Witnesses claim that Paraguayan commissioner Eusebio Torres cracked the whip and burst the eye of today's psychiatrist Carlos Arestivo in less than a second. He hung Margarita Báez by her hair, burned her chest and vagina. They say that Carlos Casco, like his brother Luis, was electrocuted and drowned for hours in April 1976, as was his wife Teresa Aguilera de Casco, now deceased, whom he tortured, although she was pregnant. of 6 months. His son was born in captivity.
He tortured Guillermina Kanonnikoff with her eight-month-old son in front of her and Constantino Coronel had him shackled for three months with electric prod sessions every afternoon. These two victims tell EL PAÍS about the torture perpetrated by the former commissioner who this Friday began to be tried for crimes against humanity.
It is 8 in the morning and there are only 30 minutes left before they can enter the Asunción Courthouse to testify against Torres. They have been waiting since 2011, when the judicial process began due to the Casco brothers' complaint.
Torres is accused of being the main interrogator of the longest dictatorial regime in America, that of General Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay, between 1954 and 1989. He has accumulated around twenty complaints, but until now his contacts have kept him from paying responsibility for any crime and receives a pension from the State, according to the victims.
“We hope that there is a conviction for this great torturer, my neighbor, Eusebio Torres, who tortured me while I was in the Police Investigation Department in March 1977 when my son was 8 months old,” explains Kanonnikoff while holding a banner with the faces of some of the 400 people who until now remain missing by the forces of Stroessner's philo-fascist dictatorial regime.
Constantino, founder of the Christian Agrarian Leagues in Paraguay, says that they tied him up, threw him into a van and took him to the Investigations Department of the Asunción Police in charge of Pastor Coronel in April 1976.
He remembers that the police chief climbed on his chest to stop him breathing, but before finishing the task, he received a call and left without killing him. Since then he was in the care of Eusebio Torres, who kept him handcuffed and subjected him to asphyxiation and electrocution among other torture for three months, according to the witness. He was imprisoned until 1981 when, through the mediation of Amnesty International, he managed to leave prison and the country.
“About nine shots were fired at him, he is 92 years old and here he is testifying today,” Kanonnikoff tells the people gathered outside the Palace before beginning the hearing that coincides with the day Agustín Goiburú, a fierce opponent of the regime, was kidnapped and disappeared. tried to murder Stroessner.
First wind of justice in a long time
Constantino was the first to testify and he was able to do so in Guaraní and Spanish because both the prosecutor and the court spoke it. He did it looking straight at a laptop where Torres, who did not appear at the appointment, was taking refuge in a video call. He was accompanied by thirty other victims, strong men and women, with proud gray hair and brilliant minds that the torturer failed to destroy, cellmates and resilience.
“He must have a dishonorable discharge from the police and return the money received and apologize to the victims. “We expect that from justice,” Kanonnikoff wished.
Unlike Argentina, Paraguay has only tried nine people responsible for crimes against humanity, and almost all of them found a way to die in their homes or hospitals. Not in jail. It has been 35 years since the dictatorship of the Colorado Party ended in Paraguay, although it continues to govern, and since then, victims, relatives, defense and human rights lawyers, as well as prosecutors, have tried to convict more perpetrators without success.
“The majority of them have evaded all the trials and blocked them through chicanery, that is, legal traps to delay the trial, such as constantly appealing any court decision, etc.,” Antonio Pecci, journalist and writer who told EL PAÍS, told EL PAÍS. He also suffered torture from Torres, after testifying before the court.
“The Colorados and heirs of the dictatorship continue to dominate justice. I'm not saying that they are all, but their money controls the majority,” Arestivo, the psychiatrist whose eye was destroyed by Torres, explains to EL PAÍS. Arestivo is one of the signatories of the final report of the Truth and Justice Commission that systematically investigated the crimes committed by the state apparatus during the dictatorship and which counted up to 18,000 detained and tortured. In a country that at that time did not have even two million inhabitants.
In 2014, then-Paraguayan President Horacio Cartes paid public tribute to Torres and other police officers reported for torture. Today Cartes presides over the Colorado Party, and his disciple and former bank manager Santiago Peña presides over the country. Even so, the victims hope for an exemplary sentence.
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