Identities of 60 victims of dictatorship will be known in a year.

Within about a year, a team of forensic anthropologists from Argentina could lead the identification of the  bones of  60 victims of the military dictatorship in Panama.

 The news comes from officials of the Panamanian Foreign Ministry says La Prensa.

Since March 7 a group of anthropologists, Mercedes Salado, Carlos Vullo and Ute Hofmainer, the Panamanian government have worked ona report explaining the procedures they will follow to begin studies of human remains in custody of Panama’s Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences.

No starting date has been set because the Institute, has not received the comments of the Argentine forensic report submitted to the board members.

After the fulfillment of this phase, anthropologists will coordinate with the Institute of Legal Medicine to begin their work.

The investigations will be carried out in several stages, including the study of the bones and DNA testing ofrelatives of the victims.

The documentation available for each case will be collated and, the evidence divided into groups to  create a genetic database of human remains with DNA samples from relatives. Some of the analyzes will be made in Argentina.  .

The Argentine forensic experts were hired by the Panamanian government after the forming on January 5 of the  committee to identify victims of the dictatorship. This committee is made up of by the Committee of Relatives of the Disappeared, the Attorney General, Office of the President, the Red Cross and the Foreign Ministry.

The bones were exhumed by the Truth Commission (2001-2002).