The Fifth Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals has indicted retired Army officers Hans Karl Stuckrath Morera, Pedro Collado Marti, and Conrado Garcia Gaier as perpetrators of the aggravated kidnapping of Rogelio Marín Rossel and Williams Robert Millar Sanhueza, both leaders of the Socialist Party who were arrested following the military coup in the city of Iquique.

The ruling, issued by judges Lamberto Cisternas, Mauricio Silva Cancino, and lawyer Patricio González, overturned the refusal of the visiting judge for the so-called Pisagua Case, Joaquín Billard, to prosecute the aforementioned military personnel for their involvement in these crimes.

In this regard, lawyer Adil Brkovic, a plaintiff in the case, welcomed the ruling, as it establishes that there is sufficient evidence to hold the accused accountable and, therefore, to reactivate an investigation that had been delayed for several months.

The Fifth Chamber's ruling orders Billard to arrange "the necessary measures for the notification of this indictment and the fingerprinting of the accused, and to determine the appropriate regime in accordance with the provisions of Article 275, third paragraph, of the Code of Criminal Procedure, and the general rules on the matter." Likewise, the appellate court judges dismissed the request for asset seizure filed by Brkovic, as there was no evidence of assets belonging to the accused. "The court in charge of the investigation shall make the necessary arrangements to establish whether there was a change in the decision of the War Council of October 29, 1973, taking into special account the judicial statements provided in the case files by Juan Enrique Sinn Bruno and by Pedro Santiago Collado Marti; and likewise, given that in the aforementioned War Council the statement of Germán Palominos Lamas was deemed unsuitable to support the sentence, whereas in the War Council of November 29, 1973, it was validated, the visiting judge shall carry out the necessary proceedings to clarify the reasons for said change," the sentence states. The ruling establishes that Jorge Marín Rossel and Williams Millar Sanhueza were detained and deprived of their liberty, "without their destinations and whereabouts being known with certainty to date following their interrogation at the Iquique Telecommunications Regiment." It was proven that Williams Robert Millar Sanhueza and Jorge Rogelio Marín Rossel were detained on September 24 and 28, 1973, respectively, by order of the Sixth Army Division, and taken to the Iquique Telecommunications Regiment, where they were interrogated. On September 29 of that same year, the military authority issued a communiqué reporting the escape of the detainees; however, to date, the whereabouts of both remain unknown. They were included as forcibly disappeared in the report of the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, and evidence from the Dialogue Table suggests that their remains may have been thrown into the sea.

Source: Terra.cl, November 21, 2008

Indicted after 35 years of hiding from justice

By the late nineties, Lieutenant Conrado García Gaier had become the colonel in charge of the Army's Intelligence Department II, and previously the head of the CNI's Anti-Terrorist Unit. To signal the start of torture in Pisagua, he would play the organ from the parish that had been brought to the prison.

It was the second time that night that the young Luis Carló had come rolling down the stairs from the second floor of the Pisagua prison. Upstairs, the "Crazy Monk" laughed again with that booming voice that matched his height of over one meter eighty and his light-colored eyes.

Once the almost daily torture of the teenager—the son of an Army non-commissioned officer—was over, the "Crazy Monk" locked him back in his cell and went down to the first floor. He opened the organ he had had moved from the parish of the legendary cove and began to play.

He didn't play well, but he knew something. With those chords, he announced that the show was beginning. Inside their cells, the couple of hundred prisoners felt their stomachs tighten. They knew of the "Monk's" brutality.

They nicknamed him that because of the organ, but Lieutenant Conrado García Gaier was no monk. He was the most brutal officer at the Pisagua concentration camp after the 1973 military coup. That night, he ordered everyone to go down and form up in the prison courtyard and forced them to take off their clothes.

The night in Pisagua was freezing and the wind was blowing hard, even though it was November. The "Monk" had two large oil drums ready. The stones were also ready up on the hill. He chose the two detainees who would start the peculiar session and ordered them to go up, guarded by soldiers.

The little hill was about 150 meters high with a very steep slope. Once the prisoners reached the summit, Lieutenant García shouted from below to his subordinates to put them inside along with the pile of stones. "Go!" the "Monk" commanded, and his men pushed the drums down the hill with their human cargo.

They stopped far away, closer to the sea, which was roaring agitatedly. The two men crawled out, bloodied and dizzy. Before taking out the others who would roll down the slope, the "Monk" forced the prisoners to lie on the dirt and pebble ground with their backs to the starry sky.

Several were shivering from the cold. In two strides, the "Monk" returned to the religious keyboard and fumbled through some chords that only he understood. But it didn't matter, as his audience feared him too much to throw eggs or tomatoes at him.

The organ stopped playing and the "Monk" ran down the few steps from the first floor to the courtyard. Then he began to jump on the bare backs, running across that human carpet. From time to time, he would stop and beat someone at random.

And he continued his crazed race, shouting insults, with his large, light eyes wide open so as not to fall. By the afternoon of the next day, when the sun was burning mercilessly, the wide metal sheet covering part of the prison courtyard was scorching.

Now Lieutenant García revealed another of the gray walls of his sick mind. He ordered a formation again. This time shirtless, so that the sun would finish wounding the detainees' skin. He flew up the steps from the courtyard to the first floor like an angel and unleashed a storm of notes on the instrument, running both hands across the entire length of the keyboard several times.

Later, when some fainted outside, he took out a few and ordered them to sit on the red-hot iron sheet. He left them there until they began to scream in pain from the burns on their buttocks, despite their pants.

The tradition of the "Crazy Monk" was fulfilled once again, announcing torture with the sound that Bach loved most while playing for kings and learned scholars. The dramatic days and nights of Pisagua under the unholy mantle of the "Crazy Monk" have been recalled by dozens of former prisoners in the thousands of pages of the case file being investigated for crimes against humanity that occurred in Pisagua.

Among others, by Luis González Vives and Luis Morales Marino. The story of the "Crazy Monk" in that concentration camp remained embedded in them forever, at the point of blood and pain. Thirty-five years later, and for the first time, the hand of justice reached Conrado García last week.

In the end, he could no longer continue posing as a retired colonel who had nothing to do with the crimes of the dictatorship. The Fifth Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals indicted him and ordered Judge Joaquín Billard to arrest and fingerprint him for the kidnapping and disappearance of Jorge Marín Rossel and William Millar Sanhueza, which occurred in Iquique between September 23 and 25, 1973.

Along with the "Crazy Monk," retired officers Karl Hans Stuckhart and Pedro Collado also fell for the first time, as they were in charge of military intelligence in that city at the time, along with García.

The "Monk" went to Pisagua afterward. Billard had previously exonerated the three of both kidnappings. The plaintiff lawyer, Adil Brkovic, expressed his satisfaction "because it was very difficult for us to hunt down this sinister character." Lawyer Rodrigo Cortés acted on behalf of the Human Rights Program of the Ministry of the Interior.

One winter morning in 1998, I called Colonel Conrado García. I told him I needed to speak with him. That I had twenty judicial testimonies against him. Former prisoners accused him of being a torturer and having a twisted mind.

He received me on the seventh floor of the Armed Forces building. I found him in uniform, smoking and pacing nervously. He invited me into his office. I showed him the testimonies. He denied everything.

He told me that he was now the commander of the Army's Department II. That is, intelligence. A high position. I told him I didn't believe him, but that I would include his version in my report. He insisted on his innocence.

I then stood up to leave. Suddenly he got up and grabbed my shoulder. "Look, Mr. Jorgito, don't screw up my career, please; I want to be a general and I'm about to be one," he said with his eyes wide open.

