Among them are former members of the Mulchén, Rengo, and Leopardo brigades. Also included are a former military prosecutor who falsified documents to cover up the crime of Carmelo Soria, an Army doctor who tortured prisoners, and the agent who extracted Eugenio Berríos from Chile.

The ghost of the crimes of the DINA and the CNI is revived in the payrolls of the Army’s fee-based personnel.

The list, updated in 2009 by the military institution itself, includes former members of the Mulchén, Rengo, and Leopardo brigades, some of whom are currently under prosecution. It also includes a torturer doctor expelled from the medical association in 1987 and a former military prosecutor accused of falsifying documentation to protect the murderers of the Chilean-Spanish diplomat Carmelo Soria.

Furthermore, it lists the former Army intelligence agent who clandestinely removed the DINA chemist, Eugenio Berríos, from Chile.

One of them is an old standard-bearer of the elite that surrounded Manuel Contreras at the headquarters on Calle Belgrano 11: Colonel (R) Hugo "Cacho" Acevedo Godoy, an aide to the DINA boss. Number five on the list of CNI agents that the Army provided to Judge Sergio Muñoz in the framework of the investigation into the crime of Tucapel Jiménez, Acevedo is married to the "Lady of Pentothal," the nurse-agent Carlota Bolumburu Taboada, who killed prisoners at the Santa Lucía Clinic by injecting them with overdoses of pentothal.

"I was in the Rengo Brigade, a security unit in the DINA that was under the command of the then-captain Christoph Willikie Flöl (convicted for the crime of General Carlos Prats). Later, in 1977, I was part of the personal security detail for my General Augusto Pinochet," "Cacho" told Judge Alejandro Madrid in the trial for the crime of agent Corporal Manuel Leyton.

A lover of history, Acevedo resorted to the Battle of La Concepción to choose the aliases for two MIR militants and another of socialist militancy who became agents: Marcia Merino Vega, María Uribe Gómez, and Luz Arce Sandoval assumed the names of Marta Vergara, Gloria Vilches, and Ana María Vergara, women who participated in that combat of the War of the Pacific.

Acevedo has a current fee-based contract for $751,259 per month for "advisory services for the administration of the Casas Viejas de Chena military property."

The doctor and Colonel (R) Guido Díaz Paci is another of those "benefited" by the military branch with fiscal funds. He participated in the passage of the Caravan of Death through La Serena on October 16, 1973, the date on which 15 prisoners were executed.

That afternoon, after the massacre, Díaz arranged the bodies, removed personal effects from their pockets, and with his medical report, took part in the cover-up of the slaughter, which was officially recorded as the fulfillment of a "sentence of a military tribunal," as reported by then-Lieutenant Juan Emilio Cheyre to the newspaper El Día of La Serena.

Díaz Paci later moved from the cover-up to the action and tortured prisoners at the Arica Regiment in La Serena. One of his victims there was the prisoner Margarita V.C.

"I was five months pregnant and I miscarried due to the torture. Among my torturers, I recognized the psychiatrist Carlos Andreu Albornoz and the doctor of the Arica Regiment of La Serena and the La Serena Hospital, Guido Díaz Paci.

I was raped, they put rats and spiders in my vagina, and they injected me with pentothal," the former prisoner told the Corporation for the Promotion and Defense of the Rights of the People (Codepu), a statement recorded in the report Testimonies of Torture in Chile, published by this organization in December 2003.

In October 1987, the Medical Association expelled Díaz Paci from its ranks for his participation, in complicity with the CNI, in the falsification of records regarding the state of health of the Christian Democrat transporter from La Serena, Mario Fernández López, who, as a result of the torture, had died at the La Serena Hospital in October 1984.

Díaz Paci has a current fee-based contract for $400,000 per month for "medical attention to active and retired personnel, and their families." To date, this doctor has not been prosecuted for crimes against humanity.

Chief of "Leopardo"

Colonel (R) Sergio Castillo González currently receives $1,205,298 per month from the Army for "advisory services for the development of the professional career structure project."

He is part of the income collected by this member of the team of instructor officers who, between November and December 1973, formed the first contingent of agents of the nascent DINA in Rocas de Santo Domingo.

Former agent Nibaldo Jiménez Castañeda, part of that first contingent, recalled in the trial for the forcibly disappeared of Operation Colombo that in January 1974 "we arrived at the Londres 38 barracks with a group of 20 agents under the command of Captain Sergio Castillo González." Another former agent, Fernando Guerra Guajardo, declared that "in September 1974 we were assigned to the barracks on Calle Irán with Los Plátanos (Ñuñoa, known as Venda Sexy) and in March-April 1975 to that of José Domingo Cañas (Ñuñoa), to which the Ciervo and Leopardo groups of the Purén Brigade were transferred." Castillo González commanded precisely the Leopardo group. "Within the Purén Brigade was the Leopardo Group in charge of the then-captain Castillo," acknowledged former agent Guido Jara Brevis.

Castillo operated side-by-side with the feared Marcelo Moren Brito, known as "El Ronco," at Londres 38. There, according to Nibaldo Jiménez, who worked in Leopardo under the command of Sergio Castillo, "one of our missions was to transport detainees to the Tejas Verdes regiment." In those "transfers," dozens of detainees were forcibly disappeared.

Their bodies were thrown into the sea. In December 2005, before Judge Juan Fuentes Belmar, Colonel (R) Castillo González admitted his status as a DINA agent. The former chief of Leopardo was prosecuted in May 2008 by Judge Víctor Montiglio as one of the perpetrators of the kidnappings and forced disappearances of the victims of Operation Colombo (the case of the 119): Jaime Buzio Lorca (PC), Rodolfo Espejo Gómez (PS), and Albano Fioraso Chau (MIR), all forcibly disappeared from the Londres 38 barracks in 1974.

The Prosecutor Cea

Sergio Cea, responsible for the Information Law chair at the Universidad del Desarrollo, receives fees of $677,222 per month from the Army as a "legal advisor on the project for reforms to military justice." Professor Cea presented a particular curriculum at the university linked to the Penta group, composed of Carlos Alberto Délano and Carlos Eugenio Lavín.

In 1993, Magistrate Violeta Guzmán restarted the investigation into the crime of the Chilean-Spanish diplomat Carmelo Soria, committed by the Mulchén Brigade in 1976. Before the Supreme Court transferred the case to military justice, the non-commissioned officer and member of that brigade, Remigio Ríos San Martín, managed to declare that Soria was murdered by that group.

He even gave names. However, once the case passed to the Second Military Prosecutor's Office of Santiago, precisely in charge of Justice Colonel and Prosecutor Sergio Cea Cienfuegos, the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE) initiated an offensive to obstruct the process.

Not only did it attempt to convince the non-commissioned officer to recant by pressuring him with his family and also gifting him a pickup truck, but it also urged Prosecutor Cea to falsify some statements and forge the signatures of Ríos and others who took part in or knew about the operation to kill Soria and had decided to provide information.

Cea, along with his secretaries Héctor Zúñiga Cadenasso and Leonardo García Pérez, were part of the cover-up and falsification of public documents operation initiated by the DINE, under the command of its chief, General Eugenio Covarrubias Valenzuela.

Brigadier Jaime Lepe Orellana, one of the perpetrators of the Soria crime and at that time secretary to the dictator Augusto Pinochet, had active participation in that operation.

Despite the above, the Supreme Court granted amnesty to the case for the homicide of Soria in August 1996. But on January 19, 2009, Judge Alejandro Madrid—who is instructing the trial for the murder of the DINA chemist, Eugenio Berríos, and is also investigating new evidence in the Soria case—prosecuted the now-former prosecutor Cea, along with Lepe Orellana, as co-perpetrators of the crime of falsification of public documents.

His two secretaries were charged as accomplices to that illicit act.

Sergio Lautaro Cea Cienfuegos continues with his classes at one of the so-called "cota mil" universities, nestled in San Carlos de Apoquindo. The same institution where Joaquín Lavín and his main samurai impart knowledge.

An Iturriaga in Mulchén

The Iturriaga Neumann brothers were fierce agents. Raúl Eduardo—chief of the Purén Brigade and the DINA foreign department—and Jorge Enrique are convicted for the double crime of General Carlos Prats and his wife. A third member of the clan, Alfredo Patricio, was also an agent of the Mulchén Brigade.

"The members of that unit were Guillermo Salinas Torres, Pablo Belmar Labbé, and Patricio Quilhot Palma," declared Alfredo Iturriaga Neumann to Judge Alejandro Madrid. Although he denied the name Mulchén Brigade and said that the group received the elegant name of "General Pinochet's Advanced Security Unit," in his statement he added that "that unit was part of the DINA."

