I hope the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, General Oscar Izurieta, will "face the music like a soldier" and therefore explain to the country the reasons why numerous DINA-CNI agents who appear involved in various human rights violations are working on a fee-basis for his...

Public opinion has learned with astonishment that former DINA-CNI agents who are being prosecuted for human rights violations are being hired on a fee-basis by the Army. It is regrettable that 19 years after the recovery of our democracy, the Army, an institution that belongs to all Chileans, has still not detached itself from "Pinochetism" and continues, in practice, to protect human rights violators.

This is nothing new, as the Army previously deducted money from its officials' payrolls for the defense of these criminals and later provided them with lawyers. But the most serious aspect is that we have been able to verify that, once again, the truth has been withheld, since the Army had stated—when pressured by public opinion to end the payroll deductions—that it had completely disassociated itself from human rights violators.

And today it has been proven that this is not the case, since Hugo Acevedo Godoy (Rengo Brigade), Guido Díaz Paci (physician), Sergio Cea Cienfuegos (former military prosecutor), Sergio Castillo González (Leopardo Group), Alfredo Iturriaga Neumann (Mulchén Brigade), and Pablo Rodríguez Márquez (intelligence agent who participated in the crime against the DINA chemist Eugenio Berríos) are hired by said institution.

Some may point out that these individuals have not yet been convicted. This is a similar argument to the one used in the past by some when I opposed the promotion of high-ranking officers involved in the assassination of Carmelo Soria.

Fortunately, on that occasion, the pressure of public opinion finally prevented their promotions. But as I pointed out on that occasion, mere formalities do not apply here. The important thing is that it is ethically and morally reprehensible that these "sinister characters" continue to be hired by the Army.

That today, with its attitude, our Army continues once again to side with the perpetrators and not the victims. Undoubtedly, this conduct is not only an offense to the victims' families, but to all of us who want to make "Never Again" a reality in Chile.

Furthermore, it once again generates legitimate distrust, as it shows us that some have still not learned the lessons of the past. And that the commitment the Army claims to have to human rights is mere words that are not supported in reality by concrete facts, as should be its total break with those who committed Crimes Against Humanity during the Pinochet dictatorship.

I hope that the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, General Oscar Izurieta, will "face the music like a soldier" and therefore explain to the country the reasons why numerous DINA-CNI agents who appear involved in various human rights violations are working on a fee-basis for his institution.

Source: elmostrador.cl, September 1, 2009

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

The minister on special assignment for human rights violation cases of 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 called "Operation Colombo." According to the information gathered by the judge, "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 the 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 taken to an unknown destination." "Subsequently, it was possible to establish, through testimonies, the passage of Héctor Marcial Garay Hermosilla 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 on Garay's whereabouts. The convicted In the resolution, the presiding judge sentenced the following to 13 years in prison: César Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Marcelo Luis Moren Brito, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, as authors of the crime perpetrated in 1974. 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

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

The biggest blow to the repression of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship was dealt yesterday by Minister Víctor Montiglio, by prosecuting 98 former agents from different branches of the Armed Forces, Carabineros, and the Investigative Police for 42 victims of Operation Colombo.

This is the largest resolution issued among the nearly 400 human rights violation cases 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 Lautaro Brigade and its Delfín Group at the Simón Bolívar barracks.

Among those accused for Colombo are eight Army colonels (Ret.), six of whom had not been prosecuted before in any case. Also declared defendants were 23 Army non-commissioned officers (Ret.), of whom at least 50 percent 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 Lautaro Brigade, who was the one who suffocated the communist leader in hiding (1976), Víctor Díaz, with a plastic bag over his head, before he was injected 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 places, such as the Peñalolén Military Police Battalion. Among the 42 victims for whom the minister 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, information that 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 detainees who were forcibly disappeared had clandestinely left for Argentina and died there in clashes 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 they had been executed by their own comrades as a settling of scores for 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, information that 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 in Buenos Aires on this operation. According to the former civilian agent Enrique Arancibia Clavel, convicted in Buenos Aires for the crime against 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 Caruvan 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

Former agents, some prosecuted, receive Army salary

The DINA on the Payroll

Among them are former members of the Mulchén, Rengo, and Leopardo brigades. There is also a former military prosecutor who falsified documents to cover up the crime of Carmelo Soria, an Army doctor who tortured prisoners, and the agent who smuggled Eugenio Berríos out of Chile.

