It was most likely a coincidence, but it seemed more like a mockery. On the same day that Pinochet arrived at the sun-drenched beaches of Iquique to escape the winter cold, plumper and rosier than ever, ten high-ranking military officers and three other uniformed personnel were added to the list of those prosecuted for criminal offenses committed under his command.

Pinochet traveled in an army plane with an entourage consisting of his wife, a personal physician, and a military escort of fifteen people—expenses paid for by all Chileans. While the former dictator, declared “persona non grata” by students and the “Fuera Pinochet” (Out with Pinochet) Coordinator, enjoys his apartment in an exclusive Iquique condominium and goes for rides in an armored Mercedes Benz provided by the army, his close collaborators parade from the courts to... military facilities, where they begin serving preventive detention for their crimes of thirty years ago.

Although everything is relative in this country where the opposition and the Concertación compete to find the best “solution” to the “human rights problem,” the latest judicial rulings provide a respite for the families of the forcibly disappeared who have been clamoring for justice for decades.

On June 9 and 10, special judge Alejandro Solís prosecuted thirteen people in two different cases. One involves the former DINA high command: once again Manuel Contreras, followed by former brigadier Miguel Krasnoff, colonel Marcelo Moren Brito, non-commissioned officer Basclay Zapata, and the torturer Osvaldo Romo.

All five are being prosecuted for the disappearance of Fernando Silva Camus, a 60-year-old decorator detained by DINA agents on November 27, 1974, one day after the detention of his son Claudio Silva Peralta, a 23-year-old MIR militant.

Both were taken to the Villa Grimaldi torture center, where they were last seen. Their names appeared in 1975 on the list of 119 people published by the DINA as supposedly deceased in Argentina. The testimony of former political prisoner Sonia Bascuñán is very clear: “On November 28 or 29, I was transferred from Villa Grimaldi.

I was placed in the back of a pickup truck, along with María Antonieta Castro and several men. At the end, closer to the exit, was the father of ‘Condoro’ (Claudio Silva’s nickname). One of the agents driving us said that we had to stop on the road, ‘to dump the old man.’ Indeed, the truck stopped on the road and they made one person get out, whom I could not distinguish.

The rest of us detainees arrived at another place that I later learned was the Cuatro Alamos Camp. There I realized that the elderly detainee had not arrived with the rest.”

PROSECUTED IN LINARES

On June 10, the same judge, Alejandro Solís, prosecuted the former vice-commander in chief of the army, Jorge Zincke Quiroz; generals Carlos Morales and Humberto Julio, former undersecretary of Foreign Affairs; and colonels Félix Cabezas and Juan Morales.

The list is completed by Claudio Lecaros, Antonio Aguilar Barrientos, and Héctor Torres Guajardo. They are accused of participating as perpetrators in the kidnapping and disappearance of six prisoners in Linares and three others in Constitución, between September 1973 and October 1974.

To that crime are added the charges of illegal exhumation, obstruction of justice, and illicit association. All those prosecuted held positions at the Linares Artillery School, where, according to witness accounts, the trail of dozens of political prisoners was lost.

Among them were Rubén Bravo, a 55-year-old farmer and socialist; Waldo Villalobos Moraga, 48, with no political affiliation; and MIR militants María Isabel Beltrán Sánchez, a 21-year-old student; Alejandro Mella Flores, a 19-year-old student; Anselmo Cancino Aravena, a 25-year-old agricultural worker; and Hernán Contreras Cabrera, 21, a CORA official.

On December 27, 2001, Codepu filed a complaint, which Judge Solís is investigating, regarding these six people. During the proceedings, a former conscript testified that around 80 political prisoners had allegedly been buried at the Artillery School.

For that reason, on April 16 of this year, the visiting minister directed an inspection of the shooting range in search of remains. The excavations yielded no results, although signs were found that the ground had been disturbed.

This case had unexpected repercussions for the director general of Investigations, Nelson Mery. The day after the prosecutions became known, the president of the Association of Former Political Prisoners of Linares, Teobaldo Peña, asserted that the head of the civil police is involved in the disappearance of people in that city, where he allegedly served from September 11, 1973, until February or March 1974.

According to Peña, Nelson Mery was part of the groups in charge of detaining and torturing people. The same accusation was made on April 16 by Viviana Díaz, secretary of the Association of Families of the Forcibly Disappeared.

Colonel Juan Hernán Morales Salgado, when he was a captain in charge of the governorship of Constitución after the military coup, is the main person prosecuted for the detention and disappearance of Arturo Enrique Riveros Blanco, a militant of the Christian Left and governor of Constitución; of Jorge Yáñez Olave, a 28-year-old journalist; and of Jaime Bernardo Torres Salazar, a 21-year-old worker.

The latter two were members of the MIR regional committee. Morales Salgado made a career within the military institution. He was head of Manuel Contreras’s security team when he was director of the DINA, and he is involved in the assassination of the former commander in chief of the army, Carlos Prats, and his wife Sofía Cuthbert.

One of the letters rogatory sent by Argentine judge María Servini de Cubría was addressed to him. These are part of the “merits” that allowed him to retire from the army with the rank of colonel.

MORALES AND THE CORVOS

“According to the data we have been able to collect, Juan Morales (a former colonel currently being prosecuted) participated directly in my husband’s death,” says Juana María Soto, wife of Jorge Bernabé Yáñez Olave and a member of the Association of Families of the Forcibly Disappeared of Linares.

