(28 Apr 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Guayaquil, Ecuador – 28 April 2025
++NIGHT SHOTS++
1. Various of police and military (dressed in orange) heading to the area to reconstruct the case of the disappearance and subsequent death of the four children
2. Various of military during reconstruction
++DAY SHOT++
3. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Abraham Aguirre, Lawyer for the Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights of Guayaquil:
"In this new reconstruction it has been possible to provide information regarding how the three adolescents and the 11-year-old boy were taken. Including that there were blows that could constitute an act of torture."
++NIGHT SHOT ++
4. Police
5. Reconstruction
STORYLINE:
In the early hours of Monday morning, five members of the military involved in an investigation into the deaths of four children at the end of 2024 took part in a reconstruction of the killings.
The five men, members of the Ecuadorian Air Force, were cooperating with the prosecutor’s investigation into the killings, which will end on Wednesday.
In total 16 men have been detained as part of the investigation. Those working with the investigation said the four children were kicked, punched and hit, among other mistreatments.
The testimonies were given in the early hours of the morning during a hearing led by the prosecutor’s office and the defence lawyers of the soldiers under investigation and of the victims in the framework of the investigation into the forced disappearance and murder of the four minors.
Fernando Bastías, the victims’ lawyer, told The Associated Press that five members of the military are cooperating and "have given details of the beatings and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of these children."
Bastías said the boys were subjected to "physical, psychological and sexual torture, because forcing them to undress is called sexual torture," and said that when one of them resisted "one of the soldiers kicked him."
Lawyer for of the Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights of Guayaquil, Abraham Aguirre said;
“In this tour that was given, those who gave their version indicated that the children were indeed beaten, that it could constitute an act of torture.”
The minimum sentence for those responsible would be 26 years in prison for the crime of forced disappearance, with aggravating circumstances such as the torture of children and adolescents in the context of ‘a behaviour that was not irrational or a slip of the uniformed men, but a totally rational and planned behaviour’.
This is the second time that a reconstruction of the facts has been carried out.
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