Harassed by the traces of his thefts, Pinochet is living through decisive moments in the courts. Added to the investigation into his crimes are the investigation into his accounts at Banco Riggs, the new indictment of his son, and the confession of some perpetrators of illegal exhumations who accuse him of being the one who directly gave the order to definitively make the bodies of the murdered prisoners disappear.

This is the operation that, in an encrypted message, the dictator called "Retiro de Televisores" (Removal of Televisions).

At the end of 1978, while serving as a lieutenant in the Section II Intelligence unit of the Buin Regiment, Captain (Ret.) Pedro Andrés Rodríguez Bustos received a coded order from the Army General Command, which was simultaneously sent to all garrisons and divisions in the country. 21 years later, in 1999, he testified before Judge Juan Guzmán Tapia that this coded message was signed by Augusto Pinochet Ugarte and gave peremptory orders "to gather the officers and non-commissioned officers who had been serving in those units between the years 1973 and 1974.

Said meeting was to attempt to obtain from this personnel any information they had regarding the whereabouts of the bodies of people executed and buried inside military units or, in this specific case, at the Peldehue military camp, given that this camp was going to transfer part of its land to the Compañía Minera Andina and, for that same reason, it had to be known if there were clandestine burials on said land, since if so, the exact locations were required in order to proceed with the exhumation and elimination of the corpses."

Although this information crossed the walls of the courts, many interested voices were raised to discredit Rodríguez Bustos's statement, even from official sources that spoke of an "intelligence operation," which undermined the credibility of the former officer.

The weight of the facts

However, Captain Rodríguez would insist, and other testimonies would come to support his account. At the beginning of July 2004, he would ratify his statements, beginning with his personal history: "I entered the Military School in 1967, graduating as a second lieutenant in 1972, serving in different units of the country, among which I can highlight the Motorized Artillery Regiment No. 2 'Arica', garrisoned in La Serena, the Military School, the Infantry Regiment No. 1 'Buin', the General Headquarters of the Second Division, and the Infantry Regiment No. 4 'Rancagua', garrisoned in the city of Arica.

I must state that, after having provided reinforcement services in the Buin Regiment between 1974 and 1975, I served as an Instructor Officer at the Military School, and I must add that in 1976 I was assigned to the Buin Regiment, where I began serving in Section II, Intelligence.

I must point out that in 1978 a command order was received, issued by the Second Army Division, whose commander at that date was General Enrique Morel Donoso. Said order referenced the order from the Army General Command and was sent to all garrisons and divisions in the country." The order issued, which aimed to avoid repeating the "embarrassment" of Lonquén, would become known as "Operation Removal of Televisions." In another part of his statement, Officer Rodríguez notes that "this meeting—which brought together those who had participated in executions and clandestine burials—was general in nature for these people, but the regiment commanders had to receive the information individually from those who were going to provide it. That is how it happened in the Buin Regiment, and the commander at the time, Colonel Mario Navarrete Barriga, now a retired general, received in his private office the personnel who had to provide some type of information, since at that date there was only one officer who had been there during those years. That information was kept secret, just like the classification of the order issued by the higher echelon. I must state that, in my capacity as an Intelligence Officer assigned during those years to Section II of the Buin regiment, with the rank of lieutenant, I remember that among the non-commissioned officers who appeared before the commander to provide the information they possessed, I can mention two officials who worked under my command: Juan Ibáñez and Jorge Aguilar, and I must add that to this date I do not know what other non-commissioned officers assigned to the Buin were the ones who appeared before the commander to provide information. I must point out that, in coordination meetings between intelligence officers and the commander of the special Intelligence detachment of the II Division, we were informed that the information sent to the division and the Santiago military garrison would always be secret, but nonetheless, having already made a survey of the places where bodies were located, these were going to be exhumed by personnel from the Puente Alto Engineer Regiment with the support of personnel from the Aviation Command, for their disappearance. It also transpired in those meetings that some human remains were going to be moved within the same Peldehue military camp, from their original grave to other locations. Regarding the compliance with this order at the national level, I must point out that regarding what happened with bodies buried in provincial military units, I must assume that the procedure was the same as that applied in Santiago, both to obtain information from personnel and to proceed with the location and exhumation of the bodies." Indeed, after the information was collected, using as a public pretext that the sale of Peldehue land to the Minera Andina company was being negotiated, it was decided that it was essential to clear a strip of land that ran to the south of the property, which was called "Cajón de los Ratones." For this reason, it became necessary to move graves to the north of Peldehue, toward the Las Tórtolas hill. The removal of bodies took place on December 23, 1978, the day a team of uniformed personnel proceeded with the exhumations using a backhoe to begin the sinister work, and then set to the task with picks and shovels for many hours. The person guiding the search and excavation was Non-Commissioned Officer Eliseo Cornejo Escobar, one of those who had participated in the 1973 machine-gunnings. Supervision had been left in the hands of Commander Hernán Canales Varas. The bodies, mostly intact thanks to the preservation provided naturally by the soil in the area, were put one by one into potato sacks, transferred to a Unimog-type truck, and loaded onto an Army Puma helicopter. The final destination of those executed from La Moneda would be out at sea.

