Visiting Judge of the Court Mario Carroza sentenced seven military personnel for the kidnapping and aggravated homicide of political prisoners at the Pisagua concentration camp. The sentence includes life imprisonment for Sergio Benavides Villarreal and Manuel Vega Collado as perpetrators of aggravated kidnapping and aggravated homicide.

Meanwhile, “Roberto Ampuero Alarcón, Gabriel Guerrero Reeve, Sergio Figueroa López, and Arturo Contador Rosales were sentenced to 15 years and one day in prison for their responsibility in the three crimes of aggravated kidnapping and for the aggravated homicides of Marcelo Guzmán Fuentes, Juan Calderón Villalón, and Luis Lizardi Lizardi.” On the other hand, Miguel Aguirre Álvarez “was sentenced to 10 years and one day in prison for his responsibility in the three aggravated kidnappings.” Sergio Benavides Villarreal was a Navy officer accused of shooting several political prisoners in Pisagua between September 1973 and June 1974. The political executions included Miguel Nash Sáez, a 19-year-old conscript who refused to participate in the dictatorship’s massacres, for which he was discharged and murdered; Jesús Cañas Cañas, 48, a socialist militant and overseer of the fishing industries; Juan Jiménez Vidal, 42, a Customs worker; and the aggravated homicide of Marcelo Guzmán Fuentes, 34, Chief of the Iquique Hospital and a militant of the Socialist Party; Juan Calderón Villalón, 25, also a socialist militant; Luis Lizardi Lizardi, 29, a socialist; Julio Cabezas Gacitúa, 45, Prosecutor for the State Defense Council, a socialist militant accused of “treason against the fatherland”; Julio Córdova Croxatto, 35, a MAPU militant; Mario Morris Barrios, 27, a Customs worker; Humberto Lizardi Flores, 26, an English teacher and MIR militant; and Juan Valencia Hinojosa, 51, Provincial Chief of the Agricultural Trade Company (ECA) in Iquique and a Communist Party militant. Carroza’s ruling indicates that “after September 11, 1973, a permanent repression operation against militants and sympathizers of the deposed government parties, known as CIRE, was installed at the headquarters of the Army’s Sixth Division under the command of General Carlos Forestier Haenseng (deceased), acting under the orders and guidance of the military prosecutor of the time, Mario Acuña Riquelme (deceased).” Many of the detainees presented themselves voluntarily, while others were kidnapped or detained in other cities across the country and subsequently transferred to Pisagua, “where they were subjected to interrogations under physical duress by orders issued by Commander Forestier or Military Prosecutor Acuña,” and were forced to sign blank papers to “justify fallacious accusations before simulated War Councils and to be able to request death sentences in them,” which led to many being executed by firing squad. On September 19, the detainees were taken from their cells and “were executed in the vicinity of the prison camp under the pretext that they had attempted to escape while being transferred outside the site.” Subsequently, “the bodies were wrapped in burlap and then buried in a mass grave in the Atacama Desert. Later, in mid-1990, the remains of Calderón Villalón, Lizardi Lizardi, and Marcelo Guzmán Fuentes were found, but no evidence has been found regarding the bodies of Juan Jiménez Vidal, Jesús Nolberto Cañas, and Michel Nash Sáez, who currently remain forcibly disappeared.” Something similar occurred with other detainees. Carroza’s ruling includes compensation from the State to the parents and relatives.

Source: laizquierdadiario.es, August 17, 2016

In a document presented to Judge Billard, the confessed murderer of Tucapel Jiménez assumed his responsibility for executions in the north but insisted that the order came from then-Captain Jaime Krauss, who was acquitted in the case.

Plaintiff lawyer Adil Brkovic announced that he will insist on the reinstatement of his indictment and criticized the potential political reasons for the State Defense Council (CDE) to withdraw its appeal.

Major (ret.) Carlos Herrera Jiménez, who is facing a life sentence for the assassination of union leader Tucapel Jiménez and is being prosecuted for the aggravated homicide of at least seven people in the town of Pisagua, which occurred in January 1974, reiterated that the order to execute the prisoners of the aforementioned detention camp came from then-Captain Jaime Krauss Rusque.

In an extensive document presented to the minister instructing the judicial process, Joaquín Billard, the former DINE agent urged the justice system to establish the truth in these cases of human rights violations, asserting that the decision to acquit the former aide-de-camp to the Chamber of Deputies and brother of the former Minister of the Interior and current ambassador to Ecuador, Enrique Krauss, was based solely on political reasons.

Herrera Jiménez has confessed to said murders, as well as the homicide of the former president of the ANEF. However, he maintains that the orders for the firing squads to execute the Pisagua prisoners came from Krauss, whose indictment was revoked by Billard on September 6, 2005. “There were executions ordered by the commander of the Prisoner of War camp, Army Colonel Ramón Larraín Larraín and/or by the war prosecutor, Colonel Mario Acuña Riquelme.

Those orders were transmitted to me for execution by my direct superior, the then-Army Captain Jaime Krauss Rusque,” states the document accessed by El Mostrador.cl.

Criticism of the Rettig Report

Furthermore, the former member of the CNI accused that a sort of “dark hand” had acted in the drafting of the Rettig Report to alter the dates of the executions in Pisagua, with the aim of disassociating Jaime Krauss from those events. “Many years later, while examining the Rettig Report, I verified that it does not record any deaths in Pisagua in the month of December 1973, and those whom I remember being executed in that month appear in the month of January 1974, a day on which I was, without any doubt, in Iquique performing the duties of a second lieutenant in my regiment,” the document states. In that sense, Herrera Jiménez adds, “Was the idea that during the period when Captain Jaime Krauss Rusque was also on a service commission in Pisagua, no deaths should appear? Therefore, there were ‘dark hands’ that altered the execution dates for that purpose.” “I will insist, until I am exhausted, that the deaths that gave rise to my indictment occurred in December 1973 (sic) and, at most, the first week of January 1974 (...) Someone with certain power and influence in the highest spheres of government manipulated the dates in the Rettig Report. Nothing more and nothing less than the revealed truth of human rights in Chile,” he added in the document. “My statements are true. I call God as my witness, and I have peace of mind regarding the facts. The indictment against me in this case is the product of a dirty political machination that does not have justice itself as its ultimate and superior goal, but rather a bastard and no less immoral objective: the concealment of facts that could damage political images, regardless of the price,” maintained the former DINE agent.

Participation in the events

Regarding the homicides of prisoners in Pisagua, Herrera Jiménez claims not to remember the number of people he executed. “It never occurred to me to write down their names or make marks on my pistol.” However, he acknowledges his participation in at least three deaths. “I was the one who commanded the firing squad that killed, by order of Captain Krauss, a person who walked with a limp; I later learned his name was Nicolás Chanez Chanez.

And another gentleman, whose toupee macabrely flew into the air at the moment of the shots, without us knowing he wore such an item.” Likewise, he detailed the execution of Nelson Márquez Agusto, a young man who, after an intense torture session, tried to escape the camp in a state of mental derangement and was recaptured by Herrera Jiménez along with two conscript soldiers under a pier on the beach. “Once off the pier, Prosecutor Acuña and Captain Krauss, among others, were waiting for me; I handed the prisoner over to them; they ordered me to change into dry clothes.

Upon my return, on the beach near the prison, in front of witnesses—political prisoners—Lieutenant Acuña, after a harangue, ordered Krauss to ‘discharge’ him, as this was a punishment that corresponded to a prisoner of war who attempted to escape from prison; my captain handed me the SIG rifle he was carrying and ordered me to shoot Mr.

Márquez. I followed the order because I considered it appropriate,” Herrera Jiménez noted. In the final considerations of his document, the former uniformed officer concluded with the phrase: “May God grant that never again in our country will we experience traumatic situations that forever truncate the existence of people who find themselves compelled to carry out certain activities that are contrary to morality.”

Denied Although the major (ret.) requested a personal hearing with Judge Billard as of mid-July to raise these objections in the case, the judge responded to his defense with “denied as improper.” Furthermore, Herrera Jiménez’s lawyer requested that Captain Eugenio Pertier Garfias, who was Jaime Krauss’s predecessor in Pisagua, be called to testify.

However, the request was also dismissed by the magistrate. Regarding the possibility of holding a new confrontation between Krauss and Herrera Jiménez, Billard replied, “adhere to the merits of the case file.” In this regard, it should be noted that before Minister (s) Carmen Garay indicted the former aide-de-camp, she brought both military men face-to-face, and they maintained their respective statements.

Krauss’s defense is primarily based on the fact that although the former officer was stationed in Pisagua during the date of the executions, his role was to be in charge of a warehouse of tools and medicines intended for the prisoners.

