The former officer is serving a life sentence for this crime, which was carried out a year and a half after the assassination of the union leader—which occurred in February 1982—for the purpose of hiding the perpetrators of the homicide.

Other individuals sentenced to life imprisonment in this case include retired Army Major Carlos Herrera Jiménez and retired Carabineros non-commissioned officer Armando Cabrera Aguilar . The civilian attached to the

CNI

, Osvaldo Pincetti , alias "Doctor Tormento," received a ten-year prison sentence. However, the case was reopened to investigate the responsibilities of Brigadier Roberto Schmied and Hugo Alarcón Vergara .

The former was dismissed, while the latter was indicted as an alleged accomplice in the murder of Alegría. Until April 23, Judge Muñoz will jointly conduct the evidentiary phases for the crimes against the former president of the ANEF and the carpenter who resided in Valparaíso.

On another note, the Sixth Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals will be in charge of resolving the procedural conflict that arose between judges Sergio Muñoz and Hugo Dolmestch, following the consolidation of cases involving the CNI under the former's jurisdiction.

These cases involve the death of 12 FPMR militants in Operación Albania , the assassination of four opponents of the military regime in 1986—following the attack on Pinochet, a process titled under the name of José Carrasco—and the disappearance of five communist militants in 1987.

The consolidation of the cases, which would form a single trial, was placed in the hands of Muñoz after he unilaterally decided to invoke the principle of consolidation, which prevents two judges from processing a case involving the same defendants.

The chamber has already ruled on this judicial episode, confirming that Muñoz must oversee the proceedings. However, the special visiting judge Hugo Dolmestch requested, via a written motion, that the Supreme Court review the ruling of the appellate court, based on the fact that jurisdiction over these three cases had been delegated to him by that same court.

The unification of the cases was requested by Corbalán's defense, as it would allow him to receive a single sentence, presumably a life sentence, of 20 or 40 years.

Source: Primera Linea, April 18

Supreme Court confirms life sentences for Alvaro Corbalán and Armando Cabrera

The Supreme Court confirmed today the life sentences against the operational chief of the

CNI

, Alvaro Corbalán Castilla, and Armando Cabrera Aguilar , for the murder of the carpenter Juan Alegría Mundaca . This follows the decision by the Second Criminal Chamber of the country's highest court to declare inadmissible the cassation appeals filed on behalf of retired Major Alvaro Corbalán, Armando Cabrera, and Osvaldo Pincetti.

Regarding retired Major Carlos Herrera Jiménez, the Court accepted for processing the cassation appeal filed by his defense to be analyzed in the coming weeks. Although new evidence could emerge during the review of Herrera Jiménez's case, the plaintiff's lawyer, Jorge Mario Saavedra, noted that it is "practically improbable" that the judicial situation of Corbalán Castilla will change, as he is, according to the case file, the material author of the homicide of Alegría Mundaca.

On July 19, the Seventh Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals sentenced retired Majors Alvaro Corbalán and Carlos Herrera, and former Carabineros non-commissioned officer Armando Cabrera, to life imprisonment; and Osvaldo Pincetti to ten years in prison, for the qualified homicide of the carpenter Juan Alegría Mundaca.

The death of the carpenter occurred in June 1983 and was investigated as a crime connected to the assassination of the union leader, Tucapel Jiménez, revealing that it was an operation to cover up the murder of the former president of the ANEF, which occurred in February 1982.

In addition to being accused of the homicide of the carpenter Juan Alegría Mundaca , Alvaro Corbalán is being prosecuted for " Operación Albania ," where twelve members of the FPMR fell, and for the assassinations of the journalist José Carrasco , the publicist Abraham Muskablit , the painter Felipe Rivera , and the architect Gastón Vidaurrázaga , which occurred on September 8, 1986, after the attack against Pinochet .

He was also prosecuted for the bankruptcy of the transport company " Santa Bárbara " and was linked to the death of Aurelio Sichel in the " La Cutufa " case.

Source: El Mercurio, October 11, 2000

Crime wears a military uniform: The Tucapel Jiménez case, the truth draws near

Before the end of the year, there should be a first-instance verdict in the trial for the assassination of the president of the National Association of Fiscal Employees (ANEF), Tucapel Francisco Jiménez Alfaro, which occurred on February 25, 1982.

This will allow for the conclusion of a difficult 18-year process and clarify one of the crimes that shocked the most diverse sectors of society. His kidnappers were brutal. After shooting him, they slit his throat, and more than a year later, the corpse of a modest carpenter, Juan Alegría Mundaca, appeared in Valparaíso, leaving behind a note blaming himself for the union leader's murder.

The staging of this supposed suicide was as cruel and grotesque as the crime it sought to cover up. After 17 years of judicial darkness, during which the investigation into these events led by visiting judge Sergio Valenzuela Patiño remained stagnant, the truth is very close.

In little more than a year, the special judge who replaced him, Sergio Muñoz, clarified and issued a sentence for the murder of Alegría Mundaca, which was confirmed in the second instance by the Santiago Court of Appeals: life imprisonment for Alvaro Corbalán, a retired Army major and former operational director of the CNI; former Major Carlos Herrera Jiménez (alias "Bocaccio"); and non-commissioned officer Armando Cabrera Aguilar ("Viejo Charlie").

The Tucapel Jiménez case, with fifteen defendants who mostly belonged to the DINE (Army Intelligence Directorate), is practically clarified. Only two or three names of high-ranking former military officers could be added to the list of those responsible, among whom could be an active-duty general and, even, Augusto Pinochet.

