Address: Población Pablo De Rokha, manzana 41, Sitio 17. La Granja, Santiago Marital Status: Married, 10 children Occupation: Warehouse worker at Viña Carafí Union Representation: Union delegate to the General Union of Wine Warehouse Workers, no known political affiliation Date of Detention: February 7, 1974

Carlos Hugo Zelaya Suazo, married, father of ten, a worker at Viñas Carafí and a union leader, was detained at his workplace on February 7, 1974, by four individuals wearing military uniforms who were traveling in a yellow Jeep without license plates or Army insignia.

At 3:30 p.m. on the aforementioned day, the four military personnel appeared at the Viña Carafí warehouse and informed the secretary and one of the owners, Alfredo Carafí Mercader, that they needed to speak with Carlos Zelaya Suazo.

After the victim was presented to them, the uniformed men requested his identification, and as he was not carrying it, two of the captors accompanied him to the locker room to retrieve it. After about five minutes, the military personnel returned with the victim from inside the warehouse and exited directly to the street.

Meanwhile, one of the agents approached the reception desk and said, "Mr. Zelaya is going to accompany us." Mr. Carafí requested further information; however, the individual insisted on the same response. Immediately thereafter, they left the premises in the aforementioned vehicle.

It should be noted, as stated before the Judge, that it drew the attention of both the company owner and the victim's coworkers, among whom were José San Martín and Francisco Orellana, that the captors at no time showed any identification proving they were members of the Army. Furthermore, they did not display an arrest warrant, and the vehicle they used had no regulatory identification.

The victim's spouse, Beatriz López, carried out numerous efforts to reliably establish the whereabouts and situation of the victim; among these actions, she went to the Regimiento Tacna on February 15, 1974, having been informed by acquaintances that her husband was there.

At that location, they confirmed the information, although they told her she could not see him because he was being held incommunicado. The truth is that it was never possible to verify whether or not he was at the Regimiento Tacna. Carlos Zelaya remains in the status of forcibly disappeared.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

A complaint for the alleged disappearance of Carlos Zelaya Suazo was filed before the 1st Criminal Court of San Miguel; the summary proceeding was registered under No. 44.076 and filed on July 8, 1976. The fear existing at the time prevented earlier judicial actions.

Consulted by the Ministry of the Interior, on July 15, 1976, Army General Raúl Benavides responded that his State Secretariat had not ordered the detention of the victim.

On July 23, 1976, the Legal Medical Institute reported that there was no record of Carlos Zelaya Suazo's admission in their files.

The Director of National Intelligence, Colonel Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, informed the Judge that the Ministry of the Interior, through the Minister of Justice, had made it known to the Judiciary that the Courts should refrain from requesting information directly from the DINA.

In the official letter, the Colonel did not take the trouble to report on the victim, which was the subject of the inquiry from the 1st Criminal Court of San Miguel.

By means of report No. 2634 of August 13, 1976, the Investigative Police responded to a judicial order to investigate, noting that after carrying out various inquiries, it was not possible to determine the situation of Carlos Zelaya; for example, the National Executive Secretariat of Detainees (SENDET) had no record of the victim, nor was there any record of him leaving the country.

Witnesses to the detention appeared before the Investigating Judge and confirmed the reported facts.

On September 14, 1976, the summary proceeding was declared closed; furthermore, because "the perpetration of the reported crime is not fully justified," the case was temporarily dismissed. Upon appeal of the resolution, the Santiago Court of Appeals considered the investigation incomplete and ordered the case returned to the summary stage.

In January 1977, the capital's cemeteries informed the Court that they had no record of the victim's body being admitted.

When consulted, the Carabineros agencies in the southern sector of the capital responded that Carlos Zelaya had not been detained.

Once again, on August 1, 1977, the summary proceeding was declared closed and the case was temporarily dismissed. The Court of Appeals confirmed the resolution on September 27, 1977.

