Activists Blame ‘Death Squad’ for Attack on Woman

A politically active young Salvadoran immigrant woman was kidnaped, raped and interrogated in Los Angeles earlier this week in what fellow activists charge may be the first Salvadoran death squad-style abduction in the United States.

Police confirmed that the woman had been kidnaped and raped, but declined comment on political aspects of the incident.

The woman, a 24-year-old Los Angeles receptionist identified only by her first name, Yanira, said she was kidnaped by two Salvadoran men Tuesday evening outside the Los Angeles office of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), where she had gone to attend a meeting.

Forced Into Van

She said in an interview Friday that two men with Salvadoran accents forced her at knifepoint into a van, blindfolded her and interrogated her about her political activities and her colleagues while driving around Los Angeles for several hours.

“At one point they started cutting my hands with a knife and then lit up cigarettes and started touching them to the tips of my fingers,” she said, breaking into sobs.

“Toward the end, one said, ‘Just kill her,’ and another said, ‘No, this way we’re going to let them know that we are here,’ ” she said. She said they did not explain who the “we” represented.

“They said that this was just the beginning, that they were going to start with the women and they knew who we were,” she said. She said they asked her specifically about Hugh Byrne, outgoing regional director of CISPES; Victor Rios, the new regional director, and a “Roberto” she did not know.

“What this means is that the death squads have come to L.A.,” said Mark Rosenbaum, general counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union, which is helping the young woman. “This is plainly a conspiracy to deny her her civil rights, and we demand a full investigation.”

CISPES, a nationwide organization with 100 chapters that was founded in Los Angeles in 1980 to oppose U.S. policy in El Salvador, held a press conference to disclose the incident Friday. The group, which says it has 2,000 contributing members in the Los Angeles area, is generally sympathetic to the FMLN-FDR, the political-military organization that represents most guerrilla groups in El Salvador. However, members here, most of them Anglo-Americans, say they have virtually no direct contact with the organization.

“I’m absolutely shocked,” said Rep. Don Edwards (D-San Jose), chairman of the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights of the House Judiciary Committee, when he learned of the incident Friday night. “I’ll get the FBI in on this tonight. We’re going to get to the bottom of this.”

Edwards is holding hearings looking into dozens of break-ins around the country at churches and other organizations, including CISPES, that have opposed U.S. policy in Central America.

A local spokesman for the FBI said earlier Friday that the agency had heard of the case only through reporters and was not involved in the investigation.

Yanira said the incident occurred after she had received several threatening telephone calls and unsigned letters over the last few months. One letter was sent to her father in El Salvador demanding that his daughter stop her political activities in Los Angeles.

A month ago, she said, a stranger forced her car to the side of the road and threatened her and her 3-year-old son. A passer-by intervened and the stranger left with her bag, she said. A few days later, she said, she received another threatening letter--this one containing a picture of her son that had been in the bag.

Lt. John Borunda, officer in charge of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Central Detective Bureau, said there is “no doubt whatsoever” that the woman had been kidnaped and raped. Political motives “will be looked at as part of the investigation,” he said.

He said that Yanira was extremely emotionally upset when she was interviewed at a hospital Tuesday and that police learned of political aspects of the incident only on Friday. The woman was sexually assaulted repeatedly with a stick during the incident, according to a doctor’s report.

Death squads have killed an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 people in El Salvador since civil war broke out in 1979. Bodies of many of the victims showed signs of torture; some had been burned with cigarettes and others had been mutilated. Such killings have declined in recent years, but none of the well-known military or civilian death squad leaders have been convicted of the murders.

“This is why we left our country in the first place,” said Mercedes Salgado, who said she has worked with Yanira in various Salvadoran groups, in particular groups that aid women refugees here.

Salgado said her car had been smashed shortly before she left for the press conference Friday morning. Rios, director-elect of the regional CISPES chapter, said his car had also been vandalized two weeks ago. Later, he said, he received a letter saying, “You Communist pigs! Your car was first and you’ll be next.”

Until now, there have been scattered reports of right-wing death squad members in the United States, including Los Angeles, but no reports of the sort of abductions and torture that became a routine part of life in El Salvador in the early 1980s.

One former Salvadoran National Police officer, who acknowledged killing 17 suspected guerrilla sympathizers as part of his job, told The Times four years ago that he and several other death squad members had moved to Los Angeles for personal reasons, but that none of those he knew had any plans to continue their activities here.