Historically identified as a DINA agent, this former cadet has been accused of being a right-wing extremist and a spy. Imprisoned in the Caseros prison in Buenos Aires, starting tomorrow he will attempt to prove that he was not, as the justice system asserts, a "necessary participant" in the crime against the former commander-in-chief and his wife.

"The Dynamiter" At the end of 1968, Enrique Arancibia Clavel rallied around the figure of General Roberto Viaux, following his mutiny at the Tacna Regiment, as part of a large group of young nationalists who joined together to prevent the establishment of a leftist government.

At that time, Arancibia was known as "The Dynamiter," and in mid-1970 the group carried out a series of explosive attacks. In one of them, which was later thwarted, several of these young men were arrested, including him. Other members were not apprehended and continued with the operation, which would have ended, a month later, with the assassination of General René Schneider.

Before that crime, Arancibia had already obtained release on bail and fled to Argentina, where he became a major opponent of the UP (Popular Unity) after linking up with nationalist groups across the Andes.

During the years prior to his arrest, his name was frequently mentioned in Argentina in connection with the Prats case. In 1989, an arrest warrant was even issued against him and he was close to being prosecuted, but the authorities of that time did not show the same interest as today in reactivating the investigation into the Prats crime.

Enrique Arancibia Clavel, the only person prosecuted for the crime against General Carlos Prats and his wife Sofía Cuthbert—who were murdered in an attack in the Argentine capital in October 1974—has been detained for four years and eight months in the Caseros prison in Argentina.

Tomorrow, the countdown for his trial will begin when the public trial against him opens at Oral Tribunal Number Six in Buenos Aires, following accusations of his alleged role as a necessary participant in the attack.

The start of the trial is viewed with concern in Chile, both at La Moneda and in the Armed Forces building. During the proceedings, for which several other former officers—such as Generals (Ret.) Manuel Contreras and Raúl Iturriaga Neumann—could soon be prosecuted, the evidence gathered over at least four years by Argentine judge María Servini will be made public.

Judge Servini had the collaboration of the United States and interrogated Michael Townley, the confessed perpetrator of the attack, as part of her investigation.

THE STORY

Enrique Arancibia Clavel, the "tip of the iceberg" of the case, is the owner of stories that seem like something out of a novel. A former cadet at the Military School, as family tradition dictated, he left his career to study Engineering. But he never practiced, his close associates claim, due to the political situation.

After Allende came to power, his life was transformed and he began to participate in a right-wing movement. Although he is identified as a former member of Patria y Libertad, his family denies it.

He arrived in Argentina in 1971, a fugitive from military justice due to a pending case against him for violating the State Security Law: he was accused of having planted explosive devices after the election of the UP President.

In Buenos Aires, and after the military coup, according to case records, he began working for the DINA while serving as the representative of the Banco del Estado. In his capacity as an agent, as established by the proceedings, he used the alias Luis Felipe Alemparte.

In the Prats crime, he is accused as a necessary participant—which carries the same penalty as a material author, life imprisonment—that is, for allegedly having carried out pre-operational activities for the attack, such as providing information on the general's movements.

At the same time, he is charged, through his other prosecution, with having been part of an illicit association that acted in Argentina with the goal of exterminating the former commander-in-chief of the Army.

In 1978, in the midst of the Chile-Argentina conflict, he was accused of espionage along with five other people, but following the Pope's mediation over the Beagle Channel, he was pardoned in the 1980s.

From then on, Arancibia's life normalized. He not only obtained nationality and therefore the right to vote, but he also, like everyone else, came to have a checking account, an apartment, and started an office repair business in Buenos Aires.

HIS ARREST

But on January 22, 1996, after having had several relatively quiet years and when his whereabouts were not unknown to the Argentine authorities, Arancibia's life suffered a blow: Judge Servini de Cubría ordered his arrest.

The decision to imprison him was announced by former President Carlos Menem himself, who—along with publicly receiving the Prats sisters shortly thereafter—thus gave a powerful political signal that the trial would continue to the end.

That event changed the course of the proceedings, because the investigation into the case was reactivated and the first signs began to appear that this judicial process would start to be a headache for the Chilean government, just as the Orlando Letelier case was in 1995, and as sources at La Moneda now fear.

This time, the arrows even reach Augusto Pinochet, because the family, as soon as the statute of limitations incident opened in his favor is resolved, will request his prosecution to achieve his extradition.

After his arrest, numerous photographs with important Chilean and Argentine figures, both civilian and military, were found in his apartment in Palermo, in addition to about 40 floppy disks containing information.

In the four years and eight months that he has been detained without ever obtaining release on bail, Arancibia has lost contact with most of his acquaintances in Argentina. His mother, Violeta Clavel, went to live in Buenos Aires to be close to him, but in 1999 she returned to Chile due to a serious illness.

His brothers visit him approximately every 15 days in prison and claim that, despite everything, he is in good spirits. Three of them find it difficult to attend due to their status as high-ranking officers: Brigadier General Roberto Arancibia, Admiral Jorge Arancibia, and Army Major Claudio Arancibia.

