Argentine rights group identifies 131st baby kidnapped during dictatorship

By Merve Berker

ANKARA (AA) – A rights group in Argentina said on Thursday that the DNA test have confirmed that a baby boy was taken from his mother during Argentina’s dictatorship era between 1976 and 1983, raising the total number of such cases to 131, according to local media.

During that time in the country, military officials periodically stole babies from political prisoners who were generally executed without any notice.

The Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, a human rights group, was established to further investigate such disappearances to figure out what happened to those babies, whom they call “grandchildren.”

Speaking at a news conference, Estela de Carlotto, the group’s chairperson, said the last confirmed case is a man and he is the biological son of Lucia Angela Nadin and Aldo Hugo Quevedo, though she did not share the man’s own name with the press.

The parents were both active in the Revolutionary Worker’s Party and People’s Revolutionary Army in Argentina, where they were known as “Chiquita and Dipy.”

They were arrested in late 1977 in the capital Buenos Aires and were taken to the clandestine centers Club Atletico and El Banco when Nadin was pregnant for about two or three months.

She was then taken out of the facility to give birth to her baby. Unfortunately, no one has ever heard from neither Nadin nor Quevedo since then.

In 2005, Nadin’s family went to the National Genetic Data Bank to give DNA samples in case traces of their daughter are ever found, although they had no idea that Nadin was pregnant at the time of her arrest.

In the meantime, the Federal Court 4 found a young man on Sept. 14, 2005 and asked him to undergo the necessary analyzes and tests.

The man agreed to give a DNA sample to the National Genetic Data Bank. Soon, he was found out to be the son of Nadin and Quevedo.

- Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo

In these 45 years of struggle, Grandmothers solved 131 cases, Carlotto told the press.

“In recent times, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, we continue to work with hope and with the conviction that we will find our grandchildren,” she said.

Carlotto also said since 2018, samples of more than 2,000 unidentified people with doubts about their identity and 400 at the request of justice have undergone genetic testing.

“It is a constant, silent, patient and loving work, but there is still a lot left and time does not stand still,” she said.

“Our grandchildren are already around the age of 45, and surely they are men and women with a life built by their work, knowledge, loves, preferences, desires and constituted families.

“The grandmothers tell them that we want to add truth to their story and we wait for them with love,” she underlined.

To achieve such a purpose, she asked for the cooperation of society: “Any data or suspicion is enough to get closer. Do not keep the information or remain in doubt. Break the silence.”