Excerpt from the judicial statement of Lieutenant Colonel (ret.) Arturo Bosch González

“I must point out that the brigade departed from Santiago heading south at the end of September 1973 or at the beginning of October of that year, remaining in the south of the country uninterruptedly until shortly before Christmas; I do not remember the exact date of return. “In that brigade, as I recall, command was exercised by, in addition to Patricio Larraín Landaeta, Captain Sergio Candia Muñoz, who was an officer at the Paratrooper School, Hernán Saldes, Carlos Rafael Parera Silva, Fernando Martínez González, Patricio Acevedo Trujillo, Emilio Timmermann Undurraga, Armando Hormazábal Marré, Hyram Eduardo Díaz, Hugo Jaque Valenzuela, Manuel Pérez Santillana, Alfredo Román Herrera, Juan Delmás Ramírez, and Cristian Labbé Galilea. I am not sure if the officer Alfredo Vicuña Oyazún went to the south.”

Source: Judiciary, December 18, 2003

Untold stories of the "Black Beret" Mayor Labbé

At the beginning of 2004, the mayor of Providencia, Cristián Labbé Galilea, was on edge. On December 22, 2003, he had to testify in the case being pursued by Judge Alejandro Solís, which investigates the death of 15 people that occurred in October 1973 in Liquiñe, near Valdivia.

The murdered individuals were simple peasants who worked at the Panguipulli Forestry and Lumber Complex. Their relatives state that on the night of October 11, 1973, the 15 were executed by firing squad and their bodies thrown into the Toltén River.

In the following days, locals saw the remains downstream. According to their testimonies, the corpses were tied by their feet and hands. Some were inside sacks. Others even showed signs of decapitation.

Providencia Mayor Labbé appears in this sinister file for one reason: he was named by Lieutenant Colonel (ret.) Arturo Antonio Bosch González as part of the military detail that operated in the area when the events occurred (see box).

Liquiñe, however, is not the only story that haunts Labbé from the past. The former officer, who retired with the rank of Army Colonel, is also mentioned in another case being investigated by Judge Alejandro Solís.

This concerns the investigation into crimes of illicit association, illegal detention, and torture that occurred in Tejas Verdes, in the V Region. In this case, former conscript Samuel Enrique Fuenzalida Devia identifies Mayor Labbé as one of the instructors who had the mission of training the personnel who later formed the DINA.

On March 31, Alejandra Arriaza, a lawyer for the Corporation for the Promotion and Defense of the Rights of the People (CODEPU), requested that Labbé be confronted with Fuenzalida. The court's response was that the request would be resolved in due course.

Municipal elections are approaching, and many take it for granted that Labbé will be the UDI candidate for the position of mayor of Providencia. The testimonies from these proceedings do his aspirations no favors. He has plenty of reasons to be on edge.

The other Caravan of Death

For human rights organizations, the deaths in Liquiñe are not an isolated case. On the contrary, they are believed to be part of an extensive operation carried out between September and October 1973 that affected towns south of Temuco.

José Araya, executive secretary of CODEPU in Valdivia, goes further and states that the deaths in Liquiñe are part of “another caravan of death, similar to the one that operated in the north.” In its wake, more than 70 people were executed, and many of them remain forcibly disappeared.

For Araya, although military personnel and Carabineros from the area participated in these deaths, a group that came from Santiago played a central role in the events: these were paratrooper commandos from Peldehue, better known as “black berets.” Nearly 200 members of that select combat group appear today linked to the various proceedings regarding the executions that occurred from Temuco southward.

José Araya states that the presence of this elite corps was due to a specific motive. “The military believed that the region's forests were full of Cuban guerrillas. For months, they operated even with armed helicopters and bombed the mountains.

You can still see the craters they left behind,” Araya asserts. An account of that extensive operation was recorded in the November 18, 1973, edition of El Mercurio. There, under the title "Cleanup operations of armed extremist groups," the actions of a “Special Anti-Guerrilla Brigade” are reported, which, under the orders of General Nilo Floody Buxton and Commander Carlos Medina Lois, operated in Neltume, Arquilhue, Lago Ranco, and, of course, Liquiñe.

The article describes the preparation of this anti-guerrilla brigade: "It is composed of professionals who graduated abroad, with honors. They have been in courses held in France, Panama, and the United States.

They have survived in the middle of the jungle with indigenous people, precisely for the purpose of specializing in this type of combat and for the fight against guerrillas." Facts today demonstrate that the Cuban guerrilla force that Floody’s men claimed to be fighting never existed. This elite force simply fell upon unarmed peasants.

