Chile is pursuing people because of alleged baby bikes

Chile is pursuing people because of alleged baby bikes

A dark chapter in the history of Chile is illuminated again. During the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet from 1973 to 1990, thousands of babys Biological mothers stolen and sold for adoption, mainly to foreign couples from the USA and Europe. In Chile they are referred to as "the children of silence".

First criminal prosecution of child drivers

Now a Chilean judge has announced for the first time in the history of the country to pursue people who supposedly kidnapped babies. Alejandro Aguilar Brevis, a judge at the Supreme Court in Santiago, found that a network of health officers, Catholic priests, lawyers, social workers and even a judge worked in the 1980s. These people generally kidnapped babies from low-income mothers and sold them for adoption to foreign couples, with amounts of up to $ 50,000 being achieved, as can be seen from a press release from the Chilean judiciary on Monday.

The investigation and allegations

The ongoing examination focuses on the city of San Fernando in the central Chile and comprises two babies that were stolen and handed over to foreign couples, according to the judiciary. According to this declaration, the network allegedly devoted itself to "kidnapping or stealing infants for financial desire", with the aim of bringing them out of the country to various destinations in Europe and the USA.

The judge has raised charges and issued arrest warrants against five people who are to be temporarily in custody due to "criminal association, childhood detention and willful misconduct," the statement said. In addition, the Chilean government has submitted an application to Israel for a former family judge who lives and was supposedly involved.

systematic kidnapping of babies

The judge decided that the limitation period in this case does not apply, since it is "crimes against humanity that were committed under a military regime and must be punished in accordance with the American Convention on Human Rights and the case law of the Inter -American Court of Human Rights." The investigation was announced on Monday, a day after the Chilean President Gabriel Boric said that a working group he set up last year to investigate cases of stolen babies presented her final report.

According to the recommendations of the working group, Boric announced that the Chilean government will “create a genetic fingerprint bank, which provides additional funds for finding origin and enables family reunification for the many babies that were stolen and given to foreign families.”

a glimmer of hope for affected families

Constanza del Río, founder and director of Nos Buscamos (we are looking for ourselves), an NGO in Santiago who is devoting herself to the reunification of families stolen babies, carefully expressed itself. She explains that the efforts of the countries like Chile to find the truth about the stolen babies are "very slow and often a revicitization of the victims". Del Río, even a victim of an illegal adoption, filed a lawsuit in 2017 to request an investigation by the Chilean government. The authorities appointed a special prosecutor, but the investigation was in the sand.

President Boric has stated that the creation of a working group shows that his government takes the topic seriously and publicly recognizes that the systematic kidnapping of babies is a fact in the past. There could be thousands of cases. The theft of thousands of babies in Chile has been documented by non -governmental organizations for over a decade. Since 2014, CNN has reported numerous cases in which stolen babies were reunited with their biological mothers after DNA tests.

first successes and long ways

Constanza del Río reports that NOS Buscamos alone built a database that comprises about 9,000 cases and reunited more than 600 parents with their stolen children. Ten years ago, Marcela Labraña, the then director of the Chilean Child Protection Authority (Sename), told CNN that her authority examined hundreds of cases, but was suspected that there could be much more cases. "This is no longer a myth. We know today that it happened and it was real. It's not a fairy tale that a few people tell," said Labraña back then.

CNNS Cristopher Ulloa contributed to this report.