Pre-trial detention imposed on Uruguayan torturing physician
Saturday, October 14th 2023 - 09:36 UTC
Suzacq practiced medicine in Spain for 29 years
Uruguay's Judiciary placed physician Carlos Suzacq Fiser under pre-trial detention for his alleged involvement in torture practices exerted by the military dictatorship (1973-1985) against prisoners, it was reported Friday in Montevideo.
Suzacq, who allegedly used his professional expertise to advise interrogators on “when to stop or continue with the tortures” in the early 1970s, was extradited from Spain where he had been practicing medicine for 29 years thanks to his Spanish nationality.
His acts “would constitute the crimes of abuse of authority against detainees, serious injuries and unlawful deprivation of liberty [which qualify] as crimes against humanity,” it was explained. He is being prosecuted for repeated crimes of deprivation of liberty, injuries, and violence.
Human rights organizations have produced evidence that Suzacq prepared “medical records” for more than 40 detainees and tortured people. He is accused of overseeing the torture process against Luis Eduardo González in 1974, who reportedly died under torture on December 26, 1976 in the 6th Cavalry Regiment, and whose body is still missing.
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https://en.mercopress.com/2023/10/14/pre-trial-detention-imposed-on-uruguayan-torturing-physician
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Google translation of an article published in Spain:
Victims of the Uruguayan dictatorship point to Dr. Suzacq, a Spanish official, with a clinic in Madrid, as a torturer.
The National Court is studying the extradition to Uruguay of the doctor Carlos Suzacq, with dual nationality (Spanish and Uruguayan), who has lived in Spain for more than 40 years, where he has been a prison doctor until his retirement. He is accused of crimes against humanity.
MADRID01/13/2023 21:20ANA MARIA PASCUAL@ANMARIAPASCUAL
The Mechanized Cavalry Regiment 6 of the Uruguayan Armed Forces was located in the Piedras Blancas neighborhood, in Montevideo . Between 1973 and 1985, the twelve years that the civil-military dictatorship lasted in the South American country, the barracks was supplied with train cars inside which political dissidents were tortured. Today the place has changed its use: it is a prison for the repressors of the dictatorship.
In the torture cars there was no shortage of a doctor to guarantee the maximum durability of the detainee in the face of the torture to which he was subjected. The military doctor controlled the extent to which they could apply torture to the detainees, grading the intensity of the torture in relation to the resistance of the victims. For example, in the event of heart failure or fainting, the doctor knew how to revive the person being interrogated so that the military could continue applying electric shocks or perform the 'dry waterboarding' with a plastic hood tight around the neck.
According to investigations by the National Commission of Medical Ethics of Uruguay, in the years of the dictatorship there were 800 doctors in the service of the military and in a single year, after the return of democracy, 80 of them received complaints from the people. who were imprisoned in different clandestine detention centers , such as the Piedras Blancas Barracks. It was not easy to know the name of the doctor who had participated in the interrogations nor was it always possible to see his face, as political prisoners have stated over the years.
Nine of those prisoners from the 6th Cavalry Regiment managed to see the face of the doctor who supervised their torture and were able to know his name. They claim that it is Carlos Américo Suzacq Fiser, who is 72 years old today.
According to his complaint, Dr. Suzacq served as a doctor in the Uruguayan Armed Forces, being stationed in Piedras Blancas between 1972 and 1975. The coup d'état perpetrated by President Juan María Bordaberry in 1973 materialized what had already been brewing since 1971: the war against communism in the Southern Cone. The so-called Operation Condor , common in other neighboring countries such as Argentina and Chile , curtailed all political and social rights in Uruguay.
The doctors were no strangers. There was a purge among the doctors who served in the barracks. Only doctors who supported the new military regime remained in the Armed Forces and became considered military as well.
Spanish civil servant since 1981
Dr. Carlos Suzacq is a cardiologist and has dual nationality, Uruguayan and Spanish. At the end of the seventies he moved to Spain and in January 1981 he passed the examinations of the Faculty of Penitentiary Health, as revealed by the Official State Gazette .
He has been consulted in important hospitals in Madrid and in recent years he had established himself in a clinic in Móstoles. But on June 23, 2022, he was arrested at his home, in a chalet in the town of Las Rozas , by virtue of an international arrest warrant issued by Uruguay, accused of crimes against humanity, for his involvement in the torture carried out in the Piedras Blancas Barracks.
