Part I
The Repression

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

Secret Detention Centres in Santa Fe

Police Station No. 4

In spite of being a legal detention centre it continually received unofficial prisoners. Clearly, given that nearly all the information collected by the Santa Fe Delegation of the Commission on Disappeared People noted that almost all the detainees passed through there, we can conclude that we are dealing with an information centre. Torture and maltreatment were the interrogation techniques.

There were twenty-six or twenty-seven of us held there. While we were being tortured they set an engine running to prevent the screams being heard outside. (Alejandro F. Córdoba, file No. 7518.) 

Other depositions submitted to us indicate that prisoners held in the Coronda Barracks were transferred to Police Station No. 4 for interrogation and torture. (Efren 1. Venturini, file No. 7508 and Roberto Cepeda, file No. 7474.)

In November 1977 Rubén Viola (file No. 7519) was taken out of Coronda Prison and moved to Police Station No. 4. There he was once again tortured to elicit information and thus signed a confession. After several torture sessions he was interrogated by the Secretary of the Federal Court under Dr Brusa (file Nos. 7474 and 7519) at the same police station. When the subject advised the magistrate of the maltreatment he had been forced to endure, the latter laughed and counselled him not to persist in his tale for he could be treated still worse. Then they took him back to Coronda again.

Rubén Maulin (file No. 7525) and Juan Carlos Pratto (file No. 7526) provided evidence in a similar vein:

When we were asked to make our statements in Police Station No. 4, in the presence of Federal Judge Mántaras (file Nos. 7474 and 7518) and the two Secretaries Monti and Brusa (file Nos. 7474 and 7519), they found us barefoot, soaking and bearing visible signs of having undergone all forms of duress. As though oblivious to our condition they asked us if we had suffered any ill-treatment and in reply to our affirmation that this was the case, said that we'd had an easy time of it.