Acting on behalf of Court of Appeals judge Jorge Zepeda, magistrate María Inés Collin, who holds exclusive jurisdiction over human rights cases, also charged former agents of the CNI’s Brigada Azul—Kranz Bauer Donoso, Alejandro Astudillo Adams, Miguel Soto Estuardo, and Jorge Andrade Gómez—with the crime of qualified homicide.

The magistrate of the Eighth Criminal Court of Santiago, María Inés Collin, charged the former operations chief of the National Information Center (CNI), Álvaro Corbalán, with the qualified homicide of MIR militant Paulina Aguirre Tobar in 1985.

Likewise, the magistrate with exclusive jurisdiction over human rights cases, who is substituting for Court of Appeals judge Jorge Zepeda on this occasion, also charged four members of the CNI’s Brigada Azul—Kranz Bauer Donoso, Alejandro Astudillo Adams, Miguel Soto Estuardo, and Jorge Andrade Gómez—with the same crime.

Corbalán was indicted for the death of Paulina Aguirre on May 14, at which time former agents Andrade Gómez and Bauer were also charged with the same crime. The indictment, within the judicial process, is the step preceding the sentencing.

Paulina Aguirre, 20 years old and a militant of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), was executed while returning to her home in the Las Condes sector of the capital on March 29, 1985, according to the Rettig Report, which documented human rights violations during the dictatorship (1973-1990).

The report adds that the young woman was executed by CNI agents, but the official version at the time spoke of a confrontation, based on the fact that the perpetrators placed a weapon in the corpse's hand to support the story that she had resisted arrest.

Although military justice corroborated that thesis, Zepeda managed to establish that there is sufficient evidence to prove that it was a qualified homicide and that the victim was gunned down in cold blood without warning or prior demand.

Source: El Mostrador, February 11, 2004

The assassination of Paulina Aguirre by CNI agents: The truth at last

This month, marking 19 years since the assassination of Paulina Alejandra Aguirre Tobar, a sentence is expected against the CNI members who shot her to death in an ambush disguised as a confrontation. The young MIR militant had just turned 20 in December 1984.

The homicide occurred shortly before midnight on March 29, 1985, in the El Arrayán sector: the same night that brothers Rafael and Eduardo Vergara Toledo were assassinated in Villa Francia. In just a few hours, the sinister hand of the dictatorship cut short the lives and dreams of three young people.

Charged and accused as perpetrators of the qualified homicide of Paulina Aguirre are Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, an army major and operations chief of the CNI who, at that time, was in command of the Borgoño barracks; Krantz Johans Bauer Donoso, a retired army lieutenant colonel who then directed the CNI’s Brigada Azul under Corbalán’s command, currently also prosecuted for the assassinations of Operation Albania and journalist José Carrasco; Miguel Angel Soto Duarte, a retired Carabineros major, alias “El Paco Aravena”; Alejandro Astudillo Adonis, an Air Force (FACH) officer; and Jorge Claudio Andrade Gómez, a retired army lieutenant colonel and sub-commander of the Borgoño barracks. It was Soto Duarte who fired the bullets that caused Paulina’s immediate death. Once she had fallen, Astudillo Adonis and Andrade Gómez continued to fire at her. Corbalán and Bauer gave the orders, followed the “operation” step by step, and were in charge of the setup to simulate a confrontation.

The indictments of these five criminals were reviewed and unanimously confirmed by the Santiago Court of Appeals. Two of them admitted to having participated in the “operation” by order of Álvaro Corbalán.

This was one of the “feats” of the CNI’s Brigada Azul, tasked with repressing the MIR and responsible for numerous crimes. This brigade was directed at that time by Krantz Bauer, under the general command of Álvaro Corbalán. During the process, about twenty former agents who were part of that brigade were interrogated, three of whom remained in active service in the army in 2002.

Currently, the investigation is closed, the case has been clarified, and the process includes two confessions from the perpetrators, which are decisive in preventing any subterfuge in search of impunity. Before the end of March, the special judge Jorge Zepeda should issue a first-instance sentence.

PRECOCIOUS MILITANT

Paulina Aguirre asked to join the MIR at age 15. At that age, she already understood all too well what it was like to live under a dictatorship. She saw her father, Luis Aguirre Smith, terribly tortured in Calama and later behind the bars of the Santiago Penitentiary.

Her uncle Pedro, a worker at Chuquicamata, was held in the Copiapó jail, and her uncle Carlos Acuña Alvarez was executed by firing squad in Antofagasta. “She wanted to fight against the crimes committed by the dictatorship.

She hoped to create a more human, just, and egalitarian society,” her father recalls today. “Paulina was a beautiful girl who continued attending the Liceo Valentín Letelier in evening classes. She drew and played the guitar with her classmates and friends. And she wrote, never forgetting her political commitment.” She left her father verses such as these:

When pain, blood, hatred, and death are necessary, thousands of hands reach out to take up arms. Remember me Always.

The young militant, whose political name was “Luisa,” worked for five years in the underground. Her parents were separated and lived in exile. Luis Aguirre in France and her mother, María Eugenia Tobar Andrade, in Sweden. Little is known about Paulina’s final years in Chile. However, it has been possible to reconstruct, in broad strokes, her steps leading up to the assassination.

A CRACK IN THE WALL

At the beginning of 1985, Paulina Aguirre rented a wooden cabin on a plot of land at Calle Pastor Fernández 16,100, in the Lo Barnechea commune. According to a witness’s testimony, the same dwelling had previously been rented by a woman of about 30 who claimed to be a photographer and was visited by a man of the same age.

At night, neighbors heard hammering, as if carpentry work were being done. The woman left the cabin abruptly the day after a robbery in a neighboring house that prompted the presence of investigative police personnel.

In the first days of March, the central zone of the country was shaken by an earthquake, and a deep crack split the only cement wall of the cabin where Paulina lived. The owner—María Victoria Esquivel, now deceased—who resided on the same property, asked her to move to a room in her house while the cabin was being repaired.

But she chose to move temporarily to her grandmother’s house in the Villa Cumbres Andinas in the Macul commune, where her brother, an aunt, and a cousin lived.

On March 27, the workers carrying out repairs on the cabin had to tear down the damaged wall and discovered packages of ammunition inside a wooden partition. They alerted the owner, who notified the Ministry of Defense.

A CNI team arrived at the scene and subsequently announced to the press the discovery of weapons, ammunition, and explosives. A permanent CNI guard remained inside and outside the dwelling, waiting for Paulina’s return.

The contractor in charge of the work, Luis Valenzuela Pérez, declared during the process that he saw the CNI agent in charge of the team show a series of photos to the owner of the plot, and that she recognized the young tenant of the cabin in one of them, as well as another woman who had served as her guarantor when renting.

Valenzuela also points out that they were affected when they learned of the girl’s death, “because we felt that because of our work, this young woman had ended up dead,” and that the property owner was upset “since she felt that the number of people hidden inside the plot and in the surroundings could have acted differently, arresting the young woman without killing her.”

According to the “official” version provided by the CNI, Paulina returned on March 29 at 11:15 PM. The plot was crawling with CNI henchmen hidden among the trees. When the young woman opened the front gate, they allegedly ordered her to stop and identify herself. Then, she allegedly pulled a weapon from her bag with which she supposedly fired at the agents.

