Political Affiliation: Partido Socialista; Member of the Cordillera Regional Committee; Member of the Central Committee. Date of Detention: December 31, 1974 ==============================================

REPRESSIVE SITUATION

Claudio Francisco Thauby Pacheco, single, one child, a sociology student at the Universidad de Chile and a socialist militant, was detained on December 31, 1974, around 7:00 PM, on Sucre Street in the city of Santiago.

He was walking with his friend and fellow party member, Jaime Robotham Bravo, who was also detained at that time and is currently forcibly disappeared, as is the victim. The apprehension was carried out by heavily armed agents of the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA), traveling in a lead-colored Fiat.

The agents were accompanied by Manuel Alejandro Cuadra Sánchez, who had been detained at noon that same December 31 and was being held at Villa Grimaldi, a secret DINA detention and torture center.

Among the agents was Fernando Adrián Laureani Maturana, known as "Lieutenant Pablo," who, in addition to participating in operations, also interrogated and tortured prisoners at Villa Grimaldi. Claudio Thauby and Jaime Robotham were taken to that facility—where they were seen by numerous witnesses—and both subsequently disappeared from there.

That December 31, around 4:00 PM, Claudio Thauby arrived at the home of Jaime Robotham, located at Lyon 3306, Ñuñoa. They had a snack, and around 7:00 PM, the two friends decided to head out toward Irarrázaval.

That same day, Manuel Alejandro Cuadra, who lived on Domingo Faustino Sarmiento Street, Ñuñoa, had been detained. The witness was held at Villa Grimaldi, and at 6:30 PM, he was taken from that facility to his home in order to arrest his spouse, Lucrecia Brito.

As she was not there, the DINA agent, Fernando Adrián Laureani, returned to the lead-colored Fiat they were using. At that moment, he saw Claudio Thauby—with whom he had been a classmate at the Military School when both were cadets—walking along Sucre Street with Jaime Robotham.

The agents immediately proceeded to arrest them. While the victim raised his arms before his captors, Robotham attempted to flee, receiving a heavy blow with a rifle butt that fractured his skull.

Thauby, Robotham, and Manuel Alejandro Cuadra were taken by their captors to Villa Grimaldi, where they were subjected to intense interrogations and torture. As Cuadra recounted, Osvaldo Romo Mena buried a pen into the victim's navel, cutting upward and to the sides, effectively drawing patterns on his abdominal region.

As the days passed, Thauby developed balance issues—he could not stand—due to severe ear injuries caused by the torture.

Hours earlier, Carlos Guerrero Gutiérrez had been detained; when he arrived at the Cuadra family home, he tried to flee upon noticing the DINA operation at that location. He was wounded by gunfire and taken to the Villa Grimaldi facility, from where he disappeared.

Under these conditions, the victim was seen by Angeles Beatriz Alvarez Cárdenas, who was detained by the DINA on January 6, 1975, and remained at Villa Grimaldi until January 15 of that same year. Around January 9, through the cracks in the women's room, she saw guards treating the victim's ears.

One of the agents was Luz Arce—a socialist militant who had become a DINA collaborator as a result of the torture and threats suffered during her imprisonment.

For her part, Patricia del Carmen Guzmán Pardo also learned of the victim's imprisonment at Villa Grimaldi. The witness was detained in the early hours of January 1, 1975, and taken to the Villa, where she remained until the 17th.

She was held in the women's room, which was separated by a hallway from the room where interrogations and torture were carried out. The latter had a boarded-up window and lacked a door to the hallway, which allowed for partially seeing and hearing what occurred there.

The officer in charge of the detainees was Marcelo Moren Brito, alias "El Coronta," "El Oso," or "El Ronco," who directed the interrogations and torture of those prisoners he classified as "big fish." Other officers included Fernando Adrián Laureani, "Lieutenant Pablo," and "Lieutenant Marcos," who claimed to be a psychologist and permanently carried a submachine gun slung across his chest.

Osvaldo Romo Mena was also among the interrogators and torturers at Villa Grimaldi.

Patricia del Carmen Guzmán testified that the victim was detained on New Year's Eve and arrived at the Villa on the very night that the facility was without officers. The highest-ranking authority was a sergeant who, like the entire guard, was completely drunk.

The victim was beaten barbarically, leaving him in very poor condition. The witness noted that his ear had been injured to such an extent that Claudio could not stand and needed the help of two people to do so.

Also present at Villa Grimaldi at that time were Luz Arce, Marcia Alejandra Merino—"La Flaca Alejandra"—and María Alicia Gómez—"La Carola"—all of whom, during their detention, became DINA collaborators.

Cristián Mallol Comandari, who was forced to participate in a press conference regarding the MIR while detained at Villa Grimaldi in February 1975, saw the victim pass by in that facility. He declared that it was rumored in the Villa that Laureani had killed Claudio Thauby from torturing him so severely.

This comment was corroborated by the statements Luz Arce made regarding the matter to the Rettig Report in 1990. She stated that she remembered Claudio Thauby, whom they called "El Gato," because he had been a classmate of her brother and Fernando Laureani at the Military School.

She said the victim was tortured extensively because he was considered a traitor to the Armed Forces and the Army due to his socialist ideas. Luz Arce saw him and knew he was being interrogated by Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and it is likely that this detainee was transferred to Lawrence, another Villa Grimaldi interrogator.

They cut Thauby's entire chest with a yataghan, drawing a circle with a cross inside. Laureani told him that "he was going to learn how traitors die." Laureani held the yataghan in his hands and made him lift his head with the tip of the weapon pressed against his chin.

According to Luz Arce, Claudio Thauby was alone in a room, sitting on the floor, with his hands tied behind his back and his head slumped. When she saw him, the victim was alive.

