20 and 25-year prison sentences for former Stroessner-era police officers upheld in Paraguay
The Court of Criminal Appeals confirmed sentences for three former officers who tortured political prisoners between 1976 and 1978. They will serve their sentences under house arrest due to their advanced age.
Paraguayan court upholds sentences against three former uniformed officers from Stroessner dictatorship
Paraguay's Court of Criminal Appeals upheld sentences of 20 and 25 years in prison on Monday for three former police officers who participated in the torture of political prisoners during the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner (1954–1989), according to infobae.com citing local media.
The ruling was unanimous from the court's Second Chamber. Fortunato Laspina Escurra and Eusebio Torres Romero each received 25-year prison sentences, whilst Manuel Crescencio Alcaraz was sentenced to 20 years, according to the newspaper Última Hora. The imprescriptibility of crimes against humanity constituted the central argument of the decision, according to the portal El Observador.
The three men had been sentenced in the first instance on 12 February. Given that they are of advanced age, they will serve their sentences under house arrest.
According to the investigation, the former police officers tortured Domingo Guzmán Rolón during his detention in the cells of the Police Investigation Department in Asunción. Rolón, who in 1976 was a member of the Agrarian Leagues—a peasant movement that sought to democratise access to land—had fled to Argentina to escape repression. He was detained in that country and forcibly transferred to Paraguay.
Within those cells, Alcaraz, Torres and Laspina subjected him to torture: they inflicted wounds with a wire whip and submerged him in a pool of sewage water, according to the accusation. Rolón died in 2024 without having seen justice in his case.
The tortures occurred between 1976 and 1978, a period also documented by the Commission for Truth and Justice, which in 2008 revealed that Stroessner's dictatorship left 20,090 direct victims of human rights violations, 336 disappeared persons, 18,772 tortured individuals, 59 extrajudicially executed persons, and 3,470 exiled persons.
Source: Google News PY — Crime