He saw dictatorship officers torture and kill. Mileis denialism has made him want to tell his story

Omar Torres is 74 and resides in Salta. He lives off a modest pension and admits that he struggles to make ends meet. Every so often, he will take a short road trip with his partner to somewhere in the region. He strives to maintain regular contact with his three children. On the surface, Torres’ life is no different from that of millions of other retirees in Argentina. But any semblance of normality dissolves as soon as he begins to recount what he witnessed as a member of the military police (known as Gendarmería) during the dictatorship that ravaged the country between 1976 and 1983. Torture sessions. Transfers to “death flights.” Even live executions. An endless stream of haunting memories that assail him at unexpected moments.  “When I left the force, I used to wake up in the early hours of the morning with images of the executions, but not so much anymore; it’s passing,” he confessed. Torres has not been a silent witness. His testimony in multiple trials since the return of democracy in 1983 has led to the sentencing of military officials for crimes against humanity, as well as the discovery of mass graves.  The denialist rhetoric of President Milei and his administration, however, has marked a new turning point for Torres. An unthinkable scenario that prompted him to contact the Herald to once again describe everything he experienced because, in his words, he still cannot understand “the aberration of the crimes they committed.” “Some boast about it and even believe they were saviors. It’s intolerable.” A job opportunity turned descent to hell Torres was born in November of 1953 in Vedia, a small town in northern Buenos Aires province. He joined the Military Police in 1975, drawn by the possibility of earning a salary and encouraged by several friends who were already members.  “They convinced me, and I joined,” he recalled. He had only been on the force for a few months when the coup took place on March 24.  As he recounted in the trials, low-ranking officers like him rotated every 50 days to different destinations around the country. That is how he ended up in Tucumán on two separate occasions between 1976 and 1977, while also serving in San Juan, Mendoza, and Buenos Aires.  It was in Tucumán where he witnessed the most horrifying events. The unit he was assigned to operated similar to a concentration camp. Prisoners were held inside small individual cells within a 25-by-30-meter warehouse. The facility could hold close to 80 detainees, who came and went blindfolded and handcuffed with wire or chains. His surveillance duties meant he was able to have fleeting contact with some of them.  “They would submerge them in 200-liter water tanks, a torture technique similar to waterboarding known as ‘the submarine,’” Torres explained. Other forms of torment included applying electrical shocks, pulling out fingernails with pliers, cutting off ears, and simulated hangings that lasted two to three minutes.  Torture was a prelude to the executions. Every two weeks around midnight, between 15 and 20 prisoners were led to a 4×6 meter pit about three meters deep. They were made to kneel and then shot in the head. The bodies would fall into the pit and be set on fire with car tires, oil, and firewood. Some officers would stay to make sure it all burned. Torres was part of a security detail stationed about 6 meters from the pits. It was from this vantage point that on two occasions he saw de facto Tucumán governor Antonio Bussi shoot defenseless prisoners in the head.  “He shot first, as if to encourage the other officers to do the same,” he explained.  One of the people he saw Bussi execute was a history student named Luis Falú. Torres recognized him because the young man had told him his name during a brief conversation. The military police remembered him because he was the nephew of renowned international folklorist Eduardo Falú.  Another victim Torres recognized was Ana Cristina Corral, a 16-year-old student who was kidnapped in June 1976. She had her hands handcuffed behind her back and was blindfolded when she was shot in the head by another officer.  Torres’ assignments also placed him in unusual circumstances. One of them was doing security as a civilian for the 1978 FIFA World Cup. “They even let us grow our mustaches and hair so we wouldn’t look like soldiers,” he remembers. The post allowed him to see Argentina defeat the Netherlands in the final at the Monumental stadium to win the tournament. The horror surrounding him took its toll. Torres tried to resign but was threatened to stay on. Because of the things he had seen, he said walking away could put him at risk. After a brief stint in Córdoba, he managed to get transferred to La Quiaca, Jujuy, right on the border with Bolivia.  Tensions began to ease with the imminent return of democracy. On March 31, 1983, Torres filed his official resignation from the force. He was 29.  A legal ordeal Torres volunteered to speak as soon as he found out that the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (in Spanish, CONADEP) had been created in December 1983. The information he gave proved valuable, and he was called to testify in several trials, including the historic Trial of the Juntas in 1985. His willingness to speak out did not go unnoticed by the remnants of the state-terror apparatus that remained in place. He received threats by telephone, while people showed up at his family home in Buenos Aires asking about him.  “I was never intimidated and showed up every time the court summoned me,” he said. In 2003, he joined the witness protection program. Far from a relocation and identity change, the inclusion only meant that he was provided with a telephone so that he could remain in constant contact with federal police. In 2013, Torres testified in the Arsenales-Jefatura de Policía trial in Tucumán, named after two of the province’s most infamous clandestine detention centers. The proceeding delivered guilty verdicts for 37 former military personnel and civilians out of a total of 41 defendants. Corral and Falú, two people Torres identified at the time of their execution, are among the more than 200 victims murdered at the Miguel de Azcuénaga Arsenal clandestine center.  Falú’s remains were identified in the Pozo de Vargas mass grave in July 2016. Antonio Bussi, who would later also become Tucumán governor in democracy (1995-99), passed away in 2011. At the time of his death, he had been convicted in only one of the multiple cases in which he was accused of crimes against humanity. Torres also provided information that enabled the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, together with the Interdisciplinary Group of Archaeology and Anthropology of Tucumán, to find five clandestine mass graves on the grounds of the former Arsenal. Investigators recovered thousands of burnt bone fragments from the four largest pits. They also identified skeletal remains of thirteen individuals found in the fifth pit. The recovery of tires, charcoal, and fuel-soaked sediments provided evidence of the military’s modus operandi of incinerating bodies to conceal evidence.  “They called me delusional and tried to discredit me, but I always told the truth, and the expert reports proved me right,” Torres said. In May 2023, he testified about what he saw while assigned to former clandestine detention center El Olimpo in Buenos Aires between August 1978 and February 1979. He offered details about the “death flights,” which consisted of loading detainees onto planes, rendering them unconscious with drugs, and throwing them alive into the Río de la Plata.  In the midst of his legal journey, Torres’ life went on. His stay in Jujuy lasted only a few months, as in 1984 he settled in the neighboring province of Salta. It was there that he married and had three children. He worked as an electrician until he joined the judiciary at the lowest rank, as an administrator. He has told his children, all of whom are now adults, “everything he went through.”  He is currently without legal protection. The security ministry, headed at the time by current Sentor Patricia Bullrich, removed him from the witness protection program in 2024. Torres also suspects that he is being monitored, as he hears strange noises every time he talks on the phone. None of this, however, seems to discourage him from continuing. “Silence is not an option,” he says, his firm voice betraying a Buenos Aires accent with a northern twang.  “Especially when there is a climate that seeks to deny the horrors of the dictatorship.”