On January 12, 1975, Raúl Flores Castillo—also held at Villa Grimaldi—saw Claudio Thauby in the courtyard of the facility at lunchtime. He was in very bad shape and could not stand. Along with other detainees, they had to help him go to the bathroom.

For its part, in January 1975, the family was informed by International Red Cross sources that the victim was at Villa Grimaldi. Witnesses who did not want to be identified for fear also provided the same information.

Some people even said that the victim, during his period of imprisonment, had been taken by his captors to different houses, where witnesses observed the terrible physical condition Thauby was in: a bruised face and an inability to stand.

Claudio Thauby knew he was being sought by the intelligence services. As early as May or June 1974, the home of his grandparents, where he resided, was raided by agents who identified themselves as belonging to the Investigations police and who asked insistently about the victim.

This fact, combined with strange phone calls, forced the victim to seek different lodgings and to visit his home only sporadically. At the time of his detention, he was staying at a residence on Salvador Street.

To this date, Claudio Francisco Thauby Pacheco remains forcibly disappeared.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

On January 9, 1975, a writ of amparo (habeas corpus) was filed for the victim before the Santiago Court of Appeals, registered under N°41-75. During its processing, on January 11 of the same year, the Court requested information regarding the victim from the Minister of the Interior.

The response did not arrive until February 19, 1975, stating that Claudio Thauby was not being held by order of that Ministry. It was signed by Vice Admiral Patricio Carvajal Prado, Acting Minister of the Interior.

In March 1975, María Cecilia Thauby—the victim's sister—informed the Court that through International Red Cross sources, she had learned of the victim's presence at a detention center located in Peñalolén (Villa Grimaldi) and that Claudio Thauby had been taken by his captors to various houses that were raided, with witnesses confirming the poor physical condition he was in.

The family added that they also had information that Thauby was hospitalized in an infirmary under the Ministry of Defense.

Without the Court having clarified any of the aforementioned aspects, the writ of amparo was rejected on July 10, 1975, six months after its filing. The records were sent to the Criminal Court on duty.

The 8th Criminal Court of Santiago then initiated case file N°12334. Following a judicial order to investigate, the Investigations police reported having made inquiries at the National Executive Secretariat of Detainees (SENDET), the Legal Medical Institute, and the Public Jail, without obtaining positive results.

For his part, Colonel Jorge Espinoza Ulloa, Executive Secretary of SENDET, informed the Court on July 29, 1975, that said agency lacked information on the victim.

On December 16, 1975, the summary proceedings were closed and the case was temporarily dismissed. On January 26, 1976, the Santiago Court of Appeals revoked the resolution because "the investigation was incomplete," ordering an inquiry with the International Police.

On June 7, 1976, the aforementioned agency responded that Claudio Thauby had no record of leaving the country. The case regarding the disappearance of Jaime Robotham was reviewed, and without further proceedings, on March 14, 1977, the summary was closed and the case was temporarily dismissed on the grounds that the existence of a crime had not been fully justified.

On October 27 of the same year, the Court of Appeals approved the resolution.

On March 28, 1991, a criminal complaint was filed for the crimes of aggravated kidnapping, prolonged incommunicado detention, unnecessary rigor, and arbitrary detention committed against Claudio Thauby Pacheco, directed against the security agents found responsible.

The filing requested the summoning of witnesses to the victim's imprisonment. Among them were Lucrecia Brito, spouse of Manuel Alejandro Cuadra; Patricia Guzmán; Angeles Alvarez; and María Cecilia Salinas.

All of them were witnesses to the repressive situation experienced by the victim, and none of them had been previously summoned to the Court to corroborate their respective sworn statements. This complaint entered the 8th Criminal Court of Santiago under case file 11.961; as of December 1992, it was in the summary stage.

One of the agents mentioned by witnesses in relation to Thauby Pacheco is Osvaldo Romo Mena, who was arrested on November 16, 1992, upon arriving in Chile after being expelled from Brazil. He had been living in that country since late 1975, and it was not until July 1992 that he was located due to proceedings ordered in the case of the disappearance of Alfonso Chanfreau Oyarce.

In his statements, Romo had acknowledged, among other facts, the DINA's collaboration in his departure from the country at a time when he was being sought by several courts handling cases of forcibly disappeared persons.

He also admits that the agency provided him with documents with a false identity for his entire family group. As of December 1992, he had been interrogated in several cases involving forcibly disappeared persons, and in six of them, he had been charged.

Source: Vicaría de la Solidaridad

At the time of his detention, Claudio Thauby was a member of the Political Commission of the newly formed Regional Coordinator of the Socialist Party of Chile, representing the Santiago Cordillera Regional.

The DINA already knew this from previous detentions, so they had information about several members of the clandestine organization. None of us were detained as a result of his detention, so it is presumable that his cruel torture was caused by his refusal to provide information.

Similarly, Jaime Robotham Bravo was a leader of the Cordillera Regional at the time of his detention; he knew my name and the names of several other leaders of the Cordillera Regional. He also did not give names to the DINA, so it is also presumable that the torturers' cruelty toward him was for that reason.

At that time, I shared a leadership position in the Santiago Cordillera Regional of the PS with Jaime Robotham, and we were both subordinates of Claudio Thauby as a member of the Political Commission.

Arnaldo Rocha Guerrero,

Former leader of the PS Regional Coordinator

Source: Note received by memoriaviva on 21-1-09

Claudio Thauby was walking along Sucre Street in Providencia, in the company of his friend and former classmate from the Sociology School at the Universidad de Chile, Jaime Robotham.

They were talking, as was their custom, about tasks associated with developing resistance to the dictatorship, from the work of the National Coordinator of Regionals (CNR), a party articulation that emerged after the coup and had been structured through the old Santiago Center and Cordillera regionals.

Evening was falling; it was nearly 7:00 PM on December 31, 1974, and the two friends were heading toward Irarrázaval Avenue, where Thauby hoped to catch transportation to the place where he was taking refuge. Jaime left his wallet, watch, and personal documents on his nightstand. He had planned to attend a New Year's Eve party with his girlfriend.

