On November 26, 1974, MIR militant Claudio Guillermo SILVA PERALTA was arrested on a public street in the commune of Ñuñoa by DINA agents. The following day, the same agents arrested his father, Fernando Guillermo SILVA CAMUS, at his home.

According to witnesses, father and son were held at the DINA facility of Villa Grimaldi, from where they were forcibly disappeared.

The Commission is convinced that their disappearance was the work of State agents, who thereby violated their human rights.

Claudio Guillermo Silva Peralta, married, one child, employee, and militant of the MIR, was detained on a public street on November 26, 1974. One day later, on November 27, his father, Fernando Silva Camus, was also detained.

On November 26, at 14:30 hours, Silva was taken to his home, located at Boccacio 364, in the Las Condes district of the city of Santiago, in a red Chevrolet pickup truck, license plate FM 965 of Las Condes, by a group of five armed civilians—one of whom was a woman—who claimed to be military personnel.

They interrogated Regina Lazo Dinamarca, Claudio Silva’s spouse, who was two months pregnant, asking her about Claudio Silva and who else was in the house. Among the agents, Regina Lazo recognized Osvaldo Raúl Romo Mena, a DINA agent who had been politically active during the Unidad Popular government.

This agent informed her that they had detained Silva at a pharmacy located at Irarrázaval and Macul while he was buying medicine.

The agents conducted a raid without presenting any warrant. After seizing books, records, and photographic equipment belonging to Silva—as he was an amateur photographer—they left the premises, taking Regina Lazo to a nearby pickup truck where they were holding Claudio Silva in handcuffs.

There, she had the opportunity to speak a few words with him. Silva was wounded on his forehead and had bloodstains on his mouth; he told her that he could not give them any information. Immediately afterward, the agents drove away, taking Claudio Silva into custody.

On two subsequent occasions, the Silva Lazo family home was visited by agents while it was empty. The agents, who had the detainee's keys, removed clean clothing and left behind Claudio Silva’s bloodstained clothes.

Romo called Regina Lazo by telephone shortly before Christmas 1974 to inform her of these raids and to assure her that Silva would be released before New Year's. He also requested some essential medicines for Silva.

On November 27, Fernando Guillermo Silva Camus, Claudio’s father, was detained and held in Villa Grimaldi in a cell separate from his son. Fernando Silva also remains forcibly disappeared to this day.

According to witness information, Claudio Silva was taken to Villa Grimaldi, a clandestine detention and torture center located in Peñalolén at José Arrieta 8.200, La Reina, where he remained until January 10, 1975, the date after which nothing more was known of him.

While detained at Villa Grimaldi, he was tortured on repeated occasions, as stated in sworn statements by other detainees who suffered the same fate during that period. Guillermo Segundo Cornejo Godoy declared, "during the time of my detention, I was able to meet and be with Claudio Silva Peralta," and that he saw him until December 28, 1974.

María Alicia Salinas Farfán, who was detained between January 3 and 10, 1975, at said center and was later transferred to other prisoner camps, remaining deprived of liberty until December 10, 1976, testified in a sworn statement before a notary on July 16, 1986, that: "During that same day, the 7th (of January 1975), I had the opportunity to see another friend who was detained at the Villa and who is now disappeared.

It is Claudio Silva Peralta. Claudio was in a room adjacent to ours; I spotted him through a partition..." "I remember that Claudio Silva was wearing a turtleneck and pants in the same light brown shade on that occasion."

For his part, Sonia Elena Bascuñán Saavedra declared that while she was detained at Villa Grimaldi, she met a young man whom the guards called "Condoro," who was subjected to a medical examination in the cell where she was being held.

Sonia Bascuñán recognized the photo of Claudio Silva as the young man "Condoro." This is the nickname Claudio Silva had in the MIR due to his aquiline nose profile. She also recognized Claudio Silva’s father among the detainees.

Luis Alfredo Muñoz González declared that while he was detained at Villa Grimaldi, starting on December 10, 1991, he was able to recognize Claudio Silva Peralta among the detainees, who appeared physically well, even though it could be seen that he had been subjected to duress. On January 10, Silva was taken out of the Villa Grimaldi torture center, and he never saw him again.

Manuel Alejandro Cuadra Sánchez, who remained detained at Villa Grimaldi from December 31, 1974, to January 15, 1975, declared under oath that he saw Claudio Silva Peralta after January 1, 1975, when he was being led to the bathroom.

Other detainees who saw him at Villa Grimaldi include Angeles Alvarez and Iris Guzmán. Angeles Beatriz Alvarez Cárdenas noted that she was detained at Villa Grimaldi, as evidenced by the respective certificate, from January 6 to 15, 1975, and stated in a sworn declaration accompanying the case file: "I saw that Claudio Guillermo Silva Peralta was in that place, and even on the same day I arrived as a detainee, DINA personnel made me talk to him." She added that "...Claudio Silva Peralta had been detained about 20 days before me and had already gone through the interrogation."

At the time of his detention, he was working with his father in the interior design business.

