On September 12, César Augusto FLORES BAEZA, 30 years old, an administrative employee of the Agrarian Reform Corporation (CORA) and a member of the Socialist Party, was detained. He presented himself voluntarily to the Investigations police, was detained, and transferred to the IANSA Gymnasium, a place where his family was able to see him.

He was later transferred to the Regiment, a facility where he was subjected to torture, according to witness statements; from that moment on, nothing is known of his fate or whereabouts. In the month of November, a high-ranking authority of the Regiment allegedly acknowledged the detention to the family, indicating that he had been released.

However, he never returned to his family, did not carry out any procedures before any State agency or service, and there is no record of him leaving the national territory. Witnesses indicated to his family that on September 17 he was taken for interrogation; from that moment on, he never returned.

Given this background, the Commission is convinced that César Flores was a victim of human rights violations by State agents, who, after apprehending him, forcibly disappeared him.

Source: Rettig Report

The remains of forcibly disappeared persons recently identified by Judge Jorge Zepeda in Santiago and the Legal Medical Service (SML), found in 1990 in Los Angeles, arrived last night in the Eighth Region and will be mourned today at the Los Cotolengos parish.

This was reported by lawyer Nelly Navarro Rojas, a plaintiff in several cases of human rights violations in the provinces of Concepción and Biobío, who specified that the funerals of three of the identified victims will be held tomorrow.

The detainees identified by Judge Zepeda are Juan Miguel Yáñez Franco, Mario Omar Belmar Soto, César Augusto Flores Baeza, and the brothers Juan Eladio and Víctor Adolfo Ulloa Pino, whose remains were found 14 years ago inside the La Mona estate, now property of the forestry company Mininco.

The victims disappeared on September 12, 1973, after being apprehended and taken to the El Abanico Carabineros station. According to lawyer Navarro, the funerals for the Ulloa brothers and Flores Baeza will be tomorrow, following a mass at the Cathedral of Los Angeles.

The former, however, will be taken to Curacautín after the religious service, while Flores Baeza will be buried in the Los Angeles General Cemetery. The remains of Yáñez Franco were sent to his family in Temuco.

Those of Belmar Soto, meanwhile, will rest at the Memorial in Santiago, as his relatives currently reside in Argentina. Lawyer Navarro maintained that there are still around 150 forcibly disappeared persons in the Eighth Region. She added that the remains found in various excavations in the region, currently under analysis at the SML in Santiago, could belong to many of them.

Source: October 27, 2004, Diario El Sur

Date: 27-10-2004

América Baeza Vega was born on August 19, 1916, in the commune of Quilleco, Biobío region. She dedicated a good part of her life to the search for truth and justice in the case of her forcibly disappeared son.

Furthermore, she stood out for her work in defense of human rights and the denunciation of violations against them during the dictatorship. She completed her primary studies in her land of origin, later finishing her secondary education at the Girls' Lyceum in the city of Los Angeles.

She then worked as an official at the Civil Registry of her hometown, until she was transferred to the commune of Mulchén, where she left public service to dedicate herself to the care of her family and children.

On September 12, 1973, her son César Augusto Flores Baeza, an official of the Agrarian Reform Corporation (CORA) and a member of the Socialist Party, was detained, tortured, executed, and forcibly disappeared.

From that moment on, she began the process of searching for him, demanding justice for his case and that of other people in a similar situation, despite being persecuted, harassed, and threatened for this cause.

In 1976, she left the country for the city of Hamburg, Germany, where she lived for two years. Upon her return to Chile in 1978, she filed a writ of amparo (habeas corpus) in favor of her son before the Court of Appeals of Concepción, which was rejected.

Despite this, América Baeza continued her search for justice, leading the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared and Executed of the Biobío province, in addition to collaborating with the Vicariate of Solidarity of Concepción.

In 2004, after ten years of investigations and forensic examinations, some of her son's mortal remains were handed over to her. And although this fact could have eventually ended her search for justice, she has continued in her fight for the truth for her relative's case, as well as for the rest of the people who suffered human rights violations during the dictatorship.