The sentence against Alvaro Corbalán—in the first and second instance—is the highest applied to a member of the Armed Forces for human rights violations. And, until now, retired Lieutenant General Humberto Gordon, former director of the CNI, member of the military junta, and "right-hand man" of Pinochet, who died on June 15 of this year, was the highest-ranking military officer preventively detained and prosecuted as an accomplice for the union leader's homicide.

A PEACEFUL MAN

"My father would have lived to be a hundred, because his sisters are in their 90s and are doing very well," says engineer Tucapel Jiménez Fuentes, the youngest of the three children of the former ANEF leader and his wife, Haydée Fuentes, who passed away on June 15, a date that curiously coincided with the death of Gordon. "I will never understand why they killed him.

All his life he was a peaceful, transparent person... and he had friends in all sectors, among the military and among the communists," he adds. He was 19 years old at the time and remembers him as cheerful and affectionate with the family.

At 17, Tucapel Jiménez had started working as a loader in gold washings and shortly after was elected a union leader. "His career is admirable, because from the lowest position he reached the head of the Budget office, and on one occasion they even offered him the position of director of Dirinco, but he did not accept," his son comments.

It was in that state department that Jorge Mario Saavedra, the lawyer who has represented the family throughout the judicial process, met him. "I was president of the Dirinco employees' association and he presided over the ANEF," he notes. "He was extremely loyal to his colleagues and a very unique radical, because first and foremost he was a leader of his union.

Many times the party would tell him he had to do such and such, and he would just laugh." Saavedra remembers that when the Radical Party split during the Unidad Popular government—one wing moved to the opposition—Tucapel Jiménez remained in the traditional sector "although he moved a little closer to the PIR (Left Radical Party), where Luis Bossay, Alberto Baltra, and René Abeliuk were." The truth is that at that time his relationship with his party was conflictive, and in the first stage after the coup, he held a position of rapprochement with the military dictatorship.

The most debated issue was his participation in an ILO meeting in Geneva. "He refused to go, but in the end, he agreed because the military asked him to as a favor and promised him several benefits for fiscal workers," explains Jiménez Fuentes. "When he returned, he realized he had been deceived, and then he distanced himself from the dictatorship." Jiménez Alfaro was dismissed from Dirinco in 1981, a year before his assassination. "With his severance pay, he bought a Datsun taxi, but he didn't work it much because he spent almost every day at the ANEF," his son says. "At that time, he started receiving his pension and our family income dropped."

TRAITOR TO THE HOMELAND?

At the beginning of the 80s, social and political resistance against the dictatorship began to manifest more openly in the streets, while representatives of opposition parties formed the Group of Ten with the goal of achieving a negotiated exit for the military.

There was Tucapel Jiménez, making efforts to try to group workers into a single organization that, among other things, would carry out a national strike. In statements to the press, the president of the ANEF alluded to his good contacts with the AFL-CIO, an organization created by the United States, to support an international boycott that involved not unloading Chilean ships in foreign ports.

In Judge Muñoz's files, Pinochet's angry response is recorded, in which he stated that he would not accept anyone coming to "sow discord" and that for Jiménez "the doors of exile are open." That was a couple of days before his assassination.

Jorge Mario Saavedra adds another element: "We all knew that Lech Walesa, who at that time was destabilizing the socialist regime in Poland, was driving Pinochet crazy. It seemed terrifying to him that something similar could happen in Chile, and he saw a Walesa in Tucapel.

That's why he had such a phobia of him." But what in his opinion was decisive for the dictatorship to sentence the president of the ANEF to death was that his conversations and ties were exceeding the scope of the workers to expand to professional, technical... and military sectors.

According to the judicial investigation, three institutions intervened in the "Tucapel case": the Directorate of Civil Organizations, which depended on the Ministry General Secretariat of Government, through the National Secretariat of Guilds (SNG) presided over by Misael Galleguillos; the CNI, directed by General Humberto Gordon (1980-1986); and the DINE, whose director was General Ramsés Arturo Alvarez Scoglia. "A labor brigade that worked with the SNG began to work and obtain information on Jiménez," adds Saavedra. "Between this secretariat and the CNI, they made the union leader a public figure worthy of suffering reprisals from the military government. They followed him, they recorded his entire life. The CNI hired his junior—Julio Olivares Silva, now prosecuted—and paid him to inform them of all his steps. He was the son of a friend of Tucapel's wife, who was unemployed and to whom he had given work to help him." Two articles published in "La Nación" are part of the process, in which Tucapel Jiménez was described as a "traitor to the homeland." Their authors—one of them known by the pseudonym "Garlito"—were journalists who were part of a fascist-leaning political organization in gestation, the National Syndicalist Revolutionary Movement (MRNS) commanded by Misael Galleguillos. "Applying the concept of traitor to the homeland to someone under a military government is condemning them to death," concludes Jorge Mario Saavedra. The family was always aware of the danger. "We received constant threats, more or less from '78 to '82," says Tucapel Jr. "When my dad arrived, he would downplay the situation. 'Who is going to kill you?' he would comment, laughing. We got used to it; the threats were a kind of routine. But at the end of 1981, he gave me a cassette and told me to listen to it when he was no longer with us. I never thought it was a farewell. In it, he speaks to all of us, as a family group, and then to each one of us. He asks us to have peace of mind, says that he will be watching over us from the beyond. In the end, he says goodbye to the workers and his beloved ANEF. Although he didn't show it, he was more aware than anyone of the danger."

