Burial records given to judge

Press, 27 October 1982, Page 8

Burial records given to judge

NZPA-Reuter Buenos Aires Burial records of a Buenos Aires cemetery have been handed to Judge Hugo Gandara who has opened an investigation on the discovery of 400 bodies buried in unmarked mass graves, officials said yesterdav.

day. Argentine human rights groups had revealed the existence of the graves in Grand Bourg Cemetery, in the Buenos Aires dormitory town of Sarmiento. They were probably the corpses of some of the thou-

sands of people who disappeared during the armed forces’ campaign against Leftist guerrillas in the late 19705, said the human rights groups. They quoted graveyard w'orkers and local residents as saying that the bodies were brought to the cemeterv in vehicles belonaine to

lery in venicies neionging to Government security forces and were buried at night. The burials took place between 1976 and 1979, during the height of the armed forces’ campaign, they were quoted as saying.

Some 400 bodies were buried in cardboard coffins stacked in 88 graves. Jose Lombardo, the Mayor of Sarmiento, yesterday told a crowd of about 300 relatives of people who disappeared that Judge Gandara had taken possession of the cemetery's burial register.

ter. He was, therefore, unable to give any information about the identity of bodies buried in the unmarked graves. But the mayor gave an assurance that the corpses would not be removed from

the graveyard. Human rights groups had expressed concern over a notice which appeared recently near the unmarked graves, saying that the corpses would shortly be dug up to be reburied in a common grave elsewhere. A number of Argentine human rights groups, spearheaded by the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights, had set in motion a judicial inquiry to determine the identity of the bodies and whether they had been buried in accordance with legal procedures.