On June 3, PBI-Honduras posted:

“Recently, as part of the week of the Detained-Disappeared, we accompanied COFADEH [the Committee of Families of Detained- Disappeared in Honduras] to the House of Memory in Amarateca, a space that was used in the 1980s as a torture house. COFADEH acquired the property in order to rescue historical memory on issues of human rights violations and crimes against humanity.”

The Inter Press Service has reported:

“The country estate of a Honduran general who formed part of a past military government housed a torture center used by the army in the 1980s, according to police reports and a team of U.S. anthropologists.

Bertha Oliva with COFADEH said the army held and tortured many opponents of the military regime on the estate of Gen. Amilcar Zelaya. Some of the victims figure on the list of people who “disappeared” by the security forces last decade.

Zelaya was one of three generals who formed the junta that ruled this Central American country from 1978 to 1981, after a string of coups d’etats.

Using special techniques, the anthropologists found traces of human blood and even the prints of bloody hands on the walls of several rooms of Zelaya’s country residency.”

And Somos+ Tocoa has also previously explained:

“This house served as a torture center in the ’80s. According to COFADEH reports there were more than 500 people here until 1986, in possession of the death squads (Army Intelligence Battalion 3/16). The house belonged to Lieutenant Colonel Amilcar Zelaya Chief of the Honduras Police in the period of the triumvirate from 1978 to 1980 [after the coup that toppled] General Melgar Castro [in August 1978].”

That triumvirate was headed by Policarpo Paz García.

For a first-hand account from Hernán Guevara Gutiérrez, who was arrested in 1982 and taken to the house where he was tortured for a month, see So that it never happens again.

Photo of PBI-Honduras on a previous accompaniment to the house in August 2020.