Cardiologists, psychiatrists, dentists, traumatologists, pediatricians, gynecologists, and otolaryngologists applied the knowledge they acquired to save lives toward the administration of torture and executions against hundreds of political prisoners.

Most of them are still employed in public hospitals, private clinics, and health institutions of the Armed Forces. The Hippocratic Oath states in part: "I swear by Apollo the physician, and Asclepius, and Hygieia and Panacea and all the gods and goddesses as my witnesses, that, according to my ability and judgment, I will keep this Oath and this stipulation.

To hold him who taught me this art equally dear to me as my parents, to be a partner in his life, and if he is in need of money, to share mine with him; to consider his offspring equal to my own brothers; to teach them this art, if they desire to learn it, without fee and stipulation.

I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous. I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion.

With purity and with holiness I will pass my life and practice my Art. Now, if I carry out this oath, and break it not, may I gain for ever reputation among all men for my life and for my art; but if I break it and forswear myself, may the opposite befall me." Evidently, those who placed their knowledge at the service of torture and death violated this oath and all norms regarding the defense of human rights.

The worst part is that, with the protection of the Armed Forces or the extreme negligence of public hospital directors appointed by the Concertación, they remain in their positions, treating people who have not the slightest idea that "their doctor" has such a sinister past.

This occurred when public protests known as funas began, with hundreds of patients calling doctors to confront them and cancel their visits upon learning of these facts. Among other cases, this happened with Alejandro Forero at the Clínica INDISA, Sergio Muñoz at the Hospital Barros Luco, and Roberto Lailhacar at his office on Calle Obispo Salas in the commune of Providencia.

From the first days

The collaboration of doctors who sided with the coup plotters began in the very first days of the Pinochet dictatorship. The case of José María Fuentealba, a health official for the Army, is one such example.

On October 27, 1973, Néstor Hernán Castillo Sepúlveda, 23, Regional Secretary of the Communist Youth; José Rosendo Pérez Ríos, 24, an employee and militant of the MAPU; and Juan Vera Oyarzún, 53, a laborer, Regional Secretary of the Communist Party, union leader, and former councilman of Punta Arenas, were handed over by the Argentine Gendarmerie to Chilean military personnel in the border town of Río Mayo.

On September 20, a group of four people, including Juan Vera, had crossed the border to seek political asylum in Argentina. Two days later, they were turned over to the Argentine Gendarmerie by the owner of a local ranch, taken to Aldea Veleiros, and subsequently to Río Mayo.

In this town, they remained under the custody of the 38th Squadron of the Gendarmerie. Furthermore, on September 28, José Rosendo Pérez and Néstor Castillo, who had also arrived from Chile days earlier, were detained at a boarding house in Río Mayo.

Along with Juan Vera, they were tasked with performing labor at the Municipality of Río Mayo while they remained in detention. This lasted until October 27, when they were handed over to a military commando consisting of Army Captain Joaquín Molina, a Carabineros officer named Salinas, Sub-officer Evaldo Reidlich Hains, and Dr.

José María Fuentealba Suazo, who were traveling in an ambulance from the Regional Hospital of Coyhaique. According to the newspaper La Epoca on November 2, 1988, the military "informed them that their families were waiting for them at the border.

Once on Chilean territory, the military patrol forced the group to board a pickup truck and began the return trip toward the Las Bandurrias prison camp. Hours later, the vehicle arrived at the military facility.

Only the uniformed personnel and the doctor were inside. The three detainees have never appeared to this day." The justice system indicted Dr. Fuentealba Suazo and retired Sub-officer Evaldo Reidlich, while proceedings continue to identify the other member of the patrol and inspections are carried out at the Coyhaique Forest Reserve of the El Claro Cemetery, the place where the three Chilean citizens were allegedly executed and forcibly disappeared.

Joaquín Molina Fuenzalida, the captain who commanded the group, was murdered by Manuel Contreras Valdebenito, son of the head of the DINA. As in this case, the cardiologist from Punta Arenas, Guillermo Aranda, and Alejandro Babaich Schmith, Director of the "Cirujano Guzmán" Hospital in that city, also appear from the very beginning, recognized by many who were tortured in that locality.

