Fredy Torres

Fredy Torres was an El Salvadorean judoka who fought at the 1984 and 1988 Olympic Games. He later established a children’s youth judo academy, which, after his death, would be named the Fredy Torres University Judo Academy.

Before the Seoul Olympics, in April 1988, Torres was arrested by the Treasury Police on suspicion that he had participated in the burning of a passenger bus in the Miramonte section of San Salvador in 8 April. He was released a few days later when preliminary evidence could not be corroborated to show that he had any involvement in the incident.

Torres became Secretary of Culture in El Salvador in 1989. In May 1989 labor unrest in El Salvador occurred after newspaper ads attacked the labor rights committee. Some leaders of the Union of Workers of the Salvadoran Social Security Institute (STISS) were accused of being subversives in a television documentary. Shortly after this broadcast Fredy Torres was abducted and tortured. Over the next few years Torres was threatened by various Death Squads. On 21 February 1993 Torres was assassinated in Parque Libertad in San Salvador.