Insisting on indictment

When consulted on the matter, plaintiff lawyer Adil Brkovic completely questioned Krauss’s version, pointing out that it is not credible that an officer of that rank, commander of the prison camp, would not have had intervention in the executions. “I have the absolute conviction that Jaime Krauss, as captain of the Pisagua prison camp, was required to participate in the executions; that is why he was indicted, and that resolution was confirmed by the Santiago Court of Appeals.” Likewise, he opined that Billard’s decision was due to the statements of other former prisoners who reported that the former aide-de-camp treated them humanely during that period, but that those facts do not absolve him of his responsibility. Along with this, Brkovic questioned the decision adopted by the State Defense Council (CDE) to appeal this acquittal and then withdraw the appeal, which, in his opinion, was due to extrajudicial considerations, pointing to possible political influences. The professional recalled that not only Herrera Jiménez’s statements supported the indictment of Krauss, but also a reconstruction of the scene that was carried out at the time by former judge Juan Guzmán. In that proceeding, the former officer admitted to having been present at the execution of Márquez Agusto, claiming that he had refused to give the order and that, nevertheless, Herrera Jiménez carried out the task. For Brkovic, that version is not credible given the context of the time, in which no military officer could refuse the orders of a superior. On the other hand, he maintained that two former prisoners testified that when Márquez hid to try to escape, driven mad by torture, it was Captain Krauss who appeared in the prison cells threatening that if Márquez did not appear in 30 minutes, prisoners would be killed. Furthermore, there is testimony from the executioners themselves that accounts for Krauss’s presence at the executions. For this reason, the lawyer said he will insist that the magistrate reinstate the indictment against the former officer. “It is not a closed issue,” he noted. However, the pro bono lawyer representing the victims’ families clarified that he did not share Herrera Jiménez’s statements that the executions occurred in December 1973, since the date of death (January 19, 1974) is a fact that is proven in the case. This media outlet attempted to obtain the version of the CDE and the Human Rights Program of the Ministry of the Interior regarding why the decision to acquit Krauss was not appealed. The former institution responded unofficially that it was considered that the decision was well-adopted, while the latter agency stated that it was a decision made by the top representatives of that department. Jaime Krauss was indicted by Minister Garay on July 27, 2004, as the perpetrator of seven aggravated homicides. After being acquitted by Billard, the former officer filed a lawsuit against the Chamber of Deputies for damages resulting from his dismissal after being indicted by the justice system.

Source: elmostrador.cl, August 25, 2006

By September 1973, Julio Cabezas Gacitúa, 45, a lawyer by profession, was serving as Fiscal Prosecutor for the State Defense Council of Iquique and was not a member of any political party. After being summoned in a Military Proclamation, he surrendered voluntarily to the military authorities.

There are testimonies that remember him walking, with a blanket over his arm, along Luis Uribe Street toward the Army’s Sixth Division. He never imagined his tragic end. Today, after 4 decades, society has an outstanding debt to him; for this reason, Mayor Jorge Soria announced that he will request that the Municipal Council, together with former judge Nelson Muñoz, grant him a posthumous recognition as an Illustrious Son of Iquique.

The story of Julio Cabezas must be told. And not forgotten. Because it exposes murky episodes of our life as a city and as a country that must never happen again. It is a case of great impact, since it is attributed that his death was a revenge by Military Prosecutor Acuña, who was involved in a drug and smuggling case where his participation was already proven.

In his book “The Truth of Pisagua,” Freddy Alonso, a former political prisoner, recounted this case, noting that the lawyer Cabezas, a man of great prestige and austerity, was designated by the State Defense Council to investigate smuggling and cocaine trafficking in Iquique.

Around that time, 1972, Mario Acuña arrived in Iquique, transferred from a court in San Miguel where he had been involved in a scandal while serving as a judge. Here, he assumed the duties of a judge. Investigative journalism again linked him to a criminal case, as he was connected to a group of people who diverted merchandise to Peru and Bolivia—a smuggling crime—which were destined from the central level to the north.

Profuse evidence of this situation is provided in a publication called “The Untouchables,” which indicates that they contributed to the black market with the operation and, in exchange, received cocaine as payment for their services.

This is precisely what the Prosecutor of the State Defense Council, Julio Cabezas, was investigating. Even the Supreme Court—relates Freddy Alonso—had backed the accusations against him, so his fate was already sealed.

The high court had authorized the dismissal and imprisonment of Acuña. But the coup occurred, and events took another course. Acuña was designated Military Prosecutor of Pisagua and was in charge of the supposed War Council where, along with Cabezas, Mario Morris Berríos (Customs Investigations), Juan Valencia Hinojosa (ECA Administrator), José Córdova Croxato (Port Administrator), and Humberto Lizardi Flores (teacher) were executed.

Curiously, all of them—with the exception of Lizardi—had formed, until days before, the Investigative Commission of the State Defense Council for the smuggling and drug trafficking case. And all of them were taken from their cells between October 8 and 10, 1973, and subsequently executed by firing squad.

ANOTHER ANGLE

After the closure of the Pisagua Prison Camp, Mario Acuña managed to reintegrate into Iquique life with complete normality, except that, from time to time, some relative of an executed person would dare to confront him to his face about the events that occurred after the coup.

Juana Trujillo, who was the wife of the local socialist leader José Sampson Ocaranza, 33 at the time of his execution in Pisagua, was one of those people. Acuña set up his law office on San Martín Street, across from the Banco de Estado in Iquique.

And from there, day by day, he traveled from the center to the courts, like any other citizen. Personally, he established a relationship, from which a son was born. The family lived comfortably in the Playa Brava sector, with a very good financial situation.

Emotionally, those close to him say that he always had episodes of crisis. However, Acuña never wanted to face the press. Even less so after the discovery of the Pisagua mass grave. And don’t even mention the Julio Cabezas case.

The author of this note tried for years to get an interview, and when she was about to achieve it, Acuña fell ill. Thanks to the process in which lawyer Adil Berkovic is a plaintiff, Acuña was indicted.

Around that date, he suffered a crisis due to diabetes that had affected him for years. In the midst of his illness, he was transferred to the Military Hospital in Santiago, where he finally died on June 12, 2000, at the age of 63.

The cause of death was a coma resulting from two cerebral infarctions. At the time of his death, Mario Acuña Riquelme was subject to the aforementioned process for the crime of aggravated kidnapping of 10 people.

For the same cause, the former Vice Commander-in-Chief of the Army, General (ret.) Carlos Forestier, and non-commissioned officer Miguel Aguirre were being prosecuted by order of the special judge Juan Guzmán in the framework of the investigation into the deaths that occurred in Pisagua in 1973.

To this day, the doubt about the death of the former Pisagua prosecutor always lingers. Mario Acuña accumulated a great deal of information that compromised major figures. However, his family has never done anything about this issue nor has it taken a position on it.

Did the victimizer end up as a victim? That is the doubt that lingers. Editor’s Note: This case is covered in one of the chapters of the Black Book of Chilean Justice by journalist Alejandra Matus.

Source: Elsoldeiquique.cl, June 4, 2018

The incredible story of Judge Acuña

Every day, at seven in the evening, "El Lito" would take his rickety bicycle and go for a ride along the high road that overlooks Pisagua Viejo, until he reached the center of the cemetery. Angel de la Cruz Venegas, "El Lito," was well known in that desert town on the seashore, between Arica and Iquique.

He cleaned the Carabineros station where his brother, Sergeant Juan de Dios de la Cruz, worked. Although he was serving a sentence of five years and one day for "repeated theft," El Lito could travel around the town without any problems.

In the midst of a State of Siege, no one stopped him from reaching the cemetery. One day he saw "several people running and being shot in the back. There were about three people, and after they shot them, they put them in sacks (...) The people who did the shooting were military personnel.

I also saw, on one occasion, that at the Governor's Office they were pulling out the fingernails of several detainees. I remember that Mario Acuña, whom I know, was the one giving the orders." He was referring to Judge Mario Acuña Riquelme.

This individual began his career in Santiago, and his time in the courts of San Miguel left behind memories of both great defenders and severe detractors. There were those who described him as "brilliant," but the Supreme Court accepted complaints regarding his poor management and transferred him to Iquique at the beginning of the 70s.

Lawyers who knew him as the presiding judge of the First Court of the northern capital claim to have seen him drunk in his office several times. They saw many other things as well. The State Defense Council (CDE) included his name, along with that of the president of the Iquique Court, Ignacio Alarcón Alarcón, and other important magistrates, on a list of judges linked to drug trafficking.

In 1972, after receiving the complaint from the CDE, the Court commissioned Minister Enrique Correa Labra to travel north to investigate. In Iquique, the magistrate had the help of the Fiscal Attorney (the representative of the CDE), Julio Cabezas Gazitúa.

