the head of the ICRC Forensic Unit, the Argentine Luis Fondebrider. They were joined by the head of the ICRC Regional Delegation, Alexandre Formisano; and the representative for Argentina, Gabriel Valladares.
As reported by Corbaz and Fondebrider, in the collective tomb “remains of at least five people were found,” and not four as originally thought, which will be brought to the continent on a private flight next Thursday 26 to be analyzed in the laboratory. of the EAAF in the Cordovan capital.
“After a priest blessed the operation, we began the excavation work on the tomb on Tuesday. And yesterday when we opened the body bag, we found the remains of at least five people. They are body fragments, not complete skeletonized bodies, ”said Fondebrider, former head of the EAAF.
A priest blesses the work of the International Red Cross in the Falkland Islands. (Photo: Télam)
However, he clarified that “these five bodies do not mean five identifications; it just means that the identification process is just beginning ”.
Unlike the work carried out in 2017, when the unidentified graves were exhumed, with the denomination “Argentine soldier known only to God”, in this case the work focuses only on a collective grave -the one called C 1 10- located in Darwin, near the major cross that presides over the cemetery.
Sources: Telam, Fr Ambrose Bennett
