22 years after the operation that resulted in the deaths of three MIR members in Concepción and Hualpencillo, there is still no conviction for those responsible. The security agents who acted in what was called the "Alfa Carbón 1" plan did so with all the protections of the regime, avoiding identification for decades.

Today, the official version, which spoke of shootouts, is being contrasted by eyewitnesses who, in an unprecedented manner, provide an account of how the events actually occurred.

The residents of the Lorenzo Arenas sector of Concepción still find it painful to recall the story of the MIR members murdered on August 23, 1984, in the vicinity of the Vega Monumental. It was one of the most public and exposed repressive operations of the now-defunct National Intelligence Center (CNI), which, paradoxically, due to the protections afforded to the intelligence agencies involved, has become one of the most difficult human rights cases to clarify.

As revealed by the statement of a CNI agent contained in the case file, the idea behind the "Alfa Carbón 1" operation—as this intelligence action was named—was intended to "burst the MIR's theater of operations between the Eighth and Tenth regions." For this reason, they acted almost simultaneously in Concepción, Los Ángeles, Valdivia, and Santiago.

In total, 9 MIR members were murdered and many others were detained in numerous raids.

In the specific case of the deaths at the Vega Monumental, the authorities of the time imposed an official version that spoke of a confrontation between terrorists and the regime's security agencies, despite the certainty of hundreds of people—adults, young people, and many children—who saw how the victims surrendered without offering resistance, with one of them even having his hands raised.

After 22 years, the military justice system, where the case remained despite the opposition of the victims' families and human rights organizations, still keeps the summary investigation open, without having issued an indictment against any of the alleged perpetrators to date.

Chronology of the crime

The "Alfa Carbón 1" operation began on the morning of August 23 in Concepción with the arrest of a MIR militant on a public street. After midday, in Hualpencillo, the official information reported a casual confrontation between a suspicious subject, Luis Humberto Aedo Arias (32), and security personnel.

The CNI reported that Aedo (one of the strongest MIR members in the area) fired at the agents and that they responded, wounding him fatally. Witnesses rule out a chance encounter. They assert that a police cordon had been set up in the sector early on and that the subject was shot in the back and finished off on the ground.

A report from Revista Hoy at the time recovered a statement that complements these versions: "When the gentleman was lying on the ground, a vehicle with three people arrived, they got out, moved him, and shots were heard again. Then three other people with briefcases appeared and placed papers on him. He was stretched out and they changed his position."

Around 3:30 PM on the same day, CNI vehicles intercepted a "Las Bahías" line bus on the Talcahuano-Concepción route near the Vega Monumental. The target: Nelson Herrera Riveros (30), the political-military leader of the MIR from Concepción to the Tenth Region, and his companion, Mario Octavio Lagos Rodríguez (34).

20 days later, the bus driver, Pedro Aguayo, who would die a couple of years later under strange circumstances, stated in a sworn declaration that both subjects had boarded his vehicle in front of the Talcahuano market. "They got on, paid their fare, and sat behind me in the first seat (...) when I reached the first traffic light on Calle 21 de Mayo, in front of the Vega, I saw a red car and on the sides 4 armed people who were protecting themselves behind the car and watching me (...) from another vehicle, which was coming in the opposite direction, some people with weapons, submachine guns, got out and leaned on the hood of the bus and forced me to stop."

The first controversies

What happened after this action triggered one of the most open debates between the Catholic Church in Concepción and the authorities of the regime at the time. While the latter claimed that both MIR members took the bus passengers hostage to evade pursuit, Aguayo himself denied that information to the newspaper El Sur two days later.

When asked if there was a confrontation or not, he was emphatic: "in honor of the truth, I have to say no (...) the two men finally decided to get off. At no time did they come out shooting. They wanted to surrender."

Journalist Marcelo Henríquez, who was 13 years old at the time, lived in the sector. He relates that, together with some friends, he witnessed everything from an apartment overlooking Calle 21 de Mayo. "We heard a lot of shouting, a lot of swearing, mainly from the people in civilian clothes.

They told the guys out loud and with megaphones that if they got off the bus, nothing would happen to them (...), but as soon as the first one got off, they killed him (...) it wasn't a shootout. The shots came from only one side. From the armed civilians," he states.

The MIR member who died at the scene was Mario Octavio Lagos. Witnesses said he got off the bus with his hands raised, which explains the bullet wound under his armpit that his body presented at the Legal Medical Institute, which was verified by the priest and journalist Enrique Moreno Laval, who at the time was the Episcopal Vicar of the Workers' Pastoral in Concepción and regional vice president of the Journalists' Association.

The circumstances of Herrera's death are not clear. The driver, Pedro Aguayo, related that he managed to see him lying in the street, but that he had no blood on his body. Only a superficial wound on his forehead, which he said "could have been from the fall or the graze of a bullet." However, he arrived dead at the Regional Hospital.

"Two men who approached him grabbed him tightly by the arms (...) they said he was wounded and that he had to be taken to the hospital. He was walking without handcuffs and they put him into a vehicle, which I cannot specify," the driver related in his sworn statement.

Marcelo Henríquez does remember this event clearly. "They took him (Herrera) and put him into a civilian car. I think it was a Chevrolet Opala, a big one. A dry shot rang out and I saw how the body jumped as a result of the impact."

Something similar was affirmed in the proceedings by a former agent, who asserted that Herrera was put into a CNI car while handcuffed. "The vehicle had taxi colors. When it started, the order to eliminate him arrived.

The team eliminated him at point-blank range." Herrera's death certificate records the cause of death as a craniocerebral gunshot wound, which is classified as homicide. A shocking photograph taken by the then-lawyer for CODEPU, Carlos Cabrera, who saw Herrera at the morgue, shows a perforation in the middle of his forehead that would have been made with a weapon held against it.

The judicial tangle

The substantial difference between the official version and that of eyewitnesses motivated the distrust of the Archbishop of Concepción, José Manuel Santos, who five days after the operation requested an investigating judge from the Concepción Court of Appeals, a request that was not granted, as the Appellate Court determined that "it was not appropriate for the ordinary justice system to hear the aforementioned matters." Indignant at the response, Santos was not deterred and appealed to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court instructed the Third Military Court to appoint an ad hoc prosecutor, an appointment that fell to Commander Alejandro Abuter Campos.

In '84, the Military Justice system had already initiated an investigation into the formation of paramilitary militias and prosecuted the MIR members detained in the raids for violation of the arms control law. In this situation, among others, are Patricia Zalaquett, Herrera's partner, and Alejandro Bernsteir, to this day.

In the following 15 years, the military prosecutor's office did not prosecute any of the agents involved in the crimes at the Vega and Hualpencillo. It even moved to definitively dismiss the case. But the CODEPU lawyers from Santiago filed a cassation appeal before the Supreme Court to invalidate the dismissal.

In September, the Supreme Court revoked this decision, issued a replacement ruling, and ordered the investigation to proceed. At this moment, the title of the military file for the case of the three MIR members murdered on August 23, '84, was changed to "unnecessary violence against CNI personnel."

"The unnecessary violence is manifested in the death of defenseless people, that is to say, the military justice system in democracy recognizes these despicable acts," asserts lawyer Carlos Cabrera. Meanwhile, the case of the surviving MIR members was transferred to the ordinary justice system.

Agents without masks

The investigation had been stalled for years, as most of the CNI agents involved acted under operational names (chapas). Even in that condition, two of them, Army Lieutenant Colonel Hugo José Hechenleitner, alias Antonio Martínez López, and Sub-officer Víctor Muñoz Orellana, alias Jaime Marinovic Palma, had recognized their participation in the events of the Vega operation on August 23 before prosecutor Pedro Marisio. "There was a degree of complicity here, because the prosecutor accepted the statement with chapas knowing that those names did not correspond," accuses Carlos Cabrera.

In April 1999, the Second Military Prosecutor's Office of Concepción prosecuted these two CNI agents, who were still listed by their chapas. For this reason, lawyer Cabrera requested proceedings to establish their true identities, which bore fruit in November 2002.

With this new data, their indictment was modified. Víctor Manuel Muñoz is prosecuted for the death of Luciano Aedo and Hechenleitner for that of Nelson Herrera, both being detained in January 2003 at the No. 1 Military Battalion.

Today both are free on bail, but separated from the Army. They face sentences of major imprisonment in its minimum to medium degree, that is, from 5 years and one day to 15 years.

As recorded in the summary, in March 2003 both defendants testified before the Military Prosecutor's Office of Concepción. Hechenleitner did not recognize his 1984 testimony before prosecutor Marisio and indicated that he only participated in the arrest of Patricia Zalaquett, which occurred in the El Recodo sector.

He added that he arrived in Concepción in August '84 by order of the head of the CNI's Borgoño Barracks, Major Alvaro Corbalán, accompanied by Carabineros Corporal I Egon Barra Barra, alias Raúl González, and a civilian employee named Fuentes who has not yet been identified.

During the interrogation, he was also asked if he knew Claudio Rosas Fernández. He replied that they met on September 20, '84, and that he was the head of the CNI in Chillán. However, in his 1984 statement, he acknowledged that he participated in the Vega Monumental operation together with Rosas Fernández and that he fired at Nelson Herrera.

He also establishes that it was he, together with agent Rosas, who transported him "alive" to the Regional Hospital.

The other defendant, Víctor Muñoz Orellana, also disavows his '84 statement. Furthermore, he ruled out his participation in the Hualpencillo operation, since, as he said, he was not at the scene when the events occurred.

Nevertheless, he gives an account of the presence of other agents, with their real names and chapas, information that allows for probing the responsibility of others involved. He names Army sub-officers Hernán Galvez Navarro (alias Vitoco) and Carlos Palma (assumed name, Juan Carlos Vera). A third mentioned is Leandro Montenegro or Farías.

The end is near

In the context of the modernization of the Army, the Third Military Court was moved to Valdivia. According to Cabrera, at this time the Concepción prosecutor Fernando Grandón issued a ruling and proposed a sentence for the two prosecuted agents.

The information was passed to the Valdivia Court to be ratified. "It took two years or more there, I don't remember, and the Third Army Division ordered the summary to be reopened again to continue the investigation, because it estimates that there were more agents involved," explains the lawyer.

To date, Cabrera, who sponsors Nelson Herrera's case, does not have access to the summary, as the military authority removed the public nature of the investigation from the parties.

However, this lawyer is optimistic and hints that, according to information he handles, it would take very little to find the true perpetrators of the deaths caused by this operation, which remains indelible in the memory of its victims and witnesses.

Operation Alfa Carbón

Waiting for the big fish To materialize this plan, in the first days of August, between 25 and 30 intelligence agents, including women, arrived in Concepción from different parts of the country and joined those from the area. All planning was in charge of the CNI's regional unit based in Santiago, led by Army Lieutenant Colonel Marcos Derpisch Miranda.

Within the support group also traveled the head of the CNI's Borgoño Barracks, Major Alvaro Corbalán Castilla, who upon his arrival reportedly had an unfortunate encounter with the Regional Chief, Major Jorge Mandiola, apparently due to a power struggle.

According to the statement of a CNI agent, the entire operation was centralized in the Third Army Division. "It was a very programmed operation, in its achievements, one hundred percent efficient (...) a lot of CNI people were moved." He also acknowledges that in Alfa Carbón I there was no prior detention, but that they knew a lot about each person.

This confirms Pinochet's words on August 16, 1984, before foreign correspondents: "We have found extremists. We are finding them and we have leads. Now, many times you have to let them get fat in order to catch them all. There are quite a few people detected..."

Source: revistanos.cl August 2006

The crimes of Hualpén and the Vega Monumental

This September 23, the day we remember 24 years since the explosive homicide of Jaime Orellana and Nelson Lagos in Chillán, the reconstructions of the scenes of the crimes committed by the military of the Armed Forces on duty with the CNI were carried out, where they proceeded with exclusive dedication to plan and execute homicides, some mass ones like that of August 23, 1984.

With a large police deployment in which numerous PDI officers participated—some strangely hooded as in the dictatorship—and GOPE personnel, the reconstruction of the scene was carried out under the charge of Minister Carlos Aldana, who, in the company of his secretary lawyer David Bravo and the lawyer of the Human Rights Department of the Ministry of the Interior, Mrs.

Magdalena Garcés, participated in order to clarify the criminal acts in which the leaders of the Southern zone of the MIR were executed on August 23, 1984.

In each place where the proceedings were carried out—Hualpén, Concepción, and San Pedro—in addition to their relatives and friends, the Association of Political Executed MIR Members of Concepción and social organizations of Hualpén were present.

A large public from the sector and press from different media outlets gathered, who from a distance—cordoned off by the officers—were attentive to the movements that described the events that occurred in those homicides.

Let us remember that on this date, seven comrades, members of the Southern leadership of the MIR, were executed in the operation called "Alfa Carbón 1" by the security services of that time, whose objective was to eliminate the members of that MIR leadership.

During that simultaneous operation, Nelson Herrera and Mario Lagos were murdered in Concepción, and Luciano Aedo Arias in Hualpén, Mario Mújica in Los Ángeles, and in Valdivia, Juan José Boncompte, Rogelio Tapia, and Raúl Barrientos.

The executioners, members of the CNI, were commanded by Marcos Derpisch Miranda, Army Lieutenant Colonel in charge of the operation, and seconded by Hugo José Hechenleitner, Army Lieutenant Colonel, who appeared today at the scene of the events along with five other members of the former CNI to reconstruct the events at the corner of Calle Grecia and Nápoles in the current Hualpén Commune, where Luciano Aedo Arias was murdered.

