Miguel Krassnoff, Marcelo Moren Brito, and Raúl Iturriaga Neumann are among those implicated.

The minister for extraordinary causes regarding human rights violations at the Santiago Court of Appeals, Hernán Crisosto, sentenced 77 agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) this Monday for their responsibility in the kidnapping of Héctor Garay Hermosilla in 1974.

Garay Hermosilla, a member of the Revolutionary Student Front (FER), was 19 years old when he was detained near his home on July 8, 1974. Days later, his name appeared in the national press on a false list of 119 people killed due to alleged internal disputes within the MIR, in what was termed "Operation Colombo." According to the judge's findings, "the publications that declared the victim Garay Hermosilla dead had their origin in disinformation maneuvers carried out by DINA agents abroad."

According to the reconstruction of events carried out by the visiting minister, the DINA agents who captured Garay "forced him into the back of a gray Chevrolet C-10 pickup truck and took him to the home of a friend of the victim, who was also forced into the aforementioned truck, to be driven to an unknown destination."

"Subsequently, it was established through testimonies that Héctor Marcial Garay Hermosilla passed through the clandestine detention center known as 'Londres 38,' which was guarded by armed guards and to which only DINA agents had access," the ruling continues, establishing that to date, there is no further information regarding Garay's whereabouts.

The convicted In the resolution, the presiding judge sentenced the following to 13 years in prison as authors of the crime perpetrated in 1974: César Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Marcelo Luis Moren Brito, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann.

Meanwhile, the following former agents must serve 10 years in prison, also as authors: Gerardo Ernesto Urrich González, Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García, Ricardo Víctor Lawrence Mires, Ciro Ernesto Torré Sáez, Sergio Hernán Castillo González, Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos, José Nelson Fuentealba Saldías, Basclay Humberto Zapata Reyes, José Enrique Fuentes Torres, José Mario Friz Esparza, Julio José Hoyos Zegarra, Nelson Alberto Paz Bustamante, Claudio Orlando Orellana de la Pinta, Enrique Tránsito Gutiérrez Rubilar, Gustavo Galvarino Caruman Soto, Hiro Álvarez Vega, José Alfonso Ojeda Obando, Olegario Enrique González Moreno, Orlando Jesús Torrejón Gatica, Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera, Alfredo Orlando Moya Tejeda, Carlos Alfonso Sáez Sanhueza, Fernando Enrique Guerra Guajardo, Hernán Patricio Valenzuela Salas, Hugo Rubén Delgado Carrasco, Juan Alfredo Villanueva Alvear, Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Lautaro Eugenio Díaz Espinoza, Leónidas Emiliano Méndez Moreno, Pedro Ariel Araneda Araneda, Rafael de Jesús Riveros Frost, Víctor Manuel Molina Astete, Máximo Ramón Aliaga Soto, Manuel Rivas Díaz, Juan Ángel Urbina Cáceres, Risiere del Prado Altez España, Raúl Juan Rodríguez Ponte, Hermon Helec Alfaro Mundaca, and Hugo del Tránsito Hernández Valle.

As accomplices to the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Garay Hermosilla, the presiding judge sentenced the following to 4 years in prison: Luis Eduardo Mora Cerda, José Jaime Mora Diocares, Camilo Torres Negrier, Carlos Justo Bermúdez Méndez, Claudio Enrique Pacheco Fernández, Fernando Adrián Roa Montaña, Gerardo Meza Acuña, Héctor Raúl Valdebenito Araya, Jaime Humberto Paris Ramos, Jorge Laureano Sagardia Monje, José Dorohi Hormazábal Rodríguez, José Manuel Sarmiento Sotelo, José Stalin Muñoz Leal, Juvenal Alfonso Piña Garrido, Luis René Torres Méndez, Manuel Antonio Montre Méndez, Moisés Paulino Campos Figueroa, Nelson Aquiles Ortiz Vignolo, Nelson Eduardo Iturriaga Cortés, Pedro Segundo Bitterlich Jaramillo, Reinaldo Alfonso Concha Orellana, Sergio Hernán Castro Andrade, Víctor Manuel de la Cruz San Martín Jiménez, Gustavo Humberto Apablaza Meneses, Héctor Carlos Díaz Cabezas, Jorge Antonio Lepileo Barrios, Óscar Belarmino la Flor Flores, Rufino Espinoza Espinoza, Héctor Manuel Lira Aravena, Víctor Manuel Álvarez Droguett, Sergio Iván Díaz Lara, Juan Miguel Troncoso Soto, and Roberto Hernán Rodríguez Manquel.

Meanwhile, Rodolfo Valentino Cocha Rodríguez and Armando Segundo Cofre Correa were acquitted due to a lack of participation in the events.

Source: t13.cl, August 31, 2015

In mid-1981, General Augusto Pinochet gave the order for the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE), under the command of General Arturo Álvarez Scoglia, to assassinate Tucapel Jiménez, president of the National Association of Fiscal Employees (ANEF), who had emerged as the main Chilean union leader and was planning, along with other opposition leaders, a major national strike against the military government.

Álvarez Scoglia created a special group to carry out the mission and designated three officers as members of the execution command. However, the agents showed an evident "lack of commitment" to the assigned task, and the DINE command had to replace them, turning to two officers who had been members of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) and who, in 1981, were assigned to the National Intelligence Center (CNI), created in 1977 to succeed the DINA.

These were Lieutenant Colonel Maximiliano Ferrer Lima and Captain Carlos Herrera Jiménez, alias "Mauro" or "Bocaccio."

Both officers settled in early November at the facilities of the Counter-Espionage Unit, dependent on Department II of Counter-Intelligence of the Army Intelligence Corps (CIE), located at Avenida Echeñique 5995, in the commune of La Reina.

That unit was part of the intricate and highly secret structure of the DINE, in charge of Commander Víctor Pinto Pérez. Ferrer Lima and Herrera Jiménez, along with two teams of agents under their command, then set out to prepare every detail of the plan to assassinate Tucapel Jiménez.

They were in the midst of this when the various services of the military dictatorship's intelligence community learned that former President Eduardo Frei Montalva had decided to check into the Santa María clinic to undergo surgery for a bothersome hiatal hernia.

At the beginning of the spring of 1981, the CNI was certain that the much-feared opposition union unit was forming rapidly and that its main architect was Tucapel Jiménez. The matter was even more serious because Jiménez was also holding conversations with several of the main political leaders of the dissidence, among them Eduardo Frei Montalva.

The ANEF leader and the former president had already met at the Vicarage of the Workers' Pastoral along with some dignitaries of the Catholic Church. CNI analysts concluded that a broad national strike with unpredictable consequences was being prepared, with the support, moreover, of numerous entities and governments from around the world.

The CNI's task From its inception, the CNI exercised close surveillance over the union world through the Labor Brigade or Political-Union Brigade, which depended directly on the Metropolitan Intelligence Division, under the command of Army Colonel Roberto Schmied Zanzi.

The head of the brigade since 1979 was Carabineros Captain Miguel Eugenio Hernández Oyarzo ("Felipe Bascur"), who had performed similar functions in the DINA in 1977, from the "Ollagüe" barracks, located on Calle José Domingo Cañas, in the commune of Ñuñoa.

