The "Remember Me" project, which began in January this year, has already identified 42 of 122 people who were buried without identification.

The Official Forensics and Technical Identification of Mato Grosso (Politec-MT) has managed to reveal the identity of 42 people initially buried without any identification. The initiative of the "Remember Me" project, a partnership between Politec and the Griaule company, reviewed 122 cases of people who died between 2009 and 2025.

Since January, 34% of unidentified victims over 16 years have been given a name in Cuiabá. Biometric identification uses the fingerprints collected from unidentified deceased people and cross-references them with digitized databases that bring together the records of millions of people.

The project uses information from bodies such as the Public Security Secretariat, which has been digitizing the state's civil collection since 2024, converting citizens' fingerprints and faces to digital media.

Many of the deceased could not be identified in the past due to the lack of biometric technology. According to data from the project, there are currently around 400,000 unidentified victims at Politec in Cuiabá.

For housewife Tereza de Andrade, 72, Thiago Carlos' grandmother, confirmation of her grandson's whereabouts came 12 years later. At the time of the incident, the family went so far as to put up posters all over the city in search of the boy's whereabouts. When she heard that her grandson's body had been identified, her first reaction was to think, "What body? There's no body left. Because it's been so long, so many years, so there's no body left."

For her, the news was a conclusion to the case, but she is shaken by the thought that she will no longer meet her grandson, as she had hoped.

"It's very sad, especially when you're distressed. Now I no longer have to wait for him. I won't think that he's arrived at the gate and is shouting for me" she recalled.

Thiago Carlos Neto, missing since August 2012 - Photo: Personal archive

This result was achieved with the implementation of the Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS). The company provides the Government of Mato Grosso with all the facial recognition and biometric technology and services for issuing documents and papiloscopic research, which is the investigation and analysis of papillary prints, such as fingerprints, for human identification.

Thiago Ribeiro, Griaule's business director, explained to g1 that the biometric system has around 4 million people registered, and that the state collection has been digitized. The establishment of this system serves to solve cases of missing persons and accident victims.

"The biometrics, fingerprints or face, are transformed into biometric templates and are searched in this database so that it is possible to determine the identity of that person. This has enabled people who have been missing for more than 20 years to be identified," he explained.

He also explained that the biometric system relies on advanced cryptography, artificial intelligence and algorithms that process information in milliseconds during the check. The average time it takes to identify victims is up to 13 days.

Identifying people

The first stage of the process is to identify the body that arrives at the IML or is in the system as unidentified. The coordinator of the "Remember me" project and IML papiloscopist, Simone Delgado, tells us how this process is carried out.

"Nowadays, if an unidentified body comes in, we take fingerprints, even in challenging cases, we manage to recover tissue from bodies in an advanced state of decomposition/ charred and we process this fingerprint of the unknown person in the automated system," she explained.

The biometric base used to identify the body and the family itself is updated through the documents issued in the state. For example, when updating the General Registry (RG), everyone needs to have their photo taken. When the document is issued for the first time, fingerprints are taken from all ten fingers. This data (photo and fingerprint) is also used to identify the bodies at the IML. Once the body has been identified, the next step is to trace the relatives.

"Each individual has a unique fingerprint. Because of this individualization, the system does this research and it will show us the candidates who have similar fingerprints. That's how we can, for example, identify which family that person is from" said Simone.

This is the case of Rafael de Oliveira Flores, 24, who stopped having contact with his family shortly after 2014, following a visit from a brother. When his father died in 2016, his half-sister Franciele Paula Flores tried to get in touch to let him know.

She looked for her brother for many years, but as she couldn't find him, she thought he was working on a farm and didn't want to be in touch. It wasn't until 2025 that Paula heard the news: Rafael had died in February 2015, a year before her father.

"I used to dream about him a lot and hoped that I would find him, but not like that. I always thought it would be me who found my brother, and in a way it was," she said.

Paula comments that it was only possible to contact her family because she keeps her details up to date in the system. As she is a bone marrow donor, she always keeps her telephone and address details up to date so that, if there is a match, she can be found without difficulty.

"They cross-checked the data, starting with his mother. They couldn't find it because the data was out of date, so they went looking for our father's name, which isn't that common, which may have helped. Searching for parentage, they reached me by cross-referencing genetic and fingerprint data. They went from person to person in the family until they found a valid contact," she explained.

Rafael de Oliveira Flores and his brother (right to left) - Photo: Personal archive

This content was published by the G1 news portal on November 1, 2025, available at this link.