Step by step, she has been reconstructing a story that, despite the years that have passed, still shakes her. She and their son, Cristián—then 6 years old—last saw Jorge a few days before the “11th.” “He seemed worried, because he saw the worst coming,” Juana recalls.

Due to his political work, he had gone to live in Constitución, where he shared a boarding room with Jaime Torres. Both participated on the day of the military coup in a protest march by Celulosa Arauco workers along with governor Arturo Riveros Blanco.

The next day, the city was occupied by soldiers from the Linares Artillery School, under the command of captain Juan Hernán Morales Salgado, who took over as governor and plaza commander. Among his trusted men were lieutenant Leonardo Marchant Rocha and sub-lieutenants Marcelo Salas Coccolo and Alejandro Herrera López, who do not appear as defendants in the case.

On September 14, they detained Arturo Riveros and union leaders José and Jorge Saavedra. Two days later, Jorge Yáñez and Jaime Torres were recognized on a rural road while heading to Chanco, and they were also arrested.

They were taken to the Cauquenes Investigations barracks, but on the 17th, the new governor of Constitución claimed them and sent a patrol to pick them up. There are witnesses who saw them enter the Governor’s office covered in blood.

Others shared the torture and horror with them. Gustavo Salazar, a dental technician and socialist militant, was confronted with Jorge on September 14 or 15. He was being held up by two uniformed men because he could not support his own body; his face was swollen and deformed from the beatings, and he could barely speak.

He was the last to see him alive. In their search, Juana and Jorge’s father, José Yáñez—a former carabineer who has since passed away—arrived at the home of the then-captain Juan Morales on September 21. “I begged him for my son to tell us where Jorge was,” she recalls. “He answered me very casually not to worry, because he had released him on the 19th and that surely I would be the first to see him.

Since he also had a small son, I asked him to swear on his son that he was telling me the truth. And he did.” Another detainee declared that the person directing the interrogations was captain Morales and that he heard him comment to detectives that José and Jorge Saavedra and Jorge Yáñez were dead.

At the end of September, Morales Salgado himself admitted at a social reception to having ordered the execution of five people, whose bodies “were left lying in an area of the beach called Potrerillos.” He mentioned Jorge Yáñez, Jaime Torres, and Arturo Riveros.

In the Report of the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, where Jorge and Jaime are listed as forcibly disappeared, colonel Juan Hernán Morales Salgado (on active duty at the time), members of the “N” section, class of 1973, of the Linares Artillery School, and unidentified personnel of the Constitución Carabineros Station are blamed.

In August 1974, case file 40150 “for alleged disappearance” was opened in the Linares Court of Letters. The judge closed the summary and dismissed the case “because the crime was not proven.” The Talca Court of Appeals ordered it reopened.

A new closure and temporary dismissal were determined by the judge. And this time it was approved by the Court. In 1995, Juana Soto filed a criminal complaint for the crimes of illegal detention, kidnapping, torture, and human rights violations.

And in December 2001, she signed another complaint, this time against Pinochet. According to the information she and the lawyers have gathered, “they killed the five of them in the worst way, they used corvos (knives) and opened their bellies...

Afterward, there are two versions: one, that they put the bodies in a hole and set them on fire. And the other... that they threw them into the sea.” " Linares Episode " On April 16, minister Alejandro Solís attended the excavations at the General Bari Shooting Range in Linares, where people listed as forcibly disappeared were allegedly buried, according to information received by a Chilean resident in Germany whose son and father are disappeared.

The excavations were carried out with specialists to see if the area had been disturbed. Experts from the Legal Medical Service and the Fifth Department of the Investigative Police also attended. After eight hours of excavations, the minister ended the proceeding and will not resume the search for remains.

On that occasion, the general secretary of the Association of the Forcibly Disappeared, Viviana Díaz, held the Director of Investigations, Nelson Mery, responsible for having participated in the detentions of several people who are disappeared, among them María Isabel Beltrán Sánchez.

In Santiago, Nelson Mery dismissed the versions of the Association of Families of the Forcibly Disappeared, pointing out that he has testified on this matter to the media on repeated occasions and that if minister Solís summoned him to testify, he would go as many times as necessary.

The communications office of the Investigative Police rejected Viviana Díaz’s accusation against Mery, because that accusation was investigated at the time and no grounds were found. On June 6, minister Solís prosecuted seven retired Army officials and one Investigations official for the disappearances of 8 people at the Linares Artillery School between September 1973 and February 1974.

Those prosecuted are: Retired Army General Humberto Lautaro Julio Reyes, as perpetrator of the qualified kidnapping of María Isabel Beltrán Sánchez. Retired General Jorge Ernesto Zinke Quiroz, as perpetrator of the crime of qualified kidnapping of José Gabriel Campos Morales and Alejandro Róbinson Mella Flores.

Retired Army Major General Carlos Edmundo Morales Retamal, as perpetrator of the crime of qualified kidnapping of Héctor Hernán Contreras Cabrera. Retired Army Colonel Félix Renato Cabezas Salazar, as perpetrator of the qualified kidnappings of José Gabriel Campos Morales, Anselmo Antonio Cancino Aravena, and Alejandro Róbinson Mella Flores.

Retired Army Colonel Juan Hernán Morales Salgado, as perpetrator of the qualified kidnappings of Arturo Enrique Riveros Blanco, Jaime Bernardo Torres Salazar, and Jorge Bernabé Yánez. Retired Army Officer Claudio Abdón Lecaros Carrasco, as perpetrator of the kidnappings of María Isabel Beltrán Sánchez, Anselmo Antonio Cancino Aravena, José Gabriel Campos Morales, Héctor Hernán Contreras Cabrera, and Alejandro Róbinson Mella Flores.

