Tortilla con Sal, October 11th 2018
Interview with Dr. Zacarías Duarte Castellón, Director General of Nicaragua’s Institute of Legal Medicine
Tortilla con Sal : What are the functions are of the Institute of Legal Medicine and how did it carry out its work during the attempted coup between April 18th and mid-July?
Dr. Zacarias Duarte : As regards the Institute of Legal Medicine’s functions I’d like to point out that the Institute of Legal Medicine is an institution belonging to the justice system and is subordinate to the Supreme Court of Justice. Its main function is to provide evidence permitting the clarification of criminal acts against the life, health, physical, psychological and sexual integrity of any person.
To comply with this function the Institute of Legal Medicine carries out expert medical, psychological or psychiatric examinations, forensic autopsies,laboratory analyses and other diagnostic studies on people who are alive or people who are deceased who suffered harm as a result of acts of violence.
As regards the work of the Institute of Legal Medicine during the period from April 18th to date, the Nicaraguan State via the Supreme Court of Justice assigned to the Institute of Legal Medicine extraordinary special resources to attend, with no discrimination of any kind and with immediacy, Nicaragua’s population affected by these violent events. Different areas were strengthened, especially pathology and forensic clinical resources as well as the Office of Attention to Victims and Relatives.
Furthermore, there was a reinforcement of infrastructure, equipment, personnel, technical resources, medical inputs and too work timetables were scheduled to provide 24 hour cover in the whole national territory so as to attend anyone who suffered harm and to carry out forensic autopsies in the case of people deceased, in all the national territory, 24 hours a day.
A multi-disciplinary team was deployed of professionals, of forensic doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, dentists, pathologists and anthropologists, toxicologists, geneticists, radiologists and auxiliary and administrative personnel so they could be available 24 hours a day offering immediate, uninterrupted forensic medical attention. As well as that direct attention to people, the Institute of Legal Medicine also strengthened the already long established Office of Attention to Victims and Relatives.
This office works 24 hours a day and after the violent events from April 18th onward has attended families, representatives of human rights organizations, religious clergy, representatives of international organizations, victims and the population in general. To all these we gave information and accompaniment and helped carry out identification of bodies that remained unidentified, the handing over of those bodies and the clarification of any doubts about the autopsies, and likewise the cause and manner of death.
In the case of people deceased, when there have been situations of doubt on the part of the family about the results of the autopsies, the Institute of Legal Medicine has agreed to and facilitated relatives to bring their own private doctors in confidence and likewise representatives of human rights organizations so they can be present at the autopsy, verify on the cadaver the results of the autopsy and even repeat the autopsies. In every case, the private doctor, the relatives and the representatives of human rights organizations have confirmed the professionalism, the humanitarianism and the treatment based on respect for human rights of all the Institute of Legal Medicine’s personnel.
The Institute of Legal Medicine acts in accordance with what the relevant laws establish and it carries out forensic autopsies, expert clinical tests and laboratory analyses n accordance with the national technical norms and protocols which are themselves based on international standards. Likewise, depending on the nature of the case, the Institute of Legal Medicine applies international standards, like the Istanbul Protocol and Minnesota protocol to investigate acts of violence on living persons and also on people deceased.
In this way what we guarantee for the justice system and the population is evidence obtained in compliance with national and international standards in the field of legal medicine and forensic science, which means that evidence have the technical and scientific basis required at national and international level. And that has been the work of the Institute of Legal Medicine during the violent events that took place in Nicaragua after April 18th.
The other aspect that is important to note is that the Institute of Legal Medicine takes action at the request of a competent authority. The competent authorities are, the National Police, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, judges and magistrates who are part of the Justice System, the Procurators for the Defense of Human Rights and the Attorney-General.
Apart from all that, the Institute of Legal Medicine, so as to facilitate access to justice and avoid impunity, informed the population via announcements in news media that any person or relative could at any time bring the body of any person who died in the violent events and the Institute of Legal Medicine would carry out the post mortem legal medical examinations. In the same way, the population was informed that any wounded person or any person harmed could seek out the legal medicine services that exist across the whole country and they would be attended immediately, with no discrimination whatsoever.
