Benjamín Antonio Orrego Lillo, married, father of 4, a carpenter, was detained on September 19, 1973, at approximately 11:00 PM, at his home in Hacienda Polcura, Los Angeles, by Carabineros officers from the El Abanico station.

The patrol was under the command of Sub-officer Nelson Arriagada and included other police officers, among them Carabinero Jaime Fuentealba. Before taking Benjamín Orrego away, they proceeded to raid the home in the presence of his spouse, Ana Pérez Osses, and other family members.

When asked, Sub-officer Arriagada stated that the detainee would be taken to the El Abanico station. The following day, his wife went to the aforementioned police station, where a guard informed her that Orrego had been executed by firing squad on the road before reaching the station. Since then, the family has had no further news of him.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

His spouse, not believing the version of his death provided by the Carabinero at El Abanico, searched for him in the cities of Chillán and Los Angeles: in regiments, prisons, and military prosecutor's offices, without achieving any positive results.

She also reported the events to the Red Cross in Los Angeles, where he was included on a list of forcibly disappeared detainees. Finally, she turned to the courts of justice and, on October 2, 1978, filed a recurso de amparo (writ of habeas corpus) on behalf of her husband before the Court of Appeals of Concepción, case file 4243.

Both the Minister of the Interior, Sergio Fernández, and the Intendant of Concepción, Army Brigadier General Rigoberto Rubio, as well as the Bío Bío Governorate, responded to the Court that Orrego had no record in their files and that no order existed against him.

The Minister of the Interior further stated that there was no record of him having been detained by security services. The responses from the Carabinero Prefectures of Concepción and Los Angeles were equally negative.

The latter reported that there were no records in the files of the El Abanico station and that Sub-officer Major Nelson Arriagada Figueroa had been questioned; he denied having participated in the detention of Orrego Lillo, adding that he was not a person known to him.

The amparo was rejected by the Court of Concepción; however, it was ordered that copies of the proceedings be sent to the Criminal Court of Los Angeles so that the reported events could be investigated. There is no information available regarding this process.

Source: Vicariate of Solidarity

Cruel murders, beatings just for pleasure, and inhumane treatment of political prisoners are part of the accounts that define retired Lieutenant Walter Klug, a criminal convicted of multiple human rights violations.

In La Voz de los que Sobran, we examine in depth the chilling testimonies that place Klug as one of Pinochet’s most brutal torturers. On the afternoon of Monday, June 28, Walter Klug stepped onto Chilean soil again.

His stay during his last trip to Argentina lasted approximately 20 days, little more than a standard vacation period. But Klug was not vacationing; he was fleeing his outstanding debts to justice after having been convicted for the kidnapping and homicide of 23 employees of the National Electricity Company (ENDESA).

He also had no intention of returning; rather, he planned to use the neighboring country as a short stopover to return to Germany, a country classified as a “safe haven” for criminals convicted of human rights violations who possess German nationality, as is the case with Klug.

It was not the first time the soldier had attempted to evade his sentence. It was in October 2014, shortly after retiring, that all the crimes of the retired Army Lieutenant, Walter Klug, caught up with him.

They materialized in a sentence, issued by the Supreme Court, of 10 years and one day in prison for his role in the so-called "Endesa Episode." As a result of the investigation, Klug was identified as responsible for the qualified homicide and kidnapping of 23 workers from the El Abanico and El Toro hydroelectric plants, among other cases of forced disappearance in which the former soldier has been placed by survivors.

Just one month after the sentence was handed down, Klug obtained a German passport and escaped without major complications. He lived there quietly for 4 years until his recapture in Italy. The entry of the dictatorship’s servant into prison has not been easy.

In some way, to this day, he refuses to accept his responsibility for the multiple human rights violations committed. Despite the solid evidence against him, until almost 11 years ago, Walter Klug categorically denied everything presented in judicial instances.

