Minister Jorge Zepeda issued an indictment in the case regarding the kidnapping of former Cobrechuqui official David Silberman, a case now approaching the sentencing stage in which charges against the four defendants remain in place.

The magistrate determined that former DINA director Manuel Contreras and Brigadier (ret.) Marcelo Moren Brito are responsible as perpetrators of Silberman's kidnapping, while maintaining the classification of accomplices in the same crime for Marcos Derpich Miranda and Carlos Labarca Sanhueza.

On October 4, 1974, members of the DINA removed Silberman from the Penitentiary where he was being held after being subjected to a War Council in Calama. According to witnesses, the supervisor of what is now Codelco was seen at DINA barracks such as José Domingo Cañas and Cuatro Alamos.

The parties may now accept or reject the indictment, and once the minister gathers all the evidence, the final phase will begin, which includes the issuance of the first-instance sentences.

Source: La Nación, October 20, 2004

Supreme Court issues final sentence in the David Silberman kidnapping case

The Supreme Court issued a final sentence in the investigation into the aggravated kidnapping of David Silberman Gurovich, which occurred beginning on October 4, 1974, in Santiago. In a split decision, the ministers of the Second Criminal Chamber ratified the ruling regarding the criminal aspect, which had established the following sanctions: Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda: 7 years of effective imprisonment; Marcelo Moren Brito: 7 years of effective imprisonment; Carlos Labarca Sanhueza: acquitted due to lack of participation; and Marcos Derpich Miranda: acquitted due to lack of participation.

Regarding the civil aspect, the magistrates accepted the appeal filed by the State Defense Council and accepted the exception of absolute incompetence of the court, determining the elimination of the payment of a total indemnity of $1,040,000,000 to the widow, three children, and two siblings of the victim.

The case David Silberman Gurovich was a married civil engineer and General Manager of Cobre Chuqui until September 11, 1973. A member of the Communist Party, he voluntarily presented himself on September 15, 1973, to the Military Commander of Calama, remaining detained and subjected to proceedings by a Wartime Military Tribunal.

On September 28 of that year, the War Council issued a sentence condemning him to 10 years in prison for crimes covered by the State Security Law and 3 years under the Arms Control Law, requiring him to serve his sentence in Santiago, as he had been requested from there by decree.

Around October 2, he was held in the Penitentiary of this city. On October 4 of the same year, he was removed from the Penitentiary and taken to the Air Force War Academy, remaining in that facility until October 20, the day he was returned to the Santiago Penitentiary.

Silberman remained in this place until October 4, 1973. On this date, he was removed from the prison facility by DINA agents who forged Army documents in order to deceive the Gendarmerie and secure the delivery of the detainee.

Once outside the facility, David Silberman was taken to the house that this security agency maintained at José Domingo Cañas. From there, on October 5, he was taken to 4 Alamos, only to be taken again on the 6th or 7th of that month to José Domingo Cañas, in whose facilities he remained until the middle of the same month, when he was transferred to 4 Alamos, from where he disappeared at the end of October or the first days of November.

In April 1975, the body of a man destroyed by an explosion appeared in a basement in Buenos Aires with a sign that read "discharged by the MIR." It was said to be David Silberman; however, it was proven that it was not Silberman, but rather the first steps of a disinformation campaign that would mark the beginning of the so-called "Operation Colombo." The body of the communist militant remains disappeared.

Source: El Mostrador, Monday, April 20, 2009

Former CNI agent prosecuted for massacre in Concepción

Minister Carlos Aldana was relentless with Army Brigadier (ret.) Marcos Derpich Miranda. On Friday, he ordered his arrest in Santiago and ordered him to be transferred to Concepción, where he would be interrogated and confronted with other CNI agents regarding the massacre of MIR militants that occurred on August 23 in Concepción.

Yesterday, the judge prosecuted him as the intellectual author of the death of one of the three people who were detained at the Vega Monumental and murdered in Santa Juana. Everyone says that he was the one who ordered the massive operation that mobilized nearly 200 CNI agents from Santiago and Concepción to track, neutralize, and eliminate the MIR's military apparatus in five cities in the south of the country.

Furthermore, his subordinates, who stained their hands with blood, said it was he who ordered by radio to assassinate Nelson Adrián Herrera Riveros. That day, from Hualpencillo, they followed the minibus with license plate UCR 065, which Herrera Riveros and Mario Lagos had boarded.

Upon arriving at the front of the Vega Monumental, already in the city, they were intercepted and shot in front of stunned passersby. The agents who carried out the operation said that while they were heading to the hospital, they received, by radio, the order from the then-Colonel Derpich to eliminate him.