Repelling the attack, they allegedly wounded her mortally. The autopsy report records eight bullet entry wounds, two of which went through her head. Death was instantaneous.

The investigation carried out during the current process revealed that Paulina had been followed beforehand, that she was unarmed, and that they murdered her in cold blood. Once the crime was committed, Álvaro Corbalán and Kranz Bauer—both prosecuted for Operation Albania, and the former sentenced to life imprisonment for the homicide of carpenter Juan Alegría Mundaca—arrived at the scene to supervise the result of the “operation,” alter the crime scene, and report the “confrontation.” That was the information released to the Chilean population through the press.

IN SEARCH OF THE TRUTH

As happened with many other cases, a process was initiated in military justice for the homicide of Paulina Aguirre that led nowhere. The Second Military Court of Santiago did not focus on investigating the death of the young MIR militant, but rather on investigating the crimes of illegal possession of weapons and terrorist conduct.

Shortly after, the case was dismissed because the perpetrator of those crimes had died in a confrontation. That was all.

At the beginning of the 90s, her relatives testified before the Commission for Reconciliation, Truth, and Justice. After investigating, the commission expressed in the Rettig Report its conviction that “Paulina Aguirre could have been arrested; however, she was killed by CNI personnel when she was returning to her home, without there having been any opposition on her part.” In 2001, Luis Aguirre Smith, a resident of France, filed a complaint through human rights lawyer Francisco Bravo against Augusto Pinochet and those responsible for the crimes of qualified homicide and genocidal illicit association committed against his daughter.

During the process in military justice, Salas Wenzel had given the names of two people—“Jaime Aravena Parada” and “Iván Stuar Briceño”—who had allegedly participated in the operation. As expected, these were aliases, which was proven in that same process.

Subsequently, in 2001, the current commander-in-chief of the army, Juan Emilio Cheyre, who then held the position of chief of the army’s general staff, refused to hand over to special judge Juan Guzmán the list of military personnel who served in the CNI in 1985, a measure requested by the plaintiffs.

He merely argued that this information is “a secret record in accordance with the provisions of Article 436 of the Code of Military Justice.” That was the extent of the “collaboration” provided by the army to clarify the crime, which belies General Cheyre’s reconciliatory and pro-human rights discourse.

With the scarce information available, special judge Juan Guzmán dispatched an order to investigate to Department V of the Investigative Police, which performed a decisive role in the inquiry.

It established that within the CNI, the apparatus in charge of repression against the MIR was the so-called Brigada Azul, and that the assassination of Paulina Aguirre had the same characteristics as others committed before and after her death, which were also presented as “confrontations.” An immediate precedent was the homicide of Fernando Vergara Vargas, gunned down in the street on December 15, 1984, when he was returning home.

False confrontations were the form taken in the 80s by the policy of extermination against those who were in the anti-dictatorship struggle. There are witnesses who heard Hugo Salas Wenzel, director of the CNI, telling Álvaro Corbalán in 1986 that “I don’t want any more detainees.”

Department V of the Investigative Police managed to identify a significant number of Brigada Azul agents and, with the guidance of the plaintiffs, requested judicial information from other judges who were investigating crimes committed by the CNI in those years.

The first light to find the perpetrators was provided by an agent of that CNI brigade, Ema Verónica Ceballos Núñez, belonging to the Navy, who declared that the operation in El Arrayán, in which she said she had not participated, was commented on in the Brigada Azul by a subject called “El Paco Aravena,” who had the peculiarity of studying Law.

This man, according to Ema Ceballos, boasted of having killed Paulina Aguirre, which bothered her a lot because she considered it an act of cowardice to have killed such a young girl without defense. Those data were decisive.

In turn, other CNI agents began providing new information. One of them admitted that it was a setup, that the young woman had been followed for approximately a month. Later, Ema recognized “El Paco Aravena” in a series of photos shown to her by the judge in charge of the investigation.

He was identified as Miguel Angel Soto Duarte. In other words, the pact of silence was beginning to break, which allowed for the identification of those who participated in the operation and to whom the aliases provided by Salas Wenzel corresponded.

In October 2003, when cases were distributed to decongest Judge Guzmán’s work, the case passed into the hands of special judge Jorge Zepeda, who continued working, now with the Investigative Police’s intelligence team, and took statements from approximately twenty former CNI agents.

Ultimately, he reached the conclusion that Paulina Aguirre had been the object of a radio-coordinated pursuit throughout the entire journey to the plot. This coincides with other information. The young woman’s brother, Luis Aguirre Tobar, and a cousin, Ana Andrade, observed a white Suzuki van circulating around the grandmother’s house, where she had sought refuge in the days prior to the assassination.

The simplest part was dismantling the “confrontation” setup. The CNI repeated errors committed in other similar cases, such as placing the weapon in the young woman’s left hand—she was not left-handed—using a pistol that had not been fired, and the absence of gunpowder residue on the young woman’s hand. “They didn’t worry about those details, which are fundamental, because they evidently thought that this would never be investigated,” points out plaintiff lawyer Francisco Bravo.

The judicial investigation neither confirms nor denies the discovery of weaponry in the MIR militant’s home, because it was oriented exclusively to clarifying the homicide. “Apparently, there were hidden caches,” says the plaintiff lawyer, “but Paulina would have been unaware of them.” What was really there is difficult to prove, because the CNI isolated the cabin while searching it and later reported a long list of ammunition, weapons, and explosives found inside.

Currently, several of the accused are on provisional release. Krantz Bauer was released on bail a few days after being arrested. The same happened with Miguel Soto Duarte, the author of the fatal shots.

Jorge Andrade was granted release, but it was almost immediately revoked by a ruling of the Eighth Chamber of the Supreme Court for considering him “a danger to the security of society due to the manner and circumstances of the crime investigated.” However, he insisted and finally obtained provisional release.

But these will be the last days that Paulina Aguirre’s assassins will enjoy that benefit to which human rights violators so easily have access. Judge Jorge Zepeda Arancibia has the floor.

Of criminals and accomplices

For plaintiff lawyer Francisco Bravo López, the investigation into the assassination of Paulina Aguirre reached a successful conclusion due to the diligence of Department V of the Investigative Police and the effective action of special judges Juan Guzmán and Jorge Zepeda. And, of course, thanks to the collaboration of some former CNI agents.

In this regard, he distinguishes two attitudes among human rights violators. “Álvaro Corbalán is one of those who show no degree of remorse; he will die in his own way, never acknowledging that what he did was wrong,” says the lawyer. “It is the mentality of the fanatic, who becomes blinded and believes that he killed for the fatherland, and that if history repeats itself, he would do the same or worse.

That is the logic of the Krasnoffs, the Moren Britos, and the Manuel Contreras, of the cruelest repressors there were in Chile. This differs from the attitude of others who have collaborated with justice, who are generally of lower rank and who, in many cases, were material executors of the crimes.

I don’t believe they collaborate only for convenience—reduction of sentences or others—but because they have a burden on their conscience that is weighing too heavily on them and that manifests itself especially when they age and start thinking about death.”

Why do you think they decided to kill Paulina Aguirre?

“Simply because she was a MIR militant. There are also different extrajudicial theses about Álvaro Corbalán’s motivations for executing assassinations, operations, or setups, beyond the State policy of the time to repress certain political sectors of the country.

