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The members of the Army asked him about his family and, when they did not obtain
an answer about where they were, they brought in one of his brother-in-laws, who
was also detained, and beat him to obtain the information; but, finally, it was the
witness himself who told them where they were. A month later, his two children of 3
and 5 years of age and his mother-in-law, with six children, were captured in
Retalhuleu and sent to Military Zone No. 1316, where they were kept in the infirmary
for nearly two months.
When he realized that there were people in the Army who knew him, and to protect
his safety and that of his family, he could no longer hide what he knew of the Front
and was obliged to collaborate and provide information about the members of the
Front and its structure to the Army. However, on two occasions he was taken to a
base in Mazatenango and there was gunfire, the members of the Army therefore
thought that he was leading them into an ambush. During the time he remained at
this base, he slept in a room with members of the G-2, and was always tied up and
with a man beside him.
At the beginning of November 1988, he was transferred with about 18 recently
captured members of FAR to the installations of the Infantry Military Police in Military
Zone No. 6 in the capital, where he remained for a week. The other prisoners had
received the same treatment as the witness. In this base, members of the Army told
them that they would be granted an amnesty. Later, they were obliged to appear
before the press and say that they were members of the guerrilla who had deserted
from FAR and that they had presented themselves voluntarily to Military Zone No.
1316. The members of the Army told him that he should refrain from talking about
his capture and about the beatings he had suffered and that he should remember
that his family was detained. Even the journalist present worked for the Army.
“The Army placed the people who had been presented to the press in different
places, under supervision, and they had to present themselves two or three times a
week to the nearest zone”. He was transferred and placed in Military Zone No. 12, in
Santa Lucía Cotzumalguapa, Escuintla. There he remained collaborating with
members of the G-2, identifying people from the villages, and they always kept him
tied up. After four months, they allowed him to circulate freely within the military
zone, but they prevented him from leaving that place.
At the end of 1989, he was transferred to Military Zone No. 6 in the capital, to work
with a command attached to the Army Staff, known as the “Death Squadron”. His
collaboration continued to consist in identifying guerrilla collaborators.
He knew Efraín Bámaca Velásquez under the alias Everardo, owing to an offensive at
the Santa Ana Berlín outpost, where a Task Force was formed in 1992 to combat the
Luis Ixmatá Front. While he was collaborating with the command at the Santa Ana
Berlín base, under the orders of Captain Alberto Gómez Guillermo, who belonged to
the command from the capital, he went to the town of Nuevo San Carlos in
Retalhuleu and, on his way to the outpost, saw how the vehicle in which Captain
Gómez Guillermo was riding approached the door of the room where they slept, and
a prisoner was put in one of the rooms, dressed in olive green and shoeless, in the
presence of Captain Gómez Guillermo and members of the San Marcos G-2. The
latter called some former URNG combatants who were prisoners and took them to
the room so that they could identify the person who had just been captured. In
particular, he mentioned Santiago Cabrera López, known as Carlos, and a woman
with the alias Karina (Anastasia López Calvo). The former identified the prisoner as
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