The accusation is framed within a series of statements by Jaime Campos regarding the evaluation of pardon requests for human rights criminals. Deputy Gutierrez has requested that President Bachelet evaluate the Minister's continued tenure in his position.

The Minister of Justice is becoming a thorn in the side of Michelle Bachelet's administration. In addition to his corporate ties to the lawyer for the company that provided IT services for the failed electoral roll, and his regrettable expressions regarding the Sename and Gendarmería cases, he has consistently expressed support for analyzing the possibility of granting pardons to dictatorship criminals on health grounds.

The latter has joined a campaign by media outlets, the right wing, and the criminals' lawyers to victimize these perpetrators. One of the motivations was provided yesterday by Deputy and human rights lawyer Hugo Gutiérrez (PC), who pointed out that "the Minister of Justice's brother tortured and killed people."

"We want to make it clear that Ángel Hernán Campos Quiroga, brother of the Minister of Justice, Jaime Campos Quiroga, was a member of Group 3 of the Maquehue air base in Temuco, with the rank of Lieutenant in the FACH (Chilean Air Force), who was involved in the murder of three militants of the Communist Party and one from the MIR," the deputy added during a conference alongside lawyers Magdalena Garcés and Cristián Cruz, as well as the vice president of the Center for Research and Promotion of Human Rights (CINPROD), Herman Carrasco Paul.

Carrasco Paul, who acknowledges having been tortured by Lieutenant (ret.) Ángel Campos Quiroga, notes: "It is necessary for public opinion to have the elements to understand this offensive to obtain benefits. We ask ourselves the reason for the Minister's statements, and it is because there are vested interests. I managed to survive the torture of Campos Quiroga, whom they called the 'Bad Angel'."

"This attitude from the Minister is a spectacle beyond words," emphasized Carrasco Paul.

For her part, lawyer Magdalena Garcés specified that "The Minister's brother is being investigated as a torturer by Judge Álvaro Mesa."

"With the background information that exists, we believe we have a Minister of Justice who is committed to the defense of criminals for human rights violations. He has had the audacity to say that there has not been the courage to address the issue; this Minister has overstepped his office, and we urge the President of the Republic to review the Minister of Justice's continuity in his position," insisted Deputy Gutiérrez.

Finally, the parliamentarian for Iquique noted that "if this Minister of Justice had remained silent, there would be no problem, but to come out in defense of criminals is a reckless step. He is using his public office to defend those who, like his brother, violated human rights."

Source: elciudadano.cl, December 26, 2016

As pointed out by Deputy Hugo Gutiérrez, the brother of the current Minister was implicated in the case of the murder of three communist militants and one MIR militant during the years of the dictatorship, at the Maquehue air base in Temuco, IX Region.

The victims were Hernán Henríquez, Eduardo Gonzalez Galeno, Alejandro Flores, and Nelson Curiñir. Eduardo González was the Director of the Cunco Hospital; he was detained on September 14, 1973, along with his wife Natacha María Carrión Osorio, a doctor who was three months pregnant with their second child.

To this day, he remains a forcibly disappeared person. Meanwhile, 22-year-old Nelson Curiñir was detained in Temuco, tortured, and murdered.

According to parliamentarian Hugo Gutiérrez of the Communist Party:

"We want to make it clear that Ángel Hernán Campos Quiroga, brother of the Minister of Justice, Jaime Campos Quiroga, was a member of Group 3 of the Maquehue air base in Temuco, with the rank of Lieutenant in the FACH, who was involved in the murder of three militants of the Communist Party and one from the MIR."

According to the Communist Party parliamentarian, more than 30 victims of torture identified the Justice Minister's brother as their torturer. This information was investigated alongside lawyers Magdalena Garcés and Cristián Cruz, and Herman Carrasco Paul, vice president of the Center for Research and Promotion of Human Rights (CINPROD).

The name of the Minister's brother appears in the following judicial investigation (http://www.araucaniacuenta.cl/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Auto-Acusatorio-113969.pdf), which states: “The 'Hernán Henríquez Aravena and 8 Others' episode of September 11 was enabled for the stated purposes, and on some occasions, they were also moved to a hangar located inside the base.