There would be pecuniary motivations—the theft of the victims’ possessions, as ‘spoils of war’—and also prestige. Most of the supposed confrontations occurred during periods of CNI personnel evaluation.

Corbalán had—and has—many enemies within the army because of his arrogant personality, because he boasted of having direct contact with the highest-ranking authorities, because he handled a great deal of information. Thus, acting in these types of events made him worthy of good ratings, because he was seen as an effective man in the anti-subversive struggle.”

Do you feel satisfied with the results of this process?

“Yes, the assassination is clarified. But I was left with a thorn in my side. In my opinion, justice should also orient its inquiries toward the military prosecutor’s offices, as happened in the cases of Tucapel Jiménez and Berríos, because they were part of an organized power apparatus that cooperated in these crimes.

That is to say, there was complicity by military prosecutors and judges, which implies collaboration in the crime that was being committed. In Operation Albania, the great argument of the defense was that they had acted because there was an order to investigate, and indeed there was a judicial decree that emanated from a military tribunal through which the CNI agents were given free rein to do as they pleased.

In that way, under a cloak of apparent formality or legality, horrific crimes were committed. As seen in the case of Paulina Aguirre, military justice not only did not do its job, but it was occupied with whitewashing crimes. In general, I believe that in cases of human rights violations, one must continue to investigate that vein.”

Psychological portrait of a murderer

At the request of special judge Jorge Zepeda, mental health examinations were performed on the accused. The report from the Psychology Service of the Carabineros Hospital, where Miguel Angel Soto Duarte had been treated since March 2003 for “borderline personality disorder and major depression,” is pathetic.

It says, among other things, that “the patient presents evident signs of character alterations, suicidal ideation, lack of impulse control, disorders in the formal course of thought, and occasional productive symptoms.”

Another report issued by the Institute of Legal Medicine concludes that Soto Duarte presents “a personality with anomalous traits of a mixed type and that at the time the events under investigation occurred, he did not suffer from psychopathological alterations that could modify his imputability.” In 1986, Miguel Angel Soto began consulting a psychiatrist for states of anxiety. “He describes the discomforts that made him consult as nervousness, restlessness when he goes down the street ‘as if they are watching me, that they want to kill me,’ sleep-onset insomnia, and when unable to sleep, ‘this case goes around in my head,’ he senses something like a shadow at his side or seems to hear the voice of a child or a woman while asleep.”

When he remembers the death of Paulina Aguirre, he says: “A person arrives, a series of shots occurs, there wasn’t much light, orders go back and forth... I participated in the confrontation, I fired too... but not because I wanted to, I felt fear, that they could kill me.

It was a strange operation, with many undercover people behind me... who could kill me. I didn’t get along with my friends. I had heard that they were going to kill me in some confrontation. I fired so they wouldn’t kill me... Now the only thing I want is to be calm. For justice to punish me soon. For this to end. I would choose the death penalty.”

Source: Punto Final, Edition 562 - March 2004

Appeal to be filed against low sentence handed down against former CNI leadership

The family of the young MIR militant Paulina Aguirre Tobar, gunned down in 1985 in El Arrayán, announced that it will appeal the low sentences handed down by judge Jorge Zepeda against the five former agents of the dissolved National Information Center (CNI), considering them insufficient in relation to the crimes committed.

Luis Aguirre Smith, Paulina’s father, considered the sanction imposed “light.” “The punishment is not proportional to the gravity of the crime. A person’s life is not five years and one day.” Likewise, he explained that he would have been willing “for (Paulina’s assassins) not to have prison sentences.

But these guys are not repentant,” or at least that is how they expressed it in the interrogations at the Fifth Department of Investigations, commented Aguirre.

The sentence for the former chief of the CNI, Álvaro Corbalán Castilla; retired lieutenant colonel Kranz Bauer Donoso; retired Carabineros major Miguel Soto Duarte; and retired lieutenant colonel Jorge Andrade Gómez was five years and one day in prison; and for the retired Chilean Air Force (FACH) officer Alejandro Astudillo Adams, three years and one day.

Furthermore, the latter was granted the benefit of conditional release. This is the reason why Aguirre will request a hardening of the sentences handed down, “from 10 years to effective life imprisonment.”

Source: La Nación, July 25, 2005

Eight former CNI agents prosecuted for FPMR disappeared

Eight spots at the Army Telecommunications Command in Peñalolén were designated for an equal number of former agents of the National Information Center (CNI) who were prosecuted—as perpetrators of qualified kidnapping—by visiting judge Mario Carroza in the so-called case of the five disappeared of '87.

The emblematic case relates to the last disappearances executed during the dictatorship, which ended with the members of the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (FPMR) kidnapped, killed, and thrown into the sea (tied to railroad ties) at the hands of personnel from repressive agencies and the Army Intelligence Battalion (BIE).

The events occurred in the context of the kidnapping of Colonel Carlos Carreño Barrera. According to the judge’s findings, between September 9 and 10, Julián Peña Maltés, Alejandro Pinochet Arenas, Manuel Sepúlveda Sánchez, Gonzalo Fuenzalida Navarrete, and Julio Muñoz Otárola were detained without a judicial warrant; they were members of the FPMR and were chosen from institutional files to carry out an exchange for the kidnapped Carreño.

During those days, according to the indictment, they were held at the Borgoño Barracks, only to be eliminated once the officer appeared in Brazil. After that episode, an operation was initiated to transport the corpses to the Peldehue Fort, from where they were transported in helicopters and thrown into the coast of Quintay, tied to railroad ties to prevent them from surfacing.

The ruling highlights that after collecting a large amount of evidence, it is reasonable to think that “these bodies correspond to the kidnapped persons, which, having been thrown into the sea, were not identified.”

In the case, it is recognized that individuals from different departments were participants in an operation in which there were “different stages,” such as the detention, confinement, interrogation in the interval prior to their death, and the transport of their corpses to the depths of the sea.

Those charged are Gonzalo Maas del Valle, Heraldo Velozo Gallegos, Sergio Mateluna Pino, Roberto Rodríguez Manquel, José Fuentes Cortez, Juan Alejandro Jorquera Abarzúa, Alejandro Astudillo Adonis, and Patricio Leonidas González.

In conjunction with the prosecution, Judge Carroza ordered their entry into the Army Telecommunications Command, where they must remain for the duration of the inquiry.

Source: La Nación, April 9, 2008

Former CNI agents convicted for death of opponents in 1981

Among those implicated are Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, Alejandro Astudillo Adonis, Fernando Rojas Tapia, and Enrique Sandoval Arancibia.

Justice condemned four former agents of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship this Tuesday, in the first instance, for the death of four opponents assassinated in 1981 in the outskirts of Santiago, judicial sources reported.

Judge Joaquín Billard sentenced Álvaro Corbalán Castilla and Alejandro Astudillo Adonis, both former members of the feared National Intelligence Center (CNI), to twelve years in prison.

In addition, he set six years of imprisonment for Fernando Rojas Tapia and for Enrique Sandoval Arancibia, also former CNI agents.

On the other hand, Luis Correa Soto, prosecuted in this case, was acquitted upon the accreditation of his lack of participation in the events.

The five had been prosecuted in April 2008 for the homicides of four left-wing militants that occurred on November 10, 1981, in the mountain sector of Las Vizcachas.

