The body of a person disappeared during Argentina’s civil-military dictatorship has been identified thanks to a lock of hair that is more than 47 years old. This is the first time that a victim of forced disappearance has been identified thanks to a DNA sample kept in a court file.
With our correspondent in Buenos Aires, Theo Consciousness
Walter Zaporta disappeared on May 4, 1976, after being abducted from his home. The body of the 32-year-old bus driver and union activist was never found. A truncated, unfinished story that echoes that of the 30,000 other forced disappearances of the Argentine civil-military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983.
On Wednesday, September 5, 2024, Federal Judge Ernesto Kreplak announced that the body of Walter Zaporta had finally been identified thanks to a 47-year-old lock of hair. A week after his disappearance in 1976, a charred body was discovered on the side of a road in the town of Brandsen, 75 kilometers south of Buenos Aires, the capital ofArgentineBefore the body was buried under X in a cemetery in the city of La Plata, a lock of hair stained with blood was taken and slipped into an envelope in the court file.
Almost half a century later, the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF) managed to identify this body as that of Zaporta by comparing this DNA fragment with that of one of his family members.
- RFI
