Dianna Ortiz

Sister Dianna Ortiz is an American Roman Catholic Ursuline nun.

A native of the state of New Mexico, while serving as a missionary in Guatemala in 1989, she was abducted by members of the Guatemalan military and brutally tortured. Among other torments she states^[1] being exposed to were gang-rape and over 100 cigarette burns. Sister Ortiz chronicled her experiences and recovery in the book (co-written with Patricia Davis), The Blindfold's Eyes: My Journey from Torture to Truth. ISBN 1570754357

She founded the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International (TASSC), the only organization in the United States founded by and for survivors of torture. TASSC's current policy campaign is dedicated to repealing the Military Commissions Act of 2006, what the survivors of torture at TASSC call the US Torture Law.

In early 1995 Sister Dianna won $5 million in a U.S. civil court case against the former Minister of Defense of Guatemala — General Héctor Gramajo.[1]^[2] In its ruling, the judiciary stated that "[Gramajo-Morales]...was aware of and supported widespread acts of brutality committed under his command resulting in thousands of civilian deaths...." ^[3] and further noted that Gramajo-Morales “devised...[and] directed...[an] indiscriminate campaign of terror against civilians.”^[3]

Five years after Sister Dianna brought her civil suit against Gramajo-Morales in the United States, she won a judgment against the State of Guatemala through the Inter-American Court of Human Rights where she specified that Gen. Gramajo "made several [official] statements to the effect that Sister Dianna's injuries did not occur or were self-inflicted."^[4] At the time of its introduction Gen. Gramajo was attending Harvard University^[2] by invitation and had just given that year's commencement speech at the SOA.^[5] According to an article in International Socialist Review, Ortiz stated that she was abducted by police officers and military personnel under Gramajo's command and taken to a secret prison where she was tortured and raped repeatedly.^[6] An excerpt from an interview with Sister Ortiz:

When the men returned, they had a video camera and a still camera. The policeman put a machete into my hands. Thinking it would be used against me, and at that point in my torture wanting to die, I did not resist. But the policeman put his hands onto the handle, on top of mine, and forced me to stab the woman again and again...

The policeman asked me if I was now ready to talk, and one of the other torturers...mentioned that they had just filmed...me stabbing the woman. If I refused to cooperate, their boss, Alejandro, would...turn the videotapes and the photographs over to the press.... This was the first I had heard of Alejandro, the torturers' boss....

The policeman raped me again. Then I was lowered into a pit full of bodies— bodies of children, men, and women, some decapitated, all caked with blood. A few were still alive. I could hear them moaning. Someone was weeping. I didn’t know if it was me or somebody else. A stench of decay rose from the pit. Rats swarmed over the bodies and were dropped onto me as I hung suspended over the pit by the wrists. I passed out and when I came to I was lying on the ground beside the pit, rats all over me.

The nightmare I lived was nothing out of the ordinary. In 1989, under Guatemala’s first civilian president in years, nearly two hundred people were abducted. Unlike me, they were "disappeared, gone forever". The only uncommon element of my ordeal was that I survived, probably because I was a U.S. citizen, and phone calls poured into Congress when I was reported missing. As a U.S. citizen, I had another advantage: I could, in relative safety, reveal afterwards the details of what happened to me in those twenty-four hours. One of those details: an American was in charge of my torturers.

I remember the moment he removed my blindfold. I asked him, "Are you an American?" In poor Spanish and with a heavy American accent, he answered me with a question: "Why do you want to know?" Moments before, after the torturers had blindfolded me again and were getting ready to rape me again, they had called out in Spanish: "Hey, Alejandro, come and have some fun!" And a voice had responded "Shit!" in perfect American English with no trace of an accent. It was the voice of the tall, fair-skinned man beside me. After swearing, he’d switched to a halting Spanish. "Idiots!" he said. "She’s a North American nun." He added that my disappearance had been made public, and he ran them out of the room.

....He kept telling me he was sorry. The torturers had made a mistake. We came to a parking garage, where he put me into a gray Suzuki jeep and told me he was taking me to a friend of his at the U.S. embassy who would help me leave the country. For the duration of the trip, I spoke to him in English, which he understood perfectly. He said he was concerned about the people of Guatemala and consequently was working to liberate them from Communism. Alejandro told me to forgive my torturers because they had confused me with Veronica Ortiz Hernandez. It was an honest mistake.