The aforementioned individuals precisely made up Mulchén, in addition to Jaime Lepe. In any case, their membership in this group, which operated in coordination with Michael Townley and Eugenio Berríos, with sarin gas and other lethal chemical elements, is proven in the trial for the crime of Carmelo Soria and in the other cases that Madrid is instructing.

A black beret and commando, a symbol of the elite of the dictatorship's repressive organs, Alfredo Iturriaga Neumann is part of the current payroll of fee-based Army officials, receiving a monthly salary of $700,000 as an "advisor on matters related to the assessment of land force capabilities."

Pablo Rodríguez Márquez—prosecuted and formally accused by Judge Alejandro Madrid as the perpetrator of the crimes of kidnapping, criminal conspiracy, and obstruction of justice in the Berríos case—also appears on the Army's fee-based payroll.

On October 26, 1991, Lieutenant Rodríguez clandestinely removed the chemist Eugenio Berríos from Chile to Uruguay, with the false identity of "Manuel Morales Jara." In February 1990, Rodríguez had moved from the CNI to the DINE.

There, he joined the Special Operations Unit, pompously disguised as the Analysis Advisory Unit. This department, with reserved funds provided by Pinochet, obstructed the work of the judges who were investigating the crimes of the dictatorship. The unit also removed agents Carlos Herrera Jiménez and Arturo Sanhueza from Chile, bound for Argentina and Uruguay.

In Montevideo, Rodríguez was one of the main participants and articulators in keeping Berríos under kidnapping. Shortly before, on September 10, 1991, he went to Argentina in search of a false passport. Two days later, he returned to Santiago "debuting" the name "Mauricio Gómez," with which Herrera was removed seven days later to extract him from the trial for the crime of Tucapel Jiménez.

Today, Pablo Rodríguez Márquez receives a monthly fee of $700,000 from the Army as an "advisor to the force preparation section."

Consulted by telephone by LND, there was no response from the institution's Communications Department. Nor was an opinion received regarding the inquiry made via the public relations email.

Relatives: "National shame"

For the president of the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared, Lorena Pizarro, the fact that the Army is financing with funds "from all Chileans" former agents who committed crimes during the dictatorship "is a national shame and an affront to the Chilean people, but the greatest infamy is that we, the relatives of our own victims, are helping with our taxes to pay the salaries of these criminals who kidnapped, murdered, and forcibly disappeared our parents and children."

She adds that "this proves that the Army has not disassociated itself from these criminals. We cannot continue to endure such complicity. Thanks to the Transparency Law, this list of fee-based people has become known, but who knows how many more of these same subjects are being paid with public funds, since the list of contract personnel of the Army appears as reserved, protected by the Code of Military Justice."

Carmen Soria, daughter of the Chilean-Spanish diplomat murdered by the Mulchén Brigade, maintains that "this is a shame that must be denounced internationally. It is simply a double standard, because, while they talk to us about respecting human rights and achieving justice, the Army continues to finance these criminals."

Soria anticipates that she will demand that the government force the Army to immediately end the contracts of these individuals. "I am also helping to pay their salaries, while there are thousands of political exiles who are in misery today. I am going to bring this to the attention of the Spanish authorities so that they can present this fact to the Chilean government," she points out.

Roberto D’Orival, a member of the Colectivo 119, which groups the relatives of the 119 victims of Operation Colombo, lost his brother Jorge in that operation. Aware of this irregularity, he states that "this is something immoral that calls into question Chilean democracy, since it is supposed that the dictatorship came to an end, but we see that the State of Chile continues to finance human rights violators.

As a collective, we are going to demand explanations from the Ministry of Defense."

Source: La Nación.cl, August 30, 2009

Former DINA agents not under prosecution removed from Army fee-based list

Two former DINA agents who are not under prosecution for human rights violations but who remained on the Army's list of fee-based officials receiving monthly salaries for services rendered have been removed from this payroll.

They are the Army Colonel (R) who was an aide to the former chief of that criminal association Manuel Contreras, Hugo "Cacho" Acevedo Godoy, and the cardiologist doctor Sergio Pliscoff Marcovick.

Given that the Army informed the Minister of Defense Francisco Vidal and the Defense Commission of the Chamber of Deputies that, of all the lists of permanent, contract, and fee-based officials, there was no former DINA agent who was not under prosecution for crimes against humanity, La Nación asked that institution why Acevedo and Pliscoff were erased from the fee-based list if no indictment was pending against them.

The response from the Army's Communications Department was that "the reasons for removing Mr. Hugo Acevedo Godoy and Mr. Sergio Pliscoff Marcovick from the Army's fee-based list were due to the fact that both presented their voluntary resignation to the institution."

Thus, there are twelve former agents and members of that military branch who did not belong to the repressive services who will stop receiving monthly payments as re-hired personnel.

Of them, ten are under prosecution for crimes against humanity committed during the dictatorship.

There are three other former agents of the CNI and the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE) who, although they are under prosecution for this type of crime, still remain in active service. The Army did not discharge them and kept them in service until a first-instance conviction exists against them.

The former member of the DINA Rengo Brigade, Hugo Acevedo, received $751,259 monthly for advisory services, while Pliscoff received $532,864 per month working at the Santiago Centro Military Medical Center.

Acevedo was one of the six former agents that La Nación Domingo presented in the report "The DINA on a fee basis" published on August 30.

Pliscoff operated in the 1970s in the clinics where the DINA murdered prisoners, and later was a CNI doctor, operating until the end of 1989 in the clinical centers inherited from its predecessor. Afterward, the Army re-hired him to continue working in the institution.

SOME REMAIN

Remaining on the fee-based payroll are former CNI and DINE agents, Colonel (R) Pedro Pablo Bustos Valderrama and Adolfo Born Pineda, respectively. Bustos, former military attaché to the United Nations, receives $1,341,205 monthly for advisory services, and Born $873,018 as a "security analyst."

Born, former head of security for Copesa, was sentenced in May 2003 to five years as the perpetrator of the 1978 kidnapping and forced disappearance of DINE agent Guillermo Jorquera.

In 2007, the Santiago Court increased the sentence to six years, but in 2008, the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court acquitted him, despite the multiple pieces of evidence against him.

Source: La Nación, September 15, 2009

Indignation and astonishment provoked by Army contracts with DINA and CNI agents. Demands to "end these pacts of silence"

On the list, retired General Gonzalo Santelices Cuevas is involved, who, although he was not part of any of the dictatorship's repressive organizations, was discharged in February 2008 after being involved in the Caravan of Death Case in Antofagasta.

At least six former members of the repressive organizations of the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet still receive money from the Army, despite what was stated at the time by the then-former commander-in-chief, General Oscar Izurieta, today Undersecretary of Defense of the Piñera administration.

A brief journalistic investigation revealed that they are former members of the feared National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), Colonels (R) Hugo Acevedo Godoy and Patricio Zambelli Restelli, and non-commissioned officer Eugenio Álvarez González, as published by the EFE agency.

But also, on the Army's website, the names of Nora Carreño Barrera, Iván Droguett Ruiz, and Nazario Aracena Robles appear, who were agents of the National Information Center (CNI).

Also involved is retired General Gonzalo Santelices Cuevas, who, although he was not part of any of the dictatorship's repressive organizations, was discharged in February 2008 after his participation in the so-called Caravan of Death in Antofagasta became known.

Let us remember that the commander-in-chief of the Army, General Óscar Izurieta, was already involved in a similar controversy in 2009 when he declared before the Defense Commission of the Chamber of Deputies that there was no former CNI or DINA member providing services to the armed institution in the Army.

However, in 2011, the current Undersecretary of Defense again jumped into the spotlight after it became known that he incorporated former members of the military dictatorship's security services into his team of advisors.

These were former DINA agent Ítalo Seccatore; Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda's son-in-law, Orlando Carter; former CNI agents Alejandro Romero, José Joaquín Pérez, and Pedro Fernández; and Mario Larenas, who is under complaint for the executions at the La Serena regiment in 1973.

The human rights sector questions advisory services

From the human rights sector, the lawyer for 15 families in the "Caravan of Death" case, Cristián Cruz, asserted that "here, more than a responsibility of the State for hiring them, the responsibility lies with the Army, because they know who the dark characters who participated in the dictatorship are."

"Here the Army refuses to disassociate itself from these burdens of the past, and unfortunately, it involves all the families who have been victims. So we do not understand why it happens; furthermore, there must be dignity because here they are rewarding them instead of doing justice," the professional claims.

Furthermore, Cruz mentioned in a conversation with Cambio21 that "we must end these pacts of silence, and the Army must give a clear sign of 'never again,' because until now it has not collaborated with the crimes that are being investigated."

