Police exhume infants as part of stolen-baby investigation

The ongoing investigation into the stolen babies scandal has taken a new twist in La Línea de Concepción, in Cádiz province, this week with the exhumation of the remains of three infants from a local cemetery under a court order.

Mothers of the infants were told in the 1970s that their babies had died during birth, but they say they had long suspected the bodies they were given for burial were not their infants. The police have tried to maintain the exhumations in strict confidence, telling family members just hours before the disinterment. Three other exhumations were ordered in Cádiz and Málaga.

La Línea is, until now, the only jurisdiction in Spain where the investigation into the stolen babies is in full force. Suspected cases have been fully documented by the local district attorney's office.

It is thought that thousands of newborns were stolen at hospitals across Spain, from the early years of the Franco dictatorship to the late 1970s, to be put up for adoption. Some 800 complaints have been filed with the Attorney General's Office but, according to an estimate made in 2008 by High Court Judge Baltasar Garzón, there could be as many as 30,000 stolen baby cases.