At that time, the repressive chief moved to the barracks that was located on Calle Pedro de Valdivia, on the banks of the Biobío River. The judge's ruling indicates that "the team leader received a radio communication, on frequency or channel 1, from the chief of the CNI regional division (Derpich), who was at the CNI regional barracks in (Calle) Pedro de Valdivia, who ordered him to change to frequency 2, which is more private than 1, which was used by all units, receiving through this channel an order from the aforementioned chief, who indicated that the detainee could not arrive at the hospital alive and that he should be eliminated or 'dispatched,' to which the team leader responded 'understood'." Marcos Derpich, who was chief of the regional division at the time of the events, and later deputy director of the CNI, is being prosecuted and imprisoned for the third time. Previously, he was involved in the kidnapping and disappearance of the former manager of Cobrechuqui, David Silberman, and the crime of Tucapel Jiménez.

Source: La Nación, Saturday, September 26, 2009

The crimes of Hualpén and the Vega Monumental

This September 23, the day we remember 24 years since the homicide by explosives of Jaime Orellana and Nelson Lagos in Chillán, reconstructions of the scenes of the crimes committed by military personnel of the Armed Forces on duty with the CNI were carried out, where they proceeded with exclusive dedication to plan and execute homicides, some massive, such as that of August 23, 1984.

With a large police deployment in which numerous PDI officers participated—some strangely hooded as in the dictatorship—and GOPE personnel, the reconstruction of the scene was carried out under the direction of Minister Carlos Aldana, who, in the company of his secretary lawyer David Bravo and the lawyer from the Human Rights Department of the Ministry of the Interior, Mrs.

Magdalena Garcés, participated in order to clarify the criminal acts in which the leaders of the Southern zone of the MIR were executed on August 23, 1984. In each place where the proceedings were carried out—Hualpén, Concepción, and San Pedro—in addition to their relatives and friends, the Association of Political Executed Persons of the MIR of Concepción and social organizations of Hualpén were present.

A large public from the sector and press from various media outlets gathered, who from a distance—cordoned off by the officers—were attentive to the movements that described the events that occurred in those homicides.

Let us remember that on this date, seven comrades, members of the Southern leadership of the MIR, were executed in the operation called Alfa Carbón 1 by the Security Services of that time, whose objective was to eliminate the members of that MIR leadership.

During that simultaneous operation, Nelson Herrera and Mario Lagos were murdered in Concepción, and Luciano Aedo Arias in Hualpén, Mario Mújica in Los Ángeles, and in Valdivia, Juan José Boncompte, Rogelio Tapia, and Raúl Barrientos.

The executioners, members of the CNI, were commanded by Marcos Derpich Miranda: Army Lieutenant Colonel in charge of the operation, and seconded by Hugo José Hechenleitner, Army Lieutenant Colonel, who appeared today at the scene of the events along with five other members of the former CNI to reconstruct the events on Calle Grecia at the corner of Nápoles in the current Commune of Hualpén, where Luciano Aedo Arias was murdered.

Some of the names of the death squad that participated in the Alfa Carbón 1 operation in Concepción: 1. Marcos Derpich Miranda: Army Lieutenant Colonel in charge of the operation. Today he continues working at the DINE (Army Intelligence Directorate). 2.

Hugo José Hechenleitner: Lieutenant Colonel, his alias was Antonio Martínez López. 3. Claudio Rodrigo Rosas Fernandez: Army Lieutenant Colonel. 4. Víctor Manuel Muñoz Orellana: Army Sub-Officer, his alias was Jaime Ricardo Marinovic Palma, and he was the one who shot Luciano Aedo. 5.

Álvaro Corbalán Castilla (Army Major). Today imprisoned in the Punta Peuco resort. 6. Francisco Zúñiga Acevedo: Army Officer. Now deceased, he left without paying. 7. Jorge Mandiola Arredondo: Army Major. 8.

Carlos Palma: Army Sub-Officer. 9. Leandro Montenegro (Army Sub-Officer), alias Farias. 10. Jorge Vargas: Civilian. 11. Miguel Gajardo: Civilian. 12. Andres Caris: Carabineros Sub-Officer. 13. Egon Barra: Carabineros Corporal. 14.

Rosa Humilde Ramos: Army Sub-Officer. The most feared among her peers. They call her "La Mala" (The Bad One). 15. Teresa Osorio: Navy Sub-Officer. These are those who acted in the massacre of Concepción and Hualpén, accompanied by another numerous contingent of CNI officers, Army, Carabineros, and informants.

In the case of Los Ángeles, where they murdered Mario Mujica, the following participated in the numerous contingent of evildoers: 1.- Bruno Antonio Soto Aravena 2.- José Artemio Zapata Zapata. Currently, it is believed that one of them—it has not been possible to establish which—is living in Los Ángeles and the other in Concepción.