His family asserts that today before the tribunal he will maintain his version that he is innocent of the acts of which he is accused. The plaintiffs acknowledge that his collaboration in the case has been nil, but maintain that the evidence accumulated against him is, at the same time, too overwhelming for the tribunal to reverse his judicial situation.

Source: La Tercera, October 8, 2000

Arancibia Clavel testifies as a defendant in human rights cases

Enrique Arancibia Clavel will return to the Argentine federal courts to defend himself against the accusations of a Chilean citizen, Laura Helgueta Díaz, who, during the oral and public trial for the murder of the couple Carlos Prats and Sofía Cuthbert, identified the former DINA agent as one of the participants in a torture session to which she was subjected in a clandestine detention center.

Following that testimony, the Oral Tribunal that sentenced Arancibia Clavel in November 2000 to life imprisonment ordered a new investigation to be opened based on Helgueta's complaint. Buenos Aires judicial sources confirmed to El Mostrador.cl that tomorrow's hearing will be led by federal judge Juan José Galeano, before whom Arancibia Clavel will be brought from the penitentiary facility where he is serving a life sentence for the double homicide of the Prats couple.

Sentence: In November 2000, the majority of Oral Federal Tribunal 6 held Arancibia Clavel responsible for the attack committed on September 30, 1974, and determined that he was a member of an "illicit association" formed by members of the Foreign Department of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA).

Later, a higher court, the Criminal Cassation Chamber, determined that the "illicit association" charge had expired under the statute of limitations, although it upheld the conviction by considering Arancibia a "necessary participant" in the attack against the Prats, which occurred in the Palermo neighborhood, in the city of Buenos Aires, on September 30, 1974.

Source: El Mostrador, Thursday, May 30, 2002

Arancibia Clavel prosecuted in Argentina for torture

The resolution was based on the testimony of a Chilean citizen, detained in the neighboring country during the dictatorship, who recognized him as one of her torturers. The former DINA agent, Enrique Arancibia Clavel, was prosecuted today in Argentina with preventive detention for illegal deprivation of liberty and torture in clandestine detention camps during the last Argentine military dictatorship.

The accused is currently serving a life sentence for the double homicide of General Carlos Prats and his wife, which occurred on September 30, 1974, in the city of Buenos Aires. The resolution of Argentine judge Juan José Galeano was based on the testimony of Laura Helgueta Díaz—a Chilean citizen detained in Argentina during the dictatorship—who recognized Arancibia Clavel as one of her torturers.

The complainant was held in the clandestine detention camp El Olimpo or Club Atlético, which operated just ten blocks from the Government House.

"Operation Condor" The case for illegal deprivation of liberty and torture emerged as a branch of the investigation into the assassination of General Prats, when some Chilean witnesses asserted that Arancibia Clavel directed the torture sessions in the clandestine detention camps that operated during the Argentine military dictatorship.

In the course of the judicial process, the former DINA agent was accused of participating in the disappearance of 119 Chilean opponents of the Augusto Pinochet government within the framework of the so-called "Operation Condor." Arancibia Clavel allegedly collaborated with these disappearances by providing information and denouncing Chilean opponents who had taken refuge in Argentina after the coup d'état of September 11, 1973.

Source: La Tercera, August 20, 2002

Kidnapping of Chilean Laura Elgueta Díaz

The former DINA agent was identified by the victim as one of those who participated in her kidnapping and subsequent interrogation in a clandestine detention center during the last military dictatorship in Argentina.

The former DINA agent Enrique Lautaro Arancibia Clavel was prosecuted with preventive detention by the Argentine justice system, which found him responsible in the first instance for the kidnapping of the Chilean citizen Laura Elgueta Díaz.

Arancibia, sentenced to life imprisonment for the crime in Buenos Aires of the couple formed by General Carlos Prats and Sofía Cuthbert, was prosecuted by Judge Juan José Galeano and had his assets frozen for 100,000 Argentine pesos, about 19 million 850 thousand Chilean pesos.

In the oral and public trial for the Prats case, Arancibia was identified by Elgueta Díaz as one of those who participated in her kidnapping and subsequent interrogation in a clandestine detention center during the last military dictatorship in Argentina.

From there, a new criminal case was opened in which Arancibia has now been prosecuted for the crimes of illegal deprivation of liberty and illicit association. This last charge further complicates Arancibia's situation, since in this new prosecution he is identified as a member of the so-called "Plan Condor," the coordination of Latin American dictatorships in the 1970s.

The case of Laura Helgueta

During the oral trial against Arancibia Clavel for the crime of General Carlos Prats and his wife, the Chilean Laura Elgueta Díaz asserted that the former DINA agent participated in a torture session that took place in the clandestine detention centers "El Olimpo" or "Club Atlético," two places where she was illegally detained during the last Argentine military dictatorship.

However, Arancibia Clavel, convicted for the assassination of General Carlos Prats, denied having participated in that session of illegal coercion against the Chilean woman. The case was initiated by order of Oral Federal Tribunal Number 6, which, after hearing Elgueta Díaz's testimony during the oral trial held for the death of Prats, ordered that testimonies be extracted and a summary be opened to investigate those facts.

