Yzabelle Bostyn
THE ‘woman in the shed’ was identified almost seven years after her death.
Her identity was revealed yesterday as 33-year-old Ainoha Izaga Ibieta Lima following a major police campaign.
She is the second person identified through Interpol’s Operation Identify Me- a campaign to find the names of dozens of unidentified women found dead in Europe.
Lima’s body was discovered in a Girona poultry shed in August 2018. She was not carrying identification documents and locals claimed they did not recognise her.
The only clue investigators had was a tattoo of the word ‘success’ in Hebrew.
She was reported missing to Paraguayan authorities in 2019 by her brother, who grew concerned after months of no contact. Lima travelled to Spain in 2013.
The breakthrough came when Paraguayan authorities matched fingerprints uploaded by Spain to ones in their national database.
Interpol uploaded publicly visible ‘black notices’ with details of the deceased with the aim of identifying them.
However, the circumstances surrounding Lima’s death remain unresolved.
The first woman identified using the Interpol campaign was 31-year-old Rita Roberts from Wales.
She last contacted her family via a postcard sent from Belgium in May 1992. Her body was found the next month.
Her family identified her in 2023 after seeing her distinctive black rose tattoo in a BBC report.
The campaign is currently seeking the identities of 45 other women found dead throughout Europe, with six more in Spain alone.
They are mostly believed to be murder victims between the ages of 15-30.
Interpol stated a rise in global migration and human trafficking has led to more people being reported missing outside their home countries. This can make identifying their bodies more challenging, but details of each case have been published on Interpol’s website, alongside photographs and facial reconstructions.