This is confirmed by a legal text dated November 18, 2010, in relation to the Endesa Episode. “He emphasizes that in this facility there were never tortures or mistreatment of detainees, perhaps some kicks to impose order; what there were, were periods of greater harshness in treatment, as cases of alcoholic individuals or people with anguish due to feeling deprived of liberty were presented, which forced him to act with greater harshness, but always within the limit of respect for the detainees,” is part of the statements that Lieutenant Walter Klug Rivera gave to legal bodies, denying all crimes committed within the Reinforced Regiment N°3 of Los Angeles. He adds that he does not know of any firing squads or murders inside the military unit, and that if anyone had carried them out, he did not find out, constantly reiterating that he was “disciplined, tough, even sarcastic, but never allowed physical mistreatment against the detainees, nor to cause them physical pain.” The former soldier’s words are fragile and are broken by a conviction and the testimony of several victims of human rights violations. “When I was in the concentration camp, I had to witness a cowardly murder. A peasant lost his mind as a result of the beatings and the life we were leading; for this reason, one day he took a very small piece of wooden board and hit a soldier on his helmet with it. This was seen by Lieutenant Walter Klug Rivera, a recognized torturer and murderer; he ordered all the prisoners who were nearby to turn around so as not to see, and ordered us to go to our cells. Then he took out his pistol and emptied it into the poor, demented peasant. The International Red Cross knew about this cowardly murder because they were shown the place of death where the bloodstains could still be seen stamped on the cement,” reads one of the vivid testimonies, collected by the portal Memoria Viva from an article in the defunct newspaper Fortín Mapocho, from a detainee who had been under Klug’s custody. In La Voz de los que Sobran, we examine in depth the accounts issued by both detainees and former colleagues of Walter Klug, which reveal intimate ties between the Army and the far-right paramilitary organization Patria y Libertad, the atrocities committed by State agents at the Regiment N°3 of Los Angeles, and the role of one of the most brutal and ruthless servants that the dictatorship integrated into its ranks. Quiet and in impunity He had been evading the acts committed since the coup d'état perpetrated by Augusto Pinochet on September 11, 1973. When his actions caught up with him, far from facing them, Klug chose to keep running from them. In November 2014, one month after the sentence against him was issued by the Supreme Court, Walter Klug had access to a German passport granted by the German embassy in Chile itself, and he escaped to the European country. Neither the Chilean authorities nor the German authorities took measures to prevent the flight of the convicted former soldier. Leaving Chile would have been a mere formality, as simple as buying a plane ticket and attaching the corresponding paperwork. Just like that, one of the most sadistic criminals of the dictatorial period in Chile got rid of all his responsibilities. Four years passed before he was located again in a hotel in the Italian city of Parma. Klug, 69 years old at the time, was in the town to attend a conference that his wife was giving. Without resisting, the former soldier surrendered to the Italian authorities, required by an international arrest warrant issued from Chile for the case of Luis Cornejo Fernández, a young topography student and Communist Party militant who was detained at Regiment N°3, and in whose forced disappearance Walter Klug was allegedly involved. The story before the fortuitous event that allowed Klug’s capture became a diffuse zone. The truth is that the dictatorship criminal was hiding in plain sight. The German journalist, Ute Löhning, followed his trail to the small town of Vallendar, a locality of approximately 9,000 people in which Klug lived quietly in impunity. The economic sphere was never a problem for the former soldier, who, according to the investigation carried out by the aforementioned professional, received a pension paid by the Chilean State, the approximate amount of which amounts to the sum of $1,200,000, plus various increases. Independent of the case of Luis Cornejo, for which the international arrest of Klug was requested, it should be noted that, until the moment of his capture in Italy, Chile had not issued an arrest warrant for the lieutenant to return to serve the 10-year and one-day sentence for the Endesa Episode; said requirement was issued by the Chilean authorities only after notifying the need to have Klug for the judicial action related to the Cornejo case. After the Supreme Court of Italy accepted Chile’s request to extradite the retired lieutenant colonel, based on the fact that the crimes committed are crimes against humanity, Klug was returned on February 6, 2020. The name of Walter Klug Rivera jumped back into public opinion after the organization dedicated to the defense of human rights, Londres 38, denounced on June 8 of this year that the former soldier had fled again toward Buenos Aires, Argentina, evading the border controls of the Investigative Police (PDI), with the intention of traveling back to Germany, a country from which he could not be extradited. However, at the moment of arriving in the neighboring country, the Interpol division in Argentina was already aware of his status as a fugitive; he was arrested on June 12 on a public street and placed before the authorities to begin the extradition process. In some way, Klug, for almost 48 years, has been fleeing from his past and his destiny, with all that this implies. The weight of both concepts in the former soldier’s life is not minor... Cornejo and Klug were the same age when they coincided at the Mountain Regiment N°3 “Los Angeles.” As a political prisoner, the young topography student from the University of Concepción, at only 23 years old, would find his fate in the hands of the high commands of the military facility enabled with the sole purpose of detaining, interrogating, torturing, and murdering opponents of the Pinochet regime. At the time of his disappearance, Luis Cornejo was not registered in local cemeteries, nor were there records of entry to hospitals, nor eventual departures from the country or the granting of diplomatic asylum. The theory that is still being considered to this day is that Cornejo met the same fate as thousands of compatriots during the military dictatorship. The young student had been forced to disappear by State agents. However, his time at the establishment where Klug served remained in the memory of multiple prisoners who survived to, years later, recount the horrors that occurred in the facility. (excerpt)

Source: lavozdelosquesobran.cl 6/30/2021 Date: 06-30-2021

Retired military officer convicted of the homicide of 23 Endesa workers during the dictatorship is extradited

This Friday, the former member of the Army, Walter Klug Rivera, was placed at the disposal of the Supreme Court following his transfer from Italy, where he was arrested in April of last year within the framework of an international arrest warrant.

