Colonel Héctor Barrientos, air attaché at the Chilean Embassy in Madrid since December 1996 after serving as spokesperson for the Chilean Air Force (FACH), has been identified by former detainees from the dictatorship era as one of the officers who, 24 years ago, carried out torture in detention centers in Punta Arenas, in the south of the country.

That young lieutenant, who in 1973 was barely in his twenties, was recognized last June by one of his victims. Carlos Parker Gribbell, an expert in international relations and advisor to the Chilean Foreign Ministry, was passing through Madrid from Algiers.

Parker was attending a meeting at the Chilean Embassy. Someone asked: "So, is Héctor Barrientos taking the suitcase on the FACH plane?" Parker’s face transformed.

In a split second, the name Barrientos and all the macabre memories from 24 years ago flashed through Parker’s mind. Barrientos—known as "El Chiporro"—was one of the participants in the violent interrogations to which Parker was subjected at the Bahía Catalina air base in Punta Arenas following the military coup by General Augusto Pinochet.

The newspaper La Tercera published a lengthy report on Sunday in which Parker recounts his encounter with Barrientos and his memories of what happened more than 20 years ago. "I know that across the entire political spectrum there will be people who think this is untimely.

But we are thousands of torture survivors throughout Chile, and our pain has never been acknowledged, as if we were supposed to be grateful for being alive," he says. Another former detainee, 42-year-old welder Carlos Speake Vidal, told EL PAÍS that he was arrested on September 11, 1973, at his parents' home in Punta Arenas.

Speake was 17 years old and a student leader at the boys' high school. "At first I was treated with deference, because my father was an Army non-commissioned officer," he recalls.

He was transferred to the Bahía Catalina base and from there to Dawson Island. "I was the only one they didn't blindfold. That’s where I met 'Chiporro' Barrientos; he was the one in charge." In his statement, he asserts that Barrientos gave the orders and that "he kicked me." Barrientos is not the only military officer who participated in the repression and has since held positions of responsibility.

Brigadier Cristoph Georg Willeke Floe served until last January as the military, naval, and air attaché at the Embassy in El Salvador.

During the dictatorship, he was in the general directorate of the DINA (Pinochet's political police) and is implicated in the assassination of Orlando Letelier, Allende's former foreign minister. Mariano Peppi Onetto, the current military attaché in Canada, was also a member of the DINA and a company linked to it.

Colonel Pedro Belmar, allegedly implicated in the assassination of the Spaniard Carmelo Soria, was nearly assigned to an important advisory mission to the Salvadoran Army in 1996.

Source: El País, September 4, 1997

Two high-ranking officials were sanctioned for violating their duties and causing "serious obstruction of service."

Two chiefs of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGAC) were dismissed from their posts following the findings of an internal inquiry into the so-called "robbery of the century," which occurred on August 12 at the Arturo Merino Benítez airport, where US$10 million was stolen.

The inquiry revealed security failures at the airport that allowed the assault to be perpetrated.

The head of the air terminal, Eduardo del Canto Hidalgo, and its security manager, Rolando Alegría González, were identified as responsible for having violated their duties, causing a "serious obstruction of service" after failing to perform the hierarchical control required of them regarding airport security (AVSEC), as reported by El Mercurio.

The administrative prosecutor who led the 8-month investigation, Lorenzo Sepúlveda, noted that the result "leaves me with a very bitter feeling."

"In some way, it affected the prestige of the DGAC. Perhaps the robbery would have happened anyway, but if all procedures had been followed, maybe things would have been absolutely different," he added.

Likewise, the national head of aviation security, José Lli Salgado, the head of airfield services, Rodrigo Silva Salbach, and the director of the airfield department, Héctor Barrientos Parra, were also reprimanded.

Source: duna.cl, April 7, 2015

New prosecutions for human rights violations following the military coup of September 1973 in Magallanes have been signed by the extraordinary visiting minister, Inés Recart Parra, current president of the Punta Arenas Court of Appeals.

In the first days of 2025, the prosecution orders for 20 individuals have been appealed before the Magallanes appellate court—resolutions issued regarding five cases, all of which were opened in 2019 and originated from individual complaints filed by former political prisoners.

The accused, mostly people over 80 years of age, deny the facts upon which the indictments issued by Minister Recart are based, and their lawyers are seeking their revocation.

One of the cases was formed following complaints filed by former political prisoners Reinaldo Ernesto Lafuente Araya and Prefect Merardo Fuentealba Ortega.