The victims were Juan Ramón Soto Cerda and Jaime Alfonso Cuevas Cuevas, both militants of the Socialist Party, and Luis Pincheira Llanos and Nelson Luis Araneda Loaiza, who were members of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR).

Their bodies were found in a burned-out car in front of the house of the then-Minister of Foreign Affairs, René Rojas.

According to left-wing organizations and relatives of victims of human rights violations, the four militants were assassinated after being detained by the secret police, who then set fire to the car and staged a false confrontation at the scene.

An expert report by the Investigative Police confirmed that the victims did not cause the impacts received by the National Intelligence Center (CNI) vehicle, as the dictatorship wanted to make people believe at the time.

The judge also determined that the State and the four convicted must jointly pay 30 million pesos to seven relatives of the victims.

Source: El Mostrador, March 18, 2010

“Calcinados” (Charred) case: Former CNI agents convicted for murder of MIR and Socialist militants

The Santiago Court of Appeals increased from 6 to 10 years of imprisonment the sanction for two former agents of the dictatorship’s repressive organ, for the crimes of three former members of the MIR and a socialist leader that occurred in 1981 in the context of false confrontations invented by the Regime to get rid of its opponents.

The Santiago Court of Appeals rejected the cassation appeals presented by the retired military officers and former agents of the National Intelligence Center (CNI), Alejandro Astudillo Adonis and Enrique Erasmo Sandoval Arancibia, both prosecuted and convicted for the qualified homicides of four dissidents of the dictatorship and former members of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR).

These are Luis Araneda Loaíza, Luis Pincheira Llanos, and Juan Soto Cerda, in addition to Jaime Cuevas Cuevas, a leader of the Socialist Party, who were detained in Talca, transported to Santiago, and executed by the dictatorship’s agents in Las Vizcachas.

The ruling “rejects the cassation appeal in form filed on page 1490 by lawyer Enrique Ibarra Chamorro on behalf of Alejandro Astudillo Adonis and Enrique Erasmo Sandoval Arancibia, so the sentence being challenged,” it adds, “is fully valid.”

In the first-instance ruling, issued in January 2010, four CNI agents were convicted for the homicides of the former MIR members. Along with Astudillo and Sandoval, who were sentenced to 12 and 6 years of imprisonment respectively, the former operations chief of the CNI, Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, and Fernando Rojas Tapia were declared guilty, being sentenced in the same way to 12 and 6 years of effective prison time.

The Sixth Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals, composed of judge Manuel Antonio Valderrama Rebolledo, substitute judge Gloria María Solís Romero, and member lawyer Enrique Pérez Levetzow, in addition to rejecting the cassation presented by the human rights violators, decided to increase the sentences of Fernando Rojas Tapia and Enrique Erasmo Sandoval from 6 to 10 years of imprisonment and ratified the compensation of 30 million pesos for the victims’ relatives.

The four convicted are being held at the Punta Peuco Penal Penitentiary Compliance Center.

The crime On November 10, 1981, Juan Ramón Soto Cerda, a student and militant of the Socialist Party; Luis Pantaleón Pincheira Llanos, an accountant and militant of the MIR; and Jaime Alfonso Cuevas Cuevas, a worker and militant of the MIR, died in Santiago.

According to the official version, in the early hours of that day, a confrontation occurred between security forces and four extremist elements. As a consequence of the exchange of gunfire, the vehicle in which they were traveling caught fire, resulting in three of them being completely charred.

According to the planimetric report of the Investigative Police, attached to the judicial file, it was proven that the security personnel did not fire from the place they maintained and that the victims could not have been the cause of the impacts received by the CNI vehicle.

Juan Soto, Luis Pincheira, Jaime Cuevas, and a fourth unidentified person were executed by CNI agents, in violation of their human rights, who then set fire to the vehicle. Hence, the event is known as the “Calcinados” case.

The fourth person assassinated was Nelson Araneda Loaiza, a 35-year-old MIR commander, whose arms and legs were severed by CNI agents. Tucapel, as he was known within the party, was only identified in October 2009, when the director of the Legal Medical Service (SML), Patricio Bustos, delivered the expert report to the Santiago Court of Appeals judge, Joaquín Billard, and the family.

His remains lay in Patio 29.

This was after anthropological, dental, and cause-of-death examinations were performed. Later, the bone samples were sent to the Innsbruck laboratory in Austria, where genetic testing was carried out through the comparison of the DNA of two brothers, which allowed for his identification.

Nelson Araneda Loiza was buried in his native Lebu on November 7, 2009.

One of the plaintiff lawyers, Nelson Miranda Urrutia, told Medialsur that “the ruling is an important signal that Justice gives by raising the sentence for brutal human rights violators,” adding that “there is an absolute and discriminatory disproportion in the legal treatment, for example, toward the Mapuche, who have received higher sentences without having been involved in crimes of blood.”

Annex: La Nación, December 25, 2006 – Dead in false confrontations

Source: Correo de los Trabajadores, March 26, 2012

Magistrate Hernán Crisosto established that intelligence agents of the dictatorship participated as perpetrators of the aggravated kidnapping of Bernardo Castro López, who later appeared on a supposed list of people killed in clashes in Argentina.

The minister on extraordinary visit to the Santiago Court of Appeals designated for human rights violation cases, Hernán Crisosto, handed down a sentence on January 6 regarding the investigation into the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Bernardo de Castro López, an event that began on September 14, 1974.

In the case, the magistrate sentenced the former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA)—Juan Manuel Guillermo Contreras Sepúlveda, César Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Gerardo Ernesto Urrich González, Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos, and Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann—to 13 years in prison as perpetrators.

Likewise, Minister Crisosto sentenced the following individuals as perpetrators of aggravated kidnapping to 10 years in prison: Orlando Manzo Durán, Pedro René Alfaro Fernández, Armando Segundo Cofré Correa, Héctor Alfredo Flores Vergara, Enrique Tránsito Gutiérrez Rubilar, Hugo del Tránsito Hernández Valle, Manuel Rivas Díaz, Risiere del Prado Altez España, Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Manuel Heriberto Avendaño González, Alfredo Orlando Moya Tejeda, Alejandro Francisco Astudillo Adonis, Demóstenes Eugenio Cárdenas Saavedra, Hernán Patricio Valenzuela Salas, and Alejandro Francisco Molina Cisternas.

Meanwhile, he sentenced Nelson Eduardo Iturriaga Cortez and José Dorohi Hormazábal Rodríguez to 4 years in prison without benefits as accomplices, and acquitted Basclay Zapata Reyes.

THE RULING

According to the resolution, Minister Hernán Crisosto considered the following facts to be proven:

“That on the afternoon of September 14, 1974, Bernardo de Castro López, a militant of the Socialist Party, was detained at his home located at Calle Bilbao No. 1236, in the commune of Providencia, being taken to a barracks of the Investigations Police of Chile where he was interrogated and then handed over to DINA agents, who took him to the clandestine detention center known as ‘Venda Sexy,’ located at Calle Irán No. 3037, in Santiago, and subsequently he was transferred to the clandestine detention center known as ‘Cuatro Álamos,’ located at Calle Canadá No. 3000, in the commune of Santiago, facilities that were guarded by armed guards and to which only DINA agents had access,” he states in his first point.

