Bernabé Baldeón García was 68-years-old and lived with his family in the District of Accomarca in Ayacucho. On September 25, 1990, military personnel arrived in Accomarca as part of a counter-insurgent operation. It was then that they detained three people, among whom was Bernabé Baldeón. Baldeón would later be brought to a church in Pacchahuallhua, where he was severely mistreated, tied up with wires, hanged by his feet, and dunked face-down in cylinders filled with water. He died as a result of his torture.

On September 25, 1990, at 7:00 in the morning, a patrol of four soldiers based out of the Accomarca Military Base in Vilcashuamán Province, Ayacucho entered the town of Pucapaccana-Lambrasniyocc firing their rifles into the air. After ringing the bells of the local church, they forced the entire population, including children and the elderly, to meet in the main square. The soldiers then demanded that the town hand their food and animals over to the patrol.

The soldiers searched the humble homes of the campesinos, robbing them of their money, blankets, clothes, and other goods. The soldiers later took out a list of names and called several people to come forward, among them Bernabé Baldeón García, Santos Baldeón Palacios, and Jesús Baldeón Zapata. Those three were forced to leave the town with the soldiers and carry everything that had been looted from the town.

According to Crispín Baldeón, son of Bernabé Baldeón, once they arrived at Pacchahuallhua they were grouped together with other villagers by the soldiers who claimed that the victims personally knew terrorists and began physically mistreat them. Bernabé Baldeón García and two other unidentified campesinos died as a result of being tortured

The act was denounced before the National Prosecutor’s Office in 1991, but the case was archived despite the fact that the Ministry of Defense acknowledged that between September 23 and 27, 1900, an anti-subversive operation was carried out and that in this operation thirty people were detained and later released. The admission further accepted that Bernabé Baldeón García died in this operation. The Ministry of Defense claimed that the cause of death of Baldeón García was a heart attack.

In 2000, the family members presented a new denunciation before the Mixed Provincial Prosecutor’s Office of Vilcashuamán. This case was also archived, this time because it did not identify the parties who were directly responsible.

Nevertheless, at the insistence of Crispín Baldeón, the prosecutor’s officer asked the Ministry of Defense to identify Lieutenant "Morán" and the soldiers that went by the aliases "Espino," "Gitano," and "Moreno" in August. The former was the chief of the Accomarca base and the three lower-ranking officials were accused by the villagers of having participated in the patrol that murdered Baldeón García. Because the Ministry of Defense did not release the names of those implicated in the crime, the case was provisionally archived in December 2001.

On September 16, 2002, the then-Secretary General of the Ministry of Defense, Gonzalo Gambirazio Martini sent an official communication to the Asociación Americana de Juristas Rama del Perú, assuring them that the archives of the Second Military Region did not have any records of those pseudonyms. However, fifteen days later the Inspector of the Military Region, in to Official Correspondence Nº 723/SRM/K-1/20.4, informed the Secretary General of the General Command of the Army that the archives of the Thirty-fourth Infantry Battalion (the battalion that was located in Vilcashuamán), it was reported that Lieutenant José Urbina Carrasco of the Reserve used the name "Lieutenant Morán" and that Lieutenant Percy Ríos Cobos used the highly-similar name "Lieutenant Morón." Furthermore, the document confirmed that in 1990 Juan Espino Palacios was assigned to the same detachment.

July 27, 2005, after all of the false starts, the Human Rights Prosecutor’s Office released a criminal indictment of José Ricardo Urbina Carrasco and Juan Espino Palacios. Ricardo Urbina was indicted for improper omission and Espino Palacios was indicted as the intellectual author of the crime of aggravated torture causing the death of Bernabé Baldeón García.

On August 25, 2005, the Criminal Judge on Human Rights in Ayacucho, Willy Ayala, opened a case against officers José Urbina and Juan Espino for the torture and death of Bernabé Baldeón García. Likewise, he ordered the two to be held at the Yanamilla Prison, prohibited them from leaving the country, and embargoed their assets. However, they are both currently fugitives.

The case is currently under the jurisdiction of Ayacucho. No one has been convicted in the case.

The Case before the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights

In May, 1997, the case was brought before the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights by APRODEH. The state was accused of the arbitrary detention, torture, and extrajudicial execution of Bernabé Baldeón García. In October 2004, the Commission found the state responsible for the death Baldeón García and issued a series of recommendations designed to obtain truth, justice, and reparations for the family members of Bernabé.

On February 2005, the Commission brought the cause against the Peruvian state to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, owing to the lack of “satisfactory implementation” of the recommendations made in the Commission’s report.

On April 6, 2006, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued a sentence that recognized the Peruvian state’s responsibility for the detention, torture, and extrajudicial execution of Bernabé Baldeón García. The sentence ruled that the Peruvian state violated the rights to life, humane treatment, and personal liberty of Bernabé Baldeón García. It further ruled that the state had violated the rights of his relatives, and ordered the state to pay reparations estimated to be $402,000 to the family members of the victim (his widow and eight sons).

The Court also ruled that the Peruvian state must investigated the acts in order to identify, try, and punish those responsible.