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Memoria Abierta

Av. Corrientes 2560 2 E
(C1046AAQ) Ciudad de Buenos Aires
Argentina

Tel: (54-11) 4951-3559
Fax: (54-11) 4951-4870

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The "Disappeared"

The procedure of clandestine detentions was almost always the same. Victims were first watched and threatened. Then they were seized off of the streets or from their houses. They were taken alive but blindfolded to detention camps. Sometimes their parents or children were taken with them.

Inside the camps, torture became the center of the nightmare. Torture was a methodical and sadistic practice, used not just to get information, but also to spiritually break the victims.

Most who survived torture were killed or thrown alive into the sea or the Rio de la Plata. The bodies of the “detained-disappeared” were never found. The authorities of that time, in every way responsible for these horrendous acts, never acknowledged their existence.

Numbers on this subject are never certain or closed. The human rights organizations claim there are 30,000 disappeared persons. The “Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas” CONADEP - (the National Commission on Disappeared Persons), in a report in 1984, claimed 8,960 citizens had disappeared from 340 clandestine detention centers. Later information multiplied that number.