For her part, the vice president of the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared (AFDD), Mireya García, said that "it is a situation that undoubtedly cannot happen, although they are becoming (the former DINA and CNI agents) part of the current administration of this country."

To this, she adds that "they have already denied it previously; they even lied in front of Parliament denying these hirings," referring to the statements of Oscar Izurieta.

Finally, García mentioned to Cambio21 that "the Army does not cut ties with the protagonists of the dictatorship; on the contrary, they continue to generate them with them. Furthermore, here they are being paid a salary with the money of all Chileans to characters who were part of the repression of this country."

Without logic

Faced with this situation, DC Deputy Jorge Burgos said that "once and for all," the high command of the Armed Forces should order the suspension of contractual links between military institutions and former DINA and CNI agents.

In Burgos's opinion, it is necessary to always respect the "principle of innocence," beyond the "social reproach that the presumption or mere suspicion that a person may have participated in an illicit action of the characteristics of the DINA might legitimately produce in one."

However, "there is also a certain principle of minimum common sense. It seems to me that at this point we should not continue to have surprises that Armed Forces institutions hire people who have formalizations or indictments in human rights matters," the parliamentarian indicated to Cooperativa.

For his part, Deputy Patricio Hales (PPD) asserted that "whoever has had criminal responsibilities must answer to justice" and added that "one thing is legal rights, and another very different thing are the political conditions of a government that does not care about hiring officials who were human rights violators or a possible criminal in one of the most horrific areas of the country's history."

"All governments should be especially careful with the people they hire, especially those they want to use in a position of trust," the legislator declared.

Finally, he referred to General Izurieta, adding to Cambio21 that "he must not have been aware of this situation. He is not characterized as a human rights violator."

The salaries of the former DINA and CNI agents

Gonzalo Santelices Cuevas: He declared that on the night of October 18, 1973, he kidnapped 14 political prisoners from the Antofagasta jail and drove them in trucks to the Quebrada del Way, on the outskirts of that city.

With personnel under his command, he lined up the prisoners so that the Caravan of Death squadron, commanded by General Sergio Arellano, could murder them. Afterward, he loaded the bodies onto the trucks and left them piled up on the street in front of the local morgue, where their relatives found them.

Patricio Zambelli Restelli: He currently receives 1,300,000 pesos per month from the Army as an "advisor for Planning of the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE)."

According to a judicial statement from May 2010, he is an intelligence expert and operated as an agent at the Villa Grimaldi prison camp "alongside Miguel Krassnoff" while prisoners were being tortured and murdered there.

In 1976, he joined the Caupolicán Brigade of the DINA, which that year kidnapped all the members of the clandestine leadership of the Communist Party, who were finally murdered at the Simón Bolívar barracks.

Hugo Acevedo: He receives 750,000 pesos per month as an "advisor for structural projects of the San Bernardo Infantry School." Known as "Cacho" Acevedo, he was an Army officer, a member of the DINA Rengo Brigade, and the legal representative of Augusto Pinochet Hiriart.

He is the one who represented Pinochet's son in the signing of the deed for the Diet Lobos Society, a commercial screen for the DINA to cover up activities both in Chile and abroad.

He is married to the nurse Eliana Bolumburu Taboada, a DINA agent famous at the London Clinic and for her participation in the death of Corporal Manuel Jesús Leyton and former President Eduardo Frei M.

This officer replaced Alejandro Burgos as an assistant to Manuel Contreras in the DINA High Command. In 1989, he assumed the position of Chief of the Anti-Subversive Division of the National Information Center (CNI).

Eugenio Álvarez, who also belonged to the DINA and the CNI, obtains 340,000 pesos per month as an "administrative advisor to the Army Maintenance Directorate."

Nazario Aracena: The former lieutenant colonel, a former operational agent of the CNI, earns 787,000 pesos per month as a "Security Supervisor of the Army General Staff."

Nora Carreño, a former operational agent of the CNI, earns 660,000 pesos per month as an "advisor to the Command of the Santiago Military Garrison."

Iván Droguett receives 420,000 pesos per month as an "advisor to the Army General Staff."

Source: Cambio 21, November 27, 2013

6 CNI agents convicted for the murders of 2 MIR militants in 1989 in a fake confrontation

The visiting minister for Human Rights cases of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Mario Carroza Espinosa, convicted six former agents of the National Information Center (CNI) for the homicides of the young men Eric Rodríguez Hinojosa (20 years old) and Iván Palacios Guarda (19), militants of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), executed on April 18, 1989, in the commune of Quinta Normal.

The magistrate convicted the former Army general, who was Director of the CNI at the time of the crimes, Humberto Leiva Gutiérrez, and the former Army lieutenant colonel Hugo César Acevedo Godoy, who was chief of the CNI Anti-Subversive Division at the time, to a sentence of 15 years and one day in prison for their responsibility as perpetrators of the homicide.

Meanwhile, agents Juan Raúl Farías Orellana, Víctor Rolando Caro Pizarro, and Jorge Enrique Rivas Arancibia must serve a sentence of 5 years and one day in prison.

The latter subject infiltrated popular and resistance organizations operating in the commune of Pudahuel, in Santiago, with the alias "Miguel," presented himself as a MIR member, and set the trap that led to the murder of the two victims.

The former Army captain, Luis Arturo Sanhueza Ros, alias "El Guiro," who was chief of the CNI Blue Brigade at the time of the events, must serve a sentence of 3 years and one day in prison for his responsibility as a perpetrator. Minister Carroza granted this criminal the benefit of supervised release.

The ruling acquits agent Armando Rodolfo Ávila Fierro. Previously, the former Army brigadier and chief of the CNI Metropolitan Division at the time, Enrique Leddy Araneda, had been acquitted due to dementia.

Minister Carroza established that the Anti-Subversive Division of the National Information Center (CNI) organized an operation in search of the militants of the Revolutionary Left Movement of the time, for which it infiltrated an agent from its ranks into the organization who used the alias "Miguel."

"Thus, on April 18, 1989, at approximately 9:00 PM, two militants of the Revolutionary Left Movement, Eric Enrique Rodríguez Hinojosa and Iván Palacios Guarda, were summoned to meet on Calle San Pablo near No. 4000 by a subject identified as Miguel, who finally turned out to be an agent of the National Information Center, who had infiltrated the popular neighborhoods, claiming to be the zonal head of the Revolutionary Left Movement—MIR—, his function being to recruit young people so that they would join the so-called 'Resistance Command'; this individual, to gain the trust of the members of the Movement, provided them with weapons and imparted military instruction," says the resolution.

It adds that: "Prior to the arrival of the victims at the aforementioned meeting, the CNI officials of the Anti-Subversive Unit had deployed a vast operation in the sector with the purpose of preparing an ambush for them; therefore, when they arrived at the place and positioned themselves in the meeting zone, part of the agents appeared and ordered them to stop, and before they could react, whether to protect themselves, flee, or repel the attack, the CNI agents initiated a shootout that wounded and took the life of the victim Iván Palacios Guarda on the spot, and they left his companion, Eric Enrique Rodríguez Hinojosa, seriously wounded, who had to be rushed to public assistance, where he remained in a coma and died on September 4, 1989, as a result of the complicated craniocerebral gunshot wound, without an exit wound, that was inflicted on him on that occasion."

Furthermore, it is considered that: "Subsequently, eyewitnesses have pointed out that the CNI agents, once the shootout ended, carried out a series of maneuvers at the scene of the event with the object of simulating a confrontation with the victims, arranging a context that they intended to be endorsed by the statements of the participants when they testified under their operational names before the Military Prosecutor's Office, delivering as an official version that the victims were preparing to place explosive devices on two public lighting poles that held a transformer, but that when they were ordered to stop, they fired at them and they had no other alternative but to repel said attack with the consequences already described."

Source: Resumen.cl, June 7, 2018

Three former Army officers convicted for the murder of an opponent in 1988 in Santiago

The extraordinary visiting minister for Human Rights violation cases of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Mario Carroza Espinosa, convicted three former Army officers and former agents of the National Information Center (CNI) for their responsibility in the crime of qualified homicide of Guillermo Eugenio Rodríguez Solís, a 26-year-old street vendor and militant of the Broad Party of Socialist Left (PAIS).

The crime was perpetrated on December 20, 1988, in the commune of Santiago.

In the ruling (case roll 365-2012), the presiding judge convicted former Colonel José Patricio Cruz Lorente and former Lieutenant Colonel Hugo César Acevedo Godoy to 10 years and one day in prison, in the capacity of perpetrators of the crime; and former Brigadier Humberto Leiva Gutiérrez to 3 years and one day in prison, as an accessory after the fact, with the benefit of intensive supervised release for the same period.

