Those implicated include Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, Alejandro Astudillo Adonis, Fernando Rojas Tapia, and Enrique Sandoval Arancibia. On Tuesday, the justice system sentenced, in the first instance, four former agents of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship for the deaths of four opponents murdered in 1981 in the outskirts of Santiago, judicial sources reported.

Judge Joaquín Billard sentenced Álvaro Corbalán Castilla and Alejandro Astudillo Adonis, both former members of the feared Central Nacional de Inteligencia (CNI), to twelve years in prison. Furthermore, he set a six-year prison term for Fernando Rojas Tapia and Enrique Sandoval Arancibia, also former CNI agents.

Conversely, Luis Correa Soto, who was prosecuted in this case, was acquitted after his lack of participation in the events was established. The five had been prosecuted in April 2008 for the homicides of four leftist militants that occurred on November 10, 1981, in the mountain sector of Las Vizcachas.

The victims were Juan Ramón Soto Cerda and Jaime Alfonso Cuevas Cuevas, both militants of the Partido Socialista, and Luis Pincheira Llanos and Nelson Luis Araneda Loaiza, who were members of the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR).

Their bodies were found in a burned-out car in front of the house of the then-Minister of Foreign Affairs, René Rojas. According to leftist organizations and relatives of victims of human rights violations, the four militants were murdered after being detained by the secret police, who subsequently set fire to the car and staged a false shootout at the scene.

An expert report by the Policía de Investigaciones confirmed that the victims did not cause the impacts received by the Central Nacional de Inteligencia (CNI) vehicle, as the dictatorship had tried to make people believe at the time. The judge also determined that the State and the four convicted individuals must jointly pay 30 million pesos to seven relatives of the victims.

Source: El Mostrador, March 18, 2010.