Arancibia Clavel is sentenced to life imprisonment as a necessary participant in the attack that on September 30, 1974, cost the lives of Carlos Prats and his wife, Sofía Cuthbert. The former agent is accused of having "prepared the ground" to place the explosive, while Michael Townley appears as the one in charge of "assembling and placing the bomb" and his wife Mariana Callejas as the one in charge of detonating it.

Source: El Mostrador, August 20, 2002

Former DINA agent Enrique Arancibia Clavel prosecuted in Argentina

The Argentine Federal Criminal Chamber confirmed today the prosecution of the former civilian agent of the dissolved National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), Enrique Arancibia Clavel, for the illegal deprivation of liberty of two Chilean women during the last dictatorship that governed the neighboring country.

Arancibia Clavel was held responsible for the illegal deprivation of liberty of Laura Ruth Elgueta Díaz and Sonia Magdalena Díaz Ureta, an event that occurred in the city of Buenos Aires on July 12, 1977, according to the Télam agency.

The Chamber considered the kidnapping of both Chilean citizens proven, as well as his participation in the DINA and "his intervention in the Argentine Republic at that time." Likewise, the high court confirmed the freezing of 100,000 pesos (about 31,000 dollars) of Arancibia Clavel's assets, but revoked the prosecution that had been imposed on him as a member of an illicit association.

The former intelligence agent is serving a life sentence for the assassination of the former commander-in-chief of the Army, Carlos Prats, and his wife, Sofía Cuthbert, perpetrated in 1974 in Buenos Aires.

Source: La Nación, February 27, 2003

Arancibia Clavel: "The government's duty is to help me"

After three years of detention in Argentina without a sentence being handed down, the only person prosecuted for the assassination of the former commander-in-chief of the army, General Carlos Prats, spoke exclusively to Qué Pasa about the new legal battle he is initiating to achieve his release and to have the Chilean government intervene in his case.

Dressed in a brown t-shirt, black pants, and sneakers of the same color, Enrique Arancibia Clavel, the only person detained for the assassination of General Carlos Prats, committed on September 30, 1974, appears to be an imperturbable man at 54 years of age.

With slow and measured responses—so much so that he sometimes regretted some of his phrases for seeming too strong—Arancibia did not move from the hard wooden bench where he remained seated for more than three hours of the interview, which took place in a visiting room whose dirty walls, cement floor, bare tables, and the enormous bars through which one had to cross betrayed the nature of the prison.

Nor did he seem to get angry or surprised by any of the questions. He always had prepared answers, the same ones he has repeated time and again during the interrogations he has attended and which are incorporated into the case file, along with those of nearly 200 other people who have also testified.

Housed in Caseros prison—an enormous structure over 100 years old, located between Avenida Caseros and Pichincha, 20 minutes from the center of Buenos Aires—he shares his routine life as a prisoner alongside 180 other inmates, most of whom have not yet received a sentence.

In that place, where the use of a tape recorder is certainly prohibited, Arancibia spoke exclusively with Qué Pasa, without avoiding any detail of his eventful life. A life that began as a student of the Padres Franceses in Viña del Mar and later became politically active at the Universidad Católica, where he studied Engineering and Architecture, without finishing either degree.

A member of the Juventud Nacional in the 1960s, he later drifted toward nationalism, although he did not acknowledge belonging to any specific group.

In 1970, he fled to Buenos Aires after his house was raided and, according to the press of the time, weapons and explosive materials were seized, a matter that he says "he has no knowledge of." Involved in the assassination of the former commander-in-chief of the Army, René Schneider, he emerged unscathed from that process, but not from the death of Schneider's successor, Carlos Prats, although he insists on his innocence.

As if his record were not enough, he was also detained in 1978 in Buenos Aires, accused of espionage along with other Chileans. From that situation, for which he was detained for two and a half years, he was only released after the Vatican promoted a prisoner exchange between Chile and Argentina in 1981, within the framework of goodwill agreements once the papal mediation for the Beagle conflict had begun.

His extensive criminal record—"the black legend," as he calls it—does not end there.

He is accused of participating in the disappearance of 119 Chileans in Argentina and of belonging to the DINA. But Arancibia is unfazed. He denies each of the charges, slowly and with a smile that reveals his yellow teeth as a habitual smoker.

He says he does not regret anything he has done in his life and that he "is happy." Happy, except for the unhappiness that being in Caseros entails. There, he rises rigorously minutes after 7:30 in the morning, the time when the "count" begins by the guards to verify that no one has escaped.

Then, after breakfast, he begins to read all the Argentine press and sometimes the Chilean press as well, when his relatives bring him national newspapers and magazines. At 12:30, "recess" begins, which is when Arancibia takes the opportunity to walk around the prison courtyard.

It was during those "recesses" that he took the opportunity to speak with General Jorge Rafael Videla, when he was brought to Caseros a couple of months ago, in the context of a trial for crimes committed by the Argentine military dictatorship.

