Maritza Urrutia worked for the Guatemalan Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres, an opposition guerilla group that fought the government during the Guatemalan armed conflict. In 1992 Urrutia was abducted by armed men and held for eight days during which time she was interrogated, threatened and forced to appear in a video where she read a prepared statement admitting to participating in the rebel group and withdrawing from it. After recording the statement she was released and told to sign a governmental amnesty agreement. After doing this she managed to flee the country.
Although Urrutia claimed to have been threatened with violence to herself and to her family (particularly her young son), she did not allege that she had been the victim of physical torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Later, the Court accepted as proven allegations that during her detention Urrutia was “locked in a room, handcuffed to a bed, hooded and with the light on in the room and the radio always on at full volume”.
In its arguments, the Court picked up on the implications of this situation from a gender perspective and, when making a claim that the right to humane treatment had been violated with regard to Urrutia, it stated that, among other things, “[d]uring her arbitrary detention, Maritza Urrutia was deliberately subjected to psychological torture arising from the threat and continual possibility of being assassinated, physically tortured or raped…”. An allegation of this nature is important in that it visualizes the too often ignored gender specific facets of torture and therefore contributes to overcoming the idea that men and women are interrogated and tortured in the same way.
Read the Maritza Urrutia v. Guatemala judgment here>>