The moving of the graves would be confirmed by Judge Amanda Valdovinos, who discovered the remains of Juan Luis Rivera Matus, whom the "Dialogue Table" had claimed was thrown into the sea. A few months later came another surprise: in a large pit inside Fort Arteaga, more than 500 bone pieces were found, including fragments of skulls, limbs, and teeth, which would correspond to part of the detainees from La Moneda.

Along with the human remains were remnants of grenades and bullets. Everything indicated that, after being shot a few days after the military coup, the prisoners had been thrown into the pit and blown up.

Throughout Chile

The latest investigations carried out in Cuesta Barriga by Judge Héctor Carreño resulted in the discovery of teeth and small vertebrae, presumably belonging to part of the clandestine leadership of the PC (Communist Party) kidnapped at the end of 1976.

The fact that larger bones could not be found was proof that the corpses had been removed here as well. After years of forced silence, the testimonies of locals who claim to have seen Army trucks moving bodies in 1987 gained strength again.

In Calama, the investigation by Judge Juan Guzmán allowed for the identification of the remains of Carlos Berger and Domingo Mamani. The fragments found provide evidence of removals. In Pisagua, there is confirmation that there were indeed removals of bodies and that they were destroyed.

In Chihuío, the 18 people who were executed and buried in October 1973 would be removed five years later, when a military patrol arrived in the sector to dig up the bodies, and their final destination remains unknown to this day.

In 1990, the visiting judge Nibaldo Segura arrived at the site and was able to establish that there were indeed highly fragmented bone remains left after the removal of the bodies, which were symbolically buried in the Valdivia cemetery.

In November 1979, the Vicar of Solidarity Ignacio Ortúzar gave Judge Humberto Espejo, who was investigating the detention of six peasants from Paine, information regarding massive and irregular burials in Patio 29 of the General Cemetery, in 200 graves with identified and N.N. (unidentified) corpses.

Among the bodies buried with identification were several detainees from Paine who had passed through Cerro Chena. The court verified the existence of dozens of graves with more than one person buried in them, as well as the existence of more than 100 with N.N. notations.

At the end of 1979, Judge Espejo informed the director of the Cemetery of the prohibition against incinerating, exhuming, or moving the remains of people buried without identification. In the early 80s, Cemetery workers reported that bodies were being taken; ultimately, only 78 people could be identified out of a total that could have reached more than 200.

A former agent of the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE), interviewed by Qué Pasa under the alias "don Eduardo," asserts that the illegal exhumations continued until very late in the dictatorial regime.

This is how in 1986, faced with the pressures exerted by the Catholic Church and the difficult political landscape being faced, "since there was certainty that there were places with graves containing the remains of forcibly disappeared persons in Peldehue," he states, "the task was entrusted to specialized intelligence units so that exhumations could be carried out with the reserved support of the Army Aviation Command.

The work was carried out quickly and discreetly, but it was not without difficulties. The ground was very hard and stony and, although the bodies were buried at a shallow depth—between 50 centimeters and one meter underground—it was necessary to bring heavy machinery from the Engineer Command located in Santiago to remove the earth.

This process lasted about a month. As the removals of corpses progressed, they were stored in thick black polyethylene bags and lined up to one side of the pit, to then be loaded into a Puma helicopter, which took off toward the coast located between Quintero and Valparaíso.

The aircraft's crew was composed of two pilot officers, two mechanic non-commissioned officers, and one telecommunications operator. The bags with the bodies were mixed with stones to make them heavier.

They were thrown into the sea from a medium altitude, as it was believed that at the moment of impact the polyethylene could break and disperse its contents into the sea. Everything was done in absolute secrecy."

Non-Commissioned Officer Balboa Ortega

Ratifying the statements of Pedro Rodríguez Bustos, the testimony of Juan Carlos Balboa Ortega appears, who retired as a first sergeant in the Army, and who points out that "in March 1979 I applied for and was accepted into an intelligence assistant course taught by the Intelligence School located in Nos, graduating at the end of August of that year.