Bad memory During the investigation into the Liquiñe deaths, a central obstacle has been identifying the officers who were actually in the area. Sources from the Fifth Department of the Investigative Police, who have participated directly in this process, assured The Clinic that “the higher-ranking officers do not remember the names or positions of their subordinates, or they declare dates that do not match the proven facts.” However, the circle of protection has slowly been cracking, and “the lower-ranking military personnel at the time of the events are collaborating,” the source states.

Because of this, it is now reportedly proven that the Paratrooper School of Peldehue participated in this detail with almost its entire complement, a unit in which Cristián Labbé served with the rank of officer. “Now, the judge has to define the dates and the participation of each officer,” the source concluded.

Labbé’s name appeared in this slow release of data only on December 18 of last year. That day, Lieutenant Colonel (ret.) Arturo Bosch González revealed to Judge Solís the names of the officers who acted in the Valdivia area.

On the list, Labbé appeared as an officer who “exercised command.” Bosch stated that the contingent, composed of between 200 and 300 people, arrived in the area at the beginning of October, “remaining in the south of the country uninterruptedly until shortly before Christmas.” He states that the area was divided into strips under the charge of different officers, although today he cannot link names to territories.

He believes, however, that Liquiñe could have been under the control of General “Nilo Floody or personnel under the charge of officer Saldes, or personnel from the Mountain School.” Mayor Labbé appeared before the judge two days after Bosch did.

In his statement, to which The Clinic had exclusive access, Labbé admitted to having been part of the brigade commanded by General Floody. He also admitted that the contingent was made up of about 200 people and that if it was under the command of a general, it was “because it was an important operational unit.” When asked about the objectives of this detail, he declared: “It was thought that in the Panguipulli Forestry Complex there could be a rural guerrilla; there was the idea that there could be a focus of this type of group.

The idea was to form this brigade to sweep these focuses. And in the event that a confrontation occurred, in addition to sweeping the place, to open fire.” Later, Labbé also acknowledged having participated in the counter-guerrilla operation.

But—and here the contradictions begin—he argues that he was only in charge of the reserve troops. “I moved along with the reserve unit to Panguipulli,” he declared. He then insisted on that point when asked about the events in Liquiñe: “I did not have intervention in the operation because I was in charge of the reserve troops, which are deployed in extreme cases, which were not reached on that occasion,” he said.

The statement is striking. None of the officers who have already testified mention the participation of reservists in these operations. They only speak of permanent staff and conscripts. On the other hand, a retired military officer of the same rank as Labbé, who was discharged after the military coup, told The Clinic that in a black beret commando unit, there is no reserve. “The black berets are an elite force, with highly trained, permanent staff.

Furthermore, for a mission of that magnitude, they were not going to take reservists,” the former officer stated on condition of anonymity. Like Bosch, Labbé could not specify which officers acted in each area, and according to his recollections, almost no black beret marched to the south.

In his case, he claims he was only in the area for two weeks, at the end of November, when the Liquiñe deaths had already occurred. However, he makes mistakes. In court, for example, he was asked about a note made by General Medina in the service record of officer Patricio Landaeta.

The note is dated September 30, 1973, and reports that the group faced “enemy fire.” “I do not know what is meant by the expression ‘enemy fire,’ because from September 21 to 30, 1974, I was not at the Paratrooper School,” Labbé declares.

If you did not notice the mayor’s error, read the sentence again. Labbé is asked about an event in 1973, and he answers about 1974. In the long run, Labbé is only clear that he is not responsible for the deaths being investigated, that during the period in question he was assigned to guard Pinochet’s house, and that he only had the duty of instructing reserve personnel.

And the truth is that there is no evidence that Labbé participated in the crimes of Liquiñe or the massacres carried out throughout the area. But the fact that he is mentioned by Bosch makes him a relevant witness to help clarify the deaths and, above all, the responsibilities.

Regarding this, Alejandra Arriaza, a lawyer for CODEPU, has no doubts. “All the background information confirms Labbé’s participation. It only remains to specify his specific responsibility in the events,” she told The Clinic.

Gymnastics instructor

It is not only Liquiñe that complicates the life of the Providencia mayor today. His time at the detention center that operated in the exclusive seaside resort of Rocas de Santo Domingo—Tejas Verdes—does so as well.

