Colonel Barriga, who was on the verge of being convicted for countless crimes and disappearances, had until recently been an ethics instructor for the guards at Líder supermarkets. In addition to a monthly pension of 650,000 pesos and the payment of his legal defense, he received from the Army the post-war stress bonus granted to former DINA and CNI agents.

Profile of the suicidal torturer

“A torturer is not redeemed by committing suicide. But it is something.” (Despistes y franquezas XVIII. Mario Benedetti)

On a Monday in mid-January 2005, the criminal Germán Jorge Barriga Muñoz, who was under indictment for dozens of cases of forcibly disappeared persons and political executions, ended his own life.

Barriga Muñoz entered an apartment building under the pretext of visiting a “model unit” for a potential purchase. He went up to the 18th floor of the building, which faces the back of the Military School, and jumped to his death.

In his pockets were letters addressed to his family and to his lawyer, Marcelo Cibié. In them, he admits that he was fired from his jobs once it became known that he was under indictment for crimes against humanity, claiming, “all because of being a retired Army colonel, indicted for alleged human rights violations committed when I was a junior officer (lieutenant or captain)... also staining my personal record with this (another reason for not being accepted for employment), all for living and following orders during the period of the Military Government.”

Without expressing any remorse, he makes it clear that he would be “soon convicted for having, among others, several people kidnapped, whom according to the justice system I have kept in that fictitious situation since the 1970s, and [sentenced] to a prison to serve a sentence for such false legal figures, which are time-barred or covered by the amnesty.” “I have decided to try to leave this life because I do not want to be a living burden...

The former soldier, the indicted and 'funado' [publicly denounced] man was me,” he notes at the end of his letters. Barriga Muñoz, 60 years old at the time of his death, received a pension of 650,000 pesos, plus a “post-war stress” bonus that the Army granted to all DINA, CNI, or DINE agents involved in crimes during the Pinochet dictatorship.

Furthermore, his legal defense in court was paid for, along with that of all other former military personnel under indictment, with a percentage deducted from the payroll of all active members of the Army.

Criminal Record

Germán Barriga was the subject of a FUNA (public denunciation) on two occasions. The first was in August 2000, when he was denounced at his home, located at Avenida Irarrazaval 2061, apartment 105, a place he abandoned that same day, never to return.

The second was in early December 2004, at the Líder supermarket located at the 14th stop of Vicuña Mackenna, to make it clear to customers and owners that they were financing a torturer and murderer by hiring him to lead the supermarket chain’s security guards.

The action of the Comisión FUNA, as always, was on both occasions peaceful and colorful, with drums, chants, and the denunciation flyer read collectively to make known the crimes committed by the person being denounced.

Germán Jorge Barriga Muñoz used the aliases “Don Jaime” or “Don Julio,” was part of the DINA General Staff, and graduated with honors from the School of the Americas as an “instructor in counter-subversive tactics and counterintelligence.”

At the time of the coup d’état, he was a lieutenant in the Infantry. He took part in the preparation courses for DINA agents held at Tejas Verdes in late 1973, among whom was the former mayor of Providencia, Cristián Labbé, who served as an instructor. Officially, and through a document from the Comptroller’s Office, he was integrated into the DINA starting on August 26, 1974.

In early 1975, he joined the Metropolitan Intelligence Brigade (BIM) and was assigned to the Purén Brigade, operating from the clandestine detention and torture center known as Villa Grimaldi. His mission in 1975 was to direct the repression against the Socialist Party, and in 1976 he dedicated his criminal efforts against the Communist Party.

While fulfilling these duties, he held primary responsibility for dozens of kidnappings, illegal detentions, torture, rape, murders, and disappearances of Socialist militants and sympathizers.

Among them, it is worth noting the detentions and subsequent disappearances of the psychiatrist and former deputy Carlos Lorca Tobar; the leaders Ricardo Lagos Salinas and Exequiel Ponce Vicencio; the Spanish citizen and engineering student Michelle Peña Herreros, who was seven months pregnant; the social worker Modesta Carolina Wiff Sepúlveda; Mireya Herminia Rodríguez Díaz; the nursing students Rosa Elvira Solís Poveda and Sara de Lourdes Donoso Palacios; the medical student Jaime Eugenio López Arellano; the civil engineer Adolfo Ariel Mancilla Ramírez; the civil engineer Alfredo Rojas Castañeda; the teacher Guillermo Hernán Herrera Manríquez; and the political science graduate Octavio Julio Boettiger Vera. He is indicted as a participant in the detention and torture of the Socialist leader Fidelia Herrera and her spouse. In the cases of Communist militants, he was accused of being the primary person responsible for the disappearances of the employee Juan Elías Cortes Alruiz; the construction worker Gabriel del Rosario Castillo Tapia; the physician Carlos Enrique Godoy Lagarrigue; the union leader Mario Jesús Juica Vega; the brothers Juan and Washington Maturana Pérez; the union leader Miguel Luis Morales Ramírez; and the businessman Daniel Palma Robledo, whose car was also stolen on Barriga’s orders. In this last case, the material author of the theft, agent Manuel Leyton Robles, “died” of a heart attack under suspicious circumstances inside the London Clinic, a clandestine DINA center located at Almirante Barroso 76, shortly after having confessed to the justice system that “Don Jaime” had ordered him to commit the crime.

From the CNI to the Courts

When the DINA was officially dissolved on July 12, 1977, Germán Barriga was integrated into the CNI to continue his terrorist tasks. Near the end of the dictatorship, he was appointed Governor of the Loa Province.

In 1990, when the CNI was dissolved, Barriga returned to the Army with the rank of colonel and was given command of the 15th Infantry Regiment of Calama. In 1991, he was assigned to the National Mobilization Directorate, retiring shortly thereafter.

In May 1993, already a retired colonel, he was sent as Administrative Chief of CODELCO-Calama, a position from which he was finally removed due to union protests.

Among other indictments, Barriga was charged by Judge Juan Guzmán in the case known as Calle Conferencia as the author of the crime of kidnapping in 1976 of nine Communist militants: former deputy Bernardo Araya and his wife, María Olga Flores, and the members of the clandestine leadership of the PC Mario Zamorano, Jorge Muñoz (husband of Gladys Marín), Elisa Escobar, Uldarico Donaire, Jaime Donato, Lenín Díaz, and Víctor Díaz (father of the AFDD leader, Viviana Díaz).

In December of the same year, the Purén Brigade struck again, and this time its agents detained members of a new clandestine leadership of the PC, in what is known as the “case of the thirteen.” In this second wave of repression, Waldo Pizarro, husband of Sola Sierra and father of the AFDD president, Lorena Pizarro, fell.

The list of disappeared persons in this case also includes Santiago Araya Cabrera, detained on November 29, 1976; Armando Portilla, detained on December 9, 1976; Fernando Navarro Allende, detained on December 13, 1976; Lincoyán Berríos Cataldo, Horacio Cepeda Marinkovic, Luis Lazo Santander, Juan Fernando Ortiz Letelier, Reinalda del Carmen Pereira Plaza –five months pregnant– and Héctor Véliz Ramírez, all of them detained on December 15, 1976, along with Waldo Pizarro; Lizandro Cruz Díaz and Carlos Patricio Durán González, both detained on December 18, 1976; and Edras de las Mercedes Pinto Arroyo, detained on December 20, 1976. Along with Barriga, the DINA members Carlos López Tapia, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, Ricardo Lawrence Mires, and the physician Osvaldo Pincetti were indicted in the Calle Conferencia case and were soon to be convicted.

They are also indicted for the kidnapping and execution of the Communist teacher Marta Ugarte, whose body appeared on the beach of Los Molles after having been tied to a rail and thrown into the sea from an Army Puma helicopter.

Other cases for which he was indicted include that of the forcibly disappeared Julia Retamal Sepúlveda, detained on August 13, 1976, and later seen at Villa Grimaldi, and the execution of the physician Jorge Lamich Vidal and the worker Héctor García García, who were beaten and subjected to electric shocks.

They were subsequently executed in the presence of the troops. The last known job of Germán Barriga was his hiring by Líder supermarkets, owned by the Ibáñez family, to serve as the chief and “ethics teacher” for the security guards of the supermarket chain. His dismissal occurred following the denunciation made by the Comisión FUNA on December 11.

With Barriga Muñoz, a large part of the information that could have provided clues to the fate of hundreds of forcibly disappeared persons and the real names of those responsible was lost.

Source: El Gran Valparaiso, January 24, 2005