23/10/2008 00:00
TW
0
STAFF REPORTER City SPANISH Judge Baltasar Garzon, who last week began a highly controversial investigation into what happened to thousands of people who vanished during and after the Spanish Civil War, has been asked by the Majorcan branch of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memeory to open up a mass grave in Porreres in which an estimated 80 people were buried.


The President of the local branch, Maria Antonia Oliver, said yesterday that she has also appealed to the Spanish High Court for a number of other mass graves to be excavated in Calvia as well.

Oliver believes that the 80 bodies in the Porreres mass grave were lined up against the local church wall and shot by a firing squad.
The President also revealed that a special DNA database is being created in association with the Genetics Department at the Balearic University as part of the ongoing drive by families to locate and identify loved ones and relations who disappeared during the Civil War.