I kept silent to gain a few seconds. The colonel surprised me. He offered me a cigarette and a coffee again, which I did not accept. "I'm sorry, I cannot reach a pact with you; I am going to publish my report," I told him, and I left. Years later, I learned that the "Crazy Monk" had also been the head of the feared CNI Anti-Terrorist Unit.

Source: La Nación, January 11, 2009

The exorbitant fiscal expenditure on Armed Forces pensions: $3.8 trillion between 2011 and 2015

2016 marked a milestone for Codelco. It was not one of those that draws applause. For the first time in its history, and as a result of the sustained drop in the price of copper, the main state-owned company had to go into debt to meet its financial commitments.

One of them is the delivery of US$707 million to the Armed Forces—an amount recorded as of September 2016—by virtue of the Copper Law (which is no longer classified). The milestone only served to illustrate the extent to which the Copper Law has become a straitjacket for Codelco.

By forcing the copper company to hand over 10% of its sales to the Armed Forces, the State is stripped of a significant flow of resources for public policy. One only needs to look at the figures to quantify the legal diversion of resources imposed under the dictatorship (by changing 10% of profits to 10% of copper sales): in 2015, some US$858 million went to the Armed Forces (see note in El Mercurio).

In addition to the cut the Armed Forces take from the State through the Copper Law, there is the other capital flight that means the Treasury is the only sector that maintained the privilege of the old pension system when the AFP system came into effect in 1980.

According to information provided by Cristián Rojas, executive vice president of the National Defense Pension Fund (Capredena), to the Chamber of Deputies commission investigating irregularities in the pensions of the Armed Forces and Order, in 2015 Capredena distributed $911 billion in pensions. 94% of that figure is a fiscal contribution, and only the remaining 6% corresponds to the contributions of the uniformed personnel.

Between 2011 and 2015, the State has disbursed a total of nearly $3.8 trillion (millions of millions of pesos) to support the Capredena retirement fund. The figure is equivalent to 119 Teletones (based on 2016 fundraising) or the cost of building 42 hospitals with state-of-the-art equipment, like the one inaugurated in Rancagua in April 2016 ($90 billion).

With the money of all Chileans, a system is financed that serves almost 107,000 former Armed Forces officials (and their families through pensions and survivor benefits). All of them enjoy privileges that expose the shortcomings of the individual capitalization system that governs the rest of the population, where as of November of this year, the average old-age pension does not exceed $192,000, according to the Superintendence of Pensions.

CIPER had access to the list of former Army, Navy, and Air Force (FACH) officers who retired in the 2006-2016 period and who receive Capredena pensions. There are 3,090 cases that represent 13%—the highest stratum—of the beneficiaries of this system.

The average pension for Armed Forces officers is close to $2.3 million. On the list of Capredena-pensioned officers, 17 former members of the Armed Forces stand out with pensions of over $4 million. The highest corresponds to that of the former FACH brigadier general Patricio Franjola Buigley, who retired in July 2012 with a pension of $5.9 million.

Because Capredena pensions are adjusted by 100% according to the variation of the Consumer Price Index (CPI), what Franjola receives today, four and a half years after his retirement, is $6.8 million. The amount of the Armed Forces officers' pensions, in contrast to those of the civilian world, is not the only thing that stands out from the list of more than three thousand former officers reviewed by CIPER.

The enormous resources that the State injects to sustain that pension system—0.9% of the national GDP in 2012, according to the Bravo Commission—are also used to cover millionaire pensions for former uniformed personnel convicted of or being prosecuted for human rights violations and various types of fraud.

The average monthly pension received by this group of 38 retired uniformed personnel amounts to $2.7 million. Among the more than three thousand cases reviewed, there appear, for example, high-ranking officers convicted of homicide and aggravated kidnapping at the Pisagua Prisoner Camp; a lieutenant colonel subjected to a double trial for the aggravated homicide of five MIR leaders on Janequeo and Fuente Ovejuna streets; a colonel involved in the disappearance of 14 peasants in Paine, another in the murder of singer-songwriter Víctor Jara, and a third in the brutal attack against Rodrigo Rojas de Negri and Carmen Gloria Quintana ("Quemados Case"). Also listed is a doctor and colonel—indicted in 2002—accused of overseeing torture and drugging prisoners whose whereabouts remain unknown; private secretaries of Pinochet convicted of embezzlement of public funds in the "Riggs Case"; a dozen uniformed personnel involved in acts of corruption such as the "Frigates Case," the "Mirage Case," or "Milicogate"; and even a captain who became one of the biggest drug trafficking kingpins in Chile. According to CIPER's calculations, the annual amount of pensions paid by Capredena to these 38 uniformed personnel involved in illicit acts who retired between 2006 and 2016 amounts to more than $1.2 billion. In the list of these pensioners, CIPER also identified more than 20 former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) and the National Intelligence Center (CNI), repressive agencies of the Augusto Pinochet regime. Their pensions reach an average of $2.5 million. The serious matter is that some remain linked to the Armed Forces, mainly in educational roles in different Army units. CIPER's investigation detected at least half a dozen former CNI and DINA agents who appear re-hired at the War Academy and also at the Military School as Contract Personnel (PAC) or Civilian Professors (PC). That means they all receive significant remuneration in addition to their pensions. An internal Army document obtained by CIPER shows that a retired military officer with the rank of general can receive $2.5 million if re-hired to perform PAC duties in the institution. An amount that is added to their retirement, which for retired generals averages over $3.2 million.

PENSIONS AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Between late September 1973 and June 1974, 26 people were executed at the Pisagua Prisoner Camp (Tarapacá Region). Among them was the young conscript and PC militant, Miguel Nash Sáez, who refused to repress the population and was riddled with bullets in the back.

His body has still not been found. In January 2009, retired Army Colonel Roberto Ampuero Alarcón was indicted as a co-perpetrator of the kidnapping and aggravated homicide of Nash and other Pisagua prisoners.

Ampuero had retired 10 months earlier, in March 2008, with a pension of $2.6 million. In August 2016, Ampuero was sentenced to 15 years and one day of major imprisonment in its maximum degree, as the perpetrator of the repeated crime of aggravated kidnapping of Nash, Jesús Cañas Cañas, and Juan Jiménez Vidal.

Also as the perpetrator of the aggravated homicide of Marcelo Guzmán Fuentes, Juan Calderón Villalón, and Luis Alberto Lizardi Lizardi. To date, Ampuero's adjusted pension is close to $3.6 million. Retired Colonel Gabriel Guerrero Reeve was also involved in those crimes; he retired in January 2010 with a pension of $2.1 million.

Guerrero, also sentenced last August to 15 years and one day, receives a pension of almost $2.6 million today. On December 26, the case in which Ampuero and Guerrero are involved was elevated to the Santiago Court of Appeals for review.

In August 2016, retired Army Colonel Pedro Collado Martí was convicted as the perpetrator of the aggravated kidnapping of Socialist militants Jorge Marín Rossel and Williams Millar Sanhueza, both detained in September 1973 in Iquique.

Collado, indicted in 2008 and sentenced to 10 years and one day, receives a pension of $2.6 million. Currently, the court is finalizing the notification of the ruling to those convicted in this case. Retired Colonel Carlos Durán Low was convicted in February 2016, along with five other former CNI agents, to 10 years and one day of major imprisonment in its medium degree for the aggravated homicide of professor and MIR member Federico Álvarez Santibáñez in September 1979 in Santiago.