By mid-1979, the brigade moved to a new secret barracks on Calle Agustinas and was divided into four groups, each under the command of Army Captain Raúl Lillo Gutiérrez ("Manolo Arriagada"), Héctor Lira ("Julián Reyes"), Nelson Fernández Franco ("Carlos Santander"), and Jorge Ramírez Romero ("Carlos de la Fuente"), respectively.

The Labor Brigade achieved an important milestone when it managed to recruit Luis Becerra, Frei Montalva's driver, for its tasks—a man who was also a person of absolute trust to the former president.

Among the agents were Pedro Alfaro Fernández, Juan Araos Araos, Carlos Asalgado Martínez, Edmundo Alberto Asenjo Gálvez, Daniel Cancino Varas, Gustavo Caruman Soto, Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Germán Erazo Ahumada, Ricardo Erazo Ahumada, Héctor Alfredo Flores Vergara, Segundo Gangas Godoy, Enrique Gutiérrez Rubilar, Luis Gutiérrez Uribe, Guido Jara Brevis, Jaime Márquez Campos, Luis Mora Cerda, José Mora Diocares, José Muñoz Leal, Enrique Naranjo Muñoz, Nelson Ortiz Vignolo, Manuel Poblete Vergara, Luis Tomás Rojas Torres, Manuel Tapia Tapia, and Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera.

The Labor Brigade achieved an important milestone when it managed to recruit Luis Becerra, Frei Montalva's driver, a man who was also a person of absolute trust to the former president and knew the activities and the inner circle of the Christian Democratic leader very closely.

In 1977, the Ministry General Secretariat of Government created, under the dependency of the Directorate of Civil Organizations, the National Secretariat of Guilds and placed Misael Galleguillos at its head, a mathematics professor from the Valparaíso branch of the University of Chile, an active militant of Patria y Libertad during the Popular Unity government.

His apparent mission was to train pro-government union leaders, but in truth, his main role consisted of monitoring and infiltrating opposition union leaderships and passing all that information to the CNI.

One of the actions with the greatest public repercussion by Galleguillos, who also directed the National Revolutionary Syndicalist Movement (MRNS), was the boycott of an ANEF press conference, in which Guillermo Henríquez, Jorge Salazar Hojman, Genaro Pozo, and Jorge Baldrich Camus burst in shouting "traitor" and "sellout" at Tucapel Jiménez.

The next day, Baldrich appeared photographed in El Mercurio. He later declared that the order had been given to him by the then Minister Secretary General of Government, General Sergio Badiola Brodeg, who was seconded by the undersecretary of the portfolio, the lawyer Jovino Novoa Vásquez.

Galleguillos also had a secret informant among the opposition who anticipated all the activities of the "Group of Ten." It was Federico Mujica Canales, a short man of radical origin, a constant pipe smoker, who presided over the Confederation of Private Employees of Chile (Cepch).

Very soon, the CNI refined its methods of tracking, surveillance, eavesdropping, and penetration. The information gathered was incorporated into individual folders, and their contents were periodically replicated, with copies sent to the central barracks on Calle República.

There, they were received by Mirtha Espinoza Caamaño, the secretary to Colonel Roberto Schmied, head of the Interior Department, who was later appointed commander of the Metropolitan Intelligence Division, where the various anti-subversive brigades were located. Under Schmied's direct command were Major Zanelli and Captain Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, in charge of operational tasks.

One of the most secret paid informants that the repressive agency maintained in the leadership circles of the opposition union movement could only be identified in the first semester of 2009. It was the socialist Víctor Hugo Gac, a member of the executive committee of the CNS, a man then very close to Arturo Martínez.

The secretary recorded the information in control books, with the date of entry, the originating unit, and a brief description of the content. Acronyms and codes were used according to the respective units and sections. Thus, for example, F.1.1 corresponded to the head of the division; F-1.2 to the deputy head, and so on, according to the various departments into which the CNI was divided.

Leaders such as Tucapel Jiménez, Eduardo Ríos, Ernesto Vogel, and Manuel Bustos, among others, had their telephones tapped, and all correspondence sent to them and their families from abroad and within the country was reviewed at the unit the CNI maintained at the Post Office. A folder was kept for each one with their personal, work, and family background, as well as their contact networks.

In 1976, a CNI agent nicknamed "Omar" recruited as an informant an employee who worked as an assistant for the ANEF, at its three-story headquarters located at Alameda and Riquelme. The "junior" was named Julio Olivares Silva and was the son of a friend of Tucapel Jiménez.

Twice a week, the boy delivered his reports to the Labor Brigade barracks, where he received a cash payment in exchange. In 1977, Olivares Silva was incorporated into the CNI staff under the alias "Gabriel Carrasco González," although everyone called him "Barnabás."

Valericio Orrego, for his part, also became a paid collaborator for the CNI. He infiltrated Carlos Santa María, a leader of the Group of Ten, by recruiting an employee of his at a business he owned at Bandera and General Mackenna. The informant was named Patricio Pezoa and had to report periodically to "Manolo" or "Carlos de la Fuente," his control agents in the CNI.

One of the most secret paid informants that the repressive agency maintained in the leadership circles of the opposition union movement could only be identified in the first semester of 2009. It was the socialist Víctor Hugo Gac, a member of the executive committee of the CNS, a man then very close to Arturo Martínez.

The hard road to unity

At the end of May 1976, ten important union leaders, nine of them linked to the PDC, who claimed to represent 400 unions and more than 600,000 workers, sent a document to the military government complaining about the new labor legislation that was being imposed and the marginalization of workers from political decisions.

The signatories were Tucapel Jiménez (ANEF), Ernesto Mellado (peasants), Pedro Cifuentes (Iansa), Antonio del Campo (bank employees), Guillermo Santana (Copper Workers Confederation, CTC), Manuel Bustos (textiles), Ernesto Vogel (Fifch), Federico Mujica (Cepch), Antonio Mimiza (oil), and Eduardo Díaz (ComaCh).

From that moment on, they were known as the Group of Ten, and very soon other important union organizations joined them, such as the Plastic Workers Confederation, the Federation of Professionals and Technicians of the National Health Service, and the Federation of Unions of the Banco Español.

At the end of the summer of 1978, former deputy Gladys Marín entered the country clandestinely, followed by Manuel Cantero Prado, both members of the political commission. Two months later, in May, the new Interior Directorate Team (EDI) was constituted, headed by Marín, along with Cantero ("Miguel"), Oscar Riquelme ("Old Pablo"), and Nicasio Farías ("Héctor"), who took charge of the Infrastructure Front, entrusted with all logistical work and the search for resources and materials for clandestine tasks. "Mariana," meanwhile, had to assume the delicate management of the party's finances.

One of the main tasks of the EDI was to rebuild the internal structures and, in particular, the union fabric. To this end, Moisés Labraña, responsible for that sector in the JJ.CC., was promoted to union manager of the party and integrated into the EDI.