I asked him how they could have mistaken me for a woman who did not resemble me in any way. And why were the threatening letters I had received addressed to Madre Dianna and not to Veronica Ortiz Hernandez? He avoided my questions and insinuated that I was to blame for my torture because I had not heeded the threats that were sent to me.^[7]

Sister Dianna has recounted this same story, in formal testimony, on several occasions^[8] but declined to participate in presenting the case before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights as "testify[ing] about her abduction and torture is a tremendously painful--even terrifying--ordeal." ^[4]

A 1996 report by the United States Intelligence Oversight Board reviewed Sister Dianna's case and wrote:

[T]he IOB believes that Sister Dianna was subjected to horrific abuse on November 2, 1989, but US intelligence reports provide little insight into the details of her plight. Because the Department of Justice is still conducting an extensive reinvestigation of the incident, we do not draw any conclusions on the case at this time.^[9]

In Raul Molina Mejía's "The Struggle against Impunity in Guatemala", Journal of Social Justice, vol. 26 (1999) describes Sister Dianna's incident as an example of state-sponsored terrorism. He writes: "impunity as concrete legal or de facto actions taken by powerful sectors to prevent investigation or prosecution, such as amnesty laws, pardons, thwarting investigations, the hiding of documents, and tampering with legal samples were abundant in Guatemala. He also mentions the cases of Michael Devine, the El Aguacate massacre, the 1990 surge of killings at the National University of San Carlos, as well as Sister Dianna. The author explains the "political/psychological" aspect of this impunity, is "a dimension resulting from state terrorism, by which political options in a polity are restricted and controlled through the state's manipulation of fear."

Allegations of US involvement

According to an article in The Nation, former U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala, Thomas F. Stroock (1989–1992), claimed that Sister Dianna's various claims amounted to an allegation of United States involvement in her rape and torture by right-wing para military forces. ^[10] Ortiz suspects the US government of covering up her abduction and torture - much evidence of such a cover up is offered in her book. She also suggests that the man who took her out of the detention center was an American working for the CIA.

In a 1996 interview on "Nightline" with Ortiz, US journalist Cokie Roberts insisted that Ortiz was lying about her torture and the allegations of US involvement. Roberts' brother, Tom Boggs, working for the advertising firm of "Patton, Boggs, & Blow," was paid by the Guatemalan military to promote a more positive image of the death squads and the military dictatorship in Guatemala.^[11]

References

1. ^ Video interview by John Pilger in the documentary The War on Democracy
2. ^ ^{a b} Ratner, Michael. "Civil Remedies for Gross Human Rights Violations". http://www.pbs.org/wnet/justice/law_background_torture.html. Retrieved 2007-07-09. 
3. ^ ^{a b} International Law Reports - Cambridge University Press
4. ^ ^{a b} Dianna Ortiz v. Guatemala, Case 10.526, Report No. 31/96, Inter-Am.C.H.R.,OEA/Ser.L/V/II.95 Doc. 7 rev. at 332 (1997)
5. ^ "School of Assassins". http://www.voicesweb.org/archive/pe/assassin.html. Retrieved 2007-07-09. 
6. ^ "School of the Assassins". http://www.isreview.org/issues/09/school_of_americas.shtml. Retrieved 2007-07-09. 
7. ^ Speak Truth To Power Defender
8. ^ A Global Agenda, Issues before the 47th General Assembly of the United Nations. University Press of America. New York. 1992. p68
9. ^ Report on the Guatemala Review by the Intelligence Oversight Board. June 28, 1996.
10. ^ "Murder as Policy" by Allan Nairn The Nation, vol. 260, April 24, 1995
11. ^ "Crisis in Latin America," by John W. Sherman, Westview Press: Boulder, Colorado. 2000.

Sources

• Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International
• Campaign to Repeal the Military Commissions Act of 2006
• Interview with Dianna Ortiz
• Salon.com review of a book by Dianna Ortiz
• Another interview with Dianna Ortiz (Available in transcript, audio and video)
• Interview with Sister Dianna Ortiz in John Pilger's 2006 documentary "The War on Democracy" starting at 1:06:38

Persondata
Name	Ortiz, Dianna
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death