The International Criminal Police Organisation (Interpol) has partnered with Netherlands-based Radboud University Nijmegen and its spin-out Smart Research BV on a programme which will help identify people based on their relatives’ DNA.
The programme, called Bonaparte, is both able to identify victims and suspects by linking DNA to relatives. It has already had success in doing so, such as in the 2010 Tripoli airplane crash and in 2012 with identifying the killer of Dutch woman Marianne Vaatstra, who died in 1999.
Willem Burgers, Bonaparte technical manager at Smart Research, will soon travel to Lyon to integrate the programme with Interpol’s DNA database for family analysis.
Burgers said: “You never know for sure, but perhaps the French find the program extra attractive because it’s called Bonaparte. Napoleon made sure everyone was given a surname, and with our Bonaparte program nameless victims get their name back.”
