MADRID, Spain—The Ministry of Justice led by Pilar Llop has acquired the Bonaparte software, with the aim of creating and managing the state DNA bank of victims of the Civil War and the Dictatorship, in accordance with the provisions of Law 20/2022, of 19 October, Democratic Memory.

The acting Minister of Justice has highlighted that this system “will allow the integration of DNA profiles from multiple laboratories and systematic searches with postmortem remains from the exhumation of mass graves of missing persons, during the period of the Civil War and the Dictatorship, and thus help in the genetic identification of the remains".

Law 20/2022, of October 19, on Democratic Memory, an initiative of the Ministry of the Presidency, through the Secretariat of State for Democratic Memory, also provides for the integration into this state bank the DNA profiles of people affected by a possible child abduction whose complaint has been admitted based on the facts established by law.

Bonaparte is a software developed by the company SMART RESEARCH BV. This software, which allows the development of a DNA database for the identification of corpses and missing persons, has been validated in the forensic field in different international settings such as the NFI, INTERPOL or ACIC.

The contract signed by the Ministry of Justice includes the permanent software license, without limitation of users, for a period of five years of maintenance and implementation of any software update; as well as a bag of annual hours for user training, incident management and patch installation.

Bonaparte is an advanced system in the creation and automated search of DNA profiles of complex family trees, regardless of the relationship of the relatives who donate their DNA to the victim they are looking for. This is an essential characteristic, since a high number of complex family trees is expected, due to the lack of direct relatives. The system also has a mathematical algorithm to calculate the statistical significance of the DNA compatibilities obtained. This computer system has been validated.

The bank will be managed in maintenance, updates and cybersecurity tasks by the General Directorate of Digital Transformation of the Administration of Justice, and the National Institute of Toxicology and Forensic Sciences will be in charge of using the application's algorithms and genetic data.

The institutions that will have access to the national DNA bank will be the state and autonomous community DNA laboratories that participate in democratic memory projects and have previously been satisfactorily evaluated by the National Commission for Forensic Use, in accordance with the ISO 17,025 standard.

Around 12 DNA laboratories from the autonomous communities of Catalonia, Valencia, Andalusia, the Canary Islands, Madrid, Aragon, Navarra, the Basque Country and Galicia are expected to participate in the state DNA bank.

Source: Ministerio de Justica website.

NIJMEGEN, The Netherlands —The Australian Commonwealth represented by the CrimTrac Agency and SNN have signed a contract for the provision of SNN's Bonaparte DNA matching software and associated support services as part of a National DNA Investigative Capability (NDIC). The contract is the corollary of SNN's successful bid on tender C14/147 issued by the CrimTrac Agency last year.

Bonaparte's state-of-the-art indirect matching algorithms will provide Australia's police and related agencies with new capability that can be used for matching DNA profiles across Australia's state and territory borders for law enforcement purposes, Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) and Missing Person programs.

Bonaparte was commissioned in 2007 by the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) as part of their CBRNe incident readiness program, and has since then been further developed and improved by SNN and its subsidiary SMART Research BV in close collaboration with the NFI.

Bonaparte played an important role in the identification of the victims of the 2010 air disaster in Tripoli, and more recently, in the identification of the victims of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in the Ukraine in 2014.

CrimTrac is the national information-sharing service provider for Australia's police, law enforcement and national security agencies. CrimTrac enables police agencies to share policing information with one another across Australia's state and territory borders.

SNN is the Dutch Foundation for Neural Networks at the Radboud University of Nijmegen headed by Prof. Kappen. SNN performs research on efficient methods for probabilistic Bayesian inference, control theory, neural networks, computational neuroscience and data analysis.

NIJMEGEN, The Netherlands, 10 February 2016 —SMART Research BV have signed a contract for the provision of the Bonaparte DNA matching software system and associated support services to the Government of Vietnam. The procurement is part of a 10-year project that aims to identify at least 80,000 of the 650,000 unidentified victims from the Vietnam War.

Initiated by the Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, "Project 150" will be the largest DNA identification project ever conducted. Three laboratories will be upgraded with latest forensic technology from technology suppliers as Qiagen and Eppendorf, while consultancy and training are provided by BioGlobe and The International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) in Bosnia. With the signing of this contract, SMART Research BV now proudly joins the project team.

Bonaparte's state-of-the-art indirect matching algorithms will provide the Vietnamese Government Laboratories with powerful kinship and familial search possibilities required for this ambitious project. The Bonaparte system allows for identification of unknown remains based on reference DNA from family members using arbitrary pedigree trees.

The Bonaparte system has been deployed in real world identification work on many occasions; it played an important role in the identification of the victims of the 2010 air disaster in Tripoli, and in the identification of the victims of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in the Ukraine in 2014.

Bonaparte was commissioned in 2007 by the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI), and has since then been further developed and improved by SNN and its subsidiary SMART Research BV in close collaboration with the NFI.

SMART Research BV is the commercial spin-off company of SNN — the Dutch Foundation for Neural Networks at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. SMART Research develops, maintains and provides support for Bonaparte. SMART Research specializes in applying advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies to solve real world problems. These technologies are also at the basis of the Bonaparte system.

NIJMEGEN, The Netherlands — INTERPOL and SMART Research have signed a contract for the provision of the "Bonaparte" software and related services to the world police body. The software will enable INTERPOL to expand its ability to assist member countries in identifying missing persons, victims of disasters and other complex identifications using this technology.

A state-of-the-art DNA matching software system, developed by SMART Research in close collaboration with the NFI, Bonaparte was originally developed for large scale DVI, but can also be used for familial and kinship searching.

At the NFI it played an important role in the identification of the victims of the 2010 air disaster in Tripoli, and more recently in the identification of the victims of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 air disaster in the Ukraine.

The signing of the agreement for an initial five-year period follows the announcement of the collaboration between NFI and INTERPOL at the 7th International DNA User’s Conference for Investigative Officers.

“We are proud to further enhance INTERPOL′s capability to support its member countries through the provision of the Bonaparte software,” said Bonaparte Technical Manager Willem Burgers who will be travelling to INTERPOL’s General Secretariat headquarters in Lyon, France to install the software.

SMART Research BV is the commercial spin-off company of SNN, the Dutch Foundation for Neural Networks at the Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, The Netherlands. SMART Research develops, maintains and provides support for Bonaparte. SMART Research specializes in applying advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies to solve real world problems. Bonaparte is also based on these technologies.

Also available from the INTERPOL website.