Labraña had a determined team in which Héctor Cuevas, Alamiro Guzmán, and José Lecaros, among others, stood out. The PC unionists managed to refine links with the main labor leaders of the Christian Democracy, among whom were Manuel Bustos, of the textiles; Eduardo Ríos, of the maritime workers; and Ernesto Vogel, of the railway workers; and with other historical figures, such as the octogenarian Clotario Blest.

The left-wing union movement, meanwhile, grouped together in the National Union Coordinator (CNS), created under the wing of the Center for Labor Studies, dependent on the Cardijn Foundation, which in turn was closely linked to the Catholic Church.

The CNS appeared publicly in 1978, representing, as it maintained, some 400 base unions, mainly industrial, of small and medium mining, and of the peasantry. Among the members, the Mining Confederation, Fensimet, Fenamex, Fiemec, Ranquil, UOC, Association of Pensioners, Sanitation Workers, the Painting Federation, and the Graphic Union stood out.

There also existed the Unitary Workers Front (FUT), a small formation of Christian unionists, led by Carlos Frez, a dismissed president of the Port Workers Union, linked long before to the Young Catholic Workers and the Workers' Movement of Catholic Action.

Thus, more than three thousand workers from these three union references converged on May 1, 1978, toward Plaza Almagro, a few blocks south of La Moneda, to commemorate Labor Day. Carabineros forced them to disperse, but they regrouped a few blocks away, at the San Francisco church, next to the Alameda Bernardo O’Higgins, where they were again driven away.

By mid-afternoon, pickets of workers were still shouting slogans in various places in downtown Santiago. By nightfall, the balance of the demonstrations indicated nearly 400 detainees, several foreigners and religious among them. The military dictatorship and the pro-government press were forced to acknowledge, for the first time, the dissident street demonstrations.

Neither the PC nor the other left-wing parties nor the Christian Democracy perceived well the effects that the Labor Plan designed by Minister Piñera would provoke among the workers.

On May 22, relatives of the forcibly disappeared occupied the offices of UNICEF and the parishes of Jesús Obrero, on General Velásquez, in the western sector of the capital; La Estampa, in Independencia, a few meters from Plaza Chacabuco, in the northern sector; and Don Bosco, on Gran Avenida, in the southern zone, simultaneously.

They stayed there until June 7, demanding to know the fate of their relatives. Neither the CNI nor the police dared to evict them because the Catholic Church was involved, and, furthermore, the demonstration coincided with the arrival in the country of five high-level representatives of the American union AFL-CIO and with a visit by prosecutor Eugene Propper, who was investigating the assassination of Orlando Letelier in Washington.

On June 7, two surprise marches were held through the downtown streets of Santiago in solidarity with the relatives of the disappeared. The presence of dissident pamphlets in places of high traffic became frequent in those days, and graffiti on walls in neighborhoods and on the city's main avenues began to multiply.

In university headquarters, lightning rallies emerged, and folk music clubs flourished under the wing of religious venues and some nightclubs. In the working-class neighborhoods, meanwhile, all kinds of community organizations began to be created, and in the factories, slowly, workers dared to meet to stammer their complaints.

In August, at the Chuquicamata division of Codelco, next to the city of Calama, copper miners decided to go to the cafeterias at lunchtime with their empty "lunchboxes." The prolonged protest movement for labor demands received the name "viandazo."

At the beginning of September, surprised and flustered by the symptoms of union unrest, the dictatorship decreed a state of siege in the degree of internal commotion. The right of amparo (habeas corpus) before the courts of justice was limited, the arrest and relegation of people were authorized, as well as the cancellation of nationality and the prosecution of detainees in military courts.

Almost a month later, on October 20, 1978, the illegality of the main entities that made up the CNS was decreed, union headquarters were raided, assets and bank accounts were confiscated, and numerous leaders were arrested.

At the same time, the renewal of union leaders in the private sector was also decreed, and many businessmen took the opportunity to fire opposition workers who could be elected. In the following weeks, some nine thousand labor leaders were renewed.

Several of the main world union organizations then intervened, and the powerful American AFL-CIO threatened a boycott of Chilean exports starting in early 1979. Alarmed, the military government announced the appointment of a new Minister of Labor, the economist José Piñera, who took office on December 26, committed to normalizing labor relations, and announced the promulgation in mid-79 of a Labor Plan that would put an end to the problems.

Pérez Zujovic, Frei, Jaime Castillo, and Modesto Collados

Neither the PC nor the other left-wing parties nor the Christian Democracy perceived well the effects that the Labor Plan designed by Minister Piñera would provoke among the workers. In July 1979, the main decrees that imposed the new labor institutional framework were promulgated: affiliation with unions ceased to be mandatory, and the formation of several unions in the same company was authorized; collective bargaining became by company and not by productive branch; the dismissal of workers "for company needs" was authorized; the right to strike was restricted to 60 days, with the possibility of replacing workers after that period; and retirement was postponed from 60 to 65 years for men and from 55 to 60 for women, among other measures. Those provisions were devastating; the union movement was extremely weakened, and the fear of "losing the job" was imposed.

In 1980 and 1981, despite the protests of union leaders, Piñera's Labor Plan was consolidated. The Group of Ten was transformed into the Democratic Workers' Union (UDT), although without several Christian Democratic leaders who were marginalized, such as Manuel Bustos, who became the leader of the new National Union Coordinator (CNS).

The hour of the executors

When the plan to assassinate Tucapel Jiménez was already underway and the military dictatorship learned that Frei Montalva would check in for surgery, a parallel operation was apparently activated to eliminate the former president and cover up the homicide as a series of post-surgical complications. However, Judge Alejandro Madrid could not specify the details of the conspiracy.

He sentenced former Captain Raúl Lillo Gutiérrez, a former member of the CNI and later of the DINE, and the driver Luis Becerra, but he could not clarify from which instance of the military dictatorship the order to assassinate him came.

Lillo Gutiérrez was the agent who controlled Becerra and Genaro Cerda Weber, a DC militant and husband of Hilda Navarro Varas, secretary of that same party. Lillo, transferred in the late 80s to the DINE, participated in the assassination of the chemist Eugenio Berríos in Uruguay, and for that crime, he was sentenced in August 2013 to ten years and one day in prison.

For many years, it was presumed that the chemist Berríos was the one who had inoculated the former president with some poison or other toxic substance while he was in the clinic. In fact, the former director of the Investigative Police (PDI), Nelson Mery, asserted during the process that Berríos was assassinated to prevent him from talking about the assassination of Frei Montalva.

Judge Madrid also sentenced four doctors, one—gastric surgeon Patricio Silva Garín—as the main author; another—Pedro Valdivia Soto, a former member of the DINA—as an accomplice; and the remaining two—thanatologists Helmar Rosenberg Gómez and Sergio González Bombardiere—as cover-ups.

The magistrate also failed to establish whether these doctors colluded with each other for the crime and/or obeyed orders to commit it.

Human rights lawyers, very close to the PDC, who requested that their names be withheld, told INTERFERENCIA that they considered the more than 800-page ruling very weak and that, in their opinion, both the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court will have to make strenuous efforts to draft a new and better resolution.