In both cases, an indictment and pretrial detention order—all currently released—were issued against the following retired officers of the Chilean Navy: Fernando Sáez Sepúlveda, Juan Montino Serrano, Ramón Fraga Jiménez, Héctor Barrientos Parra, Jorge Beytía Valenzuela, and Walter Radic Prado.

The facts

The complainant Reinaldo Lafuente, a topographer by profession, was arrested at 38 years of age on October 6, 1973, at 3:00 a.m. in his home by members of the Armed Forces, who subsequently, according to his report, subjected him to various forms of torture and humiliation. He was moved through various properties in the city before finally being held at the political prison camp on Dawson Island.

According to his statement given in the case, while detained at the Cochrane Detachment, in the Río de los Ciervos sector, they stripped him and beat him all over his body, subjecting him to various tortures, including being chased by dogs that bit him, being thrown into calafate bushes, and suffering cruel beatings and assaults on his genitals.

Ten days later, he was taken to the Naval Prosecutor's Office, which operated at Avenida Colón 636—the "Palacio de la Risa" (Palace of Laughter) in Punta Arenas. Blindfolded, he was made to walk down stairs into a kind of basement, where they also beat him and applied electric shocks to his temples and testicles while he was tied to a type of electric grill.

One night in November, in the early hours, they loaded him onto a truck headed for the pier to board a barge bound for Dawson Island, where he was assigned to the "Alpha" barracks.

He remained on Dawson until March 1974, when he was returned to Punta Arenas to face a Military Tribunal, specifically case 25-73 TG, which sentenced him to 180 days in prison, which he had to serve until July 26, 1974, on the same island.

Regarding former political prisoner Prefect Fuentealba Ortega, he was the manager of the vehicle workshop for the Corporación de Magallanes (Cormag). Most of the officials in that section were socialists.

His son, who was 15 at the time, declared that on September 11, 1973, a large contingent of uniformed men armed with rifles arrived at his house. From the window, he watched as the officers took his father away amidst beatings.

He also remained deprived of liberty at the Cochrane Detachment and on Dawson Island, being subjected to prosecution by a Military Tribunal, which sentenced him to 1 year as the perpetrator of illegal possession of a firearm, in the same case, Rol 25-73 TG.

Fuentealba Ortega went into exile in the city of Río Gallegos, Argentina, where he passed away on November 11, 2004.

Naval prosecutor and instructor of the time

The naval prosecutor and instructor for case 25-73 TG was the then-corvette captain Jorge Beytía Valenzuela of the Chilean Navy. Likewise, among the records of that trial, one of the members of the War Council who signed the sentences against both victims was Walter Radic Prado.

According to the resolution dated December 6, 2024, signed by Minister Inés Recart, "in the opinion of this court, the described facts constitute the crimes of aggravated kidnapping and torture; they also constitute crimes against humanity, insofar as they were the product of a generalized and systematic attack by the organized Armed Forces and civilians supporting the military regime, which was directed against the population, oriented basically toward causing fear and exterminating those who held thoughts in accordance with the legitimate government in force at the time and those who maintained some type of political militancy, and intimidating the citizenry—an attack that caused serious consequences for the population."

Based on these arguments, the visiting minister deemed that "the evidence constitutes sufficient grounds for the participation of Fernando Sáez Sepúlveda, Juan Montino Serrano, Ramón Fraga Jiménez, and Héctor Barrientos Parra" in the crime of aggravated kidnapping of both complainants, for having had direct participation in their apprehension and their delivery to intelligence services, with the victims' deprivation of liberty lasting more than 90 days.

Likewise, according to the resolution, "the existence of sufficient evidence is proven to establish the culpable participation of Jorge Beytía Valenzuela as the perpetrator of the crime of aggravated kidnapping for helping to maintain the deprivation of liberty to which the complainants were subjected, and likewise, of the crime of unlawful coercion regarding Reinaldo Lafuente and Prefect Fuentealba, insofar as in his capacity as military prosecutor, he subjected them to interrogations and directed them, having the power of decision over the humiliations suffered by the victims."

In the same manner, the resolution adds, "participation as a perpetrator corresponds to Walter Radic Prado, for having been part of the War Council that judged the complainants once Prosecutor Beytía formulated the accusation, imposing prison sentences and endorsing the evidence obtained through torture and the deprivation of liberty to which the complainants had been subjected."

"Both Beytía and Radic held officer ranks that allowed them to give instructions and thus exercise command, being able to directly influence the maintenance of the deprivation of liberty and the execution of the unlawful coercion, for which they had control over the commission of both crimes," the resolution reinforces.

Consequently, the minister indicted and ordered the imprisonment of Fernando Sáez, Juan Montino, Ramón Fraga, and Héctor Barrientos as perpetrators of the crime of aggravated kidnapping, and Beytía and Radic as co-perpetrators of the crimes of aggravated kidnapping and unlawful coercion.

Statement by Walter Radic

In the judicial statement that 91-year-old Walter Radic gave in this case, he admits that he participated in four or five War Councils as an auditor, in which men who had committed crimes established in the Penal Code or the Code of Military Justice were judged.

This was between 1973 and 1974. He remembers being appointed Regional Ministerial Secretary (seremi) of Justice around 1975 or 1976, where there were people sentenced by the War Councils serving prison terms in the Punta Arenas jail.

He visited them on Saturdays together with Bishop Alejandro Goic. During that period, he met two young women who were sentenced in another War Council in which he did not participate. He points out that he tried to help them obtain their freedom. The lawyer for these women, Laura Soto, comments in her book that Walter Radic obtained a pardon for one of them and a sentence reduction for the other.

Of the three current titular ministers of the Court of Appeals, two of them, Inés Recart and Marcos Kusanovic, recused themselves from hearing the appeals, so it is not ruled out that the case may have to be heard by the Court of Puerto Montt.

Prosecuted for four arrests in Porvenir

Minister Recart indicted Luis Mercado Galleguillos for the crime of aggravated kidnapping that occurred on September 11, 1973, to the detriment of Jorge Maldonado Cárdenas, Juan Torres Toro, Rosa María Valderrama, and Nancy Aguila Barría. In this case, Mercado Galleguillos obtained provisional release last April, under a bail of 500,000 pesos.

ENAP workers detained in Cullen and subjected to torture

Another of the human rights violation cases in which an indictment was issued was the one related to the criminal complaint filed by Amador Millalonco Ruiz, Alberto Gallardo Alarcón, and Juan Belarmino Saldivia Alvarez, all ENAP employees at the time the military coup broke out in September 1973, who were working at the Cullen camp in Tierra del Fuego.

This process is labeled as "illegal detention, aggravated kidnapping, and application of torture."

Minister Inés Recart indicted Luis Hernán Mercado Galleguillos, José Rafael Aguirre Aguirre, and Eduardo Rafael Mancilla, all retired Army officers who served in the city of Porvenir.

In the case of the detainee Saldivia Alvarez, he was subjected to a mock execution after 12 days of detention in Cullen. On one occasion, they took him to the side of the Side River, a place where, according to a military resolution, he was to be executed.

Once the firing squad was formed, the order to fire was ultimately not given because, according to the officer in charge, they had received a counter-order.

Former military prosecutor and two women indicted

In the case where former political prisoner José Figueroa Jiménez, a BancoEstado employee, appears as a complainant for kidnapping and unlawful coercion between November 23, 1973, and July 2, 1974, the lawyer Juan Toro Reyes was indicted.

At the time of the events, he was a military prosecutor and therefore participated in the War Council that sentenced Figueroa Jiménez to 541 days in prison. Along with Toro Reyes, Luz Valenzuela Villarroel and Maritza Salazar Bitsch were indicted as accomplices to the crime of aggravated kidnapping.

Salazar Bitsch is accused of having cooperated in the execution of the crime; her father was the manager of BancoEstado in Punta Arenas at the time. Both women have denied their participation in the events.

Seven others indicted

Also under appeal to the Court are the indictments issued by Minister Recart against Antonia Ruiz Fuchslocher, María Inés Dieus Bórquez, Otto Trujillo Miranda, Mario Casas Barril, Jorge Beytía Valenzuela, Gerardo Alvarez Rodríguez, and Mario Zamora Flores.

The complaints for illegal detention, kidnapping, application of torture, and indecent abuse were filed by the Zanzi family, Jeannette Antonín, Emilia Díaz Mancilla, Vilma Mansilla Revens, Rosa María Lizama, Norma Aqueveque Cárdenas, Ema Osorio Perich, Flor Millacari, Gloria Muñoz, Haydeé Alvarado, Laura Eyzaguirre, and Erna Aqueveque.

Source: laprensaaustral.cl, January 13, 2025