Part I
The Repression

Nunca Más (Never Again) - Report of Conadep  - 1984
 

End of the kidnapping

The first stage in this sinister journey ended with the transfer of the victims to a secret detention centre. Threatened and bound, they were put in cars, on the floor of the back seat or in the boot, thus adding the fear of enclosure and death to their ordeal. In this way the terror was not known of beyond the immediate area in which the operation had taken place.

Mirta Caravelli de Mansilla (file No. 4073) states:

At 3 a.m. on 3 July 1976, I was carried off by a group of fifteen heavily armed men in civilian clothes. I was blindfolded, gagged and handcuffed, with a pullover wrapped around my head for the journey in a Renault 12, and was probably taken to La Perla because of the time and the route taken.

The victims were taken not only from their homes or their places of work, as is shown by the denunciation of Juan di Bernardo's disappearance (file No. 4500):

My son was in the Hospital Alvear after being hit by a car. He was to have an operation on 15 May 1978. During the night of 12 May, a number of men in white coats appeared. They were armed. They forced the other patients in Ward 14 to stay in their beds and to cover their faces with the sheets, These men put Juan on a stretcher, covered him and took him away in an ambulance.