South America - Tuesday, March 25, 2008 11:15 - 0 Comments

DNA Identifies Argentina’s ‘Dirty War’ Bones

By BILL CORMIER

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — The 600 skeletons are packed into fruit cartons and stacked on shelves in the walk-in closet of a forensic lab, in the dim glow of a single bare light bulb. They are “Skeleton No. 4″ or “Skeleton No. 21,” and nothing more.

But a quarter-century after Argentina’s dictatorship and “dirty war” against its own citizens ended, DNA technology raises the possibility of finally learning the identities of these skeletons in the closet, collected from mostly unmarked graves across Argentina.

Funded by U.S. taxpayers, anthropologists have launched an ambitious campaign, drawing on techniques pioneered in Bosnia and at New York’s World Trade Center after 9/11.

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