Durán retired in March 2007 and today receives a pension of $2.5 million. In April 2016, the ruling was appealed, and the Court ordered new proceedings. Retired General and former member of the Army Intelligence Battalion (BIE), Julio Cerda Carrasco, was sentenced to five years and one day as an accomplice to the aggravated kidnappings of five members of the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (FPMR) perpetrated in September 1987.

Cerda, indicted since May 2007, retired in March of that same year and today enjoys a pension of $3.1 million. The sentence in this case—in which 33 former CNI agents are involved—was ratified by the Court of Appeals in June 2015 and is currently at the Supreme Court.

Retired Army Colonel Osvaldo Andrés Magaña Bau was indicted in July 2015 for the aggravated kidnapping of 14 peasants from the Villa el Escorial settlement in Paine, all of whom were executed between September and October 1973 (Cuesta Chada).

The colonel retired in February 2007 and today has a pension of $2.6 million. A figure similar to the pension received by retired Army Colonel Jorge Smith Gumucio, accused in July 2015 of being one of the perpetrators of the kidnapping and aggravated homicide of Víctor Jara and the former director of the Gendarmerie, Littré Quiroga.

It was in 2015 that the justice system indicted active-duty Colonel Julio Castañer González for his alleged responsibility in the death of photographer Rodrigo Rojas de Negri and for the serious injuries suffered by Carmen Gloria Quintana after they were burned alive in July 1986 in Santiago.

Castañer was accused by a former conscript of being the one who set fire to the bodies of De Negri and Quintana after they were doused with gasoline. The colonel retired in January 2016 with a pension of $2.8 million.

In October 2016, the lawyers for the accused requested the dismissal of the case, which was denied. New proceedings were also ordered. The doctor and retired Aviation Colonel Alejandro Forero Álvarez has had a brilliant career as a cardiologist at the Indisa Clinic.

His resume has a black mark. He is accused of being one of the doctors who provided services to the so-called "Joint Command," overseeing torture and drugging prisoners who are now disappeared. Forero was indicted in 2002 along with about twenty members of that repressive organization for illicit association and the illegal detention of communist militant Víctor Vega Riquelme (January 1976).

In May 2002, the justice system revoked those indictments, not because they were innocent, but because the crimes had prescribed. Forero retired in August 2014 and today receives a pension of $2.5 million.

On the list of Capredena pensioners that CIPER obtained, retired Army General Víctor Lizárraga Arias also appears, an important BIE officer. In 2010, he was convicted of being part of the illicit association that participated in the assassination of the colonel and then-head of acquisitions of the Army's Logistics Directorate, Gerardo Huber (1992).

On November 18, Lizárraga—who today receives a pension of $3.1 million—was sentenced to 205 days of effective imprisonment as the perpetrator of five repeated crimes of bribery in the so-called "Frigates Case." Lizárraga was accused of bribing a Korean public official so that the arms brokerage company the officer represented would obtain commissions for sales of war devices to the Army.

The illicit acts were committed between 2007 and 2008, when the general was already being prosecuted for the Huber crime.

FROM THE MIRAGE CASE TO MILICOGATE

Retired FACH General Florencio Dublé Pizarro was indicted in early 2009 as an accomplice to the embezzlement of public funds in the controversial trial over bribes in the purchase of 25 Mirage aircraft.

The investigation by Judge Omar Astudillo determined that US$15 million had been allocated to the payment of illicit commissions in the transaction and that Dublé received at least one bank transfer for US$60,000.

Florencio Dublé retired in December 2006 and today receives a pension of $3.1 million. The sentence in the case should be known in the coming days. The name of retired Army Colonel Clovis Montero Barra came to the fore in March 2015 after the latest of the great scandals within the Army broke out: the fraud of almost $5.5 billion perpetrated by military personnel with Copper Law funds ("Milicogate").

In February 2016, Montero was indicted by Judge Omar Astudillo as the perpetrator of the repeated crime of fraud against the treasury and document forgery. Montero is also being sued by the Internal Revenue Service (SII) for tax crimes.

The colonel—who retired in May 2015 and receives a pension of $2.5 million—is accused of obtaining more than 160 invoices from a supplier for nearly $980 million for non-existent services or acquisitions.

Also indicted in this same case is retired Colonel Jorge Frez Ramírez, who served as head of the Army Treasury's Finance Department. It was Montero himself who declared that Frez knew of the falsity of the documents, also accusing him of receiving money for the processing and payment of the false invoices.

Frez—who is imprisoned at the No. 1 Military Police Regiment in Peñalolén—retired in February 2015 with a pension of $2.5 million. Also appearing on the list to which CIPER had access are two high-ranking officers convicted in one of the branches of the "Riggs Case" (the ruling is under appeal).

They are two of the officers who were private secretaries to Augusto Pinochet: retired colonels Gabriel Vergara Cifuentes and Juan Mac-Lean Vergara, both convicted in the first instance to four years of supervised release for embezzlement of public funds.

Mac-Lean retired in April 2009 and today receives a $2.9 million pension. Vergara, meanwhile, did so in July 2011, and his pension amounts to $2.6 million. In July 2009, retired Frigate Captain Jesús Sáez Luna retired and today receives a pension of $2.1 million.

Three years later, 150 kilos of cocaine and base paste were seized from Sáez at a residence in Valparaíso. The Prosecutor's Office established that Sáez was the operational head of the gang: "He is the highest-ranking defendant we have managed to capture, because the subject was a true mafia boss," noted the prosecutor in charge of the investigation.

Sáez's departure from the Navy was not with honors. Shortly before his retirement, he was accused of the theft of a hyperbaric chamber.

THE SHADOW OF THE DICTATORSHIP

In December 2006, Army General Ricardo Hargreaves Butrón was discharged from the institution. In the middle of that month, days after the death of Augusto Pinochet, in an interview with Prensa Austral of Punta Arenas, Hargreaves (Commander-in-Chief of the V Division, Magallanes Region) referred to the dictator in the following terms: "I was a participant in Pinochet's cause and I continue to share it (...) we owe him many things, not only as an Army, but as a country." The Commander-in-Chief of the Army at the time, Óscar Izurieta, asked for his resignation.

It was a clear sign of the new times that were running in the military institution, which was reinforced in 2009 when Izurieta terminated the fee-based contracts held by a group of former DINA and CNI agents involved in human rights trials.

There was talk then of a cleanup within the institution. But Hargreaves' discharge did not mean his departure from the Army. He remained linked to the institution as manager of Corporate Affairs of the Army's Factories and Arsenals of Chile (FAMAE) and also as a professor at the Military School.

According to the Capredena list, Hargreaves retired only in August 2014 and today receives a pension of $3.5 million. To that amount are added his fees for academic work. At least until November of last year, the retired general was president of the Center for Professors of the Military School.

UNDER THE SHELTER OF THE ACADEMY

The Army War Academy is also a refuge for many uniformed personnel who, once retired, remain linked to the institution as Contract Personnel (PAC) or Civilian Professors (PC). This allows them to add regular income to their pensions or even, after at least three years of service, to re-liquidate their pensions upwards.

A confidential Army document to which CIPER had access indicates that a retired officer with the rank of colonel or general hired as a PAC can earn between $1.5 million and $2.5 million per month. For brigadier generals, the salary as a PAC, apart from the retirement they receive, reaches $2,526,910.

That of a colonel, lieutenant colonel, or major reaches $1,458,112 (see document). A former civilian Army official who requested anonymity defined the War Academy as a "paybox for favors" and as a "protection network" among former uniformed personnel. "There are retired military personnel hired as PACs at the War Academy for administrative tasks who also teach classes and have contracts as civilian professors (PC) for up to 12 hours.

