Case File No. 2.182-98: episode titled “Rebeca María Espinoza Sepúlveda"

8) Police (169 to 170) and judicial (171 to 177) statements by Ramón Luis Carriel Espinoza, who served as a vehicle driver at the Escuela de Ingenieros de Tejas Verdes and was in charge of the facilities at Cuartel 2.

He was assigned as a guard for the political prisoners, who were transported by a Carabineros non-commissioned officer, Villanueva, in a refrigerated truck and taken directly to the Military Prosecutor's Office for interrogation; on other occasions, they were taken directly to the “prisoner camp”; they were kept in cabins, with men and women separated.

Jara was in charge of the interrogations that took place in the basement of the Casino de Oficiales; when they returned, it was evident that the detainees had been victims of beatings or illegitimate coercion; the detainees themselves commented that they were subjected to electric shocks to their genitals, were hung, and were subjected to mock executions.

The Director of the School was Manuel Contreras; Vittorio Orvietto was the School doctor and, on some occasions, he went to the prisoner camp when required; Nelson Valdés was an Investigaciones official and it was said that he participated in the interrogations; Klaudio Kosiel was a Captain and Commander of the 2nd Company.

He recalls that there were nurses in the camp: Second Lieutenant Marta Bravo and Balbina León, and it is likely that they were present during the interrogations. He is almost certain that Bacciarini, Rojo, Jiménez, and Álvarez were detained there in transit, but they died when they were being transferred to Bucalemu and apparently tried to escape.

He remembers, among the female detainees, Rebeca Espinoza: “very pleasant, good at conversation… she was released, at least that is what the decree said, this must have been shortly before closing the detention camp…”.

He adds (516) that she remained detained for two or three months; at the beginning, she was severely tortured; upon being released, they made her sign a statement regarding being in good condition; she was put on a truck between March or April.

The deponent did not participate in the tortures that were carried out in the basement of the Casino de Oficiales, where Major Jara worked, and an Investigaciones official, surnamed Valdés, also participated in the interrogations; a detainee told him that he had recognized Lieutenant Quintana as one of his torturers.

The detainees returned from interrogations with signs of having been tortured; the nurses in the Red Cross tent were in charge of assessing the severity of the injuries and “when they considered it convenient, they personally called the doctor Vittorio Orvietto, who would come to see the detainees in the camp.

I happened to see him several times; I remember that this man, as a strategy so that they would not recognize him by his voice, would make me ask the detainees about their ailments.” 49) Testimony of Gladys de las Mercedes Calderón Carreño (1575) regarding having completed an Army nursing course in 1972, and on September 11, 1973, she was assigned, along with Balbina León, Mónica Manríquez, Pilar González, and Marta Bravo, to the Regimiento de Tejas Verdes, under the charge of the doctor Orvietto.

At the beginning, they attended to the conscripts, but later, in a field infirmary, to the detainees; she remembers having attended to some who had cigarette burns on their arms; they did not have access to the place where they were interrogated, but upon attending to them, they realized that they were “mistreated, as they arrived in very poor physical condition...

Doctor Orvietto also attended to detainees... I know that some of the detainees were subjected to electric shocks, since the same military personnel who brought them to be attended to told us not to give them water because they had been subjected to electric shocks...”.

Source: Judiciary, July 14, 2008

Marta Bravo Reyes: DINA Nurse

Marta Bravo Reyes appears on the list of DINA agents published by Cambio 21 in April 2012. As has been established, at the end of 2007, the Army took on the task of compiling, for the first time, a list of officers and non-commissioned officers who were part of the DINA.

The task was recorded in a "secret" document, dated August 28, 2008, signed by the then Chief of the Army General Staff, General Alfredo Ewing Pinochet. This document contains the list of officers and non-commissioned officers who "carried out extra-institutional missions in the Army General Command, assigned to the DINA, between September 11, 1973, and December 1977." The list of agents also reveals that the DINA existed from September 11, 1973.

The document remained hidden until 2012.

Source: Cambio 21