In a second point, he notes that “During his stay at the ‘Venda Sexy’ barracks, De Castro López remained without contact with the outside world, blindfolded and tied up, being continuously subjected to interrogations under torture by DINA agents operating in said barracks for the purpose of obtaining information regarding members of his political group, in order to proceed with the detention of the members of that organization, an isolation that continued at the Cuatro Álamos Center.”

“That the last time the victim De Castro López was seen alive by other detainees occurred on an undetermined day in the month of October 1974, and he remains forcibly disappeared to this date,” he states in the third point.

In the fourth point, that “the name of Bernardo de Castro López 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 Bernardo de Castro López had died in Argentina, along with 59 other people belonging to leftist groups, due to internal disputes that arose among those members; and that the publications that declared the victim De Castro López dead had their origin in disinformation maneuvers carried out by DINA agents abroad.”

As a fifth point, he established that “the facts established in the previous consideration constitute the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Bernardo de Castro López, provided for and sanctioned in Article 141, paragraph 3 of the Penal Code of the time, in relation to the first paragraph of the same article, since the deprivation of liberty or confinement of the victim lasted for more than 90 days, and therefore produced serious harm to the person, which ultimately resulted in his disappearance.”

Source: La Nación, January 8, 2015

CNI homicide perpetrator captured after being a fugitive for six months

Nicknamed “Cordero Chico” (Little Lamb) within the CNI, he is sentenced to 12 years of effective prison time for the aggravated homicide of Socialist Party militant Juan Ramón Soto Cerda, and MIR militants Luis Nelson Fernando Araneda Loaiza, Luis Pantaleón Pincheira Llanos, and Jaime Cuevas Cuevas.

Alejandro Astudillo Adonis (61), a former DINA and CNI agent sentenced for four aggravated homicides that occurred in 1981, was captured this Friday in a supermarket in Padre Las Casas.

A team from the Investigative Brigade for Crimes Against Human Rights arrested him without resistance and transferred him this weekend to be placed at the disposal of two judges investigating crimes against humanity.

Astudillo Adonis, nicknamed “Cordero Chico” in the CNI, had been a fugitive since August of last year when the Supreme Court confirmed a sentence against him of 12 years of effective prison time for the aggravated homicide of Socialist Party militant Juan Ramón Soto Cerda, and MIR militants Luis Nelson Fernando Araneda Loaiza, Luis Pantaleón Pincheira Llanos, and Jaime Cuevas Cuevas.

On November 10, 1981, the four individuals appeared riddled with bullets in a stolen taxi. It was all a setup carried out by the CNI. They had been detained in previous days, tortured in barracks of the repressive organization, and taken to that sector to simulate a clash, as was determined in the investigation.

Also sentenced for this case are the CNI operations chief, Alvaro Corbalán, and agents Enrique Sandoval Arancibia and Fernando Rojas Tapia, who were already at Punta Peuco.

This is the second conviction against “Cordero Chico.” The first, of only three years, was served under supervised release. And it was not a minor crime. He is the murderer of 17-year-old Paulina Aguirre Tobar, killed by the CNI in March 1985, one of the emblematic cases that is also remembered during the “Day of the Young Combatant.”

Astudillo Adonis worked as a traveling salesman for an import company. During these months, the police monitored his financial activity, mail, and telephones, and kept watch on family contacts. Two months ago, they managed to find clues of the former agent’s presence in the vicinity of Temuco, where one of his partners lived.

On Friday, at 7:50 PM, they captured Astudillo Adonis, who was transferred that same night to Santiago, to the barracks of that brigade on Calle Condell, Providencia.

On Saturday, at 9:00 AM, he was taken to the offices of Judge Hernán Crisosto, the first judge to issue an arrest warrant, and at 12:00 PM that same day, he was placed at the disposal of the Gendarmerie to serve the 12 years.

This Monday, Astudillo was notified by Minister Mario Carroza of the first-instance sentence of five years in prison for the kidnapping and disappearance of four members of the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front and one communist militant, a case known as “the five,” the last forcibly disappeared persons left by the Pinochet dictatorship.

“Cordero Chico” tried to mislead the police by sending several emails to some family members and his former boss at the import company for which he worked as a traveling salesman. In those communications, he claimed that, due to personal matters, he would have to take a trip to Paraguay.

However, the team formed for his capture began making inquiries in the commune of Padre Las Casas, in the Ninth Region, where they obtained indications that Astudillo Adonis frequented certain points.

His capture is the first of a group of fugitives for crimes committed during the dictatorship, which has not been simple. The search has been slow for the Investigative Brigade for Crimes Against Human Rights due to the reduction in its staff and resources.

Furthermore, these fugitives do not appear in the bulletins or on the institutional website where the files of the most wanted criminals are published.

Source: 24horas.cl, April 2, 2015

Case File 2182-98: Operation Colombo episode, “Francisco Aedo and others” case

ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEENTH: That Alejandro Francisco Astudillo Adonis, who was accused of the crimes established in considerations 3, 5, 9, 13, 15, and 27 in his investigations, on pages 10,250 and 11,125, maintains that: in December 1973, while he was performing his Military Service in Aviation Group No. 1, five conscripts were selected and sent to Santiago to the Colina Air Base and from there they were sent to the Rocas de Santo Domingo.

The Aviation group consisted of about 50 people, and they were integrated into courses given to about 200 people, including Carabineros, Army, and Aviation, which was in charge of Commander Cesar Manríquez Bravo.

The instructors were Lieutenant Labbé, Willike, and Miguel Krassnoff. They were told that they would be part of an anti-subversive group. He indicates that he was assigned to various barracks such as Londres 38 and the General Headquarters, staying in the latter until June 1975, the date on which he was assigned to provide services at Cuatro Álamos, a time when it was in charge of José Orlando Manzo and the people working at that facility were Héctor Díaz, Juan Araos Araos, Demóstenes Cárdenas, Hugo Delgado Carrasco, “Juanito” (whose last name he does not remember), Héctor Díaz, Manuel Avendaño, and “el loco Morales,” who corresponds to Juan Carlos, whom they called “the karateka.”

He began working 24-hour shifts with 48 hours off. During the day, the guard was reinforced by those who were not on duty, and at night only two people remained. The work as a guard was primarily to take the detainees to the bathroom by room separately, give them breakfast in their rooms, lunch, and in the afternoon, dinner.

If detainees arrived during the day, the chief would receive them; the detainees arrived with a slip carried by the operational group, the content of which he did not read due to his duties, as he had to remain in the hallway with the detainees.

The operational groups that brought the detainees were generally the same, and among them, he remembers a person they called “Uncle Nono,” “Uncle Pato,” who were a sergeant and a non-commissioned officer of the Carabineros, “the Troglo” Zapata, “the horse,” who had a stain on his face, and others they called “the elephants” because they were big and were from the Army.

Generally, the same agents who brought the detainees were the ones who removed them, and for this, communication took place between General Contreras’s liaison, Lucero, and Manzo, whose orders were given personally or by telephone, indicating the number of detainees who were going to leave or arrive.

When detainees arrived at midnight, his chief, who was Juan Araos, would call Lieutenant Manzo, and he would go to the barracks to receive the arriving detainees. He generally responded to these calls, and when detainees arrived during the day, he would receive them himself.