It is impossible for them to fulfill the functions of both contracts. The control system is a signature book that no one audits," a former uniformed officer who knows how the War Academy operates pointed out to CIPER.

Another uniformed officer told CIPER that both at the War Academy and at the Military School, former officers linked to the dictatorship's repressive agencies still teach classes or perform administrative duties (as PCs and PACs), several of whom enjoy succulent pensions.

CIPER's investigation detected at least half a dozen former uniformed personnel in that situation on the official lists. One of them is retired Colonel Rodolfo Ortega Prado, who was head of the CNI in Punta Arenas between 1985 and 1989 (he used the alias "Rodrigo").

On February 29, 2004, La Nación Domingo published a report titled "A CNI in Madrid." There, Ortega appears involved in the 1988 death of the 23-year-old socialist Susana Ovando Coñué in Punta Arenas. When the report appeared, in which it is said that at least 10 former CNI agents identified him as their boss in Punta Arenas the same year of Ovando's murder, Ortega was Chile's military attaché at the embassy in Madrid.

In March 2004, the retired colonel appeared before the justice system as a witness for this case. This was the version the colonel gave to La Nación about Susana Ovando's death: "The CNI in Punta Arenas was a minimal office in charge of administrative matters, without operational capacity to detain.

In the period that I was head of the CNI in Punta Arenas, no one was ever detained." Ortega retired in February 2007 and his pension amounts to almost $2.6 million. But the former head of the CNI in Punta Arenas has remained linked to the Army, receiving other high fees.

He is director of the Master's in Military History and Strategic Thought at the War Academy. CIPER had access to the list of academics who will teach subjects at the War Academy in 2017. In that Excel spreadsheet, the names of the professors, the modules, and the academic hours contemplated for each course appear.

There, retired Colonel Ortega—who holds a doctorate from the Complutense University of Madrid—appears as a professor in the subjects of "JGS Execution (War Games)" and "Geostrategy," which are taught in the modules "Command and Advisory II," "Command and Advisory III," and "Strategy II." Another former CNI agent who also appears on the list of professors at the War Academy for 2017 is the former Chief of the Army General Staff, General Guillermo Castro Muñoz: as a Civilian Professor (PC) in "research and publication" tasks.

Castro is also president of the War Academy Graduates Center. General Castro belonged to the National Intelligence Center between 1979 and 1982. It was he himself who acknowledged it in a 2003 judicial statement (as a witness) in the trial for the massacre of 22 peasants in Paine (October 1973).

In January 2008, Castro gave a second statement in which he admitted that he was part of a rifle company at the "Cuartel Dos" of the San Bernardo Infantry School, used as a detention center (Cerro Chena), a unit that participated in the murders of the 22 peasants.

And he stated that he never saw detainees at that barracks and that he only found out later through the press that there were any. General Castro has not been prosecuted by the justice system. In June 2015, Colonel Carl Marowski Pilowsky retired, who appears on the list of CNI members that the Army sent to the current Supreme Court judge, Sergio Muñoz, when he was investigating the Tucapel Jiménez crime.

There are several tasks that Marowski currently continues to perform in the Army and that allow him to inflate his $2.8 million pension. Sources consulted by CIPER indicated that the retired colonel is allegedly hired as a PAC in the Army's Education and Doctrine Command (Education Division).

Marowski also serves as an academic for the Diploma in Military Higher Education at the War Academy and appears on the 2017 list as a "Civilian Professor" (PC) with "research and publication" tasks. In September 2016, Carl Marowski attended the Chamber of Deputies Defense Commission.

He did so in his capacity as "secretary general of the War Academy." Another of the retired military personnel linked to the War Academy who belonged to Pinochet's escort group that gave rise to the DINA's Mulchén Brigade is retired General Eduardo Ludovico Aldunate Hermann.

On the 2017 professor list, Aldunate—who retired in July 2009 and today receives a pension of $3 million—appears with fees for "strategic research" tasks. Aldunate was also head of Chilean troops in Haiti before retiring.

Retired Colonel José Francisco Enberg Castro also joined the CNI. He retired in February 2014 and currently receives a pension of $2.8 million. On the list of subjects that the War Academy will teach in 2017, Enberg appears as a "Civilian Professor" (PC) in "teaching management." In June 2013, a list with 1,500 uniformed personnel and civilian former DINA agents was leaked to the press.

On that list appears the name of retired General Enrique Slater Escanilla, who retired in September 2010. In a note published on the Military School's website in October 2015, Slater appears as a Civilian Professor (he has been teaching at the Military School for more than 10 years) and also as head of the institution's Academic Department.

Slater, whose pension is today $3.2 million, also appears as an advisor (between March and August 2016) to the Army's Education Division. His task: "to provide axiology advice for the drafting of the Ethos regulation of the Army of Chile."

Source: ciperchile.cl, January 16, 2017

Association of Relatives of Political Executions files a complaint against pension fraud in the Carabineros and Armed Forces

“It is especially serious that there are individuals convicted of crimes against humanity in facilities such as Punta Peuco, or at liberty, enjoying substantial pensions paid for by all Chileans,” stated the AFEP.

On June 27, the Association of Relatives of Political Executions (AFEP) went to the Justice Center to join the lawsuit against those found responsible, whether as authors, accomplices, or cover-ups, for the commission of the crime of Subsidy Fraud within the Armed Forces and Carabineros of Chile.

“The motivation for becoming a party to this lawsuit is based on the detection of numerous cases of former officials of the Armed Forces and Carabineros of Chile, who benefit from substantial pensions known as Second Class Disability pensions, and who currently work in public or private organizations performing functions similar to those they held in the Armed Forces institutions,” the association explained.

This is in consideration of the fact that, according to Law N°18.948, the Constitutional Organic Law of the Armed Forces, such pensions correspond to those who suffer from illnesses or injuries that prevent them from continuing in service and that partially incapacitate them from working in the private sector.

“Even more serious, from our perspective, is the existence of individuals convicted of crimes against humanity in facilities such as Punta Peuco, or at liberty, enjoying substantial pensions paid for by all Chileans, given that they are not governed by the individual capitalization system,” the AFEP emphasized.

The cases Some of the most notorious cases of former military personnel and Carabineros receiving these types of pensions are:

Roberto Ampuero Alarcón,

Army colonel (ret.), retired in March 2008 with a pension of $2,600,000; the readjusted pension is around $3,600,000. In August 2016, he was sentenced to 15 years and one day of major imprisonment in its maximum degree as the author of the repeated crime of qualified kidnapping of Nash, Jesús Cañas Cañas, and Juan Jiménez Vidal.

He was also convicted as the author of the qualified homicide of Marcelo Guzmán Fuentes, Juan Calderón Villalón, and Luis Alberto Lizardi Lizardi.

Julio Castañer González,

Colonel (ret.), retired in January 2016 with a pension of $2,800,000. In March 2019, he was sentenced as the author of the qualified homicide of Rodrigo Rojas de Negri and the frustrated qualified homicide of Carmen Gloria Quintana to 10 years and one day of imprisonment.

Pedro Collado Martí,

Army colonel (ret.), who retired with a pension of $2,600,000. In August 2016, he was sentenced as the author of the qualified kidnapping of socialist militants Jorge Marín Rossel and Williams Millar Sanhueza, both detained in September 1973.

