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Comandante Everardo. Subsequently, he discovered, from former ORPA combatants
who had been captured and through the newspapers, that his name was Efraín
Bámaca Velásquez.
Later he saw Bámaca Velásquez every day for two or three weeks and even took him
food on two occasions, on the orders of Captain Gómez. Although Bámaca Velásquez
was watched, on these two occasions, the witness was able to tell him that he was
also a prisoner and that what “he [Bámaca Velásquez was] suffering, [had also] been
done to [him].”
He knew that Bámaca Velásquez was interrogated almost every night, because his
bedroom was next to the place where he was questioned and he heard how he did
not reply and was therefore beaten.
Among those who interrogated Bámaca
Velásquez, he identified a Specialist from the command named Gregorio Ávila,
“another Specialist from the zone of San Marcos called Chutá”, another from the
Guatemala City command called Erineo Ortiz, Captain Gómez Guillermo, and officers
Aguirre and Sosa Orellana; the last two sometimes took part in the interrogation.
Bámaca Velásquez remained at the Santa Ana Berlín base for between two and three
weeks and was then transferred to Military Zone No. 6, to the installations known as
La Isla (the Island), in Guatemala City.
Each time members of the Army took him to different places to collaborate in
identifying people, the members of the command repeated to him: “look Bayardo, if
anyone asks you about Everardo, you will say: ‘Everardo was killed in combat, I
never saw him alive, he was killed in combat’, and every time they drove by and saw
Jennifer Harbury during her hunger strikes, they referred to her as “there is the vieja
hija de la gran ... (Note: a strong expletive).”
The witness was transferred to the Department of Jutiapa. Two or three months
later, a Specialist called José Víctor Cordero Cardona arrived at the detachment; he
said that he had been in Quetzaltenango, “working with Everardo, but that was
over”. After this, he never heard anything more about Bámaca Velásquez.
To begin with, he did not receive payment of any kind from the Army, but then the
G-2 command gave him 200 quetzals a month, which was similar to the amount
earned by a soldier.
Later, they made him fill out some papers and forms,
supposedly to occupy a position in the National Police Force, for which he would be
paid 500 quetzals. He wore the National Police Force uniform only as part of his
work with the command, even though he was never in the police force.
He never made a statement before a judge during his detention or at any time while
he was with the Army.
Regarding his safety and that of his family, and his “collaboration” with the
command, he indicated that the Army controlled his family and he added that “he
could not escape because [...] I have almost no family left, I only have my brothers;
I knew that if I went, they would finish off the rest of my family, because in 1984,
the Army disappeared my mother, my father, my sister, my wife and my cousin [...],
they were taken away alive and I never [...] heard any more about them”. These
facts occurred on April 11, 1984, in the village of Guatalón, Municipality of Río Bravo,
Suchitepéquez. While he was with the Army, he asked a Colonel called Sergio and
the latter answered him “look, Bayardo, you should be grateful that you are alive
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