17
Eighth Criminal Magistrate. This report dealt with the police investigation of the
abduction of Maritza Urrutia and the interview that the police had had with Edmundo
Urrutia. The report says “that at approximately 8.30 a.m. on July 23, 1992,
unknown men detained and arrested Maritza on 5th Avenue and 1st Street in Zone 13,
Guatemala City, when she was returning from the Walt Disney School.” They forced
her to enter a white or gray vehicle. Then it says: “the victim left her left shoe,
black with yellow and green stripes, at the place of the facts. The shoe was
forwarded to this court.” He believes that this report reveals considerable difference
between what the highest legal authority, the Attorney General, reported to the
President of the Republic on August 19, 1992, and what appeared in the court file on
the case.
Those responsible for abducting Maritza are still at liberty, which places the Urrutia
García family at risk, both for having filed the complaint at that time and for
submitting it again before the Inter-American Court, because Maritza is evidently
disobeying the conditions imposed by her abductors in 1992.
During the years when he investigated the case, he was able to interview two
members of the Guatemalan Army’s intelligence units, who took part in Maritza’s
detention. They both said that it was a Guatemalan military intelligence unit that
investigated Maritza and carried out the abduction, interrogations and liberation.
These two individuals are free and never expressed any fear of being investigated,
prosecuted or tried. It can be said that they operated with complete impunity, and
this continues.
The fact that Maritza has received a legal amnesty in no way implies that she or the
members of her family are free and safe. Owing to the threats she received from her
abductors, she had to continue in contact with them, and to maintain a “relationship”
with the members of the Guatemalan Army who had abducted and mistreated her
during the week she disappeared. Accordingly, her family considered that the best
option for Maritza and her son and for her brother Edmundo, was to try and leave
Guatemala and go to a country where they could be safe and not subject to threats,
pressure and possibly violence from the Guatemalan Army unit that had abducted
her.
f.
Expert report of Carlos Joaquín Bethancourt Monzón, doctor24
He met Maritza Urrutia on August 1, 1992, when he was called in as the consultant
doctor of the Archdiocesan Human Rights Office. The examination he carried out
consisted essentially of a series of questions, called a “case history” and a physical
examination. The patient had no physical problem. He corroborated this information
subsequently with a physical examination that only indicated the presence of some
bruising on both ankles.
He observed that Maritza had undergone a period of intense stress and that, at a
determined moment, she may have suffered a situation of panic, which resulted in
constant agitation and insomnia. In addition, her heart rate and rate of breathing
were increased, she had lost her appetite, she was sweating, and had a few other
24
Doctor and surgeon, graduated from the Medical Sciences Faculty of the Universidad de San
Carlos de Guatemala, with postgraduate studies in internal medicine in Guatemala and nephrology in
Mexico City. Doctors are familiar with psychological problems through their private practice. He made his
report on the psychological effects caused by the alleged torture inflicted on Maritza Urrutia, and other
relevant aspects of the case.