Another is Darwin Arraigada Loyola, at that time a leader of the Medical Association of Chile, who was subsequently appointed by the Military Junta as Director General of Health and who is accused, among other things, of turning in numerous leftist doctors—more than 30 of whom were murdered—and participating in the plan to administer drugs in food to murder political prisoners.

The doctor Raúl Díaz Doll, an official of the General Directorate of the National Health Service, was a member of the military commission that investigated the political affiliation of doctors. He organized the snitching system within the service and participated personally in the interrogations of detained and tortured doctors.

In Iquique, the pediatrician Werner Gálvez, a Colonel of the Medical Corps, administered intravenous injections of sodium pentothal, alternating with biological serum, during interrogations of prisoners of war.

Meanwhile, in Valdivia, the traumatologist Fernando Jara de la Maza participated directly in the application of torture to detainees. In the province of Concepción, a Carabineros doctor named Minoletti advised the torturers of Fuerte Borgoño and issued "natural death" certificates to cover up the crimes.

Meanwhile, in Tejas Verdes, the cradle of the DINA, Dr. Vittorio Orvieto Teplizky performed collaborative functions in the tortures committed at the Prisoner Camp Number Two of that military facility; he would later join the Health Brigade of said illicit association, appearing as director of the clandestine Santa Lucía clinic.

Near Santiago, the radiologist Bernardo Pulto, together with the military prosecutor of Melipilla, personally took part in torture sessions of prisoners.

The Health Brigade

The DINA had its own team for the care of service personnel, collaborating prisoners, and the application of torment to those it considered its "enemies." Along with the aforementioned Vittorio Orvieto Teplizky, the following performed functions: Werner Zanghellini, Hernán Taricco, Nader Nasser, Osvaldo Eugenio Leyton Bahamondez, Rodrigo Vélez, Samuel Valdivia Soto, Luis Hernán Santibáñez Santelices, Eduardo Contreras Balcarce, the gynecologist Juan Pablo Figueroa Yáñez, the otolaryngologist Eugenio Fantuzzi Alliende, the psychiatrist Roberto Lailhacar Chávez, the dentist Sergio Roberto Muñoz Bonta, and the nurse María Eliana Bolumburú Taboada. Another doctor, of whom only the surname is known, is the psychiatrist Bassaure. Without being part of the structure, the doctor Gregorio Burgos of the Los Angeles Regiment collaborated with DINA agents, seeking forms of torture that would not cause the detainee to lose consciousness. Many of them appear to no longer practice in their respective areas, although they remain nearby, such as the nurse María Eliana Bolumburú, who works in a chemical laboratory on Calle Ejército. Others remain active and assume prominent roles in their profession, such as Roberto Emilio Lailhacar Chávez, who in the late 90s and until 2001 held the position of president of the Chilean Society of Sexology and Sexual Education, whose headquarters operated out of his private office at Obispo Salas 290 in the commune of Providencia. This organization included, as a "natural person," the lawyer Víctor Manuel Avilés Mejías, a member of the DINA's Legal Department. For his part, the dental surgeon Sergio Muñoz Bonta, who worked at the clandestine Santa Lucía and London clinics, treated, among others, Marcia Merino, the "flaca Alejandra," and was a "founding partner" of the front company Pedro Diet Lobos, through which the DINA laundered money from the State, from arms and drug trafficking, and legalized the theft of houses, cars, and assets of those prisoners who were forcibly disappeared. Here he was a "colleague," for example, of Francisco Ferrer Lima, Emilio Sajuria Alvear, Ricardo Lawrence Mires, Fernando Gómez Segovia, Augusto Pinochet Hiriart, and Pedro Espinoza Bravo. Luis Hernán Santibáñez Santelices appears implicated in the disappearance of Juan Elías Cortés Alruiz, a communist militant kidnapped in April 1976, a case for which he was even called to testify by Minister Servando Jordán in 1980 along with Germán Barriga Muñoz (a retired colonel who committed suicide), Emilio Troncoso Vivillos, Heriberto Acevedo, Vianel Valdivieso, and Julio Leyton Robles, brother of Manuel Leyton, who died under strange circumstances at the London clinic. Dr. Santibáñez acknowledged on July 17, 1980, that he had been part of the DINA in the capacity of a doctor. He reported that the London Clinic existed on Calle Almirante Barroso, under the charge of Dr. Taricco. When shown a photo of Cortés, he said that the face seemed familiar and that he might have seen that person at the Hospital San Juan de Dios. In the same proceeding, he was questioned about the case of Gabriel Castillo Tapia, who has been missing since August 5, 1976. In the death of Manuel Leyton Robles, another doctor appears implicated: Osvaldo Leyton Bahamondes, who signed a death certificate stating that the DINA agent had died due to an epileptic seizure and cardiac arrhythmia. The death allegedly occurred at Almirante Barroso No. 76, where the London Clinic operated. The truth is that Manuel Leyton was murdered by his "colleagues" after his role as a DINA member was discovered following his participation in a job commissioned by Germán Barriga: the theft of a Renault 4. For his part, Sergio Marcelo Virgilio Bocaz, after finishing his work at the DINA, based at the Santa Lucía Clinic, continued working at the CNI Logistics Command, and at the end of the dictatorship, he was seen appearing in various types of advertising, such as for Nescafé, Tritón cookies, and financial institutions. He still practices at the Hospital Félix Bulnes. Dr. Eugenio Fantuzzi has his private practice and is Head of the Otolaryngology Service at the Clínica Dávila. The gynecologist Juan Pablo Figueroa sees patients from Monday to Friday at the Clínica Arauco, and Hernán Taricco Lavín continues to work for the Army at the Military Medical Center of Maipú. Werner Zanghellini Martínez, who injected the detainee Jorge Fuentes Alarcón with the rabies virus, quickly abandoned his office, located at Galvarino Gallardo 1983, when he was confronted by dozens of people a couple of years ago. It is known that he continues to see patients at an office on Avenida Providencia that belongs to a relative, although his name does not appear on the plaque attached to the door.

