The Supreme Court confirmed the first-instance sentence that condemned the official of the Policía de Investigaciones (PDI) at the time of the events, José Gilberto Galdames Albistur, to a penalty of 5 years and one day of imprisonment, as the perpetrator of the consummated crime of qualified homicide of Raúl Jaime Olivares Jorquera, a crime committed in August 1975, in the commune of Ñuñoa.

In a unanimous ruling (case file 22.379-2019), the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed of ministers Haroldo Brito, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Jorge Dahm, Leopoldo Llanos, and minister María Teresa Letelier—accepted the appeals for cassation on the merits filed by the plaintiffs and, in a replacement sentence, established an error of law in the appealed sentence, issued by the Third Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals, which, by applying the loophole of "half-prescription" (statute of limitations reduction), reduced the first-instance sentence and, furthermore, rejected the claim for moral damages filed by the victim's relatives.

Cuartel Zañartu

On August 1, 1975, Raúl Jaime Olivares Jorquera, 25 years old, a socialist militant of the "Elenos" faction, which operated clandestinely, was detained by agents of the Investigative Brigade of Assaults of the Policía de Investigaciones (PDI). The detention was carried out in an operation conducted for that purpose outside the Cine California located on Calle Irarrázaval in the commune of Ñuñoa.

Raúl Olivares Jorquera was intensely sought by the PDI due to his participation in actions intended to finance resistance activities against the dictatorship through assaults on banking entities. Upon being surprised by the capture operation, Olivares Jorquera attempted to flee but was pursued by his captors, who managed to reach and detain him despite the tenacious resistance offered by the detainee, which resulted in him receiving a brutal beating by the PDI officers.

Once subdued, the police officials placed him in a police vehicle and transported him to their barracks at Calle Zañartu No. 1728 in the same commune of Ñuñoa.

At the police unit, his entry as a detainee was recorded, and he was placed in a cell without receiving any medical attention despite the severe and evident injuries the detainee presented. On the contrary, he was subjected to intense interrogations and torture by the agents of the Assault Brigade.

Once the captors' desire for torture was satisfied, they apparently left him in the same cell, where hours later he was found dead. The mandatory autopsy demonstrated that he had been poisoned.

In the first-instance sentence issued in November 2017, the extraordinary visiting judge Mario Carroza only sentenced the PDI officer José Galdames Albistur to the penalty of five years and 1 day as the perpetrator of the crime of qualified homicide and acquitted two other accused officers (Nelson Byron Víctor Lillo Merodio and Omar Segundo del Carmen Vega Vargas).

Another PDI officer implicated and accused in the crime (Gabriel Antonio Bravo Serrá) passed away during the course of the proceedings.

Later, in June 2019, the Third Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals reduced the sentence of the only convicted person to only three years of imprisonment. Against this resolution, the plaintiffs filed appeals for cassation on form and on the merits before the Supreme Court, an instance that now corrects the errors of the capital's court ruling and, furthermore, restores the compensation for moral damages to the relatives.

by Darío Núñez

Source: resumen.cl, October 20, 2022