The Abuelas (Grandmothers) of Plaza de Mayo held a rally in front of the Palacio de Tribunales, in Buenos Aires. It was to demand advances in research on the identity of the adopted children of the owner of the Clarín group. The court case is 10 years old.

The human rights group, Abuelas of Plaza de Mayo, is heading a lawsuit to determine the identities of Marcela and Felipe Noble Herrera.

They are the children adopted in 1976, during the dictatorship, by the owner of the multimedia Clarín Group, Ernestina Herrera de Noble.

The court case’s delays and continual appeals by the Noble family have prolonged the identity claim for 10 years.

To bring attention to this elapsed time, the Abuelas of Plaza de Mayo organized a rally in Buenos Aires, in front of the courthouse.

The Noble siblings are opposed to providing blood samples that would be compared with DNA from relatives of dictatorship victims, seeking stolen babies between 1976 and 1983.

The adopted children of the Clarín group owner only accepted to be compared with two family complainants in the criminal case.

The National Chamber of Criminal Appeals must decide whether to approve the collection of samples with or without the consent of the Noble brothers. This decision was ratified by the Federal Court of San Martín.

It is expected that the Noble family will appeal the decision until it reaches the Supreme Court.

Story courtesy of Agencia Púlsar, the news agency of AMARC-ALC.

Today, the Federal Court of San Martin discussed again the case of the adopted children of Ernestina Herrera de Noble, chief of the multimedia group ‘Clarín’. The lawsuit is to decide whether the children still have to undergo a blood draw or not.

The judge of the trial, Sandra Arroyo Salgado ordered the children of Herrera de Noble, Marcela and Felipe, to undergo a compulsory blood draw. In first instance the children should have undergone this blood draw on 23th December last year. However,the children never appeared in the National Genetic Data Bank of the Durand Hospital to give these blood samples.

Salgado cited them in the context of investigating whether Philip and Marcela Noble de Herrera are appropriate children during the last military dictatorship. There is a chance that the children of e de Noble are actually descended from one of the many ‘desaparicidos’ during the dictatorship.

Today, the Court has listened to arguments from both sides for examining the decision of Arroyo Salgado. The lawyers of Philip and Marcela had to justify the refusal of the children to submit blood or saliva extraction, which was ordered by the federal judge.

Also Alan Lud, lawyer of the ‘Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo’, was in turn next to Pablo Llanto, the representative of two family plaintiffs in the case.
The complaints persisted the need to immediately implement the measure of undergoing a blood test, which is ordered by Salgado.

At the end of today, bewaring the statements of all the witnesses, the Court may consider and resolve the trial. Therefore, soon the Court will point out a date of the resolve of the trial and on which to announce its temporarily decision.

The case of the children of Herrera de Noble is investigated for a long time. It is almost ten years ago that Justice started investigating whether Felipe and Marcela are children descended from a ‘desaparecida’ of the military dictatorship. However, until now the proceedings never got anywhere because of the interference and obstacles that were created by the chief of Clarín.