DNA tests confirm the discovery of the remains of Cipriano Martos | Catalonia | The USA Print

Anthropological and genetic analyzes have confirmed the discovery of the mortal remains of the anti-Francoist Cipriano Martos, a FRAP militant who died in 1973 after ingesting sulfuric acid during an interrogation with torture at the Civil Guard barracks in Reus (Tarragona). . This has been revealed by the Ministry of Justice, Rights and Memory headed by Gemma Ubasart, after the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, announced on January 11 that the technicians in charge of carrying out the exhumation work at the Pit 11-67 north of the Reus cemetery had found the remains of a body compatible with the physical description of Martos and with the location that appears in the municipal funeral records.

The archaeologists who had been working on the ground since December found, specifically, a body on which a complete autopsy was performed and, precisely, Martos was autopsied by two forensic doctors after he died on September 17, 1973, a victim of ingesting acid. sulfuric during an interrogation. The remains of that body ―one of the 41 individuals exhumed from that common grave in the Reus cemetery― were transferred to the laboratory to begin anthropological and DNA studies, to extract genetic samples and cross-check the data with those of the relatives registered in the genetic identification program.

The results of these tests, as indicated by the ministry in a statement, “have ratified that the remains correspond to those of Cipriano Martos”, who thus becomes the twentieth person exhumed identified in Catalonia since the creation of the genetic identification program , in 2016.

Cipriano Martos was born in 1942 in a group of houses within the municipality of Loja (Granada), within a family of poor peasants, and emigrated in 1969 to Sabadell (Barcelona), where he became politicized and joined the PCE and the FRAP. Already in hiding, the party assigned him to a cell in Reus, where in August 1973 he was detained by the Civil Guard, who interrogated him for more than two days, until the ingestion of sulfuric acid forced him to be admitted to the Hospital de Sant Joan, where he died for 21 days, without his family knowing where he was. The case was included in 2014 in the macro-complaint before the Argentine courts for crimes of the Franco regime.

In February of last year, the then Ministry of Justice, Lourdes Ciuró, publicly announced that the exhumation work would begin in the second half of 2022 and, in March, the Parliament approved – with Vox the only vote against – a resolution presented by PSC-Units that endorsed this initiative.

You can follow EL PAÍS Catalunya at Facebook and Twitteror sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter