The last former agent of the feared Comando Conjunto who had been a fugitive from justice since August of last year was detained last Tuesday after being located in Paraguay. He is the FACH reserve captain, Jorge Cobos Manríquez, who had been indicted for the aggravated kidnapping of four people, including the former councilman of Concepción, Carlos Contreras Maluje.

On August 22, 2003, the judge of the Third Criminal Court of Santiago, Graciela Gómez, issued her first indictment against the agents of the Comando Conjunto. Her predecessors on the case, Mario Carroza and Cristián Carvajal, had dealt heavy blows to one of the most brutal repressive organizations of the military government, to which the death and disappearance of at least 70 people is attributed.

In that resolution, the following were indicted: the head of the Comando Conjunto, Air Force (FACH) General (R) Freddy Enrique Ruiz Bunger, who was also head of the institution's Intelligence Directorate; FACH Colonel (R) Juan Saavedra Loyola, known as ‘El Mono’; Navy Captain (R) Daniel Guimpert Corvalán; FACH Captain (R) Jorge Cobos Manríquez; former Carabineros officers Manuel Muñoz Gamboa and Alejandro Sáez Morales; and the civilian agent César Palma Ramírez (‘El Fifo’).

All of them were charged as perpetrators of the aggravated kidnapping of the communist militant Carlos Contreras Maluje. And all of them were imprisoned, except for one. Cobos Manríquez had been a fugitive from justice since August, and an international arrest warrant had been issued for him, as he was not in Chile and his whereabouts were unknown.

Panic of prisons

The Investigative Police (PDI) tracked his whereabouts, and since last Tuesday, Cobos Manríquez has been detained in a FACH unit. For several months, he had been in Paraguay, a former ally of the armed forces of several countries that formed the so-called Operation Condor.

Sources indicated to La Nación that once the detectives located him, the judge was preparing to initiate the procedures to obtain his extradition. However, the fugitive contacted the Chilean police and the court to express his intention to turn himself in voluntarily and face the charges against him. “It seems that Cobos understood that it was much better to be detained in a military unit in Chile than to set foot in a Paraguayan prison,” a judicial source explained.

On Tuesday, at 3:00 PM, Jorge Cobos Manríquez, a FACH reserve captain and former operational agent of the Comando Conjunto, set foot on national soil and was immediately detained by detectives. The reserve captain is being held at the El Bosque Air Base, and after being notified of his indictment as the perpetrator of the aggravated kidnapping of four people, he will have to recount his time in the feared organization.

The Contreras Maluje case

The death of Carlos Contreras Maluje brought an end to the Comando Conjunto in 1976. The communist militant was detained on November 2 of that year in an operation in which a large number of the agents participated.

After being taken to the detention center ‘La Firma’ (Calle Dieciocho 229, former headquarters of the newspaper Clarín), he confessed under torture that the following day he would have a contact with people from the party.

However, in the Calle Nataniel sector, when the operational group intended to ambush the dissidents, Contreras eluded the agents and threw himself under the wheels of a bus, shouting his name, that he was being kidnapped by the DINA, and that they should notify the Maluje pharmacy in Concepción.

Amidst the commotion, the officers pulled him from the scene while he was bleeding. The media reported on this impasse, and the actions of the Command were called into question. At ‘La Firma’, Contreras was again subjected to a series of brutal tortures, and then he was taken to Cuesta Barriga, where he was riddled with bullets and buried, according to the testimony of the confessed agent Andrés Antonio Valenzuela Morales, alias ‘El Papudo’.

Shortly thereafter, the Comando Conjunto was dismantled.

Source: La Nación, January 2, 2004

Six former uniformed officers indicted in human rights case

The head of the Third Criminal Court of Santiago, Graciela Gómez, indicted six former uniformed officers for their participation in the kidnapping of former communist leader José Weibel and the detention of Carlos Sánchez Cornejo.

The indictment affected former FACH members Enrique Ruiz Bunger, Juan Francisco Saavedra Loyola, Jorge Rodrigo Cobos, and Daniel Luis Guimpert; former Carabinero Manuel Muñoz Gamboa; and civilian César Luis Palma Ramírez. They were also indicted as perpetrators, along with Alejandro Sáez Mardones, currently incarcerated in the Punta Peuco prison, for the kidnapping of José Weibel.

Source: La Nación, January 30, 2004

Justice reaches the Comando Conjunto

The Comando Conjunto case—a group of state agents and far-right civilians coordinated by the four intelligence agencies of the Armed Forces that operated between 1975 and 1976—has entered its final phase.

It is perhaps one of the emblematic cases of human rights violations due to the ferocity directed at the victims (nearly 70) and because it is the only case in which all branches of the military participated, although the FACH and Carabineros were the most involved.

In fact, some of its members joined Dicomcar in the 1980s. The judge with exclusive dedication at the Third Criminal Court of Santiago to investigate the crimes committed by this repressive organization, Graciela Gómez, has issued the first indictments in recent days against its agents, those responsible for the kidnapping of Carlos Contreras Maluje, son of the first UP intendant in the province of Concepción, former councilman for the commune of Concepción, and leader of the Communist Party.

This is one of the four episodes that divide this process, but it is the most symbolic, because the events surrounding the kidnapping of the leftist militant exposed the acts committed by the CC and provoked the immediate dissolution of the repressive organization.

Names Accused as intellectual authors of the kidnapping were FACH General (R) Freddy Enrique Ruiz Bunger and Colonel (R) of the same institution Juan Francisco Saavedra Loyola. Meanwhile, accused as material perpetrators were Alejandro Sáez Mardones (currently serving a sentence for the ‘degollados’ case), Jorge Cobos Manríquez (alias ‘Kiko’ and FACH Lieutenant (R)), Daniel Guimpert Corvalán (retired Navy Lieutenant), César Palma Ramírez (alias ‘Fifo’, a civilian formerly of Patria y Libertad and mentioned in at least 15 murders), and Manuel Muñoz Gamboa (alias ‘Lolo’, a retired Carabineros Major who was also convicted in the ‘degollados’ case). Ruiz Bunger was in charge of FACH Intelligence and was a trusted man of the then-Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force and member of the Military Junta, General Gustavo Leigh, whom he accompanied when he was dismissed by General Augusto Pinochet in 1978.

The facts In her resolution, Judge Gómez reaches the conviction that the agents kidnapped Contreras Maluje and, after torturing him, used him to set up an operation where they intended to capture other communist militants.

On November 2, 1976, after obtaining information provided by another detainee under torture, the agents intercepted him on Calle Nataniel and forcibly took him to the detention center known as La Firma (located on Calle Dieciocho, where the offices of the newspaper Clarín previously operated).

After subjecting him to unlawful coercion, the former councilman offered to take the agents to a place where they could capture another communist militant. But Contreras Maluje’s plans were different. As established, the following day the CC set up an operation on Calle Nataniel.

Upon arriving at the scene, the judge states, Contreras Maluje “managed to elude his guards and threw himself into the path of a public transport vehicle that was traveling south on Calle Nataniel, becoming injured as a result of the impact; despite this, he requested help from passersby and a Carabineros officer.” He said he was being kidnapped, but the officers could not do anything because a vehicle with license plate EG-588 appeared, which was later proven to belong to the FACH and was for the exclusive use of Ruiz Bunger, head of FACH Intelligence.

Its occupants identified themselves as DINA agents. Nothing more was heard of Contreras Maluje.

Source: La Nación, November 24, 2004

Seven former members of the Comando Conjunto convicted

Judge Juan Fuentes Belmar sentenced seven former members of the Comando Conjunto today to various penalties for their responsibility in the disappearance of communist leader Carlos Contreras Maluje in November 1976, judicial sources reported.

In his resolution, the magistrate did not apply the Amnesty Law issued in 1978 by former dictator Augusto Pinochet, but did apply the gradual statute of limitations for the sentence, taking March 11, 1990—the date of the return to democracy—as the end date of the aggravated kidnapping.

The first-instance convictions affect four retired Air Force (FACH) officers, one former member of the Navy, and two from Carabineros, members of this group of state agents and far-right civilians coordinated by the four intelligence agencies of the Armed Forces that operated between 1975 and 1976.

The judge sentenced the director of the FACH Intelligence Service, Freddy Ruiz Bunger, Colonel Juan Saavedra Loyola, Navy officer Daniel Guimpert, and former Carabineros officer Manuel Muñoz Gamboa to three years of suspended prison (served in freedom).

The same sentence, but with nighttime incarceration, was given to former FACH member César Palma Ramírez and retired police officer Alejandro Sáez Mardones, who has been serving another sentence for human rights violations in prison since August 2003.

In that same sense, he also sentenced former FACH Captain Jorge Cobos Manríquez to three years and one day in prison. Finally, Fuentes Belmar dismissed a civil lawsuit against the State filed by the lawyer for the victim’s family, Nelson Caucoto.

The case of Carlos Contreras Maluje was one of the few in which the Court of Appeals of the time accepted a recurso de amparo (habeas corpus) filed by his family after his detention. On November 2, 1976, Contreras Maluje, then 29 years old, a former councilman of Concepción and a pharmaceutical chemist by profession, was detained by agents of the Comando Conjunto and taken to the facility known as "La Firma" (located on Calle Dieciocho, where the offices of the newspaper Clarín previously operated), where he was tortured.

Subsequently, according to the Rettig Report, the leader was taken by the agents to a place where Contreras would supposedly make a contact, on Calle Nataniel, at which time he threw himself under the wheels of a bus, shouting his name and his kidnapping situation.

Immediately, the agents took him back to the "La Firma" facility and executed him that same night on a road near Santiago, where his remains were buried clandestinely and have not been found to this day.

Source: La Nación, November 30, 2005

Comando Conjunto: Santiago Court sentences former agents to effective prison time as perpetrators of five aggravated kidnappings.

The Court of Appeals confirmed the challenged sentence, which sentenced Freddy Enrique Ruiz Bunger, Juan Francisco Saavedra Loyola, and Manuel Agustín Muñoz Gamboa to 18 years in prison, plus legal accessories, as perpetrators of the crimes of aggravated kidnapping.

In a split decision, the Santiago Court of Appeals sentenced former agents of the "Comando Conjunto" to effective prison time for their responsibility in the crime of aggravated kidnapping of José Arturo Weibel Navarrete, Mariano León Turiel Palomera, Francisco Hernán Ortiz Valladares, José Santos Rocha Álvarez, and Carlos Enrique Sánchez Cornejo.

These crimes were committed between October 15, 1975, and July 15, 1976. The Court of Appeals confirmed the challenged sentence, issued by visiting judge Miguel Vázquez Plaza, which sentenced Freddy Enrique Ruiz Bunger, Juan Francisco Saavedra Loyola, and Manuel Agustín Muñoz Gamboa to 18 years in prison, plus legal accessories, as perpetrators of the crimes of aggravated kidnapping of Francisco Hernán Ortiz Valladares, José Santos Rocha Álvarez, Carlos Enrique Sánchez Cornejo, José Arturo Weibel Navarrete, and Mariano León Turiel Palomera.

Meanwhile, Antonio Benedicto Quirós Reyes must serve a sentence of 6 years in prison, plus legal accessories, as a perpetrator of the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Mariano León Turiel Palomera. Finally, agents Alejandro Segundo Sáez Mardones, Roberto Alfonso Flores Cisterna, and Carlos Hernán Rodrigo Villarreal must serve 5 years and one day in prison, plus legal accessories, as perpetrators of the crime of aggravated kidnapping of José Arturo Weibel Navarrete.

Likewise, due to death, partial and definitive dismissals were approved regarding Jorge Rodrigo Cobos Manríquez, César Luis Palma Ramírez, and Freddy Enrique Ruiz Bunger. The sentence maintains that regarding the statute of limitations and amnesty alleged by all the defendants, it should be specified that these chapters are duly addressed in the thirty-fifth and forty-first grounds of the appealed sentence, and given the repeated jurisprudence of the highest court that kidnapping is a permanent crime, the application of such institutes is not appropriate.

Amnesty has only a delimited temporal space for application, and for the statute of limitations, it is not yet possible to begin counting the period given the permanent nature of the crime and its status as a crime against humanity, which prevents its application.

It also states that the mitigating factors of criminal responsibility alleged are analyzed in the ruling under review, and this court agrees with their application. Regarding the civil aspect, the sentence ordering the State to pay a total compensation of $1,520,000,000 to the victims' families was ratified.

The decision was adopted with the dissenting vote of lawyer Herrera Fuenzalida, who states: A) Regarding the criminal sanction, she was of the opinion to accept what was referred to regarding the partial statute of limitations of the criminal action and consequently reduce the imposed penalty, making its effects applicable to all those convicted, since the gradual statute of limitations constitutes a qualified mitigating factor of criminal responsibility, whose effects influence the determination of the quantum of the corporal sanction, independent of the statute of limitations, with different foundations and consequences. Thus, this is also explained by humanitarian regulations, which find their justification in how senseless such a high penalty is for events that occurred more than 40 years ago. The foregoing does not imply that the crime is left unpunished, but rather that an attenuated penalty is imposed. Likewise, as it is a matter of public policy, the judge must apply it, as it is favorable to the defendant. B) Regarding the civil actions, she was in favor of rejecting them and accepting the exception of payment filed by the Chilean State, understanding that these have already been paid, due to the reparatory nature of the compensation provided by the State of Chile, which was taken into account for the enactment of Law No. 19.123, which created the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” or “Rettig Commission,” where reference is made to the moral and patrimonial reparation that said project sought, so the sums of money agreed upon are to address the non-contractual liability of the State, establishing within the functions of the Commission the promotion of the reparation of the moral damage of the victims referred to in its article 18. That, due to such purposes, the mentioned law, along with Law No. 19.980, contemplates direct payment in money to human rights victims, such as their children, which is the case in these proceedings, along with other reparations, such as those through the assignment of rights to state benefits and symbolic reparations, all with the same reparatory object. Therefore, it is evident that all those legal benefits have the same foundation and the same reparatory purpose for moral damage as the compensation claimed in these proceedings.

Source: pjud.cl, April 11, 2019