Source: Corporación report

The minister on extraordinary assignment for human rights violation cases of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Marianela Cifuentes Alarcón, met today—Friday, January 8—with the children of Carlos Hugo Zelaya Suazo, whose whereabouts and fate had been unknown since February 7, 1974, the date he was detained at his workplace, a warehouse of the Viña Carafi, located on Carlos Valdovinos, by a military patrol.

Via teleconference, the magistrate—along with the executive secretary of the Human Rights Program of the Ministry of Justice, Mauro Torres Soto; the head of the PDI Central Criminalistics Laboratory, Sub-prefect Viviana Acevedo Silva; the head of the PDI Human Rights Crimes Investigation Brigade, Sub-prefect Carolina Naamor Esbry; and experts from the Legal Medical Service, Marisol Intriago, head of the Special Forensic Identification Unit; Cecilia Figueroa, Stefano de Lica, and Giselle Contreras—informed the victim's children, Beatriz, María, Orlanda, Mario, José, Carlos, Juan, Erasmo, and Luis Zelaya López, that the forensic analysis performed on skeletal remains found in March 2018 determined that they correspond to their father.

Identification was possible following the discovery of a tibia found on March 25, 2018, inside the "Hacienda San José" condominium, located in the commune of Curacaví, at kilometer 52 of Route 68, near the Cuesta Zapata.

This bone fragment was sent to a specialized laboratory in the United States, whose professionals subjected it to radiocarbon analysis, determining that it was a fragment of a left tibia that belonged to an individual over 14 years of age, of indeterminate sex, who died between 1965 and 2014.

Following the discovery and the dating of the remains, Minister Cifuentes Alarcón ordered a series of investigative measures, including excavations at the site where they were found, which began on December 5, 2018, resulting in the discovery of new skeletal and cultural evidence (two socks, a buckle, and remains of footwear).

Subsequently, two bone samples were sent to the laboratory of the Institute of Legal Medicine at the Medical University of Innsbruck (GMI) in Austria, where they underwent genetic testing, determining with a 99.99999% probability that the genetic profile obtained from the bone fragment (talus or ankle bone of the right foot) belonged to Carlos Hugo Zelaya Suazo and that it matched the genetic profile of the left tibia fragment identified previously.

Military patrol

According to the background information gathered in the investigation conducted by Minister Cifuentes Alarcón (case file 34-201), Carlos Zelaya Suazo was detained on February 7, 1974, in the afternoon, at his workplace, a warehouse of the Viña Carafi, located at Carlos Valdovinos No. 1553 in the commune of San Miguel, by a military patrol led by Lieutenant Carlos Dionisio Figueroa Silva (deceased) and composed, among others, of soldiers Luis Armando Elgueta Rivas and Eugenio Humberto Vásquez Miranda, from the "Coraceros" regiment of Viña del Mar.

Subsequently, "the detainee was taken to the Curacaví police station, located at Avenida Ambrosio O’Higgins No. 1440 in the same commune, under the command of Carabineros de Chile Lieutenant Gerardo Aravena Longa, where he was kept locked up," it adds.

"(...) in the night hours," it continues, "the patrol, again led by Chilean Army Lieutenant Carlos Dionisio Figueroa Silva and composed, among others, of soldiers Luis Armando Elgueta Rivas and Eugenio Humberto Vásquez Miranda, transported Carlos Hugo Zelaya Suazo and two other detainees from the aforementioned police unit to kilometer 14 1/2 of the Cuesta Barriga, specifically to a plain on the side of the road, where they executed them, firing upon them with the rifles they were carrying, and abandoning the bodies at the site."

Those involved in the process are currently charged by Minister Marianela Cifuentes Alarcón and are awaiting the first-instance sentence, which will be handed down shortly.

Source: codepu.cl 9/1/2021

Date: 09-01-2021

Carlos Zelaya: remains of forcibly disappeared person identified after 47 years of unknown whereabouts

The skeletal remains of Carlos were found on March 25, 2018, in the "Hacienda San José" condominium, Curacaví commune. After a genetic test in an Austrian laboratory, it was determined that the remains—a left tibia—belonged to Zelaya.