The investigation into this center is being carried out by the same Judge Solís and pursues the crimes of illicit association, illegal detention, and torture. In this investigation, Labbé’s name jumped out from the judicial statement of Samuel Enrique Fuenzalida Devia, a former conscript who, on October 30, 2000, identified Labbé as one of the instructors at that torture camp. “During my stay in Rocas de Santo Domingo, a place that functioned as a DINA intelligence school, we received instruction in physical conditioning and various courses related to intelligence and the tracking of people.

In that place, we had as instructors César Manríquez Bravo, professor of the intelligence course; Cristian Labbé, physical trainer and current mayor of Providencia; Miguel Krassnoff Marchenko, in charge of hand-to-hand combat techniques, urban and suburban guerrilla warfare,” said Fuenzalida.

The former soldier has testified in several human rights cases, providing relevant information about the origin and operation of the DINA, an organization that for years was led by General (ret.) Manuel Contreras.

Before Judge Solís, Fuenzalida recounted that between December 1973 and January 1974, he was transferred to the Santo Domingo resort, along with military personnel from other parts of the country. The group was received by Contreras himself, who informed them “that we had been chosen from the armed forces to integrate a select group of people to form the DINA, an entity that was under his command.” Fuenzalida’s statement has special relevance.

It sets the zero hour when Manuel Contreras began to prepare the agents who later participated in the bloodiest period of Pinochet’s dictatorship. Fuenzalida maintains that Labbé Galilea was an instructor for approximately 600 military personnel, who months later were the first officials of the DINA.

The data available today indicate that in those years, Tejas Verdes was a sort of counter-insurgency academy where future agents not only received theoretical instruction but were also able to practice their knowledge on the people detained there.

According to the Rettig Report, this facility began operating as a detention center from September 11 itself, with testimonies of its systematic use until 1975. According to those who survived that hell, there were periods when Tejas Verdes had more than 100 prisoners.

The majority were brutally tortured. Some disappeared. None of the survivors accuse Labbé of having participated in torture. Neither does Fuenzalida. But everyone who knows about this investigation believes that if the mayor of Providencia was an instructor, as the former soldier points out, he could provide relevant information about what happened there.

Especially because Fuenzalida’s testimony is not the only thing that links Labbé to the DINA. There is also a confidential official letter in which Contreras himself mentions Labbé as an agent of his organization.

This is official letter 4380/19, dated December 1974, where Contreras requests “the extension of a diplomatic passport to the following DINA personnel: Mr. Cristian Labbé Galilea, Mr. Carlos Marín Castro, Mr.

José Riquelme Villagra, Mr. Rolf Esser Muller.” Contreras states that "the aforementioned personnel will carry out a specific service commission and, in accordance with the established policy, no Supreme Decree is issued.

As it is an urgent commission in Peru, we thank you for ordering the appropriate person to provide the maximum speed in the delivery of this document." According to lawyer Arriaza, Labbé is a high-ranking military officer in the DINA, not a simple gymnastics instructor. “He helped create that organization, then he travels out of the country, in an irregular procedure.

All of this is illegal; he must clarify his responsibility in the events being investigated,” the lawyer told The Clinic.

The Bosch list Excerpt from the judicial statement of Lieutenant Colonel (ret.) Arturo Bosch González. (December 18, 2003) “I must point out that the brigade departed from Santiago heading south at the end of September 1973 or at the beginning of October of that year, remaining in the south of the country uninterruptedly until shortly before Christmas; I do not remember the exact date of return. “In that brigade, as I recall, command was exercised by, in addition to Patricio Larraín Landaeta, Captain Sergio Candia Muñoz, who was an officer at the Paratrooper School, Hernán Saldes, Carlos Rafael Parera Silva, Fernando Martínez González, Patricio Acevedo Trujillo, Emilio Timmermann Undurraga, Armando Hormazábal Marré, Hyram Eduardo Díaz, Hugo Jaque Valenzuela, Manuel Pérez Santillana, Alfredo Román Herrera, Juan Delmás Ramírez, and Cristian Labbé Galilea. I am not sure if the officer Alfredo Vicuña Oyazún went to the south.”

