Relatives of Chilean disappeared detainees during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet learned through a judge of the existence of 89 boxes with bones that for more than 20 years remained without being examined in a basement of the Faculty of the University of Chile, according to press reports.

In Uruguay, the National Institution of Human Rights and Ombudsman (Inddhh) will try to contact Chilean authorities on this issue.

In Chile there are still eight Uruguayans missing after the 1973 coup that overthrew the then president Salvador Allende, newspaper La Diaria reported.

They are Ariel Arcos Latorre, Juan Ángel Cendán Almada, Julio César Fernández Fernández, Alberto Fontela Alonso, Nelsa Gadea Galán, Arazatí López López, Enrique Pagardoy Saquieres and Juan Povaschuk Galeazzo.

Inddhh director Wilder Tayler told the newspaper that most of these Uruguayans are associated with the September 11, 1973 coup d’état.

The eight were detained between September 12 and December 19 of that year, he said.

In 2010 the remains of Uruguayan Mónica Benaroyo Pencu were identified. Her body was found in an army training camp on the outskirts of the city of Arica, in northern Chile. Chilean military officers Juan Iván Vidal Oguetta and Luis Guillermo Carrera Bravo were prosecuted for her murder.

Tayler said that he will try to ‘get in touch’ with Chilean authorities to access more information about the study of the skeletons in the boxes.

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