17
She added that subsequently the National Police Force arrived to collect the
body of Anstraum Aman Villagrán Morales and they asked her if she knew or
had seen anything; however, she refused to answer because she was afraid.
Several days after the death of Villagrán Morales, the man who had
accompanied him on the night he was murdered came to the kiosk again. He
arrived in the uniform of the Fifth National Police Corps, in a blue pick-up
truck, identified as belonging to the same police corps, and accompanied by
other policemen, who were conducting a “raid”. This man was looking for her
mother who also worked in the kiosk.
She told her mother that police agents were looking for her. It was then that
her mother, who feared for her own life, advised her to make a statement
about what she had seen. She said that she went to make a statement to the
National Police Force and then her mother went to the United States “for fear
that something [might happen to her]”. She stated that she also made a
statement before the “courts” and that the State did not take any measure to
protect her safety or that of her mother.
On March 26, 1991, she made a statement before a judge. On October 9,
1990, she had done the same to National Police Force investigators. She
identified a policeman named Néstor Fonseca López as a participant in the
murder, from a “kardex”, that is cards with identification photographs. With
regard to the personal identification procedure, she stated that “[she] was
taken to several places, but [Néstor Fonseca López] was not there” and she
was never called to personally identify Samuel Rocael Valdez Zúñiga. She
declared that a man whose last names were Valdez Zúñiga, who she saw in
another photograph, was similar to the man who accompanied Fonseca López
on the day of the events. One of the men had a gold tooth.
Lastly, she stated that she was frightened of declaring before the InterAmerican Court.
f.
Testimony of Osbelí Arcadio Joaquín Tema, former Guatemalan
National Police Force investigator
He declared that, in 1990, he worked as an investigator in the Homicide Unit
of the National Police Force and, currently, he is the Second Officer of this
Unit. It was his responsibility to “collect the physical evidence and interview
the persons who were present”.
He was in charge of the preliminary
investigation in the case of Anstraum Aman Villagrán Morales. He arrived at
the scene of the crime in civilian clothes at approximately one in the morning.
There, he found a “Police Force vehicle […], the Identification Section vehicle
[both of the national Police Force] and a vehicle with the judge”.
He stated that he was able to observe when a person from the Identification
Section of the National Police Force found a bullet head “of unknown caliber”
about a meter from the body. He did not have access to the results of the
ballistic tests because it was not part of his work, but according to the
characteristics of the hole where the bullet entered, he calculated that it could
have been a .30 or .38 caliber. At that time, the National Police Force used
.38 special revolvers. The shot had been fired from a distance of five to six
meters from the victim. He said that the examination and analysis of the
bullet head could reveal the type of arm that had been used. When asked