Retired Army Non-commissioned Officer Antonio Aguilar Barrientos, as perpetrator of the qualified kidnapping of María Isabel Beltrán Sánchez, Anselmo Antonio Cancino Aravena, and Alejandro Róbinson Mella Flores.

Investigations official Héctor Armando Torres Guajardo, as perpetrator of the crime of qualified kidnapping of Anselmo Antonio Cancino Aravena and Alejandro Róbinson Mella Flores. On June 11, the president of the Association of Former Political Prisoners of Linares, Teobaldo Peña, affirmed that Mery is involved in the disappearance of people detained after September 11, 1973.

From Germany, Sergio Rojas affirmed that Mery was in charge of transporting prisoners from the Linares Artillery School to torture sites, and that he had experienced it personally.

Source: Punto Final, Edition 546, June-July 2003

Seen: In case file No. 125421-2020 of this Supreme Court, the Special Minister Hernán González García, by sentence of February 24, 2020, sentenced Antonio Aguilar Barrientos to a penalty of 541 days of minor imprisonment in its medium degree and legal accessories as perpetrator of the crime of illegal and arbitrary detention of Waldo César Alfaro Retamal perpetrated in July 1974, and to the payment of court costs.

The custodial sentence was remitted. Drained of blood In the first instance, the visiting minister Hernán González García established the following facts: “ a). Waldo César Alfaro Retamal, a nurse who worked at the Linares Base Hospital, was detained in that city on July 6, 1974, and transferred from his home to the Linares Artillery School. b).

Having been released, he was detained again on the 10th of the same month and year, being re-entered into that place. c). There, at the Linares Artillery School, he died on July 11, 1974, as a result of acute anemia secondary to a complicated incised wound of the left thigh. d).

Such detentions were motivated by a problem that occurred at the aforementioned Hospital, by virtue of which the victim was accused of the theft of surgical material, medications, and other items, and of the fact of having refused to attend a shift. e).

The detentions were carried out by State agents (military) in a time of constitutional exception (state of siege/state or time of internal war), at the behest of the director of that health establishment, an Army officer at the time ”. In the criminal aspect, the case was definitively dismissed upon the death of the only convicted military officer.

Source: Judiciary, March 8, 2022

On June 3rd, before Judge Alejandro Solís, the director of the Investigative Police, Nelson Mery Figueroa, testified in the case regarding the detention and disappearance of the young woman, María Isabel Beltrán.

In a five-page statement, the head of the civil police recounts part of his time at the Linares Artillery School and admits to having participated in the detention of another woman, Patricia Contreras, but claims he had nothing to do with the capture of Beltrán.

He identifies retired General Humberto Julio as the person responsible. In the same case, when questioned in September 2002, Contreras stated that she was apprehended with her friend in Santiago on December 18, 1973, and transferred to the city in the Seventh Region.

Other former political prisoners, detained in 1973, also testified against Mery, stating that he had witnessed the torture to which they were subjected.

Belarmino Antonio Sepúlveda Bueno was detained on October 22, 1973, by a contingent of Carabineros, taken to the Linares Artillery School, and tortured within that military facility.

According to him, several other detainees met the same fate, and he holds the current director of the Investigative Police, Nelson Mery Figueroa, responsible for these acts.

He states that the head of the civil police did not personally perform the torture but witnessed the interrogations in which he was beaten and subjected to electric shock sessions.

"He had a schedule of the MIR and wanted me to tell him what my position within it was, even though I was not a member of the MIR. He told me that if I didn't talk, I would be punished," he recalled a few days ago to El Periodista. He added: "There wasn't a detainee who wasn't interrogated by Mery."

His testimony was recorded on page 358 of the case initiated under No. 5073 in the 2nd Criminal Court of Linares.

THE CASE

A month ago, Magistrate Alejandro Solís, the first to issue a sentence that did not consider the 1978 amnesty, decided to prosecute the following individuals in the case in which Belarmino Sepúlveda testified: retired generals Jorge Zincke, former vice-commander-in-chief of the Army; Carlos Morales, former director of the Linares Artillery School; and Humberto Julio, former undersecretary of Foreign Affairs; as well as retired colonels Félix Cabezas and Juan Morales.

They were joined by: Claudio Lecaros Carrasco, commander of the Artillery Group and military intelligence officer; retired Sergeant Major Antonio Aguilar Barrientos; and retired civil police officer Héctor Torres Guajardo.

The reason? The disappearance of six people: Rubén Bravo, a 55-year-old farmer and socialist; Waldo Villalobos Moraga, 48, with no political affiliation; and the MIR members María Isabel Beltrán Sánchez, a 21-year-old student; Alejandro Mella Flores, a 19-year-old student; Anselmo Cancino Aravena, a 25-year-old agricultural worker; and Hernán Contreras Cabrera, 21, an employee of the CORA.

In the case, which consists of 14 volumes and thousands of pages, there was, however, a new development. Many survivors remembered a young detective, then 31 years old, as the liaison between the Investigative Police and the Linares regiment—the last place where the disappeared persons were seen alive: Nelson Mery Figueroa.

For this reason, eight days before issuing the indictments, Judge Solís went to the offices of the Investigative Police Directorate at General Mackenna 1314 to ask the director of that institution about his connection to the events that occurred 30 years ago.

