12
a.
Testimony of Maritza Ninette Urrutia García, alleged victim19
At the time of the facts, she carried out political tasks for the revolutionary
organization Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres [the Guerrilla Army of the Poor]
(hereinafter “EGP”) and collaborated with a psychologist, conducting tests in different
nursery schools. Two years previously, she had separated from Esteban, who was an
EGP companion with many years of affiliation, and the father of her son, Fernando
Sebastián. She lived with her parents and every day, between 7:30 and 8 a.m., she
took her son to school. The day before the abduction she noticed a “strange”
movement of several men who were on the road to her son’s school.
On the morning of Thursday, July 23, 1992, she took her son to school and when she
was walking back to her house, two men detained her very violently, they put her in
a vehicle in which there were two other men, they “seized” her head and placed it
between the legs of the man who was next to her and drove off rapidly. At once,
they began to threaten her and called her by her EGP pseudonym. She felt the
vehicle drive over a “túmulo”[mound] and it entered a large facility, a sort of large
car park; however, she did not know where she was. On arriving at this place, they
placed a hood made of newspaper over her head and transferred her to another
vehicle, where they handcuffed her and began to question her. Her abductors
pressured her to give them information, they threatened to kill her and said that they
had her son in a room. She was very nervous and disturbed, particularly because
she thought they had abducted her son.
During the interrogation, her captors showed her some photographs that they had
taken of her and her family, three letters that Maritza had sent to her son’s father,
through the EGP internal mail service, a cassette that she had recorded for Esteban
with the voice of their son, and photographs of corpses that had been destroyed and
mutilated at the war front, and they told her that this would happen to her if she did
not collaborate. She was very frightened by all of this.
When it was almost 11 a.m., they transferred her to another vehicle and moved her
to another part of the installations. They removed her from the vehicle and “took her
to some blocks, like houses.��� On the way, she could see military backpacks and
firearms on the ground. She made the first telephone call to her parents, when she
had to ask them to collect her son, and she told them not to worry, that she would
be arriving soon. She knew then that they did not have her son. Subsequently, they
took her back to the vehicle in which they had been questioning her. The threats
and the interrogation continued until the afternoon, but this time with greater
psychological pressure. Then she made two more telephone calls to her parents and,
in the last one, she told them that she would not return home that night. When she
had made the last telephone call, they went back to the place where they had been,
but this time they did not stay in the vehicle; she was taken to a room, where they
turned on the radio as loud as possible and continued the interrogation until the
early morning. When the men went, they left the light and the radio on. During the
night, people entered and left the room with a great deal of noise.
As of the Friday, the interrogation and the threats increased. She told her captors
that she wanted the amnesty and it was then that they asked if she would be willing
to film a video giving a statement about her participation in EGP and announcing her
withdrawal from the organization. She said “yes.” Her abductors obliged her to tidy
19
She provided a statement on the circumstances in which the facts of the case occurred.