Source: defensoresydefensoras.indh.cl (no date)

Retired Army Colonel Walter Klug Rivera arrived in Chile this Monday night. As confirmed by Radio Bío Bío, he remains at the Military Police Regiment in Santiago. This follows his expulsion from Argentina, where he was detained two weeks ago after fleeing Chile upon notification of a conviction for human rights violations.

Recall that the sentence was 10 years in prison decreed by the Supreme Court, specifically for the homicide and kidnapping of 23 workers from the El Toro and Abanico power plants of Endesa in 1973. This was Klug's second escape from the country, as the first was in 2015.

As reported in a statement from the Judiciary, Klug Rivera entered the military unit for a 10-day quarantine, during which time the minister for the Endesa Case, Paola Plaza, will resolve the procedural situation of the former officer.

The Supreme Court issued a final sentence in the investigation into the crimes of kidnapping and qualified homicide of 23 workers from the El Toro and El Abanico hydroelectric plants; seven of them were executed and the rest were forcibly disappeared.

These crimes were perpetrated between September 11 and November 17, 1973, and were investigated in the first instance by Minister Jorge Zepeda Arancibia. In a split decision, the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed of ministers Milton Juica, Carlos Künsemüller, Haroldo Brito, Lamberto Cisternas, and Andrea Muñoz—rejected the cassation appeals filed against the sentence of the Santiago Court of Appeals, which convicted: -Patricio Martínez Moena, retired Army general, to a sentence of 20 years in prison, without benefits; -Walter Klug Rivera, retired colonel, to 10 years and 1 day in prison, without benefits, and -Ismael Espinoza Silva (Officer) to 5 years in prison, with the benefit of supervised release. Sentences that must be served for their responsibility in the homicides of: Juan Miguel Yañez Franco, CÉSAR AUGUSTO FLORES BAEZA, Víctor Jerez Meza, Mario Belmar Soto, Mario Samuel Olivares Pérez, Juan Eladio Ulloa Pino, and Víctor Adolfo Ulloa Pino; as well as the qualified kidnappings of: Abraham López Pinto, José Abel Coronado Astudillo, Abel José Carrasco Vargas, Alamiro Segundo Santana Figueroa, Luis Leopoldo Sepúlveda Núñez, Plutarco Coussy Benavides, Wilfredo Hernán Quiroz Pereira, Exequiel del Carmen Verdejo Verdejo, Domingo Norambuena Inostroza, Luis Eduardo Vergara Corso, Benjamín Antonio Orrego Lillo, José Óscar Badilla García, Manuel Antonio Aguilera Aguilera, Manuel Sepúlveda Cerda, Bernardo Samuel Meza Rubilar, and Manuel Jesús Arias Zúñiga. In the civil aspect, the Criminal Chamber ratified the sentence that ordered the State to pay compensation of 50 million pesos to each of the nine relatives of the victims who were executed or disappeared in 1973 in the mountainous sector of Los Angeles, Bío Bío Region. According to Minister Zepeda's investigation, the following sequence of events was determined: "That, in the mountainous sector to the east of the city of Los Angeles, the hydroelectric plants of El Toro and El Abanico are located, belonging to the National Electricity Company, ENDESA; That the workers of said hydroelectric plants, as of September 11, 1973, mostly resided with their families in small rural towns in said area, forming the towns of 'Los Canelos', 'Rayenco', 'Polcura', 'Antuco', in addition to work camps for the 'El Toro' and 'El Abanico' Hydroelectric Plants, and further to the east, behind the Laja lagoon, that of 'Cuatro Juntas', a sector that was called 'Mallines del Sol', belonging to the 'Alto Polcura' canyon, patronymic of the 'Polcura' river, which runs through the place, where the workers also spent some periods performing their usual duties; That subsequent to the date indicated above, upon the violent change of government due to the coup d'état of September 11, 1973, the aforementioned workers, as well as the rest of the civilian population of said towns, supporters of the previous government that was deposed on that day, in application and knowledge of a policy of the new regime and in a flagrant attack on human dignity and the notion of humanity itself, were persecuted and detained by State agents, under the pretext that the victims intended to attack detention centers to free people deprived of liberty by the military authority and/or attack the hydroelectric plants where many of them worked, the final destination for them being their confinement or deprivation of liberty in the Regiment located in the city of Los Angeles or in places dependent on this unit, and ultimately killed and, in other cases, forcibly disappeared to this day." The Supreme Court's sentence was adopted with the dissenting vote—in the criminal aspect—of Minister Lamberto Cisternas, who was in favor of accepting mitigating factors of responsibility in the case of the convicted Klug Rivera; and the dissenting opinion of Minister Muñoz, who was in favor of accepting the statute of limitations for the civil action in the case.

Source: antimafiadosmil.com 06/01/2021

Date: 06-01-2021

DICTATORSHIP. List of Carabineros and military personnel fugitives from justice

This concerns former Carabineros commander Ricardo Lawrence Mires, who was part of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), one of the dictatorship's extermination, torture, and disappearance agencies.

Lawrence was at sites such as José Domingo Cañas and Villa Grimaldi and is accused of recording three cases of torture of detainees, eight kidnappings, five homicides, two qualified homicides, and one case of illegal coercion.

Another name on the list is Demóstenes Cárdenas, a civilian employee of the Chilean Air Force (FACH) who was allegedly close to the genocidal Manuel Contreras; he was at 4 Álamos and participated in cases of disappearance and murder.

Juan Rubilar Ottone, convicted of homicide and who participated in the National Intelligence Center, CNI. Miguel Soto Duarte was a Carabinero and member of the CNI, convicted of the qualified homicide of the MIR militant Paulina Aguirre Tobar in 1985, among other things.

Walter Klug Rivera, an Army officer who was part of the Military Intelligence Service and allegedly escaped outside of Chile, was at the Prisoner Camp in the stables of the Infantry Regiment No. 3 of Mountain "Los Ángeles," convicted to 10 years and 1 day in prison, without benefits, for the crimes of qualified homicide against Juan Miguel Yáñez Franco; César Augusto Flores Baeza; Víctor Jerez Meza; Mario Belmar Soto; Mario Samuel Olivares Pérez; Juan Eladio Ulloa Pino and Víctor Adolfo Ulloa Pino, and the crimes of Qualified Kidnapping of José Abel Coronado Astudillo; Abel José Carrasco Vargas; Alamiro Segundo Santana Figueroa; Luis Leopoldo Sepúlveda Núñez; Plutarco Coussy Benavides; Wilfredo Hernán Quiroz Pereira; Exequiel del Carmen Verdejo Verdejo; Domingo Norambuena Inostroza; Luis Eduardo Vergara Corso; Benjamín Antonio Orrego Lillo; José Oscar Badilla García; Manuel Antonio Aguilera Aguilera; Manuel Sepúlveda Cerda and Bernardo Samuel Meza Rubilar. Armando Fernández Larios, an Army officer who participated in the Caravan of Death, accused of participating in the assassination of General Carlos Prats and his wife, the torture, death, and disappearance of Manuel Sanhueza Mellado, and other serious cases of human rights violations. Carlos Minoletti Arriagada, an Army officer convicted of homicide in the Caravan of Death case, where he was in charge of choosing the riflemen and executing the shootings. The impunity that continues to reign in these cases is brutal, defended also by sectors of the Pinochetist right.

Source: udec.cl 11/26/2017

Date: 11-26-2017

Five disappeared persons identified

The investigating judge Jorge Zepeda established the identification of the remains belonging to five forcibly disappeared persons from the Los Angeles Mountain Infantry Regiment in the days following the military coup.

After subjecting remains found in 1990 at the La Mona estate, near Los Angeles, to DNA testing, the judge determined that they correspond to César Flores Baeza, Mario Belmar Soto, Juan Ulloa Pino, Juan Yáñez Franco, and Víctor Ulloa Pino, the latter only 16 years old at the time of his detention.

César Flores, who was an official of the Agrarian Reform Corporation, is the uncle of the La Nación journalist Domingo Luis Narváez. The resolution determined that the bodies of these people were buried clandestinely after they were killed, and their remains were later exhumed after 1978 in what was known as "Operation Television Removal." The small fragments found in 1990 correspond to those that remained at the burial site after the exhumations subsequent to 1978. "Operation Television Removal" was the name the dictatorship gave to the removal of bodies starting in late 1978, after the bodies of 15 murdered peasants were discovered in Lonquén. This operation was confirmed by a cryptogram sent by General Augusto Pinochet to the regiments, a document witnessed by an intelligence non-commissioned officer who deciphered it and who testified as such this year to Judge Juan Guzmán.

