Thousands of people demonstrate in silence in 2015 along the Avenida del Dieciocho de Julio in Montevideo (Uruguay) to demand the clarification of the more than 150 disappeared during the military dictatorship. ANDRES STAPFF (REUTERS)
AMMN's story navigates through a sea of torture.
This woman tells how in the 1970s, during the Uruguayan dictatorship, she was taken into custody to a headquarters of the 6th Mechanized Cavalry Regiment, where she was subjected to real torment: they stripped her naked and hooded her, tied her ankles with wire, They “applied” the cattle prod —an instrument that delivers electric shocks— and threatened to burn her with acid or shoot her.
Later she was warned that they would continue with that martyrdom of hers if she did not sign an act stating that she was not pregnant, even though she was pregnant at that time.
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His story, along with those of eight other victims, is already on the table of the National Court.
The Third Section of the Criminal Chamber will study whether it approves the extradition of a doctor based in Madrid, Carlos Américo Suzacq Fiser —72 years old and dual Uruguayan and Spanish nationality—, accused of participating in those tortures "advising the interrogators of the Organism Coordinator of Anti-subversive Operations (OCOA) to, with physical coercion, obtain testimonies from the detainees”.
Uruguay has demanded the delivery of him through its embassy in Madrid, which supports the Spanish Prosecutor's Office for the crimes of injury and illegal detention.
The authorities arrested the doctor on June 23 in Las Rozas (Madrid).
On him weighed an Interpol notice and an international arrest warrant issued by a Montevideo court for crimes against humanity, abuse of authority, serious injuries and deprivation of liberty.
As Uruguay states in its extradition request, Suzacq was working as a doctor for the 6th Mechanized Cavalry Regiment when the events described were committed and, according to the testimonies of the victims, he even advised the torturers on how to act so that they would speak.
"As a consequence of the confessions obtained through the use of violence, sentences were obtained from those interrogated and from third parties," the prosecution continues.
“JMPE [initials of another tortured person] indicates that, when he was detained, they beat him, handcuffed him, hooded him, and applied an electric baton to him;
him being handcuffed by legs and hands;
applying electric shocks while wet.
[Some] torture in which the claimed [doctor] was present and advised the perpetrators of the same", details the Spanish Prosecutor's Office in the letter supporting the handover, where it includes more statements from the tortured: "ENR reports that the doctor Suzacq specifically authorized to continue to torture, and that as a consequence of the torture he suffers psychological sequelae”.
The National Court has set the celebration of the extradition hearing on January 11.
Suzacq's defense has opposed the handover, according to the public ministry.
EL PAÍS tried to contact the doctor this Tuesday, without success.
Spain already handed over to Uruguay two years ago the septuagenarian ex-colonel Eduardo Augusto Ferro Bizzozero, also claimed for crimes against humanity committed between the 1970s and 1980s, and accused of being responsible for the so-called
Operation Condor
in the South American country —the offensive launched launched in a coordinated manner by seven Latin American dictatorships to put an end to political dissent.
This process took nearly five years, since, after his first arrest in 2017, the soldier fled and remained missing until 2021, when the Police finally discovered him in Peñíscola (Castellón), which allowed his extradition to be carried out. .
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