In his judicial statement, ordered by the Supreme Court in anticipation of the potential closure of the summary proceedings, Nelson Mery relates that "on September 12, 1973, I was designated as a liaison officer at the Linares Artillery School, an order given to me by Commissioner Ricardo Hernández."

Immediately, Solís asked him who was in command of that unit, to which the head of the civil police replied: "The director was Colonel Gabriel del Río; the deputy director was Lieutenant Colonel Félix Cabezas Salazar; there were also Majors Sergio Pérez Hormazabal, Jorge Zincke Quiroz, and Juan Saldía; and Captain Humberto Julio, who was the colonel's aide—the latter was also the head of the garrison."

In Solís's resolution, however, neither Colonel del Río, who was in charge of the regiment, nor the prosecutor Carlos Romero, who was an Army captain at the time, were prosecuted. Those who followed them were, including the commander's aide, the then-Captain Julio.

Mery, in his statement, recounted that a few days later, Captain Claudio Lecaros took charge of the Linares Intelligence Service and that, on one occasion, he was called to his office where the officer—Aguilar—asked him if he knew Patricia Contreras Farías.

Mery declared: "I knew her because I was a friend of Elena Contreras, her sister; I even attended some parties. I was surprised by the question, but I decided to tell the truth and answered that I did know her.

I was ordered to go to Santiago because she was allegedly involved in the concealment of weapons in Panimávida." Although in his June statement he says, "I imagine" the order was given by Lecaros because it was transmitted to him by Aguilar, one month later, to the newspaper La Segunda, the director of the civil police asserted that it was Lecaros who gave him the order.

Mery, who in the following paragraphs of his judicial statement maintains that he traveled to Santiago to carry out the order in a military jeep driven by the then-Captain Julio, only acknowledges that he detained his friend's sister and transferred her to the Military School.

He adds: "I lost sight of her there for the whole night. The next day, on the way back to Linares, I was in the jeep, the vehicle stopped, and a truck was coming behind us; at that moment, I was worried about what was happening with Patricia Contreras.

I also found María Isabel Beltrán; the latter was detained by military personnel, and that must have happened after we detained Patricia and after having already gone down the building's stairs. That is why I attribute the fact that I am also being blamed for the detention of María Isabel Beltrán, but that is not true."

However, both in the Rettig Report and in the statement of Patricia Contreras, which appears on page 2,359 and following of the same case, it is asserted that both women were detained simultaneously. "While I was visiting María Isabel's house for about four or five days, on December 18, 1973, during the night, while the curfew was in effect, I was detained along with María Isabel Beltrán by a military patrol and security agents dressed in civilian clothes.

Of the officials who participated in our detention, whom I knew beforehand, I remember Sergeant Aguilar, another military man named Humberto Julio, and the detectives Neves, Mery, and Torres," testified Patricia Cristina Contreras Farías before two detectives of the Investigative Police at her French residence, where she has lived for years.

According to her account, upon finishing the search of the house, they took them to their vehicles, "forcing us to get into a military jeep. The vehicle was driven by a driver, accompanied by one of the detectives, I don't remember if it was Mery or Torres." Contreras, in her statement, maintains that the next day she was transferred to Linares with her friend in a military jeep and not in a truck as Mery asserted.

Belarmino Sepúlveda and another witness say that Norma Montecinos Parra, currently residing in Sweden, participated in the detention of María Isabel Beltrán. She had been taken to Santiago from Linares, where she had been detained, to reveal the exact location where Contreras and Beltrán were.

The prisoners remember that the latter disappeared around February 25, 1974. How do they know? They sent her cigarettes through the guards until that day.

Another person who points the finger at the director of the Investigative Police is the then-Captain, now retired General, Humberto Julio, who was prosecuted in the case based solely on the mention Mery makes of his participation in the events.

Julio, who says that Mery is the "main person involved" and who requested that the judge confront him with the policeman, told the newspaper La Segunda that "what I haven't had the opportunity to tell the judge, because he hasn't questioned me about it, is that what we placed at Mery's disposal, by instruction of the Military Institutes Command, was a patrol to collaborate with what Mery and company were doing." When asked by journalist Lilian Olivares if he participated in the detention, the retired officer, who spent 9 days in detention and is currently out on bail, asserts that "no, because the operation was theirs." He added: "If someone is given a mission to come from Linares to detain a person and he says he doesn't know how he arrived with two, the picture doesn't add up to me. They force someone else into the vehicle..."

María Isabel Beltrán, who was pregnant at the time she was detained, gave birth in captivity, and her daughter was handed over, without the knowledge of her grandparents, to a middle-class family sympathetic to the military regime. Her case, fictionalized, gave rise to the book Difícil Envoltorio by writer Mónica Echeverría.

The official report, according to the Rettig Report, stated that Beltrán was transferred from the regiment to be treated for a spontaneous abortion and that she never returned to the Linares barracks.

On June 19, 1974, Colonel Carlos Morales Retamal, Intendant and Head of the Garrison of the Linares Province, wrote to María Isabel's mother and informed her that her daughter, whom she had seen alive inside the regiment until January 1974, had been released that month "so that she could undergo specialized medical treatment, with the promise of reporting to the Garrison Command in Linares once discharged, a promise that to date she has not fulfilled."

On May 30 of that same year, the Minister of the Interior informed the Court of Appeals that "...María Isabel Beltrán Sánchez was not being held by order of any administrative authority and that this Ministry is unaware of her current whereabouts..." She has been disappeared ever since.

