Fabiola Martinez
Newspaper La Jornada
Monday, September 5, 2022, p. 4
The forensic crisis in the country is evidenced by the accumulation of requests sent to the National Electoral Institute (INE) to collaborate in the identification of corpses, based on the comparison of fingerprints of the deceased with the images in possession of the Federal Electoral Registry ( RFE).
As of June this year, the INE received 60,000 petitions, of which around 19,000 have been successfully processed. However, in 14,000 cases, it has not been possible to notify the relatives, despite the findings, because the prosecutor’s offices have not completed the expert reports.
There is a funnel in forensic services
lamented the president counselor of the INE, Lorenzo Córdova.
Although there was a history of cooperation, the agreement between the INE and the National Commission for the Search of Persons was made in 2018, to achieve the identification of missing persons and corpses or human remains.
At that time, Córdova pointed out, at the end of August, that the electoral register had 90.6 million records, of which 65.2 million had information on 10 fingerprints of each citizen, that is, 72 percent of the list. And for the remaining 25.5 million records, there were prints of two index fingers from each person.
Currently, the electoral register has 95 million active records, the majority with all available biometric data.
In recent conferences to explain the functions of the INE, the counselor explained that thanks to the database, progress has been made in the task of identifying bodies.
forensic funnel
He pointed out: Although unfortunately there are about 14,000 procedures that already involved a coincidence (between) the fingerprint that the forensic services have sent to the INE and the INE database, but it has not been possible to deliver the identity of that body because there is a funnel in forensic services
.
He pointed out that the RFE specialists make a “match information system” (through its automated fingerprint identification systems and automatic biometric identification systems), but it does not have legal validity in and of itself.
The foregoing, because to acquire the level of legal validity, an expert opinion from the same forensic services is required, and until it is done, we cannot deliver the complete record of the registration in our possession, starting with the name and address
.
In that balance, the president counselor stated:
And here what we have had is about 19,000 successful verifications, that is, they have given a record in the INE database, (although) only a little more than 4,000 have been verified, 4,500 have been verified for the expert services, with which there are 14,000 people, bodies, to whom we are ready to give them an identity and thereby alleviate the pain of the families who today do not know the whereabouts of their relatives.