The ghost of the crimes of the DINA and the CNI is revived in the Army’s payroll of fee-based contractors. The list, updated in 2009 by the military institution itself, includes former members of the Mulchén, Rengo, and Leopardo brigades, some of whom are currently under prosecution.

It also includes a torturer doctor expelled from the medical association in 1987 and a former military prosecutor accused of falsifying documentation to protect the murderers of the Chilean-Spanish diplomat Carmelo Soria.

Furthermore, it lists the former Army intelligence agent who clandestinely removed the DINA chemist, Eugenio Berríos, from Chile. One of them is an old standard-bearer of the elite that surrounded Manuel Contreras at the headquarters on Calle Belgrano 11: Colonel (Ret.) Hugo "Cacho" Acevedo Godoy, an aide to the DINA boss.

Number five on the list of CNI agents that the Army provided to Judge Sergio Muñoz in the context of the investigation into the crime of Tucapel Jiménez, Acevedo is married to the "Pentothal Lady," the nurse-agent Carlota Bolumburu Taboada, who killed prisoners at the Clínica Santa Lucía by injecting them with overdoses of pentothal. "I was in the Rengo Brigade, a security unit within the DINA that was under the command of the then-captain Christoph Willikie Flöl (convicted for the crime of General Carlos Prats).

Later, in 1977, I was part of the personal security detail for my General Augusto Pinochet," "Cacho" told Judge Alejandro Madrid during the trial for the crime of agent Corporal Manuel Leyton. A lover of history, Acevedo turned to the Battle of La Concepción to choose the aliases of two MIR militants and another socialist militant who became agents: Marcia Merino Vega, María Uribe Gómez, and Luz Arce Sandoval assumed the names of Marta Vergara, Gloria Vilches, and Ana María Vergara, women who participated in that combat during the War of the Pacific.

Acevedo has a current fee-based contract for $751,259 per month for "consultancy for the administration of the Casas Viejas de Chena military property." The doctor and Colonel (Ret.) Guido Díaz Paci is another of those "benefited" by the military branch with fiscal funds.

He participated in the passage of the Caravan of Death through La Serena on October 16, 1973, the date on which 15 prisoners were executed. That afternoon, after the massacre, Díaz arranged the bodies, removed personal effects from their pockets, and with his medical report, took part in the cover-up of the slaughter, which was officially recorded as the fulfillment of a "sentence of a military tribunal," as reported by the then-Lieutenant Juan Emilio Cheyre to the newspaper El Día de La Serena.

Díaz Paci later moved from the cover-up to action and tortured prisoners at the Arica Regiment in La Serena. One of his victims there was the prisoner Margarita V.C.: "I was five months pregnant and I miscarried due to the torture.

Among my torturers, I recognized the psychiatrist Carlos Andreu Albornoz and the doctor from the Arica Regiment in La Serena and the La Serena Hospital, Guido Díaz Paci. I was raped, they put rats and spiders in my vagina, and they injected me with pentothal," the former prisoner told the Corporation for the Promotion and Defense of the Rights of the People (Codepu), a statement recorded in the report Testimonies of Torture in Chile, published by this organization in December 2003.

In October 1987, the Medical Association expelled Díaz Paci from its ranks for his participation, in complicity with the CNI, in the falsification of records regarding the health status of the Christian Democrat transporter from La Serena, Mario Fernández López, who, as a result of torture, had died at the La Serena Hospital in October 1984.

Díaz Paci has a current fee-based contract for $400,000 per month for "medical care for active and retired personnel and their families." To date, this doctor has not been prosecuted for crimes against humanity.

Chief of "Leopardo"

Colonel (Ret.) Sergio Castillo González currently receives $1,205,298 per month from the Army for "consultancy on the development of the professional career structure project." It is part of the income earned by this member of the team of instructor officers who, between November and December 1973, formed the first contingent of agents of the nascent DINA in Rocas de Santo Domingo.

