A music enthusiast, medium, treasure hunter, and one of the strongmen of the PS (Socialist Party) in the then-province of Coquimbo during the 60s and 70s, when he was riddled with bullets and his property set on fire.

To the public, the event that occurred in August 1979 was reported as an attempt by the victim to attack the Carabineros. A recent book vindicates his memory and speaks of unknown passages. On August 13, 1979, past midnight, a group of agents from the Central Nacional de Inteligencia (CNI) violently broke into the property of merchant Daniel Acuña Sepúlveda (69), located at Parcela 222 Lo Acuña, Colonia de Peñuelas in Coquimbo.

The military government led by Augusto Pinochet Ugarte had just won a plebiscite in January 1978, which pitted the "Yes" against the "No" regarding the UN's questioning of human rights violations in Chile.

When everyone thought the executions would end, a bloody event took place in the area. The military patrol, composed of Army Captain Patricio Vicente Padilla Villén and including Carabineros Lieutenant Rodolfo Aranda Jeldres ; Carabineros Sergeant Rigoberto Alejandro Gallardo Trujillo and Army Corporal Second Class Gustavo Adolfo Camilo Ahumada attacked Daniel Acuña's home with explosive devices and fired at the owner's son, Roberto Acuña, who managed to flee the scene.

But what happened next was simply macabre. The agents entered the home and riddled Daniel Acuña with bullets in a closet, where he had taken refuge to save his life. Subsequently, his body was taken to the bedroom of the property, where an explosive device installed under his body was activated, destroying his skull and abdomen.

The military then destroyed the interior and seized a series of items. This dramatic account is part of the book "El Caso Acuña. Violencia y Represión Política en la Región de Coquimbo 1973 - 1990. Apuntes Para una historia local" (The Acuña Case.

Violence and Political Repression in the Coquimbo Region 1973 - 1990. Notes for a local history), by Celso López San Francisco, Óscar Marín San Martín, Jaime Prea Gómez, and Jorge Salamanca.

Source: Diarioeldía, March 16, 2014

Visiting Judge Vicente Hormazábal leads reconstruction of the scene of the former intendant's homicide

In the proceeding, Judge Hormazábal took statements from the surviving victim, three witnesses to the events, and the accused retired military personnel Gustavo Camilo Ahumada, Jerman Ocares Morales, and Luis Pavez Silva; as well as René Ojeda Caro, a civilian employee and Army reservist.

The extraordinary visiting judge for human rights violation cases of the La Serena Court of Appeals, Vicente Hormazábal Abarzúa, led the reconstruction of the scene of the qualified homicide of the former intendant of Antofagasta, Daniel Acuña Sepúlveda, and the attempted homicide of his son, Roberto Acuña Araneda.

These crimes were perpetrated in August 1979 by agents of the Central Nacional de Inteligencia (CNI) in the Tierras Blancas sector of the Coquimbo commune. In the proceeding (case file 2-2010), Judge Hormazábal took statements from the surviving victim, three witnesses to the events, and the accused retired military personnel Gustavo Camilo Ahumada, Jerman Ocares Morales, and Luis Pavez Silva; as well as René Ojeda Caro, a civilian employee and Army reservist. "This is a case in which the qualified homicide of Mr.

Daniel Acuña and the qualified homicide, in the nature of an attempt, of his son Mr. Roberto Acuña are being investigated. We are already in the plenary stage, in the stage of measures for better resolution, and at that stage of the process, I decided to carry out the reconstruction of the scene for the purpose of ensuring the proper exercise of the right to defense that all the accused have," stated Judge Hormazábal.

With the background information collected in the case, the visiting judge considers it proven that in the early hours of August 13, 1979, a group of CNI agents from La Serena arrived at the home of Daniel Acuña Sepúlveda.

At the property's gate, they fired at his son Roberto Acuña, who, wounded in the stomach, managed to flee the scene and survive. Three agents entered the home and, upon locating Acuña Sepúlveda, killed him with gunfire, only to then destroy his body with dynamite.

In the case, the former head of the Central Nacional de Inteligencia for the regions, Juan Viterbo Chiminelli Fullerton, who gave the order to eliminate Acuña Sepúlveda, is also identified as the perpetrator of the crime of qualified homicide; and the lawyer Guido Poli Garaycochea is identified as an accessory after the fact, who, after the events, together with the local CNI chief Patricio Padilla Villén—who was definitively dismissed due to death in May 2013—instructed the agents who participated directly in the events on what they should declare before the justice system, a maneuver intended to cover up the crimes. In the proceeding, Judge Hormazábal Abarzúa had the collaboration of officials from the Human Rights Brigade and experts from the Criminalistics Laboratory of the Investigative Police.

