According to the sentence, it was the then Lieutenant Colonel Juan Rebollo, responsible for the Anti-Aircraft Artillery Group No. 1, together with Lieutenant Colonel Washington Enrique Scala Demarco, who ordered the operation in the early hours of April 21.
In this way, it was confirmed that the three young women were shot during a military operation in the Brazo Oriental neighborhood, which had the purpose of arresting the militant of the National Liberation Movement Washington Barrios, husband of Silvia Reyes, who was pregnant.
The judge ordered the “prosecution with prison for three very especially aggravated homicide crimes as a co-author”, and stipulated house arrest as a substitute measure.
Likewise, the version that an exchange of fire had taken place was ruled out, reported La Diaria.
At the time, the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Crimes Against Humanity had also requested the prosecution of soldiers José Nino Gavazzo and Eduardo Klastornick, who died during the process.
In December 2021, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) declared the Uruguayan State “internationally responsible for human rights violations, for the murders of Diana Maidanick, Silvia Reyes and Laura Raggio (Girls of April) that occurred during the dictatorship and the disappearances of Luis Eduardo González and Óscar Tassino.
While in March 2022, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs promised to recognize that the Uruguayan State is internationally responsible for the murders of Diana Maidanick, Silvia Reyes and Laura Raggio (April Girls) that occurred during the dictatorship.
The facts
The young social activists Silvia Reyes, Laura Raggio, and Diana Maidanick were gunned down in the early hours of April 21, 1974 in a house on 3098 Mariano Soler Street.
The three young women were killed in an operation led by the No. 1 Artillery Battalion with the support of No. 2 Artillery, led by General Juan Rebollo and the participation of Generals Julio César Rapela and Esteban Cristi, and Majors A. Méndez and José “Nino” Gavazzo, Colonel Manuel Cordero and the then captains Mauro Mauriño, Julio César Gutiérrez and Lieutenant Jorge Silveira.
The operation carried out by the Joint Forces took place in the early hours of April 21, 1974, in the house of the Barrios-Fernández family in search of Washington Barrios, an MLN-T militant and husband of Silvia Reyes.
But Washington Barrios had supposedly already disappeared in Córdoba, Argentina by then.
“In the midst of bursts of machine gun fire, they went to the adjoining apartment on Mariano Soler 3098 bis street, in the Brazo Oriental neighborhood, and after breaking down the door, they riddled three young classmates and fellow activists who were sleeping at that time,” tells the historian Álvaro Rico in “Ovillos de la Memoria”, and in Volume 1 of “Historical Research on the dictatorship and State terrorism in Uruguay 1973 – 1985).
They were: Diana Maidanick, 21 years old, Laura Raggio, 19 years old, and Silvia Reyes, also 19 years old, who was also in her third month of pregnancy, and wife of Washington Barrios.
For her part, Stella Reyes, sister of Silvia, recounted some time later in the book “Guerrillas. Women’s participation in the MLN-T” (Arca, 2011), by journalist Mauricio Cavallo: “My sister and her companions were killed and brutally finished off inside her house, it was a frightening operation. My sister was given to her family to watch over her, she had more than 30 bullet wounds, more than half of her head was missing and both legs were riddled with shrapnel, up close.”