According to Mery, the last time he saw her alive was when Colonel Carlos Morales Retamal was received at the School in February 1974, a time when the regiment's aide was Lieutenant Iturriaga and Captain Julio was in the capital taking an information course to subsequently enter the Santiago War Academy.

The director of the Investigative Police himself, according to his judicial statement, left his "status as an attaché to the Army" on December 28, 1973, although he admits that in January or February of the following year he was called to take a new statement from Patricia Contreras because the previous one had disappeared.

On that occasion, according to Mery, he learned that the detainee had "been tortured by Lecaros, Aguilar, Torres, and Volta." He was also able to notice, according to what he remembers from those years, that they were investigating "a possible infiltration by some military man, policeman, or detective helping the Leftist parties," and he takes the opportunity to say that the detainee Patricia Contreras, when she was admitted to prison after their meeting, told her companions that she had been lucky that Mery interrogated her because he had helped her "a lot."

Regarding the torture, however, Patricia Contreras says in her 2002 statement that it was carried out by "Torres, Neves, Aguilar, and Captain Lecaros." She does not mention Volta.

According to the International Human Rights Project, the Military Intelligence Service (SIM) operated at the Artillery School, which was in charge of Captain Claudio Lecaros Carrasco and was formed by Lieutenants Luis Arce Bulo and Raúl Díaz Jara, First Sergeant Antonio Aguilar Barrientos, Carabineros Captain Sergio Gallardo López, and Investigative Police officials Héctor Torres Guajardo, Nelson Mery Figueroa, Carlos Neves Acosta—who was from the San Javier detachment—Sub-commissioner Luis Espinoza Weber, and detectives Juan Manuel Véjar Varas and another with the surname Olivares.

In the military facility, according to the version of those who suffered torture there, "the detainees were basically placed in two sectors: one was a classroom known as the 'TV room,' because there was a TV set.

In this room, there were about 30 prisoners who remained on benches, without blindfolds or ties, but unable to speak to each other, from where they were taken for interrogations and torture. Another section consisted of isolated and walled-up cells, located in another sector of the School, where those held incommunicado were kept."

OTHER CASES AGAINST MERY

The day Judge Solís prosecuted the five officers, curiously, a reaction against him emerged from Linares because, according to many of the plaintiffs, he should have included Nelson Mery among the accused. In the case, there are 42 people who initiated legal action against the current director of the civil police.

While the president of the Association of Former Political Prisoners of that city, Teobaldo Peña, said that several of the accused were Mery's direct superiors at the Artillery School, Sergio Rojas, brother and son of disappeared persons, who was tortured inside the military facility, declared from his residence in Germany that "Mery was the intellectual; he was the one who mobilized all the people inside the School and the one who distributed them to one destination or another." On the same subject, Viviana Díaz, secretary of the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared, maintained that "Together with the associations of Linares and Parral, we made that complaint, where the director of the Investigative Police was allegedly a participant in the detention of people who are now disappeared."

Regarding other statements linking him to human rights abuses in the very case that Solís is investigating, such as that of Silvia Sepúlveda—partner of Anselmo Cancino—who asserted that Alejandro Mella told her that Mery had tortured him, the director of the Investigative Police declared on June 3rd that "that is impossible," and although he acknowledged that he knew Mella, he said that "in '76 I spoke with people from the MIR, who on behalf of Mella's mother wanted to obtain information about the young man's detention, at which time I pointed out to them that I did not detain him nor did I interrogate him, but rather it was done by the group of Neves, Volta, and Torres."

According to Mery, the detainees of those years do not see what he was, a detective without much authority, but rather relate him to his current position. "I did not direct the information; it was only my job to take it, whether by machine or by hand, then I handed it over to Intelligence, who processed it.

I can say that I am attributed a role that I never had at that time, and furthermore, I have never tortured anyone in my professional activity."

Before 2000, when a group of tortured people filed a complaint regarding the events in Linares, it was mentioned that it would include the director of the civil police, and even the magazine Qué Pasa maintained that at the last minute, speculating on pre-electoral political reasons, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs decided to withdraw Mery's name.

Sergio Monsalvez, a PS militant, said that this was not true but that it was done by "procedural order," to prevent the director of the civil police from filing a counter-complaint against the former political prisoner with the initials A.O. who, according to what had transpired, accused Mery Figueroa of "sexual abuse."

A Detective's Memory

"Regarding the names indicated to me as victims of the Artillery School, I can say the following:

Anselmo Cancino Aravena: I knew him from before, but I did not know that he had been a detainee at the Artillery School. I never saw him in that military unit.

José Gabriel Campos Morales: I remember that case; he was a peasant leader nicknamed 'el Chupalla Campos.' I don't know the circumstances of his detention, but I do know that he was at the Artillery School.

I remember that a relative of his approached me to find out if José Campos was detained at the School. In this way, I found out that this peasant leader was transferred to that unit by Captain Hernán Morales, who was the governor of Constitución; through comments at the School, I learned that this was done at night.

Héctor Contreras Cabrera: I remember that he was detained at the Linares Artillery School, where I never saw him, but I knew about it through Héctor Torres Guajardo; he indicated to me that he was detained in a guardhouse located in front of the non-commissioned officers' casino. He was known by the nickname 'el Picho.'

Arturo Riveros Blanco: I don't remember that case; I have no information whatsoever.

José Alfonso Saavedra Betancourt: Another case from Constitución; I don't know him.

Jaime Torres Salazar and Jorge Yánez Olave: They were detained in Cauquenes, and a radiogram was sent to Linares; I remember that well. In the communication, political information about these people was requested. Furthermore, the father of the latter told me that his son had finally been taken to Constitución."