Religion, the quasi-war between Chile and Argentina, and the political moment were the topics he discussed with Videla. With the rest of the inmates, however, Arancibia admits that he interacts little: he no longer has topics to discuss after three years of forced cohabitation.

That is why he often prefers to hide behind a computer he owns, where he writes about all aspects of his detention and what has happened in these three years. Reading and television are his other escape routes.

The rest is routine, including the mass he attends every Wednesday, unless a visit awaits him.

A Catholic, the son of a sailor, and a member of a family composed of 10 siblings, three of whom belong to the Chilean Armed Forces, Arancibia Clavel's imperturbable character only suffers a setback when he begins to recount what, in his view, have been irregularities and arbitrariness in his detention, a subject to which he returns time and again.

Today, his hope of leaving Caseros prison lies in the Argentine justice system complying with the Pact of San José, Costa Rica, which establishes that no citizen can remain in the status of being prosecuted for more than three years without a sentence existing.

Arancibia has just completed three years in Caseros, but he lost his request for release before the courts, which is why he is initiating a new legal battle, this time through an appeal for cassation, so that a higher court can review that adverse ruling.

One of the tools of this legal battle is to ask the Chilean government, a signatory of the Costa Rica Pact, to defend his rights as a citizen who, according to that same pact, is from now on unjustly imprisoned. That request to the Chilean government through Qué Pasa was one of the reasons why he agreed to grant this interview, which had been requested several months ago.

• You have been detained for three years for the Prats case. Why did you decide to receive the press only now?
• Up until three years, it could be said that I was legally imprisoned. But once that period was completed, my detention became an act of arbitrariness, injustice, and illegality. Law 24.390, which regulates the Pact of San José, Costa Rica, expressly prevents a person from being detained for more than three years without having a final conviction. Argentina and Chile are signatories to those agreements. That is why I am now tired of everything being done in an underhanded way. Now I am demanding. And I want the government of Chile, which is a signatory to that pact, to assume its responsibility, because here there is a Chilean citizen who has been detained for more than three years and that pact is not being respected.

• What specifically are you asking of the Chilean government?
• That it formalize a request to the Argentine government so that this pact is complied with.

• Do you believe the Chilean government will do it?
• I don't know.

• Are you going to send a letter to the Chilean authorities?
• No, because don't forget that the government is part of this process, so it should be informed of this irregularity.

• Have you had contact with the Chilean embassy in Argentina?
• In the three years I have been detained, they have come to see me three times. On two occasions, the consul during the time of Ambassador Rodríguez Guarachi, and later, a social worker who was sent by Pérez Yoma.

• In addition to asking for the government to get involved, what will be your next legal strategies?
• On Tuesday the 9th, an appeal for cassation was filed, the objective of which is to reconsider the ruling that denied the cessation of preventive detention. The ruling on that appeal can take between 20 days and five months.

• And if you lose it?
• My lawyers would appeal to the Supreme Court.

• Do you believe you can win?
• If it adheres to the law and the law is applied, there is no possibility that I will lose it. Of course, external influences can always operate.

• Are you talking about political pressure?
• Of course, I never understood the reasons for my detention. I was detained on January 18, 1996, with an arrest warrant that was from 1989. During all those years, I lived in front of the Argentine courts, I voted in elections, I paid taxes, my name appeared in the phone book. I was never a fugitive and I was never notified of an arrest warrant either. But curiously, four months and a half before the Prats case expired—at 15 years—they arrested me in a spectacular operation and my detention was reported by President Menem himself. After that, a black legend began to be written about me: I became the James Bond who assassinated generals. Because I have been accused of assassinating Prats, Schneider, and someone said that I had also killed a General Torres from Bolivia.

• And how do you plead to those charges?
• Absolutely innocent. I was acquitted in the trial for the assassination of Schneider in 1970. And regarding Prats, it seems incredible that after 25 years I am the only one detained without there being any proof of my participation. I, in judicial matters, am a babe in the woods: there is not a single piece of evidence that involves me in anything.

• Did you belong to the DINA?
• I was never a DINA agent. What happened is that when I was detained in Argentina for alleged espionage (in 1978, in the context of the quasi-war over the Beagle), I testified as a witness in the Prats case. There I said that like any Chilean government official—I was a representative of the Banco del Estado in Argentina between 1974 and 1978—I collaborated with my government. From that statement, they concluded that I was a DINA agent.

• What did those collaborations consist of?
• I sent press clippings, with my analyses, of what appeared in the Argentine media at a political and economic level.

• To whom did you send those clippings?
• To the headquarters of the Banco del Estado in Santiago and to its prosecutor, at that time, Hugo Gálvez.

• Did those reports reach the DINA?
• I could assume that they reached them. Especially the political press clippings. At that time, anyone who held a representative position was considered close to the government and the DINA. But it is false that I was a paid DINA agent. I was an agent of my government.

• How did you come to be a representative of the Banco del Estado in Argentina?
• Thanks to friends like Hugo Gálvez, who wanted to reward me because I had lived through a very bad time in Argentina, where I was for the first time between 1970 and September 25, 1973, the date I returned to Chile.

• And when did you return to Argentina to formally assume your position?
• On October 8, 1974.