This Friday, the minister on extraordinary assignment for human rights violation cases of the San Miguel Court of Appeals, Marianela Cifuentes, confirmed the identification of the remains of a forcibly disappeared person. It is CARLOS HUGO ZELAYA SUAZO, detained on February 7, 1974, at his workplace, a warehouse of the Viña Carafi.

Via teleconference, Cifuentes informed Zelaya's children—Beatriz, María, Orlanda, Mario, José, Carlos, Juan, Erasmo, and Luis Zelaya López—of the fact.

The skeletal remains—a tibia—were found on March 25, 2018, in the "Hacienda San José" condominium, Curacaví commune.

In the first instance, the remains were taken to a laboratory in the United States. There, they identified that the bone fragment was a piece of a left tibia belonging to an individual of indeterminate sex who died between 1965 and 2014, reports Radio Bío Bío.

In a second instance, two bone samples were sent to the laboratory of the Institute of Legal Medicine at the Medical University of Innsbruck (GMI) in Austria. After a genetic test, it was determined with 99.99999% probability that the bone fragment belonged to Carlos Hugo Zelaya Suazo.

Zelaya was detained by a military patrol led by Lieutenant Carlos Dionisio Figueroa Silva (deceased). Some of its other members were soldiers Luis Armando Elgueta Rivas and Eugenio Humberto Vásquez Miranda, from the "Coraceros" regiment of Viña del Mar.

During the night of the day of his detention, Carlos was executed, along with two other people, by rifle shots fired by the three aforementioned soldiers.

Currently, Elgueta and Vásquez are charged. They are awaiting the first-instance sentence.

Source: elmostrador.cl 08/01/2021

Date: 08-01-2021

After 47 years of unknown whereabouts: Remains of a forcibly disappeared person identified

Carlos Hugo Zelaya Suazo was detained in 1974 by a military patrol at his workplace, a warehouse of the Viña Carafi, located in the Carlos Valdovinos sector.

After remaining with unknown whereabouts for 47 years, this Friday the family of Carlos Hugo Zelaya Suazo, one of the forcibly disappeared during the dictatorship, was informed that his remains had been identified.

The minister on extraordinary assignment for human rights violation cases of the San Miguel Court of Appeals, Marianela Cifuentes, met this Friday with the children of the person whose whereabouts and fate had been unknown since February 7, 1974, the date he was detained at his workplace, a warehouse of the Viña Carafi located in the Carlos Valdovinos sector, by a military patrol.

As detailed by Radio Bío Bío, via teleconference, the magistrate, along with other authorities and experts, informed the victim's children—Beatriz, María, Orlanda, Mario, José, Carlos, Juan, Erasmo, and Luis Zelaya López—that the forensic analysis performed on skeletal remains found in 2018 determined that they correspond to their father.

The identification was possible following the discovery of a tibia on March 25, 2018, inside the "Hacienda San José" condominium, located in the commune of Curacaví, at kilometer 52 of Route 68, near the Cuesta Zapata.

After a radiocarbon analysis performed in the United States, it was determined that it corresponded to a fragment of a left tibia that belonged to an individual over 14 years of age, of indeterminate sex, who died between 1965 and 2014.

It was then that Minister Cifuentes Alarcón ordered investigative measures, such as excavations at the site where they were found, which began on December 5, 2018, resulting in the discovery of new skeletal and cultural evidence such as two socks, a buckle, and remains of footwear.

Two bone samples were sent to the laboratory of the Institute of Legal Medicine at the Medical University of Innsbruck (GMI) in Austria, where they underwent genetic testing, determining that the genetic profile obtained from the bone fragment (talus or ankle bone of the right foot) belonged with 99.99999% probability to Carlos Hugo Zelaya Suazo and that it matched the genetic profile of the left tibia fragment found previously.

Source: 24horas.cl 8/01/2021

Date: 08-01-2021