Supreme Court rejects cassation appeal and upholds conviction of FACH personnel for torture of political prisoners at El Bosque Air Base.

The highest court ruled out any error of law in the sentence that condemned Renato del Campo Santelices and Manuel Cabezas Pérez to 5 years and one day in prison for their responsibility as perpetrators of the acts.

The Supreme Court rejected a cassation appeal against the sentence that convicted four retired members of the Chilean Air Force for the application of torture against worker Patricio Rivera Cornejo and student Daniel Pavez Casanova, which occurred between September and October 1973 at the El Bosque Air Base.

Meanwhile, Enrique Cartagena Maldonado and Leopoldo Zamora Maldonado must serve a 4-year prison sentence, with the benefit of supervised release, for their responsibility in the same crimes. The ruling maintains that, regarding the substantive challenge formulated by the defense of the accused Gastón Del Campo Santelices, Manuel Del Carmen Cabezas Pérez, Eduardo Enrique Cartagena Maldonado, and Leopoldo Zamora Maldonado, it must be pointed out that the facts of participation declared by the judgment conflict with those stated in the appeal, and it has been claimed that the laws governing evidence were violated in their establishment. However, the error of the brief is that the cited provisions do not satisfy the intended purpose. Indeed, and in relation to the infringement of Article 488 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, although the section of the precept that acts as a rule governing evidence is alluded to—numbering 1° and 2°, first part—strictly speaking, the reading of the appeal does not demonstrate the imputation of having violated such a provision, since it only raises a discrepancy regarding the assessment that the ruling confers on the elements of conviction gathered and related in the sentence, according to which the intervention of their clients in the events was deemed proven, disagreeing only with its conclusions, a matter foreign to this appeal of a substantive nature. Finally, and regarding Article 456 bis of the same body of rules, it is necessary to point out that said precept refers to the conviction that the Judge must have in order to convict, which does not oblige them to evaluate the evidence performed in the way the appellant requires, since the judge, by virtue of the law, has a wide margin to estimate or dismiss them in their activity of evaluating those means, so the alleged violation could hardly be configured. The investigation by the minister visiting human rights cases, Mario Carroza, established: 1° That the complainant, Patricio Mario Rivera Cornejo, at the time of the events, was a militant in the Socialist Party and worked at MADECO, belonging to the Cordón San Miguel, an organization that coordinated workers, residents, and students for the defense of the Allende Government and organized the distribution of food. That on September 19, 1973, at night, while he was at his home in the commune of San Miguel in the company of another socialist militant, personnel from the 12th Carabineros precinct arrived, heavily armed, who entered violently and arrested him. Upon searching the house, they found weaponry; he was subdued and mistreated while being interrogated, subjected to a mock execution, and transferred to the police unit, from where, in the early hours of the morning, he was taken to the El Bosque Air Base by personnel of that institution and confined in a gymnasium, being subjected to interrogations with electricity on his genitals and tongue. In particular, they caused marks by tracing the sign of the Unidad Popular on his back with a yatagan, in addition to several mock executions. That, in this place, he is not in a condition to recognize any person given that they were always blindfolded. That the prisoners were lying on the floor of the gymnasium and, on some occasions, tied to the bars. After 10 days, he was taken to the Estadio Nacional, where he was also tortured and witnessed the execution of other detainees. That, subjected to a War Council, he was convicted and finally expelled from the country. 2° That Ramón Daniel Pavez Casanova was arrested without any judicial or administrative order justifying his deprivation of liberty on public roads in downtown Santiago, given his militancy as a leader in the revolutionary student front of the Commercial High School No. [number missing], on October 18, 1973, at the moment he was meeting with a person who would serve as a liaison to deliver documents to a comrade. He was taken blindfolded to the Ministry of Defense, where he was interrogated through beatings, and from there transported at night, also blindfolded, in an Air Force truck to an unknown place where they received him with beatings, later realizing that it was a gymnasium inside the El Bosque Air Base, where other detainees were found, remaining in that place for around a week to 10 days, subjected to interrogation sessions and torture through the use of electricity and beatings on his body, without being able to identify the perpetrators since he was always blindfolded. 3° That the Chilean Air Force had secret detention centers after September 11, 1973, with one of them located inside the El Bosque Air Base, specifically in a Hangar or Gymnasium inside the School of Specialties, also using it as an interrogation and torture center for the detainees, who were in those conditions in the absence of a judicial or administrative decree that justified their deprivation of liberty. To take charge of the detainees, there was a general staff that advised on intelligence work, in charge of a high-ranking officer of the institution, upon whom the different departments and the fulfillment of the objectives depended. The members were personnel from the School of Specialties and the Intelligence Department of the Air Base. (sic) In the civil aspect, the State was ordered to pay compensation of $40,000,000 to each of the victims.

Source: pdju.cl, November 11, 2021