The Torture and Murder of Jhoel Huaman Garcia

On May 26, 1995, Jhoel Huaman Garcia, a 19 year-old student, was arrested by police agent Edson Condor Arredondo in a class of the institute of superior education, where he was studying. He was transferred to the main office of the Anti-Terrorism Department (DECOTE), a departmental branch of DINCOTE.

Although Huaman had been accused before of robbery a few days before, the police did not have an arrest warrant on him. At midnight of the day in which he had been arrested, a policeman took Huaman nude body to the local hospital, where he left the body. The doctor that received Huaman and witnessed the initial autopsy later stated that a police agent had tried to dress the victim after his entry in the hospital. The apparent intention was to hide the fact that the police had undressed the victim during the interrogation.

The provincial district attorney was not present at the first autopsy, as required by law. The doctors that performed the exam carried it out one day after Huaman’s death; they failed to conduct the necessary medical tests and concluded that the cause of the death could not be determined.

At the insistence of the lawyer for the Huaman’s family, a second autopsy was carried out. On May 31, 1995, a forensic doctor of the Lima Morgue, local forensic doctors and medical personnel of the hospital carried out a detailed exam of the cadaver. The provincial district attorney was present. They concluded that Huaman had died from a cerebral hemorrhage caused by multiple blows with a heavy object and from internal abdominal lesions.

Rolando Huere Ore, a police agent who witnessed part of the interrogation, declared that he had seen Huaman “completely naked; that he was shivering from the cold and that his eyes were popping out of his head” while Edson Condor Arredondo interrogated him in his office. Condor stated during the trial that Huaman had taken off his clothes to show that he didn’t have scars and therefore was not a criminal. According to Condor, Huaman didn't obey him when he ordered him to get dressed, so the interrogation continued under those conditions. Condor also asserted that the bruises on Huaman’s body were the result of an accident.

After a year of investigation by a district attorney, Edson Condor was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison for injuries that resulted in death. Another DECOTE agent, Wilson German Torralva Davila, was sentenced to five years in jail. On November 8, 1996 the Supreme Court increased the sentence to ten years in prison for Condor and Torralva, the maximum applicable under the in the Peruvian penal code for a crime in which “injuries result in death.” The penal code does not contain specific stipulations for torture with appropriate sanctions relative to the seriousness of the crime.