In Santiago, he had the help of lawyer Manuel Guzmán Vial. Agents from the Customs Investigation Department (DIA), among other entities, had also gathered information on the magistrates while seeking to dismantle a drug trafficking and smuggling ring between Chile and Bolivia.

Correa Labra spent eight months in the north. Upon returning, he issued a thick report, and the Supreme Court intervened, dismissing the president of the Iquique Court and the prosecutor of that tribunal, Raúl Arancibia.

Another group, likely to avoid generating a scandal, was only transferred or reprimanded. Acuña was spared. However, the magistrate knew perfectly well that the lawyer Cabezas had been the promoter of the accusations against him and that he still had ammunition left to use.

Cabezas—45 years old, married, four children—was considered a brilliant lawyer, a public servant "of exemplary dedication," who also acted as head of the Judicial Assistance Service in Iquique. In 1973, Cabezas and the director of Odeplán, Freddy Taberna, had sufficient evidence of the links between Mario Acuña Acuña and the two powerful drug traffickers who directed the trafficking and smuggling operations between Chile and Bolivia and who, due to their economic influence, had even become members of the Iquique Chamber of Commerce: Nicolás Chánez and Doroteo Gutiérrez.

Both transported tons of sugar, coffee, flour, canned goods, butter, stockings, clothing, and medicine daily from Santiago to the north, among other illicitly obtained products. It was the time of lines and shortages under the government of the Unidad Popular.

The trucks with the prohibited cargo headed to two border towns: Cancosa and Colchane. The immense warehouses where the merchandise was stored dominated the landscape of both hamlets, whose combined populations did not reach 150 inhabitants.

At the border, the Chileans handed the supplies over to Bolivian traffickers, who paid them with large quantities of semi-processed cocaine. The food and medicine went to Oruro and were then distributed in Santa Cruz and La Paz.

The cocaine sulfate was brought into Iquique for processing. Before September 11, Chánez and Gutiérrez were arrested repeatedly for smuggling and drug trafficking, but they obtained their freedom easily thanks to their ties to Minister Ignacio Alarcón, Judge Acuña, and his clerk, Raúl Barraza.

The latter, Barraza, had been caught in flagrante by the police working at night on the processing of cocaine in a laboratory he had in his own home, at Wilson 151. His superior, Judge Acuña, was linked by the police investigation to the management of said laboratory.

Other types of corruption weighed on the file that the CDE had on the magistrate. It was proven that since May 1970, the magistrate had been collecting family allowances for his spouse, even though she was not entitled to them because she was a Corfo employee.

Furthermore, he had informed the Internal Revenue Service that his wife did not work, solely for the purpose of lowering his tax payments. Acuña fraudulently acquired several automobiles, making use of a franchise that at the time was the exclusive right of residents of Arica.

And he paid for part of one of those vehicles with a check from the merchant Raúl Nazar, who was under indictment for fraud in his own court and who was released "for lack of evidence" just after issuing that document.

The magistrate received Christmas gifts, in front of witnesses, from another well-known Iquique drug trafficker, Francisco Manríquez Valenzuela, "El Gallina." The lawyer Julio Cabezas also knew, and informed the Supreme Court, that on April 7, 1972, Judge Mario Acuña traveled to Santiago with drug trafficker Pascual Gallardo and that both boarded a vehicle that was waiting for them at Pudahuel airport, heading to an unknown destination.

Gallardo had been accused as part of a drug trafficking ring discovered in 1969 in a case that Judge Acuña had in his possession. Shortly thereafter, suspiciously, a complaint for fraud was filed in Santiago against one of the defendants.

This meant that the drug trafficking case had to leave the Iquique court and be sent to the capital. During the trip, the clerk designated to transport the file lost it without a plausible explanation.

It did not matter much anymore. The documents that incriminated Gallardo had been lost earlier, from the offices of the Iquique court itself. Gallardo was never prosecuted. Despite his background, the Supreme Court authorized Judge Mario Acuña to serve as a prosecutor in the War Councils in the "Norte Grande" immediately after the 11th.

The individual, of course, liked his new role. On the very day of the Coup, he arrived at the court dressed in a commando uniform, which he continued to attend to in parallel for a brief period. During that time, his subordinates were also required to wear military attire when they accompanied him to the "prosecutor's office." Judge Acuña was one of the few magistrates chosen for such an unusual mission, and he was going to take advantage of it.

Through radio announcements, the lawyer Julio Cabezas was summoned by decree to present himself before the new military authorities along with the most important political leaders in the area. Cabezas, who had no political affiliation or "any revolutionary tendency," defined himself at the time as a DC sympathizer and, as such, had been an opponent of the Allende government.

But his name, to the surprise of lawyers and judges, was repeated on the radios alongside those of the top leaders of the Unidad Popular. On September 14, once the absolute curfew had ended, the professional decided to turn himself in.

That day he met with a group of eight professionals who were doing their professional internship at the Judicial Assistance Service. On the second floor of the Iquique courts, Cabezas gave tasks to his students.

Among them were the current minister of the Arica court, Javier Moya, and lawyers Valdemar de Lucky, Juan Rebollo, Ernesto Montoya, Enrique Castillo, and Ismael Canales. "I'll be back soon. Continue with the cases; I'll review what you've done when I return," he told them.

Cabezas did not leave a replacement. With a blanket on one arm and a wool coat on the other, he walked toward the Sixth Army Division. Some of his students—with whom he liked to have ironic intellectual discussions, as the young people were mostly supporters of the UP—accompanied him to the door of the regiment.

The lawyer believed that his name had been included by mistake and that he would be released immediately. The mistake was his. He was taken prisoner and transferred to the camp in Pisagua. His jailers beat him while he remained hanging, burned his skin with cigarettes, threw him from a hill while he was curled up inside a barrel without a lid, broke his ankle, and subjected him to mock executions.

Cabezas sensed his death. He managed to send a message to Santiago asking for the intervention of his colleagues at the State Defense Council. Most of the CDE councilors were in opposition to the Allende government and supported the military intervention, but they accepted his plea because they knew that Cabezas was not a leftist.

Manuel Guzmán Vial was in charge of drafting an official letter to the Chief of the State of Emergency Zone in the Tarapacá region, Brigadier General Carlos Forestier. The document noted the excellent professional quality of the CDE representative in Iquique and his qualities as a man "of peace." Forestier did not respond.

On October 10, Julio Cabezas's name appeared in a new communiqué. This time, in a summons to a War Council. The Bar Association had established a free defense system for the prisoners and appointed a representative for him: his own student at the legal clinic, Ernesto Montoya.

The young man traveled on a military plane to Pisagua. The craft departed at 19:00 hours. The Council was scheduled for the following day, October 11, at five in the morning. The young lawyer hoped to be able to interview his professor, but he was told that he was "incommunicado." He wanted to see the file, but the military personnel were eating dinner.

Only after 23:00 hours, and for ten minutes, was he allowed to examine some pages that appeared to be a confession by Cabezas before Prosecutor Acuña. The papers stated that Cabezas admitted his connection to Plan Zeta (which would later be proven non-existent) and to the stockpiling of weapons.

Montoya attempted a defense. He argued vehemently, but the military personnel were drunk and remained indifferent to his arguments. The War Council sentenced Cabezas to the death penalty. The chaplain of Pisagua approached Montoya and confessed to him that Cabezas was already dead.

The lawyer did not want to believe it, but toward the end of the 70s, following insistent efforts by the family, the military authorities issued official documents in which they acknowledged the actual date of death and stated that Cabezas was "executed" for "high treason against the Fatherland" on October 10, along with four other detainees.

The file of the alleged War Council never appeared. In 1990, the body of Julio Cabezas was found in the clandestine graves discovered in Pisagua. Once again, the lawyer Montoya was with his former professor.

As a lawyer for the Archbishopric, he accompanied the professionals from the Vicariate of Solidarity who succeeded in locating the remains. Also dying in Pisagua was the former director of Odeplán, the socialist Freddy Taberna, who had investigated Judge Acuña along with Cabezas.

They were not the only ones. Two officials from the Customs Investigation Department (DIA) were executed in the same camp. Just before the Coup d'État, the DIA was precisely on the trail of cocaine smuggling through the Oruro-Iquique corridor.

Even then, the professionals, dubbed by La Tercera as the "Chilean untouchables," believed that Chile was becoming a "corridor" for the smuggling of the hydrochloride. The customs group acted in coordination with the United States anti-narcotics agency (DEA), and several of its members were trained in the United States as part of one of the few areas of cooperation between both nations when Allende governed in Chile and Richard Nixon in the North American country.

The Coup caught about eight agents of this service in the north. Among them was Juan Efraín Calderón, a socialist militant, who was executed in an alleged escape attempt, along with his colleague and friend, Juan Jiménez, despite the interventions in their favor by the DEA delegate in Chile, George Frangullie.