Both knew each other from party activity in the Cordillera Regional of the PS before the coup, and even more so from their time at the Sociology School of the Universidad de Chile.

Claudio was a father of one child and had also been president of the sociology student center during 1972. Previously, he had been a cadet at the Military School, from which he voluntarily withdrew at the end of 1969.

After entering the Sociology School, he joined the Leon Trotsky nucleus of the PS, which operated within that center of studies and included Adriana Muñoz, Natacha Molina, Francisco Encina, Enzo Faleto, and Eduardo Morales, among others.

In the Cordillera Regional

Some time after entering the sociology school, Claudio became a leader of the Cordillera Regional Committee of the PS, which had been constituted toward the end of the 60s as an organic split from the old Santiago South Regional.

The territory assigned to the new regional was very extensive: it covered the communes of Las Condes, Providencia, La Reina, Ñuñoa, Macul, and Puente Alto, and incorporated realities as distinct as the workers' nuclei of Macul, the middle and professional sectors of Ñuñoa and Providencia, and the niches of industrial, public, peasant, and small-scale mining workers of Puente Alto.

The Cordillera Regional had a very particular characteristic, in addition to its variegated social and territorial reality: it was a regional of great activity and political debate in which a significant part of its staff and leadership cadres recognized, to a greater or lesser extent, the influence of certain political conceptions and notions inherited from Trotskyism.

From that perspective, the name that identified the active nucleus of militants from the sociology school was not entirely coincidental, nor was the old Trotskyist background of Alfredo Rojas Castañeda or Andrés García, two of the main historical leaders of that regional, unknown.

Alfonso Guerra, Political Secretary of Cordillera at the time of the coup, recalls that at the time of their detentions, "Thauby and Robotham were incorporated into the Regional Directorate. Thauby, due to his status as a former cadet of the Military School, was responsible for security issues and had many gifts for organizational matters." He adds that after September 11, Thauby was third in the line of command, since the Cordillera Regional had foreseen that, in the event of Guerra being detained, "the leadership would be assumed by Rojas Castañeda and Claudio Thauby, successively."

Guerra remembers him as a "sympathetic, good-natured, very reflective guy, who was not a great orator, but rather a great conversationalist." He emphasizes that he was "very cheerful" and that after the coup "he played a very important role, because he had the ability to position himself with other sectors of the party, especially with the team of the Ponce Directorate, mainly through the young people of the BUS, whom he had met through his time in the university student movement.

Thauby was between two loyalties: with his regional, which expressed an evident political criticism of that directorate, and with his friends and contacts linked to the work of that team."

In the coordinator

Thauby was one of the souls of the rearticulation of the PS in the Cordillera Regional and the future work of the National Coordinator of Regionals. According to a document issued in February 1975 by the CNR, it was formally constituted in August 1974 and represented "three complete regionals of Santiago and groups in the process of reconstruction of a fourth capital regional." As Alfonso Guerra recalls, "we began to find comrades from other sectors who had become disconnected from the party organization.

Thauby would retake them and contact them; he was a born organizer, but at the same time, he had a great problem: not being entirely prepared to face loneliness, one of the harshest characteristics of clandestinity."

Claudio knew he was being sought. As early as May 1974, the home of his grandparents, where he resided, was raided by agents who claimed to belong to the Investigations police. That fact, added to strange phone calls, forced him to seek other lodgings.

Another of the regional leaders of Cordillera, Andrés García—detained at the time in a concentration camp—recalls that, when Thauby was already clandestine, he hid in an apartment that his wife used as a workshop in Villa Frei, Ñuñoa, at the request of Alfredo Rojas Castañeda.

From there, Thauby would go out to make his contacts and party activities. But "the claustrophobia and the confinement already had him half-suffocated. At one point, Thauby told my wife: 'I must leave your house, because it is not safe, neither for you nor for me.' He left a few days before Christmas.

He promised to return to the apartment to spend New Year's Eve. But he never arrived. He had been detained on the street. He was taken by chance."

At the intersection with Faustino Sarmiento Street, they were intercepted by a group of DINA agents, traveling in a lead-colored Fiat, who were carrying Manuel Alejandro Cuadra Sánchez, detained at noon that same December 31 and who was being held at Villa Grimaldi.

Among the agents was Fernando Adrián Laureani Maturana, known as "Lieutenant Pablo," who, in addition to participating in operations, served at Villa Grimaldi. Jaime Robotham and Claudio Thauby were also taken to the facility.

Cuadra, who lived on Domingo Faustino Sarmiento Street, had been taken from Villa Grimaldi around 6:30 PM and driven to his own home in order to arrest his spouse, Lucrecia Brito. As she was not there, Laureani returned to the Fiat.

At that moment, he saw Thauby, with whom he had been a classmate at the Military School a few years earlier, when both were cadets. The agent did not hide his anger. In his opinion, Thauby was a traitor to the country and the Army. It was time for him to receive his punishment.

They immediately proceeded to capture him. While Claudio raised his arms before his captors, Robotham attempted to flee and received a violent blow with the butt of a revolver to the head, leaving him bloodied. At Villa Grimaldi, the agents would nickname him "broken head." The young man suffered from an allergy that prevented his wounds from closing.

Detained at Villa Grimaldi

At Villa Grimaldi, the two young socialists were subjected to interrogations and torture. As Cuadra recounted, they buried a pen into Thauby's navel and then "cut him" upward and to the sides, drawing patterns in the abdominal area.

This was done by Osvaldo Romo Mena. As the days passed, he developed balance issues and could not stand, the result of severe ear injuries caused by the torture. For his part, Robotham was brutally beaten and subjected to repeated applications of electricity.

