In 1972 and 1973, he served as the Comptroller for said Directorate at the Industria Textil Comandari S.A. The victim, a member of the Socialist Party, was forcibly disappeared after being detained on August 17, 1974.

Cabezas Quijada was detained for the first time on September 11, 1973, by Carabineros from the 12th Precinct, at the Industria Comandari facility. On that occasion, Cabezas Quijada was prosecuted in the 2nd Military Court and sentenced to 60 days in prison by a ruling on June 22, 1974, in case file Rol 5-73.

The sentence was considered served, as he had remained in prison from the date of his detention until November 20, 1973.

About a year after his first detention, on August 17, 1974, the victim was apprehended again, this time by members of the security services. The details of the event were provided by his spouse, Mrs. Patricia Dolores Saavedra Mondaca, identity card No. 1.973, of La Reina, in the ratification of the complaint she filed before the 2nd Criminal Court of Greater Santiago on May 30, 1977.

In the aforementioned statement, which appears on page 67 of case file Rol 82.824-1, Mrs. Patricia states: "...The second detention was on August 17, 1974, at 10:30 in the morning; at that time, only the domestic worker, Sara Valenzuela, and my husband's sister, named Carmen Gloria Cabezas, currently 9 years old, were in the house."

"Since my husband had been prosecuted by the Second Military Prosecutor's Office, he had to go sign a book every Saturday; that is why on that day he was detained, which was a Saturday, I was not particularly alarmed when I met him on the first floor of the building where we lived at that time, which was at Agustinas 1442.

He was accompanied by three people dressed in civilian clothes, and my husband approached to talk to me; I did not think he was with the other three people who were standing next to him, but rather he told me that he was going to the Prosecutor's Office to sign and that he would return immediately: that I should not worry, since at that time I was in my seventh month of pregnancy."

"When I went up to the apartment later, the domestic worker told me that three men dressed in civilian clothes had come looking for my husband, and it was then that I realized that the people I saw next to him on the first floor were his escorts.

It did not occur to me to go out and look at which way they had gone, since the domestic worker was very nervous, and after a while, she told me what had happened."

"According to the domestic worker, my husband asked the three men who came to look for him to show their credentials, and they had shown him an ID card, but she did not see it..."

For her part, the Cabezas family's domestic worker, Mrs. Sara del Carmen Valenzuela Labbe, identity card No. 168.402, of San Bernardo, states on page 25 of the aforementioned case file: "...I know Antonio Sergio Cabezas Quijada because I worked in his house as a domestic worker, from 8:30 to 3:00 in the afternoon..." "...I do not remember the exact date of Mr.

Cabezas's detention, but it was a Saturday..." "...it was around 9:30 or 10:00 in the morning when three people in civilian clothes arrived, they asked me for my employer and I answered that he lived there, and I let them in; my employer was showering and I warned him that three gentlemen were waiting for him.

He got dressed very quickly and went out to attend to the visitors in the living room. I noticed he was nervous and I noticed that they showed him something, but I did not see well what it was. I withdrew to do my chores, so I did not hear anything of what they talked about."

"The four of them left, but before that, Mr. Cabezas went to the bedroom and told me: 'Sarita, tell Paty that I am going to the Ministry of Defense and I will be back.' He took his keys and left with the other three gentlemen..." "...A few moments later, the lady arrived and asked me what was wrong with Antonio that he was in such a hurry, and I explained what had happened.

Immediately, the lady started to cry and began to call the family by phone."

Since the moment of his detention, Cabezas Quijada's relatives have not seen him again; however, they have numerous records—which have been duly submitted to the criminal case—that demonstrate that after his apprehension, the victim remained kidnapped in the custody of the security agencies.

Indeed, on page 41 of the criminal case, dated December 30, 1976, Mr. José Nicolás Hugo Vargas Villegas, a lawyer, identity card No. 2.035.233-7, declares: "I can say that I worked in the Ministry of Justice for two years, serving as Chief of Staff to Minister Mr. Mussante and the current Minister Mr. Schwetzer."

"During the time Mr. Mussante was Minister, on one occasion he asked me to call the SENDET by telephone to inquire if Mr. Antonio Sergio Cabezas Quijada appeared on the list of detainees; I did so, and since I was informed that he did appear on the list of detainees, I made it known to the Minister, Mr. Hugo Mussante, and to the detainee's wife."

This week marks 45 years since Operation Colombo, or Case 119, a civil and military operation carried out in 1975 by the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), whose purpose was to cover up the forced disappearance of 119 Chilean men and women through a media fabrication.

Considered the first informal action of Operation Condor, the disappearance of these 119 people involved the collaboration of the intelligence services of Brazil and Argentina, which, through publications in fake newspapers, disseminated lists of Chileans who had been disappeared until that moment, claiming they had been murdered in different countries.