Many of these detainees remained held at the Maquehue base for a period of no less than a week, during which time they were interrogated and tortured by the aforementioned officers and non-commissioned officers who were part of the intelligence group specially formed for such purposes, including Second Commander Benjamín Fernández Hernández (R.I.P.), Lieutenants Ángel Campos Quiroga (R.I.P.), Jorge Freygang Campaña (R.I.P.), Captain Leonardo Reyes Herrera, Sergeant Orlando Garrido Riquelme (R.I.P.), non-commissioned officers Luis Arturo Soto Pinto, Heriberto Pereira Rojas, Luis Osmán Yáñez Silva, Jorge Aliro Valdebenito Isler, Jorge Eduardo Soto Herrera, and Enrique Alberto Rebolledo Sotelo; and the civilian employee Crisóstomo Hugo Ferrada Carrasco.”

Source: laizquierdadiario.com, December 26, 2016

Open letter from a coward to Minister Campos: “One of the most fearsome torturers was your brother”

The Henríquez Kries family, whose father was murdered by the military dictatorship, writes to Minister of Justice Jaime Campos, brother of Ángel Campos Quiroga, one of those responsible for the crime.

Mr. Minister, I beg you to forgive my lack of courage in addressing my words to you from a safe place located on the other side of the ocean.

I also owe you my apologies for not belonging to that select group of people who have had the courage to propose benefits and release for those who have been tried, convicted, and imprisoned for crimes against humanity by the Chilean judiciary, for whom you have shown such great and noble concern in the name of humanity and compassion.

Those valiant men, determined to exterminate evil from our Chilean lands, in an era when I was a child, many of whom have been protected by the gentle passage of time and the course of their own biological clock. It protected them from the humiliation to which the convalescent in London was so unjustly subjected.

Your brother, Ángel Campos Quiroga, had the same fortune of evading justice due to the lateness of its actions; he was decorated and admired not only by his peers, as he rose to the rank of General and Director of Intelligence of the FACH.

He received similar treatment from his civilian collaborators, among whom you are included, who enthroned him as Chief of the National Defense General Staff (during the government of Ricardo Lagos when you were Minister of Agriculture), for his services rendered to the fatherland, from which I was expelled at two and a half years old, already orphaned by my father, who was murdered in October 1973.

It is at that moment that our stories intertwine, Mr. Minister, and I ask for your forgiveness again for my reckless attitude toward you and your brother.

I am the son of Dr. Hernán Henríquez Aravena, a public health physician, Zonal Director of the National Health Service for the Malleco and Cautín Provinces at the time of the coup d'état.

His crime was to be faithful to the Hippocratic Oath and to act as a physician consistent with the most marginalized people, the rural population, many of whom belonged to the Mapuche nation. He was, along with other health professionals, responsible for launching a Rural Health program that made timely, quality healthcare a reality.

The effort of the government at the time and the health program, moreover, were recognized by the WHO at its meeting in June 1973 in Bethesda, USA.

Thanks to the unprecedented work of the Visiting Judge for Crimes Against Humanity, Álvaro Mesa, today we know a little more about what happened to the professionals who made up this health team. Mr. Minister Campos, if you still haven't heard, I will explain it to you quite simply……they were all exterminated: the nurse Gastón Elgueta, Doctor Eduardo Gonzalez Galeno, director of the Cunco hospital, my father Hernán Henríquez Aravena, Doctor Arturo Hillerns Larrañaga, director of the Pto.

Saavedra hospital, and the public health professor Jécar Neghme.

The uniformed men, who possessed all the power of the State, were so efficient in their cruelty toward defenseless women and men that we still do not know if we should look toward the Andes mountain range or head to the sea off Puerto Saavedra to mourn their remains.

It is established and noted for the interested reader in the investigation files that one of those noble uniformed men, who was also identified as one of the most feared torturers, was your brother, then FACH Lieutenant Ángel Campos Quiroga.

I write the above in case you forgot, and I ask for your forgiveness again, because just as it happened in Germany after the defeat of the Nazis, you, like other civilians, knew nothing at all, and were even less capable of imagining that your childhood playmate had been such a determined protagonist in our history.

Until recently, your silence protected you from being mentioned in relation to your brother the criminal.

Faced with the evidence of your bias (which is evident from your words expressed in an interview published in the newspaper El Mercurio on Sunday, December 11), this coward asks you for a bold gesture of consistency – that of your resignation from all public office, and that you apologize for having ignored the crimes committed by your brother (whose acts were denounced under oath) when advocating for the (covert) impunity of criminals.

Sincerely, Daniel Henríquez Kries

Source: pensar-lopensado.com, March 23, 2022