Adolfo Perez Esquivel, who won the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize for his work exposing abuses during Argentina’s military dictatorship, finally testified against his captors on Tuesday, describing his torture and crediting international pressure for saving his life.
Perez Esquivel recounted the blows, screams and repeated torture sessions in which guards pounded him and other naked prisoners with fists, boot heels and other weapons, then made them take cold showers before pummeling their injured bodies again.
“With the club they poked my ribs and asked if it hurt. I would say yes, and then they’d say: ‘Now you know how you should behave here.’ And then they would pound me with their heels, which made me think of those Nazi movies,” Perez Esquivel testified.
‘A LONG TIME’
However, after more than three decades, Perez Esquivel told the judges, he can no longer identify his torturers in the courtroom.
“It’s been a long time,” said Perez Esquivel, who is now 89.
Perez Esquivel is one of many witnesses in the trial of 14 former prison officials charged with crimes against humanity at the feared Unit 9, where many political prisoners were held during the 1976-to-1983 dictatorship.
Others include Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana.
HUMAN RIGHTS
Perez Esquivel founded the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights in 1975 and traveled around Latin America alerting the world to rights violations by the region’s military juntas.
In April 1977, Argentine military authorities took him into custody when he tried to renew his passport.
He wasn’t released until 1978.
“I was a person known at an international level, but in this jail I was tortured anyway, although there were many people who suffered more than me,” Perez Esquivel told reporters outside the court before testifying for more than two hours in the provincial capital of La Plata, where Unit 9 was located.
PEACE PRIZE
While in prison, Perez Esquivel was given a peace prize by the Vatican, which did not go unnoticed among his torturers, he recalled.
“At one point the deputy prison chief took me to his office and told me: ‘Not even the pope will save you. Here, we decide whether you live. We are the lords of life and death,’” Perez Esquivel testified.
According to official accounts, 13,000 people were killed during Argentina’s dictatorship, although rights group estimate the true toll may be as high as 30,000.
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
Former Lima mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga, a Peruvian presidential hopeful, gathered hundreds of supporters in Lima on Tuesday and gave authorities 24 hours to annul the first round of the country’s election over allegations of fraud. Lopez Aliaga is locked in a tight three-way race with two other candidates for second place in Sunday’s vote. The election runner-up wins a ticket to June’s presidential run-off against front-runner Keiko Fujimori. “I am giving them 24 hours to declare this electoral fraud null and void,” said Lopez Aliaga, surrounded by a crowd of several hundred supporters. “If it is not declared null and void tomorrow,
PAPAL RETORT: Pope Leo told reporters that he has ‘no fear, neither of the Trump administration nor speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel’ US President Donald Trump has feuded with Pope Leo XIV over the Iran conflict — setting off an unholy row that could have serious political implications for the Republican leader back in the US. Trump has drawn barbs even from some allies over the attacks on the US-born pontiff, who has criticized the Trump administration over its immigration crackdown, the intervention in Venezuela and the Iran war. The president risks alienating the religious right in November’s crucial US midterm elections. So far the unprecedented clash between the leader of the most powerful military on Earth and the head of the world’s 1.4 billion
A 16-year-old boy has been charged with murder and aggravated sexual abuse in Florida in the death of his 18-year-old stepsister on a Carnival Cruise ship, the US Department of Justice said on Monday. Timothy Hudson was initially charged in February and subsequently indicted on March 10, but the breadth of the case was not known until a seal was lifted on Friday last week, weeks after US District Judge Beth Bloom in Miami said that he would be prosecuted as an adult at the request of the government. Anna Kepner had been traveling on the Carnival Horizon ship in November last
RSS