The CNI and the Joint Command

Although the presence of other doctors is known within the Joint Command, which was basically composed of members of the Air Force, the one who has been prosecuted as a permanent part of this illicit association is the cardiologist Alejandro Jorge Forero Alvarez, a squadron commander in the FACH and an official at the institutional hospital.

Named in most of the cases involving the Joint Command, it is known that in 1976 he served as a second lieutenant at the El Bosque Air Base and at the Colina Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment, used as a clandestine detention center by the FACH.

In this place, he allegedly participated by supervising tortures and drugging prisoners who were taken out to be forcibly disappeared. Forero participated in Patria y Libertad during the government of the Unidad Popular, where he met Roberto Fuentes Morrison, alias "el Wally." Already during the dictatorship, he was prosecuted by Minister Carlos Cerda, but that process was closed and amnestied by a judge appointed specifically for that purpose.

For the crimes of illicit association and illegal detention of Víctor Vega Riquelme, he was prosecuted along with 20 other members of the Joint Command. In the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE), Jorge León Alessandrini appears, a dentist and civilian agent, implicated in the murder of union leader Tucapel Jiménez, where he allegedly acted by providing the murder weapon.

The CNI also had its own medical team, especially in the clandestine torture centers located in Santiago, such as the Cuartel Borgoña, and others in the regions. Cases that have achieved notoriety have exposed some of them, for example, those implicated in the death by torture of the teacher Federico Alvarez Santibáñez in August 1979.

The young MIR militant was handed over by the Carabineros to the CNI, where he was subjected to terrible duress while being "monitored" by health professionals to prevent his death. Among these appear Luis Losada Fuenzalida, Manfred Jurgensen Caesar, and Camilo Azar Saba, all sanctioned by the Medical Association on March 31, 1986.

Losada Fuenzalida signed a report indicating that the teacher was in good physical condition only one hour before the death of Alvarez Santibáñez. Dr. Camilo Azar Saba (he currently has a website and a blog: http://camiloazar.blogspot.com/ and http://www.camiloazar.com/) is a traumatologist and orthopedist, and therefore knew perfectly well the most sensitive areas of the body that could cause the greatest pain with the least danger of death.