The documentation that Manzo carried was kept in his office, and only Chief Manzo had access to it. The detainees arrived handcuffed and blindfolded, and when the groups that brought the detainees left, their blindfolds were removed, they were untied, and they were taken to the rooms separately, where they remained in free practice.

Sometimes some detainees were left alone in a room, on the recommendation of the high command. Both men and women arrived as detainees. The women stayed near the bathroom because they were good at going to the bathroom.

Regarding the number who remained in the facility, there were five or six women, and of the men, he managed to see about 12; he knew that on other occasions there were about 20 men in a single room, which was the largest, not counting the remaining eight rooms.

He added that the detainees were not interrogated at the Cuatro Álamos facility; the operational groups would take them to Villa Grimaldi and then bring them back, and some would move to free practice at Tres Álamos.

He maintains that he remained at Cuatro Álamos until mid-September 1975. Finally, in the confrontation with Demóstenes Cárdenas, he pointed out that the dates are not clear to him, so he does not rule out that in 1974 he may have performed duties at the Cuatro Álamos Barracks prior to September 1974.

Source: Judiciary, May 30, 2017

Supreme Court sends 59 former DINA agents to prison for Operation Colombo

Operation Colombo was a major intelligence operation and a communication setup by the DINA, which attempted to make 119 people kidnapped in Chile appear as having been killed abroad.

The Second Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court revoked the sentence that had acquitted more than 60 former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) and convicted them as responsible for the disappearance of 16 leftist militants, mostly from the MIR, in the process known as Operation Colombo, which in this case was perpetrated between June 17, 1974, and January 6, 1975, during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

The ruling was issued by ministers Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Jorge Dahm, Leopoldo Llanos, María Teresa Letelier, and Diego Simpertigue, who revoked the sentence handed down by the Court of Appeals and sentenced former DINA chiefs and officers César Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Miguel Krassnoff, and Raúl Iturriaga Neumann to the penalty of 15 years and one day of major imprisonment in its maximum degree as perpetrators of the crimes of aggravated kidnapping of the victims.

Similarly, the court sentenced 53 former agents to the effective penalty of 10 years and one day of major imprisonment in its medium degree as perpetrators of the same crime, who had previously been acquitted by the capital’s appellate court, despite having been convicted in the first instance as accomplices and perpetrators.

Furthermore, this time all of them must enter prison, with some of them already in prison for other crimes against humanity.

These are former DINA agents Fernando Eduardo Lauriani Maturana, Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García, Manuel Andrés Carevic, Rosa Humilde Ramos Hernández, Nelson Alberto Paz Bustamante, Jose Abel Aravena Ruiz, Claudio Enrique Pacheco Fernández, Nelson Aquiles Ortiz Vignolo, Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera, José Alfonso Ojeda Obando, Manuel Heriberto Avendaño Gonzalez, Raúl Juan Rodríguez Ponte, Alejandro Francisco Astudillo Adonis, Daniel Alberto Galaz Orellana, Francisco Maximiliano Ferrer Lima, Leoncio Enrique Velásquez Guala, José Enrique Fuentes Torres, Julio José Hoyos Zegarra, Pedro René Alfaro Fernández, Orlando Jesús Torrejón Gatica, José Manuel Sarmiento Sotelo, Luis René Torres Méndez, Rodolfo Valentino Concha Rodríguez, Enrique Tránsito Gutiérrez Rubilar, Hugo Del Tránsito Hernández Valle, Manuel Rivas Diaz, Daniel Valentín Cancino Varas, Juan Evangelista Duarte Gallegos, Víctor Manuel Molina Astete, Fernando Enrique Guerra Guajardo, Leónidas Emiliano Méndez Moreno, Jorge Antonio Lepileo Barrios, Lautaro Eugenio Díaz Espinoza, Pedro Ariel Aravena Aravena, Carlos Alfonso Sáez Sanhueza, Juan Carlos Villanueva Alvear, Alfredo Orlando Moya Tejeda, Rafael De Jesús Riveros Frost, Silvio Antonio Concha González, Luis Fernando Espinace Contreras, Hernán Patricio Valenzuela Salas, Palmira Isabel Almuna Guzmán, Sylvia Teresa Oyarce Pinto, Osvaldo Pulgar Gallardo, José Avelino Yévenes Vergara, Olegario Enrique González Moreno, Werner Zanghellini, and Hector Flores Vergara.

Jaime Alfonso Fernández Garrido received a sentence of 5 years and one day of major imprisonment in its minimum degree as a perpetrator of the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Ida Vera Almarza. Meanwhile, Samuel Fuenzalida Devia was sentenced to 541 days and one day for the same crime, but will not serve time in prison.

This is an extensive process that had its first-instance sentence in 2017 at the hands of Minister Hernán Crisosto Greisse. In the course of the investigation, some agents have died, such as Basclay Zapata, Ciro Torré, Manzo Duran, Ricardo Lawrence, among others.

For Nelson Caucoto, a plaintiff lawyer representing 13 of the 16 victims, this is “a transcendent ruling in Chilean judicial history, since the Supreme Court has restored the sense of justice for crimes of this nature, which had literally been left in a situation of unacceptable impunity.

The highest court has once again rejected the half-prescription and the appeals of the defense of the convicted, and has accepted the appeals of the plaintiffs,” he noted.

Caucoto adds that “it is a modern ruling based on international law and domestic legislation. It is undoubtedly the case that justice operates in this instance as a healing for so many relatives of victims who still survive, and it is a pity that others did not live to see this end.”

Operation Colombo was a major intelligence operation and a communication setup by the DINA, which attempted to make 119 people kidnapped in Chile by the DINA appear as having been killed abroad, having allegedly perished after clashing with each other.

This process investigated the fate of 16 of those 119 victims. They are Francisco Aedo Carrasco, Jorge Elías Andrónicos Antequera, Juan Carlos Andrónicos Antequera, Jaime Buzio Lorca, Mario Calderón Tapia, Cecilia Castro Salvadores, Rodolfo Espejo Gómez, Agustín Fioraso Chau, Gregorio Gaete Farías, Mauricio Jorquera Encina, Isidro Pizarro Meniconi, Marcos Quiñones Lembach, Sergio Reyes Navarrete, Ida Vera Almarza, Juan Carlos Rodríguez Araya, and Jilberto Urbina Pizarro.

Source: radio.uchile.cl, March 3, 2023

Operation Colombo: Supreme Court confirms convictions of 24 former DINA agents for aggravated kidnapping of UdeC leader in Santiago in 1974

The Supreme Court rejected the appeals in form and substance filed by the defenses against the sentence that convicted agents of the dissolved National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their responsibility in the crime of aggravated kidnapping of sociology student Ariel Martín Salinas Argomedo, committed starting on September 25, 1974, in Santiago.

The name of Ariel Salinas Argomedo later appeared on the list of 119 forcibly disappeared persons included in the disinformation maneuver implemented by the DINA and the dictatorship known as “Operation Colombo.”

In a unanimous ruling (case file 135.568-2020), the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed of ministers Haroldo Brito, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Jorge Dahm, Minister María Teresa Letelier, and ad hoc lawyer Pía Tavolari—accepted the appeal in form filed by the plaintiff Human Rights Program of the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights and, consequently, invalidated the challenged sentence, only in the part that acquitted the accused Manuel Heriberto Avendaño González and, in a replacement sentence, convicted him to 10 years in prison as a perpetrator of the crime.