Source: October 15, 2004, La Nacion

Date: 10-15-2004

The end of a painful search

They had to wait 14 years for confirmation that the remains found in a grave at the "La Mona" estate, in the rural area of Los Angeles, belonged to their relatives who had been forcibly disappeared since September 1973.

-“I think they killed him.” Those words from the then-Bishop of Los Angeles, Orozimbo Fuenzalida, remained etched in the mind of América Baeza Vega when, together with her husband, Armando Flores, she went to speak with him to ask for help in finding their son, César Augusto Flores Baeza, who was detained on September 12, 1973.

América Baeza is now 88 years old, 31 of which she has spent searching for César. Her long pilgrimage came to an end last Thursday the 14th, when she was unofficially informed that her son's remains had been identified.

It took 14 years for it to be confirmed that one of the five sets of skeletal remains found in a grave at the La Mona estate, located in the rural area of Los Angeles (515 kilometers south of Santiago), belonged to the son she had searched for so tirelessly.

Deep pain and many emotions invaded the souls of these parents who, like many other relatives, have not ceased in their efforts to find the truth. Much less Mrs. América, who has belonged to the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared since 1978 and has never stopped doing everything necessary so that events like these are not repeated and do not go unpunished.

To the anguish of not knowing what had happened to her son César was added the exile of her two daughters and the dismissal of her husband; however, she drew strength from her weakness and continued fighting.

Mrs. América remembers that on one occasion when she was feeling very low, she met a person who participated in the Association and who told her about her own tragedy. “She was older than me and her situation was so terrible that I felt ashamed. That gave me a little more strength and I sort of forgot my own pain, because there was more pain all around me.”

“Nobody knew how this was going to end”

CÉSAR AUGUSTO FLORES BAEZA was only 30 years old, a member of the Socialist Party, and worked at the Corporation for Agrarian Reform, CORA. The day after the military coup, he voluntarily presented himself to the Investigative Police because his name appeared on a list that was being broadcast on the radio. “He did not hold any important position in the party or at CORA,” his mother recalls, “but what condemned him was that they put him in charge of distributing gasoline vouchers when everything was very critical.” He was taken to the gymnasium of the IANSA plant, where there were other detainees. His parents were able to see him; they even brought him some things. “Nobody knew how all this was going to end because we didn't imagine what it was going to turn into.” They trusted that he would soon regain his freedom; however, when they transferred him to the high school boarding facility and later to the Regiment, they understood that the situation was serious. That was when they stopped seeing him. Some witnesses later indicated that on September 17 he was subjected to an interrogation and after that, they never saw him again.

The Infantry Regiment

The same thing happened to the families of the other four forcibly disappeared persons who were found in the grave at the La Mona estate: Mario Omar Belmar Soto, Juan Miguel Yáñez Franco, and the brothers Juan Eladio and Víctor Adolfo Ulloa Pino.

They were detained on different dates and under different circumstances; however, there are some common factors: the intervention of Investigative Police officers and their time spent at the Men's High School in the city (used as a detention center by the Army) and, in two of the cases, the participation of Carabineros in two others.

Perhaps the clearest element here is that almost all the detainees were taken to the Mountain Infantry Regiment, where their trail is lost.

Juan Miguel Yáñez Franco was 25 years old, married, a furniture maker, and a member of the Communist Party. He was detained on the night of September 11, 1973, at his home in the city of Los Angeles by Investigative Police officers who raided his house. They took him to the Men's High School and later to the Regiment.

On September 12, it was the turn of Mario Omar Belmar Soto, 30 years old, head of the Rapel hydroelectric plant and with no known political affiliation. Due to his work for Endesa, Mario Belmar was in the area when the military coup occurred.

The circumstances of his detention, which occurred on September 13, are not very clear. Shortly before, Belmar had communicated with his sister to tell her that he would request a safe-conduct to travel to Rapel, which did not happen.