Klug Rivera fled Chile in 2015, before being notified of the 10-year prison sentence for the kidnappings and homicides of 23 Endesa workers, in addition to the disappearance of the UdeC Los Angeles branch student, Luis Cornejo Fernández.

Judge Carlos Aldana, of the Court of Appeals of Concepción, in charge of the latter summary, immediately requested the extradition, which was granted a few days ago by the Italian justice system, hence his arrival in Santiago.

Lawyer Cristian Cruz, an expert in human rights violation cases, highlighted the speed of the resolution and the fact that the Chilean courts acted to achieve the justice demanded by the victims. After being notified of the ruling for the case of the El Toro and El Abanico plants, the former agent of the Military Intelligence Service must begin to serve the sentence of 10 years and one day in prison, with lawyer Cruz trusting that the courts will not grant any request that his lawyers might make.

Source: biobio.cl 02/07/2020 Date: 02-07-2020

Supreme Court confirms sentence for 16 disappearances and 7 murders of workers from the El Toro and El Abanico hydroelectric plants

The crimes against humanity were perpetrated between September 11 and November 17, 1973, in the mountain sector of Los Angeles, Bío Bío Region. The investigation was led by Judge Jorge Zepeda. The Supreme Court issued a final sentence in the investigation into the crimes of qualified kidnapping and homicide of 23 workers from the El Toro and El Abanico hydroelectric plants; seven of them were executed and the rest were forcibly disappeared.

In a split decision, the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed of judges Milton Juica, Carlos Künsemüller, Haroldo Brito, Lamberto Cisternas, and Andrea Muñoz—rejected the cassation appeals filed against the sentence of the Court of Appeals of Santiago, which sentenced Patricio Martínez Moena to 20 years in prison, without benefits; Walter Klug Rivera to 10 years and 1 day in prison, without benefits; and Ismael Espinoza Silva to 5 years in prison, with the benefit of supervised release.

In the civil aspect, the Criminal Chamber ratified the sentence that ordered the State to pay compensation of 50 million pesos to each of the nine relatives of the victims who were executed or disappeared in 1973 in the mountain sector of Los Angeles, Bío Bío Region.

Sentences that must be served for their responsibility in the homicides of: Juan Miguel Yañez Franco, César Augusto Flores Baeza, Víctor Jerez Meza, Mario Belmar Soto, Mario Samuel Olivares Pérez, Juan Eladio Ulloa Pino, and Víctor Adolfo Ulloa Pino.

Furthermore, the conviction includes the qualified kidnappings of: Abraham López Pinto, José Abel Coronado Astudillo, Abel José Carrasco Vargas, Alamiro Segundo Santana Figueroa, Luis Leopoldo Sepúlveda Núñez, Plutarco Coussy Benavides, Wilfredo Hernán Quiroz Pereira, Exequiel del Carmen Verdejo Verdejo, Domingo Norambuena Inostroza, Luis Eduardo Vergara Corso, BENJAMÍN ANTONIO ORREGO LILLO, José Óscar Badilla García, Manuel Antonio Aguilera Aguilera, Manuel Sepúlveda Cerda, Bernardo Samuel Meza Rubilar, and Manuel Jesús Arias Zúñiga.

According to the investigation by Judge Zepeda, it was determined “that in the mountain sector, east of the city of Los Angeles, are located the El Toro and El Abanico hydroelectric plants, belonging to the National Electricity Company, ENDESA.” “The workers of said hydroelectric plants, as of September 11, 1973, for the most part—according to Judge Zepeda’s sentence—resided with their families in small rural towns in said area, forming the towns of ‘Los Canelos,’ ‘Rayenco,’ ‘Polcura,’ ‘Antuco,’ as well as work camps for the ‘El Toro’ and ‘El Abanico’ hydroelectric plants, and further east, behind the Laja lagoon, that of ‘Cuatro Juntas,’ a sector that was called ‘Mallines del Sol,’ belonging to the Alto Polcura ravine, the patronymic of the ‘Polcura’ river, which runs through the place, where the workers also spent some periods performing their usual duties.” Subsequent to September 11, 1973, “upon the violent change of government due to the Coup d'État of September 11, 1973, the aforementioned workers, as well as the rest of the civilian population of said towns, supporters of the previous government that was deposed on that day, in application and knowledge of a policy of the new regime and in a flagrant attack on human dignity and the notion of humanity itself, were persecuted and detained by State agents, under the pretext that the victims intended to attack detention centers to free people deprived of liberty by the military authority and/or attack the hydroelectric plants where many of them worked,” states the ruling by Judge Zepeda, ratified by the country’s highest court. The final destination of these people was “their confinement or deprivation of liberty in the Regiment located in the city of Los Angeles or in places dependent on this unit, and ultimately killed and, in other cases, made to disappear to this day,” the ruling expresses. The Supreme Court’s sentence was adopted with the dissenting vote—in the criminal aspect—of Judge Lamberto Cisternas, who was in favor of accepting mitigating factors of responsibility in the case of the convicted Klug Rivera; and the dissenting opinion of Judge Muñoz, who was in favor of accepting the statute of limitations for the civil action in the case.