The forgetful one

Excerpt from Labbé’s statement before Judge Alejandro Solís. December 22, 2003. “Regarding the officers indicated: Patricio Larraín Landaeta was an officer at the school, but I do not remember if he went to the south, the same for Sergio Candia; in the case of Hernán Saldes, he was in the south; Carlos Parera, I do not remember if he went to the south on that occasion; Fernando Martínez González, I do not remember him in the operation, just like Patricio Acevedo Trujillo; Emilio Timmermann, I associate him with the school, I do not know if he went to the south; Armando Hormazábal, it does not seem to me that he went; Hyram Díaz, I remember he was an officer at the school but not in the operation, just like Hugo Jaque; I do not remember Manuel Pérez in the operation; Alfredo Román Herrera, as far as I understand, passed away before the operation took place; I do not remember Juan Delmás; Alfredo Vicuña Oyarzún was a second lieutenant at the school; Arturo Bosch, I remember him from the school but before I left this unit to take the course in Brazil.”

Word of "Mamo" Excerpt from the confidential official letter in which Labbé is mentioned as “DINA personnel.” December 2, 1974 1.- I allow myself to request the extension of a Diplomatic Passport to the following DINA personnel: Mr.

CRISTIAN LABBE GALILEA Mr. CARLOS MARIN CASTRO Mr. JOSE RIQUELME VILLAGRAN Mr. ROLF ESSER MULLER 2.- The aforementioned personnel will carry out a specific Service Commission and, in accordance with the established policy, no Supreme Decree is issued.

In the passport granted to them, please include the exemption from the corresponding tax. As it is an urgent Commission in Peru, we thank you for ordering the appropriate person to provide the maximum speed in the delivery of this document.

Source: theclinic.cl, October 27, 2011

Labbé and the murder of 15 peasants in Liquiñe at the hands of the "black berets"

Neither the current mayor nor any other member of that detachment could be prosecuted and convicted for these crimes against humanity, despite their participation in the operation being recorded. Court and police sources agree in stating that “the pact of silence” they swore to each other and the “zero collaboration with justice” were two reasons for managing to evade responsibilities.

They acted in clothing without rank distinctions, at night, and with their faces semi-covered, according to witnesses of the detentions, and for the inhabitants of these foothills, “it was impossible to recognize anyone.” Night falls on a Santiago that still trembles under the bombs of the Hawker Hunters.

The men of Lieutenant Colonel Alejandro Medina Lois rest at the Telecommunications regiment in Peñalolén. They are the “strategic reserve” of General Augusto Pinochet, installed there during the first days of the Military Coup.

Elite commandos from the Paratrooper and Special Forces School directed by Medina. They are the black berets. After the first 48 hours of the assault on Salvador Allende’s government, everything is under control.

Allende is dead. There is no armed popular resistance. The President’s main collaborators are detained. The socialist revolution is already a memory. Smoldering. Sorrowful. Tragic. But a thrust disturbs the security of the victorious insurgents.

In the still-dark early hours of September 12, 1973, a group of peasants and young revolutionaries from the south in the Valdivia foothills becomes an alarm. They surround the Neltume police station and demand that the Carabineros hand over weapons and ammunition if they are not willing to fight the coup plotters.

Among them is the MIR militant José Liendo Vera. The mythical and feared “Commander Pepe.” The police refuse and open fire. A shootout begins. After a couple of hours, the group acting from the outside disperses.

Silence returns. There are no dead or wounded on either side. From then on, the Panguipulli Forestry and Lumber Complex becomes one of the military’s main targets. It is presumed that dangerous guerrillas are operating in the area.

Pinochet orders their elimination. “Operation Leopard” is born. For this, Pinochet creates the “Special Anti-Guerrilla Brigade” with the black berets from the Paratrooper School of Peldehue and other men prepared for combat.

Under the command of General Nilo Floody, between 250 and 300 military personnel are sent to repress the insurgency. One of them is the young officer Cristián Labbé Galilea. The majority are killing machines.

Their specialties: military mountain instructor, with courses in paratrooping, commandos, special warfare, assault, guiding, and explosives and ammunition. Days after the Coup, the brigade begins the journey from Peñalolén aboard military trucks.

They carry sufficient light and heavy weaponry and ammunition. They are prepared for war and to kill guerrillas. “The brigade was created because a rural guerrilla could exist in the Panguipulli Lumber Complex.

We had to sweep those focuses, and if confrontations occurred, the order was to open fire.” It is Labbé who declares before the courts in December 2003 regarding the crimes against 15 peasants from Liquiñe, 150 kilometers east of Valdivia, near the Argentine border.

For the first time, Labbé uncovers his well-kept secret: he acknowledges that he was indeed part of that operation. From Brazil, where before September 11, 1973, he took various courses in techniques to become the elite of the elite, Labbé returns to the Paratrooper School to the Directorate of Instruction.

