On October 16, 1973, 23 people were detained at the Campo Lindo, 24 de Abril, and Nuevo Sendero settlements. 22 of them remain forcibly disappeared to this day, while the body of the last one was recently found and identified.

In the early hours of that day, an operation was carried out in the three aforementioned settlements in the town of Paine by personnel from the San Bernardo Infantry Regiment, accompanied by Carabineros and civilians from the area, who were armed and some with their faces painted.

They traveled in a red truck, a military jeep, and other civilian vehicles. The personnel proceeded to detain twenty-three people, raiding their homes and acting with unnecessary violence in some instances. They did not allow lights to be turned on, operating by the light of flashlights.

Twelve of these individuals belonged to peasant families living in the "24 de Abril" settlement; two belonged to peasant families living in the "El Tránsito" settlement, but who also worked as laborers at the "24 de Abril" settlement; seven belonged to the "Nuevo Sendero" settlement; one was a merchant and another an industrialist from the area:

José Domingo ADASME NUÑEZ, 37 years old, married;

Pedro Antonio CABEZAS VILLEGAS, 37 years old, married;

Patricio Loreto DUQUE ORELLANA, 25 years old, married;

Carlos GAETE LOPEZ, 29 years old, married;

Luis Alberto GAETE BALMACEDA, 21 years old, married;

José Germán FREDES GARCIA, 29 years old, married;

Rosalindo Delfin HERRERA MUÑOZ, 22 years old;

Luis Rodolfo LAZO MALDONADO, 20 years old, single, Socialist Party militant;

Samuel del Tránsito LAZO MALDONADO, 24 years old, married, Socialist Party militant;

Carlos Enrique LAZO QUINTEROS, 41 years old, married;

Samuel Altamiro LAZO QUINTEROS, 49 years old, married, Socialist Party militant;

René del Rosario MAUREIRA GAJARDO, 41 years old, married, Socialist Party militant;

Jorge Hernán MUÑOZ PEÑALOZA, 28 years old;

Mario Enrique MUÑOZ PEÑALOZA, 24 years old, married, Vice President of the "24 de Abril" settlement;

Ramiro Antonio MUÑOZ PEÑALOZA, 32 years old, married;

Silvestre René MUÑOZ PEÑALOZA, 33 years old, married;

Carlos Alberto NIETO DUARTE, 20 years old, single;

Laureano QUIROZ PEZOA, 42 years old, married;

Andrés PEREIRA SALSBERG, 54 years old, married, industrialist;

Roberto Estevan SERRANO GALAZ, 34 years old, married;

Luis SILVA CARREÑO, 43 years old, married;

Basilio Antonio VALENZUELA ALVAREZ, 35 years old, married;

José Ignacio CASTRO MALDONADO, 52 years old, married, Socialist Party militant;

The detainees were taken to the Paine Sub-Commissariat, where some of them were seen by their relatives. From there, they were transferred to the San Bernardo Infantry Regiment, and their whereabouts have remained unknown since then, despite the multiple administrative and judicial efforts made by their families.

Currently, the investigation into all the events that occurred in Paine in 1973 is under the jurisdiction of the Visiting Judge Germán Hermosilla, with all previously initiated cases being consolidated.

The Government of Chile informed the United Nations, in a document presented in 1975, that Carlos Gaete López appeared in the records of the Legal Medical Institute as having been admitted to that agency as deceased on October 18, 1973, at 12:20 PM, having undergone autopsy protocol No. 3393, and that his identity card number was 5,338,566 from Santiago.

This information proved to be false, as Gaete López's identity card was from Buin and bore the number 53,491. For his part, the Visiting Judge, Juan Rivas Larraín, determined that "autopsy protocol No. 3393 corresponds to an unidentified (NN) male person sent by the Prosecutor's Office to that agency, who died in the town of Quilicura on October 13, 1973, at 8:00 PM."

Of the 23 people detained on October 16, 1973, 22 remain forcibly disappeared to this day.

Considering that all the victims were detained by State agents, which has been proven, and were taken to facilities under their control, from where they disappeared, the Commission is convinced that their disappearances are the responsibility of State agents, constituting violations of their human rights.

Date of Birth: 11-27-53, 19 years of age at the time of his detention. Address: 24 de Abril Settlement, Paine Marital Status: Single Occupation: Agricultural worker Political Affiliation: No known political affiliation. Date of Detention: October 16, 1973

REPRESSIVE SITUATION

Carlos Alberto Nieto Duarte, 19 years old at the time of the events, single, an agricultural worker with no political affiliation, residing with his parents at the 24 de Abril Settlement in Paine, was detained at 03:20 on October 16, 1973, by military personnel dressed in olive-green field uniforms, with their faces blackened and carrying firearms.