Carlos Durán Low,

Colonel (ret.), who retired in March 2007 with a pension of $2,500,000. In February 2016, he was sentenced along with five other former CNI agents to 10 years and one day of major imprisonment in its medium degree for the qualified homicide of professor and MIR member Federico Álvarez Santibáñez in September 1979, in Santiago.

Osvaldo Andrés Magaña Bau,

Army colonel (ret.), who retired in February 2007 with a pension of $2,600,000. In July 2015, he was prosecuted for the qualified kidnapping of 14 peasants from the Villa el Escorial settlement in Paine, all of whom were executed between September and October 1973 (Cuesta Chada).

Jorge Smith Gumucio,

Army colonel (ret.) who retired with a pension of $2,600,000. In July 2015, he was accused of being one of the authors of the kidnapping and qualified homicide of Víctor Jara and the former director of the Gendarmerie, Littré Quiroga.

Source: eldesconcierto.cl, July 4, 2019

47 years after the events | Justice sentences retired military officers for the kidnappings of Jorge Marín and William Millar

The Santiago Court of Appeals sentenced three retired Army members as authors of the crime of qualified kidnapping of Jorge Rogelio Marín Rossel and Williams Millar Sanhueza. These crimes were perpetrated in September 1973 in the city of Iquique.

In a unanimous ruling (case file 201-2017), the Sixth Chamber of the appellate court—composed of ministers Paola Plaza, Maritza Villadangos, and Guillermo de la Barra—confirmed the sentence that condemned Miguel Chile Aguirre Álvarez, Blas Daniel Barraza Quinteros, and Pedro Santiago Collado Martí to 10 years and one day of imprisonment as authors of the crimes, after ruling out the possibility of applying the statute of limitations or partial statute of limitations, as these were crimes against humanity.

“We are facing a state policy of public order control that authorized State agents to detain and even deprive citizens of their lives or make them disappear, without consequences, due to the guarantee of impunity that the regime itself generated regarding the criminal and all other responsibilities attributable to them.

This reveals that their actions were either ordered or at least had the approval or tolerance of those responsible for designing and implementing this state policy of public order control. In the words of the Judicial Prosecutor’s Office, ‘the regime prevailing at the time proceeded through its agents to detain and torture the victims, with their whereabouts remaining unknown to this day, forced disappearance being a crime that offends all of humanity,’” the ruling states. “Furthermore, in relation to the gradual statute of limitations of the action exercised, it is convenient to remember that Article 103 of the Penal Code is not only included in the same title as the statute of limitations, but is developed after it, which reveals the close link between both institutions,” it adds. For the Santiago Court: “It cannot be overlooked that the estimation of the gradual statute of limitations regarding those responsible for the commission of crimes against humanity affects the principle of proportionality of the penalty, because given the indisputable gravity of the facts, perpetrated with the intervention of State agents, it determines that the response to the author of the transgression must be consistent with the impairment of the legal interest and the culpability with which they acted.” In the civil aspect, the appealed sentence was confirmed “with the declaration that the Chilean Treasury is ordered to pay the following indemnifications for moral damages: $20,000,000 (twenty million pesos) to each of the plaintiffs Héctor Marín Rossel, Hugo Marín Rossel, Ana María Marín Rossel, and Wilfredo Sepúlveda Rossel, siblings of Jorge Rogelio Marín Rossel; $15,000,000 (fifteen million pesos) to Aura Teresa Peña Martínez, spouse of Williams Millar Sanhueza; $30,000,000 (thirty million pesos) to each of the plaintiffs Lisabeth Millar Peña and Alexis Millar Peña, daughters of Williams Millar Sanhueza; and $50,000,000 (fifty million pesos) to Salomé Castillo Parraga, spouse of Jorge Marín Rossel.”

Source: elsoldeiquique.cl, May 19, 2020

Three former Army officers sentenced for the torture of 35 political prisoners in Pisagua and Iquique in 1973 and 1974

The minister on extraordinary assignment for human rights violation cases of the Courts of Appeals of Arica, Iquique, Antofagasta, Copiapó, and La Serena, Vicente Hormazábal Abarzúa, sentenced three former Army officers for their responsibility in the repeated crime of applying torture to 35 political prisoners committed in the city of Iquique and the town of Pisagua, during various periods between 1973 and 1974.

In the ruling (case file 21-2012. Volume A), the visiting minister sentenced former colonels Pedro Santiago Collado Martí to 15 years of imprisonment as the author of the crime regarding 29 victims; Conrado Vicente García Giaier must serve 13 years of imprisonment for his responsibility in the case of 13 victims; and Arturo Alberto Contador Rosales to 8 years of imprisonment for his responsibility in the case of eight victims.

In the ruling, Minister Hormazábal Abarzúa established that, starting from the military coup of September 1973, countless people from Iquique were detained for being sympathizers or members of left-wing political parties or supporters of the government of Salvador Allende.

These detainees, men and women of varying ages, a group ranging from adolescents to middle-aged people, were taken to various military and police facilities by orders of General Ernesto Carlos Joaquín Forestier Haensgen (deceased), commander-in-chief of the VI Army Division and head of the State of Siege zone of the Tarapacá Province.

The detainees were then transferred to the Telecommunications Regiment of the time, where their data was taken and they were placed in various areas or courtyards, and immediately separated by political affiliation or other reasons, confining them in containers, “pigsties” (a site where the military raised pigs), or oases (a sector where there was vegetation).

A portion of these people were interrogated in a sector of the unit located on a second floor, presumably in the building corresponding to the infirmary, and a number of them were tortured in various forms and intensities, depending on the political importance the military regime attributed to them, and then, immediately or after a few days, taking into account that same imputed political relevance, they were sent to Pisagua, usually in trucks guarded by Army personnel.

The detained women were held and interrogated in the Logistics Battalion, controlled by Army personnel. Subsequently, they were sent to the Buen Pastor, guarded by nuns, where they had to share space with common prisoners, and then they were sent to Pisagua, where they were kept captive on the second floor of a theater under armed guard.

The Pisagua Prisoner Camp was directed by the then-lieutenant colonel Ramón Caupolicán Larraín Larraín (deceased), who in turn received direct orders from Forestier Haensgen. The camp guards were formed by a contingent led by a captain, who was assisted by two or more lower-ranking officers, lieutenants or second lieutenants, and by the respective enlisted troops.

Larraín ordered the entry of the detainees and under his command, direct or delegated to the officers guarding the camp, sessions that the victims called “general softening” were executed, consisting of blows of all kinds, on various parts of the body, with greater or lesser force, “tasks” executed by the contingent on duty, with certain Carabineros or Army officers standing out and the officers in charge of the guard repeating these tasks.

In the Prisoner Camp, the prisoners were placed by political importance or by parties on different floors of the facility, the lowest being the so-called “catacombs,” cells that were in the worst conditions of habitability and overcrowding.

