The personnel who worked in the clinics created by the DINA—Santa Lucía, London, and El Golf—appear in a judicial branch that remains archived. Only five doctors have been convicted in proceedings for crimes committed by the repressive agency.

According to the investigation by Judge Alejandro Solís, some doctors monitored detainees while they were being tortured. CIPER accessed judicial documents containing testimonies from clinic workers regarding the role of these professionals.

In that review, we counted at least 31 people (26 doctors and five nurses) who worked in the clinics. Not all participated in torture, but none deny having placed themselves at the service of the DINA. Seven continue to practice, and three are awaiting rulings from the Supreme Court.

On June 1, 2007, a retired Carabineros officer and former agent of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), the repressive agency of the early years of the dictatorship, appeared before a judge. He was questioned about the murder of Corporal Manuel Leyton Robles, which occurred in 1977, whom the DINA eliminated at the London Clinic.

Leyton had in his possession a car reported stolen—which had belonged to a forcibly disappeared person—and for that reason, he was arrested by Carabineros. At the police station, he explained what he did for a living and mentioned the illegal detentions carried out by the dictatorship’s agents.

He was released. But, for the DINA leadership, he had spoken more than was advisable. They took him for a medical check-up at the London Clinic—one of the three healthcare facilities created by the DINA—where, despite his good physical condition, he suffered a fatal cardiorespiratory arrest.

The interrogation of the former agent, whose identity CIPER keeps confidential, led to a detailed description of the three DINA clinics: Santa Lucía, London, and El Golf. By now, the justice system has established that the security agency recruited a group of doctors who assisted the DINA with the monitoring, resuscitation, and, in some cases, even the homicide of detainees.

The former agent declared that when there was a detainee in a barracks who could not provide more information, the doctors fulfilled a role: "A DINA doctor was called, who would go and attend to the detainee.

I don't remember who they were, but they were from the clinic (Santa Lucía). These doctors were there for that; it was their function and what that healthcare center was created for," he stated.

Journalistic efforts to reveal the functioning of what the press called the DINA’s "sanitary brigade" have been numerous. Chilevisión did so in 2014, when it confronted six doctors who are on the roster of professionals who provided these services and revealed their workplaces: among them, ophthalmologist Vittorio Orvieto Tiplitzky, otolaryngologist Eugenio Fantuzzi Alliende, and the late Manfred Jürgensen Caesar.

Years earlier, journalist Mónica González, founder of CIPER, had already published the existence of these healthcare centers in reports that contained a list of doctors from the London Clinic. And for his book El despertar de los Cuervos (The Awakening of the Ravens), journalist Javier Rebolledo accessed the statements made by the health personnel of these clinics during the investigation by Minister Alejandro Solís, a file that is currently archived.

CIPER was able to review those and other testimonies that shaped this article and confirmed that at least seven doctors continue to practice in the private sector. For this report, all seven were contacted in order to incorporate their versions, but only one doctor agreed to have her testimony published.

DOCTORS INVESTIGATED BY JUDGE SOLÍS

The list of 31 professionals compiled by CIPER only includes those who were part of the clinics investigated by Judge Alejandro Solís. Of them, only five have been convicted in human rights cases. That list includes the late Manfred Jürgensen, brother of former constitutional convention member Harry Jürgensen (RN), who was sentenced to eight years of major imprisonment as an accomplice to the qualified homicide of the teacher and MIR militant Federico Álvarez Santibáñez.

Three others are awaiting a ruling from the Supreme Court.

The statements to which CIPER had access, containing accusations and accounts of torture, were mostly provided by former workers of the clinics. Some of those files were integrated into "Papers of the Dictatorship," a platform with more than 4,000 documents online developed by CIPER with the collaboration of the CIP-UDP (see the "Papers of the Dictatorship" platform here).

In those records, the sensitive data of the victims and the clinic workers who filed the complaints were redacted.

According to the judicial investigation, at least 13 doctors graduated from the University of Chile. This is not strange. At that time, the FACH (Chilean Air Force) colonel, Dámaso González Espinosa, who led the dental area of the Santa Lucía Clinic, worked as a professor at that university and was in charge of recruiting part of the staff.

This was pointed out to CIPER by some of the doctors contacted.

The statements mention three people in charge of these establishments: the FACH cardiologist Werner Zanghellini Martínez, the pediatrician Hernán Horacio Taricco Lavín, and the nurse Eliana Carlota Bolumburú Toboada.

Last March, the Supreme Court sentenced Werner Zanghellini to a prison term for the first time. The other two are prosecuted and have a sentence ratified by the Santiago Court of Appeals in the investigation into the homicide of Corporal Leyton, a case that must be reviewed by the Supreme Court.

A retired Carabineros sergeant testified that it was at the Santa Lucía Clinic where he saw the most agents with prisoners: "Indeed, I saw people arrive at that facility who apparently had just been detained by agents; they were treated, but immediately transferred by the same agents who had brought them." A nurse who worked at the site declared that "the doctors of the Santa Lucía Clinic were frequently requested at Villa Grimaldi to examine detainees, and they were always accompanied by a nurse." The villa was a secret DINA barracks where detainees were tortured and murdered. "In my case, I remember having spoken with the detainees that the doctor was examining, encouraging them to cooperate with the information requested of them," the same statement continues.

The healthcare centers were supposedly created to attend to civilian agents and their families, who did not have coverage in the Armed Forces hospitals. Indeed, medical and dental care was also provided there.

A statement by dentist Pablo César Oyanguren Plaza asserted that at the London Clinic, "even President Pinochet was attended to on some occasion." Other accounts say that Manuel Contreras did so as well.

The statement of a retired Army non-commissioned officer who was a nurse at the Santa Lucía Clinic is chilling: "It was known that at Villa Grimaldi, cars were driven over the bodies of the detainees and that sometimes they went too far and they arrived at the Santa Lucía (clinic) dying.

When there was no remedy, they had to be put to death with pentothal. I don't know what happened to the detainees to whom pentothal was administered, but it was rumored that there was another brigade that took charge of them to throw them into the sea."

MISS ELIANA

"There was a code at the Santa Lucía Clinic, which was a warning: 'the package is coming.' It meant that a detainee was arriving, and one understood that one should not get involved. They would take them into a room and then administer something, and later the patient would come out deceased.

I heard from conversations among these doctors and Miss Eliana that they administered eight milligrams of pentothal, which caused an arrhythmia followed by a cardiorespiratory arrest, resulting in death at the clinic. And around midnight, they would take them out 'camouflaged,' covered with a blanket."

The previous paragraph is part of the extrajudicial statement of a former DINA employee, dated June 29, 2005. His testimony is one of the most detailed within Minister Solís's investigation. The person he calls "Miss Eliana" is the nurse Eliana Carlota Bolumburú Taboada.

At the Santa Lucía Clinic, she held the position of head of nurses, even over those with military rank. Upon reviewing the statements from the judicial process, it is clear that she played a fundamental role in that facility, even though her name does not resonate with the same impact as that of other professionals who provided service to the repressive apparatus.

In 2015, Eliana Bolumburú was sentenced, in the first instance, to three years and one day, in addition to disqualification from the profession, as an accessory to the homicide of Corporal Manuel Leyton.

But the court decided to grant her the benefit of intensive supervised release for the same period. That sentence was ratified in 2020 by the Santiago Court of Appeals and is currently awaiting a ruling from the Supreme Court.

The statements of other former clinic workers assert that Bolumburú was aware of the treatment the DINA gave to detainees. There are testimonies that point to her as being knowledgeable and cooperative regarding the interrogations and the use of pentothal, an anesthetic known as "the truth serum," because, when administered in low doses, it causes patients to enter a state of drowsiness in which they can continue answering questions.

The application of pentothal has not been proven by the justice system, and the former nurse is only prosecuted in the investigation into the homicide of Corporal Leyton.

In a police statement from June 2005, a nurse recalled the moment he encountered Bolumburú when she was arriving in an ambulance from the London Clinic with a patient on a stretcher. "The one I recognized immediately was the Army corporal Manuel Leyton Robles," the nurse asserted.

He also added that, upon returning to the clinic at night, he found a woman at the entrance crying: "And I asked her what was wrong, and she stated that her husband had died of a heart attack, and I found out that it was Corporal Manuel Leyton."

More than one former official of the Santa Lucía Clinic pointed to Bolumburú as one of the people who controlled the medical staff. The statements also say that she did the same, for a short period, at the London Clinic. "Due to her position, she was aware of everything that happened there," noted a former Army nurse.

Another former worker recounted that on one occasion he accompanied Bolumburú to Villa Grimaldi and that she "connected directly and knew the bosses. I was able to see the interrogation rooms through this nurse who had direct access to these facilities."

In 2005, a retired Army non-commissioned officer declared before the PDI (Investigations Police) of Valdivia that there were doctors from Santa Lucía involved "secretly in acts of death of detainees." He provided three names: Dr. Werner Zanghellini, anesthesiologist Osvaldo Leyton, and nurse Bolumburú Taboada.

Two years later, the non-commissioned officer met with Bolumburú in a confrontation. The nurse was categorical: "I was in charge of buying and supplying the medications that were for the treatment of the personnel.

I never knew about the pentothal (...). Regarding the fact that there were doctors involved in acts of death at the clinic, it is a slander; I don't know what could have motivated him to tell such a lie," she emphasized.

The first time Eliana Bolumburú testified, according to the records of this file, was on June 17, 2003, at the Interpol National Central Bureau. At that time, she maintained that there were no irregular situations in the DINA clinics. In 2005, she declared: "Detained persons were never attended to. Furthermore, I must assure that I did not know of other DINA detention centers."

In 2006, her version changed. This time she confessed to having known about detainees at the Santa Lucía Clinic. According to her new account, Marcelo Moren, a former DINA agent who died in 2015 while serving a sentence of more than 300 years, arrived at the healthcare facility once.

On that occasion, Bolumburú recounted, Moren appeared together with agent Osvaldo Pincetti. They were asking for a detainee: "I knew there was a person who was in a bed on the second floor; I presume it was a political detainee, but I did not know the name of this person, although I saw that she had her wrists burned," said the nurse.

Eliana Bolumburú worked at the Santa Lucía Clinic and then at the London. She retired in mid-1977, the period in which she married the officer and DINA agent Hugo "Cacho" Acevedo Godoy, one of the men closest to the head of the repressive agency, Manuel Contreras.

Eliana Bolumburú was contacted by CIPER last Monday, August 28, but she did not respond to messages. Through her lawyer, Hernán Aladín, she initially indicated that she could address our inquiries on Thursday, August 31.

But that same day, her lawyer explained that, for health reasons, she would not be able to answer our questions until after September 20. CIPER had already delayed the publication of this article given the possibility of meeting with her, but an interview could not be arranged before the closing of this article.

DR. TARICCO

A surgeon specializing in pediatrics. His residence in Lo Barnechea, a property that according to the Internal Revenue Service has a fiscal appraisal of more than $672 million, is listed under the name of Inversiones Santo Domingo.

That company—incorporated in 2013 and composed of the doctor and his family—also owns the car that was parked at his home when CIPER tried to contact him, a 2022 Mercedes Benz.

In 2014, the Canal 13 program En su propia Trampa (In Their Own Trap) confronted him for offering a fake laser treatment in his private practice, "Red Médica Tabancura," that promised to cure psychiatric disorders, as well as addictions such as smoking and alcoholism.

Like Bolumburú, in 2015 Taricco Lavín was convicted in the first instance in the Corporal Leyton case. The court sentenced him to three years and one day as an accessory to the homicide, but granted him conditional remission.

In 2020, the Court of Appeals reduced that sentence to 541 days, without ruling on disqualification from the profession. The doctor filed an appeal for cassation: he alleges that he did not participate in the events. He is awaiting the ruling of the Supreme Court.

Taricco Lavín signed the report where it was asserted that the cause of Leyton's death was asphyxia, due to the aspiration of vomit, with a cardiorespiratory arrest. But, in a police statement, former DINA agent Michael Townley recounted that he received the order "to provide sarin (gas) to eliminate Corporal Leyton and that the material author who applied the sarin was an Army lieutenant."

In June 2003, Taricco denied his participation in the false report: "I never held the position of director of the London Clinic. Regarding the report that I have just read, which bears my signature, it is a technical report, which for a specific situation and because I was a health officer, I was asked to put the signature block as director, a position I did not hold."

Another doctor at the clinic, Luis Hernán Santibáñez Santelices, one of those who examined the Army non-commissioned officer, declared that he saw Taricco Lavín "preparing a report for the Legal Medical Service, of a patient who had died, not knowing more details, since I did not ask nor did they comment to me what had happened to the patient I had attended to previously."

Furthermore, in the judicial file, there are several statements that point to Taricco as one of the heads of the London Clinic. In 2003, nurse Bolumburú asserted that "Dr. Taricco replaced Dr. Zanghellini when he was absent from his position as general director."

Through his lawyer, Leonardo Battaglia, Dr. Hernán Taricco declined to answer CIPER's questions.

DR. LEYTON

On June 27, 2003, Osvaldo Leyton declared that it was due to an offer that he arrived at the Santa Lucía Clinic in 1974. He mentioned that, upon arriving at the address he had been given, he found out "that it was a DINA barracks and not the Air Force. In this place, they asked me if I was willing to work for them, which I accepted due to economic needs."

In July 2005, the anesthesiologist testified at Interpol facilities. There, he asserted that he did have knowledge that on occasions DINA agents arrived with detainees: "Indeed, I had to go on several occasions to detention centers like Villa Grimaldi and Cuatro Álamos." Leyton was pointed out in the statement of an Army nurse as part of the doctors involved in episodes that ended in the death of detainees.

However, Leyton Bahamondes has no convictions, although in 2007 he was prosecuted for the death of Corporal Manuel Leyton.

For this investigation, the anesthesiologist was contacted by CIPER at his private practice in Providencia, but he declined to respond.

Leyton Bahamondes also testified before the police on November 17, 2006. On that occasion, he was questioned about Corporal Leyton's medical record. It was in his handwriting. "I have no explanation for why my handwriting appears in the part that refers to the care provided during the day; speculating a little, it may be that if I did it, it was due to an order that necessarily must have come from the medical leadership, which in that period corresponded, apparently, to Dr.

Taricco or to a superior military authority."

Santiago Alfredo Matteo Galleguillos worked as an Army nurse at the Santa Lucía Clinic, and several of those who testified remember him for a single detail: the lie detector. On November 10, 2005, a nurse declared: "Both Osvaldo Leyton and Zanghellini were cardiologists, and the latter used a so-called PC1 or PC2, which was a lie detector, which operated with the advice of the nurse Santiago Matteo, who handled this equipment and which was kept in a small office at the London."

Santiago Matteo Galleguillos was also prosecuted in the investigation into the murder of Corporal Leyton for allegedly covering up the homicide. But his participation could not be proven, and he was acquitted by the Santiago Court of Appeals in 2020.

In 2010, Matteo Galleguillos gave an extrajudicial statement. On that occasion, he said that he had traveled to Miami together with Dr. Zanghellini in 1975 for a course on the use of the lie detector or polygraph.

But he added that he had never used that machine. An Army nurse recounted that in the same clinic there was equipment that interrogated detainees with a lie detector that was handled—as he recounted—by the most senior nurses, Matteo Galleguillos and Lorenzo Toro Olivares.

VISITS TO DETENTION CENTERS

Among the doctors who have been convicted for crimes related to the DINA is the former director of the Santa Lucía Clinic, cardiologist Werner Zanghellini, sentenced to 10 years and one day in an investigation into the qualified kidnapping of two people, in the framework of Operation Colombo.

Also ophthalmologist Vittorio Orvieto, sentenced in several cases related to the Tejas Verdes prisoner camp. The same happened with Manfred Jürgensen, who died after being captured in Argentina.

Jürgensen was a fugitive from justice after being sentenced by the Supreme Court, in January of this year, to eight years in prison as an accomplice to the qualified homicide of the teacher and MIR militant Federico Álvarez Santibáñez.

Along with him, rheumatologist Luis Alberto Losada was sentenced, in the capacity of accessory, to two years in prison, with the benefit of conditional remission. Both assisted Álvarez Santibáñez at the Borgoño Barracks, near the Mapocho Station.

Nurse Orlando Jesús Torrejón Gatica is convicted in multiple cases associated with victims of Operation Colombo and in the trial for the murder of teacher Marta Ugarte Román.

Orlando Torrejón Gatica appears described in the statements of other former workers of the DINA clinics. A nurse declared that "the term 'package' refers to the detainees who were dead; generally, it was said 'package out,' and those who constantly spoke with that term were Torrejón or Muñoz." A retired Carabineros sergeant who worked as a nurse pointed out that "the care for the detainees was carried out by specific personnel for them; for example, I remember Orlando Torrejón."

To those names is added, but only convicted in the first instance as an accessory in the Corporal Leyton case, surgeon Pedro Valdivia Soto. Like Bolumburú and Taricco, Valdivia is awaiting the Supreme Court ruling.

In the files, there are also statements that accuse other doctors of having gone to detention centers. In 2005, a former worker of these clinics claimed to have accompanied doctors Sergio Virgilio Bocaz, Enrique Silva Peralta, Christian Emhart Araya, Eugenio Fantuzzi Alliende, and Luis Cárcamo Díaz. "I must point out that several of these were recently graduated doctors," he asserted.

From that list, Luis Felipe Cárcamo Díaz, an otolaryngologist, is the only one who continues to function: he does so in his private practice in Temuco. Through a person who works there, Cárcamo declined to answer inquiries for this article.

Among the doctors who continue to practice is also Luis Santibáñez Santelices, who currently attends at Integramédica. Santibáñez testified in the Leyton case and, apart from detailing that he attended to the deceased non-commissioned officer, he pointed out: "I started working in the summer of 1977, at the request of Dr.

Werner Zanghellini, also a doctor of the Air Force. The reason was that they intended to implement an Intensive Care Unit there, since some attacks against the DINA and military authorities were presumed.

I lasted a short time; almost at the end of March of that same year, I submitted my resignation, not reaching three months of practice at the London Clinic. I remember that the director on that date was Horacio Taricco Lavín."

Contacted by CIPER, Santibáñez refused to address inquiries about his participation in the London Clinic.

Camilo Azar Saba is one of the doctors who reviewed the injuries of the teacher and MIR militant Federico Álvarez Santibáñez. He pointed this out before the justice system: "By order of General Mena, I had to recertify the injuries presented by two people who had been detained by Carabineros and then transferred to the CNI (...) One of these people subsequently died at the Posta Central, a teacher named Federico Álvarez Santibáñez."

Dr. Jorge Manlio Fantini Valenzuela appears in a statement provided by a former civilian DINA employee: "He was the one who had to be most attentive when operations and detentions were carried out. He liked to be involved." In 1982, Fantini married nurse Isabel Margarita Jarpa Riveros, who provided services at the London Clinic.

THE GYNECOLOGISTS

One of the branches that guided the investigation into the DINA clinics was the alleged abortion due to the torture suffered by a detainee who had arrived at the Santa Lucía Clinic eight months pregnant.

A police report records the testimony of a prisoner who in 1975 was detained by the DINA. According to her account, she was held in Colonia Dignidad and Villa Grimaldi. The report maintains that "it was at Villa Grimaldi where she was able to see a detainee in poor physical condition due to the torture received, and who came from a clinic located near the Santa Lucía hill, where they had murdered her eight-month-old son, when he was in her womb."

According to the statements reviewed by CIPER, on repeated occasions, the doctors and nurses were questioned about the passage of a pregnant woman through the Santa Lucía Clinic. The Ministry of the Interior, a plaintiff in the case, requested that Minister Solís officially ask the Vicaría de la Solidaridad to remit the records of three women who had allegedly given birth while they were detained by the DINA.

On July 6, 2009, Solís granted the request.

Two gynecologists passed through the Santa Lucía Clinic: Juan Pablo Figueroa Yáñez and Eduardo Francisco Contreras Valcarce. It was the former who once declared that he remembered an occasion when they asked him to attend to a pregnant detainee: "To that request, I refused to perform the auscultation on the pregnant woman, and subsequently, they asked me as a personal favor, and I agreed to examine her, finding no problems in her pregnancy.

I remember that while I was performing said exam, Mr. Marcelo Moren Brito was present." Figueroa said he did not remember the name of that woman.

Eduardo Francisco Contreras Valcarce died in 2016. According to a statement by Dr. Eugenio Fantuzzi Alliende, Contreras Valcarce arrived at the clinic like other colleagues from his graduating class, by offer of Zanghellini.

His name is often confused with that of his brother, Enrique Eduardo Contreras Valcarce, a surgeon. But while the former provided services in DINA clinics, the latter suffered the repression of the "Caravan of Death" and, according to his relatives' version, was even a prisoner in a facility in the north.

OTHER DOCTORS MENTIONED

In the investigation, a series of doctors, dentists, and health personnel who were part of the Santa Lucía Clinic are pointed out. According to the files, they were hired on a fee basis, mostly recently graduated from the university.

The accounts of witnesses coincide that on the first floor was the dental clinic and that on the third was concentrated the medical corps destined to keep alive detainees who had been tortured.

The dentists on the first floor assert that they never saw detained patients and that they did not know about abortions. The head of that department was the dentist Dámaso Luis Augusto González, who still attends his practice in Providencia.

As other doctors from DINA clinics explained, it was he who recruited students from the University of Chile—where he taught classes—to join the Santa Lucía Clinic. And, as stated in the file, on occasions he was left in charge of the clinic.

CIPER communicated with the doctor's practice. His secretary indicated that he was out of Santiago and that she would give him our message. At the closing of this report, there was no response.

Sergio Muñoz Bonta is also pointed out as a dental surgeon who held a leadership position at the London Clinic. A nurse declared: "Dr. Sergio Muñoz Bonta, who was an odontologist who came from the War Academy, was brought by Colonel (Manuel) Contreras to the London Clinic." Muñoz Bonta died in 2005.

Dentists Carlos Rodolfo Ullrich Dunner and Milena Cecilia Zulic Lolic declared in 2010 that they worked at the Santa Lucía Clinic. Ullrich did so in the rest of the clinics set up by the DINA and until the return to democracy in 1989. Just blocks away, in Las Condes, both currently have their dental practices, and both denied before the justice system having seen or attended to tortured patients.

Zulic—who was married to Ullrich—told CIPER that she has a clear conscience: "I never had nor do I have anything to hide (...). I worked at the clinic. I was recently graduated and was looking for a job.

I was a super good student and I was not from the left. I have never been a member of a party, but I feel like a free thinker, but I was not at all in agreement with what was happening at that moment (the Popular Unity).

But, independent of the political thing, we were never told that it was to work for the DINA nor that there were going to be detainees and things, nothing. When they contacted me, they told me it was to attend to the children of officials." She says that they paid her well, that she was there for several months, and that, when she was already working at that place, she found out it was related to the DINA.

Asked by CIPER if she left that job due to ethical objections, after finding out that the DINA was behind the clinic, she responded: "No, because at that time I was a bird (naive) (...). There I didn't know anything about what was happening."

Mario Augusto Hernández Cáceres is another doctor mentioned in the file who denies having participated in acts linked to human rights violations. He gave an extrajudicial statement in 2010. That same year, dentist Gonzalo Luarte Romo stated before the justice system that he had worked only for the London Clinic and that he also did not see or know anything. He died on July 10 of this year.

In the team of dentists, Pablo César Oyanguren Plaza also appeared, who was a professor at the Universidad Mayor until 2019. In the process, he said that it was Dámaso González who recruited him. He also declared that he was part of the CNI clinic, that they gave him an identity card with the name Cicerón Videla to vote in the 1988 Plebiscite, and a card that was used as a "line-breaker."

The list of mentions also includes doctors of other specialties: psychiatrist Roberto Emilio Lailhacar Chávez. He declared in 2010 that he was only at the El Golf Clinic, but that he provided services to the DINA from before: "I entered the DINA as a civilian employee (...).

Probably during the year 1973." Furthermore, he explained that he worked with Lucía Hiriart when Augusto Pinochet was still in power. He asserted that he never attended to wounded people nor participated in interrogations. Consulted by CIPER, he declined to refer to the detail of what he witnessed and did at the DINA clinic.

Cardiologist Sergio Pliscoff Marovich worked at the London and El Golf clinics. He declared in 2010 and pointed out that he never visited detained people: "I lack all types of information," he said. He died in 2016.

(*) Valentina Valenzuela and Soledad López Figueroa collaborated on this report. () The background information presented in this article includes ongoing judicial proceedings, so the people mentioned should not be considered guilty until the justice system issues a final sentence.

Source: ciper.cl, September 1, 2023