Undoubtedly, Case 119 turned out to be an impressive operation in terms of the coordination capacity between various civil, military, national, and international actors to falsify reality. The path, riddled with fabrications, omissions, and lies, has made the search for justice a tortuous experience for the relatives, who, based on strength, struggle, and commitment, have managed to build the path of memory long before the criminals were convicted.

In this text, we take stock of the progress in terms of justice and the ways of building memory based on Case 119, understanding these two struggles as fundamental for the construction of a society that leaves no room for oblivion or impunity.

In this way, memory and justice appear as paths that intersect and dialogue, cemented step by step by the relatives, companions, and friends of the 119 who have made the struggle their life.

Source: elclarin.cl 07/22/2020 Date: 07-22-2020

Convicted for Operation Colombo: PDI finds and arrests former DINA agent who remained a fugitive from justice

Demóstenes Cárdenas, a former civilian employee of the FACH and DINA agent, was, according to several testimonies, in torture centers such as Londres 38 and Villa Grimaldi. He had an outstanding arrest warrant since 2016 and was one of the former repressors most wanted by the PDI.

The PDI officially announced this afternoon the arrest of Demóstenes Eugenio Cárdenas Saavedra, a former DINA agent who was involved in Operation Colombo, the list of deaths from clashes in Argentina that the dictatorship disseminated through La Segunda.

Cárdenas has convictions for the disappearance of Bernardo Castro López, Vicente Palominos Benítez, ANTONIO SERGIO ERNESTO CABEZAS QUIJADA, Stalin Aguilera Peñaloza, Modesto Espinoza Soto, and Roberto Aranda Romero, among other victims of Colombo.

The former DINA agent had an arrest warrant issued by the visiting judge Mario Carroza for the crimes of kidnapping and qualified homicide.

The PDI itself had classified the former civilian employee of the Chilean Air Force as one of the seven former agents of the dictatorship most wanted by the police.

According to Manuel Fuentes, head of the PDI's Location of Persons Brigade, the arrest took place this morning in the commune of Padre Hurtado. Cárdenas, notified of four sentences in 2016, had noticeably changed his appearance. The police managed to find his location thanks to intelligence work and have already notified Judge Carroza of his arrest.

Source: eldesconcierto.cl 11/05/2018 Date: 11-05-2018

Santiago Court confirms conviction of former DINA agent for the qualified kidnapping of Antonio Cabezas Quijada.

The appellate court confirmed the sentence that convicted César Manríquez Bravo to 13 years in prison for his responsibility in the crime of qualified kidnapping of Antonio Sergio Cabezas Quijada.

In a unanimous ruling, the Santiago Court of Appeals confirmed the judgment that sentenced former National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) agent César Manríquez Bravo to 13 years in prison for his responsibility in the qualified kidnapping of Antonio Sergio Cabezas Quijada, an illicit act perpetrated starting on August 17, 1974, within the framework of the so-called Operation Colombo.

Likewise, the appellate court ratified the acquittal for lack of participation of agents Ricardo Víctor Lawrence Mires, Alejandro Francisco Astudillo Adonis, and Demóstenes Eugenio Cárdenas Saavedra.

In the first instance, Judge Crisosto managed to establish the following facts: That on the morning of August 17, 1974, Antonio Sergio Cabezas Quijada, a member of the Socialist Party (PS), was detained at his home located at Calle Agustinas No. 1442, Apt. 902, in Santiago, by agents belonging to the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), who took him to an unknown location.

That nothing more was ever known of the whereabouts of Cabezas Quijada, who remains disappeared to this day.

That the name of Antonio Sergio Cabezas Quijada appeared on a list of 119 people, published in the national press after it appeared on a list published in the Argentine magazine "LEA," dated July 15, 1975, which reported that Cabezas Quijada had died in Argentina, along with 59 other people belonging to leftist groups, due to internal quarrels that arose among those members.

That the publications that declared Antonio Cabezas Quijada dead had their origin in disinformation maneuvers carried out by DINA agents abroad to cover up the disappearance of people detained by their agents.

In civil matters, the First Chamber confirmed the resolution that accepted the lawsuit and ordered the State to pay a total compensation of $300,000,000 to the victim's spouse, children, and siblings.

Source: diarioconstitucional.cl, January 12, 2018 Date: 01-12-2018

Pinochet, Operation Colombo, and the Comptroller of Textil Comandari

Unanimously, the Sixth Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals confirmed the indictments against the former dictator Augusto Pinochet within the framework of the Operation Colombo investigation, specifically for the kidnapping and disappearance of chemical engineer Juan Carlos Perelman, student Héctor Garay, and the comptroller of the Comandari textile factory, ANTONIO CABEZAS QUIJADA.