Former agent Nibaldo Jiménez Castañeda, part of that first contingent, recalled during the trial for the forcibly disappeared of Operation Colombo that in January 1974, "we arrived at the Londres 38 barracks with a group of 20 agents under the command of Captain Sergio Castillo González." Another former agent, Fernando Guerra Guajardo, declared that "in September 1974 we were assigned to the barracks on Calle Irán with Los Plátanos (Ñuñoa, known as Venda Sexy) and in March-April 1975 to that of José Domingo Cañas (Ñuñoa), to which the Ciervo and Leopardo groups of the Purén Brigade were transferred." Castillo González commanded the Leopardo group. "Within the Purén Brigade was the Leopardo Group in charge of the then-Captain Castillo," acknowledged former agent Guido Jara Brevis. Castillo operated side-by-side with the feared Marcelo Moren Brito, known as "El Ronco," at Londres 38. There, according to Nibaldo Jiménez, who worked in Leopardo under the command of Sergio Castillo, "one of our missions was to transfer detainees to the Tejas Verdes regiment." In those "transfers," dozens of detainees disappeared. Their bodies were thrown into the sea. In December 2005, before Judge Juan Fuentes Belmar, Colonel (Ret.) Castillo González admitted his status as a DINA agent. The former chief of Leopardo was prosecuted in May 2008 by Judge Víctor Montiglio as one of the perpetrators of the kidnappings and disappearances of the victims of Operation Colombo (the case of the 119): Jaime Buzio Lorca (PC), Rodolfo Espejo Gómez (PS), and Albano Fioraso Chau (MIR), all disappeared from the Londres 38 barracks in 1974.

The Prosecutor Cea

Sergio Cea, head of the Information Law chair at the Universidad del Desarrollo, receives fees of $677,222 per month from the Army as a "legal advisor on the project for reforms to military justice." Professor Cea presented a unique curriculum at the university linked to the Penta group, composed of Carlos Alberto Délano and Carlos Eugenio Lavín.

In 1993, Judge Violeta Guzmán restarted the investigation into the crime of the Chilean-Spanish diplomat Carmelo Soria, committed by the Mulchén Brigade in 1976. Before the Supreme Court transferred the case to military justice, the non-commissioned officer and member of that brigade, Remigio Ríos San Martín, managed to testify that Soria was murdered by that group.

He even gave names. However, once the case passed to the Second Military Prosecutor's Office of Santiago, precisely under the charge of the Colonel of Justice and Prosecutor Sergio Cea Cienfuegos, the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE) launched an offensive to obstruct the process.

It not only tried to convince the non-commissioned officer to recant by pressuring him through his family and also gifting him a pickup truck, but it also urged Prosecutor Cea to falsify some statements and forge the signature of Ríos and others who took part in or knew about the operation to kill Soria and had decided to provide information.

Cea, along with his secretaries Héctor Zúñiga Cadenasso and Leonardo García Pérez, were part of the cover-up and falsification of public documents operation initiated by the DINE, under the command of its chief, General Eugenio Covarrubias Valenzuela.

Brigadier Jaime Lepe Orellana, one of the perpetrators of the Soria crime and at that time secretary to the dictator Augusto Pinochet, had active participation in that operation. Despite the above, the Supreme Court granted amnesty to the case for the homicide of Soria in August 1996.

But on January 19, 2009, Judge Alejandro Madrid—who is investigating the case of the murder of the DINA chemist, Eugenio Berríos, and is also investigating new evidence in the Soria case—prosecuted the now-former prosecutor Cea, along with Lepe Orellana, as co-perpetrators of the crime of falsification of a public document.

His two secretaries were charged as accomplices to that illicit act. Sergio Lautaro Cea Cienfuegos continues with his classes at one of the so-called "cota mil" universities, located in San Carlos de Apoquindo. The same institution where Joaquín Lavín and his main samurai impart knowledge.

An Iturriaga in Mulchén

The Iturriaga Neumann brothers were fierce agents. Raúl Eduardo—chief of the Purén Brigade and the DINA's foreign department—and Jorge Enrique are convicted for the double crime of General Carlos Prats and his wife.

A third member of the clan, Alfredo Patricio, was also an agent of the Mulchén Brigade. "The members of that unit were Guillermo Salinas Torres, Pablo Belmar Labbé, and Patricio Quilhot Palma," declared Alfredo Iturriaga Neumann to Judge Alejandro Madrid.

Although he did not recognize the name Mulchén Brigade and said that the group received the elegant name of "General Pinochet's Advanced Security Unit," in his statement he added that "that unit was part of the DINA." The aforementioned individuals precisely made up Mulchén, in addition to Jaime Lepe.

In any case, their membership in this group, which operated in coordination with Michael Townley and Eugenio Berríos, with sarin gas and other lethal chemical elements, is proven in the trial for the crime of Carmelo Soria and in the other cases that Madrid is investigating.

