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Rafael and Emilio left when a neighbor came in running to tell her that “a
patrol car ha[d] taken [her] brothers, [that] the police ha[d] thrown them on
the ground and ha[d] put them in the trunk and ha[d] taken them away.”
Another brother of hers, Miguel Ángel, went to look for their mother to let her
know what had happened, and she tried to contact their father; however, this
was not possible “because since he worked on ships, when they had to test
the valves that they repaired they went out to sea [...] and this was one of
those days.”
When their mother came home and found out what had happened, she looked
for the documents of her brothers, Rafael and Emilio, who were 17 and 14
years old, respectively. A man also came to the house asking for Emilio.
At that time, her sister Haydeé, who was nine months pregnant, called her
and said that she was feeling ill and that she was bleeding. Given this
situation, her mother, her siblings Miguel Ángel and Haydeé and the witness
went to the San Juan Hospital –now called Daniel Alcides Carrión- Emergency
service.
The man who had come to their house to ask for her brother Emilio followed
them to the hospital together with another man. At the hospital, Haydeé was
told that she should rest, for which reason they went home together with
Miguel Ángel, while the witness and her mother went to look for her detained
brothers.
They went to the Police station, not far away, but they were unable to give
them any information on her detained brothers, and did they did not help
search for them.
The witness and her mother went back the same way they had gone to the
Police station and once again they met the men who had followed them from
their house. They asked her mother, as they had when they left the house, if
they did not have a male relative “whom [she] could let know,” and they
answered that they did not. The man kept on asking this and the witness and
her mother demanded that he tell them what he knew about Rafael and
Emilio.
At that moment, Lucy realized that they were in front of a funeral parlor, and
the man told them that Rafael and Emilio were wounded, that they were at
the hospital and that he could take them there.
The man took them to the hospital, where he told them that Rafael and Emilio
were dead. They went to the room where the bodies were and saw that they
were wet, full of dirt, soiled. Her brother Rafael “smelled of urine” and “had an
expression of horrible pain.” Their eyes were empty, there was encephalic
mass on their hair, she could see that her brother Rafael’s chest was full of
holes, and that they were both filthy and full of dirt. At that time, she “fe[lt]
that [her] life was falling apart.”
Both bodies had a sign that said “NN [Unidentified], light build, olive-skinned,
approximate age” 24 years on Emilio’s card and 27 years on Rafael’s, “arrived
as a corpse.”