Source: interferencia.cl, December 19, 2019

Case No. 1.643; aggravated homicide case of Tucapel Jiménez Alfaro

Multiple confrontation proceeding of the Political-Union Brigade of the National Intelligence Center. Multiple confrontation proceeding of persons who worked in the political-union unit of the National Intelligence Center, from page 1127, Volume III, reserved, to which the following persons appeared:

• Miguel Eugenio HERNANDEZ OYARZO - Luis Tomás ROJAS TORRES - Daniel Valentín CANCINO VARAS - Carlos Enrique ASALGADO MARTINEZ - Pedro René ALFARO FERNANDEZ - Juan Manuel ARAOS ARAOS - Gustavo Galvarino CARUMAN SOTO - Juan Evaristo DUARTE GALLEGOS - Germán Ricardo ERAZO AHUMADA - Héctor Alfredo FLORES VERGARA - Segundo Armando GANGAS GODOY - Enrique del Tránsito GUTIERREZ RUBILAR - Luis Germán GUTIERREZ URIBE - Guido Arnoldo JARA BREVIS - Jaime Andrés MARQUEZ CAMPOS - Luis Eduardo MORA CERDA - José Jaime MORA DIOCARES - José Stalin MUÑOZ LEAL - Enrique Segundo NARANJO MUÑOZ - Nelson Aquiles ORTIZ VIGNOLO - Manuel Humberto POBLETE VERGARA - Manuel Alexis TAPIA TAPIA - Rudeslindo URRUTIA JORQUERA

Source: Judiciary, August 5, 2002

Judge Montiglio prosecuted 98 former agents for victims of Operation Colombo - The biggest blow to repression

Among the accused, all of whom are retired, are eight Army colonels and 23 non-commissioned officers, 40 Carabineros officers and non-commissioned officers, two former FACH agents, one former Navy agent, and seven former agents of the Investigative Police.

The greatest blow to the repression of Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship was dealt yesterday by Judge Víctor Montiglio, who prosecuted 98 former agents from different branches of the Armed Forces, Carabineros, and the Investigative Police for the 42 victims of Operation Colombo.

This is the largest resolution issued among the nearly 400 human rights violation cases currently being investigated in the country. It even surpassed the 67 former agents prosecuted by the same Judge Montiglio in 2007 for the crimes of the Brigada Lautaro and its Grupo Delfín at the Simón Bolívar barracks.

Among those accused in the Colombo case are eight retired Army colonels, six of whom had not been prosecuted before in any case. Also declared defendants were 23 retired Army non-commissioned officers, at least 50 percent of whom appear for the first time in these types of cases.

Among these non-commissioned officers is Juvenal Piña, alias "El Elefante," a former agent of the Brigada Lautaro, who was the one who suffocated the clandestine Communist leader (1976) Víctor Díaz with a plastic bag over his head, prior to injecting him with cyanide.

In addition, the magistrate prosecuted 40 former Carabineros officers and non-commissioned officers, among whom are Ricardo Lawrence, Heriberto Acevedo, Claudio Pacheco, and José Mora, all former members of the same Brigade. Among those prosecuted are also former agents who belonged to the Investigative Police.

The only civilian (Army) is Juan Suárez. Of the total list, at least thirteen are already serving sentences for other cases (see list). As of the closing of this edition, the accused were still being detained to be interned in different locations, such as the Peñalolén Military Police Battalion.

Among the 42 victims for whom the judge issued his resolution are María Angélica Andreolli, Miguel Acuña Castillo, Juan Carlos Perelmann Ide, Juan Chacón Olivares, Jorge Müller Silva, Luis Guendelmann Wisniak, Mario Calderón Tapia, and Carmen Bueno Cifuentes.

Operation Colombo and the media

The list of the 119 was published in the magazine Lea (Buenos Aires) and the newspaper O Dia (Brazil) in 1975; this information was also false. Both publications were created by DINA agents. Operation Colombo was part of Operation Condor and consisted of a setup by the dictatorship to make the population believe that 119 forcibly disappeared detainees had clandestinely left for Argentina and died there in confrontations with police and Army forces during the phase prior to the 1976 military coup in Argentina.

Some of those names appeared as militants "assassinated" in Buenos Aires and its surroundings, with signs on their bodies stating that they had been executed by their own comrades in a settling of scores due to internal disputes.

However, this also turned out to be a setup. The list of the 119 was published in the magazine Lea (Buenos Aires) and the newspaper O Dia (Brazil) in 1975; this information was also false. Both publications were created by DINA agents abroad and had only one edition.

In Chile, the pro-dictatorship press, such as the newspapers El Mercurio, La Tercera, Las Ultimas Noticias, and La Segunda, reproduced the intelligence services' setup. The headline of the evening paper remains in memory, which reported: "Exterminated like rats: 59 Chilean MIR members fall in military operation in Argentina." They were part of the list of the 119 disappeared of Colombo.

The former fugitive Raúl Iturriaga, who was one of those in charge of the DINA's foreign department, was the first to shed light on this operation in Buenos Aires. According to former civilian agent Enrique Arancibia Clavel, convicted in Buenos Aires for the crime of General Carlos Prats and his wife, it was Iturriaga who met with him at the beginning of 1975 to ask him to prepare what was necessary because "we have to make some dead people from Operation Colombo appear." It was about preparing the appearance of the supposed bodies of Jaime Robotham and Luis Guendelmann as part of the setup.

List of the prosecuted

Army (all retired)

Víctor Molina Astete (colonel); Sergio Castillo González (col); Eduardo Guerra Guajardo (col); Víctor San Martín Jiménez (col); José Fuentes Torres (col); Manuel Carevic Cubillos (col); Jaime Paris Ramos (col); César Manríquez Bravo (col); Raúl Toro Montes (non-commissioned officer); Eduardo Reyes Lagos (NCO); Orlando Torrejón Gatica (NCO); Osvaldo Tapia Alvarez (NCO.

Committed suicide); Juvenal Piña Garrido (NCO. “El Elefante”); Juan Suárez Delgado (civilian); Nelson Paz Bustamante (NCO); José Aravena Ruiz (NCO); Luis Torres Méndez (NCO); Raúl Soto Pérez (NCO); Jorge Andrade Gómez (NCO); Juan Escobar Valenzuela (NCO); Rolando Concha Rodríguez (NCO); Gustavo Apablaza Meneses (NCO); Hiro Alvarez Vega (NCO); Víctor Alvarez Droguett (NCO); Jorge Venegas Silva (NCO); Carlos Rinaldi Suazo (NCO); Carlos Letelier Verdugo (NCO); Reinaldo Concha Orellana (NCO); Máximo Aliaga Soto (NCO); Hugo Clavería Leiva (NCO); Samuel Fuenzalida Devia (NCO);

Investigative Police

Juan Urbina Cáceres; Hugo Hernández; Manuel Rivas Díaz; Herman Alfaro; Eugenio Fieldhouse; Osvaldo Castillo;

Carabineros (officers and non-commissioned officers, all retired)