Ángeles Beatriz Álvarez was detained by the DINA on January 6, 1975, and held at Villa Grimaldi until January 15 of that year. Around January 9, through the cracks in the women's room, she saw guards treating Thauby's ears. One of the agents was Luz Arce.

That former socialist declared, years later, that "in the first days of January 1975, I was taken from the room where I was staying to a hallway of the Villa by Lieutenant Fernando Laureani. He said to me: 'Do you know Claudio Thauby?' To which I replied no, because that was the truth.

He told me he wanted me to see him, as I probably knew him by his 'alias,' taking me to an adjoining room, where there was a young man of thick build, apparently of regular height, dark, short hair, sitting on the floor, with his hands tied behind his back and his legs extended and his feet tied, leaning against the wall and with his head down and not being blindfolded.

Upon seeing him, I reaffirmed that I had never seen him, and Laureani, so that I could see his face well, lifted his head, supporting or pushing upward a yataghan he had in his hands. Upon seeing his face, I again pointed out that I did not know him, and upon withdrawing the yataghan, he opened his shirt with the tip of it.

I realized that this young man had his entire chest torn open; there was a circle and inside it there was like a cross with diagonals. This impacted me greatly; to this day it moves me. The fact is that immediately Laureani told me: this is what happens to traitors."

For her part, Patricia del Carmen Guzmán Pardo learned of Claudio's imprisonment. She was detained in the early hours of January 1, 1975, and taken to Villa Grimaldi, where she remained until the 17th.

She was held in the women's room, separated by a hallway from the interrogation and torture room. The latter had a boarded-up window and lacked a door to the hallway, which allowed for partially seeing and hearing what occurred there.

The officer in charge of the detainees was Marcelo Moren Brito, who directed the interrogations and torture of those prisoners he classified as "big fish." Other agents were the aforementioned Fernando Adrián Laureani and Osvaldo Romo Mena, who was also among the interrogators and torturers of Villa Grimaldi.

Patricia testified that the victim was detained on New Year's Eve and arrived at the Villa just on the night that the facility was without officers. The highest authority was a sergeant who, like the entire guard, was completely drunk.

They beat Claudio barbarically, leaving him in very bad condition. She ratified that they injured an ear in such a way that he could not stand and needed help to do so.

For his part, Rodrigo del Villar Cañas commented that Thauby "occupied a room next to mine. After we were locked up, we communicated, and I was able to find out that he was very bad physically and also psychically, since they had been very hard on him.

He was very demoralized, and the last thing I heard him say was that he didn't want anything anymore. On that occasion, I learned that they had buried a ballpoint pen in his navel and then pulled it with the intention of ripping his stomach open."

This occurred between January 15 and 17, 1975.

In Thauby's case, on January 9, 1975, a writ of amparo was filed in the Santiago Court of Appeals, registered under N° 41–75. The kidnapping was also denied. On January 11, the Court requested information from the Minister of the Interior, and the response was that he was not being held by order of this Ministry.

It was signed by Vice Admiral Patricio Carvajal Prado, Acting Minister of the Interior and one of the key figures of the coup d'état. In March 1975, María Cecilia Thauby—the victim's sister—informed the Court that through International Red Cross sources, she had learned of his stay at a detention center in Peñalolén (Villa Grimaldi) and that Claudio Thauby had been taken by his captors to different houses that were raided, with witnesses confirming the poor physical condition he was in.

The family added that they also had information that he was hospitalized in an infirmary under the Ministry of Defense.

The writ of amparo was rejected on July 10, 1975, six months after its filing. The 8th Criminal Court of Santiago then initiated case file N° 12334. The Investigations police reported having made inquiries at SENDET, the Legal Medical Institute, and the Public Jail, without obtaining positive results.

For his part, Colonel Jorge Espinoza informed the Court on July 29 that SENDET lacked information on the victim.

On December 16, 1975, the summary was closed and the case was temporarily dismissed. The following January 26, the Santiago Court of Appeals revoked the resolution because "the investigation was incomplete," ordering an inquiry with the International Police.

On June 7, 1976, the aforementioned agency responded that Claudio Thauby had no record of leaving the country. The case regarding the disappearance of Jaime Robotham was reviewed, and without further proceedings, on March 14, 1977, the summary was closed and the case was temporarily dismissed on the grounds that the existence of a crime had not been fully justified.

At the time of his kidnapping, Claudio was 24 years old.

Source: pschile.cl undated

Court of Appeals ratifies convictions against Manuel Contreras for kidnappings.

These correspond to the abductions of Jaime Robotham and Claudio Thauby, and of Antonio Soto Cerna, Luis Mahuida Esquivel, and Luis González Mella.

SANTIAGO.- The Santiago Court of Appeals issued second-instance rulings in two cases regarding human rights violations committed between 1973 and 1990 in the Metropolitan Region, upholding the sentences against former DINA chief Manuel Contreras.

In two rulings by the Eighth Chamber of the capital's appellate court, analyzed on different days but with the same composition, the court reviewed the cases concerning the kidnappings of Jaime Robotham and Claudio Thauby—which were ruled on in the first instance by Judge Alejandro Solís—and the aggravated kidnappings of Antonio Soto Cerna, Luis Mahuida Esquivel, and Luis González Mella—which were investigated by Judge Juan Eduardo Fuentes Belmar.

In the first case, judges Lamberto Cisternas, Gloria Ana Chevesich, and lawyer Jaime Guerrero confirmed that former General Contreras must serve 15 years in prison, as must Fernando Lauriani Maturana. Meanwhile, retired Army Brigadier and former DINA member Pedro Espinoza Bravo, and retired Army Colonels Marcelo Moren Brito, Rolf Wenderoth Pozo, and Miguel Krassnoff Martchentko, must serve 10 years and one day in prison; and Daniel Cancino Varas, 5 years and one day.