Some of the names of the death squad that participated in the "Alfa Carbón 1" operation in Concepción: 1. Marcos Derpisch Miranda: Army Lieutenant Colonel in charge of the operation. Today he continues working at the DINE (Army Intelligence Directorate). 2.

Hugo José Hechenleitner: Lieutenant Colonel, his chapa was Antonio Martínez López. 3. Claudio Rodrigo Rosas Fernández: Army Lieutenant Colonel. 4. Víctor Manuel Muñoz Orellana: Army Sub-officer, his chapa was Jaime Ricardo Marinovic Palma, and he was the one who shot Luciano Aedo. 5.

Álvaro Corbalán Castilla (Army Major). Today imprisoned in the Punta Peuco resort. 6. Francisco Zúñiga Acevedo: Army Officer. Already deceased, he left without paying. 7. Jorge Mandiola Arredondo: Army Major. 8.

Carlos Palma: Army Sub-officer. 9. Leandro Montenegro (Army Sub-officer) alias Farías. 10. Jorge Vargas: Civilian. 11. Miguel Gajardo: Civilian. 12. Andrés Caris: Carabineros Sub-officer. 13. Egon Barra: Carabineros Corporal. 14. Rosa Humilde Ramos: Army Sub-officer. The most feared among her peers. They call her "La Mala" (The Bad One). 15. Teresa Osorio: Navy Sub-officer.

These are those who acted in the massacre of Concepción and Hualpén, accompanied by another numerous contingent of CNI, Army, Carabineros personnel, and snitches.

In the case of Los Ángeles, where they murdered Mario Mujica, the following participated in the numerous contingent of evildoers: 1. Bruno Antonio Soto Aravena 2. José Artemio Zapata Zapata. Currently, it is believed that one of them—it is said it has not been possible to establish which one—is living in Los Ángeles and the other in Concepción.

For a short time, they were detained and were in prison, but of course, after a short time, they were released and today they enjoy full freedom.

After concluding in Hualpén, the entourage moved to the Vega Monumental sector, where Nelson Herrera and Mario Lagos were executed after having surrendered and descended with their hands raised from the bus in which they were traveling.

This fact is a clear example of how the rights of the detainee were violated, as they were unarmed and without the capacity for armed response, they were riddled with bullets in the presence of passersby and passengers of the bus in which they were traveling, which constitutes a double homicide.

After the reconstruction in Hualpén and Concepción was finished, the Minister and his work team moved to the Población El Recodo on the road to Santa Juana, where the CNI proceeded to raid the house of Nelson Herrera's family, in which his wife, Patricia Zalaquett, was detained.

Today, Minister Aldana has obtained, in the presence of the accused, the details and characteristics of these crimes that were presented at that time to public opinion as "confrontations" of terrorists against CNI officials, even though these evildoers had traveled expressly from Santiago to commit the illicit acts.

It should be noted, as Minister Aldana himself pointed out to the press, that this judicial case was archived in the Military Prosecutor's Office, from where it was recovered, apparently by the Government's Human Rights Department, to transfer it to the hands of the Civil Justice system, which will now have the task of prosecuting and passing sentence, although the Minister himself indicated that he does not rule out new proceedings.

The Relatives of Political Executed MIR Members in Concepción expect a lot from the Minister; so far, all his conclusions in other cases implicate only the material executioners, the last link in the chain of command, the one who pulled the trigger, leaving the intellectual authors and commanders who gave the orders to murder unpunished.

For this reason, we hope that this chain of command reaches the High Commands of the institutions that had intelligence apparatuses with exclusive dedication to commit crimes, and those are even higher up than Álvaro Corbalán Castilla himself (who excused himself from attending although he participated in the events), because this bandit did not act on his own.

Today it transpired that the Minister had prosecuted the second-in-command of the CNI, whom he had sent as a detainee to the Chacabuco Regiment; at the time of writing this note, it was only a rumor. The orders to murder in a highly hierarchical and centralized armed institution could only come from the Intelligence General Staff with the due approval and authorization of the de facto government of the coup-plotting military.

It is striking that the former MIR leaders of that time are once again not present supporting the relatives, nor are they part of the lawsuits for truth and justice, nor do they undertake initiatives against impunity; it is possible that they are hunting for votes instead of hunting criminals.

Source: Liberacion.cl September 30, 2009

Case File 2.182-98: Juan Soto Cerda case

s) Statement under oath of

Egon Antonio Barra Barra on page 264, who states he perfectly remembers that one dawn in 1981, he was traveling along Av. Vicuña Mackenna as the driver of a gray Mazda 323 car belonging to the CNI, together with the Carabineros Sub-officer Reinaldo Rodríguez, nicknamed "el Papito," who was the head of his team, and they were also accompanied by a civilian employee nicknamed "El Guataca"; the fact is that while they were patrolling that sector, several radio calls were heard, immediately recognizing the voice of Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, who was reporting on a confrontation that occurred in the vicinity of the house of a Minister of State on the road to Las Vizcachas, asking the Sub-officer if they were going to provide support, to which he replied no "since it was just to get into trouble"; furthermore, according to what he remembers, the calls were to communicate what had happened and not requesting support. In the unit, the event did not have major comments, except that it was an operation that had been handled at the officer level.

Source: Judiciary, January 29, 2010

Alfa Carbón 1: The Operation Albania of the south

The Court of Appeals is about to rule on the expansion of the indictment for "illicit association" against 13 former CNI agents involved in the execution of seven MIR members in 1984, murders that were presented at the time as "confrontations." The judge overseeing the case only indicted two of the accused for "illicit association": Álvaro Corbalán and Marcos Derpich.

The following text was sent to CIPER by the victims' families and reconstructs the events based on the statements contained in the judicial file. Its authors aim to demonstrate that the "illicit association" included all the agents who acted in these operations.

The method of fake confrontations to eliminate opponents was a habitual practice used by the Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI), the repressive agency of the military government. The detention, execution, and disappearance of prisoners—which was used intensely and massively by the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA), the predecessor to the CNI, during the early period of the dictatorship—was replaced in subsequent years by the public execution of "internal enemies" and their subsequent presentation as confrontations by the CNI.

The latter would detain and eliminate opponents in chosen locations, where the scene of the alleged confrontation would later be staged. Alternatively, opponents were executed in ambushes prepared in advance.

In both circumstances, the press covered the episodes with complicit enthusiasm. The courts of justice ignored the investigations demanded by the victims' families or processed the cases in a foolish and negligent manner; in any case, the country has had to endure decades of proceedings to achieve judicial progress.

What follows accounts for the responsibility held by the courts of justice in clarifying the murder of seven MIR members in the cities of Concepción, Valdivia, and Los Ángeles, which occurred on August 23 and 24, 1984, within the framework of Operation Alfa Carbón 1 or, as it has been called, the "southern Albania," in allusion to the well-known Operation Albania or Corpus Christi Massacre, in which the CNI murdered twelve members of the Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez in June 1987.

The background information we present below does not constitute, according to the visiting judge overseeing the case, Carlos Aldana Fuentes, sufficient evidence to establish well-founded presumptions that the accused and charged individuals Hugo Salas Wenzel, Jorge Mandiola Arredondo, Jorge Andrade Gómez, and Aquiles González Cortés, among others, bore responsibility and participation as authors of the crimes committed under the classification of criminal illicit association.

Aldana also dismisses the responsibility as accomplices and accessories after the fact held by Miguel Ángel Parra Vásquez, then a lawyer for the CNI and responsible for instructing agents to provide false statements to the courts after the events occurred.

According to Aldana, there is insufficient evidence to consider that these agents bore participation as authors, accomplices, or accessories in the crimes attributed to them, as required by Article 274 No. 2 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

On August 23, 1984, the CNI team led by Luís Hernán Gálvez Navarro began the second stage of Operation Alfa Carbón 1. At around 11:00, several CNI teams and a Televisión Nacional crew arrived in Hualpencillo, current-day Hualpén.

Luciano Humberto Aedo Arias, a leader of the MIR in the Southern Theater of Operations, lived at 3346 Nápoles Street. After midday, at the intersection of Grecia and Nápoles, agents Raúl Hernán Escobar Díaz and Roberto Antonio Farías Santelices, along with Gálvez Navarro, got out of the vehicles in which they had been following him for months, shot him in the back, and finished him off on the ground.

Finally, according to witnesses, "after a while, many vehicles began to arrive; they checked his pockets, placed two small weapons near his body, some pamphlets, and some black objects like grenades" (fs. 3907, case file 746-84).

Alfa Carbón 1 had begun at the start of 1984—or perhaps earlier—when Jorge Mandiola Arredondo, head of the CNI in Concepción, informed his superior Marcos Spiros Derpich Miranda, head of the CNI Regional Division, that there was already sufficient data to confirm the presence of a subversive structure in the area: the Southern Theater of Operations (TOS) of the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionario (MIR).

Joaquín Molina Fuenzalida (+), Derpich's second-in-command in the Regional Division, had directed the intelligence work for what would be the definitive dismantling of the MIR leadership in southern Chile.

Derpich and Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, at the time head of the CNI's Anti-Subversive Division (DAS), based at the Cuartel Borgoño in Santiago, would be in charge of commanding the operation. The report submitted by Mandiola included names, addresses, and organizational charts of the MIR members, among which were Aedo's details.

The autopsy report performed by forensic doctor César Reyes Contreras on August 24, 1984, at 8:30, confirmed that Luciano Aedo received seven bullet impacts: four in the back, head, left wrist, and left foot, and defined the precise and necessary cause of death as a projectile fired from a distance of more than fifty centimeters that entered through the back and exited through the chest, compromising the heart and lungs (fs. 234; 292).

Likewise, in his statement on September 13, the doctor noted that the trajectory of the projectile suggests that Aedo was leaning forward, "as when one runs," and that the wounds in the back must have been inflicted when the thorax was very inclined, "almost horizontal to the ground" (fs. 17954). Luciano Humberto Aedo Arias was 34 years old, a father of four, and a member of the MIR.

Subsequently, at around 16:00, in front of the Vega Monumental in Concepción, driver Pedro Aguayo Aguayo was forced to stop his minibus. About thirty CNI agents and Carabineros personnel had surrounded the area.

In Talcahuano, Mario Octavio Lagos Rodríguez, military head of the TOS, and Nelson Adrián Herrera Riveros, political-military head of the TOS, had boarded it. A Televisión Nacional crew was also taking positions.

Jorge Octavio Vargas Bories, a former Army officer hired as a civilian employee of the CNI and second-in-command of the Special Brigade, ordered the passengers to get off. Only the driver did so. Faced with this, the officers began throwing tear gas canisters into the vehicle where about twelve people remained.

Ten got off. After a few minutes, Mario Lagos descended through the back door with his hands up. Egon Antonio Barra Barra, a second corporal of the Carabineros and member of the CNI's Special Brigade, descended from the vehicle in which they had followed the minibus, carrying an AK rifle.

Manuel Ángel Morales Acevedo, a first corporal of the Carabineros and member of the CNI's Special Brigade, did the same. As recorded at fs. 3646, both fired several shots, "the subject falling face down and dying in that place." They acted under the orders of Hugo José Hechenleitner Hechenleitner, then an Army lieutenant and head of the team, before the stunned gaze of some 500 witnesses.

The autopsy report for Mario Lagos Rodríguez revealed that he received two bullet impacts fired from more than fifty centimeters away: one in the left axillary area—which proves he had his arms raised at the moment of receiving it—and another in the posterior part of the right thigh. Mario Octavio Lagos Rodríguez was 34 years old, a father of three, and a member of the MIR.

Upon seeing him on the ground, Nelson Herrera tried to flee but was intercepted. The driver, Pedro Aguayo, declared on September 10, 1984: "I headed toward him and was a meter away from him. At that same moment, two agents arrived who lifted him by the arms.

The fallen man opened his eyes and looked at me head-on. He had no blood anywhere on his body, except for a scrape on the part of his right temple, which could have been caused by the fall or the graze of a bullet [...] The two men who had approached him grabbed him tightly by the arms, lifted him up, and said he was wounded and had to be taken to the hospital" (fs. 18345).

José Abel Aravena Ruiz, a Carabineros non-commissioned officer and member of the Blue Brigade, commanded the team in charge of tracking Herrera and, together with Sergio Agustín Mateluna Pino, a civilian Army agent and member of the CNI's regional Anti-Subversive Division in Concepción; Luis Enrique Andaur Leiva, a second corporal of the Carabineros and operational guard at the CNI's Cuartel Borgoño, and a fourth agent to date unidentified, whose alias was allegedly "Cárdenas," loaded him into a car and drove him toward Santa Juana.

There, in a vacant lot, Luis Andaur Leiva fired a shot into his forehead.

The autopsy of Nelson Herrera concluded that the cause of death was a craniocerebral wound resulting from a shot fired at point-blank range, which penetrated through the middle nasofrontal region and whose star-shaped appearance indicates it was inflicted at a distance of two or three centimeters.

Furthermore, it revealed the presence of bruising with blood infiltration on his wrists, which indicates they were tied at the time of death. Nelson Adrián Herrera Riveros was 30 years old, a father of one daughter, and a member of the MIR.

As recorded at fs. 4601—and established at fs. 3089; 3419; 2700 and 2557—the day before the operation, "a meeting was held in which it was said who had to be detained and who had to be eliminated. In that meeting, photographs were placed, and those who had to be eliminated were marked with a cross; among these were Herrera and Lagos." The meeting was led by Derpich and Mandiola, and the entire command participated, meaning, in addition to them: Corbalán, Gonzales Cortés, Krantz Johans Bauer Donoso, and "the CNI officer known at the Cuartel Borgoño specifically as ‘don Oscar,’ who corresponds to Jorge Claudio Andrade Gómez." Krantz Bauer (+) was to be in charge of the teams that were going to operate in Los Ángeles, and for that reason, he moved to the regiment in that city that night.

At around 17:00 on August 23, Bauer Donoso received the order to operate and informed the teams under his command to proceed with the planned actions. Bruno Antonio Soto Aravena, an Army non-commissioned officer and member of the Concepción DAS; José Artemio Zapata Zapata, a civilian Army agent and member of the Concepción DAS, and Rafael de Jesús Riveros Frost, a civilian Army agent and member of the Caupolicán, Red, and Blue brigades, arrived at 841 Bombero Carlos Vyhmeister Street in the Orompello neighborhood, where Mario Mujica Barros, a MIR leader and member of the TOS, lived.

As stated in the file, the three members of the team commanded by Soto Aravena had arrived in the city of Los Ángeles the first week of August to track him. On the day of the events, the team remained waiting for him to leave his home, but Mujica did not move.

About twelve agents positioned themselves in front of and on the sides of the house, and once the perimeter was secured, the team began the attack by entering the home. Simultaneously, the other teams fired into the air to give the impression of a confrontation.

But, just as recorded at fs. 309, Mario Mujica was subdued inside his home, placed on his knees, and executed with a shot at point-blank range. Subsequently, and to continue with the facade, the agents continued firing, climbing onto the roofs of neighboring houses and stationing themselves in the rear alley, while a large number of Carabineros provided perimeter support (fs. 146; 191).

The autopsy report for Mario Mujica indicated as the cause of death a bullet wound to the neck with involvement of the trachea and blood vessels, hemorrhage, and anemia. Likewise, Police Report No. 44 of the PDI's Criminalistics Department indicated that at the moment of receiving the homicidal impact, Mario Mujica could have been at a lower height than the person who fired the shot, either crouching or on the floor, or partially with his back turned, with his head and neck inclined (fs. 390).

Mario Ernesto Mujica Barros was 32 years old, a father of one, and a member of the MIR.

Just as in Concepción, and as recorded at fs. 392; 291, on August 22, 1984, a meeting was held in Valdivia to plan the operation in that city. The meeting was led by Patricio Lorenzo Castro Muñoz, an Army lieutenant and second-in-command of the Yellow Brigade; Luis Alberto Moraga Tresckow, an Army captain and head of the CNI in Valdivia, and Oscar Alberto Boehmwald Soto, an Army captain and head of the CNI in Puerto Montt.

There, the teams that would operate the following day and the day after in the city were assigned.

On August 23, 1984, around midday, the three teams led by Patricio Castro detained Rogelio Tapia de la Puente and Raúl Jaime Barrientos Matamala, MIR leaders and members of the TOS, in the center of Valdivia.

The three groups formed a caravan along with two other teams, one of which was commanded by Moraga Tresckow, and headed along the route to Niebla until the Estancilla Bridge, where they stopped in the middle of an open field.

A red van was also in the caravan. There, one of the vehicles moved about two hundred meters toward Niebla to cut off traffic, while another did the same with the flow coming from Valdivia. The detainees, tied, blindfolded, and gagged, were forced to get out and were immediately murdered by about five or six shooters, the first of them being Patricio Castro.

He was followed by "Miguel Aliaga," Gerardo Meza Acuña, Francisco Orellana Segel, Fernando Ramírez Romero, Alberto Moraga Tresckow, and another agent to date unidentified. Subsequently, these same agents fired at the red van that had parked nearby to simulate a confrontation.

Ernesto Arnoldo Barría Ordoñez, captain of the ferry Caupolicán, which followed an itinerary on the Valdivia River, noted that on that August 23, from midday, many vehicles with Santiago license plates began to pass, crossing from Las Mulatas toward Torobayo, and that in the afternoon, some people in civilian clothes who claimed to be from the CNI approached him, accompanied by several Carabineros.

They asked him to suspend service, and since there were orders from the Maritime Governorate, he had to obey. After approximately an hour and a half, a Carabineros chief told him to cross to pick up a hearse to transport the body of two MIR members who had died in a confrontation. "The hearse was black, but it had the Carabineros logo.

I asked a known Carabinero for authorization to see the bodies." There he recognized Barrientos, because they lived in the same neighborhood (fs. 287).

The autopsies confirmed that Rogelio Tapia received six bullet impacts in the face, thorax, and abdomen, and Raúl Barrientos, three impacts in the head and thorax. Rogelio Tapia de la Puente was 31 years old, a father of two daughters, and a member of the MIR. Raúl Barrientos Matamala was 23 years old and a member of the MIR.

The execution of Operation Alfa Carbón 1 culminated on August 24 at 643 Rubén Darío Street, in the Corvi neighborhood of Valdivia. The previous day, most of the teams that had moved to Valdivia were monitoring the home of Juan José Boncompte Andreu, a MIR leader and member of the TOS, waiting for him to leave so they could execute him.

Among them were the chiefs Boehmwald Soto, Ema Verónica Ceballos Núñez, and Luís René Torres Méndez. However, Boncompte did not leave that day. The agents returned on the 24th with the order to enter his home.

Patricio Castro Muñoz entrusted Boehmwald Soto to lead the operation after midday. The team leaders, in addition to agents Patricio Castro, Pedro María Rojas Vásquez, Zinaida Lena Vicencio González, Aquiles Poblete Palominos, and Carlos Alberto Ejía López, among others, entered through the main door, while several teams surrounded the house and the entire block.

Eladio Washington Ilabel Poblete, a neighbor in the sector, noted that on the day of the events, he saw a black taxi park in front of Boncompte's house. Four individuals got out, knocked on the door, and entered.

After one or two minutes, he heard several shots: "Out of curiosity, I climbed onto the roof of my house and observed a man running toward the site (backyard) and he was riddled with bullets by several people, as many were coming from the front of the house.

I also remember that an armed woman approached the body of the shot person and lifted his nose, hearing her say: 'He was a pretty guy,' as if laughing, and then she shot him with her weapon" (fs. 286).

According to the autopsy, Boncompte had 22 bullet impacts: nine in the thorax, four in the arm, and two in the right forearm; three in the right thigh, three in the left leg, and one in the face. Juan José Boncompte Andreu was 31 years old, a father of two, and a member of the MIR.

Narda Flandes, also a neighbor of Boncompte, noted at fs. 279 that one of the subjects who shot him turned him over with his foot so he would be face up and, together with others, "threw his body into a bag. I left the place, running toward the corner to keep watching. In that lapse, I saw when they took out a pregnant girl and loaded her into the van."