Calderón's body appeared in the graves in Pisagua with his feet and hands tied and a blindfold over his eyes. Testimonies from other former prisoners made it possible to determine that the agents did not attempt to flee, but were chosen from among the prisoners to be executed, without cause.

A group of drug traffickers, who had been part of the DIA, police, and CDE investigations in the 70s, was also captured in the military uprising. The detainees, accused of common crimes, were transferred to Pisagua along with the rest of the political prisoners.

In the camp, controlled in large part by Prosecutor Acuña, they received special treatment. But only for a time. This group included Francisco Manríquez, "El Gallina," who had given Christmas gifts to Mario Acuña, and the powerful Nicolás Chánez, the visible head of the opulent Oruro-Iquique drug trafficking network, who had been released several times thanks to the benevolence of the courts.

Along with them, Hugo Martínez, Juan Mamani, and Orlando Cabello were taken prisoner. José Ramón Steinberg, a surgeon, revealed the following: "In the month of January 1974, ten people arrived in Pisagua who we were told were drug traffickers.

Of these ten, nine were executed by Prosecutor Acuña and his team, composed of the military personnel Aguirre, Fuentes, the Carabineros officer Barraza, and Lieutenant Muñoz. These were executed in the Pisagua cemetery, being taken to that place in a military jeep, which I saw and can attest to based on the information given to me by one of the medics, who told me that they killed them two by two, and this was witnessed by two other traffickers who would be executed later." In 1990, the bodies of the "coqueros" (drug traffickers) were found next to those of the political prisoners in the graves in Pisagua. The process initiated by that discovery allowed other accusations against Acuña to come to light. On September 26, a group of conscripts raided Dr. Steinberg's house. The military arrested him, telling him that "the prosecutor" wanted to have "a few words" with him. He was taken to the Telecommunications Regiment and then to the Pisagua camp. "On October 12, 1973, it was my turn to be interrogated, and I was likewise beaten, subjected to the 'mock execution,' and other tortures, while blindfolded and interrogated by Prosecutor Acuña." Around four in the afternoon on January 16, 1974, Isaías Higueras Zúñiga arrived in Pisagua. The uniformed personnel in charge of the camp gave him "military instruction," forcing him to perform physical exercises. At night, they interrogated him under torture. Dr. José Ramón Steinberg remembers that around one in the morning on the 17th, he was called urgently to the infirmary to perform a medical check-up on Higueras. When he asked what had happened to the prisoner, a non-commissioned officer replied: "Militarily speaking, he fell." The doctor confirmed that the prisoner was suffering a heart attack. He instructed the nurses to inject him with a "vasodilator and a tranquilizer," but Prosecutor Acuña, after asking the military personnel what effect those medications would have, denied authorization for the tranquilizer. "I have to continue interrogating him," he explained. "But you cannot continue interrogating him in these conditions. The patient must remain in absolute rest," the doctor replied. Acuña turned to the nurses and ordered them: "Leave him here for fifteen minutes. Afterward, take him to the Prosecutor's Office." The doctor returned to his room. Four hours later, the soldiers woke him up again and took him to the infirmary. Higueras had died. The military nurses told Steinberg that around five in the morning, the prisoner had asked for permission to go urinate and that when he returned to lie down, he died. They assured him that they never took him back to the prosecutor's office. The doctor was recording the death when the former judge Mario Acuña appeared in the infirmary again. "What's happening?" "This person has died," the doctor replied. "Do you know what the causes are?" "As I told you before, this person suffered a heart attack." "Can you certify it?" "Of course..., but a necropsy should also be performed." "No. There are no conditions for that here." Steinberg extended the death certificate stating that the immediate cause of death had been a "myocardial infarction," caused by "physical and emotional stress." That was his scientific way of describing the torture. There are not a few more stories that could be added to the criminal record of this sinister character. Once his work as a prosecutor was finished, Judge Acuña retired from service and dedicated himself to the private practice of his profession. During those years, he boasted in the forum of his friendship with General Carlos Forestier—Forestier "admired" Acuña—and with General Augusto Pinochet himself, a frequent visitor to Iquique. Between 1975 and 1976, there was no one who would dispute his power and influence in the northern capital. But excessive alcohol made him ill with cirrhosis and diabetes. His family abandoned him. The same lawyers who had seen him before at the height of power now found his alcoholic body lying on some Iquique street. In 1988, Judge Raúl Mena indicted him for the qualified homicide of the gendarme Villegas. The lawyer Montoya represented the family of the former Pisagua prisoner. Acuña was defended by his friend, the former president of the Iquique Court, the dismissed Ignacio Alarcón. When the case reached the Iquique Court of Appeals, the northern tribunal declared that it was covered by the Amnesty Law. The Vicariate of Solidarity filed a complaint with the Supreme Court, but the process was sent to the military justice system. Since then, nothing more has been heard of Acuña in Iquique. Alarcón died in 1997. It was the Supreme Court that authorized ordinary judges to join the War Councils. The former lawyer for the Vicariate of Solidarity, Roberto Garretón, remembers with sadness not only the interventions of the feared Mario Acuña, but also those of the Judge of Temuco, Hugo Olate. "There were some exceptions," he affirms, "such as those of the Judge of Antofagasta, Juan Sinn, and the judge of Quillota, Olga Vidal, who, forced to join the Councils, made efforts to mitigate the cruelty and irregularities of the military members." Others, such as Rubén Ballesteros, Berta Rodríguez, Patricia Roncagliolo, Elba Sanhueza, and Mario Torres, although they often tried to influence the reduction of the enormous sentences proposed by the military members of the Councils, in fundamental aspects they subscribed to the regime's theses. Particularly the retroactive application of criminal law, with the sentence increases established for the State of War, for events that occurred between September 11 and 21, despite the fact that said state only began to be in effect from September 22. This last aspect is not minor if one considers that hundreds of people were arrested and sentenced in War Councils for alleged events that occurred in that brief ten-day period.

Source: El libro negro de la Justicia chilena, Alejandra Matus

Former military prosecutor Mario Acuña Riquelme, the only civilian prosecuted for the Caravan of Death case, has died

The lawyer passed away this morning at the Military Hospital, a victim of kidney failure. A victim of kidney failure, former military prosecutor Mario Acuña Riquelme passed away this morning; he was being prosecuted by the special judge Juan Guzmán Tapia in the process known as the "Caravan of Death." Acuña Riquelme was arrested on the night of Friday, April 14, at his home in Iquique, by virtue of an arrest warrant issued by Judge Guzmán.

His arrest occurred hours after the magistrate decided to prosecute him—along with the former vice-commander-in-chief of the Army, General (R) Carlos Forestier, and non-commissioned officer Miguel Chile Aguirre Alvarez—as alleged perpetrators of the crime of qualified kidnapping of 10 people.

Among them was the leadership of the PS (Socialist Party) of Iquique, who were being held in the Pisagua prisoner camp, located near the city. At the time, testimonies from relatives of the forcibly disappeared from the former Pisagua prison indicated that the former prosecutor Acuña presented the charges against the detainees in the region's war councils after the 1973 coup.

He is also identified as one of the perpetrators of the torture of political detainees in Pisagua.

Source: EL MOSTRADOR, June 12, 2000

Stories not to be forgotten: Children and young people murdered during the dictatorship

Among the more than three hundred cases of children and young people murdered during the dictatorship are Henri Francisco Torres Flores, who disappeared in 1974, and Isidro Hernán Salinas Martín, murdered twelve years later, in 1986.

The case of Henry Torres appears in the Rettig Report as one of the thousands of forcibly disappeared in the first years of the dictatorship. Henry was 16 years old when he was arrested in 1974, and his trail was lost in the month of July.

He was transferred to the Pisagua Prisoner Camp; there is a record of a letter he sent from this place, even stamped by local authorities, in which he asked about his family and requested some things like a razor and a mirror.

However, he never appeared. Pisagua was a detention center that was used from the first days of the coup d'état until October 1974. It is estimated that between 500 and 800 people passed through this place, including men and women, where they were tortured physically and psychologically with beatings, sharp objects, mock executions, being tied and hung by their feet and hands, electricity, burns, and other forms of torture and humiliation.

It was used again as a place of internal exile in the 80s. When the detainees arrived, they were locked in different places, with small confinement cells where numerous people were held. Nearly 26 people were also executed by firing squad in irregular war councils, and many others were murdered in the back, simulating that they were trying to escape, which became known in the 90s when mass graves were discovered.

One of those responsible was Ramón Larraín, Commander of the Camp, as well as General Carlos Forestier, Mario Acuña Riquelme, and Plácido Muñoz. Political execution Isidro Hernán Salinas Martín was 18 years old and was in his third year of high school when he was murdered by agents of the dictatorship; he was a member of the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front.