Almost a month before his detention, on October 31, 1974, six armed civilians raided the house located at Werner Fromm 260 in Santiago, interrogating Rebeca Esperanza Lazo Dinamarca, Esperanza Dinamarca, and the latter’s husband—all relatives of Regina Lazo, the spouse of the affected party—indicating that they were looking for him.

In July 1975, the newspapers El Mercurio and La Tercera reproduced a news story that included two lists totaling 119 people who had allegedly died abroad; these lists had appeared in two publications: LEA from Buenos Aires and O'DIA from Brazil, from which no information could ever be obtained regarding their editor, address, or person responsible, and which were never published again.

Claudio Silva Peralta’s name and that of his father, Fernando Silva Camus, appeared on this list. This information was never confirmed by the authorities of the countries involved, and the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a statement sent to the Criminal Courts, could not officially confirm these facts and implicitly did not grant them credibility.

The 119 names corresponded to people detained in Chile by security services who were forcibly disappeared.

His only sister was forced into exile, and both he and his father remain to this day in the status of forcibly disappeared.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

On November 28, 1974, a recurso de amparo (writ of habeas corpus) was filed on behalf of the affected party and his father, Fernando Guillermo Silva Camus, which was registered under number 1.484-74 by the Santiago Court of Appeals.

On May 24, 1975, the recurso de amparo was rejected. After making inquiries to the implicated agencies and receiving their refusal to acknowledge the detention, the records were sent to the Sixth Criminal Court of Santiago, which initiated a summary proceeding for the disappearance of the affected parties under case file number 91.412.

Subsequently, a lawsuit for the kidnapping of father and son was filed and consolidated with the previous case.

On March 18, 1976, the case was temporarily dismissed and sent for review. On September 28, 1976, a request was made to unarchive the case and summon new witnesses. On October 4 of the same year, the case was reopened, and the witness Angeles Alvarez, as well as the detainee Luis Alfredo Muñoz González, were ordered to appear.

The testimonies of these individuals, along with those of Sonia Elena Bascuñán and Guillermo Segundo Cornejo Díaz, confirmed they were witnesses to the detention of the two affected parties at Villa Grimaldi.

On April 29, 1977, a motion was filed requesting a search for the case file, which was found to be missing.

On May 19, 1977, official letters were reiterated to authorities to respond regarding the fate of the affected party; the case was then dismissed. In May 1981, the case was reopened, and a series of investigative steps were decreed regarding the identification of the disappeared, vehicle license plates, an official letter to the Ministry of the Interior, interviews with the plaintiffs, etc.

The case was again dismissed without the fate of the victim and his father being determined.

On January 18, 1977, this case was presented to the Andean Commission of Jurists.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the OAS consulted the government of Chile regarding the disappearance of Fernando Guillermo Silva Camus and his son, Claudio Silva Peralta. The response denied any responsibility of the Chilean military government in the following terms: "Fernando Guillermo Silva Camus and Claudio Guillermo Silva Peralta have no records of being or having been detained in Chile.

Furthermore, all of them appear on the list of 119 extremists killed in Argentina in clashes with that country's Security Forces or in internal struggles among themselves. Said lists were published in July 1975 by the weekly Lea and the newspaper O'Dia, Argentine and Brazilian respectively."

This response was transcribed by Emilio Castañón-Pasquel, Executive Secretary of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States, on November 10, 1976, in a letter addressed to Mrs. María Peralta Zamorano.

Consequently, the response referred to the aforementioned publications of the magazine LEA and the newspaper O'DIA, even though these publications had been described as "another treacherous way of attacking us, always seeking to cause damage and a bad image of Chile," as General Pinochet declared to El Mercurio, which published this statement on August 21, 1975.

In addition, the case was presented to the Red Cross, and efforts and inquiries were made before the National Secretariat of Detainees (SENDET), the Ministry of Defense, the Tres Alamos Prisoner Camp, the Public Jail, the FACH Prosecutor's Office, etc., without having obtained any results.

Regarding the inquiry directed by Mrs. María Peralta Zamorano, wife and mother of the affected parties, to the Chief of the State of Siege Zone of the Province of Santiago, Colonel Hernán Ramírez Ramírez, he responded on January 22, 1975, that "An investigation was carried out in all the agencies dependent on this Headquarters, and it was determined that there are no records of her husband and son in any of them."

To date, the fate of the forcibly disappeared person, Mr. Claudio Silva Peralta, remains unknown.

In November 1992, Osvaldo Romo Mena, one of the DINA agents who detained Claudio Silva Peralta, was arrested. The aforementioned agent, who had remained in hiding since the end of 1975 under the name Osvaldo Andrés Henríquez Mena, had been located after a series of investigative steps decreed in the case of the disappearance of Alfonso Chanfreau Oyarce.

As a result of these events, he was arrested in Brazil and later expelled from that country.

Since his arrest, he has had to testify in several courts handling cases of forcibly disappeared persons, and as of December 1992, an indictment had been issued against him in six of them. Furthermore, the records in the case of Claudio Silva and his father were being studied with a view to filing a new legal action.

Source: Vicaría de la Solidaridad