In a judicial decision that lights a new warning signal among the civilians who held high-ranking positions during the military regime, Judge Juan Guzmán Tapia indicted the former Ministers of the Interior of the military regime, César Benavides Escobar and Enrique Montero Marx, as accomplices to the qualified and repeated kidnapping of the victims of Operación Colombo.

Although these are two retired generals—one from the FACH (Chilean Air Force) and the other from the Army—if this resolution succeeds in the higher courts of the Judiciary, it will set an important precedent for other cases pursuing political responsibility for human rights violations recorded during the de facto government of Augusto Pinochet.

This is because Guzmán based his indictments on the roles they performed in the de facto ruler's cabinet, highlighting that “given the functions they performed, it was impossible for them to be unaware of the regime of illegal deprivation of liberty that was being systematically perpetrated, and despite this, they reported that there was no information regarding the so-called detentions of the victims, cooperating in the execution of those qualified kidnappings through simultaneous acts.”

The same arguments were used by Guzmán to add a new indictment against Benavides, this time within the framework of Operación Cóndor, in his capacity as an accomplice in the case of five MIR members who disappeared in Argentina in 1976, among them Edgardo Enríquez.

For this reason, the plaintiff lawyer in Operación Colombo, Hernán Quezada, valued Guzmán’s decision to target the responsibility of Pinochet’s collaborators, in both military and civilian matters.

“Judge Guzmán has concluded that these individuals had responsibility in the operation that was mounted to cover up these disappearances of more than one hundred people in our country. From that point of view, they not only have political and administrative responsibility, but eventually criminal responsibility as well,” the jurist expressed.

Quezada added that “we consider that Judge Guzmán is concluding a phase of this judicial investigation, clarifying the responsibilities of those who participated in these events, and it seems to us to be highly positive.”

Ghosts for Fernández

Guzmán’s explanation for issuing these indictments against high-ranking political officials of the dictatorship is similar to the grounds presented by lawyers Alfredo Morgado and Julia Urquieta in the complaint they filed against the former dictator Augusto Pinochet and his former Minister of the Interior Sergio Fernández, days after the report on political imprisonment and torture was released, on behalf of twenty people who suffered illegitimate coercion during the military regime.

In the document, which is now in the hands of Judge Joaquín Billard, it is indicated that there is evidence that both were “accomplices” to the coercion suffered by 28,000 tortured people. “When people were detained and sent to detention centers, their families were not informed, nor were they when recourse was made to the courts; it seems there were official letters, circulars, and precise instructions from public authorities ordering security agencies not to provide information,” argued PPD lawyer Alfredo Morgado.

Hence the importance of the resolution issued yesterday by Guzmán, because until now, convictions and indictments for human rights violations have focused on the material and intellectual authors of these crimes, and not on those who, like Fernández, Benavides, and Montero, occupied high positions in that de facto government and, in that capacity, had knowledge of the actions of the repressive agencies.

It is not in vain that the former Undersecretary of the Interior and current president of the UDI, Jovino Novoa, was surprised yesterday by the magistrate’s resolution and declared that “the justice system is ignoring fundamental facts such as the statute of limitations, the Amnesty Law, and without knowing the background, I find it hard to believe that there are legal arguments for this indictment.”

The responsibility of the Interior

In fact, the statement that Montero Marx made before Guzmán in the Operación Colombo case details that the reports on the forcibly disappeared that he issued during his time at La Moneda were governed by regulations issued by General Oscar Bonilla in 1973, which required the Ministry of the Interior to be informed of any detention ordered within the framework of the State of Siege, with that ministry being responsible for issuing an exempt decree specifying the authority responsible for the arrest and the detainee.

For this reason, the Judiciary would request that exempt decree from the Interior when a writ of amparo (habeas corpus) was filed, and although Montero Marx argues that the DINA did not always adhere to this procedure—for which reason the ministry would respond to the courts that it had no knowledge of their detention—the magistrate indicted him yesterday for the kidnapping of Juan Rosendo Chacón Olivares, Carlos Gajardo Wolf, Jorge Hernán Müller Silva, and Juan Carlos Perelman Ide.

The same applies to César Raúl Benavides, indicted as an accomplice to the qualified kidnapping crimes of 16 people: Francisco Eduardo Aedo Carrasco, Rubén Arroyo Padilla, Jaime Buzzio Lorca, Antonio Cabezas Quijada, Juan Rosendo Chacón Olivares, Luis Eduardo Durán Rivas, Héctor Garay Hermosilla, Eduardo Francisco Miranda Lobos, Jorge Alejandro Olivares Graindorge Benítez, Carlos Freddy Pérez Vargas, Sergio Reyes Navarrete, Ariel Salinas Argomedo, Teobaldo Tello Garrido, Segundo Toro Romero, Víctor Manuel Villarroel Gangas, and Héctor Zúñiga Tapia.

The operation in detail

The investigation being carried out by Judge Guzmán seeks to clarify the detention and subsequent disappearance of about twenty opponents of the military regime recorded in July 1975 due to alleged confrontations in Argentina.

The case, which consists of 36 volumes and is in the summary stage, investigates the media setup—of alleged events in Argentina—as a disinformation maneuver, which began in July 1975, to cover up the disappearance of 119 people who allegedly ended their lives at the illegal detention center Villa Grimaldi.

This disinformation plan culminated in the publication, by the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), of two lists of forcibly disappeared persons corresponding to the 119 names.

Already in January of this year, Judge Guzmán indicted—within the framework of Operación Colombo—the leadership of that dissolved repressive agency, and charged as authors of qualified kidnapping the generals (ret.) Manuel Contreras and César Manríquez (former Undersecretary of War); the brigadiers (ret.) Pedro Espinoza and Miguel Krassnoff; the colonel (ret.) Marcelo Moren Brito; the former gendarme Orlando Manzo Durán; the non-commissioned officer (ret.) Basclay Zapata; the Carabineros colonel (ret.) Conrado Pacheco Cárdenas; the major (ret.) Maximiliano Ferrer Lima; and the former agent Osvaldo Romo Mena.

All of them appear as authors of the qualified kidnappings of Carmen Cecilia Bueno Cifuentes, Jorge Müller Silva, Roberto Aranda Moreno, Modesto Espinoza Pozo, Carlos Gajardo Wolf, Rodrigo Ugas Morales, and the brothers Aldo and Carlos Pérez Vargas, who were apprehended between August 1974 and February 1975.

Previously, on September 2, 2004, Judge Guzmán indicted 16 former DINA agents for 34 victims.

The indicted

General (ret.) César Raúl Benavides Escobar was born in 1912, married with one daughter; he was a Brigadier General and director of the Military Institutes Command on September 11, 1973, and on that day he directed the troops stationed east of Avenida Vicuña Mackenna and acted as a communications liaison.

In 1958, he was at the Chilean Military Mission in Washington and completed the Fort Monmouth Instruction Course. In 1971, he was director of the War Academy. Three years later, he was promoted to general and was appointed commander-in-chief of the V Army Division, based in Punta Arenas.

In June of that year, he was appointed Minister of the Interior, replacing General Oscar Bonilla, who in turn took over the Defense portfolio. Benavides was at the Interior until 1978, when he was placed by Pinochet at the head of Defense, a secretariat of state he led until 1980.

For his part, Brigadier General (ret.) Enrique Montero Marx studied law at the Universidad Católica and served as Undersecretary of the Interior between September 12, 1973, and April 22, 1982, a period during which he occasionally substituted for Benavides. Subsequently, he assumed the position of Minister of the Interior between April 22, 1982, and August 10, 1983.

During the year 2000, Montero Marx was interrogated by Judge Joaquín Billard as part of the request from the American justice system that reactivated the investigations into the assassination in Washington of former Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier and his secretary Ronnie Moffit.

Currently, he is a legal advisor to the Fundación Paz Ciudadana and a legal advisor to the board of directors of the newspaper El Mercurio, a media outlet to which he has provided services since 1983.

Benavides will be represented by lawyer Ambrosio Rodríguez, while Montero’s defense will be in charge of Hugo Rivera.

Source: La Nación, February 19, 2005

Conferencia Case: Guzmán indicts former Pinochet minister

Judge Juan Guzmán indicted César Benavides, a former minister of the military regime, as an accomplice to the permanent kidnapping of three communist leaders in the so-called Calle Conferencia case. Specifically, it refers to the detention and disappearance of Víctor Díaz López, Mario Zamorano Donoso, and Eliana Espinosa, all members of the PC (Communist Party) leadership.

The events occurred in May 1976 when the communist leaders were forcibly taken by DINA officers from an office located on Calle Conferencia in Santiago. Three other members of the party’s Central Committee were also captured there, among whom was Jorge Muñoz, husband of Gladys Marín.

In January of this year, Army Colonel (ret.) Germán Barriga Muñoz, indicted for his responsibility in this case, jumped from the 18th floor of a building under construction in the commune of Las Condes.

After his suicide, a letter was discovered in which he explained that he suffered persecution and pressure from various political sectors.

Source: La Tercera, March 23, 2005

Court revokes indictments of former ministers Benavides and Montero Marx for Operación Colombo

In a split vote, the Sixth Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals revoked the indictments of the former Ministers of the Interior of the military regime, César Benavides and Enrique Montero Marx.

Magistrate Hugo Dolmestch and the chamber’s member lawyer Eduardo Fuentes voted to revoke the indictments, while Judge Haroldo Brito voted to maintain them. Both retired generals, who were released on bail, had been indicted by Judge Juan Guzmán as accomplices to disappearances that occurred within the framework of Operación Colombo, although Montero Marx also faces an indictment for the Cóndor case.

Operación Colombo was a setup prepared in 1975 by the dissolved National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) to cover up the disappearance of opponents of the military regime. Currently, the file consists of 36 volumes and is in the summary stage.

The plan consisted of a press operation to simulate the disappearance of 119 militants of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), presenting it as a confrontation within the subversive organization.

Source: La Tercera, March 31, 2005

Generals and officers implicated in the assassination of Carmelo Soria indicted in Spain

The Army Generals (ret.) of Chile Hermán Brady Roche, César Raúl Benavides Escobar, Juan Manuel Guillermo Contreras Sepúlveda, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Jaime Enrique Lepe, Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neuman Orellana; the former Undersecretary of the Interior, Navy Captain Enrique Montero Marx; and the officers Jorge Remigio Rios San Martín, Guillermo Humberto Salinas Torres, Pablo Belmar Labbé, René Patricio Quilhot Palma, Rolf Wenderoth Pozo, Ricardo Lawrence Mires, have been indicted by the Central Court of Instruction No. 5 of the National Court of Spain for their participation, mediate or immediate, in the kidnapping, torture, and assassination of the diplomat Mr. Carmelo Soria.

In the Order of November 17, 2009, which EL CLARIN will soon publish in full in the “Pinochet Case” section, the Judge and the Public Prosecutor’s Office have accepted the expansion of the complaint filed on January 23, 2007, by the Fundación Presidente Allende-España and the widow of Mr.

Carmelo Soria. They had also requested the indictment of the Minister of the Interior, Sergio Fernández, and the Minister of Justice, Mónica Madariaga, for having signed the Amnesty Decree in 1978, in the application of which the Supreme Court of Chile ordered in 1996 that this crime not be prosecuted in Chile.

The Spanish Judge has denied the indictment of these Dictatorship Ministers “at this time, as the fact that they signed the Amnesty Decree in 1978, which served to confer impunity upon the authors, accomplices, and concealers, is insufficient to do so, because for that reason, the other members of the government and all those who applied the rule subsequently would also have to be indicted, especially after the pronouncement on such types of rules by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Therefore, and as long as a different participation in the events is not proven, the complaint against these two people cannot be admitted for processing.”

The Order of November 17, 2009, agrees, among other proceedings, to inform the Secretary-General of the United Nations, in application of Article 11 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes against Internationally Protected Persons of December 14, 1973, of the admission of the complaint against those allegedly guilty of the torture and assassination of Mr.

Carmelo Soria Espinoza, and that the final result will be communicated in due course.

Spain assumes jurisdiction to prosecute this crime by virtue of the principles of universal jurisdiction and the avoidance of impunity, after the Supreme Court has agreed that it cannot be prosecuted in Chile, a country whose jurisdiction Spain considers preferential by virtue of the principle of territoriality.

Source: El Clarín, November 20, 2009