The Supreme Court ruling confirmed the sentences of former Army officers and former DINA hierarchs César Raúl Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, who must serve 13 years in prison for their responsibility as perpetrators of the aggravated kidnapping.

Meanwhile, in addition to the aforementioned Manuel Heriberto Avendaño González, the former officers Francisco Maximiliano Ferrer Lima, Fernando Eduardo Lauriani Maturana, Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos, Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García, Palmira Isabel Almuna Guzmán, and the former agents Hermón Helec Alfaro Mundaca, Julio José Hoyos Zegarra, Silvio Antonio Concha González, José Alfonso Ojeda Obando, Luis Rigoberto Videla Inzunza, Teresa del Carmen Osorio Navarro, Claudio Enrique Pacheco Fernández, José Abel Aravena Ruiz, Alejandro Francisco Astudillo Adonis, Rosa Humilde Ramos Hernández, Pedro René Alfaro Fernández, Raúl Juan Rodríguez Ponte, Pedro Ariel Araneda Araneda, and Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos must serve 10 years of imprisonment, all convicted as perpetrators of the crime.

Another 12 agents, also convicted in the first-instance ruling issued by Minister Hernán Crisosto Greisse in October 2015, died during the course of the process.

Regarding the case of the accused Manuel Avendaño González, the Criminal Chamber states: “(...) under such conditions, the appeal proposed by the Human Rights Program of the relevant Ministry must be accepted, since from a mere reading of the challenged sentence, it is evident that it contains grounds that are completely contradictory, canceling each other out, making the decision that acquits the accused Avendaño González, which is declared in the operative part, devoid of any foundation, thus configuring the denounced vice of invalidation.”

“In effect, at the time of the events, these accused were part, as hierarchical superiors and operational agents, together with other defendants whose participation would be analyzed in the following considerations, of the groups belonging to the National Intelligence Directorate that materialized the kidnapping of the members of the Revolutionary Left Movement, among whose members was Salinas Argomedo, in such a way that, despite not remembering the specific name of this person, it is indisputable to conclude, just as the lower court does, that they took part in the illegitimate deprivation of liberty of this person immediately and directly in the manner provided for by the aforementioned rule and that, for the same reason, they are punishable co-perpetrators of this illicit act.”

Operation Colombo

Ariel Martín Salinas Argomedo was a former sociology student at the University of Concepción. The 26-year-old, married and father of a daughter, was a militant of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), was part of the university leadership of the MIR in Concepción, and, until the military coup, was president of the student center of the sociology program at the UdeC.

After the coup, he had to go into hiding to avoid being arrested. He moved to Santiago to continue his militant activity and a year later was detained.

In the first-instance ruling, trial judge Hernán Crisosto Greisse established that on the morning of September 25, 1974, Ariel Salinas was detained on a public street by agents belonging to the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), who transferred him to the clandestine DINA detention center known as ‘Ollagüe,’ located at José Domingo Cañas No. 1367 in the commune of Ñuñoa.

Subsequently, he was transferred to the clandestine detention centers known as ‘Villa Grimaldi,’ located at Lo Arrieta No. 8200, in La Reina, and ‘Cuatro Álamos,’ located at Calle Canadá No. 3000, in the commune of Santiago, facilities that were guarded by armed guards and to which only DINA agents had access.

According to the testimony of surviving prisoners, during his stay at the José Domingo Cañas, Villa Grimaldi, and Cuatro Álamos barracks, the detainee Ariel Salinas remained without contact with the outside world. In the first two places, he was blindfolded and tied up, being continuously subjected to interrogations under torture by DINA agents who operated in said barracks.

The last time Ariel Salinas Argomedo was seen alive by other detainees occurred on an undetermined day in the month of November 1974, and he has been missing since that date.

by Darío Núñez

Source: resumen.cl, February 26, 2024

Kidnapping of Jorge Müller and Carmen Bueno: DINA agents are convicted for the disappearance of the filmmakers

The members of the defunct National Intelligence Directorate, César Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Espinoza Bravo, Raúl Iturriaga Neumann, and Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, will receive a 20-year prison sentence for their status as perpetrators.

In a unanimous ruling, the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court confirmed the sentence that convicted César Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Espinoza Bravo, Raúl Iturriaga Neumann, and Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko to 20 years in prison as perpetrators of the crime.

The highest court rejected the appeals in form and substance filed against the sentence that convicted agents of the defunct National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their responsibility in the crime of aggravated kidnapping of the filmmaker couple Jorge Hernán Müller Silva and Carmen Cecilia Bueno Cifuentes. These illicit acts were committed starting on November 29, 1974.

In a unanimous ruling (case file 43.971-2020), the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court—composed of ministers Haroldo Brito, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Jorge Dahm, Minister María Teresa Letelier, and ad hoc lawyer Pía Tavolari—confirmed the challenged sentence, issued by the Santiago Court of Appeals, which convicted César Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, and Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko to 20 years in prison as perpetrators of the crime.

Meanwhile, Orlando Manzo Durán, Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos, Alejandro Francisco Astudillo Adonis, Sylvia Teresa Oyarce Pinto, Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García, Manuel Heriberto Avendaño González, Nelson Aquiles Ortiz Vergara, Silvio Antonio Concha González, Pedro Ariel Araneda Araneda, Luis Rigoberto Videla Inzunza, Jorge Segundo Madariaga Acevedo, Teresa del Carmen Osorio Navarro, José Abel Aravena Ruiz, Rosa Humilde Ramos Hernández, Pedro René Alfaro Fernández, Luis René Torres Méndez, Jerónimo del Carmen Neira Méndez, Palmira Isabel Almuna Guzmán, Carlos López Inostroza, Hugo del Tránsito Hernández Valle, Francisco Maximiliano Ferrer Lima, and Fernando Eduardo Lauriani Maturana must serve 12 years in prison as co-perpetrators.

“That, in this way, the elements of the illicit act examined and the participation in them of these accused were considered verified by the first-instance court, conclusions that the second-instance judiciary adopted, endorsed in consideration 7 of the challenged sentence,” the ruling states.

The resolution adds: “That, consequently, and even ignoring the serious formal defects of the substantial nullity appeals examined, the infractions denounced by the defenses of Carlos López Inostroza, Jerónimo Neira Méndez, Luis Videla Inzunza, Pedro Alfaro Fernández, Raúl Iturriaga Neumann, Pedro Espinoza Bravo, and César Manríquez Bravo have not been configured in this case, since the facts established in the challenged sentence and the participation in them of these accused have been adjusted to the laws regulating evidence, so that no reproach can be raised on this matter regarding the challenged sentence, so the substantial nullity appeals under examination will be entirely dismissed.”

Operation Colombo

In the first-instance sentence, the trial judge of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Hernán Crisosto Greisse, established the following facts:

On November 29, 1974, Carmen Cecilia Bueno Cifuentes and her partner Jorge Hernán Müller Silva, militants of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), were detained on a public street, at the intersection of Calle Francisco Bilbao and Los Leones in Santiago, by agents belonging to the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), who put them into a C-10 pickup truck and transferred them to the clandestine DINA detention center known as ‘Villa Grimaldi,’ located at Lo Arrieta No. 8200, in La Reina, and subsequently to the clandestine detention center known as ‘Cuatro Álamos,’ located at Calle Canadá No. 3000, in Santiago, which were guarded by armed guards and to which only DINA agents had access.

