On the night of October 11, 2017, a class taught by the lawyer and professor at the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD), Yuniol Ramírez, at the Faculty of Legal and Political Sciences, was interrupted.
Ramírez’s body was found the next morning, just hours after he was reported missing, and several videos from the university parking lot security cameras recorded several shots fired in a vehicle parked next to his.
A similar situation occurred on May 26, but in 1994, when the also university professor, Narciso González, finished his classes at the UASD Faculty of Humanities and left for his home the night of that day, where he never came.
What happened to Yuniol?
After receiving the message in his class, Professor Ramírez dismissed his students and went to the parking lot to meet those who called him and were waiting right next to his car.
The then 45-year-old man, born in the province of San Juan de la Maguana, from where he left for the Dominican capital in his youth with the dream of becoming a lawyer and studying law, right at the university where he taught, was kidnapped around 9:00 am in that same parking lot without anyone else hearing from him until the next day.
That evening would be the last time anyone would see Ramírez alive, who had discovered a corruption scandal just days earlier in the Metropolitan Office of Bus Services (OMSA) and who took several employees of that institution to jail, in Special to the then director. , Manuel Rivas, charged with association of criminals, bribery, corruption, anti-state fraud and corruption in double payment processes.
Ramírez’s body was found on the morning of Thursday, October 12, just hours after he was reported missing, when a fisherman noticed a body with a chain around his neck tied to a log submerged in the Manoguayabo River in Hato Nuevo.
Investigations by the National District Prosecutor’s Office immediately began and as the days passed, with the arrest of defendants for the Yuniol Ramírez case, irregularities committed in the OMSA also surfaced, forcing then-director Manuel Rivas to court. had to be subdued.
Immediately before his murder, José Antonio Mercado Blanco (El Grande), an accomplice of the suspect of the perpetrator Argenis Contreras, was arrested; Víctor Elizander Ravelo Campos (El Herrero) and Jorge Luis Abreu Fabián (El Taxista), who helped the culprit find the tools to chain the body and try to get rid of the corpse.
The missing file to conclude that case was Argenis Contreras, identified as the material author of Yuniol’s murder, who was extradited from the United States last Tuesday and arrested by Dominican authorities after more than three years away from justice. The defendant says he came to “clear things up”.
Although the prosecution’s files showed that Ramírez was extorting the OMSA officials, the figure of the professor was “tortured” as an icon of the fight against corruption by much of the bourgeoisie.
Narcisazo disappearance
Narciso González, who was known on the university campus as Narcisazo, had publicly shown that he disagreed with the regime of then-president Joaquín Balaguer and according to several writings from the media, the professor at the time published an article in La Muralla magazine, where he described the president as “the most perverted thing in the island country”.
Narcisazo also cited serious corruption in state administration, citing military leaders, a consul and other officials alleged $ 20 million robbers.
After the elections in that month of May, the professor was one of the main promoters that Balaguer carried out the major “electoral fraud” and staged an excited speech against the regime.
Just ten days after the election, González disappeared without a trace.
Almost 27 years later, unlike Yuniol, the disappearance of Narcisazo remains one of the greatest mysteries of Dominican justice. After the night of May 26, neither the silhouette nor the body of the professor and columnist was seen anymore.
During this trip, there have been several theories as to what actually happened, but his relatives, including his wife Luz Altagracia Ramírez González and their four children, have blamed the authorities for viewing the case as “a simple disappearance”.
Knowing more
Phrase.
The Narcisazo case reached international borders when the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) condemned the Dominican state for holding it “internationally responsible for the enforced disappearance” of the professor, as well as for the ensuing violations. of the right to liberty and integrity of person.
Compensation.
In a unanimous decision, the court ordered González’s wife and their children Ernesto, Rhina Yokasta, Jennie Rosanna and Amaury to be compensated with US $ 290,000 for pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages. It also ordered the Dominican state to continue investigating the case to establish the truth of the facts and to order sanctions on those responsible.