Martinez was arrested on October 1 of that year and taken first to the Antofagasta investigation barracks and then to the prison in the same city, where he was held for almost a month and subjected to interrogation and physical and psychological torture.

“They did terrible things to me that no human being deserves to live through, such as mock executions, beatings with extreme violence, the dark alley,” the victim recounted.

After leaving there he was not given work again and had to go into exile in Europe.

The 14th Court of Santiago sentenced the Treasury to pay 40 million pesos (about 41 000 dollars) to Martinez, after establishing that he was the victim of a crime against humanity, imprescriptible both in criminal and civil courts. In the ruling, Judge Osvaldo Correa affirmed that the political imprisonment and torture affected him in the short and long term and caused him intense psychological damage by living a limiting experience that experts have called extreme trauma.

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