In the statement she provided on October 5, 1990, for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Inés Díaz Vallejos noted:

I, Inés Díaz Vallejos, born in Quillota, Chilean citizen, with date of birth April 25, 1952, identity card 7.152.059-5, Santiago, by profession a teacher, with current address at Sodra Ledningsgatan 39, Lilla Edet, Sweden, come to declare that:

1) Approximately at 4:00 PM that day, a group of people dressed in civilian clothes appeared at our home. Some carried a bracelet that identified them as members of the Army. Those people entered our house when I opened the door.

My partner, Juan José, remained in the bedroom. I was assaulted by four or five of the people who entered and was thrown to the floor of the living room. While lying there, I heard firearms being discharged inside the house.

At those moments, I was subjected to mistreatment by a group of those individuals. They demanded answers to questions about where there might be weapons, explosives, etc. I replied that I had no knowledge whatsoever about those things.

These people insisted that I answer, and for that, they subjected me to blows and kicks all over my body. I must highlight that when this occurred, I was 28 weeks pregnant. I lived with Juan José and he is the father of my daughter.

After some time, I was removed from the house and taken to police facilities in Valdivia. That same day, almost at nightfall, I was transferred again, this time to the men's prison in Valdivia. There I remained, always incommunicado. This lasted six days (although I remained) detained until the week of the birth in November 1984, without being charged or convicted.

2) On November 28, 1984, my daughter Javiera was born, affected by generalized spastic tetraparesis. This implies a state of total physical impairment that is irreparable. My daughter is not in a condition to use her legs or arms, nor can she speak.

The impairment is of a physical nature. My daughter's mental capacity is intact, with an evident degree of intelligence. All medical evaluations indicate without a doubt that the physical disability is due to the mistreatment I received on August 24, 1984.

The judicial history of this case begins on that same August 23, 1984, in the military prosecutor's offices of Concepción and Valdivia with proceedings against the 16 MIR members detained in both cities and those responsible for the "unnecessary violence" that caused the deaths of Luciano Aedo, Mario Lagos, Nelson Herrera, Mario Mujica, Rogelio Tapia, Raúl Barrientos, and Juan José Boncompte.

That same year

Monsignor José Manuel Santos, Archbishop of Concepción—whose denunciations were collected by Cauce magazine in a report titled “I Accuse”—requested a visiting judge from the Court of Appeals and, upon being refused, presented all the evidence he could gather to the Supreme Court.

However, the case remained under military jurisdiction, for the most part overseen by prosecutor Pedro Marisio, the same individual who took statements from detainees when they were released from CNI barracks and transferred to prison.

Marisio interrogated six agents while knowing they were using false names instructed by lawyer Miguel Ángel Parra. Claudio Rodrigo Rozas Fernández, Antonio Martínez López, Jaime Marinovic Palma, Juan Machuca Fuenzalida, Ricardo Labórquez Maturana, and Raúl González López are the “aliases” they used.

In 1998, prosecutor Marisio dismissed the case, declaring that it was not possible to determine the true identities of those responsible. The lawyer representing the families of the MIR members murdered in Concepción and Hualpencillo appealed, but the Court Martial confirmed the dismissal.

The lawyer then filed a cassation appeal with the Supreme Court, which ordered the investigation to continue. It was not until 2003 that military prosecutor Fernando Grandón, facing a new attempt at dismissal, requested that the Fifth Department of the PDI be tasked with the investigation.

It was the detectives of this brigade who discovered the first two names: Hugo José Hechenleitner Hechenleitner and Víctor Muñoz Orellana. Finally, in 2007, lawyer Magdalena Garcés took over representing the majority of the victims' families and succeeded in having the case transferred to civil justice.

In 2009, Judge Aldana reopened the proceedings for the death of Mario Mujica—which had been dismissed in 1998—and in 2011, he consolidated the three cases (Valdivia, Concepción, and Los Ángeles) into one (12-2009 of the Concepción Court of Appeals) for qualified homicide and illicit association against Marcos Derpich, Álvaro Corbalán, and others.

On June 20, 2012, Judge Aldana resolved to prosecute only ÁLVARO CORBALÁN CASTILLA and MARCOS DERPICH MIRANDA for illicit association and, for qualified homicide, in addition to them, 13 agents (see list below).

At the beginning of 2013, Magdalena Garcés and Patricia Parra (a lawyer for the Human Rights Program of the Ministry of the Interior, which also became a party to the proceedings) presented two requests to expand the indictment.

The lawyers' requests were for the judge to expand the indictment for the crime of illicit association and to prosecute: JORGE CLAUDIO ANDRADE GÓMEZ and AQUILES MAURICIO GONZÁLEZ CORTÉS as perpetrators of the qualified homicide of all the victims; JORGE CAMILO MANDIOLA ARREDONDO as perpetrator of the qualified homicide of Luciano Humberto Aedo Arias, Mario Octavio Lagos Rodríguez, Nelson Adrián Herrera Riveros, and Mario Ernesto Mujica Barros; HUGO JOSÉ HECHENLEITNER HECHENLEITNER and EGON ANTONIO BARRA BARRA as perpetrators of the crime of qualified homicide of Mario Octavio Lagos Rodríguez; RAFAEL DE JESÚS RIVEROS FROST as perpetrator of the crime of qualified homicide of Mario Ernesto Mujica Barros; FRANCISCO JAVIER ORELLANA SEGUEL and JORGE FERNANDO RAMÍREZ ROMERO as perpetrators of the qualified homicide of Rogelio Humberto Tapia De la Puente and Raúl Jaime Barrientos Matamala; and agents CARLOS ALBERTO EGUÍA LÓPEZ, LUIS RENÉ TORRES MÉNDEZ, PEDRO MARÍA ROJAS VÁSQUEZ, ZINAIDA LENA VICENCIO GONZÁLEZ, and AQUILES POBLETE PALOMINOS as perpetrators of the crime of qualified homicide of Juan José Boncompte Andreu.

An illicit association composed of only two people, as Judge Aldana intends, is laughable in this context. Indeed, Article 292 of the Penal Code provides that any association formed with the object of attacking the social order, public morals, persons, or property constitutes a crime that exists by the mere fact of organizing.

Likewise, Article 293 of the Penal Code sanctions with the penalty of presidio mayor in any of its degrees the leaders, those who have exercised command, and their instigators when the agreement of wills has had as its object the perpetration of crimes, as is the case here.

Added to this, Judge Aldana has decided to prosecute only the “material” perpetrators of the case, ignoring both the rationality and hierarchy with which the repressive apparatus functioned in Chile, as pointed out by advancements in jurisprudence on the matter.

In order to judge the crimes committed by the Nazis, international jurisprudence replaced the distinction between material perpetrator and intellectual perpetrator with one that allowed for the accounting of the way complex organizations operate.