Mario Belmar's wife was notified that her husband was admitted to the Los Angeles hospital with a gunshot wound, but she could not locate his whereabouts. The testimony provided by Naldo Sanhueza some time later shed some light on what might have happened to Belmar.

Sanhueza was detained on September 22, 1973, by Carabineros from the Antuco station. In that facility, he was locked alone in a dungeon. He says he heard many screams and was able to observe the presence of military personnel in a sector of the station where the stables were located, a place where torture took place.

At one point, he heard the military giving orders to a group of detainees to sing "Venceremos," after which bursts of machine-gun fire were heard. The next day, September 23, 1973, the witness was taken out of the dungeon and led through a hallway, where he points out "the bodies of Mario Olivares Pérez, practically agonizing, and Mario Belmar Soto (forcibly disappeared) were lying there; he appeared to be dead, as he was not moving, his tongue was hanging out, and his clothes were destroyed with mud and blood; both looked terribly tortured."

The brothers Juan Eladio, 26, a topographer and director of the Urban Works Corporation, and Víctor Adolfo Ulloa Pino, 16, a high school student, were detained on September 18, 1973, at approximately 10:30 a.m. at the house located on Calle Valdivia in Los Angeles, where Juan Ulloa was a boarder.

Both brothers, accompanied by Juan's spouse, Elena Jensen Cortés, went to the boarding house in order to recover clothing and other personal items, as the house had been closed by its owner a few days earlier.

Upon arriving at the house, they saw that its doors were open and they entered; a few moments later, a Carabineros patrol led by Sergeant Venegas and Corporal Sergio Daguiere entered and proceeded to detain them along with two other people who were also in the house.

The five detainees were taken to the Los Angeles Police Station, interrogated there by Captain Fabres, and sent the same day to the Regiment, since, as they were informed, there were no charges against them and they would only go for a check-up and then be released.

They were taken to the Regiment, entering at approximately 2:00 p.m. on September 18. According to testimony provided 17 years later by a witness who was a conscript at the Los Angeles Regiment in September 1973, the Ulloa Pino brothers remained locked up in miserable conditions in a small guardhouse inside the military compound for approximately 15 days, and were subsequently taken from the place to an unknown destination.

Fourteen years of waiting

Many rumors and stories circulated afterward trying to determine where the forcibly disappeared persons from Los Angeles were. There was talk of clandestine burials and bodies being thrown into the rivers of the area.

Everything changed in 1990, when the rumor turned into certainty, and after the respective judicial order, the remains of at least five people were exhumed from a grave located at the "La Mona" estate, owned by Forestal Mininco.

However, due to a lack of technical means and, surely, a lack of interest from the judiciary, the skeletal remains remained forgotten for several years in one of the Los Angeles courts, despite the attempts of relatives and lawyers to accelerate their identification.

Until the Santiago-based minister, Jorge Zepeda, appointed by the Supreme Court to take charge of human rights violation cases in Los Angeles, especially those referring to Endesa, took the matter into his own hands and ordered the remains to be sent to the Legal Medical Service in Santiago.

Finally, the investigations bore fruit and it was established that the remains belonged to César Flores, Miguel Franco, Mario Belmar, and Juan and Víctor Ulloa. All of them had gunshot wounds. The search for these families has ended. But it still remains to be determined what happened and who was responsible.

Source: tribunadelbiobio.cl 15/10/2004

Date: 15-10-2004

Supreme Court confirms sentence for 16 disappearances and 7 murders of workers from the El Toro and El Abanico hydroelectric plants

The crimes against humanity were perpetrated between September 11 and November 17, 1973, in the mountain sector of Los Angeles, Bío Bío Region. The investigation was led by Minister Jorge Zepeda.

The Supreme Court issued a final sentence in the investigation into the crimes of kidnapping and qualified homicide of 23 workers from the El Toro and El Abanico hydroelectric plants; seven of them were executed and the rest were forcibly disappeared.