Upon arriving at my unit, the Armored Cavalry Regiment No. 3, 'Húsares de Angol,' I was assigned to Section II, Intelligence, the commander of the regiment at that time being Colonel Patricio Escudero Troncoso.

At the end of 1979, a secret cryptogram with the designation A-1, indicating maximum urgency, was received in the unit, coming from the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Captain General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, addressed to all military units in the country.

In summary, this document informed that all unit commanders would be administratively responsible for the appearance of bodies of political executions in their jurisdiction, for which reason it ordered all corresponding measures to be taken to prevent third parties from finding the burial sites in each military jurisdiction.

This document was received, initialed by the section chief, and delivered personally to Colonel Patricio Escudero. I clearly remember having read this cryptogram and having commented on it with the other members of the section, among them non-commissioned officers Rebolledo, Cáceres, and Castro.

Classified A-1 cryptograms can be received at any time of the day and arrive at the regiment's Telecommunications section, which delivers them to Section II. The official of this Section who receives them has one hour to decrypt them and deliver them to the commander.

Subsequently, in the month of March of each year, they are incinerated along with all documents received up to December 31." Non-Commissioned Officer Balboa points out that "in January 1980 I was on vacation at a farm near Mulchén, where I had the opportunity to learn that a group of people from that place had been murdered in a location that corresponded to the jurisdiction of my regiment.

Upon returning from my legal leave, I communicated this situation to Commander Escudero, who ordered me to go look for the cryptogram that gave instructions on this subject and which stated that regiment commanders in whose jurisdiction bodies of political executions were found would be retired.

I found it and gave it to the commander, who called the commander of the Los Angeles regiment, pointing out to him that there was a jurisdictional problem, since the background information on political executions by personnel of that military unit was known.

Due to the above, the commander of the Los Angeles regiment requested that I report immediately to his unit. In Los Angeles, I met with the commander of the Reinforced Mountain Infantry Regiment No. 17, who put me in contact with the head of Section II of his unit to organize the trip.

The next day we left in two vehicles, a pickup truck and a station wagon, without military identification and in civilian clothes. Along the Curaco road, we headed toward the El Amargo sector, where Non-Commissioned Officer Paredes (see box), assigned to Department II of the III Army Division of Concepción, spoke with a local about the burials in the sector.

The first place we visited was in the El Amargo sector, on the side of the road on the north bank of the Renaico River. Since it did not correspond to my jurisdiction, I pointed that out, and about eight or nine officials crossed the river.

About three hours later they returned carrying seven or eight potato sacks, each with a body. Then we went about ten kilometers to the east, where four other bodies were dug up and loaded into the pickup truck, just like the first ones.

The Los Angeles group was under the orders of the lieutenant who was head of Section II, although the operational command was held by Non-Commissioned Officer Paredes from Concepción, who directed the work while the officer gave his approval." Regarding the same subject, the former director of the CNI, Odlanier Mena Salinas, publicly admitted at the end of 2000 that "the discovery of bodies in Lonquén produced a serious internal social commotion.

The country was in the preliminaries of a near-war with Argentina. One of the fundamental elements was the cohesion of the internal front, that is, that people were convinced that the country was right to go to war and that they supported their Armed Forces.

It could be inferred that if new 'Lonquéns' appeared, the internal front would be damaged. For this reason, the commanders-in-chief decided that the units, not the CNI, should make a survey of the possible illegal cemeteries that existed in each zone."

Mena attempts to rule out the participation of the CNI, but all indications point to them having worked in conjunction with the Army's intelligence sections to avoid "new Lonquéns" and, in this way, maintain "the cohesion of the internal front." Thus, the only solution was to obey Pinochet's order and "remove the televisions."

Nazi practices

In Auschwitz, an average of 24,000 murders per day was reached using the method of collective gas chambers, followed by incineration in scientifically planned crematoria as a way to ensure the elimination of the corpses.

There were 46 oven niches, each with a capacity for between three and five people. The incineration lasted half an hour, and one hour a day was used for cleaning. When these ovens could not keep up, in August 1944, six huge pits were dug and some previous ones made in the adjacent forest were reopened.

The pits had channels on one side to collect the boiling human fat, which would serve to maintain their operation along with the application of oil and alcohol, as a strong and permanent fire was needed.

After lighting the ovens with coke at the beginning of the day until they reached the appropriate temperature, they barely required any more fuel to function. Non-Commissioned Officer Juan Carlos Balboa points out in part of his testimony regarding the final destination of the exhumed bodies that he is unaware of what happened, "however, I remember that Non-Commissioned Officer Paredes commented that he had taken an intelligence course in Germany, where he had learned to incinerate corpses; he even said that one had to have a large grill, put the bodies on top, and start the fire with firewood and kerosene, fuel that had to continue to be added to the fire every so often until they were completely turned to ashes." The Intelligence Department II of the Los Angeles Regiment had a brick oven with a chimney. The bodies of a dozen people executed in the area were thrown there.