Specifically, there are nine testimonies against him, which describe him as a torture doctor. The National Court held the extradition hearing this week, in which Dr. Suzacq opposed his surrender to the Uruguayan authorities. He has acknowledged having served as a doctor in the aforementioned regiment, but denies having participated in the interrogations, as this newspaper has learned from investigation sources. His main defensive thesis, however, is the possible prescription of the facts.
The Spanish Prosecutor's Office is in favor of the extradition of Suzacq Fiser, but the fact that the doctor enjoys Spanish nationality and a life made in Madrid practicing as a doctor will play an essential role in the court's final decision. For Suzacq's lawyer, the facts would be prescribed with respect to the Spanish Penal Code of 1973, in force at the time of the reported facts. The Public Prosecutor's Office, on the contrary, believes that "given the description made by the claiming authorities, which appears to have a good right to claim and judge, it is appropriate to authorize through judicial means."
The electric prod and the 'dry submarine'
In the document by which the Prosecutor's Office requests its delivery, to which the Public has been able to access , Suzacq is identified as an advisor to the Coordinating Body for Antisubbersive Operations (OCOA) in the interrogations of people detained in the framework of an operation against the Communist Party . Revolutionary (PCR), between 1972 and 1975.
One of the complainants, who responds to the initials AMMN, narrates in her complaint a true episode of terror. She stated that when she was detained in the 6th Cavalry Regiment she was always hooded and that Dr. Suzacq was the doctor who told her that she was not pregnant even though she was. This woman was stripped naked, her ankles tied with wire, and she was shocked with the electric prod, while they threatened to burn her with acid or shoot her. The military made her sign a report, but she refused to accept the imposed text, and the doctor threatened to torture her again, according to her complaint.
The Mechanized Cavalry Regiment 6 of the Uruguayan Armed Forces was located in the Piedras Blancas neighborhood, in Montevideo . Between 1973 and 1985, the twelve years that the civil-military dictatorship lasted in the South American country, the barracks was supplied with train cars inside which political dissidents were tortured. Today the place has changed its use: it is a prison for the repressors of the dictatorship.
Another victim maintains that they practiced the 'dry submarine' technique, with a hood imprisoning his head. Another indicates that when he was detained they beat him, handcuffed him, hooded him and applied an electric prod to him while he was handcuffed by his legs and hands, subjecting him to electric shocks while wet. According to his story, Dr. Sucazq was present at those sessions and advised the material authors.
The same is stated by another victim, ENR, who reports that Suzacq Fiser "specifically authorized the continued torture," and that as a result of the torture he suffers from psychological consequences. For her part, Elena Zaffaroni points out that they beat her, gave her cattle prod sessions and was tortured in front of her husband (Luis Eduardo González), to whom they also applied the cattle prod, in addition to using her pregnancy as an element of psychological coercion, having suffered after-effects. physical such as deafness in the right ear and psychological.
Disappeared in Piedras Blancas
According to official investigations by the Secretary of Human Rights for the Recent Past of Uruguay , between 1968-1985, 192 people disappeared within the framework of State terrorism. In the 6th Cavalry Regiment, where the doctor Carlos Suzacq Fiser worked, there are at least four missing people. One of them is Luis Eduardo González , husband of Elena Zaffaroni , a medical student and PCR activist.
Luis Eduardo, 22, was arrested at his home in Montevideo along with his wife, who was 4 months pregnant. Taken to the 6th Mechanized Cavalry Regiment, he was tortured and interrogated for days. He was last seen alive on Christmas Day 1974 in very deteriorated physical condition. The Army later issued a statement stating that he had fled, according to official information from the Uruguayan Government. The possible delivery of Dr. Suzacq to Uruguay opens hope for Elena Zaffaroni, who is still waiting for an answer about the fate of her husband, which perhaps this doctor can provide.
The connections between Operation Condor, which enabled the military dictatorship in Uruguay, and the Franco regime, obsessed with the expansion of communism , cannot be ignored . Unpublished documents that Público has been able to access prove the involvement of the Franco government of Arias Navarro in the Montejurra massacre in 1976. The Spanish State provided material means, including a good number of foreign hitmen who had participated in Operation Condor , to neutralize the advance of the left in the Carlist ranks.
https://www.publico.es/politica/victimas-dictadura-uruguaya-senalan-torturador-doctor-suzacq-funcionario-espanol-clinica-madrid.html