Forensic experts with the Equipo Argentino de Antropología Forense (Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, EAAF) have identified the remains of a 21-year-old law student who was forcibly abducted and disappeared in 1977.
Virginia Beatriz Tempone, a political activist and law student, was abducted and forcibly disappeared in Mar del Plata during the last 1976-1983 military dictatorship in Argentina. Skeletal remains of her corpse were initially found in 1989 at the Municipal Cemetery of Avellaneda, where 19 mass graves were discovered, the EAAF said in a statement.
“Her remains have been returned to her family in Alicante, Spain,” the expert forensic team reported on Tuesday.
Tempone was abducted on January 26, 1977, aged 21. According to an investigation into her death, she was murdered on April 5 that same year, alongside Guillermo Enrique Pérez and Carlos Alberto Waitz, at the intersection of Acceso Sudeste and Arroyo Santo Domingo, in Avellaneda, the EAAF stated.
Following her murder, Tempone’s body was buried in a mass grave at the Municipal Cemetery of Avellaneda on April 19, 1977. The EAAF exhumed her remains from that cemetery in 1989, and she was later identified thanks to DNA testing, after relatives provided a blood sample for comparison.
According to the Tiempo Argentino newspaper, investigations at the Avellaneda Cemetery began in 1986, “when the [EAAF] team started exhuming mass and individual graves that had been used between 1976 and 1978 to bury unidentified individuals.”
“Following an exhaustive historical investigation, which drew on both oral and documentary sources, the team uncovered 19 mass graves — the largest of which contained 28 skeletons — and 18 individual graves. Nearly 250 bodies, belonging to people who may have been victims of state repression, were exhumed,” the newspaper reported in an article.
Since its founding 40 years ago, the EAAF has located 1,647 sets of human remains or recorded homicides linked to state terrorism in Argentina. To date, the remains of 838 disappeared persons have been found and identified.
The team’s work has drawn international acclaim and its expertise has been called on by investigators probing war crimes and human rights violations across the globe.
“In these four decades, the EAAF has searched more than a hundred cemeteries, former clandestine detention centres, and hidden burial sites for the bodies disappeared by the military regime, whose fate has never been willingly disclosed. The search has extended throughout Argentina, as well as to neighbouring countries such as Uruguay and Paraguay, where the Argentine dictatorship operated through Plan Cóndor,” the EAAF highlighted in a statement.
According to the EAAF report, of the victims identified, 71 percent were men and 29 percent women. Six in ten victims were aged between 20 and 29 and most were killed by gunshot wounds.
Evidence was also found of deaths by asphyxiation, drowning, burning and torture, among others. The largest proportion of those identified were disappeared in the years 1976 and 1977, coinciding with the years of highest recorded disappearances.
“The figures in the report represent a fresh blow to the dictatorship’s denialist narrative promoted by the government of Javier Milei, which seeks to justify the State’s illegal repression as a response to the armed struggle waged by several political organisations in the 1970s,” continued the EAAF statement.
“A total of 1,233 individuals — mostly military personnel — have been convicted for crimes such as abduction, torture, rape, baby theft, murder, and enforced disappearance committed between 1976 and 1983,” the EAAF concluded.
– TIMES/PERFIL
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