ASSASSINATION IN LAMPA

It is most likely that Tucapel Jiménez did not realize he was being followed when he left his house on the morning of February 25, 1982. Suddenly, an acquaintance of his appeared and made him stop his taxi.

It was the Carabineros officer Luis Pino Moreno, married to his niece. He participated in the plan concocted by a special group of the Army Intelligence Corps in the DINE, the current Intelligence Battalion, according to the judicial account.

Judge Muñoz describes that the stopping of Tucapel's taxi "is taken advantage of by at least three subjects to get into the (union leader's) car, who is forced to head along the Renca-Lampa road." He was followed by two other vehicles painted with the regulatory taxi colors and they made him park in an isolated area.

Then, the judge relates, "one of the subjects, acting surely and premeditatedly, proceeded to shoot Tucapel Jiménez five times in the head." The author of the shots was Carlos Herrera Jiménez. Immediately, the union leader's throat was slit.

When they found him, his body had three stab wounds in the cervical region. Before leaving the scene, the assassins "stole a taximeter, a flashlight, a wristwatch, a comb, and personal documents of the victim" to suggest an assault for robbery purposes.

ALEGRIA'S MISFORTUNE

The carpenter Juan Alegría Mundaca lived in Valparaíso, separated from his wife. He was an alcoholic and led such a marginal and lonely life in the Población O'Higgins of Playa Ancha that he could disappear for several days without anyone noticing.

His wife, Esmeralda Castillo Monárdez, had separated from him a year earlier and lived in Casablanca. He was the type of character the CNI was looking for to "close" the Tucapel case. "The horrific thing about this crime, and one of the reasons for the panic it sparked, is the malice with which they acted," points out Jorge Mario Saavedra. "Because after characterizing an ideal type of person who would serve them to cover up Tucapel's crime, Herrera Jiménez and Francisco Zúñiga (known as "el Gurka Zúñiga," now deceased) dressed as Carabineros and went out for two or three nights to the street to check people, until they found the right individual. They got Juan Alegría drunk, then took him to his house, where they hypnotized him so he would write the letter where he blamed himself for Tucapel's crime, and then they cut his wrists. The blood alcohol test showed he had 2.95 grams of alcohol per liter of blood; that is, he was in a catatonic state." The supposed suicide of Alegría was questioned from the very first moment. The cuts that bled him out were so large and deep—8 by 4 centimeters, according to the autopsy—with the severing of tendons, arteries, and veins, that it was impossible for him to have caused a wound of that magnitude on one wrist and, with the same hand, repeat the operation on the other.

JUDGES... AND JUDGES

The first eight years of the investigation under Valenzuela Patiño "were like being in the desert," says Saavedra. No one cooperated and there was no money to pay for the trial. "Later, Carlos Herrera went to Argentina (1991) and we had to follow him and investigate, because no one else was doing it," the lawyer adds. "Although the Investigations officials were correct, the same was not true of their director, former General Fernando Paredes.

When the Concertación came to government, they provided us with personnel, but we kept running into the apathy of Judge Valenzuela and the powerful defense team that to this day forces me to litigate every other day against 18 or 20 lawyers." After signing the complaint—there was another from the ANEF—Tucapel Jr. went to live in Sweden with his mother. "When I returned in 1995, the first thing I did was meet with Valenzuela Patiño and I concluded that the visiting judge had to be changed," he says. "He even told me that the process had him up to here (he touches his forehead).

Why didn't he disqualify himself, then? The only thing he was interested in was closing the case without culprits." Sergio Valenzuela has a son who belonged to the CNI, but young Tucapel prefers to think that his inoperability is due to the fact that "he is a bad judge and the process was too big for him." After several unsuccessful attempts, the change of judge was only achieved in 1999 with the support of the State Defense Council, which became a party to the process in 1996.

He finds it incredible "that a judge like Valenzuela Patiño continues in the courts making important decisions." With the same evidence in the possession of Valenzuela Patiño, Judge Sergio Muñoz issued the first-instance ruling in the Juan Alegría case, which was ratified unanimously by the Seventh Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals on July 19.

That is, life imprisonment for the authors: Alvaro Corbalán Castilla—who cut the carpenter's wrists, according to the testimonies collected in the judicial ruling—Carlos Herrera Jiménez, and Armando Cabrera Aguilar.

The latter two have another conviction on their record for the death of the Christian Democrat transporter Mario Fernández, which occurred on October 18, 1984. A fourth life sentence against Francisco Zúñiga was dismissed due to his death.

Osvaldo Pincetti Gac ("Doctor Tormento"), who hypnotized the victim, received a sentence as an accomplice of 10 years and one day. In addition, the judges accepted a proposal from the plaintiff's side and ordered an investigation into the possible participation as a cover-up agent of Roberto Schmied Zanzi, a former brigadier and former metropolitan chief of the CNI who is also being prosecuted in the Tucapel case, and Hugo Alarcón Vergara, Alvaro Corbalán's driver.

The convicted individuals filed a cassation appeal on which the Supreme Court must rule. "The second-instance sentence is very complete, so it seems difficult for it to be reversed," notes lawyer Saavedra. In his opinion, in the Tucapel Jiménez case, there should be a similar sentence. "These are qualified homicides with six or seven aggravating factors and no mitigating factors," he states.

THE EXECUTING ARM OF THE DINE

The Third Chamber of the Court of Appeals ratified on July 4 a resolution by Judge Muñoz that rendered seven indictments null and void. This decision favored Misael Galleguillos, former secretary general of the SGG; Valericio Orrego Salas, former president of the Ministry of Public Works workers; and five former CNI agents.

They are retired Lieutenant Colonel Raúl Descalsi Sporke—who appeared as an alleged author—Nelson Hernández Franco, Raúl Lillo Gutiérrez, Héctor Lira Aravena, and José Ramírez Romero, a former captain and former Carabineros non-commissioned officer, respectively.

In the process, the first two appeared linked to the initial investigation of the ANEF leader, and the other five to the surveillance prior to the assassination. Both the plaintiff's side and the CDE filed an appeal against this resolution, but it was rejected. "We believe they are involved and we are going to insist," says Saavedra.

Of the CNI, only the deputy director of the CNI, Roberto Schmied, and former agents Humberto Calderón Luna, Miguel Hernández Oyarce, and Julio Olivares Silva remain prosecuted. However, Sergio Muñoz chose to focus on the core, pointing to the material and intellectual authors of the assassination, who belonged to the DINE.

On June 21, he indicted non-commissioned officers José Cáceres and Humberto Olmedo as authors, and Juan Carlos Arriagada as an accomplice. On July 10, he did the same with the dentist Jorge León Alessandrini, who was in the DINE under the orders of Arriagada, accused of providing the Pasper .22 caliber revolver with which they killed the union leader.

Among those prosecuted are two former generals who were directors of the DINE: Ramsés Alvarez Scoglia (alleged author) and Hernán Ramírez Rurange (cover-up agent), who is accused of allowing Carlos Herrera's departure to Argentina in 1991 to evade the action of justice.

Also listed as authors are the former DINE commander, retired Brigadier Víctor Pinto Pérez, Manuel Contreras Donaire, and Leonardo Quilodrán. In addition, Galvarino Ancavil Hernández, a former CNI agent, who supposedly lives in France.

Between now and the end of the year, an active-duty general could be prosecuted as an accomplice, an event that would happen for the first time. According to the electronic newspaper "El Mostrador," it would be Hernán Ramírez Hald, chief of the Army's Military Industry and Engineering Command (CIMI) and former deputy director of the War Academy.

Alessandrini and Arriagada were under his command at the time of the assassination. Diligences involving Pinochet are not ruled out either; the special judge sent him a request when he was detained in London, which the former dictator did not answer "for not having files within his reach." Carlos Herrera Jiménez, the alleged author of the shots, provided services in the CNI, where he acquired fame as an executioner.

However, two months before the assassination of Tucapel Jiménez, between November and December 1981, he was transferred to the DINE and only returned to the CNI after the crime occurred, at the end of March or the beginning of April 1982.

That is, he participated in the homicide under the orders of Alvarez Scoglia, a military officer known for his impetuous and "dim-witted" character, who was making merits to look good before Pinochet. Aware of these facts, Jorge Mario Saavedra declared that "the army hid information or lied, because in the file there are two official letters from that institution that say that Herrera belonged to the CNI at the date of the crime."

MUTUAL DISLOYALTIES

As the truth approaches, the much-touted loyalty among the uniformed officers tends to crack. Before dying, Gordon provided information to Judge Muñoz to divert responsibility from the CNI toward the DINE.

Among these, a photo of who, in his opinion, was the material author of the union leader's assassination—non-commissioned officer Manuel Contreras Donaire—and a list with twelve names, headed by Arturo Ramsés Alvarez and Carlos Herrera Jiménez.

After his death, Gordon's lawyer gave the judge other documents that ratified what he already knew: that Herrera Jiménez was in the DINE at the time of the homicide. Alvaro Corbalán, currently detained at the Army's Technical Support Command, was always very close to Gordon.

The loyalty cracked on another side: the most decisive testimony against him for the murder of Alegría was that of Patricio Roa Caballero, his subordinate. In turn, according to the ruling, Corbalán told the wife of Alegría Mundaca on one occasion that they were "pinning" something on him that he hadn't done, and blamed Herrera and Pincetti.

And Carlos Herrera, detained in Punta Peuco, declared to La Tercera on September 11: "I feel that I am assuming more responsibilities than those that correspond to me." And he opined that since in 1982 he was only a captain following orders, "the high command of the Armed Forces and, very particularly, the army" must "assume criminal responsibility (...) for the orders they gave or failed to give." Tucapel Jiménez Jr. is calm.

He expects the maximum penalty for the assassins, "which for me is life imprisonment, because I am not a supporter of the death penalty." He still hasn't recovered from the pain of his mother's passing after several months of battling cancer. "I kept her up to date on everything that was happening.

Three days before she died, she told me that she wasn't going to live to see the culprits of my father's assassination in prison. I told her to rest easy, 'the process is clarified and those responsible are going to pay in jail, if not this year, then the next.' It was the last time we talked. And I told her the truth."

Source: PuntoFinal, October 6, 2000

Huber Case: kidnapping of former CNI agent accredited

The minister in visitation Claudio Pavez, who is investigating the case regarding the homicide of Army Colonel Gerardo Huber, established during the proceedings that the former CNI agent and retired Carabineros non-commissioned officer Armando Cabrera Aguilar was kidnapped in the early 90s by agents of the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE) in order to remove him from Chile and hide him in Argentina, an attempt that did not succeed.

This confirms what the former officer, convicted for the crime against the carpenter Juan Alegría Mundaca, declared to Pavez several weeks ago, as well as in a 2004 interview with the now-defunct magazine “Siete + 7”.

The confession comes from an officer of the DINE Special Unit, who testified last Wednesday. The latter was driving the car in which Cabrera was traveling to the south of the country, through one of whose passes he was to leave clandestinely for the neighboring country.

La Nación is withholding the identity of this military officer to protect the upcoming proceedings to be carried out by the magistrate.

This revelation is important to the judge because he is convinced that Huber was going to be taken out of the country to prevent him from collaborating with the investigation opened in 1991 into the illegal arms trafficking to Croatia, which was overseen by Minister Hernán Correa de la Cerda.

At the end of that year, Huber was the head of foreign acquisitions for the Army's Logistics Directorate. In that capacity, he was involved in the arms trafficking that occurred in December of that year.

In 1992, Correa de la Cerda issued a travel ban against him. He testified before this magistrate for the first time in January 1992 and disappeared that same month; he was found dead at the end of February in the bed of the Maipo River.

The second part

The confession of Cabrera Aguilar has a second part, in which he asserts that in the mid-90s, he met with a lawyer from the Army General Auditor's Office, René Alegría Rojas, and the former CNI agent Iván Cifuentes, who is now deceased. In that meeting, Cifuentes allegedly acknowledged that a special group had assassinated Huber with a high-powered rifle.

Pavez interrogated Alegría a few days ago, who denied having heard that version. But the magistrate does not believe his statements, because nearly three months ago, Alegría Rojas was accompanying military personnel to testify before Pavez, knowing that he was indirectly involved in the events. For this reason, the Army decided to remove him from the case and assign him to other duties.

Alegría Rojas is also mentioned in the Tucapel Jiménez case. On March 7, 1990, just before the government of Patricio Aylwin took office, he went to the Civil Registry to retrieve CNI documentation.

Alegría is not a newcomer to these types of cases: at the time of Huber's death, he worked in the DINE Legal Division.

Now that the minister has established these facts, it is very likely that he will summon the person who was the head of the DINE in 1991, retired General Hernán Ramírez Rurange, as well as the head of the Special Unit, retired Major Arturo Silva Valdés.

Source: La Nación, January 3, 2006

Crime of Victor Hugo Huerta: Confessed and confessors

This Wednesday, the scene reconstruction for the assassination of communist militant Víctor Hugo Huerta Beiza was carried out in Concepción. The crime was committed on November 3, 1983, by agents of the CNI, the abhorrent repressive apparatus of the Pinochet dictatorship.

Huerta Beiza was a 52-year-old from Concepción, a street vendor who remained active in clandestine political tasks for his collective. Since weeks before his death, he had expressed his concern about apparent surveillance and tracking activities directed at him by individuals suspected of acting in the regime's repressive agencies; as a result of this situation, he had his family leave Concepción temporarily, trying to prevent any misfortune from befalling them.

However, he could not prevent the criminal claws of the professionals of crime from falling upon him. He was kidnapped as he was getting out of a taxi by a group of individuals. The kidnappers took him to the CNI Regional Brigade barracks located on Calle Pedro de Valdivia, where he was subjected to the usual and brutal torture, something to which these repressive apparatuses were addicted and specialized.

On the night of November 3, he was murdered on Calle Sanders, in the vicinity of the aforementioned barracks. Strictly speaking, he was executed and riddled with bullets; they inflicted twelve bullet wounds, all 9mm caliber, one of which was a shot fired at close range, that is, an execution.

As was also customary during the tyrant's regime, the criminals staged the well-known setup to make the crime appear as a confrontation.

Never too late

The truth has taken almost 29 years to prevail. Not to appear, because for the oppressed and silent people, for the family and friends, for the comrades and resistors, it was always clear that it was a vile and cowardly crime.

But the hypocritical society and the blind justice are the ones that have taken so long to accept and recognize the undeniable. It is necessary to mention that the case had been dismissed by the "brown" justice of the dictatorial era; it was only reopened in recent years, falling under the duties of the Minister in Extraordinary Visitation for human rights cases of the Court of Appeals of Concepción, Mr.

Carlos Aldana.

It is no coincidence that three of the main defendants in the crime had to be brought directly from the Punta Peuco penitentiary facility, where they are serving sentences for countless human rights crimes, that is, for countless murders committed during the opprobrious dictatorship.

Those same three individuals, also in '83, came expressly from Santiago and Valparaíso to commit their crime, as they were part of the special units that the CNI had prepared for extermination purposes. The rest of the dozen agents who had to attend the judicial proceeding were part of the personnel that made up the local or regional staff of the CNI.

The visits from Punta Peuco

During the judicial process and, according to statements by Minister Carlos Aldana who is investigating the case, and which became even clearer during this Wednesday's proceeding, the individual named Carlos Alberto Fernando Herrera Jiménez, who at the time of the events was an army captain on extraordinary service commission with the CNI, has been identified and has confessed to the crime.

Herrera Jiménez, alias “Bocaccio” or “Don Mauro,” using the cover names Marcos Belmar Oyarce or Mario Bravo Oyarzún, head of the Condor Brigade in the CNI, is the same individual who executed the president of the ANEF, Tucapel Jiménez, in February '82, and the carpenter Juan Alegría Mundaca, in June '83, among other crimes that keep him imprisoned in Punta Peuco.

As co-authors of the crime, the hierarchical superior of “Bocaccio,” the major criminal of the eighties, Álvaro Julio Federico Corbalán Castilla, alias “Don Juan” or “Pharaoh,” using the cover name Álvaro Valenzuela Torres, head of the CNI's anti-subversive division, who was an army major at the time and is currently serving a life sentence in Punta Peuco, are being prosecuted.

The other defendant is Armando Edmundo Cabrera Aguilar, alias “Charly,” using the cover name Miguel Escobar Sanguinetti, a Carabineros sergeant at the time. The specialty of this lackey was being willing material to commit whatever crime or offense his bosses ordered.

This was a rank-and-file subject who played his role as an exterminator with complete willingness. Today, like his bosses, he is serving a sentence in Punta Peuco, of course in the penal facilities intended for the rank-and-file, separated from the exclusive facilities of the criminal officers.

Other suspects and potential defendants for this crime could not be charged due to having passed away. At least these three did not escape the late earthly justice.

Source: Resumen.cl, June 21, 2012

Piñera also deceived us

Álvaro Corbalán, José Zara, Eduardo Iturriaga, and Carlos Herrera, all former members of Pinochet's secret police, are demanding rights to prison benefits and assert that “we were the armed wing of the right and now they despise us.” Zara, known for his phrase about "hardened daggers," requested a pardon. Piñera denied it to him.

"We human rights violators have become the lepers of the new Chilean society, whom few want to recognize or help." This is how Carlos Herrera Jiménez, a retired Army major who has been detained for 23 years in various prisons, currently in the Punta Peuco prison—a facility built especially to house military personnel convicted of human rights crimes—refers to his current situation.

He was found guilty, among other cases, of the death of the opposition union leader Tucapel Jiménez in 1982.

This and other strong statements made by him and by the also-convicted military officers Jorge Iturriaga Neumann, Álvaro Corbalán Castilla (convicted for the Corpus Christi crimes and other murders), and José Zara Holger (the one with the famous phrase about hardened daggers, convicted for the crime against General Carlos Prats) can be read exclusively in the third edition of the weekly Cambio21, which went on sale at newsstands across the country.

Our director was exclusively at the prison built especially for human rights violators in the commune of Til Til, and they told him that the President of the Republic deceived them with his campaign promises, where he offered special laws and "point final" (statute of limitations) laws to the so-called "military family."

Retired General Eduardo Iturriaga, accused of participating in the crime against the Army Commander-in-Chief Carlos Prats and his wife, says that "with our votes, Piñera was elected president." He added that in the next election, they will call for not voting for "this government as long as our problems are not solved." He indicated that they do not rule out starting a hunger strike.

Herrera Jiménez says that "we were the armed wing of the right to reach power" and "now they despise us," and they are announcing actions to claim what they consider their rights.

Other reports that you can read in the new issue of Cambio21 are, among others, the "Karadimazo" of the Ursuline nuns, with the dismissal and transfer to Germany—for reasons not entirely clear—of their eternal superior; an interview with Senator Isabel Allende, where she speaks of her deep pain for the death of her son and national current events; and the fights between the titans of politics with an eye toward the 2013 senatorial elections.

We also learned about the Chilean "discolandia" national team, the rebel politicians, and what they play...

We also tried to elucidate who will own the nuclear energy business in Chile, and we undertook the desperate search for what was the think tank of the Piñera campaign, which no one knows where it is. Because, does anyone know what happened to the Tantaucos?

The confessed author of the crime against Tucapel Jiménez and the carpenter Juan Alegría, retired Major Carlos Herrera Jiménez, requested a pardon from Piñera. They have not yet responded to him. José Zara also requested it. They already told him no.

Read the text of the pardon request

In the main: I request a Particular Pardon; First subsidy: Reduction of sentence; Second subsidy: Commutation of sentence; Third subsidy: Relegation.

First motion: I request a Particular Pardon for a Non-Commissioned Officer.

Second motion: Power of Attorney

Most Excellent Mr. President of the Republic, Mr. Sebastián Piñera Echeñique

Carlos Alberto Fernando Herrera Jiménez, RUN No. 6.119.621-8, retired Army major, fifty-nine years of age, native of Quillota, married; currently in the Punta Peuco prison, commune of Til-Til, serving a sentence of Life Imprisonment for my responsibility in the events investigated in the accumulated cases Roll No. 1.643 and 1.643 bis, respectfully, to the Most Excellent Mr. President, I say:

I was sentenced by a judgment dated March 9, 2004, Roll No. 3231-03 of the Most Excellent Supreme Court, to suffer the unified penalty of life imprisonment for the crimes of qualified homicide, against the persons of Tucapel Jiménez Alfaro and Juan Alberto Alegría Mundaca, with the sentence becoming final as of Wednesday, March 31, 2004.

Based on records that can be obtained from the Courts of Justice, the Army, the Investigative Police, and the Gendarmerie, it is evident that since Sunday, January 19, 1992, I have been imprisoned without interruption, after being arrested in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

I have never obtained provisional release, conditional release, or intra-penitentiary benefits. Prior to that date, I spent three years and seven months in preventive detention in units of the former CNI. In total, then, I have remained a little more than twenty-two years in prison, in Argentine prisons, Chilean prisons, and military units.

Furthermore, I am responsible for the acts of human rights transgressions for which I have been charged, with the exception of the "La Serena Transporter" case, in which, together with the retired Carabineros non-commissioned officer Mr.

Armando Cabrera Aguilar, we complied with the order of the Director of the former CNI, General (R.I.P.) Mr. Humberto Gordon Rubio, to self-incriminate, because as he said, "later on he would get us out of the problem." That never happened. He could not, or perhaps, he did not want to.

Emphatically and without ambiguity, I recognize my criminal responsibility in those unfortunate injustices. Certainly, I did not join the Army to be a murderer or executioner of my fellow citizens. Of course not.

I joined the Army in 1965, at fourteen years of age, after my conviction that this institution served the country effectively, as it is directed and formed by brave people of honor and vested with dignity, whom, for that same reason, it was necessary to obey without hesitation, just as the military ordinance still in force provides.