The official story told by the dictatorship was that Carabineros officers raided a home on Calle Mamiña No. 150 on June 1, 1986, where three people were murdered: the sisters Margarita and María Paz Martín Martínez, and Isidro Salinas Martín, son of one of them, wife, sister-in-law, and son of the singer and payador Benedicto Salinas, known as "El Piojo Salinas." However, the reality is that they were murdered by the dictatorship, as confirmed by the Rettig Commission.

In 1988, the civil justice system prosecuted Carabineros officers as perpetrators of homicide; however, the case was later transferred to the military justice system, which dismissed the case in 1993.

Source: laizquierdadiario.cl, July 1, 2015

Pisagua Case: shocking revelations from those convicted of the crimes

After more than 40 years, a sentence has been handed down against a group of uniformed personnel who kidnapped, tortured, and massacred dozens of civilians held at that detention camp. The military personnel acknowledge how they riddled the bodies with bullets and invented the application of the "escape law." A journalist present at the moment the bodies were found provides testimony to Cambio21.

Pisagua holds a sad record as a place of detention. From being used during the War of the Pacific to hold foreign soldiers, it was transformed in 1956 into a political prison for opponents of the government of Carlos Ibáñez del Campo.

After the 1973 coup d'état, the camp also became a place of extermination. Between September 29, 1973, and June 1974, 26 people who were being held at the Pisagua Prisoner Camp were executed; many of them had surrendered voluntarily.

The site was overcrowded with prisoners of the dictatorship who came not only from towns near the port of Pisagua but were transported there from other locations. On September 18, 1973, nearly 50 prisoners from Valparaíso disembarked there, having been transferred on the merchant ship Maipo.

Records indicate that nearly 500 people arrived from the Telecommunications Regiment of Iquique, among other places. In charge of the facility were Lieutenant Colonel Ramón Larraín and Captain Benavides. General Carlos Forestier Haensen was the Chief of the State of Siege Zone of the Province of Tarapacá and Commander-in-Chief of the Sixth Army Division.

Brutal murders

The sentence recounts in a raw manner the illegal, ruthless, and inhumane procedure used against those who were massacred. "Those who responded to the calls made through military edicts or who were arrested in raids were taken to the headquarters of the Sixth Army Division, from where they were referred to the Telecommunications Regiment in the city of Iquique, where they were subjected to interrogations under physical duress by orders issued by Commander Forestier or the military prosecutor Acuña," the sentence reads.

"The detainees from the Telecommunications Regiment were taken to the Pisagua Prisoner Camp where, once again, they were subjected to beatings to 'soften them up' and were forced to sign blank documents that were taken to the military prosecutor (Mario) Acuña (Riquelme) with the sole purpose of justifying fallacious accusations before simulated War Councils and being able to request, in these, sentences such as the death penalty, which once imposed was executed within the following 24 hours by firing squads," the sentence states.

"Within this mode of operation, on September 19, 1973, in the morning hours, Juan Calderón Villalón, Luis Alberto Lizardi Lizardi, Marcelo Omar Guzmán Fuentes, Juan Jiménez Vidal, Jesús Nolberto Cañas, and Michel Nash Sáez were taken from their cells at the Pisagua Prisoner Camp and executed in the vicinity of the prisoner camp under the pretext that they had attempted to escape while being transferred out of the site.

The bodies were wrapped in burlap sacks and then buried in a grave in the Atacama Desert," the account continues.

"Meanwhile, on October 11, 1973, prisoners Julio Cabezas Gacitúa, Juan Valencia Hinojosa, Mario Morris Barrios, José Córdova Croxato, and José Humberto Lizardi Flores were taken from their cells and executed in a place near the cemetery with their eyes blindfolded and their hands tied, outside of all legality.

The death was verified by a doctor, and in the event that they survived, they were finished off with a coup de grâce; after this, their bodies were wrapped in burlap and buried in a mass grave," the sentence establishes.

The desert kept the bodies, as proof of the horror

Dozens of judicial testimonies from both prisoners and riflemen denote a brutality rarely seen in hands other than the security services of the time. In mid-1990, the remains of Calderón, Lizardi, and Guzmán were found; other bodies could not be located, such as the cases of Jiménez, Cañas, and Nash, who currently remain in the status of forcibly disappeared.

Unlike other places where only remains were recovered that required forensic analysis to identify to whom they belonged, in Pisagua they had remained almost unaltered and in an incredible way due to the soil conditions. The bodies of those who were found denote part of the brutality they suffered before dying.

The relatives recognized them one by one upon seeing them, almost immediately: "It was to such an extent that one looked at the bodies that were there, hidden in the sand, and one could perfectly observe their figures, the features of their faces; one could almost guess the scream of horror at the moment they were killed.

It was impressive," journalist Mario Aguilera, who was a witness to the discovery of the bodies while working as a reporter for Radio Nuevo Mundo, recounts to Cambio21.

The "Plutos"

"Those were 'my' first bodies that appeared, because later I was in Chihuio, in the Mapocho, Peldehue, Colonia Dignidad, many places where one could think there were forcibly disappeared persons. In fact, the group of journalists who followed the trails of illegal burials were called 'the Plutos,' because we were looking for 'little bones.' It might sound harsh at first, but later we assumed that that was what we were doing, looking for the remains, the little bones of those who were not there," Aguilera points out.

The journalist remembers the discovery: "There was the judge from Pozo Almonte, Nelson Muñoz, who had the audacity to believe what reached his ears; there was a clandestine grave, it was true, there was the mummified testimony of a terrible massacre.

The relatives began to arrive, they hugged each other, they hugged the lawyers, the judge, and also the journalists; it was the enormous emotion of finding them, they were dead but they were there, they cried with emotion, the anguish of the search for many had ended," he recalls.

"An hour earlier we had been at the site, only a few minutes, the experts were still working on the care to remove the bodies from the sand, everything was just as it was at the moment of their death; the salt, the heat, the sand, and the dryness of the place had allowed even the last grimaces of pain at the moment of their death to be preserved.

It was a moving landscape, them at the bottom of the grave, a little further on an old, almost abandoned cemetery; it was just a matter of looking up and one could see the sea there, calm, brushing against the sand of the desert," Mario Aguilera remembers.

"Come and see the blood"

"There was only one public telephone in Pisagua, it was a small shop where they sold a bit of everything, we journalists took turns to dispatch (...) not far from the beach there was a carabinero police station, some fishermen served as our guides and took us to the place where the detainees were," the journalist evokes.

"They also showed us the Pisagua theater, it was well preserved, and suddenly María Maluenda, the actress (and mother of José Manuel Parada - the 'degollados' case), appeared on stage. She had also arrived in Pisagua together with a group of Human Rights lawyers and began a monologue; with her powerful voice, she called to the ghosts of the place, thanked what had happened there, and recited Neruda:

'You will ask why his poetry does not speak to us of sleep, of the leaves, of the great volcanoes of his native land? Come and see the blood in the streets, come and see the blood in the streets, come and see the blood in the streets!'"

Aguilera remembers.

"It was beautiful, it was a martyrdom, it was word, it was poetry, and we all remained silent, there was no applause, one or two tears helped to contain oneself in that beautiful moment, nothing was planned, that is how it emerged. It was also not planned that in that month of June 1990 we would find ourselves in that place, welcoming those they had tried to hide under the sand," he points out.

"Michelito, where are you!"

One of the heartbreaking moments the journalist remembers corresponds to his last visit to Pisagua, after the discovery of the bodies: "We arrived at the site again, the grave was empty, they had searched in other places and nothing, others were missing.

There was the widow of Freddy Taberna, whom I had known as a student leader at the Pedagógico, and Freddy did not appear. 'Everyone to the bus!' they began to shout, suddenly some heartbreaking screams are heard: 'Michelito, where are you!

Michelito, I want you with me! Michelito, my son!' It was Michel Nash's father. He was shouting in the middle of the desert, crying out to heaven for his son. Michel did not appear either; he was a young conscript also detained in Pisagua who refused to shoot at his own people," he recounts.

Even though at that time democracy was "in its infancy" and the power of the former dictator, now entrenched in the Army's commander-in-chief office, was felt in the air, it was impossible for them to hide the discovery of the bodies: "The way they appeared, how they were, the impact it caused on the population and the whole world was such that they could not cover the sun with a finger.

It was no longer possible to continue denying that there were people who had died and who were not among the 119 (Operation Colombo) or who fell in a confrontation among themselves or who had escaped abroad; they were there, in the desert. Those who defended the false history they wanted to tell us were left speechless," Aguilera asserts.

Justice, late, but justice?

The conviction is an act of justice, for Aguilera, late, incomplete, but necessary: "Justice is slow but it arrives, it has been almost a slogan of mine, but in this case, it has taken too long. Although in part there is a ruling that has been achieved, it is only a part, because the bodies of all those who are missing (1,200) have not yet appeared, so there is no full justice; in fact, there is nothing, if we do not know the truth, how can there be justice?" asks journalist Mario Aguilera.