During their stay at the Villa Grimaldi and Cuatro Álamos barracks, they remained without contact with the outside world, blindfolded and tied up, being continuously subjected in the first of these to interrogations under torture by DINA agents who operated in said barracks for the purpose of obtaining information regarding members of the MIR, in order to proceed with the detention of its members.

The last time the victims Bueno Cifuentes and Müller Silva were seen alive occurred on an undetermined day in mid-December 1974, and to date, there is no information on the whereabouts of both, and they remain forcibly disappeared.

The name of Carmen Cecilia Bueno Cifuentes 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 Bueno Cifuentes had died in Argentina, along with 59 other people belonging to the MIR, due to internal disputes that arose among those members.

The publications that declared the victim Bueno Cifuentes dead had their origin in disinformation maneuvers carried out by DINA agents abroad.

In the civil aspect, the sentence that ordered the state to pay compensation of $50 million for moral damages to the plaintiff sister of the victim Bueno Cifuentes was confirmed.

Source: radio.uchile.cl, February 23, 2024

Supreme Court ratifies new conviction for Krassnoff and other DINA agents: total reaches 1,047 years in prison

The Supreme Court dismissed an appeal and confirmed the 15-year prison sentence for Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, César Manríquez Bravo, and Pedro Espinoza Bravo, three of the main officials responsible for the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), the branch in charge of political assassinations, torture, and general repression during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

In a unanimous ruling, the Second Chamber of the highest court ruled out any error of law in the sentence that convicted them as perpetrators of the aggravated kidnapping of Manuel Filamir Cartes Jara and José Segundo Flores Rojas, and also confirmed the 10-year major imprisonment sentence for former agents Alejandro Astudillo Adonis and Pedro Araneda Araneda as co-perpetrators.

“It should be noted that, both international and national regulations regarding the matter under study, especially the Statute of the International Criminal Court and Law No. 20.357 of 2009, which typifies crimes against humanity and genocide and war crimes, make it accurate to conclude that this investigation concerns crimes against humanity, since the illicit acts investigated occurred in a context of serious, massive, and systematic human rights violations, verified by State agents,” the sentence explains.

“The victims constituted an instrument within a policy on a general scale of exclusion, harassment, persecution, or extermination of a group of numerous compatriots who, in the period immediately following September 11, 1973, were labeled as ideologically belonging to the deposed political regime or who, for any circumstance, were considered suspicious of opposing or hindering the realization of the social and political construction devised by those holding power,” it adds.

In the first-instance ruling, the minister on visit for human rights violation cases of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Paola Plaza González, had already established that “in the month of August 1974, the Military Government maintained an operational political repression organization called the National Intelligence Directorate, also known as DINA, which had an organized structure that had its own means and clandestine detention centers.”

And that “Manuel Filamir Cartes Jara—35 years old, construction worker—and José Segundo Flores Rojas—40 years old, hairdresser, both militants of the Communist Party and neighborhood representatives of the current Peñalolén area, were detained in the early hours of August 23, 1974, from their own homes as a result of an operation carried out in the sector by the DINA, assisted by members of the Armed Forces and Order.”

Both detainees were sent to the Villa Grimaldi barracks, also known as Terranova, and later to the Cuatro Álamos detention center, two of the harshest and most famous torture centers of the military regime, “the latter being the place where their trail is lost, with their whereabouts and the fate that has occurred to their physical, psychic, and personal integrity remaining unknown since then, despite all the efforts deployed to locate them,” the ruling indicates.

With this conviction, former brigadier Miguel Krassnoff reaches 1,047 years in prison, accused in a series of cases for human rights violations.

Meanwhile, César Manríquez Bravo and Pedro Espinoza Bravo are also serving a dozen sentences at the Punta Peuco prison, a special facility where military personnel are deprived of liberty for human rights violations during the dictatorship.

Espinoza Bravo was accused, along with Manuel Contreras, head of the DINA, of the 1976 assassination in Washington of Orlando Letelier, who was foreign minister during the overthrown democratic government of socialist President Salvador Allende (1970-1973), of the assassination of former Army chief General Arturo Prat, and of the Spanish diplomat Carmelo Soria.

Source: biobiochile.cl, February 14, 2025

Operation Colombo: four former DINA agents convicted for the crime of a MIR militant woman in Santiago in 1974

The minister on extraordinary visit for human rights violation cases of the San Miguel Court of Appeals, Marianela Cifuentes Alarcón, convicted four former agents of the dissolved National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their responsibility in the consummated crime of aggravated kidnapping of secretary Violeta del Carmen López Díaz, perpetrated starting on August 29, 1974, in San Miguel, within the framework of the so-called “Operation Colombo.”

In the ruling (case file 13-2023), the visiting minister convicted former Army officer Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko to 10 years of effective prison time as a perpetrator of the crime, and former agents Pedro Ariel Araneda Araneda, Alejandro Francisco Astudillo Adonis, and Manuel Heriberto Avendaño González to 6 years of effective prison time, plus the legal accessories of absolute perpetual disqualification for public offices and political rights and absolute disqualification for professional titles for the duration of the sentences.

In the sentence, Minister Cifuentes Alarcón established that on August 29, 1974, around 10:00 PM, Violeta del Carmen López Díaz, 40 years old, a widow, mother of two adolescent children, former secretary of ‘Cecinas Loewer S.A.’ and a militant of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), was detained by DINA agents, along with Luis Alberto Lobos Jorquera, at her home on Calle Pedro Mira No. 907 in the commune of San Miguel.

Violeta was also a member of the amateur theater group “Acquarius” and worked as a secretary for the Society of Theater Authors of Chile.

Once she was detained, they transferred her to the clandestine DINA detention center known as ‘Cuatro Álamos,’ located inside the “Tres Álamos” Prisoner Camp, in charge of Gendarmerie officer Orlando Manzo Durán, currently deceased, a place where she was kept locked up, with her whereabouts remaining unknown since then.

This clandestine detention and torture center was located in the current commune of San Joaquín, on Calle Canadá, near the Departamental and Vicuña Mackenna avenues.

During that period, DINA agents Pedro Ariel Araneda Araneda, Alejandro Francisco Astudillo Adonis, and Manuel Heriberto Avendaño González, among others, served as guards at the ‘Cuatro Álamos’ detention center.

The name of Violeta del Carmen López Díaz appeared on a list of people, published in the national press, after it appeared on a list published in the Argentine magazine Lea in the month of July 1975, which mentioned that López Díaz had died in Argentina, along with other people belonging to the MIR, due to internal disputes, news that had its origin in DINA maneuvers in order to hide the true fate of the victim.

At that time, the National Intelligence Directorate was in charge of Army Colonel Juan Manuel Guillermo Contreras Sepúlveda—currently deceased—; the operational units and detention centers of the aforementioned organization depended on the National Intelligence Brigade, commanded by Army Lieutenant Colonel César Manríquez Bravo—currently mentally incapacitated—and the repression of MIR militants was in charge of the Halcón group of the Caupolicán Operational Brigade, directed by Army Captain Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and the Águila group of the same brigade, under the command of Carabineros officer Ricardo Víctor Lawrence Mires—currently deceased.

by Darío Núñez

Source: resumen.cl, July 20, 2025