Source: villagrimaldi.cl 10/30/2014 Date: 10-30-2014

MEMORIAL TO BE INAUGURATED FOR PUBLIC EMPLOYEES WHO WERE VICTIMS OF THE DICTATORSHIP

This Monday, September 8, the National Association of Public Employees (ANEF) will hold a ceremony to inaugurate a memorial in honor of the public officials who were forcibly disappeared and killed during the dictatorship, a tribute that will be attended by government authorities, social organizations, and human rights organizations. “This is done with all the respect that preserving the memory of our country holds for us as an association.

On this occasion, we want to immortalize our officials and leaders, who also bequeathed to us their ethics and union struggle and who were murdered in the worst period of our history. And in remembering our fallen comrades, we also make a call for life and peace,” commented the general secretary of ANEF, Bernardo Jorquera.

Joining the ANEF leaders who announced the memorial was Deputy Tucapel Jiménez—son of the ANEF union leader of the same name, murdered by Army agents in 1982—as well as the leader of the Association of Relatives of Political Executions, Alicia Lira.

There are more than 380 cases that will appear on a plaque at the ANEF headquarters, which will be inaugurated on Monday, September 8, at 11:00 AM. The list was provided to the union by the Ministry of the Interior, and includes President Salvador Allende Gossens and Tucapel Jiménez. “This inauguration dignifies the working class and the union movements,” said Alicia Lira, who is the widow of a Treasury official murdered in the first days after the Coup d'État. “These acts of keeping memory alive, remembering the fallen, are important because memory is fragile and it is good to keep it alive.

We want young people to never again live through that dark history that we went through as a country, and that is why it is important to remember the fallen and seek truth and justice, with the purpose that these things never happen again,” stated Deputy Jiménez.

Source: cronicadigital.cl 9/5/2014 Date: 09-05-2014

Justice system issues convictions against dictatorship repressors for human rights violations

The Courts of Appeals of Santiago and Puerto Montt issued sentences related to investigations into human rights violations, which were investigated by visiting judges. In the first case, sentences were issued for the qualified kidnappings and homicides committed between December and January 1974, in the vicinity of the El Toro and El Abanico hydroelectric plants, a process that was instructed in the first instance by Judge Jorge Zepeda.

The appellate court determined to convict the following State agents: Patricio Martínez Moena: 20 years in prison, without benefits; Walter Klug Rivera: 10 years and 1 day in prison, without benefits. The justice system also convicted Ismael Espinoza Silva: 5 years in prison.

He was granted the benefit of supervised release. In the civil aspect, the court ratified that the convicted and the State must pay 50 million pesos to nine relatives of the victims. In the second case, the Court of Appeals of Puerto Montt issued four sentences in a process instructed by the judge of the Court of Appeals of Coyhaique, Luis Sepúlveda Coronado (Coyhaique, Aysén, Puerto Cisnes, and Los Torreones cases).

Source: radio.uchile.cl 10/28/2013 Date: 10-28-2013

Judge Zepeda issues conviction for executions at El Toro and El Abanico plants

The kidnappings of the 23 employees were carried out, according to the investigation, in the last days of 1973 and at the beginning of 1974. In a 120-page resolution, visiting judge Jorge Zepeda issued a final sentence for the executions carried out by intelligence agencies against workers of the El Abanico and El Toro plants during the military regime.

The kidnappings of the 23 employees were carried out, according to the investigation, in the last days of 1973 and at the beginning of 1974. Zepeda sentenced Patricio Martínez, head of the Intelligence Department II of the Los Angeles regiment, to six years of deprivation of liberty, and Ismael Espinoza Silva to five years in prison for the kidnapping of Manuel Arias.

The latter received the benefit of supervised release. Walter Klug was acquitted after considering the exculpatory circumstance of due obedience, applying for the first time in Chile what is regulated in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, considering that this precept is more favorable to the accused.

Likewise, he ordered the dismissal of the case against the commander of the Regiment, Alfredo Rehren Pulido, due to his death. Magistrate Zepeda accepted the claims for compensation for damages against the Chilean State, ordering the payment of $50,000,000 to each of the nine relatives of the victims who filed a judicial action.

Source: elmostrador.cl 11/19/2010 Date: 11-19-2010