A peasant woman recounts how soldiers beat and tortured one of her relatives while he was detained

On February 2, 1987, a peasant woman recounts how soldiers beat and tortured one of her relatives while he was detained, along with nine other peasants, under suspicion of being a member of Sendero Luminoso. The newspaper La República investigated this case and found that the ten detainees were innocent; however, they were not released. Torture was, on many occasions, the next step following detention. Over the years in which it was practiced, the strategies and human rights-violating practices varied. In the early years of the violence, the counter-subversive strategy was indiscriminate and massive and caused an enormous toll on civilian victims, while from the late 1980s it became more selective. One common method used to instill fear among the population was the indiscriminate accusation of "terrorist," against which state agents did not always verify the information provided.