None will be eligible for benefits. Meanwhile, the magistrates determined that the State must pay $50,000,000 to each of the plaintiffs: Rosa Alicia Robotham Bravo, Adriana Victoria Robotham Bravo, Roberto Enrique Robotham Bravo, Guillermo Eduardo Robotham Bravo, and Jorge Robotham Bravo; Yury Francisco Thauby Cortés, María Cecilia Thauby Pacheco, Marcela Inés Thauby Pacheco, Carmen Laura Godoy Pacheco, and Edith Leonor Cortés Herrera.

Increased Sentences

In the second case, the same magistrates increased the sentences for Contreras established in the first instance. While the former DINA chief received a sentence of 10 years and one day, retired General Raúl Iturriaga Neumann, and Manuel Carevic Cubillos, Risiere Altez España, and Hugo Hernández Valle must serve 5 years, albeit under supervised release.

Orlando Manzo Durán, meanwhile, was acquitted due to a lack of participation in the charges for the aggravated kidnappings of Antonio Soto Cerna, Luis Mahuida Esquivel, and Luis González Mella. In the first instance, the convicted Iturriaga Neumann, Carevic Cubillos, and Altez España had been sentenced to three years and one day in prison, with the benefit of conditional remission; meanwhile, the convicted Hernández Valle had been acquitted due to lack of participation.

Regarding civil matters, the first-instance ruling was overturned, and the State of Chile was ordered to pay compensation of $25,000,000 to Marialina González Esquivel.

Source: emol.com 2/06/2010

Date: 06-02-2010

Judge issues sentences for the disappearance of two socialists in 1974

Judge Alejandro Solís sentenced seven former DINA agents who kidnapped Jaime Robotham and Claudio Thauby just on the eve of New Year's 1975. The trail of the Sociology students is lost after their time at Villa Grimaldi.

A painful chapter of recent history began to close yesterday after special judge Alejandro Solís issued a sentence for the aggravated kidnapping of the two Socialist Party militants Jaime Robotham and Claudio Thauby, detained by repressive agencies on the eve of New Year's 1975.

The magistrate sentenced the former DINA chief, Manuel Contreras, to 15 years of effective prison time and imposed the same sentence on the leader of the so-called "Vampire Brigade," Fernando Lauriani, who—according to witness accounts—had been particularly cruel with the torture of Thauby, as he knew him from the Military School, where the young socialist had spent time before deciding to study Sociology at the Universidad de Chile.

This fact allegedly bothered Lauriani, who considered him a traitor to the Armed Forces due to his socialist ideals, a situation that was recorded in statements made to the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation in 1990.

Likewise, after investigating this case, the judge found responsibility in the other repressive agents Pedro Espinoza, Marcelo Moren Brito, Rolf Wenderoth, and Miguel Krassnoff; all sentenced to 10 years in prison without any benefits. Meanwhile, former police officer Daniel Cancino, who was assigned to the DINA during those years, was sentenced to 5 years and one day.

The latter was due to his cooperation in clarifying the facts. The officer, in one of his statements, acknowledged that he was part of the "Vampire Group" and clarified that Lauriani was in command of the group that detained Robotham and Thauby.

"When Laureani took charge of the group, it seemed to me that he was a person who had no command ability, he had a lower rank than me in equivalence and was stupid, so it bothered me a lot to be under his orders (...) (we called him) 'Pablito'. He was called that as a diminutive because of how stupid he was. He had no preparation. He was a total ignoramus in every aspect," declared Cancino.

Likewise, Judge Solís accepted the compensation claim filed by the victims' families. Thus, all those convicted must pay $250 million to the Thauby family and the same sum to the Robotham family.

Both young men were walking along Calle Miguel Claro on December 31, 1974, when DINA agents intimidated them with weapons, forcing them into a car to then transport them to Villa Grimaldi.

In that place, Robotham was identified during his stay because his head was bleeding, as an allergy prevented a wound from healing that he had received from one of the agents when he tried to escape the detention.

Meanwhile, Thauby received such violent torture with electricity that it affected his middle ear and his balance. A bruised face and his inability to stand are the characteristics remembered by former prisoners of Villa Grimaldi who lost track of him in that facility.

Source: La Nación Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Date: 12-30-2008

Former chief of the dissolved DINA receives new sentence

The magistrate issued the following sentences against former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA): Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, 15 years as the perpetrator of aggravated kidnapping.

Visiting Judge Alejandro Solís issued a new sentence this Monday against the former chief of the disappeared National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), retired General Manuel Contreras, for his involvement in the aggravated kidnapping of Anselmo Radrigán Plaza, which occurred starting December 12, 1974.

The magistrate issued the following sentences against former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA): Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, 15 years as the perpetrator of aggravated kidnapping; Marcelo Moren Brito, 10 years and one day as the perpetrator of aggravated kidnapping; Pedro Espinoza Bravo, 10 years and one day as the perpetrator of aggravated kidnapping; Rolf Wenderoth Pozo, 10 years and one day as the perpetrator of aggravated kidnapping; Miguel Krassnoff Martchentko, 10 years and one day as the perpetrator of aggravated kidnapping; and Basclay Zapata Reyes, 10 years and one day as the perpetrator of aggravated kidnapping.

Likewise, the judge issued a series of indictments for four cases of aggravated kidnapping. Among those charged are Pedro Espinoza Bravo, Basclay Zapata Reyes, and Palmira Almuna Guzmán, linked to the disappearance of Claudio Silva Peralta, which occurred starting November 26, 1974.

For the kidnapping of Mireya Pérez Vargas, kidnapped starting February 24, 1976, Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, Miguel Krassnoff Martchentko, Carlos López Tapia, Basclay Zapata Reyes, and José Fuentes Torres were indicted.