A black beret and commando, a symbol of the elite of the dictatorship's repressive organs, Alfredo Iturriaga Neumann is part of the current payroll of fee-based Army officials, receiving a monthly salary of $700,000 as an "advisor on matters related to the assessment of land force competencies." Pablo Rodríguez Márquez—prosecuted and formally accused by Judge Alejandro Madrid as the author of the crimes of kidnapping, criminal conspiracy, and obstruction of justice in the Berríos case—also appears on the Army's fee-based payroll.

On October 26, 1991, Lieutenant Rodríguez smuggled the chemist Eugenio Berríos out of Chile to Uruguay, with the false identity of "Manuel Morales Jara." In February 1990, Rodríguez had moved from the CNI to the DINE.

There, he joined the Special Operations Unit, pompously disguised as the Analysis Advisory Unit. This department, with reserved funds provided by Pinochet, obstructed the work of the judges investigating the crimes of the dictatorship.

The unit also removed agents Carlos Herrera Jiménez and Arturo Sanhueza from Chile, destined for Argentina and Uruguay. In Montevideo, Rodríguez was one of the main participants and articulators in keeping Berríos under kidnapping.

Shortly before, on September 10, 1991, he went to Argentina in search of a false passport. Two days later, he returned to Santiago "debuting" the name "Mauricio Gómez," with which Herrera was removed seven days later to extract him from the trial for the crime of Tucapel Jiménez.

Today, Pablo Rodríguez Márquez receives a monthly fee of $700,000 from the Army as an "advisor to the force preparation section." When the Army was consulted by telephone by LND, there was no response from the institution's Communications Department. Nor was an opinion received regarding the inquiry made through the public relations email.

Relatives: "National Shame"

For the president of the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared, Lorena Pizarro, the fact that the Army is financing with funds "from all Chileans" former agents who committed crimes during the dictatorship "is a national shame and an affront to the Chilean people, but the greatest infamy is that we, the relatives of our own victims, are helping with our taxes to pay the salaries of these criminals who kidnapped, murdered, and forcibly disappeared our parents and children." She adds that "this proves that the Army has not disassociated itself from these criminals.

We cannot continue to endure such complicity. Thanks to the Transparency Law, this list of fee-based people has become known, but who knows how many more of these same subjects are being paid with public funds, since the list of the Army's contract personnel appears as classified, protected by the Code of Military Justice." Carmen Soria, daughter of the Chilean-Spanish diplomat murdered by the Mulchén Brigade, maintains that "this is a shame that must be denounced internationally.

It is simply a double standard, because, while they talk to us about respecting human rights and achieving justice, the Army continues to finance these criminals." Soria anticipates that she will demand that the government force the Army to immediately end the contracts of these individuals. "I am also helping to pay their salaries, while there are thousands of political exiles who are in misery today.

I am going to bring this to the attention of the authorities in Spain so that they can present this fact to the Chilean government," she points out. Roberto D’Orival, a member of the Colectivo 119, which groups the relatives of the 119 victims of Operation Colombo, lost his brother Jorge in that operation.

Aware of this irregularity, he states that "this is something immoral that calls into question Chilean democracy, since it is assumed that the dictatorship came to an end, but we see that the State of Chile continues to finance human rights violators. As a collective, we are going to demand explanations from the Ministry of Defense."

Source: La Nación, Sunday, August 30, 2009

Cruel repressors appear among the more than 150 former agents prosecuted

Cruel repressors appear among the more than 150 former DINA agents, all in retirement, who were prosecuted last Tuesday by Minister Víctor Montiglio in the Operation Colombo, Condor, and Calle Conferencia 1587 cases.

Among them is Army officer Gladys Calderón Carreño, who injected cyanide to kill detainees at the barracks on Avenida Simón Bolívar, in the commune of La Reina, where the Lautaro Brigade operated. Also appearing is Marine Infantry non-commissioned officer Sergio Escalona Acuña, who used pliers to extract gold teeth from the bodies of prisoners who were already dead.

He performed this operation before the bodies were bagged to be thrown into the sea. In the same way, others of those prosecuted are the Carabineros non-commissioned officers Jorge Pichunmán Curiqueo and Claudio Pacheco Fernández, who were in charge at that clandestine barracks of disfiguring the faces of the detainees and burning their fingerprints using a blowtorch.