In fact I want to make clear that many times Catholic priests, civil organization representatives, groups of demonstrators, representatives of human rights organizations and even representatives of the Interamerican Commission for Human Rights came to the offices of the Institute of Legal Medicine accompanying victims and people deceased on whom an expert legal medicine clinical examination was done or a forensic autopsy.
Equally, we have attended many relatives of people deceased and these we have given the service they requested. Everything they asked for was facilitated, they were given the information they wanted and at the end, after receiving that attention, they expressed that they had been properly attended, thanking and recognizing the work we carry out in our institution.
Such that all the information circulating in the social networks spread by national or international non-governmental organizations alleging that the Institute of Legal Medicine has not given the correct legal medicine attention or that it has made relatives sign authorization for an autopsy on condition they do not bring charges is completely false and baseless. That false information has the purpose of disinforming, undermining and confusing the population and is totally unconnected with the reality. The Institute of Legal Medicine acts not in response to a relative but on the order of a legally competent authority.
The Institute of Legal Medicine has fulfilled its functions in these difficult moments, in situations of total insecurity for our experts. There were occasions when our experts arrived at the scene of the events and relatives or other people at the scene refused to allow the transfer of the deceased people’s bodies to the Institute of Legal Medicine to carry out the corresponding post mortem medical legal study. And in some cases in which our personnel were allowed to get to the place where the dead person was located but were completely controlled by the people there who aimed firearms at them, searched them and their vehicle and on one occasion stole a camera. People damaged our vehicles, puncturing the tyres of the vehicles that were transporting bodies of people deceased and frequently our personnel were not permitted to transfer bodies of people deceased to the Institute of Legal Medicine.
TcS : Accusations have also circulated that the Institute of Legal Medicine asked relatives to sign a document saying they would not bring charges against the government before they were allowed to remove the body of their deceased relative for burial…
Dr. Zacarías Duarte : The Institute of Legal Medicine has never, never, asked a relative either of a deceased person or of a wounded person to sign a document committing them not to accuse the government. That is completely untrue. To the contrary, the Institute of Legal Medicine opened its doors to the whole population 24 hours a day and informed the population they could bring deceased persons and wounded people so that subsequently the established legal procedures could be followed so as to carry out expert legal medical examinations, either on live people or on people deceased, with the aim of facilitating access to legal medical services and subsequently to the justice system.
I want to make clear that in those cases where no legal medical diagnosis was issued it was because the relatives or demonstrators did not permit it, obstructed it or refused it. Those were the only cases in which the Institute of Legal Medicine could not carry out its functions.
In every other case, the Institute of Legal Medicine acted in accordance with the law and offered all the information, all the facilities for people to be present at autopsies if they so wished, be they relatives, or their own private doctors, so as to be able to verify what the Institute of Legal Medicine did.
With regard to the numbers of people deceased or people wounded or harmed, that is a figure still to be completed. It is not complete because people who suffered harm continue to arrive to be evaluated and because the Institute of Legal Medicine does not investigate the circumstances in which the violent events took place. Naturally, the Institute of Legal Medicine carries out forensic autopsies on all violent deaths that occur as a result of common crime, accidents and suicides as well as sudden unexpected deaths or the deaths of indigent people and too the deaths that took place during the violent events following April 18th.
What the Institute of Legal Medicine does is to carry out an autopsy of expert legal medical exam in the area of medicine, psychology, dentistry of psychiatry. The the violent act itself, what led to those wounds or to that death, is not the competency of the Institute of Legal Medicine to investigate. Such that s a result we have the data of all the violent deaths that occurred during those months but within those violent deaths there are deaths from traffic accidents, or form other types of accidents and deaths by homicide. And within all those deaths there are a number that took place within the context of violent events which are subject to investigation by the competent authority. But other deaths happened in circumstances completely apart from the context of violence. But the details and precise information on the circumstances of those deaths are not the job of the Institute of Legal Medicine to investigate.