E/CN.4/1992/17 page 33 103. In a letter dated 18 October 1991 the Special Rapporteur transmitted to the Government of Guatemala information according to which the bodies of persons who had been arrested and had disappeared for some time often turned up on the roadside or at the bottom of a precipice, and invariably showed signs of torture or mutilation. The limited testimony available from people who have been released after being held at clandestine detention centres indicate that both the police and the army regularly use torture in the course of interrogations, such as beatings, rape, cigarette burns, electric shocks, suffocation, acid burns, inhalation of poison gases, etc. Information was transmitted in particular on the following cases: (a) Sebastian Velasquez Mejia, arrested on 6 October 1990 in Guatemala City by individuals suspected of ties with government forces. His body was found two days later on the Avenida del Ferrocarril. The autopsy report speaks, inter alia» of fourth degree bruises in the thorax and abdomen, pulmonary oedema and congested viscera; (b) Julio Choalcu Ben, aged 23, arrested on 16 December 1990 by two soldiers named Andrés Chalcu and Vicente Morales and taken to Solóla Military Base No. 14 for some days and tortured. On 27 December 1990 he was left on the roadside close to Escuintla. He was taken to hospital and remained in a coma for several months ; (c) Diana Ortiz, a United States member of a religious order, was arrested on 2 November 1989 in Antigua by individuals driving a police vehicle. She was, among other things, repeatedly tortured with cigarette burns and she was raped; (d) Faustino Palma, Gonzalo Gómez Castro and Celedonio Pérez, arrested on 27 March 1991 and tortured at the military detachment in Los Amates Department of Izabal. The case was reported to the Human Rights Attorney, who checked that the facts were true and submitted a complaint against an army commanding officer to the Puerto Barrios Military Prosecutor; (e) Francisco Castillo García, Ezequiel Trujillo Hernández and Carlos Geovanni Rosales Chavez, recently arrested by police in Guatemala City and taken to Third Army General Barracks where they were held for two hours and beaten up. They were then taken to the Criminal Investigation Department where the torture continued, more particularly with near-suffocation from a hood, beatings and acid burns on their hands. 104. In the same letter the Special Rapporteur also transmitted to the Government information on the ill-treatment to which the so-called "street children" were frequently subjected by members of the security forces, particularly the police. For example, on 31 July 1991 the body of a child aged six or seven who had been savagely tortured was found in a garbage dump in Zone 3 in Guatemala City; his eyes had been gouged out and he had been beaten on the head to such an extent that it was impossible to identify him. The Special Rapporteur also transmitted the case of Edwin Esteban Rodriguez Garcia, a street child aged 15 who was arrested by the police after stealing some sunglasses. Under Guatemalan law, Edwin Rodriguez should have been taken to the juvenile court, but was instead taken to an unknown place in the