2. Indictment Order

1.- Carlos Edmundo Morales Retamal, in his capacity as author of the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Héctor Contreras Cabrera.

2.- Juan Hernán Morales Salgado, in his capacity as author of the crimes of aggravated kidnapping of Arturo Enrique Riveros Blanco, Jaime Bernardo Torres Salazar, and Jorge Bernabé Yánez Olave.

3.- Félix Renato Cabezas Salazar, in his capacity as author of the crimes of aggravated kidnapping of Anselmo Antonio Cancino Aravena, José Gabriel Campos Morales, and Alejandro Robinson Mella Flores.

4.- Jorge Ernesto Mario Zincke Quiroz, in his capacity as author of the crimes of aggravated kidnapping of José Gabriel Campos Morales and Alejandro Robinson Mella Flores.

5.- Claudio Abdón Lecaros Carrasco, in his capacity as author of the crimes of aggravated kidnapping of María Isabel Beltrán Sánchez, Anselmo Antonio Cancino Aravena, José Gabriel Campos Morales, Héctor Hernán Contreras Cabrera, and Alejandro Robinson Mella Flores.

6.- Antonio Aguilar Barrientos, in his capacity as author of the crimes of aggravated kidnapping of María Isabel Beltrán Sánchez, Anselmo Antonio Cancino Aravena, and Alejandro Robinson Mella Flores.

7.- Héctor Armando Torres Guajardo, in his capacity as author of the crimes of aggravated kidnapping of Anselmo Antonio Cancino Aravena and Alejandro Robinson Mella Flores, and

8.- Humberto Lautaro Julio Reyes, in his capacity as author of the crime against María Isabel Beltrán, illicit acts whose execution began between September 1973 and February 1974, continuing to this date.

Source: El Periodista, July 6, 2003

Visiting Minister Alejandro Solís prosecuted five retired members of the Army and two former detectives as authors of the aggravated kidnapping of three MIR militants and one union leader, who were last seen alive at the Linares Artillery School between September 12, 1973, and January 2, 1974.

The ruling becomes an expansion of the resolution he issued on July 6, 2003, when he prosecuted six former officers for other cases of forcibly disappeared persons contained in the same episode.

The magistrate decided to prosecute Colonel (R) Gabriel del Río Espinoza, who was the commander of the aforementioned facility and—at the same time—regional intendant at the time; Colonel (R) Claudio Abdón Lecaros Carrasco; former Investigative Police Commissioner Héctor Torres Guajardo; Sergeant Major (R) Antonio Aguilar Barrientos; and Investigative Police Commissioner (R) Nelson Volta Rosas, in their capacity as authors of the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Guillermo del Canto Ramírez, a MIR leader.

According to the investigation substantiated by Solís, at 00:30 hours on January 2, 1974, Del Canto was detained while he was with his spouse, Marianela Méndez Soto, at the home of his cousin Félix Ignacio Valenzuela Ferrer, located at Calle Santa Clara No. 560 in the commune of La Cisterna.

In fact, several officials who claimed to belong to the Linares city Regiment entered the place and detained Del Canto Ramírez and his cousin, because he was an "accomplice"—according to what the captors stated.

Both detainees were taken in a truck to the Military School in Santiago, where they were interrogated. The following morning, Valenzuela Ferrer was released, while Guillermo del Canto was transferred to the Linares Artillery Regiment, where he remained detained for a few days, being interrogated and tortured, to subsequently, on an undetermined date, be taken to the Tejas Verdes prison camp in San Antonio, where his trail was lost until today.

Three other victims

On the other hand, Minister Solís prosecuted General (R) Carlos Edmundo Morales Retamal, then director of the Linares Artillery School, in his capacity as author of the crime of aggravated kidnapping against university student and former MIR militant María Isabel Beltrán Sánchez, committed starting September 18, 1973.

He also prosecuted former Investigative Police Commissioner Héctor Armando Torres Guajardo and Sergeant Major (R) Antonio Aguilar Barrientos as authors of the crime of aggravated kidnapping against former MIR militant Héctor Hernán Contreras Cabrera, committed starting December 8, 1973.

Finally, the judge prosecuted Colonel (R) Juan Hernán Morales Salgado in his capacity as author of the crime of aggravated kidnapping of José Alfonso Saavedra Betancourt, a former union leader of the Celco company, perpetrated starting September 12, 1973.

The magistrate granted provisional release to all those prosecuted, and only in the case of Morales Salgado, who is being charged for the first time in this case, was the benefit granted with consultation to the Court of Appeals.

The First Chamber of the appellate court confirmed the release of the former military officer this Tuesday, with the favorable votes of ministers Juan Cristóbal Mera and Amanda Valdovinos, as well as the member lawyer Benito Mauriz.

Mery's companions

In the indictment, which consists of more than 60 pages, Minister Solís recorded the various allusions that exist in these cases regarding the participation of the former director of the Investigative Police in the detention of these opponents of the military regime.

In fact, several witnesses identify him as part of the group of agents that detained María Isabel Beltrán. Likewise, one of the detectives who served at the Artillery School, Armando Torres Guajardo, maintained that in that unit "there was a Security Department, in charge of Captain Lecaros, and it had other officials, such as Nelson Mery, under the command of Jorge Zincke.

He participated in the interrogations, and regarding María Isabel Beltrán, a MIR militant arrested in Santiago, he witnessed about 3 interrogations led by Captain Lecaros, who, to intimidate her, beat her on the back with a rubber 'churro'."