Currently, a distinction is made between the immediate perpetrator and the mediate perpetrator, who is, ultimately, the one who gives the order and “has control over the act.” For this same reason, the fact that Hugo Salas Wenzel (second-in-command of the CNI), Jorge Mandiola Arredondo (head of the CNI in Concepción), Jorge Andrade Gómez (second-in-command of the Anti-Subversive Division commanded by Corbalán), and Aquiles González Cortés (head of the Blue Brigade in charge of the extermination of the MIR) are not being prosecuted in this case, when their participation in the crimes is proven, constitutes sufficient proof to affirm that the courts lack the will and conviction to effectively investigate and punish the State agents who committed criminal offenses during the dictatorship.

The collection of statements from witnesses, agents, and survivors is not sufficient for the judge, who seems to ignore that in human rights cases, obtaining a confession from the accused is almost impossible.

Therefore, convictions in these cases are based not on conviction, but on the configuration of well-founded presumptions: the immediate and mediate perpetrators have not confessed and will not confess their crimes, so if there are two or more statements indicating that an agent presided over a meeting and showed photographs marked with crosses; commanded a team and gave the order to execute; fired at a man who was in the street or inside his house, or occupies a place in the organizational charts that the agents themselves created to map the operational command of the CNI—as is the case throughout the 20 volumes that make up the case—that person should be prosecuted for both illicit association and qualified homicide.

Finally, even if Judge Aldana were to prosecute all the most obvious commanders and immediate perpetrators, as requested by lawyers Garcés and Parra, the convictions would be insufficient. Operation Alfa Carbón 1 involved around one hundred agents from Santiago, Concepción, Valdivia, Puerto Montt, and other cities in the south of the country in a massacre that ended the lives of seven people and for which, currently, only 15 individuals are being tried.

What do the judge and the Chilean justice system need to recognize the logic of extermination that prevailed in Chile between 1973-1990 and proceed accordingly?

Authors' note: We have written this text while waiting for the Santiago Court of Appeals to rule regarding the refusal to expand the judge's indictment. If their response is “no grounds,” the Supreme Court will only be able to ratify, increase, or lower the proposed sentences, and several members of the CNI high command, responsible for the design and execution of Operation Alfa Carbón 1, will remain unpunished.

As they have until now.

Source: www.ciperchile.cl June 4, 2013

Human Rights: 23 former CNI agents convicted for fake shootout during dictatorship

In the ruling by visiting judge Miguel Vázquez Plaza, one of those convicted is Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, former head of operations of the dictatorship's National Intelligence Center (CNI), who adds another 20 years of imprisonment.

The extraordinary visiting judge for human rights violation cases of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Miguel Vázquez Plaza, convicted 23 former agents of the National Intelligence Center (CNI) for their responsibility in the crimes of homicide of Alejandro Salgado Troquián and Hugo Ratier Noguera, illicit acts perpetrated in 1983 in a fake shootout on Janequeo Street in the commune of Quinta Normal.

In the ruling, the visiting judge sentenced Roberto Schmied Zanzi, Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, and Aquiles González Cortés to 20 years of imprisonment; meanwhile, former agents José Aravena Ruiz, José Salas Fuentes, Luis Arturo Sanhueza Ross, Egon Barra Barra, Jorge Vargas Bories, Norman Jeldes Aguilar, Fernando Rojas Tapia, Manuel Morales Acevedo, Sergio Canals Baldwin, and José Vidal Veloso must serve 15 years and one day of imprisonment as perpetrators of the crimes.

In the case of Raúl Méndez Santos, Rodolfo Olguín González, Ema Ceballos Núñez, Miguel Gajardo Quijada, Rosa Humilde Ramos Hernández, Francisco Orellana Seguel, Juan Carlos Vergara Gutiérrez, Raúl Escobar Díaz, Rafael Ortega Gutiérrez, and Luis Gálvez Navarro, they were sentenced to 10 years and one day of imprisonment as accomplices.

In the case, Judge Vázquez Plaza decreed the acquittal of agents Zinaida Vicencio González, Jorge Ahumada Molina, and Eduardo Chávez Baeza, as their participation in the events was not proven.

According to the investigation, on September 7, 1983, a number of agents from the CNI, the Chilean Investigative Police, and other repressive agencies went to the residence located at Janequeo Street No. 5707, in the commune of Quinta Normal, which had been under surveillance for some weeks, “proceeding to surround and cordon off the place, and then, through the use of a base of fire and other weaponry, to fire without any provocation and with great firepower against the property, as a result of which Hugo Ratier Noguera (José) died from various gunshot wounds in the backyard of the home.”

Furthermore, the proceedings established that “on the occasion of arriving at the same residence where he resided, Alejandro Salgado Troquián was gunned down by multiple gunshot wounds on the public thoroughfare, that is, on Janequeo Street in front of number 5946.”

Source: elmostrador.cl, July 22, 2019

Convictions confirmed for five former CNI agents for the homicide of two MIR members in a fake shootout in 1980

The Supreme Court confirmed the sentences against five agents of the dissolved National Intelligence Center (CNI) for the crime of qualified homicide of Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) militants Juan Ramón Olivares Pérez and Rubén Eduardo Orta Jopia, crimes committed on November 7, 1980, in the vicinity of the Vivaceta Bridge in Santiago.

In a unanimous ruling (case file 31.866-2018), the Second Chamber of the Court—composed of judges Haroldo Brito, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Leopoldo Llanos, Juan Manuel Muñoz Pardo, and acting lawyer Pía Tavolari—rejected the cassation appeal filed by the convicted, confirming the first-instance sentence issued by Judge Miguel Vásquez Plaza in May 2016, which sentenced the former Army brigadier, at the time of the events head of the Metropolitan Division of the CNI, Roberto Urbano Schmied Zanzi, to 18 years of effective imprisonment as the perpetrator of the crimes.

Meanwhile, as co-perpetrators, former agents Egon Antonio Barra Barra, alias “El Siete Fachas,” Teresa Osorio Navarro, alias “La Chica Marisol,” José Javier Soto Torres, alias “El Cabrón,” and Carlos Iván Labarca Brezzo, alias “El Pata de Canario,” must serve 15 years and one day of imprisonment.

The victims Juan Ramón Olivares Pérez, 37 years old, was a former electromechanical worker for the Empresa Nacional de Frigoríficos (Enafri), president of the company's Single National Union, president of the Estación Central Industrial Cordon, leader of the Revolutionary Workers' Front, provincial leader representing his union in the CUT, and a member of the central committee of the MIR.

He had 6 children, four from his first marriage and two from a second relationship. He had been detained by the FACh repressive apparatus in 1975, remaining as a prisoner in the AGA facilities, Villa Grimaldi, Tres Álamos, and the Santiago Penitentiary.

