The Acts

On April 19, 1991, Zenón Huamani Chuchón, Eleuterio Fernández Quispe, Napoleón Quispe Ortega, Onofredo Huamani Quispe, Luis Amaru Quispe, and Julio Arotoma Cacñahuaray celebrated their listing as candidates in the municipal elections on the socialist United Left ticket. After that, they decided to return to their houses in Huancapi, the capital of Víctor Fajardo Province, Ayacucho. The first house that the group arrived at was that of Julio Arotoma, who, after saying goodbye to his friends, entered his house.

The five others continued on their path and were intercepted by several soldiers from the army who were based out of the Huancapi Military Base. At the time that base was led by Sub-Lieutenant José Luis Israel Chávez Velásquez, also known as “Centaur.” The soldiers assaulted the group and attempted to drive them to the military base. However, the group of candidates began to yell for help. Julio Arotoma, who had just recently left the group and entered his house, heard the screams and stepped out of his house. The soldiers then detained Arotoma as well. At this point, Arotoma’s wife, Honorata Oré, who at the time was eight months pregnant, came out of the house to defend her husband. She was also detained

The families of the detained men became worried when they did not come home, and went out to look for them. The family members actually saw the soldiers brining the men to the base. The soldiers were screaming threats, beating the men, and shooting their guns, and the detainees were yelling. Neighbors hear the racket and looked out their windows. Some of these neighbors were able to see “Centaur” forcing the group into the military base. These neighbors would later testify as witnesses to the acts.

By the time that the soldiers and detainees arrived at “The Arc,” the wooden door located on one of the corners of the Municipal Stadium, which was being used as the location for the military base, a group of onlookers were following them. The soldiers attempted to shoot the onlookers but missed them. At that point the soldiers stopped the generator that provided electricity to the town and began firing in the air. When the group that had followed the soldiers ran away at about midnight, they heard blasts coming from inside the military base.

The next day, the realitives of the detained men talked to the Under-Prefect, Eleodoro Gonzáles. However, at the entrance to the base they were told that no one had been detained. Gonzáles managed to speak to the Sub-Lieutenant “Cenataur,” who also denied the presence of any of the detained and further blamed “the terrucos,” derogatory slang for terrorists, for the entire incident. The family members then refused to move from the entrance to the base, but they were dislodged when the soldiers began to beat them while firing their guns in the air

The parish priest of Huancapi, Moisés Morales, arrived at the base on April 21. He spoke with Lieutenant Carlos Morgan, who denied that any detentions took place. The next day, the family members of the victims returned to the base to ask for their relatives. Once again the soldiers shot their guns in the air to keep them away from the base.

After several days of searching for their relatives, the family members returned to the base on April 24, this time accompanied by the prosecutor of Cangallo, the mayor of Huancapi, the priest of the Fransican nuns, and a justice of the peace. The authorities were received by the military, but under the express order of “Cenataur,” the family members were excluded.

Lieutenant Morgran, who was the highest officer at the military base, attended the meeting and denied that any detentions took place. The prosecutor asked for the real name of Centaur but was not told it.

Legal Action

On April 23, 1991, the family members of the disappeared denounced the act before the Superior Prosecutor Commissioned for the Affairs of the Disappeared Persons of Ayacucho and the Provincial Prosecutor of Víctor Fajardo, who issued a criminal indictment of Peruvian Army Sub-Lieutenant José Luis Israel Chávez Velásquez, alias “Centaur,” for crimes against individual freedom and aggravated abuse of authority. That indictment was accepted by the Court of First Instance of Víctor Fajardo on October 14, 1991.

On May 17, 1991, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights opened a case and sent the Peruvian state the pertinent parts of the denunciation to demand from it more information. The state responded two months later, on July 29, 1991, denying that the detention of the victims was carried out by military actors. In an additional communication to the Commission dated September 10, 1993, the state claimed that the Permanent Military Court had opened a case against the chief of the military base and others who were responsible. The state said that the case was for abuse of authority and other crimes.

In 1998 the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights solicited the parties to update the information on the case. The Commission attempted to mediate an amicable solution to the affair. However, the state simply declared that its old declarations were still valid, and further questioned the admissibility of the case for a lack of having exhausted the internal domestic courts. It also claimed that it did not find the beginning of any procedure to find an amicable solution to be convenient.

In effect, on August 3, 1998, the Peruvian state alleged that the judicial investigation could not accredit the commission of the crimes to the accused, and claimed that in the trial the family members of the disappeared could not be sure that it was soldiers who kidnapped their relatives. It further alleged that a “armed strike” had been decreed by the Shining Path on the same day that the disappearances took place, and that it assumed that subversive criminals had carried out the kidnappings. It also judged that the case was inadmissible as all internal courts had not been exhausted and that the petition was improvident.

In September 2004, the Human Rights Prosecutor of Ayacucho, Cristina Olazábal, issued a criminal indictment against José Luis Israel Chávez Velásquez, Julio Cesar Torres Ortiz, Juan Díaz Peña, Juan Carlos Gutiérrez Huamaní, and Javier Quispe Díaz for the crime of forced disappearance.

On October 7, 2004, the Mixed Judge of Fajardo began a criminal trial against the accused for the crime of forced disappearance and issued an arrest warrant against all of them. The case was remitted in November 2007 to the Second Criminal Court of Huamanga.

After carrying out the needed work on the case, the First Criminal Division of Ayacucho remitted the case to the Superior Prosecutor who had written the indictment.

On March 28, 2006, the First Mixed Superior Prosecutor’s Office of Ayacucho, through prosecutor Edmundo Miranda, issued an accusation against José Luís Israel Chávez Velásquez, Julio Cesar Torres Ortiz, Juan Díaz Peña, Juan Carlos Gutiérrez Huamaní, and Javier Quispe Díaz for the crime of forced disappearance, asking the court to sentence each one of the accused to thirty-five years in jail and a fine of 100,000 soles in order to pay civil reparations.

Prosecutor Miranda did not only claim that the seven disappeared detainees were the only victims. Rather, he included the direct family members of each of them as victims.

The judgment that resulted from the solicitation of the family members determined that the state was responsible for the crimes in a civil sense and that the agents who actually executed the crimes were members and subordinates of the Peruvian army, which is a military branch of the state.

The case is currently in the National Criminal Division pending trial.