The name of ANTONIO CABEZAS QUIJADA was included in a list published by the Argentine weekly Lea, reproduced by El Mercurio on July 23, 1975. It stated that 60 "MIR members" had been murdered "by their own comrades in struggle" in Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Mexico, and France.

The cases were taken up by Judge Víctor Montiglio after Judge Guzmán retired. The indictment had been issued on December 5, after it was recognized through various expert reports that Pinochet was in a mental state to face trial.

The ruling states that "the facts indicated in the indictment are evident, that is, that State agents deprived of liberty and tortured people who were only heard of through false reports of their death published in Brazil and Argentina."

Operation Colombo was a fabrication by the DINA, the Chilean GESTAPO, to cover up in 1975 the disappearance of 119 members of the resistance, among them ANTONIO CABEZAS QUIJADA (28 years old, married), a socialist militant.

He had served as a comptroller in the Comandari textile industry during the government of President Salvador Allende, and on September 11, he remained at his post alongside the workers of that factory.

He was released three months after that first detention. But on August 17, 1974, this passionate fan of the Universidad de Chile club, former student of the Instituto Nacional and the Liceo Lastarria, father of Antonio—a son he had waited years for and did not get to meet—was detained in his own home. The agents assured him he only had to go sign at the Second Military Prosecutor's Office.

At the Comandari industry

Since 1972, ANTONIO CABEZAS had worked at Comandari, appointed by DIRINCO (Directorate of Industry and Commerce), the department where he worked, which depended on the Ministry of Economy at the time. Textil Comandari was one of the industries in the country that, upon being occupied by its workers, continued to produce, linked to the so-called "Social Property Area," which was heavily attacked by the economic right at the time.

The comptrollers were particularly hated by the businessmen, who saw in them a symbol of the power lost during the government of President Allende. Many of them were detained or had to go into exile after the coup. All those factories returned to the power of their former owners, in this case, Juan Comandari.

The first year, the family received calls indicating that Antonio had been seen in Cuatro Alamos, but the uniformed officer Conrado Pacheco, in charge of Tres Alamos, always denied any information. Of all the clues that vanished, only one testimony remained firm: the statement of José Nicolás Vargas Villegas, the chief of staff lawyer for the Minister of Justice at the time, General Hugo Mussante.

He received the response from the SENDET (National Service for Detainees) that ANTONIO CABEZAS QUIJADA was detained.

The family ratified on May 30, 1977, the complaint filed before the Second Criminal Court of Santiago, case file Rol 82.824-1, which yielded no results.

Born in Chile From Australia, where she went into exile in 1982 together with her son Toño, today a commercial engineer, Patricia Saavedra, his wife, reacts to the news: "I am overjoyed and I only hope that the process continues... without stopping, we have to know about everyone, one by one." In her testimony for the book "119 of Us" (Lom Ediciones, 2005), she had related: "Antonio wanted to wait for the child to be born, and then we would leave; I was seven months pregnant.

He had been detained until November 20, 1973. The day of the coup, I went to the industry and we were detained together, I as just another worker. They took us to the Tacna Regiment. I managed to get them to take me to the infirmary because I felt ill, and from there I was released.

He was in the regiment's infirmary the whole time, and I was able to visit him. When they detained him again, we never imagined what could happen, because our experience had been different."

Hugo Cabezas Quijada, an agricultural engineer at the SAG (Agricultural and Livestock Service), reaffirms that opinion, expressing in Santiago: "I advised my brother to leave the country. He replied that he had not committed any crime, and he was free.

We were not aware of the situation. No one could imagine what happened. Today I see a uniform and I hate it. But I was not born with that hate, that feeling was born in me in those years, when I learned of the atrocities such as the fact that there were disappeared people and women raped by dogs. We believed in democracy, we did not see what was coming, the most absolute betrayal of all values..."

The mother Gabriela Quijada, his mother, was a housewife and participated in the Neighborhood Council of her district, where she worked supporting the presidential candidacy of Salvador Allende. When her son disappeared, she became a fierce member of the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared.

Patricia, his wife, remembers very well the summer day that President Allende went to visit the Comandari textile factory. Antonio and the workers look happy and moved in the photo that documented that moment for history, and which was part of the exhibition mounted in Santiago for the 30th anniversary of the coup d'état at the Salvador Allende Museum.

Patricia explains her husband's performance as comptroller: "He had an incredible capacity for organization, which flowed naturally, without having studied, and allowed him to manage very well. In our son Toño, I also see that gift." In fact, in Sydney, Australia, Tony Cabezas has just been named "High Flyer" at the company where he works, GE Commercial Finance Australia and New Zealand, for his extraordinary performance in finance and sales in the last two years.

At the Instituto Nacional, where he studied secondary education, Don Hugo Cabezas, Antonio's father, had been a classmate of Gustavo Leigh, a member of the Military Junta in 1975. He addressed a letter to him appealing to his feelings, without receiving any response.