Another person involved in this crime, named Enrique Leddy Araneda, was not convicted because he is classified as "demented."

During the investigation stage of the case, Minister Carroza managed to establish the following facts:

"That the National Information Center, an organization created by the Military Government on August 13, 1977, by Decree Law No. 1878, executed through its agents persecutions, detentions, interrogations under torture, and executions, being responsible for numerous deaths and forced disappearances of political opponents;

That in that historical context, on December 20, 1988, on Calle Manuel Rodríguez in front of number 369 in the Commune of Santiago, the citizen Guillermo Eugenio Rodríguez Solís was executed by agents of that organization, belonging to the Blue Group, C. 1, 2.1, which was part of the Anti-Subversive Unit;

That in effect, on that occasion, in the night hours, a team from the aforementioned Group, commanded by the agent under the assumed name Óscar Hernández Santa María—identified subsequently as the Army officer Krantz Johans Bauer Donoso, currently deceased, accompanied by the Army official, Lieutenant José Patricio Cruz Lorente, and presumably a driver, not identified—had an encounter in that place with the victim Rodríguez Solís (who has been vaguely and unconfirmedly indicated as an informant or infiltrator of the intelligence organization);

That this operational activity of the group was under the control and supervision of the Anti-Subversive Unit, whose Chief was the Army officer Hugo César Acevedo Godoy, who on that date depended on the Chief of the Metropolitan Division, Enrique Leddy Araneda, and the Director of the National Information Center, Humberto Leiva Gutiérrez, who by command was responsible for being informed of everything that happened in the organization, as happened with this operation;

That as a result of the encounter, the CNI agent Cruz Lorente resulted with two shots in his body, one in the abdomen and another in a thigh, which led him and his companion Krantz Bauer Donoso, alias 'Óscar Hernández Santa María,' to fire their service weapons at Rodríguez Solís and cause his death with six bullet impacts, causing facial, cervical, thoracic, abdominal, lumbar spinal, and left forearm trauma;

That subsequent to what happened, the personnel of the National Information Center arrived at the scene of the event, then the personnel of the Carabineros, and finally, the Homicide Brigade, who established the required procedure and sent the background information to the respective Military Court;

That the official version, collected by the police officials from the CNI agents, is that the victim was asked for his identification because his attitudes were suspicious, and he reacted by taking a pistol from his clothing, which required one of the agents to lunge at him to subdue him, but that in the course of the struggle the victim fired and the agent received bullet impacts in the abdomen and thigh, which moved the reaction of the agents, who fired at him and Rodríguez Solís fell wounded, fatally struck down."

However, the version of witnesses and relatives of the victim indicates that he had been detained in previous hours, that he was executed in another place, and then transported to the place where the CNI agents staged the show of a supposed confrontation. They also deny that Rodríguez Solís was an informant or possessed any firearm.

Source: resumen.cl, May 27, 2019

The Fourth Chamber of the Court of Appeals sentenced Hugo Acevedo Godoy, Juan Farías Orellana, Víctor Caro Pizarro, and Jorge Rivas Arancibia to 15 years and one day in prison, and Luis Sanhueza Ross to 10 years and one day, in their capacity as perpetrators.

The Santiago Court of Appeals convicted five agents of the defunct National Information Center (CNI) for their responsibility in the consummated and repeated crime of qualified homicide against Iván Gustavo Palacios Guarda and Erick Enrique Rodríguez Hinojosa, militants of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), who were executed in a staged shootout on April 18, 1989, in the commune of Quinta Normal.

In a split decision (case file 1.443-2019), the Fourth Chamber of the Court of Appeals—composed of ministers Hernán Crisosto Greisse, Antonio Ulloa Márquez, and acting lawyer Jorge Benítez Urrutia—upheld the appealed sentence regarding the conviction of former agent Hugo César Acevedo Godoy to 15 years and one day in prison as the perpetrator of the crimes.

Furthermore, the chamber upheld the conviction against Juan Farías Orellana, Víctor Caro Pizarro, and Jorge Rivas Arancibia, with the modification that the sentence they must serve as perpetrators of the crimes is increased to 15 years and one day in prison; in the case of former agent Luis Sanhueza Ross, the sentence he must serve, also as a perpetrator, was increased to 10 years and one day of effective imprisonment.

In the same case, the Santiago Court of Appeals overturned the first-instance ruling and decreed the acquittal of the then-head of the CNI, Humberto Leiva Gutiérrez, and confirmed the acquittal of agent Armando Rodolfo Ávila Fierro.

"The crimes in question were committed by State agents in the context of the final stages of a period of grave, massive, and systematic human rights violations, with the victims serving as instruments within a general policy of exclusion, harassment, and persecution of a large group of people, composed of politicians, workers, students, professionals, and anyone who, since September 11, 1973, during the tenure of the military regime, was accused of belonging to or being ideologically aligned with the deposed political regime, or considered suspicious of opposing or hindering the military government's project," the ruling states.

The resolution adds: "Thus, the established facts show that the victims were subjected to inhumane treatment, devoid of any due respect for the dignity inherent to human beings; without the most elementary pity for a fellow human, and far from any moral principle, by instigating two people to carry out acts of resistance only to, after preparing the site and scene of the event, stage a shootout and kill two people.

This constitutes a multiple and continuous violation of numerous rights, which has been described by the General Assembly of the Organization of American States as 'an affront to the conscience of the Hemisphere and constitutes a crime against humanity,' crimes that the world community has committed to eradicate, as such acts deserve categorical condemnation from the universal conscience, for they attack fundamental human values that no convention, pact, or positive norm can repeal, weaken, or disguise.

Therefore, the crimes in this case must be classified as crimes against humanity."

Regarding the acquittal of the CNI chief at the time of the events, the chamber reasons: "(...) the conduct of the accused Humberto Leiva Gutiérrez during the leadership he held at the CNI, in the opinion of this Court, resembles the profile of an administrator, intended to terminate the agency and reallocate its resources, with an anti-subversive unit that had been dismantled, as it became the Metropolitan Intelligence Brigade, under the command of Brigadier Enrique Ledy, without carrying out operational or combat activities."

"Indeed," it continues, "there is no indubitable evidence indicating that the accused ordered or arranged the murder of the young victims of these crimes, or that he participated in a coordination meeting, or was present at the scene of the events, or signed any communiqué.

There is no evidence that can attribute an order or instruction to Ledy, Acevedo, or Sanhueza. Nor did he participate in the falsification of information provided to the military justice system that was already under investigation."

"Given the reasoning and by virtue of the provisions of Article 456 bis of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which states that no one can be convicted of a crime unless the court judging them has acquired, through legal means of proof, the conviction that a punishable act has truly been committed and that the accused bears culpable participation in it, as penalized by law, these judges of the majority opinion deem the grounds put forward by the first-instance judge insufficient to convict Leiva Gutiérrez.

This is because the criminal classification of perpetrator of the qualified homicides of Mr. Iván Gustavo Palacios Guarda and Mr. Erick Enrique Rodríguez Hinojosa, under No. 1 of Article 391 of the Penal Code, which occurred in this city on April 18, 1989, is not established regarding him.

Therefore, dissenting from the prosecutor's report, he will be acquitted, thus dissenting from the opinion of the Judicial Prosecutor who was in favor of confirming the sentence in this regard," it concludes.

In civil matters, the Court of Appeals confirmed the sentence ordering the State to pay a total indemnity of $100,000,000 (one hundred million pesos) for moral damages to the plaintiffs: two siblings and a cousin of the victim Palacios Guarda.

The criminal decision was adopted with the dissenting vote of Minister Crisosto Greisse, who was in favor of upholding the appealed sentence in the part that convicted Leiva Gutiérrez to 15 years and one day in prison as the perpetrator of the crimes; and in civil matters, with the dissenting vote of the acting lawyer Benítez Urrutia, who was in favor of overturning the sentence and rejecting the claim, considering the statute of limitations for the indemnity action to have expired.

