According to the Army's institutional website for 2013, retired and rehired colonels Patricio Zambelli Restelli and Hugo Acevedo Godoy, and former non-commissioned officer Eugenio Álvarez Gonzalez—all of whom are former DINA agents—receive monthly payments.

The Army allocates several million pesos each month to pay salaries to former agents of the repressive apparatus of Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship who appear on its payrolls as "contract personnel," as can be verified on that military branch's institutional website.

This situation contradicts the statement made in September 2009 by the then-commander-in-chief, General Oscar Izurieta, current Undersecretary of Defense, to the Chamber of Deputies Defense Committee, that by that date "there were no" former agents remaining who were receiving payments from the Army.

According to the Army's institutional website for 2013, retired and rehired colonels Patricio Zambelli Restelli and Hugo Acevedo Godoy, and former non-commissioned officer Eugenio Álvarez Gonzalez—all of whom are former DINA agents—receive monthly payments.

Also receiving monthly payments are former operational agents of the Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI), the successor to the DINA, Nazario Aracena Robles, Iván Droguett Ruiz, and Nora Carreño Barrera.

None of them have been convicted or prosecuted for crimes against humanity to date, despite having performed operational duties in brigades linked to crimes, which they have denied in their judicial statements.

The person who is indeed indicted for the crimes of the Caravan of Death in the city of Antofagasta in October 1973 is retired General Gonzalo Santelices Cuevas, who receives a monthly salary of 1,670,000 pesos as an "advisor to the General Staff of the Army Intelligence Directorate (Dine)." Santelices did not belong to the DINA or the CNI, but while in command of the Santiago Military Garrison in February 2008, he was discharged from the Army by the government of President Michelle Bachelet, following the publication of a report in the newspaper La Nación Domingo that included his judicial statement, given in September 2002, admitting his participation in that crime. Bachelet will contest the presidential runoff on December 15 against the right-wing ruling party candidate Evelyn Matthei. Santelices declared that on the night of October 18, 1973, he abducted 14 political prisoners from the Antofagasta jail and transported them in trucks to the Quebrada del Way on the outskirts of that city. With personnel under his command, he lined up the prisoners so that the Caravan of Death squadron, commanded by General Sergio Arellano, could murder them. Afterward, he loaded the bodies onto the trucks and left them piled up on the street in front of the local morgue, where their relatives found them. Patricio Zambelli Restelli receives 1,300,000 pesos monthly from the Army as an "advisor for Planning for the Army Intelligence Directorate (Dine)." According to a judicial statement from May 2010, Zambelli is an intelligence expert and operated as an agent at the Villa Grimaldi detention center "alongside Miguel Krassnoff" while prisoners were being tortured and murdered there. In 1976, he was part of the DINA's Caupolicán Brigade, which that year abducted all members of the clandestine leadership of the Communist Party, who were ultimately murdered in another of the organization's barracks (Simón Bolívar). Hugo Acevedo receives 750,000 pesos monthly as an "advisor for structural projects at the San Bernardo Infantry School." In the DINA, Acevedo was part of the "Rengo" Brigade and later moved to the CNI, where he performed operational duties until the end of the dictatorship in 1990. Eugenio Álvarez, who also belonged to the DINA and the CNI, receives 340,000 pesos per month as an "administrative advisor for the Army Maintenance Directorate." Former Lieutenant Colonel Nazario Aracena, a former operational agent of the CNI, earns 787,000 pesos monthly as a "Security supervisor for the Army General Staff." Nora Carreño, a former operational agent of the CNI, earns 660,000 pesos per month as an "advisor to the Command of the Santiago Military Garrison," while Iván Droguett receives 420,000 pesos monthly as an "advisor to the Army General Staff." Jorge Tarud, a member of the Chamber of Deputies Defense Committee, considered the situation "outrageous" and told Efe that the Army commander-in-chief, General Juan Miguel Fuente-Alba, and the Undersecretary of Defense, Óscar Izurieta, will be summoned by said committee "to provide explanations to the country." He further considered that the former agents should be dismissed from their duties immediately. Meanwhile, Mireya García, vice president of the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared (AFDD), stated that "with this information, it is clear that the Army remains committed to those who violated human rights under the dictatorship." In her view, it is even more serious that the Army "attacked a democratic institution, such as the Chamber of Deputies Defense Committee, when its commander-in-chief, General Izurieta, stated in 2009 that by that date there were no former agents left being funded by the Army. Now we see that is not true," she concluded.

Source: elmostrador.cl, October 6, 2013