Gerardo Godoy García; Ciro Torres Sáez, Alejandro Molina Cisternas; Camilo Torres Negrier; Héctor Lira Aravena; José Fritz Esparza; Claudio Pacheco Fernández; Jorge Sagardia Monge; Sergio Castro Andrade; Luis Villarroel Gutiérrez; Armando Cofré Gómez; Fernando Roa Montaña; Gerardo Meza Acuña; Enrique Gutiérrez Rubilar; Luis Mora Cerda; José Muñoz Leal; Juan Duarte Gallegos; Carlos Miranda Meza; Rufino Jaime Astorga; Luis Urrutia Acuña; Luis Zúñiga Ovalle; Pedro Alfaro Hernández; Orlando Inostroza Lagos; Rosa Ramos Hernández; Gustavo Carumán Soto; Héctor Valdebenito Araya; Manuel Avendaño González; José Mora Diocares; Guido Jara Brevis; Nelson Ortiz Vignolo; Ruderlindo Urrutia Jorquera; Héctor Flores Vergara; Jerónimo Neira Méndez; Manuel Montré Méndez; Heriberto del Carmen Acevedo; Claudio Orerllana de la Pinta; Nelson Iturriaga Cortés; Luis Gutiérrez Uribe; José Ojeda Obando;

Air Force Delia Gajardo Cortés; Hernán Avalos Muñoz

Navy Teresa Navarro Osorio;

Prosecuted individuals already serving sentences

Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda; Pedro Espinoza Bravo; Raúl Iturriaga Neumann; Marcelo Moren Brito; Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko; Ricardo Lawrence Mires; Basclay Zapata Reyes; Conrado Pacheco; Francisco Ferrer Lima; Gerardo Urrich; Orlando Manzo Durán; Rizier Altez España; Fernando Lauriani Maturana

Source: La Nación, May 27, 2008

Case, roll 6671-2005: Crime of torture committed against Sergio Patricio Aguiló Melo d) Gustavo Galvarino Carumán Soto (381), a Carabineros official assigned to the DINA and the CNI, who states: “I knew an agent with the operational name “Felipe Villaseca,” but I do not remember his second surname… nor his real name.

I remember meeting this person while I was working at the barracks on Agustinas street, and he was a civilian employee and “caddy” at a golf center in Santiago that the former Navy Admiral Merino frequented. This subject was physically 1.75 meters tall, thin build, black hair, dark complexion, black eyes, a bit impulsive…”.

Source: Judiciary, June 4, 2012

Miguel Angel Acuña Castillo: The disappearance of the 19-year-old in Londres 38

He was detained in July 1974 in the commune of Macul. Numerous witnesses saw him at the torture and extermination center of Londres 38. He is one of the victims of “Operation Colombo.” The Justice system sentenced 78 former DINA agents for this crime against humanity.

The minister of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Hernán Crisosto, issued a first-instance sentence for the kidnapping and disappearance of Miguel Angel Acuña Castillo.

The magistrate established that the young man, a militant of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), was detained in the vicinity of his home located at Pasaje Talca No. 2033 in the commune of Macul, by State agents belonging to the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), among them Osvaldo Romo Mena, alias "el Guatón Romo."

His sister, Rosa Acuña Castillo, declared that her father tried to climb onto the back of the covered pickup truck at the moment they were taking him away, but he was struck in the mouth by one of the subjects, falling to the ground.

A week after the kidnapping, Romo went to their home again and told her that her brother was in good condition along with Héctor Garay Hermosilla, who also disappeared. Both were members of the Revolutionary Student Front (FER) at the Liceo 7 in Ñuñoa.

Judge Crisosto determined that the DINA agents “transferred him to the clandestine detention center called “Yucatán” or “Londres 38.” Acuña Castillo belonged to the secondary student structure of the MIR's Political-Military Group 3 (GPM3), an organization that grouped militants from the eastern zone of the capital and which was led by Agustín Reyes González, whose trail was lost forever in Londres 38.

There, he “remained without contact with the outside world, blindfolded and tied up, being continuously subjected to interrogations under torture by DINA agents” and, the last time he was seen alive, “occurred on an undetermined day in the month of July or August 1974, remaining disappeared to this day,” the first-instance ruling states.

They laughed in Londres 38 along with Héctor Garay Hermosilla. In the “Yucatán” barracks, he was seen by Erika Hennings, detained on July 30, 1974. “I can say that he was very young, I think they called him El Pampa,” she asserted in the process.

She heard that they took roll call for the detainees twice a day. On July 31, 1974, she heard the name Miguel Angel Acuña Castillo, who answered "present." Later, she did not hear them call him again. “They took them out of Londres 38 just like other detainees, among whom she remembers María Inés Alvarado,” a 21-year-old forcibly disappeared person.

Hugo Chacaltana Silva, detained on May 4, 1974, a former student of the Liceo Manuel de Salas and member of the Revolutionary Student Front (FER), also saw him in Londres 38. He related that in the early hours of July 8 to 9, 1974, Miguel Angel Acuña arrived along with Héctor Garay Hermosilla, whom they called "Titín"; he was able to see them through a gap that formed between his nose and cheekbones under the blindfold.

Chacaltana pointed out that he met Castillo in 1971, when both were secondary students. Both coincided in meetings that were held at the time between members of the FER, the judicial ruling notes. He remembers “Miguel Ángel as a young man of great leadership capacity and great physical resistance.” He stopped seeing him on September 11, 1973.

He met him again in Londres 38. He arrived along with Héctor Garay to the same room where he remained lying on the floor. “At that moment, I did not address Miguel Ángel,” on the contrary, he pretended to be unaware of his presence. “The next day, when the mattresses on which we detainees lay were removed and replaced by chairs, I sat down and, to one side, I observed that they both remained seated.

It struck him that both were talking and laughing, which made him think that they were unaware of the magnitude of what awaited them. Miguel Ángel approached him in Londres 38, saying to him, “I know you.”

His mother found out at the hair salon that her son was in Londres 38. León Gómez, detained on July 15, 1974, and transferred to Londres 38, saw Miguel Angel along with Héctor Garay, whom he knew. Someone commented to him that among the detainees was "Pampino," which he corroborated upon hearing him “with his typical jokes that he made to the guards, as if giving the impression that what was happening in the place had no importance.

Even Titín and Pampino would drive the guards crazy. They were very irreverent.”

David Cuevas Sharon, detained on May 4, 1974, also testified to having seen him. “Pampino, despite showing signs of mistreatment, seemed to have a great presence of mind; he was very physically strong.” He shared space with him for at least five days.

When Cuevas was released, Acuña Castillo remained a prisoner. His maternal grandmother had a hair salon in Ñuñoa, and one of her clients was Miguel Angel's mother. In a conversation, “she found out about the problem she had with a disappeared son.