For Jaime Robotham Bravo, kidnapped starting December 31, 1974, Solís filed charges against Contreras Sepúlveda, Pedro Espinoza Bravo, Rolf Wenderoth Pozo, Miguel Krassnoff Martchentko, Fernando Lauriani Maturana, and Daniel Cancino Varas.

In the case of Claudio Thauby Pacheco, kidnapped starting December 31, 1974, Pedro Espinoza Bravo, Rolf Wenderoth Pozo, Fernando Lauriani Maturana, and Daniel Cancino Varas were indicted.

Source: UPI May 20, 2008

Date: 05-20-2008

Claudio Francisco Thauby Pacheco

24 years old, father of one child, sociology student at the Universidad de Chile, socialist militant, was detained on December 31, 1974, around 7:00 PM, in Santiago, while walking with his friend and party comrade, Jaime Robotham Bravo, who was also detained at that time and is currently among the forcibly disappeared, just like Claudio.

The kidnapping was carried out by heavily armed DINA agents, mobilized in a lead-colored Fiat car, who were carrying with them Manuel Cuadra Sánchez, who had been detained at noon that December 31 and who remained held at Villa Grimaldi, a secret DINA detention and torture facility.

Claudio Thauby had been a cadet at the Military School and a classmate of one of his kidnappers, Fernando Adrián Laureani.

Claudio was subjected to ferocious torture at Villa Grimaldi. The then-MIR militant, Cristián Mallol Comandari, who was forced to participate in a press conference regarding the MIR while he was detained at Villa Grimaldi in February 1975, declared that Fernando Laureani had killed Claudio Thauby from so much torture.

This comment was ratified years later by the statements that Luz Arce, a former socialist militant and DINA collaborator, made regarding this before the Rettig Report in 1990. There, she noted that she remembered Claudio Thauby for having been a classmate of her brother and Fernando Laureani at the Military School.

She said that the victim was tortured severely, as he was considered a traitor to the Armed Forces and the Army due to his socialist ideas. Luz Arce saw him and knew that he was being interrogated by Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko and transferred to Lawrence, another interrogator at Villa Grimaldi.

They tore Thauby's entire chest with a yatagan, made a circle, and a cross inside. Laureani told him that "he was going to learn how traitors died." Laureani had the yatagan in his hands and made him lift his head with the tip of the weapon resting on his chin.

According to Luz Arce, Claudio Thauby was alone in a room, sitting on the floor, with his hands tied behind his back and his head hanging down. When she saw him, the victim was alive.

Source: resumen.cl 2/9/2023

Mural inaugurated at DAE building in memory of forcibly disappeared and executed students of the U. de Chile School of Sociology

The mural was created by artist Francisco 'Koshayuyo' Maltez, a former student of Visual Arts Pedagogy, in conjunction with the 119 Esperanzas Cultural Corporation.

Highlighting the value of memory, justice, and non-repetition, an emotional ceremony was held to inaugurate a mural in tribute to 16 forcibly disappeared and executed students of the School of Sociology of the Universidad de Chile, which during the dictatorship was located on the UMCE Macul campus, specifically where the Student Affairs Directorate (DAE) is today.

The meeting was attended by family members, friends, former students, the U. de Chile and UMCE Sociology community, as well as prominent figures such as former deputy Fanny Pollarolo, founder of the Women for Life movement; and former students and members of the Sociology community during the dictatorship: Eduardo Morales, director of the School during that time; Ricardo Núñez, former president of the student center and former senator; Adriana Muñoz, former president of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate; and Gabriel Salinas, a member of Inti Illimani who also performed a heartfelt musical presentation. The ceremony was also attended by authorities, led by the Academic Vice-Rector of the UMCE, Guillermo Castro, and the Undersecretary of Human Rights Xavier Altamirano, who highlighted the importance of this initiative for memory and non-repetition.

"Memory should not just be nostalgia for the past. The importance of the mural being where it is, occupying a wall of a very important professional support unit, such as the DAE, is because it resignifies the possibility for our students to know that when they step on these lawns and classrooms, they are not entering a glass building, but a space that built a proposal for political and social change for Chile," expressed Vice-Rector Castro.

Adding to his words, the Undersecretary noted: "Memory at this political moment does not allow us to be passive. We have to go fast, be forceful, and we have to be concrete and tangible, so that the everyday, the way society and the community see their history, their wounds, and what is pending, is intervened."

The day also included reflections from Pablo González and Paula Castillo, students currently studying Sociology at the U. de Chile, and their director, Octavio Avendaño.

The mural was created by artist Francisco 'Koshayuyo' Maltez, a former student of Visual Arts Pedagogy, in conjunction with the 119 Esperanzas Cultural Corporation. Jorge Robotham was one of the organizers of the initiative.

His brother, Jaime, was detained in December 1975 and taken to Villa Grimaldi, and his trail has been lost to this day. "Over time, it is necessary to stimulate memory, which as a collective phenomenon and due to its characteristics can lead to forgetting.

Therefore, family members of the forcibly disappeared, the executed, and those killed in confrontations, and former students of the Pedagogical Institute School of the U. de Chile, present this initiative of respect, of saying no to forgetting through a mural, where art symbolically becomes the most powerful visual message we have, since it is in the image that we house the hope of non-repetition, to go about building a future of justice and democracy," were part of his words.

In memory of

• Claudio Jimeno Grendi 33 years old
• Manuel Donoso Dañobeitia 26 years old
• Lumi Videla Moya 26 years old
• Tatiana Valentina Fariña Concha 19 years old
• Cecilia Magni Camino 32 years old
• Jose Manuel Parada Maluenda 34 years old
• Dagoberto Pérez Vargas 27 years old
• Juan Renato Perez Vargas 21 years old
• Aldo Gonzalo Perez Vargas 23 years old
• Anselmo Osvaldo Radrigan Plaza 25 years old
• Carlos Salcedo Morales 21 years old
• Claudio Francisco Thauby Pacheco 24 years old
• Jaime Eugenio Robotham Bravo 23 years old
• Eduardo Humberto Ziede Gómez 27 years old
• Mauricio Edmundo Jorquera Encina 19 years old
• Luis Oscar Valenzuela Leiva 20 years old.