In other words, he is not just a common black beret; he is the one who trains them. During the operation in Liquiñe and other places in the Valdivian foothills, the current mayor of Providencia depends directly on the supreme chief of the black berets, Lieutenant Colonel Alejandro Medina, who on this long journey was the Chief of Staff for General Nilo Floody. “My work depended on the Chief of Staff,” Labbé maintains in his judicial statement.

As is known, with that comprehensive preparation, he was later one of the trainers of the DINA agents and, properly speaking, a prominent member of this illicit criminal organization. “We arrived in Valdivia first, but we didn’t really know what we were going for.

We were only told that the objective was to fight a guerrilla,” recalls a black beret non-commissioned officer who spoke with El Mostrador but preferred to keep his identity confidential. A day later, the non-commissioned officer maintains that they left for the foothills, to the area of the Panguipulli Forestry and Lumber Complex, and arrived in Liquiñe. “The black berets set up tents in the courtyard of the nuns' school,” states Julián García, an industrialist and owner of the Liquiñe Hot Springs and the inn, in the judicial investigation.

This is the Liquiñe Missionary School. Another military contingent under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Guerra Jorquera, which arrives earlier from Valdivia, sets up its camp on the large site of the hot springs themselves, according to Julián García. This man is a recognized anti-communist, according to judicial statements by surviving peasants.

The complex is born

The Panguipulli Forestry and Lumber Complex extended between the Chihuío Baths in the south and Liquiñe in the north, about 150 kilometers east of Valdivia. It came to have 360,000 hectares. It was made up of 22 large estates.

Starting in the late 1960s, the properties were occupied by members of the Revolutionary Peasant Movement (MCR), an organization controlled by the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR). By 1973, more than 3,000 peasants worked there.

Not a few followed “Commander Pepe,” leader of the MCR. Along with Liendo Vera, a handful of MIR students arrived in the area in the late sixties to begin a “land recovery” alongside the peasants. When Allende triumphed in 1970, his government expropriated the 22 estates.

Thus, the Panguipulli Forestry and Lumber Complex was officially born as a subsidiary company of the Production Development Corporation (Corfo). The dream of building their own destiny was fulfilled. The complex and Commander Pepe became the terror of the right-wing latifundistas.

For this reason, the post-military coup revenge was ferocious. After the Liquiñe police station episode in the early hours of September 12, 1973, Commander Pepe, along with his wife, Yolanda Ávila, and the MIR militants Luis Pezo and Pedro Barría, who uses a crutch to walk, hide for a few days and go up into the mountains.

But on September 19, they are found and transferred to the Valdivia prison. On the night of October 3, 1973, Liendo Vera is executed at the Llancahue military camp. The next day, eleven other MIR members accused of participating in the attack on the Neltume police station are murdered.

The crimes are handled by the Caravan of Death of General Sergio Arellano, present in Valdivia in those days. For this, Arellano signs a sentence from a fake War Council. The man who would later be the second-in-command of the DINA, Pedro Espinoza Bravo, attends that night to witness the death of Liendo Vera.

Black berets accused

The night of October 10, 1973, can never be forgotten by the inhabitants of Liquiñe. Julián García’s inn operates as “headquarters.” From there comes the list with the 15 peasants who must be arrested and killed immediately.

As established in the proceedings, Julián García and his son Luis, who wear military clothing that night, provide the names of those who must die. The black berets begin the raid along with Carabineros from the Liquiñe station, under the charge of non-commissioned officer Luis Anguita Castro.

They know the chosen ones well. According to the police report signed by the sub-prefect of the Valdivia Investigative Police, Benjamín Leal Riquelme, and the sub-commissioner Manuel Castro Contreras, in the detentions of the Complex peasants José Miguel and Alejandro Antonio Tracanao Pincheira and their father Eliseo Maximiliano Tracanao Valenzuela, “a Carabineros corporal named Quintana from the Liquiñe station and several black beret military personnel” participate.

The owner of the Liquiñe hot springs, Julián García, declares judicially that “the black berets carried out the detentions.” The judge of Villarrica in 1973, René García Villegas, maintains in his book Soy Testigo (I Am a Witness) that one of the bodies of those riddled with bullets on the Toltén bridge remains hours later in the river “tangled among some rocks, headless.” Elcira Figueroa Arias, wife of Salvador Alamos Rubilar, one of the 15 victims of Liquiñe, declared in the proceedings that, while looking for her husband, “at the Military Prosecutor’s Office in Temuco, Captain Ubilla told me that on the date of my husband’s disappearance (October 10, 1973), an operation by the Black Beret Commando from Colina (Santiago) was in the area, so the local military authorities ‘washed their hands of it,’ and that if my husband fell into their hands, ‘you better mourn and consider him dead.’”

