Paraguayan Secret Police Covered Up Forced Disappearance of Four Young People in 1976

A document from the Archive of Terror in Paraguay revealed today confirms that the Chief of the Secret Police tried to cover up the disappearance of Amilcar Oviedo, Carlos Mancuello, Benjamin Ramirez Villalba and Rodolfo Ramirez Villalba on September 21, 1976. Posted today for the first time on the Web site of the National Security Archive, a note from Commissary Eliodoro Sánchez reported that "THERE IS NO NEWS WORTH MENTIONING," emphatically contradicting the Chief of Investigations (D-3) Pastor Coronel who reported that the four missing youth had escaped on that night.

"The discovery of the report without news from a high ranking official at the D-3 contradicts the story that there had been an escape and is evidence that the police tried to conceal the forced disappearance of the four young men," declared Alfredo Boccia, researcher and author, together with other collaborators, of the first detailed summary of the Terror Archive content.

On the occasion of another anniversary of the discovery of the Archive of Terror on December 22, the collection of 14 Spanish language documents published today provides a look into the ordeal endured by the four young people through documentation that has been key in trials for reparations in Paraguay and before the Inter American Human Rights Court, including:

* a high level report prepared for dictator Alfredo Stroessner on December 1974 at the time of their capture;

* Argentinean intelligence documents that tie the fate of the four missing persons to a system established to coordinate security forces in the Southern Cone in the 1970's: Operation Condor;

* and the tragic testimony from relatives who delivered a change of clothes to their detained son, stating that "on numerous occasions the clothes were brought back from the Department of Investigations stained with blood."