For a brief time, they were detained and were in prison, but of course, after a short time, they were released and today enjoy full freedom. After concluding in Hualpén, the entourage moved to the Vega Monumental sector, where Nelson Herrera and Mario Lagos were executed after having surrendered and descended with their hands raised from the taxi-bus in which they were traveling.

This event is a clear example of how the rights of the detainee were violated; unarmed and without the capacity for armed response, they were riddled with bullets in the presence of passersby and passengers of the bus in which they were traveling, which constitutes a double homicide.

After the reconstruction in Hualpén and Concepción was finished, the Minister and his work team moved to the Población el Recodo on the road to Santa Juana, where the CNI proceeded to raid the house of Nelson Herrera's family, in which his wife, Patricia Zalaquet, was detained.

Today, Minister Aldana has obtained, in the presence of the accused, the details and characteristics of these crimes that were presented at that time to public opinion as "clashes" of terrorists against CNI officials, even though these evildoers had traveled expressly from Santiago to commit the illicit acts.

It should be noted, as Minister Aldana himself pointed out to the press, that this judicial case was archived in the Military Prosecutor's Office, from where it was recovered, apparently by the Government's Human Rights Department, to transfer it to the hands of the Civil Justice system, which will now have the task of prosecuting and issuing a sentence, although the Minister himself indicated that he does not rule out new proceedings.

The Relatives of Political Executed Persons of the MIR in Concepción expect a lot from the Minister; until now, all his conclusions in other cases blame only the material executioners, the last link in the chain of command, the one who pulled the trigger, leaving the intellectual authors and commanders who gave the orders to murder unpunished.

Therefore, we hope that this chain of command reaches the High Commands of the institutions that had intelligence apparatuses with exclusive dedication to commit crimes, and those are even higher than Álvaro Corbalán Castilla himself (who excused himself from attending although he participated in the events), because this bandit did not act alone.

Today it transpired that the Minister had prosecuted the second-in-command of the CNI, whom he had sent as a detainee to the Chacabuco Regiment; at the time of writing this note, it was only a rumor. The orders to murder in a highly hierarchical and centralized armed institution could only come from the Intelligence General Staff with the due approval and authorization of the de facto government of the coup-plotting military.

It is striking that the former leaders of the MIR of that time are once again not present supporting the relatives, nor are they becoming parties to the lawsuits for truth and justice, nor are they undertaking initiatives against impunity; it is possible that they are hunting for votes instead of hunting criminals.

Source: Liberacion.cl, September 30, 2009

Alfa Carbón 1: The Operation Albania of the south

The Court of Appeals is about to rule on the expansion of the indictment for "illicit association" against 13 former CNI agents involved in the execution of seven MIR members in 1984—murders that were presented at the time as "confrontations." The judge overseeing the case only indicted two of the accused for "illicit association": Álvaro Corbalán and Marcos Derpich.

The following text was sent to CIPER by the victims' families and reconstructs the events based on statements contained in the judicial file. Its authors aim to demonstrate that the "illicit association" included all the agents who acted in these operations.

The method of fake confrontations to eliminate opponents was a common practice used by the National Information Center (CNI), the repressive agency of the military government. The detention, execution, and disappearance of prisoners—which the Directorate of National Intelligence (DINA), the CNI's predecessor, used intensely and massively during the early period of the dictatorship—was replaced in later years by the public execution of "internal enemies" and their subsequent presentation as confrontations by the CNI.

The latter would detain and eliminate opponents in chosen locations, where the scene of the alleged confrontation was later staged. Alternatively, opponents were executed in ambushes prepared in advance.

In both circumstances, the press covered the episodes with complicit enthusiasm. The courts of justice ignored the investigations demanded by the victims' families or processed the cases in a foolish and negligent manner; in any event, the country has had to endure decades of proceedings to achieve judicial progress.

What follows accounts for the responsibility of the courts of justice in clarifying the murder of seven MIR members in the cities of Concepción, Valdivia, and Los Ángeles, which occurred on August 23 and 24, 1984, within the framework of Operation Alfa Carbón 1 or, as it has been called, the "Southern Albania," in allusion to the well-known Operation Albania or Corpus Christi Massacre, in which the CNI murdered twelve members of the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front in June 1987.

The background information we present below does not constitute, according to the visiting judge overseeing the case, Carlos Aldana Fuentes, sufficient evidence to establish well-founded presumptions that the defendants and those charged—Hugo Salas Wenzel, Jorge Mandiola Arredondo, Jorge Andrade Gómez, and Aquiles González Cortés, among others—bore responsibility and participation as authors of the crimes committed under the charge of criminal illicit association.