In a split decision, the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed of ministers Milton Juica, Carlos Künsemüller, Haroldo Brito, Lamberto Cisternas, and Andrea Muñoz—rejected the cassation appeals filed against the sentence of the Santiago Court of Appeals, which sentenced Patricio Martínez Moena to 20 years in prison without benefits; Walter Klug Rivera to 10 years and 1 day in prison without benefits; and Ismael Espinoza Silva to 5 years in prison, with the benefit of supervised release.

Regarding civil matters, the Criminal Chamber ratified the sentence ordering the state to pay compensation of 50 million pesos to each of the nine relatives of the victims who were executed or disappeared in 1973 in the mountain sector of Los Angeles, Bío Bío Region.

These sentences must be served for their responsibility in the homicides of: Juan Miguel Yañez Franco, César Augusto Flores Baeza, Víctor Jerez Meza, Mario Belmar Soto, Mario Samuel Olivares Pérez, Juan Eladio Ulloa Pino, and Víctor Adolfo Ulloa Pino.

Furthermore, the conviction includes the qualified kidnappings of: Abraham López Pinto, José Abel Coronado Astudillo, Abel José Carrasco Vargas, Alamiro Segundo Santana Figueroa, Luis Leopoldo Sepúlveda Núñez, Plutarco Coussy Benavides, Wilfredo Hernán Quiroz Pereira, Exequiel del Carmen Verdejo Verdejo, Domingo Norambuena Inostroza, Luis Eduardo Vergara Corso, Benjamín Antonio Orrego Lillo, José Óscar Badilla García, Manuel Antonio Aguilera Aguilera, Manuel Sepúlveda Cerda, Bernardo Samuel Meza Rubilar, and Manuel Jesús Arias Zúñiga.

According to Minister Zepeda's investigation, it was determined “that in the mountain sector, east of the city of Los Angeles, are located the El Toro and El Abanico hydroelectric plants, belonging to the National Electricity Company, ENDESA.”

“The workers of said hydroelectric plants, as of September 11, 1973, for the most part—according to Minister Zepeda's sentence—resided with their families in small rural towns in said area, forming the towns of 'Los Canelos,' 'Rayenco,' 'Polcura,' 'Antuco,' in addition to work camps for the 'El Toro' and 'El Abanico' hydroelectric plants, and further east, behind the Laja lagoon, the 'Cuatro Juntas' camp, a sector that was called 'Mallines del Sol,' belonging to the Alto Polcura canyon, named after the 'Polcura' river that runs through the place, where the workers also spent periods performing their usual duties.”

Following September 11, 1973, “upon the violent change of government due to the Military Coup of September 11, 1973, the aforementioned workers, as well as the rest of the civilian population of said towns, supporters of the previous government that was deposed that day, in application and knowledge of a policy of the new regime and in a flagrant attack on human dignity and the very notion of humanity, were persecuted and detained by State agents, under the pretext that the victims intended to attack detention centers to free people deprived of liberty by the military authority and/or attack the hydroelectric plants where many of them worked,” states the ruling by Minister Zepeda, ratified by the country's highest court.

The final destination of these people was “their confinement or deprivation of liberty in the Regiment located in the city of Los Angeles or in places dependent on this unit, and ultimately death and, in other cases, being forcibly disappeared to this day,” the ruling expresses.

The Supreme Court's sentence was adopted with the dissenting vote—in the criminal aspect—of Minister Lamberto Cisternas, who was in favor of accepting mitigating factors of responsibility in the case of the convicted Klug Rivera; and the dissenting opinion of Minister Muñoz, who was in favor of accepting the statute of limitations for the civil action in the case.

Source: villagrimaldi.cl 24/10/2014

Walther Klug, the criminal against humanity who fled to Argentina, is admitted to a Military Regiment

The Judiciary reported in the evening hours that Walther Klug Rivera, a criminal against humanity of the Chilean Dictatorship who had fled the country attempting to evade the legal proceedings against him, was admitted to the Santiago Military Police Regiment No. 1, in the commune of Peñalolén.

Former Colonel Klug Rivera is a well-known member of the Dictatorship's repressive forces in southern Chile, and today he is wanted in two cases for human rights violations: the kidnapping and death of 21 Endesa workers in the commune of Antuco, Bío Bío Province, and the qualified kidnapping of the president of the Student Federation of the University of Concepción, Los Angeles branch, Luis Cornejo.