Upon arriving at the home, the uniformed men asked for Nieto Duarte, then entered the residence and demanded his identity card. His name was checked against a list carried by the captors. They immediately made him dress in warm clothing and he was then taken to a destination unknown to his family.

Despite the countless search efforts made by his family, Carlos Alberto Nieto Duarte remains forcibly disappeared. That night and early morning, in a vast operation carried out by military personnel under the orders of Army Lieutenant Andrés Magaña, 22 people were detained in their homes; in none of these cases was there authorization to conduct raids or arrests.

These military personnel, dressed in field uniforms or gray uniforms with a cape of the same color, wore armbands and used black berets or helmets. Their faces were in some cases blackened, and in others covered with balaclavas.

They moved in at least one red truck with side railings and a jeep. The captors were heavily armed and illuminated the rooms with flashlights, preventing the residents from turning on the lights. The operation began in the early hours of October 16, 1973, and lasted until 04:00.

The people who were detained, mostly settlers who had participated in the agrarian reform process, were listed on a roster carried by the military. Their homes were raided and the detainees were taken from their houses, with the families warned that they would return during the day after giving statements in San Bernardo.

Everyone was loaded onto a truck waiting on the main road. The operation was carried out silently, and the victims' families were forbidden from looking out of their houses. The operation began with the detention of Andrés Pereira Salsberg, an industrialist and owner of a machine shop; then René del Rosario Maureira Gajardo, a merchant, was detained; immediately after, the military headed toward the sector corresponding to the 24 de Abril Settlement, where they detained Patricio Loreto Duque Orellana, the brothers Raúl Antonio, Silvestre René, and Jorge Hernán Muñoz Peñaloza, their brother-in-law Basilio Antonio Valenzuela Alvarez, Germán Fredes García, Carlos Enrique Gaete López, Carlos Alberto Nieto Duarte, Laureano Quiroz Pezoa, Rosalindo Delfín Hernán Muñoz, and Ramón Luis Silva Carreño. They then headed to the El Tránsito Settlement, where Pedro Antonio Cabezas Villegas and Roberto Servando Galaz were detained. Finally, they went to the Nuevo Sendero Settlement, where they detained Enrique Lazo Quintero, his brother Samuel Altamiro Lazo Quinteros and his sons Luis Rodolfo and Samuel Lazo Maldonado, José Domingo Adasme Núñez, Luis Alberto Gaete Balmaceda, and José Ignacio Gaete Maldonado.

On October 10, Carabineros from the Paine Sub-precinct had detained Samuel Altamiro Lazo Quinteros from his home in the El Tránsito Settlement; he had been released after 24 hours of detention at said Sub-precinct.

This peasant was detained again in the early hours of October 16, 1973. Subsequent to his first detention, he informed his fellow settlers that he had been warned by the Carabineros that in the following days, military personnel from the San Bernardo Infantry School would come and proceed to detain the settlers.

The peasants of said settlement had received identical information when they approached the sub-precinct, where they had a conversation with Sergeant Reyes regarding their situation.

Of all the people detained on October 16, 1973, their presence in any detention center remains unknown. To date, there are no witnesses in this regard. Judicial records indicate that they were taken that early morning in the direction of the hills of Codegua, near Melipilla, where they were executed. Their remains have not been found.

The detention and subsequent disappearance of Carlos Alberto Duarte Nieto is part of the repression that took place in Paine in 1973. (Further details in the account of José Domingo Adasme Núñez).

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

On March 24, 1974, a mass recurso de amparo (habeas corpus) was filed for 131 people before the Santiago Court of Appeals, which was registered under No. 289-74. Carlos Alberto Nieto Duarte was included in it.

Authorities were consulted without being able to establish the particular situation of each of the individuals covered by the petition. On November 28, 1974, the amparo was rejected. The resolution was appealed.

The Plenary of the Supreme Court confirmed the ruling on January 31, 1975, agreeing to appoint a Ministro en Visita Extraordinaria (Special Investigating Judge) to focus on the corresponding investigation.

The appointment fell to Judge Enrique Zurita Camps, who on February 24 of that year initiated case file No. 106657 in the First Criminal Court of Santiago. Nieto Duarte's parents were summoned to testify by Judge Zurita, and the circumstances of his detention were placed on record.