Thirty years later, in June 2004, when the future President of Chile, then Minister of Defense, Michelle Bachelet, visited Australia, where Antonio's wife and son continue to live, Patricia gave her a letter asking for her intervention so that this case could be activated and investigated judicially.

Antonio's wife recalled in the letter the work relationship and camaraderie that her husband maintained in 1972 with General Alberto Bachelet—the minister's father—regarding the JAP and DINAC, the national food distributor.

A fleeting return

Patricia has returned to Chile only once, in 2001, an opportunity in which "I saw with emotion my husband's name on a wall at the Socialist Party's Central Committee headquarters, on a list headed by the comrade President. I also saw the plaque that was placed at the Instituto Nacional as a tribute to the fallen students, among whom Antonio also appears."

In turn, Toñito, on his only visit to Chile, managed to see his grandparents, reconnected with his childhood by rediscovering his cousins, and visited the Memorial for the Forcibly Disappeared at the General Cemetery.

Condolences for the lie

From Australia, Patricia evokes with anger the publication of the list of the 119. She was living in Santiago with her mother; she had been fired from her job immediately after her husband's detention. They told her that some acquaintances were coming "to offer their condolences." With her voice still trembling with indignation, as if it were yesterday, she states:

"I became furious. What condolences are you talking about? This is a lie. How was he going to be fighting in Argentina if they took him from his own house? I threw them all out of the house." Until now, she says, "I sign as Patricia de Cabezas; I do not consider myself a widow."

Thirty years after the kidnapping of Antonio Cabezas, on September 2, 2004, the then-judge Juan Guzmán, who was investigating the so-called "Operation Colombo" (List of the 119), had ordered the indictment of 16 uniformed officers for this case and 32 similar ones.

They are the former director of the DINA, Manuel Contreras; César Manríquez, his second in command; the former head of Cuatro Alamos, Orlando Manzo; the former head of Villa Grimaldi, Marcelo Morén Brito; the former head of the Halcón brigade, Miguel Krassnoff; and agents Basclay Zapata and Osvaldo Romo.

Also indicted were Conrado Pacheco, head of Tres Alamos; the former detective Manuel Carevic; the former head of the DINA's foreign apparatus, Francisco Ferrer Lima; and lieutenants Ricardo Lawrence and Gerardo Godoy, as well as Gerardo Urrich, head of the Purén brigade; the former head of the Vampiro brigade, Brigadier (ret.) Fernando Lauriani; and General (ret.) Raúl Iturriaga, then head of the DINA's foreign apparatus.

The circle would now close with the main person responsible, the former dictator and mafioso Augusto Pinochet.

Source: rebelion.org 02/02/2006 Date: 02-02-2006

Operation Colombo: Judge indicts Pinochet for three more disappearances

In addition to increasing the number of disappearances for which the former dictator is being prosecuted, Víctor Montiglio dismissed four others based on the principle of "res judicata."

The visiting judge for the Operation Colombo case, Víctor Montiglio, ordered the indictment of former dictator Augusto Pinochet Ugarte for the disappearance of three people, although—at the same time—he dismissed four cases of qualified kidnapping, applying the criterion of "res judicata."

According to Montiglio, there is well-founded evidence to consider Pinochet Ugarte as the alleged perpetrator of the disappearance of: Héctor Marcial Garay Hermosilla, detained on July 8, 1974. Juan Carlos Perelman Ide, a chemical engineer at Corfo, arrested on February 20, 1975. Antonio Sergio Ernesto Cabezas Quijada, a former official of the Ministry of Economy, detained on August 17, 1974.

However, the magistrate dismissed the indictment of the nonagenarian retired military officer for four other cases, which during the military regime were seen by the Military Justice system, which applied the 1978 Amnesty Law in each of them.

Thus, Montiglio considered that Pinochet Ugarte cannot be tried for crimes that have already been reviewed by another court.

These are the cases of

Arturo Barría Araneda, music teacher at the Liceo Darío Salas, detained on August 28, 1974. Juan Rosendo Chacón Olivares, veterinarian, arrested on July 15, 1974. Jorge Hernán Müller Silva, filmmaker, detained on November 29, 1974. Carmen Bueno Cifuentes, filmmaker and Müller's girlfriend, detained on the same day, November 29.

"We think there is a legal error, because since Pinochet has never been prosecuted, as the latest rulings of the Supreme Court have repeatedly declared, we think there is no res judicata," commented human rights lawyer Boris Paredes.

The jurist added that "we do not agree with the substance of the matter; like all resolutions, they are respectable, but obviously we will appeal them," which will be materialized before the Santiago Court of Appeals.

The new indictment and the four dismissals have already been notified to the parties. (Cooperativa.cl)

Source: cooperativa.cl, Monday, December 5, 2005 Date: 12-05-2005