Staged shootout

In the first-instance ruling, the extraordinary visiting minister Mario Carroza established the following facts:

" 1.- That the National Information Center, created on August 13, 1977, established through Decree Law No. 1878 its structure, powers, and faculties similar to those of its predecessor, the DINA, and like it, was dependent on the Ministry of the Interior, its primary function being to gather and process all national information from various fields of action that '... the Supreme Government requires for the formation of plans and programs, and the adoption of measures necessary for the protection of national security, the development of national activities, and the maintenance of institutional order.'; 2.- That this intelligence organization was militarized, and therefore had personnel from the armed forces and civilian personnel to carry out its functions; it was endowed with its own resources and also detention centers, all under the charge of a General Director who exercised command at the national level and to whom all its members were subordinate; 3.- That in the Metropolitan Region, subordinate to the command of the National Directorate, was the Anti-Subversive Division, installed in the República Barracks, located on Grajales Street, and dependent on the CNI's Intelligence Department. Its objective was to organize itself at the top level around an Officer who headed the operational groups, also establishing the guidelines, objectives, and setting work priorities; then, field activities were carried out by groups or work teams, composed of members of the Armed Forces, Carabineros, the Investigative Police, and civilians; 4.- That, as things stood, on April 18, 1989, at approximately 9:00 PM, two militants of the Revolutionary Left Movement, Erick Enrique Rodríguez Hinojosa and Iván Palacios Guarda, were summoned to meet on San Pablo Street near the 4000 block by an individual identified as Miguel, who ultimately turned out to be an agent of the National Information Center, who had infiltrated popular neighborhoods, claiming to be the zonal head of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR). His function was to recruit young people so that they would join the so-called 'Resistance Command'; this individual, to gain the trust of the Movement's members, provided them with weapons and imparted military instruction; 5.- That prior to the arrival of the victims at the aforementioned meeting, the CNI officials of the Anti-Subversive Unit had deployed a vast operation in the sector with the purpose of preparing an ambush for them. Therefore, when they arrived at the location and positioned themselves in the meeting area, some of the agents appeared and ordered them to stop, and before they could react—whether to protect themselves, flee, or repel the attack—the CNI agents initiated a shootout that wounded and took the life of the victim Iván Palacios Guarda at the scene, and left his companion, Erick Enrique Rodríguez Hinojosa, seriously wounded, requiring him to be rushed to the public emergency service, where he remained in a coma and passed away on September 4, 1989, as a result of the complicated craniocerebral gunshot wound, with no exit wound, inflicted upon him on that occasion; 6.- That subsequently, eyewitnesses have pointed out that the CNI agents, once the shooting had ended, carried out a series of maneuvers at the scene of the event with the object of simulating a shootout with the victims, arranging a context that they intended to be supported by the statements of the participants when they testified under operational names before the Military Prosecutor's Office, providing the official version that the victims were preparing to place explosive devices on two public lighting poles that held a transformer, but that when ordered to stop, they fired at them and they had no other alternative but to repel said attack with the consequences already described."

Source: pjud.cl, October 1, 2021

Dictatorship Papers: The 26 doctors and five nurses who served in DINA clinics

The personnel who worked in the clinics created by the DINA—Santa Lucía, London, and El Golf—appear in a judicial branch that remains archived. There are only five doctors convicted in proceedings for crimes committed by the repressive agency.

According to the investigation by Judge Alejandro Solís, some doctors monitored detainees while they were being tortured. CIPER accessed judicial documents containing testimonies from clinic workers regarding the role of these professionals.

In that review, we counted at least 31 people (26 doctors and five nurses) who worked in the clinics. Not all participated in torture, but none deny having placed themselves at the service of the DINA. Seven continue to practice, and three are awaiting rulings from the Supreme Court.

On June 1, 2007, a retired Carabineros officer and former agent of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), the repressive agency of the early years of the dictatorship, appeared before a judge. He was questioned about the murder of Corporal Manuel Leyton Robles, which occurred in 1977, whom the DINA eliminated at the London Clinic.

Leyton was in possession of a car reported stolen—it had belonged to a forcibly disappeared person—and for that reason, he was arrested by Carabineros. At the police station, he explained what he did for a living and mentioned the illegal detentions carried out by the dictatorship's agents.

He was released. But, for the DINA leadership, he had spoken more than was advisable. They took him for a medical check-up at the London Clinic—one of the three healthcare facilities created by the DINA—where, despite his good physical condition, he suffered a fatal cardiorespiratory arrest.

The interrogation of the former agent, whose identity CIPER keeps confidential, led to a detailed description of the three DINA clinics: Santa Lucía, London, and El Golf. By now, the justice system has established that the security agency recruited a group of doctors who assisted the DINA with the monitoring, resuscitation, and, in some cases, even the homicide of detainees.

The former agent declared that when there was a detainee in a barracks who could not provide more information, the doctors fulfilled a role: “A DINA doctor was called, who would go and attend to the detainee.

I don’t remember who they were, but they were from the clinic (Santa Lucía). These doctors were there for that; it was their function and what that healthcare center was created for,” he stated.

Journalistic efforts to reveal the functioning of what the press called the DINA’s “sanitary brigade” have been numerous. Chilevisión did so in 2014, when it confronted six doctors who are on the list of professionals who provided these services and revealed their workplaces: among them, the ophthalmologist Vittorio Orvieto Tiplitzky, the otolaryngologist Eugenio Fantuzzi Alliende, and the late Manfred Jürgensen Caesar.

Years earlier, the journalist Mónica González, founder of CIPER, had already published the existence of these healthcare centers in reports that contained a list of doctors from the London Clinic. And for his book “El despertar de los Cuervos” (The Awakening of the Ravens), the journalist Javier Rebolledo accessed the statements made by the health personnel of these clinics during the investigation by Minister Alejandro Solís, a file that is currently archived.

CIPER was able to review those and other testimonies that shaped this article and confirmed that at least seven doctors continue to practice in the private sector. For this report, all seven were contacted in order to incorporate their versions, but only one doctor agreed to have her testimony published.

DOCTORS INVESTIGATED BY JUDGE SOLÍS

The list of 31 professionals compiled by CIPER only includes those who were part of the clinics investigated by Judge Alejandro Solís. Of them, only five have been convicted in human rights cases. That list includes the late Manfred Jürgensen, brother of the former constitutional convention member Harry Jürgensen (RN), who was sentenced to eight years of presidio mayor as an accomplice to the qualified homicide of the teacher and MIR militant, Federico Álvarez Santibáñez.

Three others are awaiting a ruling from the Supreme Court.

The statements to which CIPER had access, containing accusations and accounts of torture, were mostly provided by former workers of the clinics. Some of those files were integrated into “Papeles de la Dictadura” (Dictatorship Papers), a platform with more than 4,000 documents online developed by CIPER with the collaboration of the CIP-UDP (see the “Papeles de la Dictadura” platform here).

In those records, the sensitive data of the victims and the clinic workers who filed the complaints were redacted.

According to the judicial investigation, at least 13 doctors had graduated from the Universidad de Chile. This is not strange. At that time, the FACH (Chilean Air Force) Colonel Dámaso González Espinosa, who led the dental area of the Santa Lucía Clinic, served as a professor at that university and was in charge of recruiting part of the staff.

This was pointed out to CIPER by some of the doctors contacted.

The statements mention three people in charge of these establishments: the FACH cardiologist Werner Zanghellini Martínez, the pediatrician Hernán Horacio Taricco Lavín, and the nurse Eliana Carlota Bolumburú Toboada.

Last March, the Supreme Court sentenced Werner Zanghellini to a prison term for the first time. The other two are under prosecution and have a sentence ratified by the Santiago Court of Appeals in the investigation into the homicide of Corporal Leyton, a case that must be reviewed by the Supreme Court.

A retired Carabineros sergeant testified that it was at the Santa Lucía Clinic where he saw the most agents with prisoners: “Indeed, I saw people arrive at that facility, who apparently had just been detained by agents; they were treated, but immediately they were taken away by the same agents who had brought them.” A nurse who worked at the site declared that “the doctors of the Santa Lucía Clinic were frequently requested at Villa Grimaldi to examine the detainees, and they were always accompanied by a nurse.” The villa was a secret DINA barracks where detainees were tortured and murdered. “In my case, I remember having spoken with the detainees that the doctor was examining, encouraging them to cooperate with the information requested of them,” the same statement continues.

The healthcare centers were supposedly created to attend to civilian agents and their families, who did not have coverage in the Armed Forces hospitals. Indeed, medical and dental care was also provided there.

A statement from the dentist Pablo César Oyanguren Plaza asserted that at the London Clinic “even President Pinochet was treated on some occasion.” Other accounts say that Manuel Contreras did so as well.

The statement of a retired Army non-commissioned officer who was a nurse at the Santa Lucía Clinic is chilling: “It was known that at Villa Grimaldi, cars were driven over the bodies of the detainees and that sometimes they went too far and they arrived at the Santa Lucía (clinic) dying.

When there was no remedy, they had to be put to death with pentothal. I do not know what happened to the detainees to whom pentothal was administered, but it was rumored that there was another brigade that took charge of them to throw them into the sea.”

