The Colombian learned for the first time that there is already a first opinion on the skeletal remains found, last November, by the Unit for the Search for Persons Deemed Missing (UBPD) on the property of the commune 13 of Medellín known as La Escombrera, where it is presumed that they buried victims of forced disappearance.
On November 22, this newspaper revealed that the forensic team of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace and the UBPD they found small bones half a meter deep, next to what appeared to be a piece of clothing.
The news was extremely important at that time because it opened up the scientific possibility that dozens of victims of the armed conflict rest there, who would have been murdered and thrown into that garbage dump during the most critical times of the war. The latter, as they have been denouncing the victims during the last two decades.
After two months of waiting the victims and the UBPD received a forensic report from the National Institute of Legal Medicine a few days ago which sought to answer a single question: whether these bones were of animal or human origin.
Also read: In commune 13 they will remove 40,000 cubic meters of earth to search for the disappeared
In an interview with this newspaper, the director of the Search Unit, Luz Marina Monzón Cifuentes, revealed exclusively that Legal Medicine could not establish in this first stage the biological origin of the remains, given the complexity of the bone tissues that were found in the place.
“We sent these remains to Legal Medicine, they did the analysis and gave us information this week to the victims, the Unit, the JEP and the Mayor’s Office that They have not been able to rule out whether they are humans or animals.” said the director, who formally received the report on January 24.
Despite this, the Institute concluded that it was able to carry out a second stage of more advanced analysis that will finally show which species they belong to.
“Despite the fact that in those first analyzes a conclusion could not be reached, Legal Medicine told us that it could do more in-depth analyzes that will yield a result. At that point, the entity explained to us that it was going to have to take this small sample of bone remains and that it might be destroyed in the middle of the study in order to reach a conclusion, ”he said.
It may interest you: “This gives us hope”: they verify the discovery of bone remains in La Escombrera of the commune 13
Decision was left in the hands of the victims
The decision, then, was in the hands of the victims and the organizations, who were forced to define whether to risk the small pieces to confirm if there was a human corpse at that site and, therefore, establish the possibility of finding more bodies.
Finally, the entities and the families of the victims decided to give the green light to carry out these studies that will conclude with a definitive result, which will be known soon.
It should be remembered that the skeletal remains were found by the technical team of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace and the Search Unit in the forensic archaeological intervention that was carried out between November 8 and 25, 2022 in La Escombrera.
For the date of the findings, the technical team explained that “the bone remains and the garment were found in one of the six excavations” carried out in the first phase of the investigation carried out by the entities and that the bones were found while a backhoe began work on one of the points of forensic interest.
Also: Dying without finding: story of someone who died looking for a missing relative
The find was so interesting for this stage of the process, which was only in an exploratory stage, that neither Monzón nor the technical team expected to find it. something of forensic interest in these first six dig spots.
“But this gives us hope. Here people had always believed that we were not going to find anything, but this would be the demonstration that we did,” Monzón said on those dates.
In addition to this discovery, the Search Unit and the Special Jurisdiction for Peace They have found at least another dozen items of clothing such as pants, shirts and shoes.
However, these elements are not of forensic interest, so they have not been sent for analysis.
So far, the team has also found animal bones and other normal items inside a dump site.