On August 11, 1976, Carlos Mario VIZCARRA COFRE, a member of the Central Committee of the JJCC, was arrested on a public street. He was taken to Villa Grimaldi, where he was forced to repair dents on a pickup truck alongside another detainee, who was later released.

This witness stated that he had spoken with the victim at that facility and had seen foul-smelling sores on his body as a result of the application of electric shocks. There has been no further news of the victim since that time.

The Commission is convinced that his disappearance was the work of State agents, who thereby violated his human rights.

Political Representation : Leader of the Communist Youth, former youth leader of the CUT, former union leader at the FIAT company. Date of Detention : August 11, 1976

Carlos Vizcarra Cofré, married, father of two, a worker and former candidate for councilman for the commune of Barrancas representing the Communist Party, was detained on August 11, 1976, presumably on a public street after 6:15 p.m., after leaving his home located in Quinta Normal.

The captors were DINA agents, who took him to the secret facility of that organization known as Villa Grimaldi, where he was seen by other prisoners until August 25 of the same year, the date on which the witnesses were released.

Almost a month later, on September 7 of that year, the victim's home was raided by armed civilians who broke the floor with a pickaxe. In the house, owned by his mother María Cofré, with whom he lived, there were also tenants in the back rooms: the married couple Luis Caballero Alvarez and Isabel Rozas Osorio.

The agents locked Caballero in his bedroom and beat him. The agents, who asked for the victim upon entering, later left and apologized to the mother, stating that they were "following orders."

During those days, numerous militants and leaders of the Communist Party were detained, all of whom were taken to Villa Grimaldi. This operation had begun months earlier and had been widely publicized by the press, basically in an edition of the weekly "Que Pasa," which reported on the seizure of documentation from that party that had allowed them to find "mailbox houses" and deal "a hard blow" to the Communist Party.

In the context of these detentions, Vizcarra Cofré was apprehended. Although there were no known witnesses to the arrest itself, he was seen and was able to speak with other detainees, his party comrades.

Among them was Pedro Jara Alegría, with whom he was forced to repair a pickup truck inside Villa Grimaldi, an occasion during which they were allowed to remove the blindfolds they were kept in permanently. This occurred approximately on August 23, that is, twelve days after he was detained. Isaac Godoy was also with the detainee during this same task. Carlos Vizcarra was known as "Lolo."

In this center for political imprisonment and torture, he shared a cell with other detainees who are also forcibly disappeared, including: Julio Vega, Pedro Silva Bustos, Jorge Solovera, Darío Miranda, Guillermo Martínez, Lenín Díaz, Vicente Atencio, and Eduardo Canteros.

Regarding the latter two, Canteros and Atencio, their bodies were found in 1990 on land that had belonged to the Army in Colina.

Also present at the Villa Grimaldi facility in those days, but in other cells, was a group of women, including Marta Ugarte Román, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, whose lifeless body was found in September of that same year, 1976, on a beach in the resort town of Los Molles, located about 250 kilometers north of Santiago.

Her body had been thrown into the sea, tied with barbed wire.

No further news was heard of Carlos Vizcarra, and his detention was always denied by the military authorities.

In November of that year, after the discovery of Marta Ugarte's body caused a commotion, the Bishop of Talca, Carlos González Cruchaga, sent the Head of State a copy of a Sworn Statement by Pedro Jara Alegría, in which he gave an account of his time at Villa Grimaldi, the illegal detention to which he had been subjected, the torture applied to him and other detainees, and in which he stated he had seen Marta Ugarte and had spoken with her, also mentioning other detainees.

General Pinochet responded to the Bishop by discrediting Jara's accusations, based on the fact that the witness had left the country the same day he had signed the statement, thus demonstrating his status as a "communist."

He added that five of the people mentioned in said testimony had been "located" after several inquiries, which refuted what Jara had asserted (attaching sworn statements from these people), and he ended this point by indicating that the rest of the people mentioned by Jara did not exist.

These other people mentioned are all those who are currently forcibly disappeared. It should be noted, in this regard, that the other five people—Juana Vicencio, Horacio Silva, Manuel Mieres, Rosa Leiva, and Isaac Godoy—were all "visited" in their respective homes by DINA agents and forced to sign such statements.

Finally, it should be added that Vizcarra's spouse, Gladys González, was pregnant at the time of the victim's detention, and their second child was born a month later, without his father being able to meet him.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

On August 16, 1976, a few days after his disappearance, his spouse filed a writ of amparo (habeas corpus) before the Santiago Court of Appeals, case file 758-76.

Ten days later, the Minister of the Interior responded to an inquiry sent by the Court, denying the arrest, but referring to Vicente Atencio, with no mention of Vizcarra. With this background, on the 28th of the same month, the second chamber of the Court resolved to reject the amparo and remit the records to the corresponding Criminal Court so that the reported facts could be investigated.

This resolution was appealed, but on September 1 of the same year, the first chamber of the Supreme Court confirmed the ruling, instructing the Judge in charge of the investigation to add the victim's "filiation extract" (criminal record) "immediately."

