Argentina’s Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that people can’t be forced to give blood for genetic tests to determine whether they were taken at birth from political detainees who were killed during the dictatorship era.
Activists estimate some 500 such offspring have not been traced.
But the court ruled that people cannot be forced to participate in efforts to track down those who were taken from parents slain in the “dirty war” campaign against leftists during military rule from 1976 to 1983.
“The right of biological families to know the truth does not mean that the other victim should shoulder all the emotional and legal consequences of establishing a new identity,” two of the justices said.
However, the court said less invasive ways of obtaining DNA would respect personal dignity and individual rights under the Argentine Constitution.
The judges said for example that taking samples from hair brushes or other personal objects was legal with a court order.
The rulings involved a decade-old case of a former sailor and his wife, Guillermo Prieto and Emma Gualtieri, who falsely registered two boys as their own.
The boys were taken from their mothers, who had been kidnapped by security forces, said the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a movement that campaigns to reunite “dirty war” victims with blood relatives.
The group persuaded a judge to order the young men to give blood samples. Both refused.
The judge then ordered a search of their home and recovered samples from their personal effects, which confirmed they were not related to the couple.
It remained to be seen whether the couple would face any charges.
The two men’s DNA was entered into Argentina’s national gene bank, which contains genetic information related to thousands of missing people, but it has not been made public whether the DNA led to a match with blood relatives.
Both rulings will apply to other cases in which the suspected children of the disappeared have refused to provide DNA. Most people, however, have volunteered in hopes of discovering their birth families.
The Grandmothers group has recovered the identities of 97 of these children and estimates 500 others remain undiscovered.
Chile’s government, meanwhile, launched a campaign on Tuesday to gather more samples for a similar DNA database.
An official survey lists 3,197 people killed by security forces while late general Augusto Pinochet ruled Chile from 1973 to 90, including 1,200 who disappeared after being detained.
In the 19 years since democracy was restored, bodies or bone fragments of about 200 of missing people have been found. Many remain unidentified.
The government hopes its media campaign will encourage Chileans with missing relatives to provide blood samples.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion