As commander of the Tacna Regiment, on the day of the coup, Major (R) Enrique Cruz Laugier bombarded the government palace from the ground and assaulted the headquarters of the Ramona Parra Brigades and the MAPU with his troops.

Today, he is in charge of security in the upper house. At six in the morning on September 11, 1973, the commander of the Tacna regiment, Colonel Joaquín Ramírez Pineda, handed over command of the barracks to the commander of the Artillery Group, Major Enrique Cruz Laugier. Ramírez had warned the Tacna officers of the coup d'état to overthrow Salvador Allende.

A couple of hours later, Commander Cruz went out with his troops to downtown Santiago, headed to La Moneda via the south side, ordered the artillery batteries to be unhitched from their transports, prepared the shells, and began to bombard the government palace.

Inside, Allende was resisting along with his men. Cruz fired several heavy shells. Moments later, the Air Force's Hawker Hunters would finish the task begun by the acting commander of the Tacna and other units, which also attacked the seat of government from the ground with heavy fire.

Today, Major Cruz, now retired, is the head of security for the Senate. Later that same day, the 11th, Commander Cruz led his troops to Avenida República and attacked the occupants of the local headquarters of the Communist Party's Ramona Parra Brigades with artillery fire.

He did the same shortly after with the MAPU militants who were inside the Santiago Regional office on Calle Carrera. The young people managed to flee through neighboring houses. Having completed this second mission and having stormed both headquarters, Cruz headed with his men to the regiment to recover and eat.

At night, he went out again with his troops, according to him, for "night patrols to ensure compliance with the curfew and the tranquility of the population." The story never before told by Major Cruz, who has confided other minor things about those days to some people but never this, was related by Cruz himself in the proceedings being instructed by the judge of the Fifth Criminal Court, Juan Carlos Urrutia, regarding the forcibly disappeared of La Moneda.

In this case, Cruz is listed as an "accused" and not as a witness, although he has not been prosecuted to date. Furthermore, the head of security for the Senate has provided testimony in several other proceedings regarding human rights violations for events that occurred in the first months after the military uprising.

Everything recounted in this chronicle is in the respective pages of the La Moneda case file, signed by Cruz Laugier. LND has a copy of them.

"WE ONLY WENT OUT TO THE STREET"

When we visited him a couple of years ago in his Senate office to ask him about his participation and what he saw inside the Tacna regarding the detainees from La Moneda—who were tortured and then taken to the Peldehue military zone to be murdered—the former commander told minor things, justifying "my innocence" in the Peldehue crimes and the torture of Allende's GAP (Personal Security Group) and advisors at the Tacna.

But he was careful not to mention the bombardment of the government palace or the assault on the Ramona Parra and MAPU headquarters. That time, we needed him to confirm if he had told Colonel (R) Fernando Reveco that he had seen Augusto Pinochet on the night of the 11th, semi-hidden on a railing at the Tacna made with old Spencer carbine barrels in the "rastrillos" sector, watching as they tortured Allende's GAP.

Cruz denied it, but Reveco maintained his version and declared it to Judge Juan Guzmán. Regarding the bombardment of La Moneda, Cruz maintains that, despite the Tacna having been under the orders of Colonel Julio Canessa Robert that day, since he could not communicate with him on the morning of September 11, he acted under the orders of Colonel Joaquín Ramírez.

"Colonel Ramírez handed over command of the regiment to me in my capacity as commander of the artillery group (...) The order was to bombard La Moneda. Having received the mission, I moved with my unit quickly to Avenida Bulnes.

There, we equipped and unhitched one of the artillery pieces. As we received sniper fire, we had to prepare, aim, and fire the artillery piece with the officers, because the contingent had sought cover," he declared in the proceedings.

According to Cruz, the artillery attack on the Government Palace "did not cause damage." When we asked him last Thursday, November 25, if he assumed command of the regiment in the first hours of the coup and participated in attacks on party headquarters and bombardments, he said, "Never, I only had to go out to the street to patrol the curfew and things like that, I was just a major."

-Did you not participate in the bombardments of September 11 either? -If I had been an aviator, yes. -No, from the ground at some building. -No, no, we only had to go out to the street and drive around all of Santiago. Sometimes we participated in raids.

Today, Enrique Cruz holds the status of "political exonerated," because he told that qualifying commission that he had been fired from the Army.

Source: La Nacion, November 28, 2004

The presidency of the Senate reported the resignation of the head of security of the Upper House, Enrique Cruz Laugier, who in 1973, as interim commander of the Tacna regiment, bombarded La Moneda from the ground.

Through a public statement, the president of the Senate, Hernán Larraín, indicated that "the departure from the position will become effective once his vacation period and corresponding administrative days have been completed." The text also informs that the official Alejandro Miguel Turis Maureira has assumed the position of head of security of the Senate on an interim basis.

The statement details that Cruz made the determination "after speaking with his hierarchical superior, keeping in mind the functioning of said area during the current year, and the concerns raised in recent times—for various reasons—by some senators." Likewise, it attributes his departure "to the new design of the Senate's security system, which marks a new stage in this area." The Senate's Internal Regime Commission determined last Wednesday, December 1, to terminate Cruz Laugier's contract, with which the decision regarding his departure remained in the hands of Larraín.

On the day of the coup, the military officer also assaulted with his troops the headquarters of the Ramona Parra Brigade, of the Communist Party, and of the Unitary Popular Action Movement (MAPU).

Source: Cooperativa.cl, December 3, 2004

La Moneda bombardier is a "political exonerated"

The Army Major (R) Enrique Edgardo Cruz Laugier, who brought out heavy weaponry from the Tacna Regiment on the day of the military coup to bombard La Moneda from the ground while Allende resisted inside, and the former intelligence agent and FACh Colonel (R) Rafael Agustín González Berdugo, prosecuted until now as the only culprit in the post-coup murder of the American Charles Horman, today hold the status of "political exonerated." Their names appear on the list of the 145,000 recognized individuals.

Cruz Laugier was qualified as such on January 20, 2000, by the respective program of the Ministry of the Interior, while Gonzalez Berdugo was on November 19, 1999. Both stories are like something out of a movie.

Under his signature, Cruz admitted in the proceedings for the forcibly disappeared of La Moneda that on September 11, 1973, while being commander of the Tacna Artillery Group, the barracks commander Joaquín Ramírez Pineda handed over command of the barracks to him.

Cruz says that he went out early with his troops to downtown Santiago and installed artillery pieces on the south side of La Moneda, beginning to bombard from the ground before the Hawker Hunters. Later, he maintains that he went with his troops and attacked the local headquarters of the PC's Ramona Parra Brigades on República with artillery fire, and did the same with the MAPU militants who were in the office on Calle Carrera.

With the rebirth of democracy, the individual installed himself as head of security for the Senate in Valparaíso, where he remained until December 2004, when the Internal Regime Commission fired him following the article that LND ("Sleeping with the enemy") published in 2004.

Cruz filed a lawsuit for "injury and slander," but the court ruled that such crimes did not exist. The case of González Berdugo is worthy of a second part of the movie "Missing" by Costa Gavras, inspired by the crime of Charles Horman.

González, a civilian attached to the FACh who today holds the rank of Colonel (R), worked for 40 years as an intelligence agent for that institution. In the days following the coup, he drove Horman to the Ministry of Defense to interrogate him in the office of the then-head of Army intelligence, General Augusto Lutz.

Days later, Horman was found riddled with bullets. For this reason, Minister Jorge Zepeda prosecuted him on December 10, 2003, as an accomplice to the murder. When, at the beginning of December 2003, the then-Minister of Defense and current President, Michelle Bachelet, gave a toast in Quintero to the FACh officers and non-commissioned officers (R) who were victims of repression to "reintegrate into the air family," the former agent González received it and posed for the photo.

In 1980, while posing in the United States as a "dissident" of Pinochet, he had the coldness to go have tea with Horman's father. Another character who appears on the list of qualified individuals is the so-called "Prince," Edwin Dimter Bianchi, to whom—according to witnesses in the proceedings—the crime of Víctor Jara at the Estadio Chile is attributed, although he has not been prosecuted for it.

Dimter was qualified as such on January 20, 2000, but the Ministry of the Interior's program revoked that qualification in 2006 after considering his personal background related to this case and the frustrated coup of June 29, 1973, known as the "Tancazo."

Source: La Nación, Friday, November 28, 2008

The true false exonerated

When in 1998 a second law on political exonerated individuals expanded the universe of potential beneficiaries to include military personnel and former parliamentarians, an avalanche of applications occurred, especially from the Army.

And in that process, military personnel involved in human rights violations, former coup-supporting parliamentarians, and dictatorship officials were qualified as political exonerated individuals. This week, the president of a Command of Political Exonerated Individuals denounced that there are some 100,000 people receiving benefits as political exonerated individuals without ever having been so.

Thus, he opened a Pandora's box whose contents many already knew, suspected, or have tried to hide. The reactions were unusual. The national coordinator of the Program for Recognition of the Political Exonerated (PREP) of the Ministry of the Interior, Marta Joignant, assured that it was "impossible to deceive the system," since the Comptroller General of the Republic had to "take note" (approve) of each case.

However, the Comptroller only does that, "take note" of what the Executive decides; that is, it acknowledges receipt. The president of the Socialist Party, Camilo Escalona, for his part, did Joignant a disservice.

He said that the Comptroller's Office itself had allowed parliamentary offices to register indigents as political exonerated individuals as a way to ensure them a pension. Wow! Beyond the figure provided by the president of the National Unitary Commission of Exonerated and former Political Prisoners, Raúl Celpa, irregularities in the application and granting of these benefits have been denounced for a long time.

Irregularities that the PREP has certainly known about, because dozens of complaints have reached its offices over the years, which have also been made public in the press. Thus, the granting of benefits (pensions and time credits for social security gaps) to people who were never exonerated has been denounced; the falsification of documents; the payment of favors and the collection of commissions.

It is also said that the verification process to qualify an applicant as exonerated has been lax and negligent; and that "true mafias" have been created—as described by a PREP professional—to profit from the misfortune of others.

INFLUENCE PEDDLING AND COMMISSIONS

Since the approval, in 1993, of the first law to grant benefits to political exonerated individuals—those who lost their jobs for political reasons during the military dictatorship—some self-proclaimed "leaders of political exonerated commands" have charged for services and commissions to process applications, despite the fact that the process does not require intermediaries and is completely free.

Others have falsified documents and/or have registered people who do not meet the requirements, and regarding this, it is enough to remember the public denunciations in the provinces of Osorno and Llanquihue last year.

In Río Negro, Fresia, and Puerto Montt, among other localities, it was denounced that municipal authorities were processing and charging undue commissions to register exonerated individuals. In some cases, a considerable commission was charged to true exonerated individuals who were applying for benefits.

In others, documentation was falsified to apply for false exonerated individuals, including the invention of "settlements," since the law also covers those who were dispossessed of their lands. Some of them were also being charged a commission.

There was talk of more than 100 fraudulent cases. Deputy Fidel Espinoza told the Diario Austral de Osorno (March 5, 2007) that the beneficiaries themselves had informed him that "some municipal authorities have charged them to make them participants in this program, whose entry is free, and that in some cases, the incorporations have been fraudulent to provide them with benefits that do not correspond to them." They provided names and surnames and denounced the situation in detail to the PREP.

EXONERATED...?

Perhaps where the spirit of the political exonerated law is most violated is with the granting of benefits to coup-supporting military personnel and right-wing politicians. A second law on exonerated individuals approved in 1998 expanded the universe of potential beneficiaries to include officials of the National Congress, the Armed Forces, Carabineros, and the Investigative Police, among others.

This allowed any parliamentarian who had been left without a job on September 12, 1973—because Congress was closed—to apply for benefits as an exonerated individual. And so, several parliamentarians who publicly and notoriously urged the military coup and supported the dictatorship applied for and obtained pensions and time credits.

As for the military, the ambiguity of the law favored them. Many could apply, since the law spoke of exonerations "due to changes in the institutional order." It did not ask if they were coup-supporters or non-coup-supporters, if they had been members or collaborators of the DINA or the CNI, or if they had tortured, murdered, or disappeared people.

This caused a true avalanche of applications between 1998-2000. From the Army alone, more than 1,200 retired officers did so; many of whom only wanted to improve their pensions. Most of the time, they say at the PREP, the endorsement or sponsorship of some politician or lawyer was enough to qualify.

At the time, the person in charge of evaluating the background information presented by each applicant and recommending their qualification was the technical head of the Program, Luis Salinas Rojas, second in command at the PREP.

He was not terribly rigorous in the qualification or in the maintenance of the files with the background information and documentation that would support the qualification of exonerated. In December 2003, when one of the "exonerated" individuals that Salinas had approved was prosecuted as an accomplice to murder, an earthquake broke out within the PREP.

They desperately searched for the "exonerated" individual's file to see his background, but it was never found. At the PREP, they realized that there were several cases that had "slipped through" and they began to search for and organize the folders with the supporting documentation to review them case by case.

However, many folders of the military personnel qualified as political exonerated individuals were not found and still have not appeared, if they ever existed.

THE COUP-SUPPORTING EXONERATED

Exonerated benefits for some military personnel involved in human rights violations, right-wing former parliamentarians who actively conspired for the military coup, and Junta officials. These are some of them: Rafael González Verdugo (also "Berdugo"), former civilian agent of the Air Force Intelligence Service (Sifa).

A career "spy," after the military coup, he was placed in Department II (Intelligence) of the National Defense General Staff (EMDN). In December 2003, he was prosecuted as an accomplice to the qualified homicide of the American Charles Horman, executed in September 1973.

He was qualified as a political exonerated individual of the Air Force in November 1999 and receives a pension of 464,000 pesos. Edwin Dimter Bianchi, former Army lieutenant, participated in the "tanquetazo" against the government of Salvador Allende (June 1973).

After the military coup, he was sent as a repressor to the Estadio Chile. An investigation by this journalist confirmed that Dimter was the officer whom the political prisoners at the Estadio Chile called "The Prince," whom they accuse of killing Víctor Jara, although this has not been proven judicially.

He was summoned to testify in the Jara case in 2006 as an accused. Dimter was discharged in 1976 and got a job at the Ministry of Public Works. In 1985, he joined the Superintendency of AFPs, climbing positions until achieving a high position of trust.

He applied as a "political exonerated individual" in February 1999 and was qualified as such a year later, receiving a time credit of 11 months and 29 days. However, after the public revelation of his past and a noisy protest at his workplace, he was fired from the Superintendency of AFPs and the PREP revoked his benefit.

Patricio Kellet Oyarsún, former Army captain, head of intelligence of the Cazadores Regiment of Valdivia in September 1973. Subsequently, he was chief of staff for General Roberto Guillard. He left the Army in May 1986.

He was qualified as a political exonerated individual in March 2002, thanks to a sponsorship letter from the former lawyer of the Vicariate of Solidarity, Luis Toro. A short, handwritten letter that attested that he was a good guy.

The technical head, Luis Salinas, an acquaintance of Toro, then recommended his qualification as a political exonerated individual. Horacio Toro Iturra, former Army general. After the military coup, he was designated by Pinochet as second in command of the Advisory Committee of the Government Junta (COAJ).

In 1975, he was the Junta's military attaché in France. He retired in 1978 and was qualified as a political exonerated individual in May 2002. He benefited from a time credit of 54 months.

Enrique Cruz Laugier, commander of the Artillery Group of the Tacna Regiment at the time of the military coup. That day, he attacked the presidential palace with artillery. He retired from the Army in September 1987 and applied for political exonerated benefits, being qualified as such in January 2000.

He was head of security for the Senate until 2004, when a report by La Nación Domingo revealed his past. Today he receives a pension as a political exonerated individual. The one for whom the move did not work out was former Army officer Salvador Ballas Siglic.

He applied for exonerated benefits even though he had been investigated and discharged from the Army before the coup, and for being a coup-supporter. Ballas had participated in uniform in the women's demonstration against the then-Commander in Chief of the Army, General Carlos Prats, in front of his house in August 1973.

Pinochet, who replaced Prats, ordered his discharge, but the processing was delayed and the decree was issued six months after the military coup, so he managed to be in the period to apply as an exonerated individual. He alleged that the discharge was motivated by political reasons, but the Program rejected it. Indignant, he sent a letter accusing the PREP of discrimination.

AND THE CIVILIANS...

Sergio Onofre Jarpa Reyes, former senator of the National Party and active promoter of the military coup. He was an ambassador for the dictatorship and also its Minister of the Interior. He was qualified as a political exonerated individual in July 2000 and received the benefit of a 35-month time credit.

Hermógenes Pérez de Arce Ibieta, former deputy of the National Party, a staunch defender of the military coup and General Pinochet to this day. He collaborated in the legislative commissions of the Military Junta and is an eternal columnist for El Mercurio.

He asked to be qualified as a political exonerated individual and succeeded in February 1999, but did not obtain any benefit because he never lost his job—he had no social security gaps. Juan de Dios Carmona Peralta, former senator of the Christian Democracy, supported the military coup and was later a Councilor of State for the Military Junta.

In 2001, he received the September 11 Decoration from the September 11 Corporation. He was qualified as a political exonerated individual in February 1999 and has since received a pension of 644,000 pesos.

Mario Arnello Romo, former deputy of the National Party, supported the coup and was an enthusiastic fan of Pinochet. He was qualified as a political exonerated individual in November 1999, with a pension of 611,000 pesos. Perhaps now is a good time to go back and look for those folders.

Source: El Ciudadano, February 12, 2009

Among those favored are

Enrique Cruz Laugier, who bombarded La Moneda from the ground on September 11; Patricio Kellet Oyarzún, head of Intelligence in charge of the detention of individuals in Valdivia; Juan Campos Cifuentes, liaison between the Carabineros and the Navy Intelligence Service at the Navy’s main torture center in Valparaíso; and, Rafael González Berdugo, prosecuted for the crime against Charles Horman.

Also included is the case of Edwin Dimter Bianchi—who brought tanks out into the street against Allende and was the alleged "Prince" of the Estadio Chile, prosecuted for the assassination of Víctor Jara—whose benefit was only revoked in 2006.

Past nine o'clock on the morning of September 11, 1973, Major Enrique Cruz Laugier prepared his troops and heavy artillery pieces. Three hours earlier, Cruz, who was the commander of the Artillery Group of the Tacna Regiment, had received command of the barracks from his commander, Colonel Joaquín Ramírez Pineda.

That morning, Cruz positioned himself with his troops and heavy weaponry in front of La Moneda on the south side and opened fire on the seat of government. Inside, Allende resisted the military attack, submachine gun in hand. In a coordinated move, Cruz ordered the ceasefire shortly before the Hawker Hunter jets dropped bombs on the Palace.

Once the attack ended, Major Cruz commanded the assault on the headquarters of the Ramona Parra Brigades of the Communist Party on Avenida República. He did the same with the Santiago Regional headquarters of the Movimiento de Acción Popular Unitario (MAPU) on Calle Carrera.

On the night of that same day and the days that followed, he and his men were in charge of raiding homes and detaining people. Starting in 1990, he was installed as head of Security for the Senate in Valparaíso.

In 2004, he was expelled from his position after a report by La Nación Domingo revealed his history, which Cruz himself recounted on August 30, 2002, in a judicial statement regarding the forcibly disappeared from La Moneda. He was classified as a "political exonerated person" on January 20, 2000.

Patricio Kellet Oyarzún is today a retired Army major. On September 11, 1973, he was the head of Intelligence for the Cazadores Regiment of Valdivia, then commanded by former Military Junta member Santiago Sinclair.

In his capacity as head of Intelligence, Kellet detained dozens of people in Valdivia and its surroundings, as he admitted in his judicial statement on May 9, 2003, during the proceedings for the crimes of the "Caravana de la Muerte" (Caravan of Death) in Valdivia.

It was there that José Liendo Vera, "Comandante Pepe," and 11 other MIR militants were assassinated. It was from that same regiment that a military convoy departed on October 9, 1973, toward the Panguipulli Forestry and Lumber Complex in the foothills of Valdivia.

The troops assassinated 17 peasants in the Baños de Chihuío sector and then hid their bodies in a clandestine grave. In 1978, they exhumed them and threw them into the sea. Kellet is today an agricultural businessman.

Curiously, the former head of Intelligence told the Qualifying Commission of the Office of the Political Exonerated of the Ministry of the Interior that the Army exonerated him for reasons "outside" of his control.

On March 6, 2002, he was classified as a "political exonerated person." But a year later, in his aforementioned judicial statement, he maintained that "in 1985 I retired for personal reasons and currently I dedicate myself to agriculture."

Rafael González Berdugo is a civilian who operated as a counterintelligence agent for the Air Force, but was incorporated into the FACh with the rank of colonel. He served throughout his career in Department II of Intelligence of the National Defense General Staff.

In the early hours of the military coup, he acted as a liaison officer at the Ministry of Defense between the different branches of the Armed Forces and the detainees who arrived at that location. There, and in the office of the Army head of Intelligence, General Augusto Lutz, he was the interrogator of the assassinated U.S. citizens Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi.

His agent badge number was 27759, and he had been infiltrating various social and political organizations since the 1960s. His story is that of a Chilean James Bond. He has been prosecuted since 2003 for the crime against Horman.

In January 1977, United States embassy officials interrogated him at the Italian embassy, where he had sought asylum, claiming that DINA agents were pursuing him. In that interview, he told the officials, "I was the only Air Force officer who participated in the takeover of La Moneda on September 11, 1973." He finally left Chile, and in 1980, posing as a dissident of the Pinochet dictatorship, he went to have tea with Charles Horman’s father.

In 1974, he directed the exhumation of Horman’s corpse to hand it over to the United States embassy, which repatriated it to his country. As established in this case, the order to assassinate Horman and Teruggi came from General Lutz’s office, following González Berdugo’s interrogations.

Years later, he changed the V in his second surname to a B. When he returned to Chile after the dictatorship ended, he posed as a political exonerated person, successfully obtaining that accreditation.

Juan Campos Cifuentes is a strange character. He was a Carabineros officer in Valparaíso and has had his brother, José Alejandro, disappeared since 1981, when he attempted to enter Chile clandestinely from Argentina during the MIR’s "Operación Retorno" and was detained in the foothills of Valdivia.

Along with 200 Carabineros from the Fifth Region, he was one of the 16 officers from this group who, after the coup d'état, took the special "commando" course at the Marine Infantry’s Fuerte Miller in Las Salinas, Viña del Mar.

There, he learned to kill and torture. He was also instructed in Intelligence. Once the instruction given by the "dogs" of the Infantry—as he calls them himself—was finished, he went to perform duties at the Naval War Academy (AGN) on the Playa Ancha hill in the port.

There, he was a "liaison officer" between the Carabineros prefecture of the Fifth Region and the Naval Intelligence Service, known as "Ancla 2," which had that Academy under its control. That was the Navy’s main detention and torture center in the entire port region.

He transferred prisoners from the AGN to the prison ships Maipo and Lebu. Together with a platoon of Carabineros, they killed an opponent of the dictatorship in the Plaza Aníbal Pinto. Juan Campos recounted his curriculum vitae in a recorded interview with historian Jorge Magasich, author of the book Los que dijeron No (Those Who Said No), which recounts the trial of the constitutionalist sailors conducted by the Naval Prosecutor's Office of Valparaíso.

However, Campos claims he never tortured at the AGN, but was only in charge of analyzing documentation and the prisoners' interrogations. He was recognized as a "political exonerated person" on November 19, 1999.

Erwin Dimter was classified as a "political exonerated person" on January 20, 2000, but the benefit was canceled in 2006. He had already appeared as the alleged "Prince" of the Estadio Chile linked to the assassination of singer-songwriter Víctor Jara.

Six years later, he was prosecuted as an accomplice for this crime, along with seven other retired Army officers. But Dimter already had coup-plotting behaviors before September 11, 1973. On June 29 of that year, he participated in an uprising against the government of Salvador Allende by bringing tanks out into the street.

The mutiny was led by Lieutenant Colonel Roberto Souper Onfray, another of those indicted for the Víctor Jara case.

Source: El Mostrador, July 15, 2013

The 15 best reports on the dictatorship by Jorge “Gato” Escalante in La Nación

Jorge “Gato” Escalante is one of the journalists who has conducted the most investigations regarding human rights violations in Chile. A former member of the MAPU, he was tortured and exiled, but returned to Chile in the mid-80s and has since produced a series of reports in which he has managed to reveal how repressive organizations operated in the country. "Gato" spoke with The Clinic Online about his history and selected the best reports and interviews he conducted for the newspaper La Nación. "In '73, I was in my fourth year of law school at the Catholic University of Valparaíso.