Source: umce.cl 24/4/2024

To Repair the Irreparable: The Robotham-Thauby Case and the right to full justice

“Little white horse take me away…” sang and played Mariana, competing to be the focus of attention while her father talked with a visitor. At four years old, Mariana is already older than her father Yury Thauby was the last time he saw his own father.

The grandfather that Mariana will only know through photos and the stories of others, Claudio Thauby, was snatched away by DINA agents on December 31, 1974, when he was walking with his friend Jaime Robotham, who was detained along with him.

Yuri Thauby observes his small and lively daughter with tenderness and comments, “All men learn to be fathers by watching our own. I didn't have that and I feel penalized. I have to learn to be a father every day. I don't have an internal pattern or model of how to be a father because mine was taken from me.” (1)

The suffering that this lack meant was recognized by the Judge of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Alejandro Solís, when, in December 2008, he issued prison sentences for seven DINA leaders and economic reparations for the Thauby and Robotham families.

In his first-instance ruling, Judge Solís noted “the immense moral damage that has been caused to these families by subjecting them to the pain, suffering, and anguish for the loss of their brother, a father, a partner.”

In June 2010, the Eighth Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals accepted the plaintiffs' appeal in all its parts and ordered the State to pay compensatory damages.

But on June 23, 2011, the Second Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court used the concept of "half-prescription" (statute of limitations), considered inadmissible by international treaties in cases of human rights violations, to reduce the sentences of all the military personnel to five years in prison.

Furthermore, it granted them supervised release. However, none will go free, given that they have been convicted in multiple other trials for human rights violations. In civil matters, the Supreme Court accepted the families' claims and ordered the State to pay 50 million pesos to the plaintiffs.

Fabiola Letelier, a lawyer for both families since 2000 when Judge Solís was assigned to the case, points out, “In the Supreme Court ruling, there are three 'Considerations' that are copied exactly from the arguments we made regarding civil matters. The acts that give rise to the civil claim are based on the same acts that originated the criminal process. That is very contradictory.”

Cases involving human rights violations—summary executions, aggravated kidnappings, abuses, and indignities inflicted by the State on Chilean citizens—go through the official recognition of the truth of the facts, justice, and, rarely, reparation.

In this case, the truth was established by seventeen survivors of Villa Grimaldi who testified in Chile and in the consulates of different countries that they had seen Jaime Robotham and Claudio Thauby seriously wounded in that secret detention and extermination center that formed the headquarters of the DINA Metropolitan Intelligence Brigade in those first years of the dictatorship.

It was also a former prisoner, released, who went to the Robotham family's house to inform them for the first time that Jaime was detained at Villa Grimaldi.

Lawyer Fabiola Letelier states, “It is a process of enormous procedural legal activity that shows the truth, until completing it with an extraordinary investigative work done by Judge Solís.”

What for many years was the truth only for a group of witnesses and the relatives of the direct victims was endorsed by the weight of the ruling written by Judge Solís. “After 34 years, it has been achieved that the State of Chile, through the Judiciary, determines with some certainty that Claudio is being held kidnapped by agencies of the same State,” wrote Solís in his ruling, and repeated the phrase in relation to Jaime Robotham.

Therefore, the family members present at the hearing before the Second Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court for the cassation appeal that took place on March 2, 2011, were attentive to every word of the defense that distorted that truth.

When the defense lawyer for Pedro Espinoza Bravo alleged that his client was on vacation and was not even present at Villa Grimaldi on the date of the detention, Jorge Robotham, the victim's brother, immediately took out a pen and pointed out in a note that he passed to the other listeners: the date of detention cited by the defender is wrong!

Then, they listened to the defense of Fernando Laureani Maturana argue that the lieutenant colonel was a hierarchical inferior who had no other option but to obey orders from higher commands.

The description of Laureani as a mere official who only obeyed orders—which Yuri Thauby calls a “blatant lie”—was refuted by the Human Rights Program lawyer, Magdalena Garcés. The lawyer pointed out that the process has proven that six agents made up the Vampire Brigade, and the Rettig Report indicates that Laureani was in charge of this repressive group that carried out detentions and participated directly in the torture of its captives.

Moreover, Laureani personally detained Thauby, who had been a cadet at the Military School, and dealt Robotham a brutal beating to the head when he tried to avoid his detention. At Villa Grimaldi, former prisoners noted how Laureani was cruel to Thauby, for considering him a traitor for abandoning the military career and joining the Socialist Party.

Not being satisfied with the portfolio of routine techniques that the DINA executioners had to cause pain, Laureani resorted to his sadistic creativity to subject Thauby to acts of extreme cruelty. Subsequently, in February 1975, Thauby and Robotham were taken out of Villa Grimaldi and were never seen again.

Despite that track record, the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court based the reduction of the sentences and the benefit of supervised release on “irreproachable prior conduct.” Yury Thauby comments, “Those impeccable military men had been colluding for at least 2 years at the time of my father's detention, committing crimes against humanity.

They have been dedicated since the creation of the DINA and in some cases since before September 11 to preparing a repression of the nature of a crime against humanity outside of any legal framework.”

The cases of Jaime Robotham and Claudio Thauby have traveled through the judicial tangle since the time when the complicity of the judiciary resulted in the systematic rejection of the writs of amparo (habeas corpus), in this case, filed in January 1975.

From there, the family members faced the dismissal of the complaint when the Military Justice applied the Amnesty decree law. Then the process was reopened in 2000, bearing fruit with the 2008 conviction, to continue with the appeals, the cassation appeal, until the final word of the Supreme Court.

