They will unveil the mystery of one of the collective graves of the soldiers who died in Malvinas

Natasha Niebieskikwiat

03/17/2021 4:35 PM

• Clarín.com

• Politics

Updated 03/17/2021 4:35 PM

The Governments of Argentina and the United Kingdom will take

a historic step on

Thursday

in what does the so-called Humanitarian Project Plan in Malvinas, which has allowed the identification so far of 115 Argentine soldiers who were buried without name or surname in the Darwin island cemetery.

Through the agreement that they will sign in Geneva with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), no later than August, a team of forensics will exhume the remains of a

mass grave that had been identified since 2004

with the names of four men, three of which

appeared in other tombs that were identified in recent years.

The ICRC president, Peter Maurer, and the ambassador to international organizations, Federico Villegas Beltrán, will sign.

And it will be a new agreement different from the one signed in 2016, and not an addendum to the latter as was thought.

In addition, the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team will continue to be involved in the field work, whose founder, Luis Fondebrider, will precisely become a member of the Red Cross, this newspaper learned. 

"The important thing is to rescue the State policy that Argentina has maintained with this agreement since 2012 and that transcends governments

," Daniel Filmus, secretary of the Malvinas and South Atlantic Islands Area, told Clarín, and who coincidentally participated from that office in the request. that the government of Cristina Kirchner did to the Red Cross in that year so that DNA could be done on the soldiers.

It was a long process in which they had to obtain the agreement of each family to draw their blood and set up a DNA bank.

"It was a job that went through governments and prioritized family members and former combatants, and with which Foreign Minister (Felipe) Solá also committed himself" when he arrived at the Ministry of Foreign Relations, said Filmus.

The collective grave of the Darwin Cemetery, in Malvinas that bears the names of Héctor Walter Aguirre, Mario Ramón Luna, Luis Guillermo Sevilla and Julio Ricardo Sánchez.

The first three appeared in individual graves between 2017 and 2018.

Since the agreement signed in 2016 by the management of Mauricio Macri with London

, 115 of the 121 graves that were unidentified in the Darwin Cemetery have been identified

.

Two men were found in one of those 115 graves.

The islanders concentrated in that cemetery the Argentines who fell in the 1982 war, which will be 39 years old on April 2.

In total there are 230 crosses, the majority erected in 1983 in Darwin by former British Army Captain Geofrey Cardozo.

Of these 109 bore names, and two are collective.

And he already speaks of a third for the grave that will remain unexhumed, although the relatives have not agreed.

In an official letter about what happened there, it is indicated that according to records on file,

"there were inconsistencies in Parcel C.1.10 of the Darwin cemetery"

, the collective grave that is the object of the agreement signed this Thursday.

And that based on these documents provided by the Cardozo report of February 1983-, tomb C.1.10 had the following legend:

"Sub-Alferez Ricardo Sánchez and three Argentine Soldiers only known to God

.

"

There is no record of any identity substitution or exhumations between 1983 and 2004. But Sánchez's grave "underwent modifications in its nomenclature as of 2004 when the cemetery was revalued by the Commission of Relatives of Fallen in Malvinas ".

Thus, the black granite tombstone placed in 2004 bears the name of the

1st Ensign of the National Gendarmerie Julio Ricardo Sánchez, as well as the soldiers of the Air Force Héctor Aguirre, Luis Sevilla and Mario Luna.

In the process of exhumation and DNA of the relatives of the three soldiers that took place between 2017 and 2018, Aguirre, Sevilla and Luna appeared in other individual graves.

They were in graves with headstones

bearing the emblematic legend of "Argentine Soldier known only to God

.

"

The three died on May 29 in a bombardment of the Isthmus of Darwin, more than 85 kilometers from where Sánchez fell.

The sub-lieutenant had died along with colleagues in a “Puma” helicopter on May 30.

Clarín

could not confirm it, but there are reports that those who are buried next to Sánchez are

other members of the Gendarmerie whose Puma helicopter was shot down in Monte Kent.

The Government does not confirm it, and it is also a highly sensitive issue for families.

But in that collective grave the gendarmes Juan Carlos Trepo, Misael Pereira and Guillermo Nasif.

Their families have contributed blood to the DNA bank, and so far not the remains analyzed with them have been negative.

With this new agreement, that mystery will begin to unravel.