08/16/2020 - 17:46
- Clarín.com
- Police
Four experts from the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF) traveled to Bahía Blanca this Sunday to take charge of the process that will seek to identify the body found in Villarino and determine whether or not it is Facundo Astudillo Castro, the 22-year-old who disappeared on December 30. April.
It was in the morning that they came at the request of federal prosecutor Santiago Ulpiano Martínez and carried out tasks at the site of the discovery to collect samples and inspect the surroundings of the site. They stayed until around 1 pm and at night they will return to Buenos Aires.
The work carried out by the team is interdisciplinary and encompasses different anthropological and forensic elements. They specialize in the lifting and identification of skeletonized remains , such as the one found in this bay in a sector with difficult access.
They find a body in the area where they were looking for Facundo Astudillo Castro. Photo: Pablo Presti
"Only the members of Forensic Anthropology and the Scientific Expert Cabinet of the Federal Police worked," explained a police source.
So far, the EAAF had not intervened in the case investigating the disappearance of Facundo, who had been seen for the last time about 14 kilometers from the place where the body was found, according to a witness who said that she had brought him, when hitchhiking, even before a phytosanitary post on national route 3.
What they were able to determine is that it was the corpse of "a male," according to the young man's mother, Cristina Castro (42), although he was very deteriorated by the saltpeter and his arms were also missing, although this could have been the work of the animals of the area.
The remains found will be transferred to a morgue in Buenos Aires and will remain in the custody of the Federal Police until they begin the identification process and the autopsy expertise looking for evidence that can determine age, gender, ante and post-mortem injuries, and if Some of these signs help determine the cause of death.
Although the DNA tests could take time, Cristina Castro has already had blood samples taken and a swab performed to carry out the genetic comparison and confirm if it is her son, as her "mother instinct" indicates, according to to his words.
In addition, Virginia Cremier, forensic doctor and academic director of the Forensic Sciences Expert Consultant, will be an expert on the part and anticipated that she will be "fully participating" in the case in which Facundo's disappearance is being investigated after being summoned by the complaint and the Provincial Commission for Memory (CPM).
Facundo Castro's mother and the lawyers at the place where they found the body. / Pablo Presti
Cremier was an expert in the judicial case that investigated the forced disappearance followed by the death of Luciano Arruga (16), the boy who disappeared in 2009 and found as an NN in the morgue of the Argerich Hospital, in Buenos Aires, in October 2014
"The first thing I would do would be an external analysis of the body, in the conditions in which it is, arms, hands and legs arranged, before turning it to see if it expresses any injury by holding, for example, if the body expresses an injury by direct or indirect trauma, "he commented before he was lifted from the scene.
Meanwhile, the EAAF is recognized worldwide for its work in identifying people. Thanks to their interdisciplinary work, they have been able to recover, identify and restore missing victims of the Argentine civic-military dictatorship.
His task has been replicated around the world with the identification of people buried in mass graves in Mexico and even one of the 43 students who disappeared in September 2014 in Ayotzinapa, for example.
The EAAF is part of the Malvinas Humanitarian Project Plan, which allowed the identification of 115 Argentine combatants buried without names in the Darwin military cemetery. They also performed an autopsy on the body of Santiago Maldonado in November 2017.
Astudillo Castro has been missing since April 30. That day he left Pedro Luro for Bahía Blanca, hitchhiking on Route 3. Twice he was delayed by the Buenos Aires Police, who remained under suspicion although federal judge Gabriela Marrón did not order any arrest.
EMJ