RIGHTS-HONDURAS: Blood-Stained Walls in General’s Torture Center

By Thelma Mejía Reprint | | Print |

Thelma Mejia

TEGUCIGALPA, Mar 15 1999 (IPS) - The country estate of a Honduran general who formed part of a past military government housed a torture centre used by the army in the 1980s, according to police reports and a team of U.S. anthropologists.

Bertha Oliva, with the Committee of Families of Detained- Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH), said the army held and tortured many opponents of the military regime on the estate of Gen. Amilcar Zelaya. Some of the victims figure on the list of people “disappeared” by the security forces last decade.

The U.S. anthropologists were in Honduras to collaborate in the search for clandestine cemeteries in which according to human rights groups, suspected opponents and “subversives” killed by the security forces were buried in the 1980s.

Police and the anthropologists found blood-stained walls in the estate, bathroom graffiti demonstrating that personnel of the Tegucigalpa-based Second Infantry Batallion took part in the torture, and false floors and tunnels.

The estate is located in Amarateca, north of Tegucigalpa. The inspection was carried out last week on a court order issued in response to a request by COFADEH and the ‘Fiscalia de los Derechos’ (office of the rights prosecutor).

Zelaya was one of three generals who formed the junta that ruled this Central American country from 1978 to 1981, after a string of coups d’etats. COFADEH said the general would be summoned by the court investigating the case.

According to an official report issued here in 1994, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Argentine military personnel were accomplices in the repression in the 1980s, in which 184 people were abducted and disappeared.

Using special techniques, the anthropologists found traces of human blood and even the prints of bloody hands on the walls of several rooms of Zelaya’s country residency.

“Disguised as a normal estate and house, the rooms were torture cells,” said Oliva.

Six students who were released by the army thanks to pressure by local and international organisations were reportedly held in the Amarateca estate in 1982.

One of the captors identified by the students was former captain Billy Fernando Joya, who three years after fleeing to Spain returned to Honduras last month. A judge absolved him on grounds of “lack of evidence”, and he remains in provisional liberty.

Gilda Rivera, one of the students who identified Joya, said the finding of the torture centre in Amarateca confirmed their claim.

“We didn’t lie, and now we will seek and substantiate new proof and demonstrate in the courts that the law cannot be twisted at the whim of judges or other people,” said Rivera.

Joya formed part of the now defunct 3-16 batallion, which carried out politically motivated disappearances. He confessed his actions in a book published three years ago by the armed forces.

Last week, the government handed over the remains of one disappeared victim to COFADEH – a U.S. national, Hans Albert Madinson, “mistakenly” killed by the security forces as he passed by a house while it was being searched by the army.

Madinson’s remains were found two years ago, buried next to a highway leading to the Atlantic coast. His corpse had been dismembered and distributed in a number of graves alongside the highway. COFADEH gave a proper burial to Madinson’s remains last week.

The team of U.S. anthropologists will return to Honduras in late April to continue the search for cemeteries and clandestine jails.