Along with the “collective softening” sessions, there were individual interrogations, with the aim of obtaining forced confessions, in which a determined and permanent group of torturers led by prosecutor Mario Sergio Acuña Riquelme (deceased) and integrated, among others, by Roberto Fuentes Zambrano (deceased), René Valdivia Castro (deceased), Miguel Chile Aguirre Álvarez (deceased), and Blas Daniel Barraza Quinteros (deceased), who on some occasions interacted with officers in charge of the custody of the Prisoner Camp, applied torture that left the victims with physical and/or psychological sequelae. This team of interrogators traveled regularly to Pisagua from Iquique in a small plane. The reason this group did not have a stable presence in Pisagua was because they executed the same practices against detainees at the Telecommunications Regiment, where they were under the command of Pedro Santiago Collado Martí, who directed the Military Intelligence Service, composed of military and Carabineros, and who held meetings with Acuña Riquelme at least once a week. The torture consisted of blows to the body with rifle butts, hands, feet; placing the detainees naked or semi-naked on the floor and walking on them, sleep deprivation, exposure to the sun for hours and to the cold of the night without clothing, climbing and descending hills through crawling exercises, throwing them inside drums down slopes, electricity in certain parts of the body, submerging the head in water (submarine), blows to the ears (telephone), mock executions, interrogations in which a firearm was left by their side, hanging from their extremities with the aim of stretching the body for prolonged periods, rape, sexual abuse, keeping them with scarce food rations, and the constant threat of being executed, them or their relatives, among others. Only a portion of the detainees in Pisagua were subjected to a War Council, which were held in the school of that town, formed by various officers specially called for the purpose, with Mario Acuña serving as prosecutor and Ramón Larraín Larraín and Carlos Forestier Haensgen, interchangeably, as ratifiers of the sentences ordered by the Council. A large percentage of prisoners were condemned informally, that is, without a written sentence or at least without them receiving one; many times they were condemned solely on the merit of their confessions obtained through torture. Summary by Darío Núñez

Source: resumen.cl, November 9, 2023

Minister Vicente Hormazábal sentences retired Army officers for the application of torture to 35 victims in Iquique and Pisagua

In the civil sphere, Minister Hormazábal Abarzúa accepted, with costs, the claims for damages filed and ordered the Treasury to pay the total sum of $2,570,000,000 (two billion five hundred seventy million pesos) for moral damages to 33 of the victims.

The minister on extraordinary assignment for human rights violation cases of the Courts of Appeals of Arica, Iquique, Antofagasta, Copiapó, and La Serena, Vicente Hormazábal Abarzúa, sentenced three retired Army officers for their responsibility in the repeated crime of applying torture to Juan Alberto Araya Álvarez, Nelson Eddy Clery Cabezas, Freddy Beder Alonso Oyanadel, Luis Alberto Caucoto Ortega, Guillermo Ernesto Morales Armas, Héctor Reinaldo Pavelic Sanhueza, Hugo Medardo Bolívar Salazar, Héctor Mateo Taberna Gallegos, Luis Emilio Morales Marino, Alberto Orlando Viveros Madariaga, Juan Enrique Mercado Jordán, Eduardo Bernal Acuña, Haroldo Segundo Quinteros Bugueño, Miguel Belisario Cabrera Riquelme, Ornaldo Jesús Bacian Callpa, Rigoberto Orlando Echeverría Allende, Ángel Gabriel Prieto Henríquez, Francisco Germán Prieto Henríquez, Manuel Evaristo Espinoza Godoy, Juan Luis Gómez Guerrero, Carlos Antonio Lillo Quea, Juan Antonio Prieto Henríquez, Luis Pedro Caroca Vásquez, Manuel Guillermo Jiménez Méndez, Óscar Fernando Pizarro Talamilla, Raúl Ángel Díaz Bravo, José Ramón Steinberg Montes, Vladislav Dusan Kuzmicic Calderón, Juan Rolando Morales Herrera, Luis Rafael Alberto Angulo Córdova, Héctor Francisco Inostroza Núñez, Orlando Herrera Pinto, Luis Segundo González Vivas, Ernesto Paul Montoya Peredo, and Sylvia Amanda Urtubia Bobadilla. These crimes were committed in the city of Iquique and the town of Pisagua, during various periods between 1973 and 1974.

In the ruling (case file 21-2012. Volume A), the visiting minister sentenced Pedro Santiago Collado Martí to 15 years of imprisonment as the author of the crime regarding 29 victims. Meanwhile, Conrado Vicente García Giaier must serve 13 years of imprisonment for his responsibility in the case of 13 victims, and Arturo Alberto Contador Rosales to 8 years of imprisonment for his responsibility in the case of eight victims.

In the ruling, Minister Hormazábal Abarzúa established the following facts:

a) That starting from September 11, 1973, countless people from Iquique, sympathizers, supporters, or members of the Communist, Socialist, or MAPU political parties, were detained, being accused in some cases of specific acts, such as organizing plans to poison the city's water, assaulting barracks, belonging to paramilitary groups, kidnapping children of military personnel, organizing, carrying out, and participating in clandestine meetings, stockpiling weapons, seizing basic public services, communications, and the port by force of arms, among others, without any accusation other than their sympathy, closeness, or membership in a left-wing political party that, at the time, was constituted and functioning within the institutional legality of the country, or of being a member of the Revolutionary Left Movement, MIR.

b) That all these people, men and women of varying ages, a group ranging from adolescents to middle-aged people, by orders of General Ernesto Carlos Joaquín Forestier Haensgen (deceased), commander-in-chief of the VI Army Division and head of the State of Siege zone of the Tarapacá Province, were taken, in the case of the men, to the Sixth Army Division or the First Police Station of Carabineros of Iquique, and that part of their detention invariably ended at the Telecommunications Regiment of the time, where they were placed in what could be called courtyards, and then separated by political affiliation or other reasons, in containers, “pigsties” (a site where the military raised pigs), or oases (a sector where there was vegetation), all were asked for their data by Army personnel, with a portion of these people being interrogated in a sector of the unit located on a second floor, presumably in the building corresponding to the infirmary, and a number of them being tortured in various forms and intensities, depending on the political importance the military regime attributed to them, and then, taking into account that same imputed political relevance, they were sent to Pisagua immediately or after a few days, usually in trucks, at early or late hours of the day, guarded by personnel of the same branch of the Armed Forces.

c) That, in the case of the women, their passage was through the Logistics Battalion, being controlled by Army personnel. Subsequently, they were sent to the Buen Pastor, guarded by nuns, where they had to share space with prisoners for common crimes, and then they were sent to Pisagua, where they were kept detained on the second floor of a theater under armed guard.

d) That the Pisagua Prisoner Camp was directed by Lieutenant Colonel Ramón Caupolicán Larraín Larraín (deceased), comptroller and commander of the Prisoner of War Camp and Military Garrison of Pisagua, who in turn received direct and peremptory orders from Ernesto Carlos Joaquín Forestier Haensgen.

The camp guards were formed by a contingent led by a captain, who was assisted by two or more lower-ranking officers, lieutenants or second lieutenants, and by the respective enlisted troops. Larraín ordered the entry of the detainees and under his command, direct or delegated to the officers guarding the camp, sessions that the victims called “general softening” were executed, consisting of blows of all kinds, on various parts of the body, with greater or lesser force, “tasks” executed by the contingent on duty, with certain Carabineros or Army officers standing out and the officers in charge of the guard repeating these tasks.

e) That, upon the Camp beginning to function, the prisoners were placed by political importance or by parties on different floors of the prison, the lowest being the so-called “catacombs,” cells that were in the worst conditions of habitability and overcrowding.

As time went on, the prisoners themselves were made to build pavilions to continue housing people, which were not finished being built, a period during which some of them enjoyed certain privileges due to their skills, fundamentally manual, such as cooks, shellfish divers, furniture makers, waiters, etc., although they did not stop noticing the physical effects that the beatings caused on their companions, the same period in which they received the visit of some journalists who, under the guise of the International Red Cross, and despite the renovation ordered by Commander Larraín, managed to record and inform the world about the existence of the Camp, a video that was converted into a document that is on record.

f) That only a portion of the accused detained in Pisagua were subjected to a War Council, which were held in the school of that town. There were councils for the Socialist, Communist, or multi-party groups, formed by various officers specially called for the purpose, with Mario Sergio Acuña Riquelme (deceased) serving as prosecutor and Ramón Larraín Larraín and Carlos Forestier Haensgen, interchangeably, as the ratifying entity of the sentences ordered by the Council.

