OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE, Neb. (KMTV) — Francis Niño said she's waited 10 years to visit the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency Lab. That chance came for the Colombian Attorney General's Office official on Monday at Offutt Air Force Base.
The goal: learn from the local experts working to identify Americans lost at war and apply those skills to identify those missing in armed conflicts in the South American country. More than 120,000 are missing to armed conflicts in Colombia, per a press release for the visit.
"For us, as a culture, this is very important," said Niño. "It’s the way the family can have peace of mind, to give them back their loved ones."
Through the Department of Justice's International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program, about a dozen Colombians visited the lab at Offutt, which opened in 2013 and employs about 50 people.
The stop at Offutt will last two days and be followed by a trip to visit the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Jessica Yopak, a government contractor at the DPAA lab, said she expects to learn from the occasion, too.
"Collaboration always leads to diversity of thought," she said, "(Missing people) is really a basic human issue, not just maybe a U.S. military issue ... There’s people missing from all over the globe."
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