Among the 150 former agents indicted for the Colombo and Conferencia cases, there is a total of 21 officers. (See list). To this must be added the nearly 50 prosecuted for victims of Operation Condor, which could increase the total number of indicted to over 165, given that the majority of these nearly 50 names are repeated in the resolutions issued for Colombo and Conferencia.

The majority of those prosecuted belong to the Army, but there are also members of the Air Force, Navy, Army, Investigative Police, and Gendarmerie. Today, Friday, the marathon operation must conclude so that all those prosecuted are arrested and admitted to the various places of preventive detention, according to the institution to which they belong.

In the case of the Army, all must remain detained at the Military Police Battalion on Avenida José Arrieta, in the commune of Peñalolén.

List of officers (Ret.) 1.- César Manríquez Bravo (Army Colonel) 2.- Ciro Torré Sáez (Carabineros Colonel) 3.- Fernando Lauriani Maturana (Army Brigadier) 4.- Gerardo Godoy García (Carabineros Lieutenant Colonel) 5.- Gerardo Urrich González (Army Colonel) 6.- Jaime Paris Ramos (Army Colonel) 7.- José Fuentes Torres (Army Colonel) 8.- Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda (Army General) 9.- Manuel Carevic Cubillos (Army Colonel) 10.- Marcelo Moren Brito (Army Colonel) 11.- Miguel Krassnoff (Army Brigadier) 12.- Orlando Manzo Durán (Gendarmerie Colonel) 13.- Pedro Espinoza Bravo (Army Brigadier) 14.- Raúl Iturriaga Neumann (Army General) 15.- Ricardo Lawrence Mires (Carabineros Colonel) 16.- Sergio Castillo González (Army Colonel) 17.- Víctor Molina Astete (Army Colonel) 18.- Víctor San Martín Jiménez (Army Colonel) 19.- Gladys Calderón Carreño (Army Captain) 20.- Federico Chaigneau Sepúlveda (Army Lieutenant Colonel) 21.- Juan Morales Salgado (Army Colonel)

Source: La Nación, Friday, September 4, 2009

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

He was detained in July 1974 in the commune of Macul. Numerous witnesses saw him at the Londres 38 torture and extermination center. He is one of the victims of "Operation Colombo." The justice system convicted 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 near 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, testified that her father tried to climb onto the back of the covered pickup truck as they were taking him away, but he was struck in the mouth by one of the subjects and fell 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 is also forcibly disappeared. Both were members of the Revolutionary Students Front (FER) at the Liceo 7 in Ñuñoa.

Judge Crisosto determined that the DINA agents "transferred him to the clandestine detention center known as '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 was led by Agustín Reyes González, whose trail was lost forever at 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 at Londres 38 along with Héctor Garay Hermosilla. At the "Yucatán" barracks, he was seen by Erika Hennings, who was detained on July 30, 1974. "I can say he was very young, I think they called him 'El Pampa'," she asserted during the proceedings.

She heard the detainees being called for roll call twice a day. On July 31, 1974, she heard the name Miguel Angel Acuña Castillo, who answered "present." Afterward, she never heard him called 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 Students Front (FER), also saw him at Londres 38. He recounted 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 noted that he had known Castillo since 1971, when both were secondary students. Both coincided in meetings 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 encountered him again at 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 not to notice his presence. "The next day, when the mattresses on which we detainees lay were removed and replaced by chairs, I sat down, and on one side I observed that they were still sitting." It caught his attention that both were talking and laughing, which made him think they were unaware of the magnitude of what awaited them.

Miguel Ángel approached him at Londres 38, telling him, "I know you." His mother found out at the hair salon that her son had been at 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 "Pampino" was among the detainees, 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 was of 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. "Despite showing signs of mistreatment, 'El Pampino' appeared to have 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.

Because of 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 at Londres 38, including Miguel Angel, Minister Crisosto incorporated statements from Osvaldo Romo, who stated that among other tortures, detainees were subjected to "the dry submarine, which was covering their breathing with a plastic bag placed over their heads; the detainees' eyes would look like 'fried eggs,' and 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, especially to the genitals and breasts. Another form of torture consisted of keeping the detainees sitting on 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 agency and indicated that the same DINA agents who intervened in the detention and interrogation of the detainees, once the sought-after information was obtained, were the ones in charge of making them disappear, following an order from 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 were printed 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 convictions

"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 convicted 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.