But, I was wrong. After distancing myself from the events, due to the time elapsed and the vicissitudes experienced regarding the problems derived from human rights, it became clear that my services rendered to the country were not precisely the best.

I recognize that what is stated in the preceding paragraph is of a supine naivety bordering on candor. But, it cannot be ignored that I am part of the youth of the sixties and early seventies, with ideologization and Manichaeism being our main characteristic. The young people of that time only had two positions to take; one way or another, we wanted to radically change the world.

Both contenders, it seems to me, were thoroughly wrong regarding our leaders and the way of carrying out the paradigms. Suddenly, those who were not with some were enemies of the others. Young people, spurred on by slogans and by older people, just as irresponsible or more so, in schools, universities, factories, in the countryside, in the city, and in military barracks, faced each other, some with words, others with verbal violence, others with weapons, and, in this way, we were led to the social disaster that a good part of Chilean society laments today.

I think that in those years, the world and Chile in particular, we lived in a state of generalized madness; I did not exempt myself from it. Due to the nature of the functions I performed in the security services of the military government, regrettably and as I have publicly recognized, the barrier between moral, immoral, and amoral became blurred for me; I agreed that to serve the interests of the fatherland, not looking at the means was legitimate, if that served to achieve the final purpose.

I was one of those who thought about the need for deep changes, with weapons, if the case arose. Furthermore, I was mistakenly convinced that the national intellectual elite was in the Chilean Armed Forces, as they were the last moral reserve of the fatherland and that their commanders were people of the highest intellectual, moral, and ethical level.

What else was I to think if the only information I received was imparted through the regular military channel?

At the end of the day, Mr. President, what is already an institution in our country prevailed: no one took responsibility for anything. The leaders of one side and the other did not assume, for a change, the responsibilities inherent to their positions.

It would seem to be a marked thing: in Chile, there is no will and courage to investigate first and, if the case arises, condemn later the leaderships, whatever they may be.

Indeed, just as in the past the General Secretariats of subversive terrorist movements, such as the MIR and the F.P.M.R., were not subjected to trial and much less condemned; today, with few exceptions, sailors, aviators, and police officers who at that time held subordinate ranks are judicially answering for what happened regarding human rights during the military government.

Generals and admirals of the time, in most cases, with qualified and prestigious teams of lawyers from the square in Santiago, have managed to evade the action of justice regarding the criminal responsibility that fell to them, for having been the ones who planned, created, and maintained a psychological climate within the institutions to exacerbate hatred against the "enemy" and issued the orders for the commission of the illicit acts that today have their subordinates in prison.

Definitely, no general or admiral from the time of the coup or military pronouncement answered for anything. No one among the generals now imprisoned in the Punta Peuco and Cordillera prisons had reached that rank by September 11, 1973. The most notorious of all, General Manuel Contreras, was only a lieutenant colonel. Curious.

The climate of hatred before and after September 11, 1973, made me lose my way in matters of human rights, despite knowing from the womb that killing is wrong, for we are born with that norm incorporated into our being.

Inexplicably at that time, young military men like me complied with orders that were illegal in origin, but converted into legal ones through a sustained and effective psychological action in which we were made to see that the "enemy" was every day stronger, more dangerous, more bloodthirsty, more treacherous, more dangerous for families and for our country.

The passage of time, the maturity acquired, and the weight of conscience made me understand that what was done previously by that path was a profound and misguided error.

The illicit will always be illicit, the immoral will also always be so, whatever the circumstances, and, never, ever, will the end justify the means.

My catharsis on the matter is captured in:

a) Some of my reflections on the problem of human rights were added to the books, "El bisel del espejo: mi ventana" (The Bevel of the Mirror: My Window) and "Culpabilidades y sanciones en crímenes contra los derechos humanos, otra clase de delitos" (Culpabilities and Sanctions in Crimes Against Human Rights, Another Kind of Crime), written by the well-known lawyer, Ms. Clara Szcsaranki Cerda.

b) My essay, written during the year 2006, entitled: "Derechos Humanos, Verdad Inconclusa. ¿Deuda Social?" (Human Rights, Inconclusive Truth. Social Debt?), which, among other places, is found in the Illustrious Court of Appeals of Santiago, marked as book AD Roll No. 1114-2007.

Based on this same document, I gave talks in this prison to the fourth and fifth-year law students of the University of Chile. It was also requested by the same chair, but at the Pontifical Catholic University, as a research text. Both events had wide press coverage at the time.

On Tuesday, December 26, 2006, the social worker, Ms. Claudia Reyes Guzmán, a Chilean and American citizen, doctor in Political Science at the University of Michigan, United States, visiting Chile and aware of the existence of the work, visited me in this prison and requested a copy of it.

A short time later, I received a complimentary letter from the chair of the doctorate program in Political Science at that university, thanking me for the work and informing me that it is reference material there.

The morning newspaper "El Mercurio," of Sunday, August 26, 2007, section "D," page 4, transcribed a passage from my work, and on pages 6 and 7, interviewed about the matter, former President Mr. Patricio Aylwin Azócar. He expressed agreement with my approaches.

In August 2003, the President of the Republic at the time, Mr. Ricardo Lagos Escobar, gave his speech regarding human rights matters via national broadcast, entitled "No hay mañana sin ayer" (There is no tomorrow without yesterday).

It states in chapter IV, numeral 3: "(...) At the same time, it will examine other situations of prisoners convicted of crimes of similar gravity in previous periods, who request the presidential pardon, provided that they have genuinely manifested their repentance, have already been in prison for a long time, and have recognized their crimes, cooperating with the truth and the Courts of Justice (...)".