Given this, my grandmother made her go to the hair salon where she met Pampino's mother and told her what she knew about him, specifically the place where he had been imprisoned with him.” Regarding the torments applied to the detainees in Londres 38, among them Miguel Angel, Minister Crisosto incorporated statements from Osvaldo Romo, who stated that among other tortures, the detainees were subjected to “the dry submarine, which was covering the breathing of the detainees with a plastic bag placed on their heads; their eyes would look like “fried eggs,” blood would come out of their noses and eardrums. After the interrogations and duress, the detainees would be exhausted.” Another former agent, Samuel Fuenzalida Devia, specified in this regard that “the general treatment of the prisoners was to keep them blindfolded, they were not allowed to wash, there were no beds for them to sleep on, the food was scarce, and they were subjected to intense interrogations in which electricity was applied to them, especially on the genitals and breasts. Another form of torture consisted of keeping the detainees seated in chairs, tied by their feet and hands, while current was applied to them with magnets, although common electric current was also applied, which burned those people, a procedure in which many people died.” Eugenio Fieldhouse Chávez maintains that as an official of the Investigative Police, in mid-June 1974, he was assigned to that repressive body and indicated that the same DINA agents who intervened in the detention and interrogation of the detainees, once the information sought was obtained, were the ones in charge of making them disappear, upon the order of DINA superiors. The name of Miguel Ángel Acuña Castillo appeared among the 119 Chileans of Operation Colombo, on a list disseminated in the national press, after it appeared in publications that appeared only once in Brazil and Argentina, “in which it was reported that Miguel Ángel Acuña Castillo had died in Argentina, along with 58 other people belonging to the MIR, due to internal disputes.”

The sentences: “The publications that declared the victim Acuña Castillo dead had their origin in disinformation maneuvers carried out by DINA agents abroad,” determined Judge Crisosto, who sentenced 78 former DINA agents for his disappearance.

The magistrate issued a sentence of 13 years of major imprisonment in its medium degree to Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda; César Manríquez Bravo; Pedro Espinoza; Marcelo Luis Moren Brito; Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko; and Raúl Iturriaga Neumann.

Likewise, he sentenced to 10 years of major imprisonment in its minimum degree Gerardo Ernesto Urrich González; Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García; Ricardo Víctor Lawrence Mires; Ciro Ernesto Torré Sáez; Sergio Hernán Castillo González; Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos; José Nelson Fuentealba Saldías; Basclay Humberto Zapata Reyes; José Enrique Fuentes Torres; José Mario Friz Esparza; Julio José Hoyos Zegarra; Nelson Alberto Paz Bustamante; Claudio Orlando Orellana de la Pinta; Enrique Tránsito Gutiérrez Rubilar; Gustavo Galvarino Caruman Soto; Hiro Álvarez Vega; José Alfonso Ojeda Obando; Luis Salvador Villarroel Gutiérrez; Olegario Enrique González Moreno; Orlando Jesús Torrejón Gatica; Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera; Alfredo Orlando Moya Tejeda; Carlos Alfonso Sáez Sanhueza; Fernando Enrique Guerra Guajardo; Hernán Patricio Valenzuela Salas; Hugo Rubén Delgado Carrasco; Juan Alfredo Villanueva Alvear; Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos; Lautaro Eugenio Díaz Espinoza; Leónides Emiliano Méndez Moreno; Pedro Ariel Araneda Araneda; Rafael De Jesús Riveros Frost; Víctor Manuel Molina Astete; Manuel Rivas Díaz; Hugo del Tránsito Hernández Valle; Juan Ángel Urbina Cáceres; Risiere del Prado Altez España; Hermon Helec Alfaro Mundaca; and Raúl Juan Rodríguez Ponte. As accomplices to the kidnapping and disappearance of the 19-year-old, he sentenced to 4 years of minor imprisonment in its maximum degree Luis Eduardo Mora Cerda; José Jaime Mora Diocares; Camilo Torres Negrier; Carlos Justo Bermúdez Méndez; Claudio Enrique Pacheco Fernández; Fernando Adrián Roa Montaña; Gerardo Meza Acuña; Héctor Raúl Valdebenito Araya; Jaime Humberto Paris Ramos; Jorge Laureano Sagardia Monge; José Dorohi Hormazabal Rodríguez; José Manuel Sarmiento Sotelo; José Stalin Muñoz Leal; Juvenal Alfonso Piña Garrido; Luis René Torres Méndez; Manuel Antonio Montre Méndez; Máximo Ramón Aliaga Soto; Moisés Paulino Campos Figueroa; Nelson Aquiles Ortiz Vignolo; Nelson Eduardo Iturriaga Cortes; Pedro Segundo Bitterlich Jaramillo; Reinaldo Alfonso Concha Orellana; Sergio Hernán Castro Andrade; Víctor Manuel de la Cruz San Martin Jiménez; Gustavo Humberto Apablaza Meneses; Héctor Carlos Díaz Cabezas; Jorge Antonio Lepileo Barrios; Oscar Belarmino La Flor Flores; Rufino Espinoza Espinoza; Roberto Hernán Rodríguez Manquel; Víctor Manuel Álvarez Droguett; Héctor Manuel Lira Aravena; and Sergio Iván Díaz Lara.

Regarding Víctor Manuel De la Cruz San Martín Jiménez, due to having fallen into dementia, the fulfillment of the sentence is suspended, and he must, in due course, be handed over under custody bail to a family member.

Source: Villa Grimaldi.cl, February 3, 2015

When Chilean unionists were watched, followed, and listened to

From its inception in 1977, the CNI exercised close surveillance over the union world through the Labor Brigade. The head of the brigade from 1979 was Carabineros Captain Miguel Eugenio Hernández Oyarzo (“Felipe Bascur”), who had performed similar functions in the DINA.

By mid-1979, the brigade moved to a new secret barracks on Agustinas street and was divided into four groups, each of them under the command of Army Captain Raúl Lillo Gutiérrez (“Manolo Arriagada”), Héctor Lira (“Julián Reyes”), Nelson Fernández Franco (“Carlos Santander”), and Jorge Ramírez Romero (“Carlos de la Fuente”), respectively.

Among the agents were Pedro Alfaro Fernández, Juan Araos Araos, Carlos Asalgado Martínez, Edmundo Alberto Asenjo Gálvez, Daniel Cancino Varas, Gustavo Caruman Soto, Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Germán Erazo Ahumada, Ricardo Erazo Ahumada, Héctor Alfredo Flores Vergara, Segundo Gangas Godoy, Enrique Gutiérrez Rubilar, Luis Gutiérrez Uribe, Guido Jara Brevis, Jaime Márquez Campos, Luis Mora Cerda, José Mora Diocares, José Muñoz Leal, Enrique Naranjo Muñoz, Nelson Ortiz Vignolo, Manuel Poblete Vergara, Luis Tomás Rojas Torres, Manuel Tapia Tapia, and Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera.

In 1977, the Ministry Secretariat General of Government created, under the dependency of the Directorate of Civil Organizations, the National Secretariat of Guilds and placed Misael Galleguillos at its head, a Mathematics professor from the Valparaíso branch of the University of Chile, an active militant of Patria y Libertad during the Popular Unity government.

His apparent mission was to train pro-government union leaders, but in truth, his main role consisted of watching and infiltrating opposition union leaderships and passing all that information to the CNI.

The leadership of the Secretariat of Guilds had its offices in the Diego Portales building, but most of its officials and collaborators worked near there, in a three-story house that stood on the corner of the Alameda and Victoria Subercaseaux street, on the side of Santa Lucía hill.