• Where were you on September 30, 1974, the day Carlos Prats and his wife, Sofía Cuthbert, were killed?
• In Chile. I was at a lunch at my sister's house, which was precisely to say goodbye because I was leaving for Argentina. I think the day before, or I don't know if it was even the same day, I went to Viña with my mother and my grandmother.

• Can you guarantee that between September 25, 1973, and October 8, 1974, you did not set foot on Argentine territory?
• Absolutely, and not only that. Judge Cervini de Cubría requested all movements on that date from immigration. They could not provide them because in Argentina there are no archives from that time, but the Chilean police did verify that I had not traveled or left the country during that period.

• Not by your name, but you used aliases, like Luis Felipe Alemparte or Harizmendi.
• That was also searched and they did not find any movement.

• What are, in your opinion, the pieces of evidence that exist in the process that involve you the most?
• None, there is no evidence.

• One of the accusations against you is for illicit association in relation to your link with the DINA.
• I already told you that I was not a DINA agent.

• But when your apartment was raided in 1978, in Argentina, they found some identity cards of Chileans who are currently forcibly disappeared.
• I don't know if they found those identity cards.

• It was published profusely in the press and was never denied.
• Because I have become a black legend, but I have no knowledge of any of that. When I was detained for espionage, I spent many days hooded in the Argentine police department. I thought they were going to execute me. In the end, I was imprisoned for two and a half years, along with two managers of Lan Chile, a former sailor, and a Chilean businessman. They exchanged us for Argentine prisoners who were in Chile, thanks to an effort by the Vatican. For two and a half years, I was never accused of anything. Do you think that if they had had proof of my supposed status as a spy, they would not have used it during that time, when we were about to go to war?

• In the raid on your apartment, some letters of yours were also seized, signed as Luis Felipe Alemparte and whose recipient was a certain "Elías," supposedly the alias of Raúl Iturriaga Neumann, head of the DINA's foreign department. Is that not proof of your relationship with the security agency?
• Those were not letters, but the press reports I spoke to you about. When I was detained in 1978, they made me sign many papers whose content I was unaware of. So I do not recognize those supposed pieces of evidence at all.

• Was the supposed "Elías" Iturriaga Neumann?
• It could have been Mr. Elías or Mr. Pérez. I have no knowledge of anything that was seized from me, and besides, that means nothing. It does not mean that I depended hierarchically on any department. I answered to the authorities of the time who were at the bank.

• Did you know Manuel Contreras?
• No. Socially, I may have been introduced to him, but I had no dealings with him.

• Iturriaga Neumann?
• The same as with Contreras, it may be that in some social setting I was introduced to him. No more.

• And Michael Townley?
• I met him as Andrés Wilson, in 1975. Through the press, I found out his name was Townley.

• Who do you think killed Carlos Prats?
• I have two theories: that Prats was a victim of an internal struggle between two factions in Argentina, the far-right, composed of the Triple A, and the far-left, integrated by the Montoneros, the ERP, and the FARC. The second theory is the one that Manuel Contreras has publicly postulated, that is, that it could have been the CIA.

• And could it have been the DINA?
• I don't know, I don't think so. Today the DINA is worse than the Gestapo. I do not agree with that black legend that has been woven about the DINA. I think it was necessary in its time, just as the CNI was, and today the government's Security Directorate under Frei is.

• And the human rights violations, do you think that was also necessary?
• No, but human rights are applied only for the left. It is human rights when a leftist is detained or mistreated. When they kill Jaime Guzmán or a carabinero, it is not human rights. So, seen that way, human rights organizations are nothing more than a mask for the left.

"After my arrest, a black legend began to be written about me: I became the James Bond who assassinated generals," states Arancibia Clavel.

Legal Itinerary

At least one of the three lawyers representing Enrique Arancibia Clavel in Argentina is convinced that the task of clarifying the assassination of Prats and his wife will remain more in the hands of historians than of the justice system.

This is something the plaintiffs, represented by the Prats family, the Chilean government, and the Argentine prosecutor's office, wish to avoid. The certainty of the Argentine lawyer Jorge Batista lies in the fact that, almost 25 years after the assassination, the Argentine justice system has not obtained reliable evidence regarding those responsible for the crime.

Currently, and despite the fact that the process has already accumulated more than six thousand pages and nearly 200 people have testified, there are no elements to conclude that the end is near.

The trial is running on two tracks. The first has to do with the process itself, which should provide news on February 25, when a complaint filed by the Chilean government is resolved. This appeal was filed after the Oral Tribunal Six approved, by two votes to one, in September 1988, that the Argentine justice system was incompetent to investigate the nature of the DINA as an "illicit association," because, being a Chilean organization, the principle of territoriality should apply—that is, the competence to investigate lay with the Chilean justice system.

One of the accusations hanging over Arancibia Clavel is that he was a member of an "illicit association": the DINA. The resolution also included removing the Chilean State from the case, based on the fact that, at the date of the assassination, Prats was not an official in the exercise of the Chilean government.

