He was 22 years old, had a son and had a journalist’s card that did not prevent his death. The last time Jaime Boris Ayala Sulca was seen alive, before crossing the gate of the Huanta municipal stadium, the impetus in his eyes could be seen from leagues away. During the early morning, some men had broken into her mother’s house to threaten her with a gun and, in addition, they had fractured her brother’s partition with a few kicks. Ayala Sulca had the suspicion that they had been police officers and, since the police station had refused to accept his complaint, he went to the Navy base, stationed in the stadium, to ask for explanations. It was the morning of August 2, 1984 in the heights of Ayacucho. The city was taken by the Armed Forces in response to the subversion. Forty years have passed and the correspondent of the newspaper La República and host of a program on Radio Huanta 2000 still does not appear.
Just the night before, a Marine infantry patrol had violently entered a temple of the Presbyterian Church, in the middle of a service, in the community of Callqui, also located in the province of Huanta. They forcibly removed six parishioners and took them to the patio. After asking them if they were terrorists, they stabbed them, shot them and dynamited them. Two of them were minors. Shortly after, between August 9 and 13, 1984, 42 people disappeared in the community of Culluchaca, an annex of Huanta. On the 22nd of that same month, four graves were discovered in the Pucayacu area, in the adjacent region of Huancavelica, with fifty bodies. His advanced state of decomposition did not hide the signs of torture: tied hands, knife injuries and holes in the head.
This brief chronology of horror proves the context of violence that was experienced in Ayacucho, where the population, mostly dedicated to agriculture and livestock, lived between two fires: terrorism and the Armed Forces. According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 22.16% of the murders and 18.52% of the disappearances in the entire region occurred in Huanta alone. This Monday, after 40 years of waiting and a long battle in the courts, one of the main perpetrators of those crimes has been sentenced to 18 years in prison. This is a senior Navy commander, Alberto Rivera Valdeavellano, former political-military head of the Huanta national security area.
Rivera is credited with direct responsibility for these serious human rights violations. In this ruling with historical overtones, the court imposed a five-year disqualification and civil compensation of 100,000 soles ($26,700) for the relatives of each of the victims. It was also noted that the Peruvian State owes them a public apology, since it was demonstrated that the “victims had no connection with terrorist elements. Rather, they were humble peasants whose rights and life plans were curtailed,” the sentence was read.
Another of those accused in these massacres is the former sailor Augusto Gabilondo García del Barco, who in those years assumed leadership of the Huanta Countersubversive Base. In his case, the magistrates declared the ruling reserved, and issued an arrest warrant at the national and international level because he is in Spain. García del Barco, whose war name was ‘Barrabás’, fled Peru and was captured in 2022 in Fuengirola, a seaside resort in Malaga, but was released without bail. He is also implicated in the disappearance of Benito Baldeón, a worker at the Army Recruitment Office who, like journalist Jaime Ayala Sulca, has been missing since August 2, 1984.
Augusto Gabilondo García del Barco is the first soldier who has requested the application of Law No. 32107, known as the law of impunity, enacted by Congress last August, which exempts from all judicial proceedings those who have committed crimes against humanity or war crimes before July 2002, when the Rome Statute came into force in Peru. The judges, however, rejected his request and decided to disapply the law due to control of conventionality and the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
Originally among the accused was also Adrián Huamán Centeno, former head of the military-political command of Ayacucho, but he died and the trial continued with the other defendants. A main protagonist of these tortures was also the cover captain Álvaro Artaza Adrianzén, known as ‘commander Camión’. In February 1986, two years after the crimes, the Supreme Court of Justice decided that those cases be transferred to the common jurisdiction. And it was just around those days that ‘Commander Camión’ was allegedly kidnapped near a restaurant in Lima. Three years later he was declared dead, although his disappearance never ceased to arouse suspicion.
The historic ruling occurred on the eve of Peruvian Journalist’s Day. Regarding this, the National Association of Journalists of Peru has indicated that the “sentence is a firm step in the fight against impunity, but for full justice to exist it is urgent to find the remains of the journalist (Jaime Ayala Sulca).” On the other hand, the Association for Human Rights (Aprodeh) stressed that it will be vigilant so that the sentence is confirmed by the Supreme Court, also so that “comprehensive reparations are fulfilled” and, finally, so that “the extradition of “Augusto Gabilondo García del Barco”.
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