On September 25, 1975, without having delved into any of the reported cases, the summary was closed because "it was not possible to advance further in the investigation." On September 29 of the same year, the Judge issued a ruling; in the case of Nieto Duarte, as well as in 27 other cases of detainees from Paine, he temporarily dismissed the case because the existence of a criminal act was not fully justified.

On May 10, 1976, the Santiago Court of Appeals approved Judge Zurita Camps' resolution.

On March 21, 1975, a complaint for alleged misfortune was filed before the Maipo-Buin Court of Letters following the detention and subsequent disappearance of 23 locals from Paine, the vast majority of whom were peasants detained on October 16, 1973.

The case of Carlos Alberto Nieto Duarte was included in this filing. The case for the group of affected individuals was registered under No. 24005-1, under Judge Javier Torres. The first investigative steps were ordered three months later, once María Inés López Ahumada and Teresa Celinda López Moya—complainants in the case—appeared before the Court to ratify their statements.

Starting in July, the first investigative measures were decreed; the National Executive Secretariat for Detainees (SENDET) and the San Bernardo Infantry School were notified. Both institutions, in their official responses, stated they had no information regarding the persons consulted.

The Legal Medical Institute, for its part, replied that the names of those 23 people did not appear in the entry index book for corpses at that establishment. The Court, in turn, issued a broad order to investigate to the Carabineros and the Investigations police.

The Carabineros limited themselves to taking statements from the 2 complainants, while the Investigations police, in addition to carrying out similar procedures to those of the Carabineros, informed the Court that they had made inquiries in order to "locate and identify the people who, apparently, were dressed as military personnel on the day of the events, without favorable results." Without having decreed other measures, on November 26, 1975, the Court decided to close the summary and definitively dismiss the case, as "no presumptions appeared from the summary that the reported facts had been verified."

On January 20, 1976, the Rancagua Court of Appeals confirmed the dismissal, establishing it as temporary and not definitive. The case was archived.

On December 14, 1976, a complaint for the illegal arrest of Carlos Alberto Nieto Duarte was filed before the Maipo-Buin Court of Letters. The case, under file No. 24765, was assigned to Judge Fernando Montenegro Araya.

On August 2, 1977, the summary was closed and the case dismissed, as "it was not fully justified in the records that Carlos Alberto Nieto Duarte had been the victim of any crime or quasi-crime." The Judge took into account for such a resolution the official responses provided by the San Bernardo Infantry School and the Ministry of the Interior, in which it was stated that they had no information regarding the person in question.

The Prosecutor moved to revoke the Judge's resolution in order to continue the investigation. On September 1, 1978, the Rancagua Court of Appeals confirmed the Prosecutor's report and issued precise instructions aimed at achieving progress in the case.

On March 13, 1978, and after having received official responses from the Legal Medical Institute and cemeteries in Santiago, San Bernardo, and Buin, which accounted for the absence of the affected person in their entry records, the Judge declared himself incompetent and referred the records to the II Military Prosecutor's Office.

The military court rejected the jurisdiction due to the lack of sufficient evidence in the case to substantiate it. The file was returned to its original court.

On March 14, 1978, a criminal complaint was filed against Army Colonel Jorge Dawling Santa María as an accessory to the crime of illegal arrest of Nieto Duarte. Both the complaint and the case file 24765 were consolidated into case file 24005-1, which had been reopened.

Regarding the reopening of case file 24005-1, it should be noted that it occurred on March 23, 1977, when a request to that effect presented by the complainant party was accepted. The request for reopening was based on the fact that 10 cases included in case file 24005-1 appeared on a list of 63 people whom the Chilean government, at the 30th Session of the United Nations (UN) in 1975, claimed were not "forcibly disappeared"—as their families denounced—but were dead people whose corpses were recorded in the entry index book of the Legal Medical Institute.

This list of 63 names was included in the document titled "Current Situation of Human Rights in Chile" (Volume II, pp. 381-383).

The information contained in the report—the complainants added—was contradictory to what that Court had received from the Legal Medical Institute itself when consulted by official letter. During the years 1977 and 1978, 11 complaints for illegal arrests of peasants from Paine and 5 criminal complaints against Colonel Jorge Dawling Santa María as an accessory to the crime of detention followed by disappearance were consolidated into case file 24005-1.

The latter was based on the fact that, during the investigation, the aforementioned Colonel, in his capacity as Director of the San Bernardo Infantry School, had responded to the Court that he was not in a position to provide the names of the officers who participated in the operations of October 1973 in Paine and its surroundings.

On April 3, 1979, the Minister of the Rancagua Court of Appeals, Mr. Juan Rivas Larraín, was appointed to continue hearing the case, in response to a request presented by the Catholic Church to the Supreme Court so that Ministros en Visita could address the cases of forcibly disappeared persons throughout the national territory.

Thus, two years after the reopening of the case, upon assuming the position, Minister Rivas ordered the first investigative steps aimed at clarifying the information regarding 10 forcibly disappeared persons—the subject of the process—who appeared with contradictory information as already noted.

Minister Rivas sent an official letter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile, requesting information regarding the background and procedures that allowed for the compilation of the list of "Presumably disappeared persons" who had been located in the records of the Legal Medical Institute of Santiago.

The response was received on October 30, 1979, by the recently appointed Ministro en Visita, Mr. Humberto Espejo Zúñiga, after the creation of the Presidente Aguirre Cerda Court of Appeals, which, for jurisdictional reasons, was responsible for continuing the investigation, and whose new file number was 1-79.

The official response, signed by the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, stated textually in one of its parts: "Such information was requested by Your Honor in view of the fact that the Legal Medical Institute, when requested on the same matter, has not found official letters from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Legal Medical Institute regarding said list.

In this regard, I inform Your Honor that the list contained on pages 381, 382, and 383 of the aforementioned volume 2 appears with an illegible signature and a stamp that this Ministry understands corresponds to authorities of the Legal Medical Institute; otherwise, such a document would not have been circulated to international organizations.

Regarding how the list came into the possession of this Secretariat of State, it should be noted that there is no official documentation sent to the aforementioned Institute, so it must be concluded that it was requested verbally and delivered by hand to officials of this Ministry." Minister Rivas Larraín, at the moment he left his visit in case file 24005-1, established that said list was false and that the autopsy protocols assigned to the forcibly disappeared detainees corresponded to unidentified (NN) bodies, whose identification had been impossible due to the lack of skin on their hands.

By December 1979, nine criminal complaints were consolidated into case file 1-79 against the staff of the San Bernardo Infantry School for the crimes of kidnapping of Pedro Hernán Pinto Caroca, Ramón Luis Silva Carreño, Laureano Quiroz Pezoa, Ramiro Antonio Muñoz Peñaloza, Silvestre René Muñoz Peñaloza, José Ignacio Castro Maldonado, Luis Alberto Gaete Balmaceda, José Germán Fredes García, and Carlos Gaete López.

Five complaints against Army Colonel Jorge Dawling Santa María for the cover-up of the crime of illegal arrest of Jorge Hernán Muñoz Peñaloza, Carlos Enrique Lazo Quinteros, Carlos Alberto Nieto Duarte, José Domingo Adasme Núñez, Samuel Altamiro Lazo Quinteros, Samuel del Tránsito Lazo Maldonado, and Luis Rodolfo Lazo Maldonado.

A complaint for the kidnapping and qualified homicide of Juan Guillermo Cuadra Espinoza and Ignacio del Tránsito Santander Albornoz, perpetrated by members of the San Bernardo Infantry School.

A complaint against Army Lieutenant Andrés Magaña Bau for the crime of illegal arrest of René del Rosario Maureira Gajardo; a complaint for the kidnapping of Andrés Pereira Salsberg; and a complaint for the crime of kidnapping of Mario Enrique Muñoz Peñaloza against Carabineros Sergeant Manuel Reyes (further details regarding this last complaint in the account of Mario E. Muñoz Peñaloza).

Regarding the accused, Army Colonel Jorge Dawling Santa María, who in 1979 served as Director of the San Bernardo Infantry School, an official letter was sent to him on September 26, 1978, requesting all information he possessed regarding the personnel of that military unit who performed duties in the months of September and October 1973.

No response was obtained. The Court reported this situation to the Court of Appeals, which on November 14, 1978, resolved in Plenary that the aforementioned Colonel should comply with the provisions of Article 191 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (that is, depending on his rank, he had to report).

The official response finally arrived signed by the new Director of the San Bernardo Infantry School, Carlos Meirelles Müller, in which he limited himself to stating that there was no intention to hide information, that there were documents with the requested information, and added that Colonel Dawling Santa María had handed over command and ceased to belong to the Institution.

