The long-awaited National Forensic Data Bank (BNDF) has come into operation in Mexico this Monday, May 29, as an important tool in the search for missing persons and the identification of human remains.
The implementation of the BNDF, which thousands of relatives of missing people claim should have been operational four years ago, is a response to the protection given to Olympia Montoya, the sister of a missing person, who filed an appeal against the prosecutor’s office to activate said tool.
The creation of the BNDF was stipulated in the General Law on the Enforced Disappearance of Persons, the Disappearance of Persons and the National System for the Search of Persons, which came into force in January 2018; Although this was not implemented, Montoya, supported by several other Discovery families, took legal action.
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What is the role of forensic data bank
According to the communication from the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic (FGR) in which the date of May 29 was announced as the start-up of the BNDF, this tool “considers the integration and therefore the operation of the National Registry of the Dead Person unknown and unclaimed”.
The new entity seeks to integrate and interlink the National Registry of Common and Secret Graves, the Federal Forensic Registry, the National Genetic Information Base, the National Registry of Detentions, the National Registry of Torture Crimes, background databases and systems. criminals records, the National Nominal Information System (SININ), the Automatic Identification System for Broadcasters (ASIS), the Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS), the Amber Alert, the National Registry of Missing and Unlocated Persons, and “other databases, records” or systems that have forensic and genetic information relevant to the search, location and identification of a missing or alienated person”, elaborates the prosecutor’s office.
With this apparatus, it will be the Office of the Special Prosecutor for Human Rights, which will have the powers to establish coordination mechanisms with officials from different levels of government, foreign governments and other institutions involved.
With the National Forensic Data Bank, Mexico seeks to bridge the gap between the discovery of human bodies and the collection of genetic information for their identification, in addition to becoming an important tool for federal investigations.
Given the large amount of information and the great interconnection of systems and records to which it aspires, they have already announced that the process of specifying this forensic data bank with all the interdependencies will be individual and progressive.
“However the foregoing alone is not necessary to end a humanitarian crisis of such magnitude, including the recent killings of unwed mothers and the lack of protection for them as human rights defenders, as well as the vulnerability of The forensic system is intended to be a useful resource in view of the lack of articulation among various authorities to conduct investigations involving due diligence, a specialized approach, a framework of equality and non-discrimination, participation and coordination,” the much-awaited commission said. In a statement to the Human Rights Commission of Mexico City after knowing the date of May 29 for the implementation of the tool.
Who will have access to Mexico’s forensic data bank?
In accordance with the law providing for the creation of the BNDF, the information contained in it can be consulted by the competent authorities and automatically on the basis of requests made.
For individuals, relatives of victims or search and human rights organizations, access to this resource must be requested from the public ministry in charge of the investigation, either by court order or through the National Commission for the Search of Persons or State Commissions .
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