After an appeal for cassation was filed by the plaintiffs, it was won by the Argentine prosecutor and the Prats family, but not by the Chilean government, which immediately filed a complaint appeal, which will be heard on February 25.

Parallel to this appeal, the cassation prosecutor, Dr. Oscar Plee, was asked for a legal opinion, a common matter since they represent Argentine society. The jurist concluded that the Chilean government should maintain its status as a party in the process and that the resolution of "incompetence" of the Argentine courts to investigate the illicit association should be set aside.

In Plee's opinion, this would not be the occasion to rule on competence, but rather after the oral trial, once all the evidence is heard. He also argues that, if his criterion were to prevail, Tribunal Six should be removed from the case so that another tribunal could intervene.

If Plee's opinion were accepted, two more years could easily pass, since it would imply that the new tribunal would have to study the six thousand pages just to see the trial, without considering the proceedings that the parties might request.

The other track on which the process runs is an "incident": the appeal for cassation filed on Monday the 8th by Arancibia's defense to annul the resolution that prevented his release, based on the Costa Rica Pact.

The appeal should be heard between 20 days and five months, and if they fare poorly, they can file a complaint and, later, go to the Supreme Court. In this regard, the defense intends to continue pressuring the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, where in April 1988 they initiated a complaint for the excessive time Arancibia has been detained without receiving a sentence, which, in their view, constitutes an illegality.

In that organization, however, the issue is still under study.

Angélica Prats: "I do not believe Arancibia's request will have an echo"

The daughters of General Prats see little hope for Arancibia Clavel's request that the government ask Argentina for his release, citing the Pact of San José, Costa Rica. According to Angélica Prats, when the judge who is substantiating the investigation of the case in Buenos Aires analyzed the request for parole filed by Arancibia Clavel, she did not accept it, even while keeping in mind that pact and the international laws that could benefit the only prisoner in the Prats case.

According to the information handled by the daughter of the assassinated general, Arancibia Clavel's petition to the government is not justified, since the delay in his prosecution is due to the modality of the trial being carried out in Argentina, which the accused's own defense requested.

Because it is oral, the process includes two steps. The first, where the background information was collected by the judge and the prosecutor's office that determined that there were merits to initiate the trial, and the second, which corresponds to the oral trial itself, which began in the middle of last year.

Furthermore, according to the plaintiffs, the trial has been delayed due to requests filed by Arancibia Clavel's defense, the proceedings of which have not yet concluded.

Although the government has not commented on Arancibia Clavel's request—he reportedly sent a letter to La Moneda at the beginning of the month—Angélica Prats rules out that his request will have an echo.

This is because in the process being followed in Buenos Aires, there is evidence that would prove the accused's membership in the DINA and the responsibility he would have in the assassination of the Prats couple.

In any case, Arancibia Clavel's request, as well as the irregularities he has denounced in the process, surprise the daughter of the disappeared general, since—she asserts—at no time has his defense lawyer filed formal complaints before the Argentine courts.

Source: Revista Qué Pasa 1453, Monday, February 15 to 22, 1999

Enrique Arancibia Clavel sentenced to twelve years in prison

The Argentine justice system today sentenced Enrique Arancibia Clavel, a former agent of the Chilean secret police during the dictatorship, to 12 years in prison for the kidnapping of two Chilean citizens in Buenos Aires in 1977.

Throughout the process, it was proven that the former DINA agent was part of the group of repressors who kidnapped Laura Elgueta Díaz and Sonia Magdalena Días Ureta, both of Chilean nationality, in the Argentine capital.

The women were taken to a clandestine detention center, tortured, and released the following day. According to the victims' testimonies, Arancibia Clavel was the one who interrogated them during their captivity.

The former agent was carrying out tasks in Argentina within the framework of the so-called Plan Cóndor, designed by South American military dictatorships during the 1970s to persecute opponents in the region.

In his defense, Arancibia Clavel claimed to be innocent of the charges brought against him. But lawyer Alcira Ríos, who represented the victims, maintained that "the tribunal made it very clear with its ruling; there was more than enough evidence." The ruling came on the same day that marks 30 years since the assassination of General Carlos Prats, a case for which Arancibia Clavel was sentenced in 2000 to life imprisonment.

Source: La Nación, September 30, 2004

Enrique Arancibia Clavel, from agent to spy for the 'quasi-war' of '78

He knew the names of the forcibly disappeared in Chile and Argentina when the relatives were fighting in the courts to know their whereabouts. He participated in Operation Cóndor, in the crime of Prats, in that of General Schneider, and spied on the neighboring armed forces for the Beagle conflict.

His reports are kept at the Universidad Alberto Hurtado. Enrique Arancibia Clavel. Chilean. Born in Punta Arenas on October 13, 1944; son of Eladio and Violeta, single, student, residing at General del Canto No. 122, Santiago.

Identity Card No. 4,815,227 from Santiago. Dactyloscopic classification 86444-68262-97434. 1.73 meters tall, weight 70 kg; brown eyes, brown hair. That is how the first police file that the former DINA agent had in Buenos Aires read—recently released, despite the two sentences weighing against him—one of life imprisonment for the death of General Carlos Prats and 12 years for the torture of Laura Elgueta—when he was sought in 1970 for his involvement in the death of the former commander-in-chief of the Army, René Schneider.