Galleguillos, enthusiastic about his task, recreated the National Revolutionary Syndicalist Movement (MRNS)—inspired by an old movement of the same name—headquartered in a large house at Vergara 180, in the old República neighborhood, southeast of the center of Santiago, and closely linked to the CNI.

Several of the main pro-government union leaders gathered there, among them René Sotolicchio, president of the National Association of Municipal Employees; Valericio Orrego Salas, president of the Association of Employees of the Ministry of Public Works; Carlos Navarrete, president of Union No. 1 of Street Markets of Santiago; and Jaime Tramont Castillo, a union leader from Valparaíso.

Galleguillos also summoned Werner Anís Bischosausen, Eugenio Cáceres Contreras, Ramón Callís Arrigorriaga, Iván Catalina Sánchez, Gustavo Cuevas Torrealba, Héctor Larenas Bugueño, Luis Lillo Abarca, Lázaro Maluenda, Claudio Matte, and Pedro Urquieta.

Claudio Matte and Héctor Larenas financed the rental of the headquarters, where the security officers were Hugo Cabezas Freire, a member of the CNI, and Rigoberto Moreno, a former Navy official.

The leadership of the movement, headed by Galleguillos, was composed of José Fernández Jorquera, Arturo Marshall de Amesti, Alfredo Urrutia, Fernando Muñoz Parra, and Marcelo Retamal Moreno, who dedicated themselves to planning shock actions, producing propaganda, and programming union training courses for the cadres and leaders they summoned to their meetings.

Luis Lillo Abarca was in charge of training, and Héctor Larenas Buqueño of propaganda and public relations.

Black shirts and Nazi salutes

In another property, located at Larraín 8081, in front of the Tobalaba airfield, or in a vacant lot in Farellones, paramilitary training was carried out for the militants who made up the shock groups. This task was carried out by Fernando Muñoz, Genaro Pozo, and Manuel Hernández. The use of black shirts, the Nazi-style raised-arm salute, and the singing of military hymns were mandatory.

Other militants like Pablo Medina, Jorge Salinas (a former Patria y Libertad member nicknamed “Bombero Loco”), and Santiago Schesta assumed the preparation of explosives that they installed in previously determined areas, which press releases attributed to leftist groups.

One of the actions of the MRNS with public repercussions was the boycott of an ANEF press conference, in which Guillermo Henríquez, Jorge Salazar Hojman, Genaro Pozo, and Jorge Baldrich Camus burst in shouting “traitor” and “sellout” at Tucapel Jiménez.

The next day, Baldrich appeared photographed in El Mercurio. He declared later that the order had been given to him by the then-Minister Secretary General of Government, General Sergio Badiola Brodeg, who was seconded by the undersecretary of the portfolio, the lawyer Jovino Novoa Vásquez.

Galleguillos also had a secret informant among the opposition who anticipated all the activities of the "Group of Ten." It was Federico Mujica Canales, a short man, a constant pipe smoker, who presided over the Cepch.

Already in 1975, in the glory years of the DINA, opposition union leaders were closely watched and their meetings recorded by agents or collaborators infiltrated among them. Marcia Merino, “la flaca Alejandra,” a MIR member who collaborated with the DINA, received from Rolf Wenderoth at the central barracks in Belgrado verbatim transcripts of the meetings of the Group of Ten, the National Union Coordinator (CNS), and the Unitary Workers' Front (FUT).

Her task was to analyze the contents and infer probable courses of action of the unionists, returning them later to Wenderoth's offices.

After the installation of the CNI in 1977, the DINA's replacement continued the same method of tracking, surveillance, listening, and penetration. The information gathered was incorporated into individual folders, and their contents were periodically replicated, with copies sent to the central barracks on República street.

There, they were received by Mirtha Espinoza Caamaño, the secretary of Colonel Roberto Schmied, head of the Interior Department, who was later appointed commander of the Metropolitan Intelligence Division, where the various anti-subversive brigades were located. Under Schmied's direct command were Major Zanelli and Captain Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, in charge of operational tasks.

The secretary recorded the information in control books, with the date of entry, the originating unit, and a brief description of the content. Acronyms and codes were used according to the respective units and sections. Thus, for example, F.1.1 corresponded to the head of the division; F-1.2 to the deputy head, and so on, according to the various departments into which the CNI was divided.

Close surveillance was exercised over the union world through the Labor Brigade or Political-Union Brigade, which depended directly on the Metropolitan Intelligence Division, under the command of Colonel Schmied Zanzi.

The head of the brigade from 1979 was Carabineros Captain Miguel Eugenio Hernández Oyarzo (“Felipe Bascur”), who had performed similar functions in the DINA in 1977, from the “Ollagüe” barracks, located on José Domingo Cañas street, in the commune of Ñuñoa.

By mid-1979, the brigade moved to a new secret barracks on Agustinas street and was divided into four groups, each of them under the command of Army Captain Raúl Lillo Gutiérrez (“Manolo Arriagada”), Héctor Lira (“Julián Reyes”), Nelson Fernández Franco (“Carlos Santander”), and Jorge Ramírez Romero (“Carlos de la Fuente”), respectively.

Among the agents were Pedro Alfaro Fernández, Juan Araos Araos, Carlos Asalgado Martínez, Edmundo Alberto Asenjo Gálvez, Daniel Cancino Varas, Gustavo Caruman Soto, Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Germán Erazo Ahumada, Ricardo Erazo Ahumada, Héctor Alfredo Flores Vergara, Segundo Gangas Godoy, Enrique Gutiérrez Rubilar, Luis Gutiérrez Uribe, Guido Jara Brevis, Jaime Márquez Campos, Luis Mora Cerda, José Mora Diocares, José Muñoz Leal, Enrique Naranjo Muñoz, Nelson Ortiz Vignolo, Manuel Poblete Vergara, Luis Tomás Rojas Torres, Manuel Tapia Tapia, and Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera.

Leaders like Eduardo Ríos, Ernesto Vogel, Manuel Bustos, and Tucapel Jiménez, among others, had their telephones tapped, and all correspondence sent to them and their families from abroad and within the country was reviewed in the unit that the CNI maintained at the Post Office. A folder was kept for each one with their personal, work, and family background, in addition to their contact networks.

In 1976, a CNI agent nicknamed “Omar” recruited as an informant the employee who worked as an assistant for the ANEF, at its three-story headquarters located at Alameda and Riquelme. The “junior” was named Julio Olivares Silva and was the son of a friend of Tucapel Jiménez.

Twice a week, the boy delivered his reports to the Labor Brigade barracks, where in exchange he received a cash payment. In 1977, Olivares Silva was incorporated into the CNI staff under the alias “Gabriel Carrasco González,” although everyone called him “Barnabás.”

Infiltration of leaderships

Valericio Orrego, for his part, also became a paid collaborator of the CNI. He infiltrated Carlos Santa María, a leader of the Group of Ten, by recruiting an employee of his in a business he had at Bandera and General Mackenna. The informant was named Patricio Pezoa and had to report periodically to “Manolo” or “Carlos de la Fuente,” his control agents in the CNI.

