city of Buenos Aires. They were taken to a secret detention center in Argentina known as “Automotores Orletti”. A week later, Maria Cassinelli was freed; Marcelo had been tortured and was removed to a cell with other detainees, where he remained until the end of September 1976, when he was again transferred to an unknown destination. 13. In 1989, the remains of Marcelo Ariel Gelman were discovered by the Argentine Team of Forensic Anthropologists in a suburban cemetery in the province of Buenos Aires, where, at the end of October 1976, he had been buried with seven additional unidentified (“N.N.”) persons. Maria Claudia had been seen in the secret detention center, Automotores Orletti, until October 7, 1976 by another detainee who was then freed. 14. Maria Claudia Gelman was reportedly removed from the secret detention center known as “Automotores Orletti” and transferred by officers of the Uruguayan Air Force to Montevideo, Uruguay, where she was held with other Uruguayans at the seat of the IIId Division of the Information Service of the Department of Defense (SID), located on the Artigas Boulevard and Palmar in Montevideo, despite the fact that she had no connection with Uruguay and had never been active in a militant organization that had anything to do with Uruguay. At the end of October or early November she was taken to the Military Hospital, where she gave birth to a girl. Subsequently, Maria Claudia and the baby were returned to the SID detention center, where they remained until approximately the end of December 1976, at which time the Uruguayan security forces removed the child and transferred Maria Claudia again. Different versions of Maria Claudia’s fate have been proffered, it has been suggested that she was returned to the Argentine Armed Forces and it has also been suggested that she was killed and buried on a military base in Uruguay. It is generally believed, however, that Maria Claudia Gelman is dead. Until the present, Maria Claudia’s remains remain unknown. 15. Petitioners argue that on January 14, 1977, the baby of Maria Claudia and Marcelo Gelman was placed in a basket and left at the door of the house of the family of Angel Tauriño, a policeman, in the Punta Carretas neighborhood of Montevideo. There was a note in the basket which stated that the baby had been born on November 1 st but that the mother could not take care of her. Angel Tauriño and his wife –who had no children-- took the basket and registered the child as their own, and baptized her as Maria Macarena Tauriño. Twenty three years later, four months after the death of the man who raised her, Juan Gelman, her paternal grandfather, made contact with the woman who raised her, a contact facilitated by Monsignor Pablo Galimberti. Juan Gelman made contact with Maria Macarena and she learned of the events that transpired with her biological parents, and without rejecting the family that raised her, she sought a judicial nullification of her birth certificate and its re-issuance as the legitimate child of Marcelo Ariel and Maria Claudia Gelman. Maria Macarena seeks the truth regarding the last days of her mother’s life and the first days of her own. 16. According to the complaint, on December 22, 1986, the Uruguayan Parliament approved Law Nº 15.848, an Amnesty Law (Ley de Caducidad de la Pretensión Punitiva del Estado), which was further approved by a national referendum. 6 By means of Presidential Resolution Nº 858/2000 of August 9, 2000, former President Jorge Battle Ibáñez created the Commission for Peace in order to “receive, analyze, classify and compile information about the forced disappearances that occurred during the de facto regime.” The official report was made public on April 10, 2003 and presented to President Battle; inter alia, it established that Maria Claudia Gelman had been detained in Argentina at Automotores Orletti and despite the fact that she was not found to have been involved in any political activity related to Uruguay, she was transferred to Uruguay and detained at the headquarters of the Defense Intelligence Service (SID) until she was taken to the Military Hospital where she gave birth to a baby girl. The child was taken from her and given to a Uruguayan family and there are different versions of what happened to the mother; either she was killed in Uruguay or returned to the Argentine authorities who killed her in Argentina. 6 This law was submitted to a referendum in April 1989 and affirmed by a vote of 55.44% of the electorate in favor of ratification of the law versus 42.42% for the nullification of the law. As a consequence of the law, human rights violations committed by military and police officials until March 1, 1985, could not be punished. 4