On February 7, 1979, in a new official letter, Colonel Meirelles was requested to provide the list of the Institution's personnel as of October 1973, to which he responded that he did not have the authority to provide that information and that it should be requested from the Minister of National Defense.

Starting in April 1979, with Minister Humberto Espejo in charge of the investigation, after the creation of the Presidente Aguirre Cerda Court of Appeals, which territorially corresponded to continue the case, official letters were diversified in order to establish the identification of those who participated in the operations carried out in Paine and its surroundings.

The Minister of National Defense was notified, not only to inquire about the aforementioned personnel but also to request the appearance of Colonel Dawling Santa María, Lieutenant Andrés Magaña Bau—identified by the victims' families as the person in charge of the October 16, 1973, operation—and Colonel Pedro Montalva Calvo, Deputy Director of the Infantry School as of October 1973.

In April 1979, Lieutenant Andrés Magaña Bau appeared before the Court, at which time he denied his participation in the October 16, 1973, operation, as well as in any other that might have been carried out in Paine.

When confronted with family members of one of these forcibly disappeared detainees, René Maureira Gajardo, he denied knowing them, despite the fact that they claimed to have been with the uniformed officer on more than one occasion at social events prior to September 11, 1973, in the town of Paine.

Regarding Colonel Jorge Dawling Santa María, the Court was informed in an official response that since August 1978 he had been appointed as Military Attaché at the Chilean Embassy in Uruguay, a position that would last for more than a year.

For his part, Army Colonel Pedro Montalva Calvo, upon appearing before the Court on December 10, 1979, declared and affirmed the existence of a Detention Camp at Cerro Chena dependent on the Infantry School, which he noted ceased to function in December 1973, at the time he assumed the Directorship of the School.

Prior to that, its Director had been Colonel Leonel Köening Altterman, who gave written orders regarding who entered as detainees. When the then-Director of the Infantry School, Colonel Köening, was summoned to testify, the Court was notified that he had committed suicide on June 21, 1979.

On December 12, 1979, Minister Espejo declared himself incompetent and referred the records to the Military Prosecutor's Office, given that all the complaints and lawsuits contained in this case (file 1-79) attributed their authorship to personnel of the Armed Forces and Carabineros, both from the San Bernardo Infantry School and the Paine Sub-precinct, respectively.

On March 6, 1980, the Court revoked the incompetence and ordered some measures to advance the investigation. As a result, Colonel Jorge Dawling Santa María was summoned to testify again. On April 2, 1980, the Minister of National Defense, Lieutenant General Raúl Benavides Escobar, informed the Court that Mr.

Dawling Santa María held the rank of Brigadier General and, in accordance with Articles 191 and 192 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, he must testify in writing. The Minister sent a list of erroneously formulated questions, which gave the Brigadier General the opportunity to respond: "in relation to questions 2 through 13, I have no information to provide."

On June 5, 1980, Minister Espejo declared himself incompetent for the second time, basing his resolution on the same terms as the previous time. This was appealed, and on July 25, 1980, the Court of Appeals revoked the resolution, ordering the Ministro Visitador to prepare a new questionnaire to be answered by the Brigadier General, based on the accusations made in the complaints filed against him that are part of the process.

In July 1980, the Court received an official response from Brigadier General Dawling Santa María, the content of which provided no information, arguing that in 1977 there were no longer written records at the Infantry School regarding military maneuvers and operations.

His official letter concluded by stating that he had brought the background of case file 1-79 to the attention of the Army General Command, since he was charged in the complaints with participation as an accessory to "alleged crimes" that he would have committed "in the line of duty."

On October 17, 1980, the records were definitively referred to the II Military Prosecutor's Office of Santiago, at which point the jurisdictional inhibition took effect.

On May 24, 1982, the case was totally and temporarily dismissed: "notwithstanding that the investigation is exhausted, the perpetration of the facts reported at page 1 and attributed to personnel of the Armed Forces and Order, subject to military jurisdiction, is not fully proven."

That resolution was appealed and revoked in March 1984 by the Martial Court, which ordered measures aimed at completing the investigation. During 1985, at least 26 officers and non-commissioned officers who performed duties in the months of September to October 1973 at the San Bernardo Infantry School testified.

All of them denied their participation in operations in Paine and its surroundings, denied knowing about the presence of people in the Chena Detention Camp, and even denied the existence of such a facility.

On November 22, 1989, the Prosecutor of the II Military Prosecutor's Office, Enrique Ibarra Chamorro, appeared on behalf of the Military Public Ministry and requested the application of the Amnesty Decree Law 2191-78.

