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Buenos Aires (AFP)

An indigenous rights activist found dead in an Argentinian river 78 days after he went missing died by drowning, a judge said Friday.

Santiago Maldonado, 27, disappeared on August 1 following a paramilitary police operation to disperse a protest march by the Mapuche indigenous group in Chubut province, Patagonia, around 1,100 miles (1,800 kilometers) southwest of Buenos Aires.

The case has embroiled President Mauricio Macri's government in a political storm and revived dark memories of the country's years of dictatorship and forced disappearances of opponents.

Maldonado's body was found on October 17, 300 meters from where he was last seen, in the Chubut river which flows through ancestral lands sold to Italian fashion mogul Luciano Benetton but claimed by the Mapuche.

"Experts unanimously reached conclusions establishing the causes of death as drowning by submersion in the water of the Chubut river, to which hypothermia contributed," judge Gustavo Lleral told a press conference in Buenos Aires.

Speaking to the press shortly before the judge's announcement, the Maldonado family's lawyer, Veronica Heredia, said his cause of death is still being treated as "forced disappearance followed by death," although no conclusion could be made about the date Maldonado died.

"We are going to continue with our hypothesis of forced disappearance followed by death due to institutional violence," she told reporters.

© 2017 AFP