SPAIN'S STOLEN BABIES

SPAIN'S first trial linked to thousands of suspected cases of babies stolen from their mothers during the Franco era will resume in a Madrid court, decades after the scandal broke.

Eduardo Vela, 85, a former gynecologist at the now defunct San Ramon clinic in Madrid, is accused of having in 1969 taken Ince Madrigal, now aged 49, from her biological mother and given her to another woman, who then raised her and was falsely certified as her birth mother.

Activists say hundreds of similar cases have failed to make it to court in Spain because of a lack of evidence or because the time limit to file charges has passed.

Enreque Vila, a lawyer who has written extensively about the ''stolen babies'' scandal, said Vela's trial could provide ''moral'' encouragement for other victims to bring forward lawsuits.

''There are dozens of doctors and nuns across Spain who are guilty'' and who are still alive, he told AFP.

In a dark and often overlooked chapter of General Francisco Franco's 1939 - 75 dictatorship, the newborns of some left wing opponents of the regime, as well as of poor couples, were removed from their mothers and adopted.

New mothers were frequently told their babies had died suddenly within hours of birth and the hospital had taken care of their burials, but in fact they were given or sold to another family.

Baby stealing began in the  1950s after Franco came to power following the 1936-39  civil war getting pitting left-wing Republicans against conservative Nationalists loyal to the general.

It was part of an effort to purge Spain of Marxist influence. It was expanded to take newborns from poor families.

In the context of the trial set to resume, prosecutors are seeking an 11-year jail sentence for falsifying official documents, illegal adoption, unlawful detention and certifying a non-existent birth. [Agencies]