MISS ELIANA

“There was a code at the Santa Lucía Clinic, which was a warning: ‘the package is coming.’ It meant that a detainee was coming, and one understood that one should not get involved. They would take them into a room and then administer something, and later the patient would come out deceased.

I heard from conversations among these doctors and Miss Eliana that they administered eight milligrams of pentothal, which caused an arrhythmia followed by a cardiorespiratory arrest, resulting in death at the clinic. And around midnight, they would take them out ‘camouflaged,’ covered with a blanket.”

The previous paragraph is part of the extrajudicial statement of a former DINA employee, dated June 29, 2005. His testimony is one of the most detailed within Minister Solís’s investigation. The person he calls “Miss Eliana” is the nurse Eliana Carlota Bolumburú Taboada.

At the Santa Lucía Clinic, she held the position of head of nurses, even over those with military rank. Upon reviewing the statements from the judicial process, it is clear that she played a fundamental role in that facility, even though her name does not resonate with the same impact as that of other professionals who provided service to the repressive apparatus.

In 2015, Eliana Bolumburú was sentenced, in the first instance, to three years and one day, in addition to disqualification from the profession, as a cover-up for the homicide of Corporal Manuel Leyton.

But the court decided to grant her the benefit of intensive supervised release for the same period. That sentence was ratified in 2020 by the Santiago Court of Appeals and is currently awaiting a ruling from the Supreme Court.

The statements of other former clinic workers assert that Bolumburú was aware of the treatment the DINA gave to detainees. There are testimonies that point to her as being knowledgeable and cooperative regarding the interrogations and the use of pentothal, an anesthetic known as “the truth serum,” because, when administered in low doses, it causes patients to enter a state of drowsiness in which they can continue answering questions.

The application of pentothal has not been proven by the justice system, and the former nurse is only under prosecution in the investigation into the homicide of Corporal Leyton.

In a police statement from June 2005, a nurse recalled the moment he met Bolumburú when she was arriving in an ambulance from the London Clinic with a patient on a stretcher. “The one I recognized immediately was the Army Corporal Manuel Leyton Robles,” the nurse asserted.

He also added that, upon returning to the clinic at night, he found a lady at the entrance crying: “And I asked her what was wrong, and she stated that her husband had died of a heart attack, and I learned that it was Corporal Manuel Leyton.”

More than one former official of the Santa Lucía Clinic pointed to Bolumburú as one of the people who controlled the medical staff. The statements also say that she did the same, for a short period, at the London Clinic. “Due to her position, she was aware of everything that happened there,” noted a former Army nurse.

Another former worker recounted that on one occasion he accompanied Bolumburú to Villa Grimaldi and that she “connected directly and knew the bosses. I was able to see the interrogation rooms through this nurse who had direct access to these areas.”

In 2005, a retired Army non-commissioned officer declared before the PDI (Investigations Police) of Valdivia that there were doctors from Santa Lucía involved “secretly in acts of death of detainees.” He provided three names: Dr. Werner Zanghellini, the anesthesiologist Osvaldo Leyton, and the nurse Bolumburú Taboada.

Two years later, the non-commissioned officer met Bolumburú in a confrontation. The nurse was categorical: “I was in charge of buying and supplying the medications that were for the treatment of the personnel.

I never knew about pentothal (…). Regarding the fact that there were doctors involved in acts of death at the clinic, it is a slander; I don’t know what could have motivated him to tell such a lie,” she emphasized.

The first time Eliana Bolumburú testified, according to the records of this file, was on June 17, 2003, at the Interpol National Central Bureau. At that time, she maintained that there were no irregular situations at the DINA clinics. In 2005, she declared: “Detained persons were never treated. Furthermore, I must assure you that I did not know of other DINA detention centers.”

In 2006, her version changed. This time she confessed to having known about detainees at the Santa Lucía Clinic. According to her new account, Marcelo Moren, a former DINA agent who died in 2015 while serving a sentence of more than 300 years, arrived at the healthcare facility once.

On that occasion, Bolumburú recounted, Moren appeared together with the agent Osvaldo Pincetti. They were asking for a detainee: “I knew there was a person who was in a bed on the second floor; I presume it was a political prisoner, but I did not know this person’s name, although I saw that they had burned wrists,” the nurse said.

Eliana Bolumburú worked at the Santa Lucía Clinic and later at the London. She retired in mid-1977, a period during which she married the officer and DINA agent Hugo “Cacho” Acevedo Godoy, one of the men closest to the head of the repressive agency, Manuel Contreras.

Eliana Bolumburú was contacted by CIPER last Monday, August 28, but she did not respond to the messages. Through her lawyer, Hernán Aladín, she initially indicated that she could address our questions on Thursday, August 31.

But that same day, her lawyer explained that, for health reasons, she would not be able to answer our questions until after September 20. CIPER had already delayed the publication of this article given the possibility of meeting with her, but an interview could not be arranged before the closing of this article.

DR. TARICCO

A surgeon with a specialty in pediatrics. His residence in Lo Barnechea, a property that according to the Internal Revenue Service has a fiscal appraisal of more than $672 million, is registered under the name Inversiones Santo Domingo.

That company—established in 2013 and composed of the doctor and his family—also owns the car that was parked at his home when CIPER tried to contact him, a 2022 Mercedes Benz.

In 2014, the Canal 13 program “En su propia Trampa” (In His Own Trap) confronted him for offering a fake laser treatment at his private practice, “Red Médica Tabancura,” which promised to cure psychiatric disorders, as well as addictions such as smoking and alcoholism.

Like Bolumburú, in 2015 Taricco Lavín was convicted in the first instance in the Corporal Leyton case. The court sentenced him to three years and one day as a cover-up for the homicide, but granted him conditional remission.

In 2020, the Court of Appeals reduced that sentence to 541 days, without ruling on disqualification from the profession. The doctor filed an appeal for cassation: he alleges that he did not participate in the events. He is awaiting the ruling of the Supreme Court.

Taricco Lavín signed the report where it was asserted that the cause of Leyton’s death was asphyxia, due to aspiration of vomit, with a cardiorespiratory arrest. But, in a police statement, the former DINA agent Michael Townley recounted that he received the order “to provide (sarin) gas to eliminate Corporal Leyton and that the material author who applied the sarin was an Army lieutenant.”

In June 2003, Taricco denied his participation in the false report: “I never held the position of director of the London Clinic. Regarding the report that I have just read, which bears my signature, it is a technical report, which, due to a specific situation and because I was a health officer, I was asked to sign as director, a position I did not hold.”

Another doctor from the clinic, Luis Hernán Santibáñez Santelices, one of those who examined the Army non-commissioned officer, declared that he saw Taricco Lavín “preparing a report for the Legal Medical Service, for a patient who had died, knowing no further details, since I did not ask nor was I told what had happened to the patient he had previously attended.”

Furthermore, in the judicial file, there are several statements that point to Taricco as one of the heads of the London Clinic. In 2003, the nurse Bolumburú asserted that “Dr. Taricco replaced Dr. Zanghellini when he was absent from his position as general director.”

Through his lawyer, Leonardo Battaglia, Dr. Hernán Taricco declined to answer CIPER’s questions.

DR. LEYTON

On June 27, 2003, Osvaldo Leyton declared that it was due to an offer that he arrived at the Santa Lucía Clinic in 1974. He mentioned that, upon arriving at the address he had been given, he found out “that it was a DINA barracks and not the Air Force. In this place, they asked me if I was willing to work for them, which I accepted due to economic needs.”

In July 2005, the anesthesiologist testified at the Interpol offices. There, he asserted that he did have knowledge that on occasions DINA agents arrived with detainees: “Indeed, I had to go on several occasions to detention centers like Villa Grimaldi and Cuatro Álamos.” Leyton was pointed out in the statement of an Army nurse as part of the doctors involved in episodes that ended in the death of detainees.

However, Leyton Bahamondes has no convictions, although in 2007 he was prosecuted for the death of Corporal Manuel Leyton.

For this investigation, the anesthesiologist was contacted by CIPER at his private practice in Providencia, but he declined to respond.

Leyton Bahamondes also testified before the police on November 17, 2006. On that occasion, he was questioned about Corporal Leyton’s medical file. It was in his handwriting. “I have no explanation as to why my handwriting appears in the part that refers to the care provided during the day; speculating a little, it may be that if I did it, it was due to an order that necessarily must have come from the medical leadership, which in that period corresponded, apparently, to Dr.

Taricco or to a superior military authority.”

Santiago Alfredo Matteo Galleguillos

He worked as an Army nurse at the Santa Lucía Clinic, and several of those who testified remember him for a single detail: the lie detector. On November 10, 2005, a nurse declared: “Both Osvaldo Leyton and Zanghellini were cardiologists, and the latter used a so-called PC1 or PC2, which was a lie detector, which operated with the advice of the nurse Santiago Matteo, who handled this equipment and which was kept in a small office at the London.”

