Colombia identifies almost 10,000 bodies in unmarked graves | World news | The Guardian

The Colombian government has identified the remains of almost 10,000 people buried in unmarked graves across the country, and at least that many more bodies are still to be identified, an official said.

The interior minister, German Vargas Lleras, said it was "fundamental for advancing legal human rights proceedings" to identify the remains. Many of the bodies are suspected of being victims of the decades-long conflict between leftist guerrillas, rightwing militias and government security forces.

The process of identifying remains found in unmarked graves was carried out over the past five months by comparing fingerprints taken from bodies at morgues with data from the national registry, the agency that issues identity documents. Doing this enabled the identification of 9,969 people: 8,810 men and 1,159 women.

Politician Iván Cepeda said bodies in at least 10,000 more graves could not be identified because they were minors, lacked identity documents or their fingerprints were not taken properly.

Identified bodies would be exhumed from the graves and returned to their families, if they were claimed.

Each morgue in Colombia would have an attention centre and information would be posted on the website of the Legal Medicine Institute to help families recover the bodies of loved ones, Cepeda said.

via guardian.co.uk