Throughout this judicial trajectory, shared with variations in countless other cases, the family members experience an emotional roller coaster as they raise their hopes of obtaining justice, only to have them crushed by the repeated refusals of the courts.

In the case of Jaime Robotham, in the first six months after the detention, his mother and siblings sent dozens of letters to the President of the Military Junta Augusto Pinochet, his wife Lucia Hiriart, the Chief of the General Staff Sergio Arellano, the Minister of the Interior, the Red Cross, the Vatican, and many other recipients asking them to intervene to free Jaime.

The letters, the first-instance ruling points out, show the suffering and pain endured by the family.

The then-Minister of the Interior, General Cesar Benavides, answered the family with the same refrain that thousands of other family members received: “he is not detained by order of an administrative authority.” They even tried to make them believe that Jaime had been burned to death in El Pilar, Argentina, by the sinister intelligence orchestration known as Operation Colombo on July 12, 1975.

Jorge Robotham, Jaime's brother, points out, “I think the most exhausting thing on this long road has been the time from Judge Solís's sentence until reaching the last hearing with the Supreme Court. There, hopes and desires are added, and a lot of helplessness, having to submit to the way of proceeding of the defense of the accused, and the rules of the Judiciary.”

The right to economic reparation for victims of crimes against humanity is fully recognized in international treaties such as the American Convention on Human Rights and by the International Criminal Court.

However, in Chile, the country's highest court is reluctant to recognize this right and the Council of State denies it systematically. Therefore, it is surprising that in this case it does grant economic reparation but leaves aside the punishment of the guilty.

In 1997, lawyer Nelson Caucoto presented what was perhaps the first civil lawsuit by relatives of victims of human rights violations. At that time, there was still a perception on the part of many family members that filing a civil lawsuit was equivalent to trading money for their loved ones, or that it implied renouncing criminal action.

Then there was a maturation in their thinking on the matter, to come to understand that it is an undeniable right, and it resulted in an escalation of civil lawsuits. But of the numerous civil lawsuits that Caucoto has filed, he loses most of them in the Supreme Court. This motivated him to argue for reparation before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and its decision is expected soon.

Caucoto points out: “Reparation in Chile has been treated as the poor relative of the fight for human rights, in circumstances where in other countries it has the same height, the same importance, as the criminal sanction, as the truth.

They are three legs of the same table that you have to combine together to achieve what is called justice. If you achieve truth, criminal sanction but not reparation, you did not achieve justice. If you achieve reparation without truth, without criminal sanction, there is no justice either. The three parts of the same concept go hand in hand.”

Between Judge Solís's first instance and the Court of Appeals' second, the relatives of Claudio Thauby and Jaime Robotham had had these three rights restored. However, in Yury Thauby's opinion, “The Supreme Court ruling destroys that.”

Jorge Robotham did not hold illusions that the end of the long judicial process would clear up all the doubts he has carried for more than three decades. “There are too many unanswered questions. And the biggest question remains: the final destination.

What happened to Jaime and Claudio, who were tortured until they lost their lives? Who were their murderers? Where did they hide and what did they do with their bodies? The Chilean judicial system leaves much to be desired.”

Lawyer Fabiola Letelier points out, “There can be no statute of limitations on crimes against humanity. […] This ruling forces us to turn to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights with the hope that it will provide a solution for the way in which international treaties have been violated. So, this story will continue.”

Yuri Thauby searches for the words that would express what justice means to him. “This judicial process must be the beginning of our healing. The absence will accompany me until death, but [justice] will allow me to look my father or his ghost in the eyes without feeling that I owe him something. (…) For society, it is to have the undeniable elements of a historical truth: documented, investigated, condemned crimes against humanity.

It is absolutely a social necessity so that it does not happen again. We cannot build a better society without justice.”

Source: Le Monde Diplomatique September 2013

U. de Chile to award posthumous degrees to 104 executed and disappeared persons (excerpt)

Symbolic recognition will be directed to former students murdered during the military regime.

Through exempt decree number 0030766 of the Universidad de Chile, authorized by the Comptroller of the Republic on September 4 of this year, said university was enabled, for the first time in its history, to award the distinction of posthumous and symbolic degrees to students who were political executions victims and those who became forcibly disappeared during the military regime.

The official ceremony, which will be led by rector Ennio Vivaldi, will take place next Monday the 11th, in the Domeyko courtyard of the central house, starting at 12:30 PM.

For Vivaldi, "this initiative has two very deep meanings. On one hand, it is a gesture of reparation for the victims themselves and for their family members, who also affectively associate their loved ones with this great institution that is the U. de Chile.

On the other hand, the U. de Chile feels that it is fulfilling its moral duty by not granting the dictatorship the terrible objective of, in addition to having cut their lives short, erasing their achievements as students and future professionals for Chile."

The list includes 104 former students of the university, who were murdered by State agents between 1973 and 1989.

Among the most remembered cases is that of history student Jécar Nehgme, who also appears as the last victim of Augusto Pinochet's regime. This former leader of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) appeared dead on September 4, 1989, on Calle General Bulnes, a few days before the elections that would mark the return to democracy.

After a long judicial process, which was resolved in 2008, it was possible to establish as authors of the murder the metropolitan chief of the CNI, retired Brigadier Enrique Levy Araneda; retired Colonel Pedro Guzmán Olivares, and retired Captain Luis Sanhueza Ross.

From social organizations, they valued the gesture. The president of the Association of Executed Political Prisoners (Afep), Alicia Lira, pointed out that "it is a great gesture, which we recognize enormously.

With this, Rector Vivaldi fulfills a pending task that the Universidad de Chile had, since similar gestures had already been fulfilled by other universities such as the U. de Santiago and the Austral de Valdivia. But it is a huge signal for democracy and so that a true 'never again' is fulfilled in Chile." (excerpt)

Source: latercera.com 09-08-2017