From Patria y Libertad, passing through his pro-Nazi tendencies, the homosexuality that no one talks about, head of clandestine information for the DINA in Buenos Aires after the coup, recycled at times as a military intelligence spy for the quasi-war with Argentina in 1978, a bit of a businessman, and with a conservative family linked to the right and the Army—his brother came to be head of the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE)—he is a character whom reality surpassed, as if it were the best novel of the conspiratorial genre.

But new generations know little of his activities, of his reports that arrived every week at the DINA offices, signed by Luis Felipe Alemparte Díaz, his operational identity, of the information on Chilean and Argentine forcibly disappeared persons that he handled within a few months, even days, which reflect the profile of a man who knew the darkest years of the Southern Cone regimes up close.

In the archives kept by the Universidad Alberto Hurtado, his activities are detailed. Memos to Luis Gutiérrez, the assumed name of the head of the DINA's foreign service, to whom he even reported that Eva Perón's minister of social welfare, the sadly famous López Rega, was hitting the president. "The version was delivered by her naval aide-de-camp," he wrote.

The image corresponds to one of his intelligence reports when he was the head of clandestine information for the DINA in Buenos Aires. Arancibia Clavel had such access and importance for the DINA that he knew the details of the so-called Operation Colombo, which that service carried out for the elimination of dissidents to the military regime.

In fact, he sent lists with the disappeared and eliminated in Argentina—by the left, according to his reports—that contain full names, identity numbers, at a time when human rights organizations were fighting to know what was happening to their relatives.

But Arancibia Clavel's luck changed in 1978 when he was detained for espionage. The rest is history. In 2000, he was sentenced for the Prats case, years later for the torture of Laura Elgueta, and today he is free due to prison benefits. Although journalist Mónica González revealed all his activities in her book Bomba en una Calle de Palermo, his story has yet to be written.

Source: El Mostrador, August 23, 2007

France to judge thirteen Chilean repressors in absentia

After almost ten years, since the French justice system decided to judge a group of Chilean repressors and one Argentine for the kidnapping and disappearance of five Franco-Chilean citizens, the Grand Penal Tribunal of Paris set a date for the trial between May 19 and 23.

The 13 Chileans and the Argentine will be judged in absentia (according to the French legal figure) because neither Chile nor Argentina accepted the extradition demands formulated at the time by France.

Among the Chileans are the former head of the DINA, Manuel Contreras, and the leader of the German sect Colonia Dignidad, Paul Schäfer. Four of the Chileans initially sought are already dead: the dictator Augusto Pinochet, General Javier Palacios, who commanded the assault from the ground on La Moneda on September 11, 1973, Air Force Colonel Andrés Pacheco Cárdenas, commander of the Temuco air base, and the former civil agent Osvaldo "Guatón" Romo.

The Chilean officers (all retired) who will be subjected to trial are, in addition to Contreras and Schäfer: Emilio Sandoval Poo, a southern businessman; Joaquín Ramírez Pineda, former commander of the Tacna regiment; Rafael Ahumada Valderrama; Carabineros Lieutenant Colonel Gerardo Godoy García ("El Cachete Chico"); Basclay Zapata Reyes ("El Troglo"), DINA Army non-commissioned officer; Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, DINA brigadier, former head of the Águila brigade; Marcelo Moren Brito, DINA colonel, former head of Villa Grimaldi; Pedro Espinoza Bravo, brigadier, former second-in-command of DINA; Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, DINA general, former head of its foreign department; José Zara Holger, DINA brigadier, former head of its foreign department; and the former DINA civil agent Enrique Arancibia Clavel, who last year finished serving a prison sentence in Buenos Aires for the 1974 assassination of General Carlos Prats and his wife Sofía Cuthbert. Also to be judged is the former head of Argentine Army intelligence (SIDE) in Mendoza and Bahía Blanca during the last dictatorship, José Osvaldo Riveiro, alias "Balita." The fourteen criminals, most with a long criminal record for crimes against humanity, will be judged for the kidnapping and disappearance of Alfonso Chanfreau Oyarce, Jean Ives Claudet Fernández, René Marcel Amiel Baquet, George Klein Pipper, and Etienne Pesle de Menil. The five victims: Chanfreau was detained in July 1974 in Santiago and his name appears on the list of the 119 disappeared of Operation Colombo—a preamble to Operation Cóndor—by which the Chilean dictatorship tried to make people believe they had fled to Argentina. Claudet was detained in Buenos Aires in November 1975 as part of Operation Cóndor, in which the intelligence services of Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Uruguay also participated. In this case, Arancibia Clavel, or "Luis Felipe Alemparte," sent from Buenos Aires (November 1975) a memorandum addressed to "Luis Gutiérrez"—the alias for the position of DINA foreign chief, at that time Iturriaga Neumann—which said: "Claudet was subjected to interrogation... He no longer exists, he is RIP (Réquiem in pace)." The memo, along with others similar to it, was investigated in Buenos Aires by Judge María Servini and formed part of the file opened there for the Prats-Cuthbert crime. Amiel was arrested in Mendoza by Chilean and Argentine agents in 1977. Klein was an advisor to Allende and was detained at La Moneda on the day of the military coup. Pesle was a priest kidnapped in Temuco in September 1973.