Some claim that this same late justice is also unjust for those who committed the illicit acts and today, after more than 40 years and finding themselves old and sick, must be in prison. For Aguilera, the perspective is different: "In no case is it an injustice regarding them.

Klaus Barbie, the so-called 'Butcher of Lyon,' old, elderly, went to prison, extradited to France from Bolivia, because he was one of the murderers who committed atrocious crimes. And just as we say that those who are in Punta Peuco are old, poor things that they are in prison, we must remember that they even killed children and had no compassion for the old people who were prisoners in the National Stadium, Colonia Dignidad, Villa Grimaldi; they were also old," he points out.

He clarifies, however, that it is not about revenge or an eye for an eye. "Clearly it is not revenge. None of them have been tortured, nor are they forcibly disappeared; they are in prison after fair trials with the right to a defense, they have testified without anyone running a truck over their legs, none of them have been blindfolded," he concludes.

Testimony of the riflemen

Among the guards who had to participate in illicit acts against the prisoners is former prison guard Francisco Zamora Órdenes, who declares judicially that in Pisagua he occasionally fulfilled the functions of acting warden during October 1973.

He confesses that there "several executions were carried out, with or without a prior War Council, since those that were not the product of a War Council were not recorded; for this, a firing squad was not formed, but rather the detainee was made to run and was shot in the back, then the corpses were taken to a grave that had been dug especially for the executed, wrapping them in potato sacks.

One on top and another underneath, sewing them in the middle."

Zamora also confessed that "it was his turn to participate in an execution as a firing squad, receiving the order from Commander Larraín, where if he did not shoot, the one to be executed would be him.

The other prisoners were taken to see the executions as a means of pressure so that they would talk and denounce people, but they were executed anyway later," he acknowledged. The statements of one of the convicted, Gabriel Guerrero Reeve, who was an Army second lieutenant, are consistent.

He confesses that before one of the crimes, he received the order from Colonel Ramón Larraín, who "points out to them that they had to carry out a mission that had been arranged by the higher echelon (...) The mission assigned to them represented a service for the country against the enemy of Chile," he stated.

Another of the convicted, Sergio Figueroa, second lieutenant of the Carampagne Army, had to be a rifleman. Before the judge, he confesses that "Regarding the War Councils (...) it was clear that it was a farce to give an appearance of legality to the executions" and recalls that in September 1973, "the act of execution was only one, everyone was shot in the same act, there was never an attempt to escape (...) the detainees were blindfolded and handcuffed.

He remembers that the prisoner Nash did not die immediately and Benavides had to shoot him again." Not all the convicted acknowledged the facts; some said they did not know, others maintained the lies of escape or the legality of the War Councils.

Sergio Benavides Villarreal and Manuel Vega Collado were sentenced to life imprisonment as authors of kidnappings and the 8 qualified homicides. Roberto Ampuero Alarcón, Gabriel Guerrero Reeve, Sergio Figueroa López, and Arturo Contador Rosales were sentenced to 15 years and one day for three kidnappings and qualified homicides.

Miguel Aguirre Álvarez was sentenced to 10 years and one day for three of the kidnappings.

Source: cambio21.cl, September 5, 2016

Tarapacá: Commemoration of International Human Rights Day

The act of Commemoration of International Human Rights Day was organized by the Regional Ministerial Secretary (Seremi) of Justice, Lorena De Ferrari, and was surrounded by emotion as it remembered three public servants from the justice sector who fell during the military dictatorship.

In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations General Assembly categorically stated that respect for human rights and the dignity of the human person "are the foundations for freedom, justice, and peace in the world."

By 1950, the General Assembly invited all member States and interested organizations to observe December 10 of each year as Human Rights Day.

In this sense, this year's motto is "Human Rights: 365 days a year," being reinforced by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, who stated: "I urge States to fulfill their obligation to protect human rights every day of the year. I call on people to hold their governments accountable."

To fulfill this objective, an activity was held in the Tarapacá region, which was led by the acting Intendant, Gonzalo Prieto, and was attended by the Governor of the Tamarugal Province, Claudio Vila, as well as Seremis, directors of Services, officials of the justice sector, and members of the associations of executed and former political prisoners.

On the occasion, Enrique Echeverría, general secretary of the Corporation of Former Political Prisoners of Pisagua; Sandra Sampson, president of the Association of Relatives and Friends for the Reconstruction of the Historical Memory of Executed, Forcibly Disappeared, and Political Prisoners; Faremehi; and Héctor Marín Rossel, President of the Association of Relatives of Political Executed and Forcibly Disappeared of Iquique and Pisagua, expressed their words.

Likewise, Joel Cortez, acting general director representing CAJTA, conducted a historical tour of the origin of human rights, highlighting their enormous validity and transcendence in the present. He emphasized that it is in democracy that they can truly be exercised and valued the fighters who, in inclement times, raised their brave voices to defend human rights.

At the same time, he highlighted the well-deserved recognition of the justice sector officials executed during the military government.

On the occasion, the Seremi of Justice, Lorena De Ferrari, explained that our country has strengthened the existing institutional framework, mainly with the National Institute of Human Rights and the Museum of Memory and Human Rights.

In this same sense, she referred to the creation of the Undersecretariat of Human Rights within the Ministry of Justice, which will be renamed the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights. She added that the initiative includes the provision of human and budgetary resources that allow for coordinated work on the matter, also expanding the presence of the National Institute of Human Rights at the regional level.

At the same time, the Seremi of Justice especially remembered three men from the justice sector who fell in the dictatorship; they were: Julio Cabezas Gacitúa, lawyer, fiscal prosecutor of the State Defense Council, and head of the Judicial Assistance Service of the Bar Association in Iquique; Isaías Higueras Zúñiga, prison guard and militant of the Communist Party; and Alberto Yáñez Carvajal, prison official.

Regarding Isaías Higueras, the authority explained that the Rettig Report indicates that there is a conviction, especially due to the statements of multiple and concordant eyewitnesses, that his death occurred as a consequence of the illegitimate duress to which he was subjected by agents of the State while he was detained in the Pisagua prisoner camp, where his guards beat him to death.

Regarding Alberto Yáñez, she stated that according to the background information indicated in the Rettig Report, there is a conviction that he was executed by agents of the State by virtue of a War Council, which, by having departed from the basic norms of due process, violated the human rights of the accused. His body was found in 1990 in the Pisagua grave.

Finally, De Ferrari referred to Julio Cabezas Gacitúa, lawyer, fiscal prosecutor of the State Defense Council, and head of the Judicial Assistance Service of the Bar Association in Iquique, with no known political militancy, murdered at age 45 in the Pisagua Prisoner Camp.

Regarding Julio Cabezas, the authority recounted that the lawyer had begun an investigation into the smuggling of food from Iquique to Bolivia and the cocaine trade from Bolivia to Iquique, which involved merchants and members of the judiciary.

Upon concluding the investigation, the Supreme Court was informed of the situation. This court appointed a visiting minister who verified the complaints made by Cabezas. Disciplinary measures were adopted, with the dismissal of two ministers of the Iquique Court of Appeals and the suspension from his position of judge Mario Acuña Riquelme.

Continuing her presentation, De Ferrari recalled that upon the military coup, Mario Acuña Riquelme was appointed military prosecutor of the Sixth Army Division, substantiating a War Council against Cabezas who was "executed" for "high treason to the Fatherland" on October 10, 1973. The file of the alleged War Council never appeared.

Finally, the acting Intendant Gonzalo Prieto indicated that the Government program of President Michelle Bachelet decisively incorporates human rights, specifying that the document states that, "Human Rights must be the main foundation and articulating axis of the State's actions, both of the Government, of the powers and institutions of the State, and especially of the legislative activity and the public policies that are adopted."

The commemoration concluded with the heartfelt interpretation by Engracia Palominos of the Cueca Sola, reminding us of the debt to those who are gone.

Source: minjusticia.gob.cl, December 18, 2014

SANTIAGO COURT CONFIRMS RULING THAT CONVICTED (RETIRED) ARMY MEMBERS FOR KIDNAPPINGS AND HOMICIDES IN PISAGUA

The Santiago Court of Appeals confirmed the sentence that convicted seven retired Army members for their responsibility in the crimes of qualified kidnapping of Miguel Selín Nash Sáez, Jesús Nolberto Cañas Cañas, and Juan Jiménez Vidal; and in the qualified homicide of Marcelo Guzmán Fuentes, Juan Calderón Villalón, Luis Lizardi Lizardi, Julio Cabezas Gacitúa, Julio Córdova Croxato, Mario Morris Barrios, Humberto Lizardi Flores, and Juan Valencia Hinojosa, political prisoners admitted to the Pisagua detention center in September and October 1973.

