This case involves two retired officers; one is currently required to sign in monthly, while the other is under nighttime house arrest. The minister for extraordinary cases of human rights violations at the La Serena Court of Appeals, Vicente Hormazábal Abarzúa, issued an indictment in the investigation into the homicide of Juan Segundo Guajardo Pizarro, perpetrated on September 21, 1974, in the commune of Vicuña.

In the resolution, Minister Hormazábal indicted and ordered the preventive detention of retired Carabineros officers Luis Osvaldo Castro Miquel and Carlos Alfaro Valderrama, in their capacities as author and accomplice, respectively, of the crime of aggravated kidnapping.

According to the evidence gathered during the investigation phase, the visiting minister established that on the morning of September 21, 1974, without any motive or judicial order, Juan Segundo Guajardo Pizarro was detained by order of the unit chief, Commissioner Luis Castro Miquel, while he was at a friend's house in the rural sector of Hierro Viejo, Cerro La Virgen, Vicuña.

At the police station, Castro Miquel interrogated the detainee regarding the existence of far-left groups in the northern mines, where the victim worked, and instructed a non-commissioned officer to keep Guajardo Pizarro detained at the station, in direct sunlight.

Later, the non-commissioned officer ordered student Carabineros officer Carlos Manuel Alfaro Valderrama—who had recently joined the ranks—to "beat" the victim, which he did. As a consequence, "...these mistreatments and blows inflicted upon Mr. Juan Segundo Guajardo Pizarro caused his death in the afternoon hours of that day, September 21, 1974."

Source: elobservador.cl, January 26, 2016

Retired Carabineros officer sentenced for 1974 kidnapping in Vicuña

Visiting Minister Vicente Hormazábal sentenced Luis Castro Miquel to 10 years of effective prison time. The minister for extraordinary cases of human rights violations at the La Serena Court of Appeals, Vicente Hormazábal, sentenced retired Carabineros Lieutenant Colonel Luis Osvaldo Castro Miquel to 10 years in prison for his responsibility in the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Juan Segundo Guajardo Pizarro, perpetrated in the commune of Vicuña in 1974.

The ruling establishes that on September 21 of that year, without any motive or judicial order, a group of police officers belonging to the commune's Carabineros station, acting on an order from the unit chief, detained Juan Segundo Guajardo Pizarro while he was at a friend's house in the rural sector of Hierro Viejo, on Cerro La Virgen.

The victim was taken to the police station, where he was interrogated and beaten to death. Later, by order of the unit chief, his body was taken to an interior road leading to Río Hurtado. After digging a pit, they buried him, and hours later, the former officers exhumed the body and set it on fire, only to bury it again in the same location.

In the ruling, Minister Hormazábal convicted Castro Miquel as the author of aggravated kidnapping. Meanwhile, former Carabineros officer Carlos Manuel Alfaro Valderrama was sentenced to three years in prison, with the benefit of conditional remission of the sentence for the same period, as an accomplice to the crime.

Source: cooperativa.cl, December 1, 2017