Torture Victims in El Salvador Speak Out
Torture Victims in El Salvador Speak Out
By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Mar 21 2013 (IPS) - A report containing the testimonies of victims of torture during El Salvador’s 1980-1992 civil war will be published 27 years after it was written, to help Salvadorans today learn more about that chapter in the country’s history.
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More than 40 torture techniques are described in detail and depicted in drawings in the report. One of the most commonly used techniques was the “avioncito” (airplane), in which the victim’s hands were tied behind his or her back and the victim was suspended in the air from the wrists, often causing dislocation of the shoulders.In the “capucha” (hood), a plastic bag was placed over the prisoner’s head, to partially suffocate them, while the “submarino” (submarine) involved simulated drowning. Other methods were electric shock, cutting off the tongue, or destroying the eyes with chemicals.
“They would take me to a room in the Treasury Police headquarters in San Salvador where the walls and the floor were covered with dried blood,” Montenegro said. The book also provides profiles of torture victims who were forcibly disappeared.
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The CDHES document is coming out shortly after an investigative report by the BBC and The Guardian, published as a documentary on Mar. 5, revealed that retired U.S. Colonel James Steele, a Special Forces veteran of Vietnam who was posted in El Salvador in the 1980s, was later sent to Iraq. The British media report said Steele, who trained and directed counterinsurgency operations in El Salvador, was sent to Iraq to implement the so-called “Salvadoran option” to fight the insurgency after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq 10 years ago. Steele was reportedly sent to train special Iraqi police brigades in torture techniques employed in this Central American country in the 1980s.
More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/03/torture-victims-in-el-salvador-speak-out/
