According to Última Hora, the Criminal Appeals Court’s Second Chamber rejected the defense appeals and upheld the convictions of three former police officers from Alfredo Stroessner’s dictatorship for torturing political prisoners between 1976 and 1978. Fortunato Lorenzo Laspina Escurra and Eusebio Torres Romero received 25-year prison sentences, while Manuel Crescencio Alcaraz was sentenced to 20 years.
Última Hora reported on September 14, 2026, that the decision was unanimous and identified the appellate panel as María Lourdes Sanabria, Miryam Meza de López and Bibiana Benítez Faría. The defenses had argued, among other points, that the crimes were time-barred, that criminal law had been applied retroactively and that the evidence had been improperly assessed.
The case concerns Domingo Guzmán Rolón Centurión, a political prisoner detained on December 2, 1976, and taken to the Investigations Department of the Capital Police in Asunción. According to the reports on the evidence considered in the proceedings, he was subjected to physical and psychological torture. He remained in detention until 1978, including a period at Emboscada prison, and died in 2024.
Reports by Última Hora and El Nacional say that the proceedings considered testimony from victims and witnesses, documents from the Archives of Terror, records from the Justice Museum, and psychological and psychiatric reports. Among the witnesses was Carlos Casco, who was also tortured and identified the three convicted men as participants in the abuses. The reports say the assaults were intended to obtain information about agrarian leagues and other organizations critical of the regime.
El Nacional and El Observador report that the court classified torture in the context of political repression as a crime against humanity and as not subject to a statute of limitations. This legal reasoning is presented here as reported by those outlets; the appellate ruling itself was not available for this article.
The reports also say that the defenses argued that the convictions violated the principle against retroactive application of criminal law. According to the reasoning attributed to the court, the prohibition of torture was already part of universal humanitarian principles when the events occurred. The reports describe the court’s view that recognizing the absence of a limitation period would not impose a retroactive punishment, but would fulfill the state’s duty to investigate serious human rights violations.
The first-instance conviction was issued on February 12, 2026. Última Hora and El Nacional report that the appeals court upheld the sentences imposed at trial and found them consistent with Article 65 of the Criminal Code. This article does not assert an exact judgment number or a custodial regime because those points were not confirmed by a primary appellate document.