He also 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 Monje; 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

Elusive justice: taking two steps forward and four back

In several cases of forcibly disappeared persons in recent times, the Santiago Court of Appeals has decided to acquit a significant percentage of those responsible, thus contradicting the first-instance rulings in the "Operation Colombo" cases. It is feared that this criterion will become a constant, installing, once again, new forms of impunity.

This situation has occurred in the cases of Jorge Grez Aburto, Sergio Flores Ponce, Luis Durán Rivas, and Washington Cid Urrutia, all of whom were detained in 1974. Only in the case of María Cristina López Stewart were all those prosecuted convicted.

Particularly serious is the argumentation given by the magistrates in the case of Grez, who was part of the founding group of the MIR, joined the Socialist Party in the late sixties, and was detained on May 23, 1974, by DINA agents.

The first-instance conviction in the Grez case, from May 2014, issued by Minister Hernán Crisosto Greisse, established these facts as proven, as well as the condition in which he was kept during his detention at Londres 38: without contact with the outside world, blindfolded and tied up, continuously subjected to interrogations under torture.

The first-instance ruling sentenced six high-ranking DINA officers to 13 years of imprisonment as perpetrators of the crime of qualified kidnapping: Juan Manuel Guillermo Contreras Sepúlveda, César Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Marcelo Luis Moren Brito, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and Gerardo Ernesto Urrich González.

In addition, it sentenced 35 other DINA agents as perpetrators of the same crime to a penalty of 10 years; among them are Gerardo Godoy García, Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García, Ricardo Víctor Lawrence Mires, Ciro Ernesto Torré Sáez, Sergio Hernán Castillo González, and Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos.

Finally, the sentence convicted 34 DINA agents to a penalty of 4 years of imprisonment as accomplices to the same crime.

As part of an unusual argument, the Santiago Court compares the responsibility of DINA agents with that of any public official and, to the extreme, with that of society as a whole, ignoring the different responsibilities and knowledge of the facts.

The sentence was hopeful for hundreds of families who still remain without knowing the whereabouts of their relatives, notwithstanding that this is a matter of national concern. However, considering the slow progress, the process took a step back, since the sentence was appealed by the defense of the convicted.

The Twelfth Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals resolved to acquit the vast majority of the accused and reduce the sentences of a few convicted persons, in an unexpected and dubiously founded decision, since for the Ministers of the Chamber, we could all be responsible for the crimes of the DINA. Just like that, 56 agents, officers, non-commissioned officers, and conscripts were acquitted.

Mere "public officials"

As part of an unusual argument, the Santiago Court compares the responsibility of DINA agents with that of any public official and, to the extreme, with that of society as a whole, ignoring the different responsibilities and knowledge of the facts. Thus, it is stated in the text of June 2016:

"(...) It does not seem reasonable to impute personal criminal responsibility to a specific subject for the sole fact of the existence of certainty that they belonged to the organizational chart that formed the repressive apparatus of the State, because in such logic, it seems rather that what is being objected to is the very existence of such an organization, given the unheard-of and inadmissible purpose for which it was created, a reproach that although it can naturally be understood, it being sufficient for that to only take into account the most elementary distinction between good and evil, the truth is that if such reasoning were accepted in order to extend personal responsibility in the perpetration of a crime based on the aforementioned considerations, we could even affirm that such an imputation factor should also be made applicable to all those who were part of the State administration and, even more, to society as a whole, which remained silent and inactive in the face of such illicit conduct (...)."

The Twelfth Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals was presided over by Minister Alejandro Rivera Muñoz and integrated by Minister Maritza Villadangos Frankovich and the participating lawyer José Luis López Reitze.

This criterion gives continuity to the path initiated many years ago by the courts, in the sense of convicting only a few direct perpetrators and some chiefs, without understanding that these are serious crimes that cannot be judged as common crimes, because they are crimes committed from the State, by power apparatuses that had enormous and numerous resources and members, all of whom collaborated in different ways so that the policy of forced disappearance of militants of the Chilean left could materialize.

We recognize the courage of some ministers for investigating and judging adequately, often against the transitional justice policies adopted by successive governments since the transition began ("justice to the extent possible") and the zero progress of these matters in the legislative branch, as is the case with the repeal or interpretation of the Amnesty Law, which is announced every so often with fanfare and still sleeps in Congress.