Unfortunately, it was never carried out.

Mr. President, regarding the criminological variables (repentance, awareness of the crime, and the harm caused) that the authority weighs when studying the background of a prisoner who applies for benefits, I will transcribe the statements given on Saturday, July 31 of this year, to the morning newspaper "El Mercurio," magazine El Sábado, pages 16, 17, and 18, by Congressman Mr.

Tucapel Jiménez Fuentes, about me: "(...) President Lagos would have had more support if he had pardoned Herrera Jiménez. He did cooperate with the case, he did show repentance, and he did have cancer (...)".

It happens that the honorable congressman referred in this way, nothing more and nothing less, to the person who murdered his father. That moving statement is, without a doubt, an authentic and genuine gesture of reconciliation, which, for the good of our country, cannot and must not fall into a vacuum.

I have served a little more than twenty-two years in prison; I recognized my guilt in national and foreign publications; I provided all the collaboration possible to the courts, with a record of this in the respective files; I requested to be forgiven, publicly and privately, by the relatives of my victims; a good part of the period in which I have been imprisoned has been in national and Argentine prisons.

Positive justice has done its part.

I meet the requirements demanded in Law No. 18.050, which Sets Standards for the Granting of Particular Pardons. I ask for equality before the law for myself, just as in the governments of Mr. Patricio Aylwin Azócar and Mr.

Ricardo Lagos Escobar, who, in legitimate use of their presidential powers, pardoned two hundred and eighty-two people imprisoned for politically motivated crimes. For a better resolution by Your Excellency, I fulfill informing you that Eliseo Aballai González and Luis Enrique Quilodrán Muñoz, who benefited during the year 1994, are those who, from that group, remained in prison the longest: sixteen years and seven months each.

I have surpassed them by more than six years.

It is not my intention to make this request a Venezuelan soap opera. But, much to my regret, I have cancer. For this reason, I have been operated on more than four times, hospitalized as many times, with the obligation to periodically attend treatment and oncological control at the Military Hospital.

For the moment—God willing—the disease is controlled and, truly, I would not want to end my days in prison.

Finally, for my age, my illness, my wife, my four children, my four grandchildren, for all the time lost not being with my family, for all the important family events I could not attend—graduations of my children, marriage proposals, their weddings, births of my grandchildren, operations of my wife and my mother who is still alive, funerals of relatives, etc.—Your Excellency can have the absolute certainty that in the event of granting me the grace of a particular pardon, I will only dedicate myself to taking care of the trees on my five-thousand-square-meter plot located in the commune of greater Santiago, to developing my hobby of amateur radio, and to spoiling my four grandchildren.

Therefore: In accordance with what is indicated by Law No. 18.050, which Sets Standards for the Granting of Particular Pardons, I ask the Most Excellent Mr. President of the Republic, Mr. Sebastián Piñera Echeñique, to be pleased to grant me the grace of a particular pardon, keeping in mind the long time of imprisonment served; the criminological variables that could influence my person are, with facts and not words, totally and absolutely overcome; the serious or terminal illness that afflicts me, and the good disposition in this regard manifested by the next of kin of Mr.

Tucapel Jiménez Alfaro.

In second subsidy; the commutation of the sentence, for the remainder of it under the supervision of the Local Patronage of Prisoners. In third subsidy, to be relegated to the Metropolitan Region, province of Melipilla, for a determined number of years.

I ask Your Excellency to take note of what has been stated and to grant what has been requested.

First motion: In advance, I offer apologies to the President for the liberty I will allow myself. But, out of a duty of conscience and minimal loyalty that my superiors never had with me, I would like to advocate and ask for your clemency for the retired Carabineros non-commissioned officer Mr.

Armando Edmundo Cabrera Aguilar, also imprisoned in this prison and serving a sentence in case Roll No. 1.643 bis, regarding the Homicide of Mr. Juan Alegría Mundaca. Retired non-commissioned officer Cabrera was a loyal subordinate of mine; he is a man of very little education—sixth grade of primary school—seventy-two years of age.

He also suffers from terminal stomach cancer of the heart and is asthmatic. The life expectations of this person are not promising. Despite this, he has the commendable merit of having kept his family united, together with him, throughout all these bleak years.

In the same way, he has served more than eighteen years in prison, always for crimes related to human rights violations.

Therefore: I ask the Most Excellent Mr. President of the Republic, Mr. Sebastián Piñera Echeñique, to be pleased to grant the grace of a particular pardon to Mr. Armando Edmundo Cabrera Aguilar, keeping in mind the long time of imprisonment served; the criminological variables that could influence his person are totally and absolutely overcome; and the terminal illness that afflicts him.

If the granting of such grace is not possible, I ask in first subsidy for a reduction of his sentence, setting as a single and maximum penalty the amount of eighteen years of effective imprisonment. In second subsidy; the commutation of the sentence, for the remainder of it under the supervision of the Local Patronage of Prisoners.

In third subsidy, to be relegated to the Valparaíso Region, province of Viña del Mar, for a determined number of years.

I pray Your Excellency to grant the Particular Pardon to the retired Carabineros non-commissioned officer Cabrera.

Third motion: For the purposes of the processing of these particular pardons, I grant POWER OF ATTORNEY, as broad as is required by Law, to the lawyer Mr. Luis Hernán Núñez Muñoz.

I ask Your Excellency to take note of this.

Source: Cambio 21.cl, March 22, 2011