Brother identifies body of missing Argentine protester Santiago Maldonado [View all]
Last edited Fri Oct 20, 2017, 09:27 PM - Edit history (1)
The brother of an Argentine protester whose disappearance prompted nationwide demonstrations said Friday that the family believes a body found in a river is that of activist Santiago Maldonado.
The family is now "convinced that the body is Santiago," his brother, Sergio Maldonado, told reporters outside a morgue in Buenos Aires where the autopsy was performed.
“We saw the body. We recognized Santiago’s tattoos so we are convinced it is Santiago,” he said.
The body was found Tuesday near the site of a protest on August 1, when Maldonado, 28, was last seen alive. Protesters were demanding the release of a jailed Mapuche indigenous leader and the return of lands belonging to Italian clothing company Benetton that are claimed by the Mapuche as their ancestral territory.
People at the protest said they saw police beat and detain Maldonado after he and others blocked a road in Patagonia.
Police never confirmed the arrest and denied wrongdoing. But some rights groups accused President Mauricio Macri's government of being part a cover-up.
His being located nearly a mile upstream from where he was last seen has led his family and rights groups to suspect his body may have been planted.
"It's very strange that the body was found where it was, when we have searched those same places and there was nothing," Sergio Maldonado pointed out. "We want to know the truth. "
The Maldonado case has overshadowed Sunday’s congressional election in a country where potential cases of abuse by security forces are particularly sensitive. It has also spurred mass protests and campaigns on social media demanding to know what happened to Maldonado.
At: http://newsok.com/article/feed/1467169
Santiago Maldonado
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