PALMA
AN initial assessment by the National Police of the bones which have been found in a suitcase in undergrowth south of Mahon, is that they belong to a boy aged between 10 and 13, Balearic Police spokesperson Janka Jurkiewicz said yesterday.
The results of tests on the bones, which were discovered in a suitcase in bushes between Binidali and Cap den Font are still being awaited from the Balearic Forensic Institute, Jurkiewicz confirmed.
It is believed, however, she furthered, that the boy died between one and three years ago and that his body decomposed in the case. There were other items found alongside the body including children's comics in Spanish, cheap coloured prints, coloured pencils, and a toy scorpion and spider inside a glass.
Jurkiewicz said that once the analysis of the bones was complete in the Balearics, they will be sent to the Scientific Police Commissioner in Madrid for DNA testing through which the identity of the boy will be determined.
Through this process, affirmed Jurkiewicz, police will be able to establish if the boy was someone who had disappeared in recent years in Spain or from a foreign country.
Once the police have notification of a disappearance, she explained, DNA samples of the missing person are logged on a data base. Jurkiewicz said however that the police were holding no record of a boy who had disappeared from the Balearic Islands.
The Forensic Institute, said Jurkiewica, will try to pinpoint the exact age of the boy and the possible causes of death.
The interior of the suitcase was apparently lined with red material. Police found a track-suit, some jeans, shorts and a short-sleeved T-shirt for a boy aged between 10 and 13 years-old.
Jurkiewicz said that although death had occurred between one and three years ago, there were still some organic remains which had not as yet decomposed. She added that although tests have yet to confirm whether the body had been dismembered, initial assessments claim that no bones are missing.