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Julian Cadman, the 7-year-old Australian boy whose disappearance had caused much speculation, is one of the 13 who died in the attack on la Rambla Thursday. Since the beginning, the police had his body and were carrying out DNA tests to identify him. Finally, today, his parents have been told that Julian Cadman is dead.

It needs mentioning that the list of victims has included an Australian since the first day. But the identification of a body is not instantaneous. It is necessary to analyse DNA samples and to compare them with those of relatives or with personal objects owned by the victim. In this case, once the results were obtained, the report was communicated to the judge who validated it and the family were informed. Julian's mother is one of those wounded in the attack. The emergency services told her and Julian's father of his death in the hospital where they were waiting.

Over the last three days there has been a lot of confusion about this victim, since the family made a public appeal because it was thought that the boy had disappeared. Yesterday, however, the Mossos (Catalan police) made it clear that Julian Cadman had never been considered missing, in answer reports saying that he was alive and with his mother in a Barcelona hospital. The police made it public that "all the victims and injured people are located and the process of identification is underway".

On Saturday morning the news had come out that Cadman might be among the injured, but sources from both the Catalan Civil Protection service, which controls the information about the victims, and the Catalan Interior Ministry, which coordinates the resources and all the information it has available, always denied that the boy was in any hospital. 

Julian Cadman was in Barcelona on holiday with his mother and family. From Australia, when they learned of the attack, the news of the boy's disappearance was spread around the internet. The Australian media placed strong focus on the story and it even received the concerns of the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull.