Among the accused, all retired, are eight colonels and 23 non-commissioned officers from the Army, 40 officers and non-commissioned officers from the Carabineros, two former FACH agents, one former Navy agent, and seven former agents from the Investigative Police.

The biggest blow to the repression of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship was dealt yesterday by Minister Víctor Montiglio, who indicted 98 former agents from different branches of the Armed Forces, Carabineros, and the Investigative Police for 42 victims of Operation Colombo.

This is the largest resolution issued among the nearly 400 human rights violation cases currently being investigated in the country. It even surpassed the 67 former agents indicted by the same Judge Montiglio in 2007 for the crimes of the Brigada Lautaro and its Grupo Delfín at the Simón Bolívar barracks.

Among those indicted for Colombo are eight Army colonels (R), six of whom had not been indicted in any previous case. Also declared defendants were 23 Army non-commissioned officers (R), of whom at least 50 percent appear for the first time in this type of case.

Among these non-commissioned officers is Juvenal Piña, alias "El Elefante," a former agent of the Brigada Lautaro, who was the one who suffocated the clandestine communist leader (1976) Víctor Díaz with a plastic bag over his head, prior to injecting him with cyanide.

In addition, the magistrate indicted 40 former officer and non-commissioned officer agents of the Carabineros, including Ricardo Lawrence, Heriberto Acevedo, Claudio Pacheco, and José Mora, all former members of the same Brigade.

Among those prosecuted are also former agents who belonged to the Investigative Police. The only civilian (Army) is Juan Suárez. Of the total list, at least thirteen are already serving sentences for other cases (see list).

As of the closing of this edition, the accused were still being detained to be interned in different locations, such as the Peñalolén Military Police Battalion. Among the 42 victims for whom the minister issued his resolution are María Angélica Andreolli, Miguel Acuña Castillo, Juan Carlos Perelmann Ide, Juan Chacón Olivares, Jorge Müller Silva, Luis Guendelmann Wisniak, Mario Calderón Tapia, and Carmen Bueno Cifuentes.

Operation Colombo and the media

The list of the 119 was published in the magazine Lea (Buenos Aires) and the newspaper O Dia (Brazil) in 1975, information that was also false. Both publications were created by DINA agents. Operation Colombo was part of Operation Condor and consisted of a setup by the dictatorship to make the population believe that 119 detainees who were forcibly disappeared had clandestinely left for Argentina and died there in clashes with police and Army forces during the phase prior to the 1976 military coup in Argentina.

Some of those names appeared as militants "murdered" in Buenos Aires and its surroundings, with signs on their bodies stating they had been executed by their own comrades as a settling of scores due to internal disputes.

However, this also turned out to be a setup. The list of the 119 was published in the magazine Lea (Buenos Aires) and the newspaper O Dia (Brazil) in 1975, information that was also false. Both publications were created by DINA agents abroad and had only one edition.

In Chile, the pro-dictatorship press, such as the newspapers El Mercurio, La Tercera, Las Ultimas Noticias, and La Segunda, reproduced the intelligence services' setup. The headline of the evening paper remains in memory, which reported: "Exterminated like rats: 59 Chilean MIR members fall in military operation in Argentina." They were part of the list of the 119 disappeared of Colombo.

The former fugitive Raúl Iturriaga, who was one of those in charge of the DINA's foreign department, was the first to shed light on this operation in Buenos Aires. According to the former civilian agent Enrique Arancibia Clavel, convicted in Buenos Aires for the crime of General Carlos Prats and his wife, it was Iturriaga who met with him at the beginning of 1975 to ask him to prepare what was necessary because "we have to make some dead people from Operation Colombo appear." It was about preparing the appearance of the supposed bodies of Jaime Robotham and Luis Guendelmann as part of the setup.

List of the indicted

Army (all retired)

Víctor Molina Astete (colonel); Sergio Castillo González (col); Eduardo Guerra Guajardo (col); Víctor San Martín Jiménez (col); José Fuentes Torres (col); Manuel Carevic Cubillos (col); Jaime Paris Ramos (col); César Manríquez Bravo (col); Raúl Toro Montes (non-commissioned officer); Eduardo Reyes Lagos (nco); Orlando Torrejón Gatica (nco); Osvaldo Tapia Alvarez (nco.

Committed suicide); Juvenal Piña Garrido (nco. “El Elefante”); Juan Suárez Delgado (civilian); Nelson Paz Bustamante (nco); José Aravena Ruiz (nco); Luis Torres Méndez (nco); Raúl Soto Pérez (nco); Jorge Andrade Gómez (nco); Juan Escobar Valenzuela (nco); Rolando Concha Rodríguez (nco); Gustavo Apablaza Meneses (nco); Hiro Alvarez Vega (nco); Víctor Alvarez Droguett (nco); Jorge Venegas Silva (nco); Carlos Rinaldi Suazo (nco); Carlos Letelier Verdugo (nco); Reinaldo Concha Orellana (nco); Máximo Aliaga Soto (nco); Hugo Clavería Leiva (nco); Samuel Fuenzalida Devia (nco);

Investigative Police

Juan Urbina Cáceres; Hugo Hernández; Manuel Rivas Díaz; Herman Alfaro; Eugenio Fieldhouse; Osvaldo Castillo;

Carabineros (officers and non-commissioned officers all retired)

Gerardo Godoy García; Ciro Torres Sáez, Alejandro Molina Cisternas; Camilo Torres Negrier; Héctor Lira Aravena; José Fritz Esparza; Claudio Pacheco Fernández; Jorge Sagardia Monge; Sergio Castro Andrade; Luis Villarroel Gutiérrez; Armando Cofré Gómez; Fernando Roa Montaña; Gerardo Meza Acuña; Enrique Gutiérrez Rubilar; Luis Mora Cerda; José Muñoz Leal; Juan Duarte Gallegos; Carlos Miranda Meza; Rufino Jaime Astorga; Luis Urrutia Acuña; Luis Zúñiga Ovalle; Pedro Alfaro Hernández; Orlando Inostroza Lagos; Rosa Ramos Hernández; Gustavo Caruvan Soto; Héctor Valdebenito Araya; Manuel Avendaño González; José Mora Diocares; Guido Jara Brevis; Nelson Ortiz Vignolo; Ruderlindo Urrutia Jorquera; Héctor Flores Vergara; Jerónimo Neira Méndez; Manuel Montré Méndez; Heriberto del Carmen Acevedo; Claudio Orerllana de la Pinta; Nelson Iturriaga Cortés; Luis Gutiérrez Uribe; José Ojeda Obando;

Air Force Delia Gajardo Cortés; Hernán Avalos Muñoz

Navy Teresa Navarro Osorio;

Indicted individuals already serving sentences

Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda; Pedro Espinoza Bravo; Raúl Iturriaga Neumann; Marcelo Moren Brito; Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko; Ricardo Lawrence Mires; Basclay Zapata Reyes; Conrado Pacheco; Francisco Ferrer Lima; Gerardo Urrich; Orlando Manzo Durán; Rizier Altez España; Fernando Lauriani Maturana

Source: La Nación, May 27, 2008