Meanwhile, one of the survivors of the Linares Artillery School, Osvaldo Efraín Salazar Saavedra, who was detained on December 19, 1973, by a platoon of military personnel and detectives who took him to the Military School and then transferred him to the Linares Artillery School, states that Nelson Mery participated in that group.

For his part, the former director of the civil police, who left his post due to his alleged connection to human rights violations, declared in the proceedings that "on September 12, 1973, being a detective, he was designated as a liaison officer at the Linares Artillery School, and on one occasion he was called by the 'Intelligence Office' and Aguilar asked him if he knew Patricia Contreras, whom he knew because he was a friend of her sister, Elena."

"He answered yes, and they ordered him to go to Santiago because she was allegedly involved in the concealment of weapons in Panimávida. They arrived at a house on Calle Cienfuegos in a military jeep, in charge of Captain Humberto Julio; Sergeant Aguilar and Detective Volta also went; they detained her and took her to the Military School; the next day, on the way back, he got out of the jeep and looked into the truck she was in and also found María Isabel Beltrán, who was detained by military personnel," he added.

"He always considered that María Isabel Beltrán was a military intelligence target, as Colonel Morales Retamal stated in writing, who points out that she belonged to a MIR cell, maintained extremist activities in Parral, and was involved in the infiltration of people into the Armed Forces, the main charge for which she was detained," Mery assured the tribunal.

Source: El Mostrador, April 19, 2006

The magistrate's ruling for the kidnapping of Guillermo del Canto affected two officers and one sergeant of the Army, all retired, as well as a former Investigative Police commissioner.

Visiting Minister Alejandro Solís Muñoz issued his 15th conviction for human rights violations that occurred during the military regime since he inherited part of the cases investigated by former minister Juan Guzmán Tapia against Augusto Pinochet.

Solís sentenced General (R) Gabriel del Río, Captain (R) Claudio Lecaros Carrasco, and former Sergeant Antonio Aguilar Barrientos, all from the Army, and former Investigative Police commissioner Héctor Torres Guajardo to 10 years and one day in prison for the kidnapping of MIR militant Guillermo del Canto Ramírez, which occurred in January 1974.

Former detective Nelson Volta Rozas was sentenced to five years and one day in prison as an accomplice.

In May 2006, visiting minister Víctor Montiglio Rezzio had favored General (R) Del Río with the application of the 1978 Amnesty Decree Law for the crimes of the so-called "Caravan of Death" in the city of San Javier, Maule Region, making this the first sentence to affect the military officer who was intendant in the first days of the regime.

Meanwhile, the rest of the convicted individuals are already facing suspended prison sentences for the torture that took place inside the Linares Artillery School between 1973 and 1974, in a case investigated by the visiting minister of the Talca Court of Appeals, Víctor Stenger Larenas.

Guillermo del Canto Ramírez was 30 years old at the time of his detention and was the regional secretary of the MIR for Linares-Maule, and therefore a member of the party's Central Committee. Since November 1973, he had been intensely sought by members of the Military Intelligence Service (SIM) in the area, where he was also an employee of the Agrarian Reform Corporation (CORA).

Despite the intense search in the Maule Region, Del Canto Ramírez had managed to leave for Santiago to take refuge in the house of some cousins located at Calle Santa Clara 560, La Cisterna, where he was captured in the early hours of January 2, 1974.

Military personnel broke into the house and took Del Canto Ramírez and his wife, Marianela Méndez Soto, to the Military School and the Linares Artillery School, from where the whereabouts of the agricultural technician were lost.

Minister Alejandro Solís is the judge who has issued the most convictions in human rights violation cases since October 14, 2002, when the Supreme Court decided to divide the more than 200 complaints processed by former judge Juan Guzmán Tapia.

On that occasion, in addition to Solís, ministers Jorge Zepeda Arancibia and Daniel Calvo Flores were appointed, the latter of whom was later replaced by Joaquín Billard Acuña, while Guzmán remained only with the processes called "Caravan of Death," "Operation Colombo," "Operation Condor I and II," and "Calle Conferencia," which he processed until his retirement in March 2005 without issuing any convictions.

Source: El Mostrador, June 4, 2007

The Supreme Court acquitted one retired military officer and allowed 5 others to serve sentences under supervised release.

The Supreme Court acquitted one retired military officer and allowed 5 others to serve sentences of between 3 and 5 years in prison under supervised release as authors of the disappearance of 9 opponents during the military dictatorship, judicial sources reported this Thursday.

The president of the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared described the ruling as an "aberration" and did not rule out going to international courts.

Jorge Bernabé Yañez Olave, a former worker at Celco in Constitución, was 27 years old in 1973 when he disappeared, and his wife, Juana María Soto, who still lives in Linares, never heard from him again.

At that time, they had been married for 6 years and had a young son. She asserts that she did everything possible to find out his whereabouts, and today she receives with sadness the Supreme Court ruling that allowed 5 military officers involved in human rights violations to serve their sentences in freedom.

A view that is supported by the president of the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared, Lorena Pizarro, who did not hesitate to describe the ruling as aberrant.

Among those involved are retired General Gabriel del Río Espinoza, former Colonel Claudio Lecaros Carrasco, retired General Juan Morales Salgado, retired Colonel Félix Cabezas Salazar, retired Sergeant Major Antonio Aguilar Barrientos, and retired General Humberto Julio Reyes.

With this final ruling, the high court has issued a total of 100 convictions and 12 acquittals since 2005 in cases of human rights violations during the regime of Augusto Pinochet.