The scenario of a judicial system that takes two steps forward and four back accounts for the persistent impunity in which the cases of victims of forced disappearance remain and the complicity that continues to exist between sectors of the judiciary and those responsible, civilians and military, for the repression in Chile.

This complicity is even more serious in the framework of the justificatory arguments for human rights violations issued by the Commander-in-Chief of the Army when asking to "understand the historical context" in which they occurred, and the silence of the highest political authority to whom the armed forces, as a non-deliberative body, should be subordinate.

Source: elmostrador.cl, August 21, 2017

39 former DINA agents convicted for Operation Colombo

In a ruling announced this Tuesday, the Santiago Court of Appeals convicted 39 former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their responsibility in the crime of qualified kidnapping of secondary student leader Héctor Marcial Garay Hermosilla.

The kidnapping was perpetrated on July 8, 1974, in the commune of Ñuñoa, and the victim was made to disappear within the framework of the so-called Operation Colombo.

Garay Hermosilla was a 19-year-old student leader, a militant of the MIR, who was detained by DINA agents near his home. He was taken by his captors to the secret facility of Londres 38, from where his trail was lost.

In the ruling (case file 174-2016), the Second Chamber of the capital's appellate court—integrated by ministers María Soledad Melo, Rafael Andrade, and the participating lawyer María Cecilia Ramírez—sentenced former army officers César Raúl Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, Gerardo Ernesto Urrich González, Sergio Hernán Castillo González, Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos, former carabineros officers Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García, Ricardo Víctor Lawrence Mires, Ciro Ernesto Torré Sáez, and former agents Nelson Alberto Paz Bustamante, Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera, Pedro Ariel Araneda Araneda, Víctor Manuel Molina Astete, Máximo Ramón Aliaga Soto, Manuel de la Cruz Rivas Díaz, Risiere del Prado Altez España, Raúl Juan Rodríguez Ponte, Hermon Helec Alfaro Mundaca, Hugo del Tránsito Hernández Valle, Enrique Tránsito Gutiérrez Rubilar, José Alfonso Ojeda Obando, Fernando Enrique Guerra Guajardo, and Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos to penalties of 10 years and one day of imprisonment, as perpetrators of the crime.

The Court reduces the sentence of Manríquez Bravo, Espinoza Bravo, Krassnoff Martchenko, and Iturriaga Neumann, who in the first instance had been sentenced to 13 years in prison.

Meanwhile, former agents Hiro Álvarez Vega, Olegario Enrique González Moreno, Hernán Patricio Valenzuela Salas, Juan Alfredo Villanueva Alvear, Lautaro Eugenio Díaz Espinoza, Leonidas Emiliano Méndez Moreno, Rafael de Jesús Riveros Frost, Gustavo Humberto Apablaza Meneses, Héctor Carlos Díaz Cabezas, Jorge Antonio Lepileo Barrios, Oscar Belarmino La Flor Flores, Rufino Espinoza Espinoza, Víctor Manuel Álvarez Droguett, Sergio Iván Díaz Lara, and Roberto Hernán Rodríguez Manquel were sentenced to 4 years of imprisonment, with the benefit of supervised release, as accomplices to the illicit act.

In August 2015, the first-instance ruling had been issued by Minister Hernán Crisosto Greisse. In the present resolution of the Court, the criminals Marcelo Morén Brito, Sergio Hernán Castillo González, Basclay Zapata Reyes, Juan Ángel Urbina Cáceres, José Mario Friz Esparza, Gustavo Galvarino Carumán Soto, José Nelson Fuentealba Saldías, Claudio Orlando Orellana de la Pinta, Manuel Antonio Montré Méndez, Hugo Rubén Delgado Carrasco, Héctor Manuel Lira Aravena, and Víctor Manuel San Martín Jiménez were acquitted due to their deaths, which occurred between that ruling and the date of the hearing of the case.

The name of Héctor Marcial Garay Hermosilla appeared on a list of 119 people, published in the national press after it appeared in a list published in the magazine LEA in Argentina, dated July 15, 1975, in which it was intended to make people believe that Héctor Marcial Garay Hermosilla had died in Argentina, along with 59 other people belonging to the MIR, due to internal disputes that arose between those members.

The publications that declared the victim Garay Hermosilla and all 119 people dead had their origin in disinformation maneuvers carried out by DINA agents abroad.

Source: resumen.cl, June 4, 2020