In the first case, Klug was sentenced by the Supreme Court to 10 years in prison, without benefits, for his responsibility in the homicides of: Juan Miguel Yañez Franco, CÉSAR AUGUSTO FLORES BAEZA, Víctor Jerez Meza, Mario Belmar Soto, Mario Samuel Olivares Pérez, Juan Eladio Ulloa Pino, and Víctor Adolfo Ulloa Pino; in addition to the qualified kidnappings of: Abraham López Pinto, José Abel Coronado Astudillo, Abel José Carrasco Vargas, Alamiro Segundo Santana Figueroa, Luis Leopoldo Sepúlveda Núñez, Plutarco Coussy Benavides, Wilfredo Hernán Quiroz Pereira, Exequiel del Carmen Verdejo Verdejo, Domingo Norambuena Inostroza, Luis Eduardo Vergara Corso, Benjamín Antonio Orrego Lillo, José Óscar Badilla García, Manuel Antonio Aguilera Aguilera, Manuel Sepúlveda Cerda, Bernardo Samuel Meza Rubilar, and Manuel Jesús Arias Zúñiga.

In the second case, Klug is identified as the person responsible for the disappearance of the Topography student and president of the student center of the Los Angeles branch of the University of Concepción, Luis Cornejo.

Klug had fled to Germany in 2015, taking advantage of the leniency in the treatment of human rights violators in our country. Thus, he used his dual nationality and benefited from the difficulty of the European nation to extradite its citizens, even if they are criminals against humanity.

However, in 2019 he was detained during a trip he made to Italy, the country from which he was extradited to Chile.

Nevertheless, despite the gravity of the crimes committed—he is sentenced by the Supreme Court—the criminal against humanity was not imprisoned and fled again, this time to Argentina, from where he was expelled to our country.

Klug did not comply with the precautionary measures dictated by Minister Carlos Aldana—who did not order his detention despite the existence of these records—for the other case for which he is being prosecuted: the qualified kidnapping of Luis Cornejo.

The Visiting Minister of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Paola Plaza, indicated that Walther Klug Rivera will serve a 10-day quarantine period at the Santiago Military Police Regiment No. 1 to then review his procedural situation.

Source: resumen.cl 29 jun 2021

Santiago Court of Appeals Ruling: State ordered to pay compensation to relatives of Endesa worker executed in 1973

Víctor Jerez Meza, married, 3 children, a worker at the "El Abanico" plant of the National Electricity Company (Endesa), president of the company's Union, and Regional General Secretary of the Socialist Party, was detained on September 22, 1973, at the facilities of the "El Toro" plant union by Carabineros and Army personnel.

His whereabouts remained unknown until 1999, when his body was found buried as a John Doe in a mass grave at the Nacimiento cemetery.

The Santiago Court of Appeals ordered the State of Chile to pay total compensation of $260,000,000 (two hundred and sixty million pesos) to the spouse and children of Víctor Jerez Meza, a worker at the El Abanico hydroelectric plant, Endesa, who was executed on September 22, 1973.

In a split decision, the Eighth Chamber of the appellate court—composed of ministers Marisol Rojas, María Luisa Riesco, and the acting lawyer Rodrigo Asenjo—confirmed in all its parts the challenged sentence, issued by the Seventh Civil Court of Santiago, which established the State's responsibility for the actions of its agents in the commission of a crime against humanity, which is imprescriptible in both criminal and civil aspects.

“Now, regarding the exception of the statute of limitations for the compensation action, and finding it essential to elucidate whether or not it is appropriate to affirm a statute of full imprescriptibility applicable not only in the field of criminal responsibility but also in the civil field of compensation in matters of crimes against humanity, or if, on the contrary, it is incumbent to restrict imprescriptibility only to criminal actions, and consequently, the statute of limitations must be applied to civil actions as regulated by private law, it must be pointed out that, in this case, it is not an action of a merely patrimonial nature but a reparatory action in the field of human rights violations in crimes against humanity that is governed by precepts of international law that establish imprescriptibility,” maintains the first-instance ruling.