I was a co-founder of the MAPU and participated in student federations. I was marked by the military because I had been detained before the Coup, on August 5, '73. We were photographing Navy barracks in Las Salinas in Viña because it was obvious that a Coup d'état was coming and we wanted to know what was happening.

A Marine Infantry patrol detained us; they raided the vehicle, which was full of pamphlets against Merino, so they held us at the Fort. There, they rolled us in the mud, kicked us on the ground; we were all bruised.

They made us kneel with our hands behind our necks and told us: 'Alright, three last wishes.' And they fired. I remember feeling the whistle of the bullets that passed close by. Afterward, they handed us over to the 'pacos' (police) with a statement to go to the Naval Prosecutor's Office, and they initiated a process against us.

In charge of that operation in the Marine Infantry was a classmate of mine from Mackay school, and I said to him: 'Remember we were classmates, don't you remember?' Then he looked at me surprised and said: 'Look, you son of a bitch, I am not a classmate of any Marxist!' If the Coup happened, we had planned for the MAPU members to meet at a house in Viña in Recreo Alto, in a shantytown.

At the Camilo Torres camp, we were going to set up a kind of cordon together with other camps that were further up to prevent the passage of the Armed Forces. It was a naive thing, I know that now. We had stolen a radio transmitter and started broadcasting proclamations.

It was medium frequency, but it could be heard on radios. A group went out to place a dynamite charge on an aqueduct that was in a ravine and carried water to Viña. I didn't agree with that, although they didn't pay much attention to me because they said I was a 'petty bourgeois' because I ironed my shirts, polished my shoes, wore a tie.

I told them: 'Look, this is going to be a disaster. Viña is going to flood, they are going to raid this whole sector, we are not residents, it is these people who are going to suffer the repression.' In the end, the charge didn't explode and on the 12th we left, but the owner of the house, who was a resident who was a militant in the MAPU, was detained.

And that started an investigation. Because of these two stories, I was on their list. On October 3, '73, they raided the sector where we lived in Playa Ancha with my wife, and we couldn't escape. The Marines arrived at the apartment.

My wife said, 'Let's make them a 'malta con huevo' (a drink) to try to butter them up.' But one of the marines recognized me: 'You were a classmate of Lieutenant Sami, remember?' And I said, 'I'm done for.'"

They took me to the Navy barracks, to a very long torture session. They didn't know anything; they asked obvious things. Sometimes I told them to stop and that I would talk. Then they would realize I was lying and continue.

Afterward, they transferred me to the Naval War Academy in Playa Ancha. I was there for about a week. The torture sessions continued, and I was hit with these charges of the dynamite charge, the meeting on the night of the 11th, and this story of Las Salinas on August 5.

Furthermore, they discovered the clandestine network that the sailors had to oppose the Coup and resist. There were about 100 of them. They wanted to link me to that story, because those sailors had indeed had meetings with the MAPU, but also with the MIR and the Socialist Party.

At the War Academy, I suffered new tortures. We had read pamphlets on how to face torture, especially after the Coup in Brazil in the 60s. But that was reading; it's another story when you face it. Torture wasn't just beatings, but a lot of electricity.

All this naked and blindfolded. They would grab you by the feet and spin you to one side, and others would grab you by the arms and spin you to the other side, and they would cut off your breathing. Or they would put your head in a barrel of water.

Or they would tie your penis with wire and with the other end of the wire they would tie your wrists, so they would apply current in such a way that when you moved your arms, you caused wounds to your penis.

And also psychological torture: "We are going to bring your wife, we are going to rape her in front of you." I always tried to pretend that I was much worse off because I didn't want to return to the torture.

In torture, no one is a hero, because the physical has a limit. The body tells you: you cannot resist anymore, you have to talk. The point is what you can say. I gave a couple of names of people who were MAPU helpers, who wouldn't hurt a fly nor did they know anything.

They gave them three or four kicks in the ass and let them go. Later I found them and apologized. In torture, everyone talks; some talk more, others less. I was on the Esmeralda until September 20. And before that, I was on a ship called the Maipo that left on September 1 for Pisagua with about 300 prisoners in its holds.

It was a ship from the Compañía Sudamericana de Vapores that had been made available. And then I entered this other ship, the Lebu, and I was held incommunicado in a cabin for about a week and a half. I remember my concern was that my wounds wouldn't get infected.

And none of them got infected, I don't know how. The hygiene conditions were deplorable. After about two weeks, they took me down to the hold, and there were about 130 people more or less per hold. There were two holds.

And I was there until the end of '73, before Christmas. We put on a circus. One day, Commander Santa Cruz arrived, who had his son-in-law imprisoned, who was a friend of mine. And this old man called him every day and gave him letters from his wife.

He was a very cool old man. He was one of the non-commissioned officers who reach officer rank through special courses. So the rest of the infantry officers who were on the Lebu had a lot of resentment toward him because they said he treated the prisoners more benevolently.