Those who know about the "final destination"

At the Linares Artillery School, at the time of the illegal exhumations, Lieutenant Colonel Patricio Gualda Tiffani was in command, who from 1985 to 1988 would be the last appointed rector of the University of Santiago (USACH).

Gualda gave Captain Mario Gianotti Hidalgo the order to form a team of diggers, according to him after receiving the information about the "removal of televisions" from his second-in-command, Deputy Director Ricardo Gaete Villaseñor. One of the members of the special team was Lieutenant Hernán Véjar Sinning.

The perpetrators of the disappearance of six prisoners in Linares, prosecuted by Judge Alejandro Solís, are the former Vice Commander-in-Chief of the Army Jorge Zincke Quiroz; the former director of the Linares Artillery School and former commander of the Metropolitan Region Army Garrison, Major General Carlos Morales Retamal; the General (Ret.) and former Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs of the military regime, Humberto Julio; and retired Colonels Juan Morales and Félix Cabezas.

For this case, the former director of Investigations, Nelson Mery, was summoned to testify, who after September 1973 was assigned to the Linares Artillery School as a liaison officer with the then-director of the unit, Colonel Gabriel del Río.

In the case of the Peldehue diggings, Judge Juan Carlos Urrutia maintains five uniformed personnel under prosecution, among whom stands out the commander of the Tacna Regiment in 1978, Colonel Hernán Ricardo Canales Varas.

The other implicated individuals are the intelligence chief of the time, Luis Antonio Fuenzalida Rojas, and non-commissioned officers Eliseo Cornejo Escobedo, José Canario Santibáñez, and Darío Gutiérrez de la Torre.

Previously, the same judge had prosecuted, as perpetrators of the kidnapping of 12 prisoners from La Moneda, nine other uniformed personnel, among whom are General Luis Joaquín Ramírez Pineda and Brigadier Pedro Espinoza Bravo, who allegedly supervised the machine-gunning and clandestine burial of those executed.

Canales Varas, meanwhile, is the one who appears commanding the operation of exhumation and removal of the bodies that were bagged and loaded onto a Unimog truck, to then take them to the helicopter that would lead them to their "final destination." Pinochet's "favorites" to pilot these helicopters were the same ones who participated in the Caravan of Death: Antonio Palomo Contreras, Emilio de la Mahotiere González, and Luis Felipe Polanco.

In the case of Pisagua, the same people who are prosecuted for the kidnappings and executions must have information about what happened to some of the bodies that have still not been found. Among them appears the father-in-law of the current Commander-in-Chief of the Army, the former vice-commander Carlos Forestier, along with Pedro Espinoza Bravo and Non-Commissioned Officer Miguel Aguirre.

Source: El Siglo, August 13, 2004

In a split decision, the Eighth Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals convicted nine retired military personnel for the crime of illegal exhumation in the case known as the "Removal of Televisions," in which the bodies of victims of the dictatorship were dug up to make them disappear definitively.

The ruling adopted by judges Cornelio Villarroel, Mario Carroza, and lawyer member Manuel Hasbún sets a sentence of 270 days of presidio menor in its medium degree, in addition to a fine of 14 UTM (Monthly Tax Units), for Hernán Ricardo Canales Varas, José Jaime Darrigrandi Márquez, Eliseo Antonio Cornejo Escobedo, José Nelson Canario Santibáñez, Luis Antonio Fuenzalida Rojas, Darío Ernesto Gutiérrez de la Torre, Fernando Remigio Burgos Díaz, Sergio Antonio Medina Salazar, and Isidoro Custodio Durán Muñoz.

As the resolution details, the bodies exhumed from the Peldehue military facility were detainees from the La Moneda Palace on September 11, 1973, who were then taken to the Tacna Regiment and later shot at the Peldehue military facility in the commune of Colina.