Over the Toltén bridge

Tied by their feet and hands, the 15 peasants are taken that night in two pickup trucks in the direction of Villarrica. One of the vehicles is provided by Julián García and driven by his son Luis. The other is provided by merchant Juan Carmach and driven by the Liquiñe ambulance driver, Sixto Díaz.

On the bridge over the Toltén River, the peasants are taken out, and the berets order both drivers to move away. In a few minutes, the detainees form a macabre human carpet laid out on the bridge. Red in color, like the blood flowing in torrents from their bodies riddled by repeating rifles with war ammunition.

Below, the rushing waters of the river cannot drown out the sound of the machine-gun fire. Díaz and García hear it, as they later declare judicially. After Liquiñe, always in search of guerrillas, the contingent of black berets in which Labbé participates heads to other localities that comprise the Lumber Complex.

But the non-commissioned officer we spoke with maintains, smiling ironically: “We didn’t find any; there was nothing, no guerrillas or anything.” The Anti-Guerrilla Brigade remained in the area until the beginning of December 1973 (...) A couple of days before the night massacre in Liquiñe, in Chihuío, 25 kilometers south of Liquiñe, 17 members of the Complex are likewise riddled with bullets, all peasants who lived in the area with their families.

One by one, the bodies are thrown into the river. The Liquiñe list is fulfilled. The executioners think that the multiple perforations in the bodies will allow them to sink and be lost forever downstream to the sea.

The boatmen and the authority

But days later, boatmen in the area who fish discover some bodies clinging to branches on the bank or stuck between rocks. They notify the Villarrica Carabineros. The secretary of the Villarrica Criminal Court, Osvaldo Wiegand Carrasco, arrives at the scene with the sub-commissioner of the Villarrica sub-station, Captain Ramón Torrealba Guzmán.

In the proceedings, secretary Wiegand says he manages to save a couple of bodies. But the boatmen contradict him. They state that the order they receive from both the secretary and the sub-commissioner is to free the bodies from what they are caught on and throw them back into the current to disappear.

The boatmen Eliseo Rosas Maldonado and José Carrasco Rodríguez are confronted with Wiegand and Torrealba. They maintain their statements that they were forced by both authorities to release the bodies and return them to the torrent.

The same is confirmed by boatmen Guido Mora, Leopoldo Ghisolfo, and Juan Yáñez Cares. After Liquiñe, always in search of guerrillas, the contingent of black berets in which Labbé participates heads to other localities that comprise the Lumber Complex.

But the non-commissioned officer we spoke with maintains, smiling ironically: “We didn’t find any; there was nothing, no guerrillas or anything.” The Anti-Guerrilla Brigade remained in the area until the beginning of December 1973.

However, in the area where the berets move under the command of General Floody and Medina Lois, in addition to the 15 from Liquiñe, another 30 peasants from the Lumber Complex are murdered. A couple of days before the night massacre in Liquiñe, in Chihuío, 25 kilometers south of Liquiñe, 17 members of the Complex are likewise riddled with bullets, all peasants who lived in the area with their families.

Members of the Cazadores regiment of Valdivia also participate in this operation. The raid is supported by Puma helicopters of the Air Force, which come from the Maquehua Air Base in Temuco.

The secret Some other officers who participate in “Operation Leopard” are: Carlos Parera Silva, Emilio Timmermann Undurraga, Arturo Bosch González, Manuel Pérez Santillán (DINA agent), and Sergio Candia Muñoz.

Why could neither Labbé nor any other member of the black berets be prosecuted and convicted for these crimes against humanity? Court and police sources agree in stating that “the pact of silence” they swore to each other and the “zero collaboration with justice” were two reasons for managing to evade responsibilities.

According to the sources, to this is added that, as it was an unknown contingent from Santiago that acted in clothing without rank distinctions, at night, and with their faces semi-covered, according to witnesses of the detentions, for the inhabitants of these foothills, “it was impossible to recognize anyone.” The former DINA agent, retired Colonel Cristián Labbé, avoids prison once again, while he waits to be re-elected as mayor on October 28.

Source: elmostrador.cl, October 23, 2012