crime, to the detriment of Walter Munárriz Escobar. 38 On August 14, 2000, the Huancavelica Superior Court of
Justice issued an indictment against all of the officers cited.39
54.
The preliminary hearing included the collection of pretrial statements of the accused, testimonial
statements of witnesses, expert opinions, confrontation of witnesses, and judicial inspections. In its judgment
of February 15, 2001, the Joint Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice convicted officers Roberto Eugenio
Gastiaburú Nakada and Adolfo Ángeles Ramos of committing a crime against humanity in the form of forced
disappearance, to the detriment of Walter Munárriz Escobar, and sentenced them to eighteen years in prison,
professional disqualification, and payment of 20,000 new soles by way of civil reparations. The rest of the
defendants were acquitted.40
55.
These are some of the deliberations of the Joint Chamber:
[…] fully proven the detention of the disappeared person, Walter Munárriz Escobar, in the
circumstances referred to in the preceding preambular section, by defendant Gunther
Cuaresma Ramos, it not being relevant to the criminal offense of this hearing to analyze the
legitimacy of that intervention; of relevance, however, as a reproach for criminal liability for
the crime of forced disappearance being judged, is the fact that the accused, as fully
demonstrated with sufficient evidence, left the detainee after having performed his police
function of detention on a public street, based on the verbal complaint made by Mrs. Patrick
Flores de Gutiérrez and after having informed his co-defendant Angeles Ramos, as is also
verified in the court documents, to subsequently […] proceed to withdraw to rest in the
dormitories of the police station as his shift had ended, with the subsequent shift being that
of his codefendant Angeles Ramos; it being consequently for that reason that defendant
Gunther Cuaresma Ramos cannot be convicted for criminal responsibility for the crime that
is the subject of this proceeding, because […] the causal relationship between his action and
the result was broken, in accordance with the elements comprising the crime of forced
disappearance […]. FIFTH. […] the defendant, noncommissioned officer Adolfo Edgar
Ángeles Ramos, who engaged in police action involving the detainee, Walter Munárriz
Escobar, since during his shift he was on duty as the Reports and Assistance Officer of the
Lircay police station; he did not just confine his activity to maintaining the detention of
Walter Munárriz Escobar, who was left under his responsibility with the appropriate report,
as verified in court documents, but he also took action that amounted to deprivation of the
liberty of the disappeared person, Walter Munárriz Escobar […] which also included at the
scene of the crime Peruvian National Police Captain Roberto Gastiaburú Nakada, as he is […]
the person who not only assumed responsibility for the detainee in his capacity as Chief of
the Lircay Police Department […] but also ordered his detention, by ordering his codefendant Angeles Ramos “to bring him here” when the detainee, now a disappeared person,
was preparing to leave the police station on his own, a corroborated version […], authorized
the detainee Walter Munárriz Escobar to be taken from the police station where he was
detained, stubbornly insisting that the disappeared person was not being detained but that
he was “intervened,” using that term to so as to exclude himself from punitive responsibility,
in vain, […] there is no legal certainty that in fact the detainee was released in the early
morning hours of Saturday, March twenty, nineteen hundred ninety-nine at approximately
five fifteen in the morning; also because the testimony of witnesses […] has no basis in the
truth; […]41
38
Annex 22. Prosecutorial Decision No. 01-2000 of January 19, 2000. Annex to State Memorandum No. 7-5-M/066 of
February 9, 2006.
39
Annex 23. Decision No. 100 of August 14, 2000. Annex to State Memorandum No. 7-5-M/066 of February 9, 2006.
40 Annex 8. Copy of the judgment of February 15, 2001.
Annex to the State’s Memorandum No. 7-5-M/066 of February 9,
2006.
41
2006.
Annex 8. Copy of the judgment of February 15, 2001. Annex to the State’s Memorandum No. 7-5-M/066 of February 9,
11