Santiago Matteo Galleguillos was also prosecuted in the investigation into the murder of Corporal Leyton for allegedly covering up the homicide. But his participation could not be proven, and he was acquitted by the Santiago Court of Appeals in 2020.

In 2010, Matteo Galleguillos gave an extrajudicial statement. On that occasion, he said that he had traveled to Miami together with Dr. Zanghellini in 1975 for a course on the use of the lie detector or polygraph.

But he added that he had never used that machine. An Army nurse said that in the same clinic there was equipment that interrogated detainees with a lie detector that was handled—as he recounted—by the most senior nurses, Matteo Galleguillos and Lorenzo Toro Olivares.

VISITS TO DETENTION CENTERS

Among the doctors who have been convicted for crimes related to the DINA is the former director of the Santa Lucía Clinic, the cardiologist Werner Zanghellini, sentenced to 10 years and one day in an investigation into the qualified kidnapping of two people, within the framework of Operation Colombo.

Also the ophthalmologist Vittorio Orvieto, sentenced in several cases related to the Tejas Verdes prisoner camp. The same occurred with...

nfred Jürgensen, who passed away after being captured in Argentina. Jürgensen was a fugitive from justice after being sentenced by the Supreme Court in January of this year to eight years in prison as an accomplice to the qualified homicide of the professor and MIR militant, Federico Álvarez Santibáñez.

Along with him, the rheumatologist Luis Alberto Losada was sentenced to two years in prison as an accessory, with the benefit of conditional remission. Both assisted Álvarez Santibáñez at the Cuartel Borgoño, near the Estación Mapocho.

The nurse Orlando Jesús Torrejón Gatica is currently sentenced in multiple cases associated with victims of Operation Colombo and in the trial for the murder of the teacher Marta Ugarte Román.

Orlando Torrejón Gatica appears described in the statements of other former workers of the DINA clinics. One nurse stated that “the term ‘package’ refers to the detainees who were dead; generally, it was said ‘a package has gone out,’ and those who constantly used that term were Torrejón or Muñoz.” A retired Carabineros sergeant who worked as a nurse noted that “care for the detainees was carried out by specific personnel for them; for example, I remember Orlando Torrejón.”

Added to these names is the surgeon Pedro Valdivia Soto, though he was only convicted in the first instance as an accessory in the case of Corporal Leyton. Like Bolumburú and Taricco, Valdivia is awaiting the ruling of the Supreme Court.

In the files, there are also statements accusing other doctors of having attended detention centers. In 2005, a former worker at these clinics claimed to have accompanied the doctors Sergio Virgilio Bocaz, Enrique Silva Peralta, Christian Emhart Araya, Eugenio Fantuzzi Alliende, and Luis Cárcamo Díaz. “I must point out that several of these were recently graduated doctors,” he asserted.

Of that list, Luis Felipe Cárcamo Díaz, an otolaryngologist, is the only one who continues to practice: he does so at his private office in Temuco. Through a person who works there, Cárcamo declined to respond to inquiries for this article.

Among the doctors who continue to practice is also Luis Santibáñez Santelices, who currently sees patients at Integramédica. Santibáñez testified in the Leyton case and, besides detailing that he attended to the deceased non-commissioned officer, he noted: “I began working in the summer of 1977, at the request of Dr.

Werner Zanghellini, also a doctor for the Air Force. The reason was that they intended to implement an Intensive Care Unit there, as some attacks against the DINA and military authorities were presumed.

I lasted a short time; almost at the end of March of that same year, I submitted my resignation, not having managed to practice for three months at the Clínica London. I remember that the director at that date was Horacio Taricco Lavín.”

Contacted by CIPER, Santibáñez refused to address inquiries about his participation in the Clínica London.

Camilo Azar Saba is one of the doctors who examined the injuries of the professor and MIR militant, Federico Álvarez Santibáñez. He stated this before the courts: “By order of General Mena, I had to recertify the injuries presented by two people who had been detained by Carabineros and later transferred to the CNI (…) One of these people subsequently died at the Posta Central, a professor named Federico Álvarez Santibáñez.”

The doctor Jorge Manlio Fantini Valenzuela appears in a statement provided by a former civilian employee of the DINA: “He was the one who had to be most attentive when operations and detentions were carried out. He liked to be involved.” In 1982, Fantini married the nurse Isabel Margarita Jarpa Riveros, who provided services at the Clínica London.

THE GYNECOLOGISTS

One of the angles that guided the investigation into the DINA clinics was the alleged abortion caused by the torture suffered by a detainee who had arrived at the Clínica Santa Lucía eight months pregnant.

A police report records the testimony of a prisoner who was detained by the DINA in 1975. According to her account, she was held at Colonia Dignidad and Villa Grimaldi. The report maintains that “it was at Villa Grimaldi where she was able to see a detainee in poor physical condition due to the torture received, and who had come from a clinic located near the Cerro Santa Lucía, where they had murdered her eight-month-old son while he was in her womb.”

According to the statements reviewed by CIPER, on repeated occasions, doctors and nurses were questioned about the passage of a pregnant woman through the Clínica Santa Lucía. The Ministry of the Interior, a plaintiff in the case, requested that Judge Solís officially ask the Vicaría de la Solidaridad to submit the records of three women who had allegedly given birth while they were detained by the DINA.

On July 6, 2009, Solís granted the request.

Two gynecologists passed through the Clínica Santa Lucía: Juan Pablo Figueroa Yáñez and Eduardo Francisco Contreras Valcarce.

It was the former who once declared that he remembered an occasion when he was asked to attend to a pregnant detainee: “I refused that request to perform an auscultation on the pregnant woman, and subsequently, they asked me as a personal favor, and I agreed to examine her, finding no problems with her pregnancy.

I remember that while I was performing said exam, Mr. Marcelo Moren Brito was present.” Figueroa said he did not remember the woman’s name.

Eduardo Francisco Contreras Valcarce passed away in 2016. According to a statement by the doctor Eugenio Fantuzzi Alliende, Contreras Valcarce arrived at the clinic like other colleagues from his graduating class, upon the offer of Zanghellini.

His name is often confused with that of his brother, Enrique Eduardo Contreras Valcarce, a surgeon. But while the former provided services in DINA clinics, the latter suffered the repression of the “Caravan of Death” and, according to his family’s version, was even a prisoner in a facility in the north.

OTHER MENTIONED DOCTORS

The investigation points to a series of doctors, dentists, and health personnel who were part of the Clínica Santa Lucía. According to the files, they were hired on a fee basis, mostly as recent university graduates. Witness accounts coincide that the dental clinic was on the first floor and that the medical staff dedicated to keeping tortured detainees alive was concentrated on the third floor.

The dentists on the first floor claim that they never saw detained patients and that they did not know about abortions. The head of that department was the dentist Dámaso Luis Augusto González, who still sees patients at his office in Providencia.

As other doctors from DINA clinics explained, it was he who recruited students from the Universidad de Chile—where he taught—to join the Clínica Santa Lucía. And, as stated in the file, on occasions, he was left in charge of the clinic.

CIPER contacted the doctor’s office. His secretary indicated that he was out of Santiago and that she would give him our message. At the closing of this report, there was no response.

Sergio Muñoz Bonta is also pointed out as a dental surgeon who held a leadership position at the Clínica London. A nurse stated: “Dr. Sergio Muñoz Bonta, who was a dentist who came from the Academia de Guerra, was brought by Colonel (Manuel) Contreras to the Clínica London.” Muñoz Bonta passed away in 2005.

The dentists Carlos Rodolfo Ullrich Dunner and Milena Cecilia Zulic Lolic declared in 2010 that they worked at the Clínica Santa Lucía. Ullrich did so in the rest of the clinics set up by the DINA until the return to democracy in 1989. Just blocks away, in Las Condes, both currently have their dental offices, and both denied before the courts having seen or treated tortured patients.

Zulic—who was married to Ullrich—told CIPER that she has a clear conscience: “I never had and do not have anything to hide (…). I worked at the clinic. I had just graduated and was looking for a job. I was a very good student and was not on the left.

I have never been a member of a party, but I consider myself a free thinker, but I was not at all in agreement with what was happening at that moment (the Unidad Popular). But, independent of the political side, we were never told that it was to work for the DINA or that detainees and things were going to be there, nothing.

When they contacted me, they told me it was to attend to the children of officials.” She says they paid her well, that she was there for several months, and that, when she was already working there, she learned it was related to the DINA.

