Washington, DC: The director of the Peruvian Forensic Anthropology Team (EPAF), Jose Pablo Baraybar, was featured today in a Washington Post piece focusing on the use of DNA evidence to identify murder victims both in the United States and abroad.

In the article, Mr Baraybar talks about EPAF’s work identifying victims from a mass grave at Putis, Peru – the site of a brutal 1984 massacre that killed 123 men, women and children.

According to the article, scientists’ experiences with remains from the World Trade Center – where bones were subjected to intense heat – is being applied to the work in Peru, where soldiers tried to hide killings by burning bodies.

“It’s very September 11-like material. It’s very degraded,” Mr Baraybar noted in the article, speaking about the remains of mass graves in Peru. “There are a lot of children. That’s a problem. The bones are very fragile.”

EPAF is a partner of The Advocacy Project, and AP sent Peace Fellow Ash Kosiewicz to volunteer with the group this past summer.

Read the full article.

Read Ash’s blog.