MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina’s Clarin owner siblings to have DNA blood tests on Friday

Ernestina Herrera de Noble, 86, has frequently clashed with the Kirchners

The (adopted) heirs of one of Argentina’s most powerful media conglomerates will have blood samples taken in a Buenos Aires hospital on Friday after they decided to voluntarily have DNA tests to determine whether they coincide with DNA samples of relatives from people killed during the Argentine dictatorship (1976/1983).-

Judge Sandra Arroyo Salgado ruled that the blood work is done on Friday at the Durand Hospital, after the siblings, Marcela and Felipe, adopted children of the Clarin newspaper conglomerate owner Ernestina Herrera de Noble, decided to voluntarily take the DNA tests and compare them to all the samples stored at the Argentine Bank of Genetic Data, in a case that has lasted over ten years.

The two siblings who were adopted as babies by the owner of Clarin are under suspicion that they could allegedly be among hundreds of infants stolen from political prisoners during Argentina's military dictatorship.

Adoptees Marcela and Felipe Noble had previously refused to submit DNA tests and only offered their DNA to be compared with two families of disappeared people. However this time they will not appeal the order to have blood samples taken and compared with available DNA of every relative of those who disappeared during the country's 1976-1983 dictatorship.

Marcelo and Felipe who are in their 30s, have said they have no interest in learning the identities of their birth parents and have been protective of their adopted mother, Grupo Clarin owner Ernestina Herrera de Noble, 86.

On June 2, Argentina’s top criminal appellate court ruled that Marcela and Felipe Noble had to submit biological material, with or without their consent, for testing but limited the scope of DNA comparisons to people known to have disappeared before the date of the Nobles' 1976 adoption papers.

The case, which has lasted a decade, has turned political as President Cristina Fernandez has called for the identity of the adoptees to be cleared up. Mrs Kirchner has clashed frequently on a range of issues with Herrera de Noble's media properties, which include the country's biggest newspaper Clarin and the TV news station Todo Noticias.

“They are tired of being attacked and of having lies said about them,” said the pair's lawyer, Alejandro Carrio, referring to suspicions raised about their biological parents. “They're in a defeated state of mind from fighting so much for their rights.”

The plaintiffs in the case, the human rights group Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, have pushed for the pair to submit their DNA for testing. The group has led the public campaign to find hundreds of children, including relatives of group members, that the military abducted from women who gave birth under captivity, often in clandestine torture centres. Nearly all of those women were executed or disappeared.

The Argentine government maintains a bank of DNA samples submitted by relatives of the dictatorship's political prisoners.