The resolution adds that “by a principle of legal coherence, imprescriptibility must govern both in the civil and criminal spheres. The source of the State's obligation to provide reparation is based not only on the Political Constitution of the Republic but also on the general principles of humanitarian law and international treaties, which must prevail over civil codes.”

“On the other hand, the application of the statute of limitations of private law in this case would violate fundamental values, from a legal and moral point of view, since the aforementioned institution constitutes a protection for the state entity, and therefore its application in the field of public law would mean ignoring the State's duty to fulfill its own ends, leaving people helpless, which implies a denial of their fundamental rights to life and physical integrity by the one who is constitutionally obligated to safeguard them,” the ruling concludes.

Víctor Jerez Meza (pictured), married, 3 children, a worker at the "El Abanico" plant of the National Electricity Company (Endesa), president of the company's Union, and Regional General Secretary of the Socialist Party, was detained on September 22, 1973, at the facilities of the "El Toro" plant union by Carabineros and Army personnel, with his whereabouts unknown from that moment on.

The affected man's spouse stated in a sworn declaration that the Carabineros lieutenant Zacarías Hannover García Agüero, from the Abanico station, participated in the detention, and that on that day, September 22, she went to the "El Toro" plant to request information about her spouse, who after the military coup had to be absent from the family home for security reasons, as the house was raided repeatedly by the military.

“When I was coming down the street of the union, I saw the military throwing an individual into the van, and I asked some men who were there who they were putting into the military vehicle, and they replied that they were taking the president of the union as a detainee. From that day on, the raids on our home ceased,” the woman's statement indicates.

Víctor Jerez Meza's spouse went in search of him to the Antuco and Abanico stations, and also to the Los Angeles Regiment, all without positive results in locating his whereabouts.

For its part, the Report of the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation indicates that the affected man was held along with other Endesa workers—Plutarco Coussy, Mario Olivares, and Wilfredo Muñoz—who to this day remain forcibly disappeared.

The information given by police authorities to the relatives was that they had been transferred to the Los Angeles Regiment. And as in other cases, the local press on October 6 reported that the affected man was missing, after having been released on parole while proceedings were completed, adding that he had not appeared before a new summons and that he should “face the consequences.”

The report of said Commission also adds that on January 14, 1977, four years after the detention, information appeared in the local press indicating that Víctor Jerez Meza, Plutarco Coussy Benavides, Mario Olivares Pérez, and Wilfredo Quiroz Pereira had been executed by firing squad. No circumstances are explained, there is no death certificate, and no official explanation for the death.

Finally, in 1999, the remains of Jerez Meza were identified among the bodies exhumed—buried as John Does in a mass grave—at the Nacimiento cemetery, following a proceeding ordered by the then-special judge Juan Guzmán.

For the crime of Víctor Jerez, and 22 other workers of the El Toro and El Abanico plants, the Supreme Court sentenced in 2014 Patricio Martínez Moena, a retired Army general, to 20 years in prison without benefits; Walter Klug Rivera, a retired colonel, to 10 years and 1 day in prison without benefits; and the officer Ismael Espinoza Silva to 5 years in prison, with the benefit of supervised release.

According to the highest court, they are the culprits of the homicides of Juan Miguel Yañez Franco, César Augusto Flores Baeza, Víctor Jerez Meza, Mario Belmar Soto, Mario Samuel Olivares Pérez, Juan Eladio Ulloa Pino, and Víctor Adolfo Ulloa Pino; in addition to the qualified kidnappings of Abraham López Pinto, José Abel Coronado Astudillo, Abel José Carrasco Vargas, Alamiro Segundo Santana Figueroa, Luis Leopoldo Sepúlveda Núñez, Plutarco Coussy Benavides, Wilfredo Hernán Quiroz Pereira, Exequiel del Carmen Verdejo Verdejo, Domingo Norambuena Inostroza, Luis Eduardo Vergara Corso, Benjamín Antonio Orrego Lillo, José Óscar Badilla García, Manuel Antonio Aguilera Aguilera, Manuel Sepúlveda Cerda, Bernardo Samuel Meza Rubilar, and Manuel Jesús Arias Zúñiga.

Source: Elciudadano.com (no date)