Ángela Auad

In July 2005, a mass grave with remains of several women was exhumed. Forensic DNA testing established the identities of Auad and other women kidnapped with her, including Duquet and Villaflor.

Cattani sent the bones to the Laboratory of Immunogenetics and Molecular Diagnostics (LIDMO) of Córdoba, belonging to the EAAF. The results of the laboratory were determining that the remains belonged to the group of hostages between December 8 and 10, 1977. On September 15, 2005, Judge Cattani received the report stating that one of the individualised remains belonged to Angela Auad.

On September 25, 2005, 28 years after she was murdered, Angela Auad was buried in the garden of the Church of Santa Cruz, in Buenos Aires, next to Sister Léonie Duquet, one of the French nuns who were kidnapped with her. Previously the mothers of Plaza de Mayo Esther Ballestrino and María Ponce were buried there as well. The ashes of Azucena Villaflor were scattered in the Plaza de Mayo.

In 2003, the mayor of General Lavalle reported that new NN tombs had been located in the cemetery of the city. The judge then ordered Cattani make new excavations with Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF), being discovered two lines of tombs, one above the other. 8 skeletons were discovered, 5 corresponding to women, corresponding to men and one, classified as GL-17, which was defined as "probably male".

Secret documents of the United States government declassified in 2002 prove that the US government knew since 1978 that the bodies of French nuns Alice Domon and Léonie Duquet and the mothers of Plaza de Mayo Azucena Villaflor, Esther Ballestrino and María Ponce had been found on the beaches of Buenos Aires. This information was kept secret and was never communicated to the Argentine government.

From then on Judge Horacio Cattani began to accumulate causes about disappeared. Despite the laws of Full Stop and Due Obedience, which paralysed the investigation, Cattani managed to arm in 1995 a file of 40 square meters to house all these tests.

In 1984, in the framework of the investigation of the CONADEP and the Trial to the Boards, excavations had been carried out in the General Lavalle cemetery, finding a large quantity of skeletal remains from the corpses found on the beaches of San Bernardo and Lucila del Mar. These remains were used in the trial of the Boards and then stored in 16 bags.

Note 1: "Maggio managed to escape on 17 March 1978. During the following months he dedicated himself to denouncing everything he saw and learned during his captivity, to inform the families of the hostages where their loved ones were, and not even He was deprived of calling the sailors who had tortured him to insult them, and he fell again on 4 October 1978. But they did not succeed in kidnapping him alive, he resisted and an army gang killed him and his body was transferred to the ESMA, where Acosta exposed him to the other hostages. " (Page 12. The testimonies of Maggio gave them to publicity in 1978 to different news agencies.

The information is included in Document No. 1978-BUENOS-02346, directed by the then US Ambassador to Argentina, Raúl Castro, to the Secretary of State of the United States, dated March 30, 1978 and mentioned as an object "Report about dead nuns. " Textually the document says:

Ángela Auad (born February 1945 in Jujuy, Argentina; "disappeared" 17 or 18 December 1977) was an Argentine social activist. A member of the Marxist–Leninist Communist Party (Partido Comunista Marxista Leninista), she worked with the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (Madres de Plaza de Mayo) to locate those who "disappeared" during the Dirty War. Because of her activism, she was kidnapped, tortured and murdered.

Between Thursday, 8 December and Saturday, 10 December 1977, a group of soldiers under the command of Alfredo Astiz kidnapped a group of twelve people linked to the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo.1 Among them was Angela Auad, together with the founding mothers of Mothers of Plaza de Mayo Azucena Villaflor, Esther Ballestrino and María Ponce, and the French nuns Alice Domon and Léonie Duquet.

Probably on 17 or 18 December 1977, Ángela and the rest of the group were "transferred" to the military airport located at the southern end of the Aeroparque in the city of Buenos Aires, boarding a Navy plane and sedates. thrown alive to the sea off the coast of Santa Teresita, dying to hit the water In 1978 unidentified bodies began to be washed up on beaches south of Buenos Aires. Some were buried in mass graves at General Lavalle Cemetery about 400 kilometres south of the capital. It was later confirmed that the military threw prisoners from planes and helicopters to kill them after torture.

On 20 December 1977, corpses from the sea began to appear on the beaches of the province of Buenos Aires at the height of the spas of Santa Teresita and Mar del Tuyú. The police doctors who examined the bodies at that time recorded that the cause of death had been "the clash against hard objects from high altitude," as indicated by the type of bone fractures observed, which occurred before death. the local authorities immediately arranged for the bodies to be buried as NN in the cemetery of the nearby city of General Lavalle.

Auad was first arrested when she was a college student in Tucumán; she was released in mid-1975. In 1976, her husband Roberto Genoves was imprisoned in Chaco Province. Because of this, Auad came into contact with the Relatives of Those Disappeared and Detained for Political Reasons (Familiares de Desaparecidos y Detenidos por Razones Políticas) and the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who were seeking to find their children.