Source: La Nación, February 12, 2008

Disappearance of four French citizens: Lawyers for former DINA agents downplay trial in France

"It has no validity in Chile," said lawyer Jorge Balmaceda yesterday, who represents two of the former members of the DINA who will be judged next May by a French tribunal for their responsibility in the kidnappings and illegitimate coercion suffered in Chile by four citizens of that country during the military regime.

Yesterday, it was reported in France that the trial against 17 former members of the intelligence agency headed by the then-colonel Manuel Contreras, who are held responsible for the disappearances of Alfonso Chanfreau Oyarce, Etienne Pesle, Georges Klein, and Jean-Yves Claudet Fernández, will take place in a Paris criminal court between May 19 and 23.

It is expected that several of those who will be judged in absentia could be sentenced to life imprisonment if the application of torture is proven. For Balmaceda, who defends Brigadier (ret.) Pedro Espinoza and General (ret.) Raúl Iturriaga—both on the list of 17—the French courts "have no competence or jurisdiction in Chile," and it is the Chilean justice system that is the only one that can rule on the events that occurred in the country. "Furthermore, they have no way to investigate the facts; the trial is conducted only on the basis of assumptions," he added.

Lawyer Enrique Ibarra, who represents Basclay Zapata, emphasized that what the French justice system may resolve has no value. "It is a symbolic issue," he asserted, because it has no practical effects.

Furthermore, he recalled that the cases for which they are going to be judged are being investigated by the Chilean justice system, and in some, there have been resolutions. Lawyer José Luis Sotomayor, who represents Brigadier (ret.) José Zara and the former leader of Colonia Dignidad, Paul Schäfer, emphasized that "no rational rule of law can judge anyone in absentia." Meanwhile, Alfonso Chanfreau's widow, Erika Hennings, celebrated the news. "I think it is spectacular, considering that in Chile there has been no progress," she asserted, in reference to the process being instructed by Minister Carlos Gajardo. The woman, who was also detained, did not rule out traveling to France.

Source: El Mercurio, February 12, 2008

Former DINA agent dies from stab wounds

Former DINA agent Enrique Arancibia Clavel, who was convicted for the assassination of General Carlos Prats and his wife Sofía Cuthbert in Buenos Aires, was found dead from a stab wound in the Argentine capital.

The former agent of Pinochet's secret agency, Enrique Arancibia Clavel, who was convicted for the assassination of the former chief of the Chilean army, General Carlos Prats, and his wife in this capital in 1975, was found stabbed to death in his apartment located a few meters from the Palace of Tribunals in Buenos Aires.

Clavel's body was found on Thursday night near a desk "in a supine position with more than 20 stab wounds to the chest and back" by his 21-year-old partner, who then alerted the Federal Police to the crime. According to neighbors, the body has more than 20 stab wounds.

Clavel was serving his sentence under supervised release since July 2007. It is rumored that he practiced homosexual relationships in recent years, according to the newspaper Clarín. In the apartment on Lavalle Street 1438 1B, "there were no signs of robbery or violence, although dried blood was found," police sources informed the newspaper Clarín.

The entrance door "was not forced either," the sources added. The dried blood reveals that the crime could have been committed several days before the discovery of the body. Although the motive for the crime is not clear, it is not ruled out that it was due to his activity as a secret agent for Pinochet's dictatorship, nor that it was of a passionate nature.

Spy and Anti-communist

Clavel settled in Argentina in 1971, fleeing military justice due to a pending process against him for violation of the State Security Law, accused of having planted bombs after the election of Salvador Allende, whom he rejected due to his deep anti-communism.

After the military coup, he began working for the DINA while he was the representative of the Banco del Estado, using the name Luis Felipe Alemparte.

In 1978, he had been accused of espionage in favor of Chile during the conflict over the Beagle Channel. According to the trial for the death of Prats, he was the one who made the preparations for the attack, such as providing information on the general's movements.

Prats was the Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the overthrown president Salvador Allende and remained faithful to the Constitution and rejected the military coup carried out by Pinochet, which meant exile for him. As his figure represented the moral counterweight to Pinochet for the Army, he was ordered to be killed in the Argentine capital.

Arancibia Clavel was sentenced in 2004 by the Argentine justice system to twelve years in prison for the assassination of General Carlos Prats and his wife Sofía Cuthbert, who died after a bomb placed by their car exploded in 1974 in the Palermo neighborhood.

The explosive device was placed by the former CIA agent, the American Michael Townley, by order of the head of the DINA, Manuel Contreras. Clavel had also participated in the kidnapping of the Chilean women Laura Elgueta Díaz and Sonia Díaz Ureta, within the framework of the so-called Plan Cóndor implemented by the South American dictatorships.

Source: El Ciudadano, April 29, 2011