Source: Poder Judicial, February 22, 2023

CNI lawyer convicted for crime committed during the dictatorship

Visiting Judge Sergio Troncoso issued a verdict that considered the responsibility as an accessory after the fact of the lawyer, who traveled from Santiago to La Serena to—the ruling indicates—instruct the agents on what they should say to evade their responsibilities.

For the first time since investigations into human rights violations during the dictatorship began in 1991, a visiting judge has convicted one of the lawyers who provided services to the defunct Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI), the secret police of Augusto Pinochet, which only formally ceased to exist in 1990.

In previous rulings, various judges had prosecuted and convicted other lawyers linked to the repression unleashed after the 1973 coup d'état, as was the case with the former Army auditor and former ad hoc military prosecutor, Fernando Torres Silva , convicted for the crimes of Eugenio Berríos and Tucapel Jiménez (and pardoned in 2021 due to a terminal illness), or with the former military prosecutor of Temuco, Alfonso Podlech , convicted for several crimes committed in La Araucanía.

However, different actors in the human rights world indicate that, before the convictions issued by the visiting judge of the La Serena Court of Appeals, Sergio Troncoso, for the homicide of former intendant Daniel Acuña and the attempted homicide of his son, there were no precedents like the current one, due to the conviction of 78-year-old lawyer Guido Poli Garaycochea as an accessory after the fact.

The ruling According to the investigation by the special judge, the events occurred during the early hours of August 13, 1979, in Coquimbo, when a CNI commando attacked Daniel Acuña Sepúlveda , a militant of the Socialist Party and former intendant of Antofagasta, and his son Roberto Enrique Acuña Aravena , in their home.

The investigation determined that the operation was carried out by an "elimination order" issued against Acuña Sepúlveda by the Regional Division of the Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI) in Santiago.

According to what was confessed many years later on his deathbed by Captain Patricio Padilla Villén (who died 13 years ago), the CNI agents under his command traveled to plot 222 in Tierras Blancas, in Coquimbo, where, after falsely identifying themselves as Carabineros, they fired at the victim's son, Roberto Enrique Acuña Aravena , who managed to survive, and then entered the home, where Padilla shot Daniel Acuña Sepúlveda in the skull.

Subsequently, in an attempt to cover up the murder and make it look like a suicide, the CNI agents placed dynamite on the victim's body and detonated it, destroying his corpse . The survivor, meanwhile, was detained at the hospital and then subjected to preventive detention for about six months , under the false accusation of crimes linked to the Arms Control Law and possession of explosives.

After the investigation, Judge Troncoso convicted Juan Viterbo Chiminelli Fullerton , head of the CNI Regional Division, for qualified homicide (15 years and one day); while Gustavo Adolfo Camilo Ahumada was sentenced to 10 years for the homicide and 540 days for the serious injuries caused to Acuña Aravena.

Regarding the accomplices, Manuel Humberto Catalán Arriola received 5 years and one day for the homicide and 41 days in prison as an accessory after the fact to the serious injuries, while René Hugo Ojeda Caro was sentenced to 5 years for the qualified homicide.

Finally, the lawyer Guido Poli was convicted as an accessory after the fact to both crimes, receiving sentences of 3 years in prison for the qualified homicide and 40 days in prison for the serious injuries, obtaining the benefit of conditional release.

The Schneider Case On October 10, 1970, at 23 years of age, Poli—who at that time was studying law at the Universidad Católica and was a militant of the National Party—was arrested, accused along with two other defendants of having installed several explosive devices (some of which failed) in different areas of Santiago, in the midst of the maneuvers prior to the homicide of General René Schneider , Commander-in-Chief of the Army at that time and a strict constitutionalist, who maintained that if Salvador Allende were elected by the Plenary Congress on October 24, 1970 (after having won the first round on September 4 of that year), the Army should remain attached to the Constitution and not participate in any military uprising. This led to an absurd plan devised in Washington D.C. at the behest of Agustín Edwards , in which U.S. military intelligence agents (the CIA chief in Santiago, Henry Hecksher , was removed from the plot due to his criticisms of how poorly designed it was), retired and active-duty Chilean generals, common criminals, and young people belonging to far-right groups and others of pro-Nazi thought participated, as was the case with Guido Poli, who was part of several such movements. On October 22, a clumsy attempt to kidnap Schneider culminated in his homicide, and in 1972 the participants were sentenced to various penalties. Poli was one of the 43 convicted in that case, although he had no responsibility for the homicide; rather, in the first instance, he received a sentence of 2 years of relegation in Caldera for violating the State Internal Security Law, but later, after the 1973 coup d'état, almost all the participants were pardoned. The legal advisor In 1979, as established by Judge Troncoso's ruling, Poli served as a CNI lawyer, being second in the hierarchy of the staff of lawyers for that secret police. According to him, his role was "to provide legal advice on all requests made, analysis of legal bodies and bills, and to draft responses to the courts, in accordance with the background information provided to them." That team, as specified by former CNI agent Fernando Rojas Tapia , was composed, in addition to Poli, of several lawyers, including Víctor Gálvez (who was the head), René Alegría, Juan Carlos Manns, Fernando Dumay, and a certain "Iribarra." Poli assured the Justice system that in August of that year, Chiminelli arranged for him to travel to La Serena in order to "advise" Captain Padilla on the statement he would give before the military prosecutor's office, for which he ordered another CNI agent, Captain Manuel Catalán, to accompany him. Still according to Poli's statement, on August 13, 1979, in the afternoon, Víctor Gálvez told him that "an event had occurred where CNI personnel were involved and a person had died as a result of an explosion in their home, managing to travel around 11:00 PM in a CNI vehicle. They arrived in La Serena in the early hours of the next day, waiting for the time in the unit's facilities. Around 08:30 AM, Captain Padilla, who was the chief and with whom he had to interview, arrived at the unit. At that moment, he explained his version of the events to him and that everything was reported to the Regional Government. He indicated to Padilla that if there were requests from the court, he should satisfy them in a timely manner." Subsequently, he accompanied Captain Padilla to the Intendencia, then they returned to the unit, and shortly after, he returned to Santiago on August 14, never to hear about the case again. Likewise, as he argued, "the legal department only knew the official version of the events." Poli also asserted that he did not convey any instruction to Captain Padilla regarding what to declare and that he only limited himself to telling him " that he should cooperate with the court ." Likewise, " he stated that he was unaware that the event was a setup, adding that Padilla never told him that there was a wounded person who fled the scene and was in prison " and asserted that it was "absurd for a lawyer to be given an order to go and check on the compliance with a military order." He also said that "he never worked with Chiminelli at that time (1979), and that they only had a social relationship."

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The doubts However, several pieces of evidence caused the judge to doubt the version. For example, the version provided by the then-procurator Miguel Ángel Parra Vásquez, who, in addition to saying that in the summer of 1980 he was sent to accompany Padilla to another statement, specified that the lawyers belonged to a unit called " legal intelligence ," also explaining that Poli and Chiminelli had known each other from before and that between them " there was a very familiar treatment ." At the same time, one of the agents who participated in the event, Luis Pavez Silva , " pointed out that he had lied in court in his statement at the time and assured that he was told what he had to say, realizing that everything was a setup by the bosses ," states the ruling, which points out that Poli's version that he only traveled to La Serena to carry out "the delivery of a brief message, regarding the duty to cooperate with the courts" is " inadmissible, as it lacks logic to organize a trip from Santiago to deliver a simple message like that, when it could have been delivered directly to Padilla by phone, or by telex if it was considered necessary to encrypt the message. It is certainly absurd that a message like cooperating with the investigation should be delivered in person, when Padilla himself confessed that he received an order as serious as killing Acuña by telex, which notoriously merited more reserved treatment." Given this, among other arguments, Poli's defense attorney, Maximiliano Murath, asserted that the elements against his client are not sufficient to be able to incriminate him, indicating that " it was not within his functions in the CNI Legal Department to prepare judicial angles or similar things " and that "it is contradictory to think that the lawyer Poli would go to tell the agents or the head of the operation what to say, since they had already prepared the false facts and version" and that "in that sense, one cannot cover up what is already covered up." However, the judge rejected the allegations and determined that the real motive for Poli's trip was "to meet with those involved in the execution operation of Daniel Acuña, to verify how the mission had been carried out and to issue guidelines for what would be the official CNI version before the courts," adding that " his trip was motivated by the need to protect the institution in the face of the 'screw-up' (in Chiminelli's words) that the existence of a surviving victim and eyewitness to the events implied, making it necessary to coordinate the statements of those involved ." It should be noted that, before being a member of the CNI, Poli was a member of the DINA and in that capacity, according to the biography of Manuel Contreras written by journalist Manuel Salazar, he had close contact with the Italian neo-fascists of the terrorist group Avanguardia Nazionale and its leader, Stefano Delle Chiaie. Poli eventually became the Army's auditor general, where he worked until 1999, and was subsequently one of the founders of the NGO Jure (Justice and Reconciliation), which defends military personnel accused of human rights violations. by: Carlos Basso Prieto

Source: elmostrador.cl, September 27, 2025