Unanimously (case roll 1552-2016), the Fifth Chamber of the capital's appellate court—composed of ministers Mauricio Silva Cancino, Jessica González, and Jenny Book—ratified the resolution that sentenced Sergio Benavides Villarreal and Manuel Vega Collado to life imprisonment, in their capacity as authors of the three qualified kidnappings and the eight qualified homicides.

In the case, Roberto Antonio Ampuero Alarcón, Gabriel Alfonso Guerrero Reeve, and Arturo Alberto Contador Rosales must serve single sentences of 10 years in prison as co-authors of the repeated crimes of qualified kidnapping of Miguel Selin Nash Sáez, Jesús Nolberto Cañas Cañas, and Juan Jiménez Vidal, and as co-authors of the repeated crimes of qualified homicide of Marcelo Omar Guzmán Fuentes, Juan Calderón Villalón, and Luis Alberto Lizardi Lizardi.

Meanwhile, Sergio Eduardo Figueroa López was sentenced to a single penalty of 12 years in prison as the author of the crimes, and the court confirmed the penalty of 10 years and one day in prison that Miguel Aguirre Álvarez must serve for his responsibility in the three qualified kidnappings.

In the investigation stage, the visiting minister Mario Carroza managed to determine the following facts:

"That after September 11, 1973, a permanent repression operation against militants and sympathizers of the parties of the deposed government, under the name CIRE, was installed at the headquarters of the Sixth Army Division, under the command of General Carlos Forestier Haenseng (deceased), and which acted by order and guidance of the military prosecutor of the time, Mario Acuña Riquelme (deceased);

Those who responded to the calls made through military edicts or who were arrested in raids were taken to the headquarters of the Sixth Army Division, from where they were referred to the Telecommunications Regiment in the city of Iquique, where they were subjected to interrogations under physical duress by orders issued by Commander Forestier or the military prosecutor Acuña;

The detainees from the Telecommunications Regiment were taken to the Pisagua Prisoner Camp where, once again, they were subjected to beatings to 'soften them up' and were forced to sign blank documents that were taken to the military prosecutor Acuña 'with the sole purpose of justifying fallacious accusations before simulated War Councils and being able to request, in these, sentences such as the death penalty,' which once imposed was executed within the following 24 hours by firing squads;

Within this mode of operation, on September 19, 1973, in the morning hours, Juan Calderón Villalón, Luis Alberto Lizardi Lizardi, Marcelo Omar Guzmán Fuentes, Juan Jiménez Vidal, Jesús Nolberto Cañas, and Michel Selin Nash Sáez were taken from their cells at the Pisagua Prisoner Camp and executed in the vicinity of the prisoner camp under the pretext that they had attempted to escape while being transferred out of the site.

The bodies were wrapped in burlap sacks and then buried in a grave in the Atacama Desert. Subsequently, in mid-1990, the remains of Calderón Villalón, Lizardi Lizardi, and Marcelo Guzmán Fuentes were found, but there is no record of the bodies of Juan Jiménez Vidal, Jesús Nolberto Cañas, and Michel Nash Sáez, who currently remain disappeared;

Meanwhile, on October 11, 1973, prisoners Julio Cabezas Gacitúa, Juan Valencia Hinojosa, Mario Morris Barrios, José Córdova Croxato, and José Humberto Lizardi Flores were taken from their cells and executed in a place near the cemetery with their eyes blindfolded and their hands tied, outside of all legality.

The death was verified by a doctor, and in the event that they survived, they were finished off with a coup de grâce; after this, their bodies were wrapped in burlap and buried in a mass grave."

In the civil aspect, the ruling ordered the State of Chile to pay, as moral damages, the total sum of $510,000,000 (five hundred and ten million pesos) to the parents, spouses, children, and siblings of the victims.

Source: mediabanco.com, April 2, 2018

After 40 Years of Impunity: First Accusations Issued for Pisagua Crimes

After 40 years of impunity and thanks to the fact that the victims' relatives never gave up in their struggle, the minister of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Mario Carroza, issued the first accusations against seven members of the Chilean Army who served as jailers at the former Pisagua Political Prisoner Camp during the 1973 dictatorship, for the crimes of Qualified Homicide against 8 political executions and Qualified Kidnapping against 3 forcibly disappeared persons.

Minister Carroza traveled to Iquique and met with the relatives of the victims of the dictatorship, who could not contain their emotion upon learning that finally, after 40 years and with only 4 months of investigation carried out by the magistrate, the accusations were issued for the indicated crimes, which cost the lives of numerous political prisoners.

The first accusations correspond to the execution of the prisoners: Juan Calderón Villalobos, Marcelo Guzmán Fuentes, and Luis Lizardi Lizardi.

In addition, the hitherto forcibly disappeared Michel Nasch Sáez, Nolberto Cañas Cañas, and Juan Jiménez Vidal, executed on September 29, 1973, in Pisagua.

Also the executed Julio Cabezas Gacitúa, Mario Morris Barrios, Juan Valencia Hinojosa, Humberto Lizardi Flores, and Julio Córdova Croxato; all of them murdered in the former prisoner camp on October 11, 1973.

Minister Carroza will continue to investigate and issue accusations, in chronological order of how the murders occurred, both in Iquique and in Pisagua, according to how the complaint is filed.

The accused for the crimes of Qualified Homicide and Qualified Kidnapping are: Sergio Eugenio Benavides Villarreal, Roberto Antonio Ampuero Alarcón, Arturo Alberto Contador Rosales, Sergio Eduardo Figueroa López, Gabriel Alonso Guerrero Reeve, Manuel del Carmen Vega, and Miguel Aguirre Alvarez.

According to the investigation, Calderón, Lizardi Lizardi, and Guzmán were in Pisagua, a facility dependent on the VI Army Division, from where they were selectively taken from their cells by officers in charge of their custody, under the pretext that "volunteers" were needed to perform work outside the prisoner camp.

However, there was never any voluntary work, as is proven in the investigation, since the prisoners were executed outside the Pisagua cemetery by the same military patrol that took them from their cells. It was headed by Army Captain Sergio Benavides Villarreal, who, together with other soldiers, proceeded to bury the remains in the same place.

Specifically, they were buried on the north side of the Pisagua Municipal Cemetery, which corresponds to the place where the Clandestine Grave of Pisagua was discovered on June 2, 1990.

Seventeen years later, their remains were found in burlap sacks, wearing on their clothes, at chest height, a red disc, presumably to indicate the area where they should receive the deadly discharge.

However, the military authority "explained" at the time that the prisoners had attempted to escape toward Pisagua Viejo, the place where the cemetery is located, which is why the military security patrol ordered them to stop on several occasions, firing into the air, but as they continued their escape, they were shot down, perishing in the action. Their remains were buried in the same cemetery.

The version of the escape was discarded by subsequent investigations. Today, the minister establishes that the narrated facts involve the commission of the crime of qualified homicide for the mentioned defendants.

On this same date of September 29, three other executions were recorded that cost the lives of Michel Nasch Sáez, Nolberto Cañas Cañas, and Juan Jiménez Vidal, prisoners in Pisagua, but whose bodies never appeared.

According to the investigation, they were taken from their cells, together with the other three prisoners, Calderón, Guzmán, and Lizardi Lizardi (first case), by the Army officers in charge of their custody, under the same pretext of performing "voluntary work."

The military authority of the time explained that the prisoners tried to escape toward Pisagua Viejo, for which they were shot down, given the null attempts to stop the alleged escape. Their remains were buried in the Pisagua Cemetery, according to the jailers' statements.

However, and despite the fact that the military authority acknowledges having executed the prisoners and having buried them in the Pisagua Cemetery, their remains were not found in the clandestine grave, where the remains of the other three executed, Calderón, Guzmán, and Lizardi Lizardi, did appear.

To date, Michel Nasch, Nolberto Cañas, and Juan Jiménez are in the status of disappeared.

On October 11, 1973, the execution of Julio Cabezas Gacitúa, Mario Morris Barrios, Juan Valencia Hinojosa, Julio Córdova Croxato, and Humberto Lizardi Flores occurred. All of them were prisoners in Pisagua when they were suddenly taken from their cells on October 8 and 10 and transferred to the carabinero police station of the same cove.

At the site, they were interrogated by Military Prosecutor Mario Acuña Riquelme. In the early hours of October 11, the prisoners were executed outside of all legality by the Army officers who were in charge of their custody.

Their bodies were illegally buried in the same place where they were killed, that is, in the clandestine grave of Pisagua. As in the previous case, their bodies were inside burlap sacks.

