The corpses collapse the deposit of Institute of Legal Medicine (IML) Almeria. The bodies of people who are not claimed or who are slow to be identified, the majority of migrants or foreign residents, crowd the facilities without receiving burial.
According to advance The Voice of Almería, he collapse is such that not a single more body enters the facilities, they have even had to ask for help from funeral homes in the area to take care of some bodies. The facilities have 24 cold roomsnine of them refrigerated for the temporary conservation of samples and 15 with a freezing system that makes longer conservation possible, at 40 degrees below zero, and they are not enough.
The problem is that IMLs have the obligation to cpreserve unclaimed bodies of the deceased who have been the subject of expert evidence until a judge, by order, forces the bodies to be buried; a task that must be taken care of by the city councils of the municipalities in which these bodies have appeared. The agility of the process depends on them.
According to the aforementioned media, the record for permanence in a chamber of the Almería mortuary is held by a body that entered in July 2022 and that it is still in the same place after two years and two months. Although the Board points out that the collapse is not such since the IML is at 60% of its capacity.
“Pioneer” protocol
The territorial delegate of Justice, Local Administration and Public Function of the Board in Almería, Rebeca Gómez, pointed out this Tuesday a new “pioneering” protocol that speeds up burials to a maximum period of 50 days and thus not have “capacity problems” in the cold rooms. Gómez considers that in the province it is not “excessively bad” in terms of occupation and has shown that many of the bodies of the IML are of people who have died after reaching the coast of Almería by sea without documentation.
Thus, Gómez has called for calm and has referred to the aforementioned protocol, signed between the Ministry of Justice, Administration and Public Function, the Ministry of Justice, the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia (TSJA) and the Superior Prosecutor’s Office of Andalusia. As assessed, the protocol establishes a “agile” procedure to bury corpses, since it allows “to give a dignified burial to people who are unidentified or who have not been claimed” so that “they can later be identified” for possible claimants, while at the same time it allows “decongesting” the burial facilities. the forensics.
The objective, furthermore, is to optimize material and human resources of the IML so that, once the autopsy has been carried out, the necessary samples for future identification have been extracted and the corresponding forensic reports have been prepared, the judges authorize their burial – never cremation – at the expense of the town councils.
Thus, corpses that have not been identified or whose identification is presumed difficult will remain at the disposal of the judicial authoritywho will be the one who orders, by order, the transfer to other places of conservation or storage, or its burial. Afterwards, you will notify the city council to which the charitable funeral expenses correspond, in accordance with the applicable Mortuary Health Police regulations.
From that moment on, the corpse “ceases to be judicial”, Therefore, the competent city council “must act, in accordance with the legislation, regarding the costs of conservation, transfer and charitable burial, as well as the corresponding consulate in the case of repatriation.” Although, Under no circumstances may an unidentified corpse be cremated. and the burial must be done in an identified niche so that exhumation is possible if it is identified. The exact location of the burial must be communicated to the competent investigating court.
To guarantee good coordination between all parties involved, the signed agreement provides for a Monitoring Commission that will meet at least semiannually. The protocol is valid for four years, extendable for another four years, subject to express agreement of the parties.