Asked by CIPER if she left that job due to ethical objections after learning that the DINA was behind the clinic, she replied: “No, because at that time I was a bird [naive] (…). I didn’t know anything about what was happening there.”

Mario Augusto Hernández Cáceres is another doctor mentioned in the file who denies having participated in events linked to human rights violations. He provided an extrajudicial statement in 2010. That same year, the dentist Gonzalo Luarte Romo stated before the courts that he had worked only for the Clínica London and that he also did not see or know anything.

He passed away on July 10 of this year.

In the team of dentists, Pablo César Oyanguren Plaza also appeared, who was a professor at the Universidad Mayor until 2019. In the trial, he said that it was Dámaso González who recruited him. He also declared that he was part of the CNI clinic, that they gave him an identity card with the name Cicerón Videla to vote in the 1988 Plebiscite, and a card that was used as a “line-breaker.”

The list of mentions also includes doctors of other specialties: the psychiatrist Roberto Emilio Lailhacar Chávez. He declared in 2010 that he was only at Clínica El Golf, but that he had provided services to the DINA since before: “I entered the DINA as a civilian employee (…).

Probably during the year 1973.” Furthermore, he explained that he worked with Lucía Hiriart when Augusto Pinochet was still in power. He asserted that he never attended to wounded people nor participated in interrogations. Consulted by CIPER, he declined to refer to the details of what he witnessed and did at the DINA clinic.

The cardiologist Sergio Pliscoff Marovich worked at the London and El Golf clinics. He declared in 2010 and noted that he never visited detained people: “I lack all types of information,” he said. He passed away in 2016.

(*) Valentina Valenzuela and Soledad López Figueroa collaborated on this report. () The background information presented in this article includes ongoing judicial proceedings, so the people mentioned should not be considered guilty until the justice system issues a final sentence.

Source: ciper.cl, September 1, 2023

Supreme Court convicts CNI agents for simple homicide on public roads in 1988

The Supreme Court convicted two agents of the dissolved Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI) for their responsibility in the consummated crime of simple homicide of Guillermo Eugenio Rodríguez Solís. The crime was committed in December 1988, in the commune of Santiago.

In a replacement sentence (case file 29.970-2021), the Second Chamber of the high court—composed of ministers Haroldo Brito, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Jorge Dahm, Leopoldo Llanos, and minister María Teresa Letelier—sentenced José Patricio Cruz Lorente and Hugo César Acevedo Godoy to 5 years and one day in prison as authors of the crime, after establishing an error in the challenged sentence, issued by the Santiago Court of Appeals, which had confirmed the first-instance ruling that classified the crime as homicide with treachery (alevosía).

“That the first-instance sentence established the facts in the sixteenth motive, confirmed by the appellate court, which were reproduced in the fourth foundation of the present ruling, which were classified as a crime of qualified homicide, provided for and punished in article 391 No. 1 of the Penal Code, due to the concurrence of the first circumstance of treachery, in a consummated degree, which occurred on December 20, 1988, considering for this that the agents acted ‘on the safe side’ (sobre seguro), as there is no evidence of an intention to detain the victim, proceeding to alter the crime scene so that the police who arrived to analyze the place would acquire the conviction that, prior to the death of the victim, a confrontation occurred, revealing a cold spirit by shooting him at least six times, which are the wounds presented by the body of the deceased,” the ruling states.

“That in such events, it is not possible to establish the presence of a treacherous homicide, due to the special concurrence of the modality of execution of acting ‘on the safe side’,” it adds.

The resolution adds that: “In effect, jurisprudence and doctrine understand that treachery constitutes a mode or form of execution of the crime that requires on the part of the agent the concealment of their criminal intention, to execute the homicide with security, without risks for them, proceeding with caution and ‘on the safe side,’ in a perfidious and insidious manner, attacking unexpectedly, by treason or by surprise, when the victim is caught off guard or defenseless, it being indispensable that this situation of advantage has been sought, procured, or taken advantage of by the aggressor.”

“It has also been maintained,” it continues, “that acting ‘on the safe side’ is the ambush or ‘agguato’ in the Italian Penal Code, which derives from the Spanish ‘aguaitar,’ even though among us it is broader, as it also includes cases in which the means are hidden and not necessarily the person of the perpetrator.

The note of moral reprobation arises when the conditions of assurance have been especially sought or procured by the perpetrator, which also reveals the existence of the treacherous spirit (Alfredo Etcheberry, Derecho Penal, Editorial Jurídica de Chile, year 1998, Vol. III, pages 60 and 61).”

“Acting ‘on the safe side’ implies creating or taking advantage of factual conditions that allow the agent to rule out any risk to their person in the commission of the act. There are two modalities of acting ‘on the safe side,’ both constitutive of treachery.

The agent can create a situation especially destined to provide security to their action or to marginalize any risk to their person. It can also happen that the agent simply takes advantage of the concrete conditions in which the victim finds themselves and which offer them security in their action, not prepared or determined by them. (Mario Garrido, El Homicidio y sus Figuras Penales, Editorial Jurídica Conosur, second edition, year 1994, pages 157 and 158),” it cites.

For the Penal Chamber: “(…) the aforementioned circumstances are not present in the facts under examination, as it was established that the Central Nacional de Informaciones patrol had an encounter with the victim, resulting in one of the agents being wounded by two shots fired against him, which is why both he and his companion fired six shots at Guillermo Eugenio Rodríguez Solís, who resulted with several wounds that caused his death.”

“The described facts do not allow for the establishment of the concurrence of the objective and subjective requirements demanded by the qualifying factor of treachery in this crime, as they do not describe the two possibilities in which it could be configured according to what has been explained,” the resolution highlights.

“That, consequently, the sentence suffers from the vice of nullity contemplated in the second ordinal of article 546 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, since by making an incorrect classification of the crime, the penalty was applied in accordance with that classification, since the facts declared as proven satisfy the requirements of the penal type of article 391 No. 2 of the Penal Code, and not of its numeral 1°, first circumstance, as was erroneously indicated,” it concludes.

Execution In the base sentence, the presiding minister of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Mario Carroza Espinosa, established the following facts:

1º.- That the Central Nacional de Informaciones, an organization created by the Military Government on August 13, 1977, by Decree Law No. 1878, executed through its agents persecutions, detentions, interrogations under torture, and executions, being responsible for numerous deaths and disappearances of political opponents;

2.- That in that historical context, on December 20, 1988, on Calle Manuel Rodríguez in front of number 369 in the commune of Santiago, the citizen Guillermo Eugenio Rodríguez Solís was executed by agents of that organization, belonging to the Blue Group, C. l, 2.1, which was part of the Anti-Subversive Unit;

3.- That in effect, on that occasion, in the night hours, a team from the aforementioned group, commanded by the agent under the assumed name of Oscar Hernández Santa María—identified subsequently as the Army officer Krantz Johans Bauer Donoso, currently deceased—accompanied by the Army official, Lieutenant José Patricio Cruz Lorente, and presumably a driver, not identified, had an encounter in that place with the victim Rodríguez Solís (who has been veiledly and without confirmation indicated as an informant or infiltrator of the intelligence organization);

4.- That this operational activity of the group was under the control and supervision of the Anti-Subversive Unit, whose chief was the Army officer Hugo César Acevedo Godoy, who on that date depended on the chief of the Metropolitan Division, Enrique Leddy Arancibia, and the director of the Central Nacional de Informaciones, Humberto Leiva Gutiérrez, who by command was responsible for being informed of everything that happened in the organization, as happened with this operation;

5.- That as a result of the encounter, the CNI agent Cruz Lorente resulted with two shots in his body, one in the abdomen and another in a thigh, which led him and his companion Krantz Bauer Donoso, alias ‘Oscar Hernández Santa María,’ to fire their service weapons at Rodríguez Solís and cause his death through six bullet impacts, causing him facial, cervical, thoracic, abdominal, lumbar spinal, and left forearm trauma;

6.- That subsequent to what happened, members of the Central Nacional de Informaciones arrived at the scene, then members of the Carabineros, and finally, the Homicide Brigade, who constituted the required procedure and sent the background information to the respective Military Court;

7.- That the official version, collected by police officials from the CNI agents, is that the victim was asked for his identification because his attitudes were suspicious, and he reacted by taking a pistol from his clothing, which required one of the agents to lunge at him to subdue him, but that in the course of the struggle the victim fired and the agent received bullet impacts in the abdomen and thigh, which moved the reaction of the agents, who fired at him and Rodríguez Solís fell wounded, mortally struck.

In the civil sphere, the sentence that ordered the state treasury to pay a total compensation of $135,000,000 for moral damages to the victim’s relatives was maintained.

Source: pjud.cl, February 26, 2024