A large percentage of prisoners were condemned informally, that is, without a written sentence or at least without them receiving one; many times they were condemned solely on the merit of their confessions obtained through torture, and having to travel by their own means to the places of serving their sentences, remaining imprisoned or relegated until their term, reduction of sentence, or conversion to exile.

g) That, along with the “collective softening” sessions, there were individual interrogations, with the aim of obtaining the aforementioned confessions, in which a determined and permanent group led by prosecutor Mario Acuña Riquelme and integrated, among others, by Roberto Fuentes Zambrano (deceased), René Valdivia Castro (deceased), Miguel Chile Aguirre Álvarez (deceased), and Blas Daniel Barraza Quinteros (deceased), who on some occasions interacted with officers in charge of the custody of the Prisoner Camp, applied torture that left the victims with physical and/or psychological sequelae, as accounted for by the expert reports carried out in accordance with the Istanbul Protocol by the Legal Medical Service.

h) That this team of interrogators traveled regularly to Pisagua from Iquique in a small plane piloted by Army officer Carlos Teodoro de la Barra Daniels (deceased). The reason this group did not have a stable presence in Pisagua was because they executed the same practices against detainees at the Telecommunications Regiment, where they were under the command of Pedro Santiago Collado Martí who, according to his own words, directed the Military Intelligence Service, composed of military and Carabineros, and who had a bond of friendship with prosecutor Mario Acuña Riquelme and held meetings that he calls “colloquial” at least once a week.

i) That, in general terms, the torture consisted of blows to the body with rifle butts, hands, feet, placing the detainees naked or semi-naked on the floor and walking on them, sleep deprivation, exposure to the sun for hours and to the cold of the night without clothing, climbing and descending hills through crawling exercises, throwing them inside drums down slopes, electricity in certain parts of the body, submerging the head in water (submarine), blows to the ears (telephone), mock executions, interrogations in which a firearm was left by their side, hanging from their extremities with the aim of stretching the body for prolonged periods, rape, sexual abuse, keeping them with scarce food rations, and the constant threat of being executed, them or their relatives, among others.

In the civil sphere, Minister Hormazábal Abarzúa accepted, with costs, the claims for damages filed and ordered the Treasury to pay the total sum of $2,570,000,000 (two billion five hundred seventy million pesos) for moral damages to 33 of the victims.

Source: pdju.cl, November 7, 2023

Minister Sergio Troncoso sentences retired Army officers to life imprisonment for qualified kidnappings in Iquique and Pisagua

“That, for what has been considered, this judge deems that it is normatively inappropriate to apply an amnesty to crimes against humanity, because norms of ius cogens are at stake, for which the penalization of these illicit acts is mandatory, and this has been repeatedly resolved by the higher courts of justice.”

The minister on extraordinary assignment for human rights violation cases of the La Serena Court of Appeals, Sergio Troncoso Espinoza, sentenced, with costs, retired Army colonel Conrado Vicente García Giaier to the penalty of life imprisonment, with the accessory penalties of absolute perpetual disqualification for public offices and positions, political rights, and professional titles, as the author of the repeated crime of qualified kidnapping of Artemio Rufino Salinas Valdivia, Gerardo Enrique Soudre Rojas, José Alejandro González Carreño, Damián Ernesto Rojas Gallardo, Carlos Aldo Valdivieso Martínez, Juan Adolfo Guillermo Petersen Gallardo, Luis Alberto Tapia Hidalgo, Patricio Alberto Polanco Polanco, Odesa Raquel Flores Tiayna, Alfonso Pedro Araya Pallero, and Eddie Omar Márquez Cortez. These crimes were committed in the town of Pisagua after September 11, 1973.

In the ruling (case file 21-2012 volume B), Minister Troncoso Espinoza sentenced, with costs, the former Army brigadier Pedro Santiago Collado Martí to the penalty of life imprisonment, with the accessory penalties of absolute perpetual disqualification for public offices and positions, political rights, and professional titles, as the author of the crime of applying torture to the victim Luis Fernando Fuentes López and the repeated crime of qualified kidnapping of Agusto Samuel Ahumada Gallardo, Enrique Silva Olivares, Mario del Carmen Magne Castillo, Artemio Rufino Salinas Valdivia, Rigoberto Ernesto Pizarro Prado, Ricardo Enrique Torres Morales, Ignelia Patricia Fuentes Rojas, Gerardo Enrique Soudre Rojas, José Alejandro González Carreño, Damián Enrique Villegas Castillo, Damián Ernesto Rojas Gallardo, Carlos Aldo Valdivieso Martínez, Juan Ernesto García Justiniano, Pedro Segundo Aguilera Sanquea, Juan Adolfo Guillermo Petersen Gallardo, Luis Alberto Tapia Hidalgo, Patricio Alberto Polanco Polanco, Odesa Raquel Flores Tiayna, Alfonso Pedro Araya Pallero, Jorge Ramón Zúñiga Poblete, and Eddie Omar Márquez Cortez. These crimes were committed in Iquique and Pisagua after September 11, 1973.

“That, having issued an indictment in this process, in accordance with the provisions of Article 424 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the Court already decided that there was no merit to decree the dismissal, which is why the reasoned order required by law was issued, so that this is more than sufficient to dismiss the request for dismissal made by the defense attorney for Conrado García.

Furthermore, the background information on which the incident-maker bases his arguments relates to events that occurred regarding certain victims and that are situated in the repressive actions developed inside the Telecommunications Regiment, without covering the set of charges that have been formulated against him in the present case.

Moreover, what was established in the cited ruling is only one more piece of evidence that can be refuted with the evidence presented in the current process, which will be analyzed later in this sentence. Therefore, the request will be rejected, with costs,” the ruling states.

The resolution adds that: “The most violent era of the entire repressive period corresponds to the first months of the de facto government, it being possible to indicate by way of example that, of the 3,197 victims of executions and forced disappearances identified by the Rettig Report, 1,823 occurred in the year 1973, and that 67.4% of the testimonies qualified by the Valech Commission report having been detained between September and December 1973 (18,364 people out of a total of 22,824 detentions).

From all of the above, it follows that the events that this investigation deals with, if true, would undoubtedly correspond to crimes against humanity, by including acts of torture perpetrated in a context of systematic or generalized oppression against a civilian population, typical of such a category of illicit acts.”

“That, for what has been considered, this judge deems that it is normatively inappropriate to apply an amnesty to crimes against humanity, because norms of ius cogens are at stake, for which the penalization of these illicit acts is mandatory, and this has been repeatedly resolved by the higher courts of justice,” it adds.

“Consequently, as it is mandatory for all State bodies to give strict application to the norms and principles of International Human Rights Law, which exclude any possibility of benefiting those responsible for crimes against humanity with the institution of amnesty, the allegations formulated in that sense by the Defense of Pedro Collado Martí will be rejected, with costs,” it concludes.

In the case, Minister Troncoso Espinoza decreed the acquittal of Collado Martí of the charges formulated against him as the author of the crime of applying torture to Encina Encina.

