Sunday 13 July 2008

Peru: La Cantuta

16 years after the massacre of La Cantuta, the remains of the victims are to be returned to their families.

In 1992, 9 students and a professor of the university of Enrique Guzman y Valle, better known as Cantuta, were disappeared by members of the Colina Group who suspected them of involvement in 'subversive' activity. Their bodies were discovered the following year, after an investigation by the magazine Si, in Cieneguilla, an area just outside Lima which is popular with picknickers at weekends.

The Cantuta case is one of the ones for which Fujimori is currently standing trial (see background here).


La Republica is reporting today that it was only possible to identify definitively 5 of the victims. In fact, the bodies have been returned to the families before, in 1994, at which time, according to the relatives, they were handed cardboard boxes by the police which contained rubbish from the shallow grave mixed with the bones of their loved ones. The remains were then exhumed once 2002 for further investigations. Let's hope that this time, they really can rest in peace.

Solo se pudo identificar por descarte cientifico a cinco victimas de La Cantuta (La Republica)

Tras 16 aƱos devolveran cuerpos de victimas de masacre en La Cantuta (El Comercio)

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