One of the most secret paid snitches that the repressive body maintained in the leadership spheres of opposition unionism could only be identified in the first semester of 2009. It was the socialist Víctor Hugo Gac, a member of the executive committee of the CNS, a man then very close to Arturo Martínez, the current president of the CUT, to whom the CNI paid 40,000 pesos per month for his reports.

Thus, at the beginning of the spring of 1981, the CNI had the certainty that the much-feared opposition union unity was being achieved and that the main architect of it was the president of the public employees, Tucapel Jiménez.

The matter was even more serious because Jiménez also held conversations with some of the main political leaders of the dissidence, among them Eduardo Frei Montalva. The leader of the ANEF and the former president had already met at the Vicaría de la Pastoral Obrera together with some dignitaries of the Catholic Church.

The CNI analysts reached the conclusion that a national strike of unpredictable consequences was being prepared, with the support, moreover, of numerous instances and governments from the entire world.

The information gathered by the CNI reached La Moneda, and in the following weeks, the director of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINE), General Ramsés Arturo Álvarez Sgolia, received the order from General Augusto Pinochet to eliminate Tucapel Jiménez.

by Manuel Salazar Salvo

Source: interferencia.cl, May 5, 2020

Operation Colombo: Supreme Court issues convictions against 32 DINA agents in cases of two victims

The Supreme Court issued separate replacement sentences that convict 32 former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their responsibility in the qualified kidnapping of two victims of the so-called Operation Colombo.

In separate cases and rulings, the highest court issued a resolution on the cases of Ismael Darío Chávez Lobos, detained on July 26, 1974, and Jorge Alejandro Olivares Graindorge, detained on July 27, 1974, both in the commune of Quinta Normal, in Santiago.

In the first case, referring to the case of Ismael Chávez Lobos, in a unanimous ruling (case roll 79.461-2020), the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed of ministers Jorge Dahm, Leopoldo Llanos, minister María Teresa Letelier, and the acting lawyers Pía Tavolari and Gonzalo Ruz—established an error of law in the sentence issued by the Santiago Court of Appeals in June 2020, by absolving the agents who performed operational functions and served as guards at the Londres 38 facility of responsibility for the proven facts.

For this reason, in the replacement sentence, it classifies them as guilty and convicts them for the crime, while increasing the sentences of the other convicted individuals.

At the same time, it accepted the appeals for cassation on the merits filed by the plaintiffs and, issuing a replacement sentence, sentenced the former DINA hierarchs and former Army officers César Raúl Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann to sentences of 10 years and one day of imprisonment, in their capacity as authors of the crime.

Meanwhile, also as authors of the crime, the former Carabineros officer Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García and Army officer Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos, and the former agent José Enrique Fuentes Torres were sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment.

While the former agents Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Pedro Ariel Araneda Araneda, Víctor Manuel Molina Astete, Manuel de la Cruz Rivas Díaz, Raúl Juan Rodríguez Ponte, Hermon Helec Alfaro Mundaca, Hugo del Tránsito Hernández Valle, Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera, Julio José Hoyos Zegarra, Nelson Alberto Paz Bustamante, Enrique Tránsito Gutiérrez Rubilar, Hiro Álvarez Vega, José Alfonso Ojeda Obando, Olegario Enrique González Moreno, Orlando Jesús Torrejón Gatica, Alfredo Orlando Moya Tejeda, Fernando Enrique Guerra Guajardo, Hernán Patricio Valenzuela Salas, Juan Alfredo Villanueva Alvear, Lautaro Eugenio Díaz Espinoza, Leónidas Emiliano Méndez Moreno, Rafael de Jesús Riveros Frost, Carlos Alfonso Sáez Sanhueza, Máximo Ramón Aliaga Soto, and José Avelino Yévenes Vergara must serve 5 years and one day of imprisonment as authors of the crime.

In the second case, referring to Jorge Olivares Graindorge, in a unanimous ruling (case roll 122.171.2020), the Second Chamber, composed of the same ministers as in the previous case, established an error of law in the sentence issued by the Santiago Court of Appeals in July 2020, by mistakenly absolving agents who performed operational and guard functions at the Londres 38 facility.

For this reason, in the replacement sentence, it classifies and convicts them as guilty of the crime.

Likewise, it increases the sentences of the other convicted individuals and sentenced the former DINA hierarchs and former Army officers César Raúl Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann to sentences of 10 years and one day of imprisonment, in their capacity as authors of the crime.

Meanwhile, also as authors of the crime, the former officers Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García and Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos, and the former agent José Enrique Fuentes Torres were sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment.

Likewise, for this crime, the former agents Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Pedro Ariel Araneda Araneda, Víctor Manuel Molina Astete, Manuel de la Cruz Rivas Díaz, Raúl Juan Rodríguez Ponte, Hermon Helec Alfaro Mundaca, Hugo del Tránsito Hernández Valle, Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera, Julio José Hoyos Zegarra, Nelson Alberto Paz Bustamante, Enrique Tránsito Gutiérrez Rubilar, Hiro Álvarez Vega, José Alfonso Ojeda Obando, Olegario Enrique González Moreno, Orlando Jesús Torrejón Gatica, Alfredo Orlando Moya Tejeda, Fernando Enrique Guerra Guajardo, Hernán Patricio Valenzuela Salas, Juan Alfredo Villanueva Alvear, Lautaro Eugenio Díaz Espinoza, Leónidas Emiliano Méndez Moreno, Rafael de Jesús Riveros Frost, Carlos Alfonso Sáez Sanhueza, Máximo Ramón Aliaga Soto, and Osvaldo Enrique Pulgar Gallardo must serve sentences of 5 years and one day of imprisonment as authors of the crime.

In both cases, twelve other agents convicted in the first instance died during the course of the process, among them former officers Gerardo Urrich González, Ricardo Lawrence Mires, Ciro Torré Sáez, and Sergio Castillo González, and the agents Basclay Zapata Reyes, Risiere del Altez España, Juan Ángel Urbina Cáceres, José Nelson Fuentealba Saldías, Hugo Rubén Delgado Carrasco, José Mario Friz Esparza, Claudio Orlando Orellana de la Pinta, and Gustavo Galvarino Carumán Soto, remaining acquitted of these crimes.

The victims Ismael Darío Chávez Lobos, 22 years old, was a Social Sciences student at the University of Chile and a militant of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR). He was detained during the night of July 26, 1974, at his home located at Calle Los Copihues No. 1977 in the commune of Quinta Normal, by agents belonging to the DINA, who transferred him to the clandestine detention center 'Londres 38', located at that address in the city of Santiago.

Jorge Alejandro Olivares Graindorge, 23 years old, a gardener by trade, also a militant of the MIR, was detained by DINA agents on a public street, during the afternoon of July 27, 1974, in the vicinity of his home located at Pasaje Salta 2258, in the commune of Quinta Normal. He was also transferred by the agents to the clandestine detention center «Londres 38».

From this place of detention and torture, the trail of both detainees is lost. Subsequently, in July 1975, they appeared mentioned in the lists of the international disinformation maneuver known as "Operation Colombo," carried out by the DINA, which included 119 forcibly disappeared persons.

by Darío Nuñez

Source: resumen.cl, December 4, 2023