However, in this case, it did not help: Federico Alvarez died due to multiple contusions, hemoptysis, and pulmonary insufficiency. Another case is that of the transporter from La Serena, Mario Fernández López, kidnapped by the CNI in October 1984.

After the death by torture of Fernández, doctors Víctor Carcuro Correa and Guido Mario Félix Díaz Paci, participants in the application of torment to the detainee, were sanctioned by the Medical Association.

Guido Díaz Paci, a well-known Army doctor, lied to the doctors on duty at the Hospital de La Serena, claiming that the detainee came from a Carabineros station and not from the CNI, and requesting that the doctors hide the detainee's condition.

Once Mario Fernández had passed away, Díaz Paci attempted to have the physician who had performed emergency surgery on the victim falsify the diagnosis of his death, hiding the true reasons for the passing.

Back in 1974, when he participated in the exhumation of the body of María Avalos, murdered along with her husband Bernardo Lejdermann in December 1973 by a patrol of the Arica Regiment of La Serena, he lied when issuing a death certificate, claiming that the woman had blown herself up with dynamite. Like many of these "doctors of death," Díaz Paci continues to work in La Serena.

Workplace H. Darwin Arraigada Loyola, General Medicine. Sees patients at Santa María 217, office 34, commune of Independencia. Phone 7372626. Dr. Eugenio Fantuzzi Alliende, Otolaryngologist. Chief Physician of the Otolaryngology Service at the Clínica Dávila, located at Avenida Recoleta 464, Santiago.

Private practice at Luis Thayer Ojeda Norte 073, office 606, Providencia. Phone 233 7524. Fax 234 1740. Dr. Juan Pablo Figueroa Yáñez, Gynecologist and Obstetrician. Sees patients from Monday to Friday at the Clínica Arauco, located at Parque Arauco.

Avenida Kennedy 5413-B. Phone 2990299. Werner Zanghellini Martínez, Cardiologist. Last known address: Galvarino Gallardo 1983, Providencia. Now sees patients without advertising at the office of a relative, in the same commune.

Sergio Marcelo Virgilio Bocaz, General Medicine. Still employed at the Hospital Félix Bulnes, located at Leoncio Fernández 2655, Quinta Normal, Santiago. Hernán Horacio Taricco Lavín, Pediatrician. Sees patients Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, from 12:00 to 14:30, at the Military Medical Center of Maipú, located at Avenida Ramón Freire No. 6097, Villa Militar Oeste, Paradero 3 1/2 de Pajaritos, Comuna Estación Central.

Phones: 450 8564, 450 8565, 450 8566. Fax: 4508563. Manfred Jurgensen Caesar, General Medicine. Works at the Military Hospital of Santiago. Alejandro Forero Alvarez, Cardiologist. Works at the Clínica INDISA, Avenida Santa María 1810, phone 2254555.

Private practice Apoquindo 6275, office 116. Guido Díaz Paci, Pediatrician. Sees patients at the 21st "Arica" Infantry Regiment of the Second Army Division based in La Serena, under the command of Brigadier General José Gabriel Gaete Paredes.

Camilo Azar Saba, Traumatologist. email: camiloazar@vtr.net. Phones: (56-2) 679 65 00. Sergio Roberto Muñoz Bonta, Dentist. Sees patients at the Hospital Barros Luco-Trudeau and at the dental office "San Lucas" at José Domingo Santa María 1338. Phones 7377674 and 7379978. Roberto Lailhacar Chávez, Psychiatrist. Continues to see patients at Obispo Salas 290, Office 168. Phone 2239405.

Source: El Siglo, February 13, 2004

List of doctors who tortured during the Dictatorship disseminated

What would Hippocrates think about the cardiologists, psychiatrists, radiologists, pediatricians, and traumatologists who appear in the list below? These are doctors who still practice and who injected truth serum and the rabies virus into political prisoners during the dictatorship; others who are pursued by justice and who falsified reports to cover up DINA tortures and even traveled outside the country to bring back those who had escaped Pinochet's authoritarian regime.