The Military Judge totally and definitively dismissed the case, as the criminal liability of the persons allegedly accused of the reported facts had been extinguished. That resolution was revoked in February 1992 by the Martial Court; this Court instructed that the case return to the summary stage and ordered the exhumation of the six graves in Patio 29.

Said exhumation could not be carried out by order of this Court, since in September 1991, in case 4449-AF of the 22nd Criminal Court of Santiago, the exhumation of all the remains of unidentified persons buried between September and December 1973 in the aforementioned patio at the General Cemetery had been carried out. As of December 1992, the case was still in process.

It should be noted that in this case, investigations were also carried out regarding Patio 29 of the General Cemetery of Santiago, starting in November 1979, when Monsignor Ignacio Ortúzar R.—in his capacity as Vicar General and Acting Vicar of the Vicariate of Solidarity—reported to the Court the existence of massive and irregular burials of corpses in Patio 29 of the aforementioned cemetery, which would affect nearly 200 graves.

From the investigation, the Court was able to conclude that at least 6 graves could yield information regarding forcibly disappeared detainees included in the process. Between 1981 and 1987, the exhumation of those six graves was requested from the Court on five occasions, with the request being denied on the grounds that it was inconclusive given the time elapsed.

In August 1990, case file 2-90-E was initiated before the Buin-Maipo Court of Letters with the appointment of Ministro en Visita Germán Hermosilla by the Presidente Aguirre Cerda Court of Appeals. Said appointment was due to a request to that effect from the Vicariate of Solidarity of the Archbishopric of Santiago, given the existence of illegal burials of corpses in the town of Paine that affected forcibly disappeared detainees.

The information on Carlos Alberto Nieto Duarte was delivered to the Court.

On March 15, 1991, Mrs. María del Tránsito Venegas Cortés testified before Ministro en Visita Germán Hermosilla, in her capacity as the mother of Jorge Reyes Cortés, who in 1973 had to perform military service at the San Bernardo Infantry School.

Her words, which account for the fate of the 22 detainees of October 16, 1973, were recorded in the file. Textually, in one of its parts, she said: "a few days after they took my cousin Luisa's husband, Roberto Serrano, I went to visit my aunt Rosa's house and I saw that she was very desperate and crying for the fate of her husband.

So I told her 'don't cry anymore Lucha, because the military took your husband, Jorge was with them.' I was referring to the fact that my son had to carry out this detention. My son Jorge had told me about this a few months later, I don't remember exactly when; I found out a few days later as I said before.

They kept them for months without leaving after the Coup, so when he went to the house he told me. He wasn't calm, he was scared, desperate, and not only him, but his companions too. My son didn't know Roberto Serrano; when they went to their house, Jorge met Luisa.

He told me that these detentions were done at night. Yes, it is true that my son told me that it was his turn to shoot at Serrano, but that he asked a companion to change places with him. He also told me that if he said he wouldn't shoot, they would kill him.

It is true that I told Luisa this, since she was taking clothes to her husband at Cerro Chena and they would receive them there, when Serrano was already dead." Jorge Reyes Cortés currently serves in the Los Andes Regiment, and his current military rank is unknown.

Although Mrs. María Venegas Cortez declared that she did not remember having indicated the hills near Codegua and Melipilla as the place of execution, Serrano Galaz's wife did remember it, as recorded in her statements before Ministro en Visita Humberto Espejo.

On April 22, 1980, Jorge Reyes Cortes appeared before the Court in case file 1-79. In his statement, he denied any participation in the events; textually, in one of its parts, he said: "I never participated in any operation in Paine, I never knew there were detainees at Cerro Chena, nor did I recognize any of the detainees in the few times I had to be on guard when they arrived." The Ministro en Visita has carried out various ocular inspections in rural sectors around Paine, without positive results regarding the forcibly disappeared detainees of October 16, 1973.

On August 22, 1991, case file 4449-AF was initiated in the 22nd Criminal Court of Santiago, upon proceeding with the judicial investigation of the crime of illegal burial of corpses that currently remain buried as NN in Patio 29 of the General Cemetery, information contained in a criminal complaint filed by the Vicariate of Solidarity of the Archbishopric of Santiago.

Anthropomorphic information on Carlos Alberto Nieto Duarte was delivered in said case. In September 1991, the exhumation of 108 graves in Patio 29 was carried out; as of December 1992, the extracted remains are at the Legal Medical Institute undergoing the corresponding identification process.

Source: Vicariate of Solidarity