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News > Latin America

Mujica Opens Health Unit in Jail Where He Was Tortured

  • The president of Uruguay, Jose Mujica, lives on his farm and drives an old beetle. (Photo: Reuters)

    The president of Uruguay, Jose Mujica, lives on his farm and drives an old beetle. (Photo: Reuters) | Photo: REUTERS

Published 11 November 2014
Opinion

The new facility will benefit more than 1,000 people.

The President of Uruguay, Jose “Pepe” Mujica, opened on Tuesday a new health unit inside the prison where he was jailed and tortured from 1973 to 1985, during the Uruguayan dictatorship.

Mujica was accompanied by the Interior Ministry, Eduardo Bonomi who along Mujica also was jailed there, in Freedom Prison, located in San Jose, northern Montevideo.

The health unit was built on “the island,” the zone where political prisoners were tortured. More than 1,000 people will benefit from the health unit, which includes a mental health area.

“Guards usually made inmates commit suicide by leaving them for one month inside flooded jails with only a rope in their hand,” recalled Bonomi.

The Interior Ministry explained that guards never allowed them to talk to other inmates and that during the hour and half that they used to have to go to the jail’s patio, they were always hit.

Bonomi also confessed that at some point they considered destroying the jail.

President Mujica, a former guerilla, and Bonomi were jailed in the seventies, when they used to be part of the Tupamaros movement that fought against the military dictatorship.

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