You be the judge. 1. Darwin Arriagada. Doctor. Leader of the Medical Association of Chile in 1973. He was appointed by the Military Junta as Director General of Health. He participated in the plan to administer drugs in food to murder political prisoners.

He turned in several of his leftist colleagues. Some were murdered. 2. Camilo Azar Saba. CNI doctor. He was suspended for six months from the Medical Association for his participation in tortures applied to prisoners in CNI barracks.

Implicated in the case of Federico Álvarez Santibáñez. 3. Guillermo Aranda. Doctor from Punta Arenas, cardiologist. Applied his knowledge to the torture of prisoners in this city. 4. Alejandro Babaich Schmith.

Doctor and director of the "Cirujano Guzmán" Hospital in Punta Arenas. Advisor on tortures against political prisoners. 5. Gregorio Burgos. Doctor of the Los Angeles Regiment. Advised DINA agents on seeking forms of torture without the detainee losing consciousness. 6.

Víctor Carcuro Correa. CNI doctor. This doctor was suspended from his rights in the Medical Association for his participation in the tortures that culminated in the death of the transporter Mario Fernández López, in La Serena, in October 1984. 7.

Raúl Díaz Doll. Doctor and official of the General Directorate of the National Health Service. Member of the military commission that investigated the political affiliation of doctors. Organized the snitching system in the service and participated personally in the interrogations of detained and tortured doctors. 8.

Guido Mario Félix Díaz Paci. Army and CNI doctor. Military health officer of the Army who participated in the events that culminated in the death of the transporter Mario Fernández López, in La Serena.

The causes of the death of Fernández López were the tortures suffered in the CNI barracks of said city in October 1984. When Mario Fernández had to be transferred to the Hospital de La Serena, Díaz Paci lied to the doctors on duty at the Hospital, claiming that the detainee came from a Carabineros station and not from the CNI, requesting that the doctors hide the detainee's condition.

Once Fernández had passed away, the doctor and CNI agent attempted to have the physician who had performed emergency surgery on the victim falsify the diagnosis of his death, hiding the true reasons for the passing.

For all these reasons, Guido Díaz Paci was expelled from the Medical Association. In 1974, he participated in the exhumation of the body of María Ávalos, murdered along with her husband, Bernardo Lejdermann, in December 1973 by a patrol of the Arica Regiment of La Serena.

In the death certificate, he claimed that the woman had blown herself up with dynamite. 9. José María Fuentealba Suaz. Army doctor. On October 27, 1973, Fuentealba participated in the delegation that traveled to Río Mayo, in Argentina, to transfer 3 detainees, Juan Vera, Néstor Castillo, and José Rosendo Pérez, who had been captured by the Argentine Gendarmerie when they escaped in search of political refuge.

The delegation was under the command of Captain Joaquín Molina Fuenzalida (murdered by the son of Manuel Contreras) and also included a Carabineros officer named Salinas and Sub-officer Evaldo Reidlich Hains.

The three prisoners were loaded into a vehicle from the Regional Hospital of Coyhaique and transported in the direction of Chile, but they never reached their destination. In April 2002, the judge of the First Criminal Court of Coyhaique, Luis Sepúlveda, indicted Fuentealba Suazo and the retired Carabineros Sub-officer Evaldo Reidlich Hains. 10.

Alejandro Jorge Forero Alvarez. Cardiologist. Medical Association Registry 9580-K. Squadron commander who was working at the time of the coup d'état at the FACH Hospital. In 1976, he served at the El Bosque Air Base and at the Colina Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment.

In this place, he participated in the Joint Command, supervising tortures and drugging prisoners who were taken out to be forcibly disappeared. He was prosecuted by Judge Carlos Cerda in the middle of the dictatorship.

These days, he has been summoned again in new Joint Command trials. 11. Werner Gálvez. Pediatrician. Colonel of the Medical Corps in Iquique. At the beginning of the military regime, he administered intravenous injections of sodium pentothal, alternating with biological serum, during interrogations in this city. 12.