One day, it occurred to us to talk to him so he would let us put on a circus, to have a little fun. With clowns, jokes, singers, comedians, with costumes. We had, for example, the song of the little duck.

They would ask the little duck what he sang at the War Academy, and the little duck would say: "Oh, if you knew that I saw you." Because since they interrogated us blindfolded, the little duck would sing that song to the torturer to make them believe that we had seen them.

Afterward, they took us out and brought us to a concentration camp they had established in Colliguay, inland from Quilpué, and I was there until about March '74. Some people have said that the concentration camp was very terrible.

It wasn't that much: you were in the open air, you had sun, they gave you lunch, breakfast, tea, and dinner. And life was very routine, it was calm. There was little torture in the concentration camp, much more psychological pressure.

At night, you could hear gunfire and they would shout: "The extremists are coming to rescue these Marxists," but we knew it was a lie. The only problem was when we saw dust rising on the horizon. That was a truck that brought and took away prisoners.

A list would come; your name could be on it, meaning they were taking you back to the War Academy or other places. It was called the "crap truck." We named it that because when they announced the truck was coming, everyone would shit themselves.

In the concentration camp, we put on the circus every Sunday. We also held soccer and chess tournaments. I remember we spent Easter and New Year's there. And on New Year's Eve, we started singing The Internationale.

People started from another part, and it started to grow, and the whole camp ended up singing. And of course, the shots into the air started: "Shut up, Marxists!" We sang it in its entirety anyway. From there, they took me at the beginning of April to the Silva Palma barracks, and to my surprise, upon arriving there, I recognized the voice of Captain Santa Cruz.

He was receiving the prisoners who came from the camp, and I remember he approached me and said: "Your son was born. Everything is fine." My wife was two months pregnant when they detained me. I knew he was born around that time.

I was there for a couple of weeks; it was a transit place. I got out on a list for the public jail, and that was like the greatest happiness because you had visits, you were in the city of Valparaíso. We were in the third gallery, which was only for political prisoners.

They called me to the prosecutor's office several times to testify, and they told me: "You have to leave Chile; we are going to expel you." I was also hospitalized for a month because I had a spinal injury from the beatings.

A discopathy that paralyzed my left leg; it was hard for me to walk, with a lot of pain. And I left, at the end of '74, into exile through Amnesty International. I left alone because my wife abandoned me while I was in prison.

That was super difficult, the hardest thing of all. I managed to understand over time that she was very afraid; she was left alone. They took me prisoner, the whole group of friends we had fell apart—they were all from the MAPU; some sought asylum, others were in prison, a couple had died.

So she was pregnant and went back to her parents' house. That made her distance herself from me; besides, I don't think she loved me that much either, because if she had loved me a lot, she would have been by my side and would have left with me.

We annulled the marriage. She never answered my letters, never gave Rodrigo the gifts I sent him for Christmas and birthdays. Therefore, when I returned to Chile, Rodrigo was 12 years old, and it was super difficult.

In exile, I first arrived in Brussels. Then I went to Paris, where the MAPU's foreign leadership was. I stayed there living for six months, and one day they told me they needed me to go to West Berlin.

The largest solidarity committee with Chile in Europe operated there. And well, I always continued in political activity, linked to the MAPU abroad and the Chilean left. I started studying photographic technique.

I got my degree, and there I learned a lot of work with chemical elements to mount photos. I went to Paris to take a course with a Frenchman who had been in the resistance against the Nazis, and he instructed me in the falsification of documents.

And I started making some documents for people who were returning to Chile. Afterward, I entered to study Communication Sciences at the Free University of Berlin. And I was doing that when this permit to return to Chile for 30 days appeared.

I came after 10 years and stayed 10 months. Because I said: "I have my feet in Chile; I'm not leaving here unless it's with a document in my pocket that says I can return to live in Chile." And that took 10 months.

I went every month to the Ministry of the Interior office, to Cardemil's office, who was Undersecretary of the Interior. Sometimes he attended to me himself. They asked me what I thought about socialism now, and I told them: "You know, I am now critical of 'real socialisms'." It was true, in any case.

For example, when I went to Berlin, I encountered a police state where people couldn't leave; they weren't free to think. The State gave them everything—housing, education, health—but Western press was not allowed.

I didn't like that. That was my great disillusionment with 'real socialism.' The first and great disillusionment. Because people were a bit prisoners of a single party that directed everything from above and became separated from the citizen, and in the end, that's why the wall fell; people got fed up.

On September 18, '85, a list of people who could return to Chile was released, and my name was on it. I have it saved. I legalized all my papers and came back in March 1986 for good. I had to cover the attack on Pinochet and the crime of Pepe Carrasco.

I was working at the IPS: Inter Press Service, which was an Italian press agency that had an office here in Santiago. It wasn't that big; there were four of us journalists. That was dramatic, the whole story of the attack, state of siege again.

That afternoon, we were with a German and another Chilean having tea where I lived when we heard sirens and things. We turned on the radio, and that's when the attack was talked about. I remember I had to cover when they burned Carmen Gloria Quintana and Rodrigo Rojas.