In this case, the Supreme Court reduced the sentences decreed by Judge Alejandro Solís in a 2008 ruling, in which he set 15 years and one day in prison for five of the defendants, and 10 years and one day in prison for the sixth former military officer prosecuted.

Juan Pablo Manss, lawyer for retired Sergeant Major Antonio Aguilar Barrientos, who was sentenced to 5 years in prison but with the benefit of supervised release, valued the ruling.

The victims of the so-called "Linares" process, at the time of their detention, were between 19 and 26 years old, lived in the communes of Linares and Constitución, and were militants of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR).

Source: Cambio21, April 29, 2011

The leaders of the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared of Linares did not rule out resorting to the International Court of that instance, with the aim of denouncing the final ruling of the Supreme Court regarding the disappearance of militants and left-wing sympathizers during the government of Augusto Pinochet.

The spokesperson for said entity, Juana Soto, indicated that "we are very disappointed to learn of the resolution of the justice system, and although we highlight the meticulous work of Minister Solís, who we believe got to the bottom of the investigation, we do not think the same of the judges."

Soto harshly criticized the position of President Piñera's government, in the sense that "we are in a right-wing government, and for that same reason, what else could we expect from such a delicate issue as Human Rights? On the other hand, today, although the Judiciary is independent of the Government, with connections, things are often achieved, even impunity."

On the other hand, the daughter of María Isabel Beltrán, whose case is one of the most emblematic in the southern Maule region, Tamara Callejas, stated: "There is a bias of impunity in these decisions.

My hope remains alive to know what really happened to my mother, but I believe that just as there are people who I am sure have collaborated in these cases that Minister Solís investigated, I cannot rule out that there are those who did not tell everything they know."

In a split decision, the ministers of the Second Chamber of the highest court determined to acquit Gabriel Del Río Espinoza due to his lack of responsibility; while they ruled 5 years in prison for their responsibility as authors of kidnappings and granted the benefit of supervised release to Juan Hernán Morales Salgado, Claudio Abdón Lecaros Carrasco, Antonio Aguilar Barrientos, and Félix Renato Cabezas Salazar; and three years in prison with the benefit of conditional remission to Humberto Lautaro Julio Reyes.

It must be remembered that the Supreme Court issued a final sentence in the investigation into the aggravated kidnappings of Arturo Enrique Riveros Blanco, Jaime Bernardo Torres Salazar, Jorge Bernabé Yáñez Olave, José Saavedra Betancourt, José Gabriel Campos Morales, Anselmo Antonio Cancino Aravena, Alejandro Robinson Mella Flores, María Isabel Beltrán Sánchez, and Héctor Hernán Contreras Cabrera, which occurred starting in September and December 1973, in the city of Linares.

Source: La Tercera, May 3, 2011

The jurist arrived in Linares to meet in the Plaza de Armas (in front of the Monolith to the Forcibly Disappeared) with relatives of the student (Sandra Lastra) and the nurse (Isolina Martínez and Waldo Alfaro Martínez, current candidate for mayor of Linares).

The plaintiff lawyer Roberto Celedón reaffirmed today in Linares that Marcia Campos Lastra and Waldo Alfaro Retamal were murdered.

The jurist arrived in Linares to meet in the Plaza de Armas (in front of the Monolith to the Forcibly Disappeared) with relatives of the student (Sandra Lastra) and the nurse (Isolina Martínez and Waldo Alfaro Martínez, current candidate for mayor of Linares).

WALDO ALFARO RETAMAL

Regarding the death of Waldo Alfaro Retamal, which occurred in July 1974, in the middle of the dictatorship, lawyer Roberto Celedón indicated that there is an appeal for cassation in the Supreme Court since they do not agree with the ruling of the Talca Court of Appeals, which confirmed the conviction against the retired Army Sergeant Major, Antonio Aguilar Barrientos, for illegal detention at the Linares Artillery School of the country's first university nurse. "We estimate, with all the background information in our possession, including secret reports that were found in the former Colonia Dignidad, that Waldo Alfaro Retamal was killed. We hope that the Supreme Court will look at the issue and that the difference between being detained for not accepting to work night shifts and being murdered is established. There is sufficient evidence of that. There is no justice. This impunity harms us," he commented.

MARCIA CAMPOS LASTRA

Regarding the Marcia Campos case, the plaintiff in the case expressed that "it is the same. Marcia Campos did not have justice. The influence and manipulation of those who had the duty to investigate and be impartial had more power than achieving justice and truth.

We have no doubt that there was a homicide and a cover-up in the death of Marcia Campos. There is overwhelming evidence of that, and yet, impunity prevailed again in a murder in Linares, with clear evidence of a homicide."

RELATIVES

Isolina Martínez, widow of Waldo Alfaro Retamal, pointed out that "I am very clear about how things were, but we need truth. We need justice."

For his part, the candidate for mayor of Linares, Waldo Alfaro Martínez, pointed out that "what we have to work on and the commitment we assume is the search for the truth. We must work from justice, then forgiveness and reconciliation. Still, after 50 years, we continue searching for the truth about what happened to our father. We believe that he was murdered and we want there to be justice."

Finally, Sandra Lastra, Marcia Campos's aunt, stated that "we have fought for years (17 specifically) seeking truth and justice. Unfortunately, today we have a dismissed and unpunished case. This cannot continue to happen in Chile. Marcia did not commit suicide; Marcia was killed," she noted.

Source: septimapaginanoticias.cl, February 8, 2021