Fernando Jara de la Maza. Traumatologist from Valdivia. In the days following the military coup, he participated directly in the application of torture to detainees. 13. Manfred Jurgensen Caesar. CNI doctor.

This doctor, who was also a CNI agent, was expelled from the Medical Association for his participation in tortures applied to prisoners in clandestine barracks of this repressive organization. Implicated in the death of Federico Alvarez Santibáñez. 14.

Luis Losada Fuenzalida. CNI doctor. He was also expelled from the Medical Association for his participation in the tortures that culminated in the death of the teacher Federico Álvarez Santibáñez. One hour before the death of Álvarez Santibáñez, who was tortured in August 1979 for seven days in secret CNI barracks in Santiago, he signed a report indicating that the teacher was in good physical condition. 15.

Vittorio Orvieto Teplizky. Army doctor. Performed collaborative functions in the tortures committed at the Prisoner Camp Number Two of Tejas Verdes. He also participated in the DINA Health Brigade as director of the Santa Lucía Clinic. 16.

América González Figueroa. Hired during the dictatorship to perform functions at the Legal Medical Service (SML), where she falsified information regarding the causes of death of some political executions.

Among the cases in which she is implicated are the death by torture of Carlos Godoy Echegoyen, which she made appear as "sudden death"; the murder of Cecilia Magni Camino, claiming she had drowned and hiding the signs of torture on her body; and the crime of the DC student leader Mario Martínez, who appeared on the coast of Rocas de Santo Domingo after being kidnapped in Santiago.

Another "service to the fatherland" was her participation in the examinations that culminated in the fraud of Pinochet's dementia. In the last period, still at the SML, she was appointed head of the Department of Thanatology and acting director of the service. 17.

Osvaldo Leyton Bahamondes. DINA doctor. Implicated in the death by torture of Manuel Leyton Robles, a DINA agent who was murdered by his "colleagues" after being publicly involved in the theft of a Renault 4, a job commissioned by his superior Germán Barriga Muñoz.

Dr. Leyton Bahamondes signed a certificate in which the agent appears to have died due to an epileptic seizure and cardiac arrhythmia at Almirante Barroso 76, the location of the clandestine London clinic. 18.

Bernardo Pulto. Radiologist from Melipilla. Together with the military prosecutor of Melipilla, he personally took part in torture sessions of prisoners. 19. Sergio Marcelo Virgilio Bocaz. Doctor of the DINA Health Brigade, with duties at the clandestine Santa Lucía clinic, who continued working at the CNI Logistics Command.

Marcia Merino says she saw him in advertising for coffee and financial institutions. The DINA Health Brigade was composed, among others, by doctors Vittorio Orvieto, Werner Zanghellini, Hernán Taricco, Nader Nasser, Osvaldo Eugenio Leyton Bahamondez, Rodrigo Vélez, Samuel Valdivia Soto, Luis Hernán Santibáñez Santelices, Eduardo Contreras Balcarce, the gynecologist Juan Pablo Figueroa Yáñez, the otolaryngologist Eugenio Fantuzzi Alliende, the psychiatrist Roberto Lailhacar Chávez, the dentist Sergio Roberto Muñoz Bonta, and the nurse María Eliana Bolumburú Taboada.

Another doctor, of whom only the surname is known, is the psychologist Bassaure. 20. Luis Hernán Santibáñez Santelices. DINA doctor. Member of the Health Brigade that operated at the London Clinic (Almirante Barroso).

Implicated in the disappearance of Juan Elías Cortés. 21. Hernán Horacio Taricco Lavín. DINA doctor. Head of the Health Brigade that operated at the London Clinic. Implicated in the death of DINA agent Manuel Jesús Leyton Robles. 22.

Werner Zanghellini Martínez. Director of the Santa Lucía Clinic between 1975 and 1976. He is accused by survivors of Villa Grimaldi of having injected the rabies virus into Jorge Fuentes Alarcón, a forcibly disappeared person. He was confronted at his private clinic at Galvarino Gallardo 1983, Providencia, and the next day he moved to a nearby office belonging to a relative.

Source: El Ciudadano, July 30, 2013