19 protested by setting fire to some mattresses. The fire spread quickly. The cellblock doors were locked and the guards were unable to find the key. The smoke and the high temperature began to suffocate the inmates. Despite their screams of pain and desperation, the inmates did not get immediate help, since the guards had not even called the firefighters. Some inmates fainted and collapsed. The inmates continued to scream, begging for help, while some bodies burned. One of the young people said that the smell of burned flesh mixed with the smoke and heat was unbearable. Some inmates managed to get out through a small opening they made in the roof. Once they had escaped the flames, they were taken to the hospital in ambulances. For the young people who were incarcerated at the Center to be able to easily readapt to life in society, they would have to live, from the outset, in a safe place, where they are treated humanely and with affection; they also need to spend a reasonable period of time in psychological and affective recuperation – in other words, healing the affective and emotional wounds they suffered – and they have to feel useful to restore their self-esteem. In short, they need an environment where they can re-adapt in every positive sense. This environment might be an institution that concerns itself with problems of this type, where the young people can study to have a solid base and learn some activity they can perform that reinforces a sense of dignity and gets them back into mainstream society. The young people must also have psychotherapy, to enable them to reflect upon their lives and then build a new and different life project. Finally, to provide for these pressing needs and enable these young people to rejoin society, the State must ensure them a pension as reparations, as they have hopes of being able to get international assistance. 70. On March 31, 2004, in response to the President’s March 2, 2004 order (supra para. 42),34 the representatives sent the affidavits given by witnesses Dirma Monserrat Peña, Clemente Luis Escobar González, Arsenio Joel Barrios Báez, Hugo Antonio Vera Quintana, Jorge Daniel Toledo and María Teresa de Jesús Pérez, all sworn in the presence of a person authorized by law to authenticate documents and statements (supra para. 44). The following is a summary of the pertinent parts of those affidavits: a) Testimony of Dirma Monserrat Peña, elder sister of Pedro Iván Peña, a former inmate at the Center The witness’ brother was taken away on December 31, 1999, but his family was never advised. In order to get word to them, Pedro Iván Peña lied to the police and told them that he had a stolen object stashed in his house. That way, the police came to his house looking for the supposedly stolen object. That was how his family learned that he was at Police Station 12. The witness went to the police station, but they denied that his brother was there. She had to turn to a community radio station to ask for help. A journalist called her and confirmed that her brother was at that police station. Her brother told him that they had tortured him badly and, in fact, he had “sign[s] of torture” and “scratches everywhere”. The witness wanted her brother to be examined by a physician at the police station, but the police didn’t want to have it done. 34 Cf. file of written statements supplied by the State, the Inter-American Commission and the alleged victims’ representatives, volume I, folios 221-263.