On the other hand, on September 10 of the same year, the spouse also filed a complaint for kidnapping before the 9th Criminal Court, which initiated case file 17.035-10E, to which the amparo writ sent by the Court of Appeals was added a month later.

The Headquarters of the Tres Alamos Prisoner Camp, the National Secretariat for Detainees (SENDET), and the Ministry of the Interior reported negatively regarding the detention of Carlos Vizcarra.

The relatives and witnesses of the raid on his home also gave statements before the Tribunal, providing all the information available about his kidnapping and the certain probability that he was being held in a security service detention center.

The Investigations police, for their part, reported that he had no criminal record and no record of leaving the country. The Ministry of Labor, through its Undersecretary, reported that he also had no record of previous union participation.

With this information, and without complying with the Supreme Court's order to attach the victim's filiation extract to the process, the Tribunal closed the summary proceedings on July 6, 1977, and on the same date decreed the temporary dismissal of the case because the crime had not been proven.

The Prosecutor of the Santiago Court of Appeals, reporting on the ruling issued by the Ninth Court, points out that there have been "not a few" cases with these characteristics where it has not been possible to clarify what happened, since the Ordinary Justice system "has not always had the efficient, exact, real, and truthful cooperation that it has requested." The Prosecutor also considers that in these processes, the accused are members of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), an organization under military dependency.

Due to this consideration, the Prosecutor is of the opinion that the dismissal issued by the Judge should be rendered ineffective, as this is a matter that must be resolved by the Military Justice system; therefore, a declaration of incompetence is appropriate.

The affected party refuted the Prosecutor's considerations for declaring incompetence and also requested that the summary proceedings be reopened because the investigation was incomplete. On October 14, 1977, the Supreme Court, considering that the investigation was indeed not exhausted, revoked the dismissal resolution and ordered the summary proceedings to be reopened.

On November 12, 1977, the spouse became a plaintiff in the process, which was denied by the Tribunal due to the lack of identification of the culprits. This resolution was appealed, an appeal that was accepted, finally allowing the kidnapping complaint to proceed.

In August 1978, two years after the kidnapping occurred, there was a first communication from the now National Intelligence Center (CNI), the legal successor to the DINA, but it reported nothing and merely stated that all information must be requested from the Ministry of the Interior.

Likewise, on this date, the Supreme Court's order was finally complied with, and the victim's filiation extract was requested, which showed no criminal record and no photograph on file.

Also at this time, it was again reported that the victim had no record of leaving the country. This detail is important because, a year later, when this process had passed into the hands of the Visiting Minister Servando Jordán, appointed by the Santiago Court of Appeals to investigate cases of disappearance of persons detained by the military government's security services, the Director of Investigations sent him the political file that that department kept on Carlos Vizcarra, in which three trips abroad by the victim between 1965 and 1972 are noted, with their respective re-entries.

It should be noted that the last trip had been to Cuba. This political file also identified him as a militant of the Communist Party "his entire life" and noted his status as a union leader and leader of that political group. It is also indicated in the aforementioned file that in 1977 both the DINA and the DINE (Army Intelligence Directorate) had consulted his records.

The investigation that Minister Jordán inherited in June 1979 incorporated the information provided by the Minister of the Interior, Sergio Fernández, which indicated that the detention record books of the Tres Alamos Camp were in the possession of the Carabineros Prefecture, and those corresponding to Cuatro Alamos—the incommunicado section of Tres Alamos that was in charge of the DINA—had been incinerated when this organization was "dissolved," for "security reasons." Notwithstanding the fact that the Carabineros Sub-directorate reported the existence of these books, the effort to find out if the victim's detention was recorded in them was only carried out eight months later, at the request of the Visiting Minister. The President Aguirre Cerda Prefecture of the police organization reported that, upon reviewing the books, said arrest was not recorded.

The Undersecretariat of War also reported negatively regarding his detention by the CNI or any Armed Forces security agency.

The Minister of the Interior, Sergio Fernández, reported in the same vein in August 1979, denying that the CNI had records of his detention.

The affected party requested the Visiting Minister to officially request the Minister of Defense—or the relevant authority—to report the name, rank, and current assignment of the Head of Villa Grimaldi in August 1976, the date on which Vizcarra had been kidnapped, so that he could proceed to interrogate him about the victim's stay in that facility.

This request was denied by the Tribunal, on the grounds that it was proven that the aforementioned facility was not a detention center and that it was received by the CNI from the DINA empty, with the identities of its previous occupants unknown.

This resolution was appealed, which was not granted by Minister Jordán for a formal reason: no prior motion for reconsideration had been requested, and also because he considered that it did not cause irreparable harm.

Minister Jordán's resolution to deny the request was dated September 27, 1979, and a few days later, on October 1, he decreed the closure of the summary proceedings, ending the investigation.

On December 20, 1979, the Minister decreed the temporary dismissal of the case because the crime was not completely justified, a resolution that was appealed by the plaintiff. On June 9, 1980, the Santiago Court of Appeals, after reviewing Minister Jordán's Visiting Notebook, confirmed the temporary dismissal of the kidnapping case of Carlos Vizcarra Cofré.

Source: Vicaría de la Solidaridad