38
Villegas fell seriously ill. Trying to exit the pavilion toward the conduit, the witness
suffered from a bullet shot in the leg. Two prison mates took her to pavilion 4B. The
bullet caused impact in the left lumbar area affecting the nervous roots but she was
denied medical attention, “proving once more that [the authorities] did not care
about the inmates’ lives.”
The prison mates that were in the pavilion requested that the injured be transferred
and that they be offered medical attention. Likewise, “they repeatedly asked for a
guarantee for their lives (the presence of representatives of the International Red
Cross, attorneys and their next of kin) in order to go out.” However, “the attack was
more brutal and uncontrolled every time.” On May 9, 1992 “the prisoners that went
out holding hands singing the International” were object of a selective killing.
When she ran into the other persons injured she heard the voice of Elvia Sanabria.
After the transfers she noticed that she was no longer there.
This “brutal and sinister attack” was extensive to her next of kin and especially
affected her mother, who got heart sickness, was in psychiatric treatment and who
tried to take her own lifer when she could not stand the suffering she felt as a
consequence of the attacks and then when looking for the body of her daughter who
she thought dead.
After these events, the witness was transferred along with other injured persons to a
hospital where, during almost their entire stay and in plain cold, they were kept in
the nude and covered only with a sheet, until the Red Cross was finally allowed to
give them a blanket and a nightgown. During the women’s stay in the hospital they
were watched over by three armed custodians. She had a probe to eliminate urine
that was only changed once in a month. In the hospital they were not provided any
medicines, which led to the death of María Villegas. After 15 days she was
transferred along with other injured women to the maximum-security criminal center
of Chorillos, but the doctor of the criminal center would not assume responsibility for
what could happen and she was returned to the hospital along with other prison
mates; they had open wounds.
One month later she was transferred once again to the criminal center of Chorillos.
She urgently required physical rehabilitation, but it was repeatedly denied. After
more than a year she was taken to a specialized center, but for them her muscles
had already become atrophied, condition characterized by the specialists as
irreversible due to lack of physical rehabilitation. The specialists considered that it
was possible that the witness recover mobility in one of her legs if she was submitted
o daily rehabilitation, treatment that she was not able to fulfill because the prison
authorities did not take her. She was later transferred to the National Rehabilitation
Center, where the diagnosis was that she could only maintain the muscular mass
that she had, but the authorities impeded the corresponding rehabilitation treatment.
On two occasions she suffered from skin burns with a hot-water bag. Regarding her
open wounds, she was only given a antibiotic cream by the doctor of the criminal
center, until she was taken to the hospital by demand of her family.
The inmates were also victims of beatings by security forces, such as those received
on September 25 (approved by the prosecutor Mirtha Campos) and in November
1992. She was pulled through the hall along with other inmates and they were
kicked all over their body “without respecting the pregnant, elderly, or sick women.”