In the civil sphere, the visiting minister granted the claims for damages and ordered the Treasury to pay a total indemnity in the sum of $2,100,000,000 for moral damages to the plaintiffs, broken down into $50,000,000 in favor of Jorge Patricio Encina Encina; $80,000,000 to each of the plaintiffs Ahumada Gallardo, Silva Olivares, Pizarro Prado, Fuentes Rojas, González Carreño, Rojas Gallardo, Valdivieso Martínez, Polanco Polanco, Varela Barbagelata, and Flores Tiayna; $100,000,000 to each of the plaintiffs Magne Castillo, Salinas Valdivia, Fuentes López, Torres Morales, Soudre Rojas, Villegas Castillo, Aguilera Sanquea, Guillermo Petersen Gallardo, Araya Pallero, Zúñiga Poblete, and Márquez Cortez; and $150,000,000 to Tapia Hidalgo.

Softening In the resolution, Minister Troncoso Espinoza established the following facts:

“1.- That starting from September 11, 1973, countless people from Iquique, sympathizers, supporters, or members of the Communist, Socialist, or MAPU political parties, were detained, being accused in some cases of specific acts, such as organizing plans to poison the city's water, assaulting barracks, belonging to paramilitary groups, kidnapping children of military personnel, organizing, carrying out, and participating in clandestine meetings, stockpiling weapons, seizing basic public services, communications, and the port by force of arms, among others, without any accusation other than their sympathy, closeness, or membership in a left-wing political party that, at the time, was constituted and functioning within the institutional legality of the country, or of being a member of the Revolutionary Left Movement, MIR.

2.- That all these people, men and women of varying ages, a group ranging from adolescents to middle-aged people, by orders of General Ernesto Carlos Joaquín Forestier Haensgen (deceased), commander-in-chief of the VI Army Division and head of the State of Siege zone of the Tarapacá Province, were taken, in the case of the men, to the Sixth Army Division or the First Police Station of Carabineros of Iquique, and that part of their detention invariably ended at the Telecommunications Regiment of the time, where they were placed in what could be called courtyards, and then separated by political affiliation or other reasons, in containers, ‘pigsties’ (a site where the military raised pigs), or oases (a sector where there was vegetation inside the Regiment), all were asked for their data by Army personnel, with a portion of these people being interrogated in a sector of the military unit located on a second floor, presumably in the building corresponding to the infirmary, and another number of them being tortured in various forms and intensities, depending on the political importance the military regime attributed to them, and then, taking into account that same imputed political relevance, they were sent to Pisagua immediately or after a few days, usually in trucks, at early or late hours of the day, guarded by personnel of the same branch of the Armed Forces.

3.- That, in the case of the women, their passage was through the Logistics Battalion, being controlled by Army personnel. Subsequently, they were sent to the Buen Pastor, guarded by nuns, where they had to share space with prisoners for common crimes, and then they were sent to Pisagua, where they were kept detained on the second floor of the local theater under armed guard.

4.- That the Pisagua Prisoner Camp was directed by Lieutenant Colonel Ramón Caupolicán Larraín Larraín (deceased), comptroller and commander of the Prisoner of War Camp and Military Garrison of Pisagua, who in turn received direct and peremptory orders from Ernesto Carlos Joaquín Forestier Haensgen.

The camp guards were formed by a contingent led by a captain, who was assisted by two or more lower-ranking officers, lieutenants or second lieutenants, and by the respective enlisted troops. Larraín ordered the entry of the detainees and under his command, direct or delegated to the officers guarding the camp, sessions that the victims called ‘general softening’ were executed, consisting of blows of all kinds, on various parts of the body, with greater or lesser force, ‘tasks’ executed by the contingent on duty, with certain Carabineros or Army officers standing out and the officers in charge of the guard repeating these tasks.

5.- That, upon the Camp beginning to function, the prisoners were placed by political importance or by parties on different floors of the prison, the lowest being the so-called ‘catacombs,’ cells that were in the worst conditions of habitability and overcrowding.

As time went on, the prisoners themselves were made to build pavilions to continue housing people, which were not finished being built, a period during which some of them enjoyed certain privileges due to their skills, fundamentally manual, such as cooks, shellfish divers, furniture makers, waiters, etc., although they did not stop noticing the physical effects that the beatings caused on their companions, the same period in which they received the visit of some journalists who, under the guise of the International Red Cross, and despite the renovation ordered by Commander Larraín, managed to record and inform the world about the existence of the Camp, a video that was converted into a document that is on record.

6.- That only a portion of the accused detained in Pisagua were subjected to a War Council, which were held in the school of that town. There were councils for the Socialist, Communist, or multi-party groups, formed by various officers specially called for the purpose, with Mario Sergio Acuña Riquelme (deceased) serving as prosecutor and Ramón Larraín Larraín and Carlos Forestier Haensgen, interchangeably, as the ratifying entity of the sentences ordered by the Council.

A large percentage of prisoners were condemned informally, that is, without a written sentence or at least without them receiving one; many times they were condemned solely on the merit of their confessions obtained through torture, and having to travel by their own means to the places of serving their sentences, remaining imprisoned or relegated until their term, reduction of sentence, or conversion to exile.

7.- That, along with the ‘collective softening’ sessions, there were individual interrogations, with the aim of obtaining the aforementioned confessions, in which a determined and permanent group led by prosecutor Mario Acuña Riquelme and integrated, among others, by Roberto Fuentes Zambrano (deceased), René Valdivia Castro (deceased), Miguel Chile Aguirre Álvarez (deceased), and Blas Daniel Barraza Quinteros (deceased), who on some occasions interacted with officers in charge of the custody of the Prisoner Camp, applied torture that left the victims Agusto Ahumada Gallardo, Enrique Silva Olivares, Mario Magne Castillo, Artemio Salinas Valdivia, Rigoberto Pizarro Prado, Luis Fuentes López, Ricardo Torres Morales, Ignelia Fuentes Rojas, Gerardo Soudre Rojas, José González Carreño, Damián Villegas Castillo, Damián Rojas Gallardo, Carlos Valdivieso Martínez, Juan García Justiniano, Pedro Aguilera Sanquea, Juan Petersen Gallardo, Luis Tapia Hidalgo, Jorge Encina Encina, Patricio Polanco Polanco, Óscar Varela Barbagelata, Odesa Flores Tiayna, Alfonso Araya Pallero, Jorge Zúñiga Poblete, and Eddie Márquez Cortez with physical and/or psychological sequelae, as accounted for by the expert reports carried out in accordance with the Istanbul Protocol by the Legal Medical Service.

8.- That this team of interrogators traveled regularly to Pisagua from Iquique in a small plane piloted by Army officer Carlos Teodoro de la Barra Daniels (deceased). The reason this group did not have a stable presence in Pisagua was because they executed the same practices against detainees at the Telecommunications Regiment, where they were under the command of Pedro Santiago Collado Martí who, according to his own words, directed the Military Intelligence Service, composed of military and Carabineros, and who had a bond of friendship with prosecutor Mario Acuña Riquelme and held meetings that he calls ‘colloquial’ at least once a week.

9.- That, in general terms, the torture consisted of blows to the body with rifle butts, hands, feet, placing the detainees naked or semi-naked on the floor and walking on them, sleep deprivation, exposure to the sun for hours and to the cold of the night without clothing, climbing and descending hills through crawling exercises, throwing them inside drums down slopes, electricity in certain parts of the body, submerging the head in water (submarine), blows to the ears (telephone), mock executions, interrogations in which a firearm was left by their side, hanging from their extremities with the aim of stretching the body for prolonged periods, rape, sexual abuse, keeping them with scarce food rations, and the constant threat of being executed, them or their relatives, among others.”

Source: pdju.cl, January 2, 2025