That two-day national strike. Something that marked me a lot was the interview I did with Carlos Herrera Jiménez. He was a guy who dared to speak out against Pinochet and his superior bosses. I did a long interview that appeared on two pages in La Nación, and he told me about the crimes he had committed in Pisagua.

He told me details of how they had killed Tucapel Jiménez. When I was leaving, the guy hugged me. He told me: "Jorge, you know that with you I have had the human treatment that I never had with my brothers-in-arms after we fell into disgrace." And tears were falling from his eyes.

And he wouldn't let go of me. I froze. I said to myself, "What do I do? If this is a criminal." But I loosened my arms and hugged him. And that for me was like a breaking point. I was telling myself inside, "You are hugging a criminal.

This guy killed with his own hands; he is a very bad guy." But there I realized that I had started a process in which, professionally, I could rise above my memories, my grudges, my rages, my own experience to take the necessary distance and feel a kind of compassion.

Not for everyone. For Herrera Jiménez because he had asked for forgiveness. He was the only one who asked for forgiveness publicly."

1.- The Rinconada setup Report on the setup filmed in 1975 by TVN journalist Julio López. It was discovered that the six bodies were taken to Rinconada de Maipú already dead from Villa Grimaldi. 2.- Sleeping with the enemy Report on retired Major Enrique Cruz Laugier, who—as commander of the Tacna regiment—on the day of the Coup bombarded the government palace from the ground and assaulted the headquarters of the Ramona Parra Brigades and the MAPU with his troops.

This report cost him his position in the Senate in charge of security. 3.- The fearsome story of "Pete el Negro" Report on the former DINA and CNI agent who in 1973 shot the boy Carlos Fariña in the back and burned the corpse of the youngest victim of the dictatorship.

In 1979, he commanded the "cleaning" of the bodies buried in Cuesta Barriga to throw them into the sea. In 1981, he killed the MIR member Lisandro Sandoval. 4.- "Monje Loco": the most feared officer in Pisagua Report on Lieutenant Conrado García Gaier, who by the end of the nineties became the colonel in charge of the Army's Department II of Intelligence, and before that, head of the CNI's Anti-Terrorist Unit.

To signal torture, in Pisagua he would play the parish organ that was taken to the jail. 5.- Angels of death Report on the investigation by Judge Juan Guzmán and his team of detectives from Department V that managed to unveil the best-kept secret of the DINA: the fate of its disappeared in the Metropolitan Region.

The systematic operation was carried out by the pilots and mechanics of the Army Aviation Command's Puma helicopters between the years 1974 and 1978. 6.- Operation Kiwi: Buried at sea The story of how Navy personnel threw prisoners' bodies off the coast of San Antonio from the tugboat Kiwi. 7.- Burned with chemical phosphorus The story of how Gerhard Mücke, a leader of the Parral sect, confronted his boss, Paul Schäfer, demanding that he take responsibility.

Mücke told the judge about the dramatic final hours of the prisoners inside the estate. They exhumed them in 1978, chemically burned their remains, and threw the ashes into the Perquilauquén River. 8.- The sins of my captain The story of the suicide of former DINA officer Germán Barriga and his subordinate agents who accuse him of how he made prisoners disappear.

The retired colonel never spoke or gave information to the judges regarding the events that occurred under his responsibility in the Purén brigade. He took the secrets to his grave. 9.- The general who handed over the prisoners to the Caravan Report on the officer who in 1973 took 14 prisoners from the Antofagasta jail, tied up and blindfolded, and drove them in a truck to the pampa, where Arellano's entourage massacred them.

The general was discharged a week after the publication of this article. 10.- Berríos on the road to death Report on the investigation by Judge Alejandro Madrid in the case of the assassination of former DINA agent Eugenio Berríos.

A team of three police officers, who became the minister's right arm in the process, penetrated the walls that hid his victimizers and unraveled the crime. In their search, they discovered unknown episodes of the chemist's life. 11.- The last hours of Huber Report on Colonel Gerardo Huber, assassinated by the Army led by Pinochet because he had decided to tell what he knew about arms trafficking to Croatia.

The 461-page sentence by Judge Claudio Pavez unveiled details unknown until that moment. 12.- Who killed Commander Araya? 32 years after the homicide of President Allende's naval aide-de-camp, this report reveals inconsistencies in the Navy's justice investigation and a lead provided by a former civil police officer, which threatened to tear down the official version. 13.- Disappeared in the barracks of Hell Report on an Intelligence non-commissioned officer who declared to the Fifth Department of Investigations and Judge Juan Guzmán that he had translated the cryptogram sent at the beginning of 1979 by Pinochet ordering the exhumation of prisoners' bodies to make them disappear. The task was covered up as "Operation Television Removal." In Los Angeles and Linares, 17 exhumed bodies were burned in ovens and drums inside military facilities. 14.- They killed them in the back with a .30 caliber (click to view in large). 15.- War Council: under threat, he changed the sentence and condemned to death in Pisagua (click to view in large).

Source: The Clinic, September 9, 2013