Personnes recherchées et « Enterrés sous X » : projet d'harmonisation des fichiers d'identification

Each year in France, a thousand of unidentified corpses are found in an extrajudicial context. Without request by magistrates, they will be buried under X. This situation is an ethical and social issue, and a possible judicial problem. In parallel, each year, a thousand of French individuals are declared missing and not found. Their disappearing represents a real psychological torment for their families. These two observations lead to ask if these corpses buried under X include some missing persons, still researched by their family. Matching these two sets require an efficient comparison of post-mortem (PM) data collected during the autopsy procedure, and “ante-mortem” (AM) data from missing persons files. We propose here a model of PM and AM files, based on the DVI Interpol process, and so manually and computationally comparable. Interpol forms have proven effective during the last mass disasters. They have been simplified, so they can be used in classical autopsy process, and completed by an “anthropological examination” part. Using this form, in association with classical identification methods (dental, digital and genetic), and with anticipation of anthropological examination, should allow to bring back more corpses to their family, and so facilitate grieving and psychological repair.