Political
prisoners were set free and the use of torture as means of interrogation
by the military was verified. The evidence of torture was recorded in
reports by international Human Rights missions, which allowed the assignation
of responsibilities of the state. In response to this, high commanders
of the Armed Forces came up with a formula to avoid witnesses of Human
Rights violations and replaced the means of detention and torture of
the so called "internal enemies", with physical elimination
or abduction, widening for these purposes the use of civil personnel,
indirectly linked with the Armed Forces. This was the time of selective
assassinations of popular leaders and politicians of the left, and of
the abduction of people. These crimes ran parallel with the augmentation
of the peasant self-defense groups, the appearance of the MAS and other
paramilitary groups to whom many massacres are credited. |