9 society: leaders of grass-roots or opposition organizations, workers, peasants, teachers, student leaders, members of religious orders or their lay helpers; 40(3) This practice was implemented by the army, the civil self-defense patrols (hereinafter “the PAC”), the military commissioners, the military footpolice, the national police, the judicial police and the “death squadrons”; 40(4) The detention, abduction, torture and subsequent assassination of those who were “disappeared” was carried out by heavily armed groups of individuals, who introduced and identified themselves as belonging to one of the State’s different investigation or security units. During these operations, they did not provide information on the motives for the alleged detention or the centers to which those detained would be transferred. These groups acted with total impunity and traveled in cars similar to those used by the police forces or identified as belonging to security units, with deteriorated license plates or without the road use permit; 40(5) Violence was inevitably used in the forced disappearance of persons carried out by members of State security units. These acts of violence were directed against the victims, their next of kin, and any witnesses to the events. The threats and intimidation of the victims’ next of kin continued for some time after the detention, so as to curb their initiatives to locate the persons detained and to heighten their fear; 40(6) Between 1979 and 1983, the period coinciding with the exacerbation of the internal conflict in Guatemala, boys and girls were subjected to many human rights violations, and were direct victims of forced disappearance, arbitrary execution, torture, abduction, rape, and other acts that violated their fundamental rights. The threats and torture to which they were subjected were used as a way of torturing their families, and were designed to instill exemplary terror in them; Concerning Marco Antonio Molina Theissen and his next of kin 40(7) Marco Antonio Molina Theissen was born on November 30, 1966, and was 14 years and 10 months old when the facts took place. He lived with his family in Guatemala City. He was in third year of high school at the Guatemalan-Israeli College and hoped to complete his high school certificate and continue on to university; 40(8) His mother is Emma Theissen Álvarez de Molina and his father, who is deceased, was Carlos Augusto Molina Palma. His sisters are Emma Guadalupe, María Eugenia and Ana Lucrecia, all Molina Theissen; 40(9) The members of the Molina Theissen family and other next of kin, such as Marco Antonio’s brothers-in-law, are members of the administrative, academic, political and social areas of the Universidad de San Carlos5 and were identified as political opponents or “subversives” by the security forces; 5 The representatives indicated in their brief with requests, arguments and evidence that “during the era of internal armed conflict, the Universidad Estatal de San Carlos was considered to be a ‘center of subversion.’”