INTERSITE ANALYSIS OF VICTIMS OF EXTRA- AND JUDICIAL EXECUTION IN CIVIL WAR SPAIN: LOCATION AND DIRECTION OF PERIMORTEM GUNSHOT TRAUMA.

More than 150,000 executions took place during and soon following the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)-many without any judicial proceedings and mostly of noncombatants. As a result of disinterested postwar governments, nongovernmental organizations-representing families of victims-have insisted on finding the graves and exhuming the dead for identification and repatriation. This study examines skeletal gunshot trauma patterns from three extrajudicial mass execution sites and compares them with trauma of those from a postwar prison site, where victims were given more formal legal proceedings. Chi-square tests of cranial and postcranial trauma show that the latter is significantly more common at the postwar site. Further study of evidence from these sites will help ascertain circumstances of death and will help bring a measure of justice to victim families, even if future governments continue to deny official investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]