The version of the military at the time was that the detainees were executed by application of a sentence handed down within the framework of a War Council, for being confessed and being authors of the crimes of treason to the Fatherland, espionage, and violation of the State Security Law.

The investigation indicates that there is no record of any background information that supports the fact that the hearings of the Military Justice were held. The described facts involve the crimes of qualified homicide provided for and punished in Article 391 N° 1 of the Penal Code.

Thus, well-founded charges arise to consider that the agents of the dictatorial government Sergio Eugenio Benavides Villarreal, Roberto Antonio Ampuero Alarcón, Arturo Alberto Contador Rosales, Sergio Eduardo Figueroa López, Gabriel Alonso Guerrero Reeve, and Manuel del Carmen Vega Colao had participation as authors of qualified homicide.

Source: reddigital.cl, October 22, 2015

The minister for extraordinary causes regarding human rights violations at the Santiago Court of Appeals, Mario Carroza, issued a sentence in the investigation he is conducting into the crimes of kidnapping and qualified homicide of eleven prisoners, offenses perpetrated in October 1973 and January 1974, respectively, in the town of Pisagua.

In the ruling (case file 2182-98), issued this Wednesday the 23rd, the presiding judge sentenced former Army Major Carlos Alberto Fernando Herrera Jiménez to a single penalty of 12 years in prison for his responsibility in the qualified homicides of Orlando Tomás Cabello Cabello, Nicolás Chanez Chanez, Juan Apolinario Mamani García, Luis Aníbal Manríquez Wilden, Hugo Tomás Martínez Guillén, and Juan Rojas Osega, perpetrated on January 29, 1974; and of Nelson José Márquez Agusto, executed on January 18, 1974.

Meanwhile, former Army non-commissioned officer Miguel Chile Aguirre Álvarez must serve 10 years and one day for the repeated crimes of aggravated kidnapping of Rodolfo Jacinto Fuenzalida Fernández, Juan Antonio Ruz Díaz, José Demóstenes Rosier Sampson Ocaranza, and Freddy Marcelo Taberna Gallegos, perpetrated on October 29, 1973.

Likewise, Minister Carroza decreed the acquittal of former Carabineros Major Manuel Rogelio del Carmen Vega Collao, as his participation in these crimes could not be proven.

Herrera Jiménez is the same individual who, under the cover name "Marcos Belmar" and the alias "Bocaccio," later continued his criminal actions within the DINA, the CNI, and the DINE, and currently remains serving a sentence in Punta Peuco for other crimes.

The Facts

During the investigation stage, Minister Carroza was able to establish the following sequence of events:

«a.- That the illicit acts that occurred after September 11, 1973, in the city of Iquique began at the General Headquarters of the Sixth Army Division, at that time commanded by General Ernesto Carlos Joaquín Forestier Haensgen, who, once the Military Coup had taken place, created a repressive body targeting militants or sympathizers of leftist parties and/or those opposed to the Military Government.

He included in this group individuals whom the Military Prosecutor and former Criminal Judge of Iquique, Mario Acuña Riquelme, for personal reasons, decided to hold responsible for alleged crimes committed in the area prior to the establishment of the Military Government.

In fulfilling this task of mutilating individual guarantees, this Army officer and the Military Prosecutor of the time created the Regional Intelligence Agency (CIRE), with personnel from the Intelligence Department of the Sixth Army Division and the Civil Commission of the First Police Station of Iquique; b.- That all operations carried out by CIRE agents in the city of Iquique, which were arbitrary and restrictive of rights, were conducted with an evident transgression of fundamental rights and were not limited to raids and the detention of civilians and military personnel, but also intimidated numerous people in the area to report to the General Headquarters of the Sixth Army Division, under the threat of being shot if they did not present themselves and were found on public roads; for this purpose, military decrees publicized through the media were used; c.- That, as a consequence of these actions, an indeterminate number of people were deprived of their liberty, taken to the Telecommunications Regiment of the city of Iquique, and subjected to intense interrogations under torture. Some of them, as happened with the victims in this case, were sent to the Prisoner of War Camp located in the town of Pisagua, which had been transformed at that time into a military unit under the command of Army Major Ramón Ibarra Ibarra, which also received nearly 270 detainees transported by sea by the Chilean Navy on the merchant ship Maipo; d.- That in the Pisagua Prisoner Camp, the detainees were locked in shared cells and, from time to time, taken from their place of confinement to be interrogated and/or, on occasions, subjected to "softening" beatings, thus forcing them to sign blank documents. These same documents later constituted a confession of crimes of treason against the fatherland, with which Military Prosecutor Acuña justified fallacious accusations before spurious War Councils. These did not prevent this Military Prosecutor from occasionally requesting the death penalty for prisoners whose only crime was their ideology, and which, once imposed, was executed within twenty-four hours by firing squads in the northern area of the town of Pisagua. These rulings were ratified by Regional Commander Forestier and executed by personnel from the Army and other institutions; e.- That these procedures, which were essentially arbitrary and unjust—including kidnappings, confinement, interrogations, torture, and, on occasions, summary executions—were directed by Military Prosecutor and former Criminal Judge Mario Acuña Riquelme, based on crimes admitted under torture. Despite this, they formed the basis for sham War Councils and endorsed the despotic defenselessness to which the prisoners were subjected by the military hierarchy, in a framework lacking impartiality and showing absolute contempt for the norms of due process. The above is evidenced by the fact that there is no record or evidence in the case files to prove that the victims were allowed a timely and effective defense, much less in those cases where the death penalty was applied; it was not even applied with strict adherence to the law of the time, but on the contrary, it was carried out with an open violation of the requirements that the law demanded for these cases, as in the one that concerns us today, where capital punishment was applied without the unanimity of its members. For others, this was not even taken into consideration, but rather it was arbitrarily decided that they should be executed without a War Council, supported only by considerations known only to their captors or by the so-called "Law of Flight";

By virtue of what has been expressed above, it is possible to conclude three illicit events:

I.-) That Orlando Tomás Cabello Cabello, Nicolás Chanez Chanez, Juan Apolinario Mamani García, Luis Aníbal Manríquez Wilden, Hugo Tomás Martínez Guillén, and Juan Rojas Osega were detained in the city of Iquique in the month of November 1973 and taken to the Telecommunications Regiment of the same city, and after some time transferred to the Pisagua Political Prisoner Camp, both units dependent on the General Command of the VI Army Division, under the command of Army General Carlos Forestier Haensgen, currently deceased.

The detainees had no political affiliation nor did they carry out any type of subversive activity, but they were accused by military authorities of being perpetrators of crimes of smuggling goods and/or drug trafficking, without any basis to prove it.

One day in January 1974, the public and their families were informed, via a military decree, that the aforementioned prisoners had been released at the intersection of the Pisagua Road and the Pan-American Highway.

However, upon the discovery and exhumation of human remains found in a clandestine grave next to the Pisagua cemetery in 1990, their bodies were found in a pit, all with their hands tied, eyes blindfolded, and a red circle adhered to their clothing over the heart. Each of them was wrapped in burlap sacks and they were buried with other prisoners who received the same punitive sanction.

The forensic examinations performed on these human remains determined that the cause of their deaths was multiple gunshot wounds resulting from an execution, prior to their bodies being bagged and buried in the pit;

II.-) That Nelson José Márquez Agusto, a member of the Communist Party, was detained in Iquique after September 11, 1973, and transferred to the Pisagua Prisoner of War Camp, where he was held for about four months with repeated physical punishments, which increased with the visit of General Oscar Bonilla, a military authority to whom he reported mistreatment by the soldiers guarding him.

In view of this violence against his person, Márquez's mental state deteriorated, so his captors decided to leave him without custody in a field located in front of the Public Jail, a situation that allowed him to attempt to go down to the pier to flee.

However, he was discovered and, despite orders, did not stop, so a search was initiated under the "Law of Flight" and he was successfully detained. He was then given a "lesson" beating and transferred back to the jail.

Later, they came to get him, and on the beach adjacent to the Pisagua theater, it was decided to execute him as a warning and example for the other prisoners, without there being any reason that made it necessary, only to prevent other detainees from deciding to follow his example and attempt to escape;

III.-) That on October 29, 1973, in the town of Pisagua, Tarapacá Region, a War Council was held and it was resolved to sentence Freddy Marcelo Taberna Gallegos, José Demóstenes Rosiel Sampson Ocaranza, Juan Antonio Ruz Díaz, and Rodolfo Jacinto Fuenzalida Fernández to death.

At the time, they were deprived of their liberty in the prisoner camp existing in that town. As a consequence, they were executed on the north side of the local cemetery, and to this date, the whereabouts of their remains are unknown, making it impossible to verify their deaths, a situation that persists to this day.»

As is known, this ruling is a first-instance decision, which means that the sentence could be appealed to higher courts before becoming final.

Source: resumen.cl, November 25, 2016