After a little over a year of proceedings, the two life sentences he had been given by the pseudo-military tribunals were commuted to exile or expulsion from the country. At the beginning of 1977, he left Chile. He returned clandestinely in March 1980 to join the Resistance tasks against the dictatorship.

Rubén Eduardo Orta Jopia, 34 years old, was an electrical technician, a militant of the PS until after the 1973 coup d'état. While in Cuba, in 1976, he decided to join the MIR and shortly after assumed the policy of return, entering Chile clandestinely in 1979.

The murders As verified in the investigation stage by Judge Vásquez, both militants had been previously detected and identified and were the object of surveillance and tracking by agents of the Metropolitan Division of the CNI, which had its base of operations at the Borgoño Barracks in the capital.

In that context, on November 6, 1980, the repressive agents followed Ramón Olivares and Rubén Orta separately throughout the day, proceeding to detain them separately in the course of that day.

Subsequently, that same night, but already in the early hours of November 7, the agents transported the detainees to Avenida Santa María at the Vivaceta Bridge, that is, in the vicinity of the aforementioned Borgoño Barracks.

At that location, they proceeded to execute them by firing gunshots with firearms. Then they placed them inside a Citroën vehicle they had brought for that purpose to simulate a shootout. This is how they presented the event to public opinion with the fallacy that the murdered men intended to attack the nearby Borgoño barracks.

The murders of Olivares Pérez and Orta Jopia were carried out with cruelty and known premeditation, as established by the judicial investigation, “since the death was the product of a prior plan to take their lives, which implied a tracking initiated in advance, being captured at different times and circumstances, but in time very close to their deaths, for which they staged a simulation of a shootout, which demonstrates that the purpose was taken with a cold and calm spirit to kill them, both victims being defenseless,” the ruling states, among other considerations.

Source: resumen.cl, July 8, 2021

Supreme Court confirms convictions of 22 CNI agents for crimes in a fake shootout in Quinta Normal in September 1983

The Supreme Court confirmed the convictions against 22 agents of the National Intelligence Center (CNI) for their responsibility in the crimes of qualified homicide of Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) militants Hugo Ratier Noguera and Alejandro Salgado Troquián.

The crimes were perpetrated on September 7, 1983, in a fake shootout on Janequeo Street in the commune of Quinta Normal, in Santiago.

In a unanimous ruling, the Second Chamber of the highest court (case file 10.047-2022)—composed of judges Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Leopoldo Llanos Sagristá, Jean Pierre Matus, and acting lawyers Gonzalo Ruz L. and Leonor Etcheberry C.—ruled out any error of law in the sentence and rejected the cassation appeals in form and substance filed by almost all of the convicted against the ruling of the Santiago Court of Appeals, issued in November 2021, which in turn confirmed with some changes the first-instance ruling issued in July 2019 by Judge Miguel Vásquez Plaza.

In the resolution, the Second Chamber confirms the sentences applied to former Army officers and former CNI leaders Roberto Urbano Schmied Zanzi, Álvaro Julio Federico Corbalán Castilla, and Aquiles Mauricio González Cortés, who are sentenced to 17 years of imprisonment as co-perpetrators of the crime.

The first of the convicted, Schmied Zanzi, served as head of the Metropolitan Division of the CNI; Corbalán Castilla was head of the Anti-Subversive Division, and Aquiles González acted as head of the Blue Brigade, specialized in the repression of the MIR.

Meanwhile, former Army officers and CNI operatives Sergio María Canals Baldwin, Luis Arturo Sanhueza Ros, Fernando Rafael Mauricio Rojas Tapia, Norman Antonio Jeldes Aguilar, and former agents José Abel Aravena Ruiz, José Guillermo Salas Fuentes, Egon Antonio Barra Barra, Jorge Octavio Vargas Bories, and José Isaías Vidal Veloso must serve 15 years and one day of imprisonment as perpetrators of the crimes.

For their part, former agents Rodolfo Enrique Olguín González, Ema Verónica Ceballos Núñez, Luis Hernán Gálvez Navarro, Rosa Humilde Ramos Hernández, Francisco Javier Orellana Seguel, Miguel Fernando Gajardo Quijada, Juan Carlos Vergara Gutiérrez, Raúl Boris Méndez Santos, Raúl Hernán Escobar Díaz, and Rafael Ricardo Ortega Gutiérrez were sentenced to 10 years and one day of imprisonment as accomplices to the crimes.

Agent Manuel Ángel Morales Acevedo, also convicted in previous instances, passed away during the course of the proceedings.

Fake shootout On September 7, 1983, dozens of agents from the CNI, the SIFA, the Investigative Police, and other repressive agencies went to the residence located at Janequeo Street No. 5707, in the commune of Quinta Normal, which had been under surveillance for some weeks, proceeding to surround and cordon off the place, and then, through the use of a base of fire and other weaponry, to fire without any provocation and with great firepower against the property, as a result of which Hugo Ratier Noguera died from various gunshot wounds in the backyard of the home.

Simultaneously, on the occasion of arriving at the neighborhood and at the same residence where he resided, the militant Alejandro Salgado Troquián was gunned down by multiple gunshot wounds and executed on the public thoroughfare, that is, on Janequeo Street in front of number 5946, two blocks from the attacked home.

Hugo Norberto Ratier Noguera, 39 years old, was of Argentine nationality, originally from Misiones, and had resided in Chile since 1970. He was a leader of the MIR and remained active in the underground.

He was married and a father of three children; shortly before these events, his wife and children had left the country for security reasons. Alejandro Salgado Troquián, 30 years old, a veterinarian by profession, also a militant of the MIR, was married and a surrogate father to his partner's children.

A minor, an adopted son of Salgado and a resident of the home along with Salgado and Ratier, was a victim and witness to the events but, in the middle of the shootout, managed to flee to neighboring houses, thus saving his life and later denouncing the criminal attack.

This fake shootout was carried out by the CNI on the same day and immediately following the execution of three other MIR militants on Fuenteovejuna Street, in the commune of Las Condes, in a criminal act also orchestrated as a fake shootout where Arturo Vilavella Araujo, Lucía Orfilia Vergara Valenzuela, and Sergio Peña Díaz were murdered.

The three had returned clandestinely to Chile to join the fight against the dictatorship. Judicially, both events are processed as separate episodes, in circumstances where it was a single repressive operation.

In the investigation of the repressive act, it was demonstrated that the dictatorship's repressive agency developed a tracking and surveillance operation during the months prior on a group of MIR members who were acting in the underground in the resistance struggle against the tyrant regime.

With the data obtained from that prior observation, the CNI orchestrated the extermination operation that meant the detention of a dozen people, the attack and murder of the three residents of the house on Fuente Ovejuna Street, and then the attack and murder of two other militants in the house on Janequeo Street in the commune of Quinta Normal.

by Darío Núñez

Source: resumen.cl, January 27, 2024