"A court in Ecuador has sentenced 11 air force personnel to decades in prison over the forced disappearance of four Afro-Ecuadorian boys aged between 11 and 15 during security operations in the country's largest city last year. The case of the Guayaquil Four is widely seen as the starkest example of human rights abuses under the iron-fist security policy pursued by the rightwing president, Daniel Noboa, who placed the armed forces at the centre of the fight against drug trafficking."
"Eleven servicemen were sentenced to 34 years and eight months in prison. Five others, who confessed and cooperated with the investigation, received reduced sentences of two years and six months, and one was acquitted. The cruelty with which the four minors were victimised has been proven, said the presiding judge, Jovanny Suarez, who was joined by two other judges. It remains unclear who exactly killed the boys."
"On 8 December last year, Steven Medina, 11, Nehemias Saul Arboleda, 14, and brothers Josue and Ismael Arroyo, aged 14 and 15, were returning from a football match in Las Malvinas, an impoverished neighbourhood in southern Guayaquil, when they were stopped by air force personnel who have been deployed on street patrols since Noboa declared a state of internal armed conflict two years ago."
Eleven air force personnel were sentenced to 34 years and eight months for the forced disappearance of four Afro-Ecuadorian boys aged 11 to 15 during security operations in Guayaquil. Five other servicemen who confessed and cooperated received reduced sentences of two years and six months, and one was acquitted. The presiding judge affirmed the cruelty against the minors, while the precise responsibility for the deaths remains unclear. Prosecutors continue a separate investigation into kidnapping resulting in death. The youths were stopped by air force patrols amid a declared state of internal armed conflict; CCTV later showed them being assaulted and forced into vehicles, and charred remains were found weeks later.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]