The Colombian government has identified the cadavers of nearly 10,000 people, many listed as disappeared, who were buried anonymously in various mass graves throughout the country.
Interior and Justice Minister German Vargas Lleras said that the majority of the 9,945 cadavers identified, out of 22,000 that have been recovered, correspond to people listed as disappeared in the registers of the Prosecutor General’s Office.
Out of these, many specifically correspond to forced disappearances that occurred since the year 1993, according to information that has been established thus far.
The list of correspondences will be announced by the Ministry of Interior and Justice on Thursday, but Vargas Lleras declined to give further explanations prior to this date, Caracol Radio reported.
The identification of the victims was achieved as the result of an agreement signed at the end of 2010 between the ministry, the National Registry and Medicina Legal, to complete the process of identification, which has cost around $65,000 (COP120 million).
The government reported that the process of identifying the remains of the other 12,000 corpses will continue, although difficulties have been encountered due to the fact that many don’t appear in national registers or were minors.