E/CN.4/1990/17 page 24 reportedly members of the Presidential Guard. The three detainees are now said to be in the National Penitentiary and their state of health is a matter of concern. Honduras 78. On 6 April 1989 the Special Rapporteur sent a letter to the Government of Honduras transmitting information that Francisco Briones Castelion and Erick Meyer Garcia, students aged 19 and 22 respectively, and members of the Sandanista People's Army (EPS), were kidnapped at the end of November 1988 in Somotillo, Department of Chimandega, Nicaragua, by members of the Nicaraguan counter-revolutionary forces. According to the information received, these two persons were beaten up, tortured and taken off to Honduras in a lorry. Mr. Briones is said to have had a recent operation on his pancreas. It was also reported that Mr. Briones and Mr. Meyer were in a very bad state of health and their conditions of detention were inhuman, as a result of which Mr. Meyer had contracted a skin disease. 79. On 18 July 1989 the Special Rapporteur sent a letter to the Government of Honduras transmitting information on the detention of Mr. Tulio Mancia Garcia by members of the National Police Directorate (DNI) on 7 April 1989. According to the information, Mr. Mancia Garcia was beaten up and tortured while he was in detention and was then released. 80. On 16 August 1989 the Special Rapporteur sent an urgent message to the Government of Honduras about the case of Mr. Victor Miguel Maza Elvir, the head of a co-operative, who was kidnapped on 31 July 1989 in the Guanacaste district of Tegucigalpa by members of the National Police Directorate (DNI) who reportedly carried him off to clandestine prisons where he was tortured for five days and threatened with death if he reported that he had been tortured. According to the complaint, this person is now in the Central Penitentiary, along with Jose Oscar Luna Palacios, Manuel de Jesus Alvarado Herrera and Jose Martin Lopez Romero, who said that they had been tortured. The complaint states that these persons are still being subjected to ill-treatment in the penitentiary, such as doing the hardest work for other privileged inmates; the object is to break down their morale and their mental balance. 81. On 25 September 1989 the Government of Honduras informed the Special Rapporteur that, on 5 September 1989, in the Central Penitentiary in Tegucigalpa, Mr. Edwin Boehi, regional delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) spoke with detainees, Maria Luisa Ochoa Zelaya, Jose 06car Luna Romero, Victor Miguel Maza Elvir and Manuel de Jesu6 Alvarado Herrera. According to the ICRC delegate, they were in perfect health and they said that they had already been notified of the detention order, that counsel would be appointed for them the following week, and that in general they received good treatment. 82. On 20 October 1989 the Special Rapporteur sent an urgent message to the Government of Honduras about the case of Jose Alfredo Diaz Amaya, arrested on 7 September 1989 at his home in Intibuca by three military intelligence agents from the Infantry Battalion in Marcala, La Paz. When she visited him at the Battalion's barracks, his wife reportedly found that he had been the victim of physical and mental torture to force him to confess that he was a member of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) of El Salvador.