Worse Than Torture, Political Prisoner Says : Loss of Rank Caused Most Pain

MADRID —  During the 25 years he spent in jail as one of Latin America’s longest-held political prisoners, Napoleon Ortigoza could sleep only when the light bulbs in his cell blew out.

It happened, he said, about once every three months. When the guards in his Paraguayan prison noticed it, they quickly put in fresh bulbs.

But the lights burning night and day, the beatings, the submersion in water and 18 years in a 6-by-6-foot cell didn’t humiliate him as much, he said, as being tortured by a policeman who ranked far below him, a captain in the Paraguayan army.

“I never thought a policeman could get away with torturing an officer--that’s a crime,” Ortigoza, 56, said. “They beat me, tied me up and held me under water. But nothing hurt as much as when they ripped off my captain’s braids.”

Denies Charges

He was sent to prison Dec. 17, 1962, on the ground that he was involved in a military plot to overthrow Paraguay’s longtime authoritarian president, Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, and that he had a role in the death of an army cadet, Alberto Benitez. They are charges he has steadfastly denied from the beginning.

Last Dec. 17, 25 years to the day after he was sent to prison, Ortigoza was released. He was granted political asylum in Spain in June.

Ortigoza blames his suffering on Stroessner, now 75, who has ruled Paraguay since he seized power in 1954.

“I know he gave the order for my arrest,” Ortigoza said. “He robbed me of my career.”

Honor Graduate

Ortigoza enlisted in the Paraguayan army in 1949, graduated at the top of his class as a lieutenant and placed fourth when promoted to captain.

He was one of five army captains among 20 middle-level officers convicted after Stroessner moved to smash a rumored plot in the army ranks.

At the time, Ortigoza was serving as a staff officer to Cmdr. Sixto Dure Franco, one of several regiment commanders supposedly involved in the plot. Dure Franco and the others were subsequently reconciled with Stroessner and promoted to the highest posts in the military.

“I knew better than to get involved in some anti-Stroessner game,” Ortigoza said, though he knew of the coup plans through Dure Franco.

Found Innocent

Shortly after his arrest, Ortigoza faced a civil court that found him innocent of all charges.

He was then brought before a military court that convicted him of involvement in the coup and the murder of the cadet. He was sentenced to death, but the sentence was reduced later to 25 years in prison.

“Police forced me to write a letter implicating myself in the cadet’s murder,” Ortigoza said. “The lower-ranking officers became the scapegoats, once Stroessner decided he didn’t want to create a shake-up among the higher officers.”

‘Arbitrary and Political’

In 1978, the Organization of American States (OAS) reviewed Ortigoza’s case and concluded that it was “arbitrary and political” and a “very grave violation of his human rights.”

After the OAS conclusions, Paraguayan authorities permitted Roman Catholic church officials to visit Ortigoza every four months. His family could visit once a week.

He spent the first 18 years of his sentence in what he described as “brutal conditions” at a military police facility in Asuncion, Paraguay’s capital.

In October, 1980, Ortigoza was moved to a more comfortable 9-by-15-foot cell with a bathroom.

“The idea that sustained me through my time in jail was the certainty I felt that I would some day be able to correct the injustice done to me,” he said.

Refuge in Embassy

But his problems did not end with his release from prison in December.

The Interior Ministry sent Ortigoza to the San Estanislao military garrison 120 miles north of Asuncion. The Supreme Court accused the ministry of kidnaping Ortigoza and ordered him sent back to Asuncion, where he was then placed under unofficial house arrest at his mother’s home.

“After I got tired of that, one of my lawyers helped me to escape in a car,” Ortigoza said. That was March 23.

“Police guards fired machine guns at the car, but we got away,” he said. “We hadn’t planned to go to the Colombian Embassy, but when we saw the gate to the compound open, we zipped right in.”

Ortigoza spent 83 days there.

Given Safe Conduct

On June 15, after talks with diplomats from Colombia, Spain and Argentina, Paraguay agreed to giving Ortigoza safe conduct out of the country.

The next day he arrived in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and immediately departed for Madrid.

Many countries and human rights organizations had called for his release over the years. Norway offered him a lifetime pension if he accepted its offer of asylum.

But he said he chose Spain for “reasons of language and culture.”

Ortigoza now lives in a faculty apartment at Madrid University, where he was recently joined by his wife and one of his two daughters.

He recounts his experiences to students of Latin American politics in a project funded by the Spanish Foreign Ministry’s Institute for Iberoamerican Cooperation.

“While Stroessner is alive there is no chance of reopening my case,” Ortigoza said. “But I am prepared to defend the truth to the end.”