The ruling maintains that "in accordance with the accusation that has been formulated against the defendants, it is necessary to analyze whether the crime of illegal exhumation, given its form of commission and the participation of public agents in it, can be classified as a common act within the criminal perspective; or if, due to its characteristics, it can have the classification of a crime against humanity, insofar as the action of removal constituted the last link in a chain that began with the detention of a group of people at the La Moneda Palace on September 11, 1973, of whom the group formed by members of the Security Detail and Advisors to the Presidency of the Republic were tied hand and foot with wire, loaded onto a military truck, and transported to the Peldehue military fiscal facility. They were then allegedly shot by State agents consisting of Officers and Permanent Staff personnel and finally buried in a dry well into which they were thrown or fell as they were executed, considering that the removal carried out more than five years after said kidnapping and alleged execution constituted the final phase intended to achieve the concealment of the facts." And it adds that to establish that the crimes are crimes against humanity, the majority vote of the judges states that "analyzed such background information, it appears unequivocally that the described conduct makes evident reference to a link within the chain that was part of the systematic and generalized attack against members of the civilian population, in accordance with the plan implemented by the military authority that held power, directed essentially at causing fear through the kidnapping or disappearance of people, conduct carried out by State agents provided with all the power that the de facto situation provided them." And it adds that "this Court considers that we are facing a crime against humanity, insofar as it offends the most intimate feelings of the human being, such as granting their loved ones the right to a Christian burial or a burial worthy of their condition as a person, and that for this reason it contradicts the general principles of law and becomes a concern of the international community."

Source: La Nación, June 11, 2008

Supreme Court convicts nine former uniformed personnel for Operation Removal of Televisions

"In the case of crimes against humanity, the non-statute of limitations for these illicit acts, which gravely offend fundamental human rights, arises as a barrier to impunity," states the ruling of the Supreme Court that confirmed the conviction against the three former officers and six Army non-commissioned officers who illegally exhumed the bodies of those detained on September 11, 1973, at La Moneda.

After their arrest, the victims were taken to the Tacna Regiment and, subsequently, shot at a military facility in Peldehue, where their remains were buried. Five years later, in December 1978, the convicted individuals made the bodies disappear in the operation that was called "Removal of Televisions." The ruling of the highest court thus ratified, by three votes to two, what was resolved by the Santiago Court of Appeals, which, in 2008, imposed 270 days of imprisonment on the former uniformed personnel for their responsibility in the events and granted them the conditional remission of the sentence. The convicted are Colonel (Ret.) Hernán Canales Varas (commander of the Tacna Regiment in 1978), retired Brigadier José Darrigrandi Marques (commander of the Army Aviation Command in 1978), Colonel (Ret.) Luis Fuenzalida Rojas (Intelligence chief of the Tacna in 1978), and retired non-commissioned officers Eliseo Cornejo Escobedo, José Canario Santibáñez, Darío Gutiérrez de la Torre, Fernando Burgos Díaz, Sergio Medina Salazar, and Isidro Durán Muñoz. The majority vote was from judges Jaime Rodríguez, Hugo Dolmestch, and Carlos Künsmüller, while their peers Nibaldo Segura and Rubén Ballesteros were in favor of accepting the statute of limitations for criminal action. Likewise, the judges resolved to dismiss the plaintiffs' lawsuit against the State. "The statute of limitations (for civil action) has expired," the ruling notes.

Source: La Nación, Friday, August 14, 2009

Court of Appeals convicts nine former members of the Army for illegal exhumation

The conviction implies 270 days of reclusión menor in its medium degree and the payment of a fine of 14 Monthly Tax Units (UTM). The Eighth Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals, in a split decision, convicted nine former members of the Army for the crime of illegal exhumation of people who appear on the lists of forcibly disappeared persons, and whose bodies were dug up—in December 1978—from a pit at the Peldehue military camp, in the commune of Colina, in the investigation into the so-called "Removal of Televisions" case.

Judges Cornelio Villarroel Ramírez, Mario Carroza Espinoza, and lawyer member Manuel Hasbún Comandari determined the sentence of 270 days of reclusión menor in its medium degree and the payment of a fine of 14 Monthly Tax Units (UTM) for Hernán Ricardo Canales Varas, José Jaime Darrigrandi Márquez, Eliseo Antonio Cornejo Escobedo, José Nelson Canario Santibáñez, Luis Antonio Fuenzalida Rojas, Darío Ernesto Gutiérrez de la Torre, Fernando Remigio Burgos Díaz, Sergio Antonio Medina Salazar, and Isidoro Custodio Durán Muñoz.

The exhumed bodies correspond to detainees at the La Moneda Palace on September 11, 1973, who were taken to the Tacna Regiment and later shot at the Peldehue military facility in the commune of Colina.

Judge Carroza and lawyer member Manuel Hasbún were of the opinion to revoke the first-instance sentence, dated January 31, 2007, which had acquitted Canales Varas and Darrigrandi Márquez due to lack of participation, and to accept the exception of the statute of limitations for the other 7 convicted individuals, considering that the crime is a crime against humanity and, therefore, not subject to a statute of limitations.

Source: Emol.com, June 11, 2008