Aldana also dismisses the responsibility as accomplices and accessories after the fact of Miguel Ángel Parra Vásquez, then a CNI lawyer responsible for instructing agents to provide false statements to the courts after the events occurred.

According to Aldana, there is insufficient evidence to conclude that these agents participated as authors, accomplices, or accessories in the crimes attributed to them, as required by Article 274 No. 2 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

On August 23, 1984, the CNI team led by Luís Hernán Gálvez Navarro began the second stage of Operation Alfa Carbón 1. Around 11:00, several CNI teams and a National Television crew arrived in Hualpencillo, now Hualpén.

Luciano Humberto Aedo Arias, a MIR leader in the Southern Theater of Operations, lived at 3346 Nápoles Street. After midday, at the intersection of Grecia and Nápoles, agents Raúl Hernán Escobar Díaz and Roberto Antonio Farías Santelices, along with Gálvez Navarro, got out of the vehicles in which they had been following him for months, shot him in the back, and finished him off on the ground.

Finally, according to witnesses, "after a while, many vehicles began to arrive; they checked his pockets, placed two small weapons near his body, some pamphlets, and some black objects like grenades" (fs. 3907, case file 746-84).

Alfa Carbón 1 had begun at the start of '84—or perhaps earlier—when Jorge Mandiola Arredondo, head of the CNI in Concepción, informed his superior, Marcos Spiros Derpich Miranda, head of the CNI's Regional Division, that there was already sufficient data to confirm the presence of a subversive structure in the area: the Southern Theater of Operations (TOS) of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR).

Joaquín Molina Fuenzalida (†), Derpich's second-in-command in the Regional Division (see the organizational chart of the agents who participated in the operation and their individual files), had directed the intelligence work for what would be the definitive dismantling of the MIR leadership in southern Chile.

Derpich and Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, then head of the CNI's Anti-Subversive Division (DAS), based at the Cuartel Borgoño in Santiago, were to command the operation. The report submitted by Mandiola included names, addresses, and organizational charts of the MIR members, among which was Aedo's information.

The autopsy report performed by forensic doctor César Reyes Contreras on August 24, 1984, at 8:30, confirmed that Luciano Aedo received seven bullet impacts: four in the back, head, left wrist, and left foot.

It defined the precise and necessary cause of death as a projectile fired from a distance of more than fifty centimeters that entered through the back and exited through the chest, compromising the heart and lungs (fs. 234; 292).

Likewise, in his statement on September 13, the doctor noted that the projectile's trajectory suggests that Aedo was leaning forward, "as when running," and that the wounds in the back must have been inflicted when the thorax was tilted significantly, "almost horizontal to the ground" (fs. 17954). Luciano Humberto Aedo Arias was 34 years old, a father of four, and a member of the MIR.

Later, around 16:00, in front of the Vega Monumental in Concepción, driver Pedro Aguayo Aguayo was forced to stop his minibus. About thirty CNI agents and Carabineros personnel had surrounded the area.

In Talcahuano, Mario Octavio Lagos Rodríguez, military head of the TOS, and Nelson Adrián Herrera Riveros, political-military head of the TOS, had boarded the bus. A National Television crew also took up positions.

Jorge Octavio Vargas Bories, a former Army officer hired as a civilian employee of the CNI and second-in-command of the Special Brigade, ordered the passengers to get off. Only the driver did so. Faced with this, the officers began throwing tear gas bombs into the vehicle, where about twelve people remained.

Ten got off. After a few minutes, Mario Lagos descended through the back door with his hands raised. Egon Antonio Barra Barra, a Carabineros corporal and member of the CNI's Special Brigade, got out of the vehicle in which they had followed the minibus, carrying an AK rifle.

Manuel Ángel Morales Acevedo, a Carabineros corporal and member of the CNI's Special Brigade, did the same. As stated at fs. 3646, both fired several shots, "the subject falling face down and dying in that place." They acted under the orders of Hugo José Hechenleitner Hechenleitner, then an Army lieutenant and team leader, before the stunned gaze of about 500 witnesses.

The autopsy report for Mario Lagos Rodríguez revealed that he received two bullet impacts fired from more than fifty centimeters away: one in the left axillary area—which proves he had his arms raised at the moment he was hit—and another in the posterior part of the right thigh. Mario Octavio Lagos Rodríguez was 34 years old, a father of three, and a member of the MIR.

Upon seeing him on the ground, Nelson Herrera tried to flee but was intercepted. The driver, Pedro Aguayo, declared on September 10, 1984: "I headed toward him and was a meter away from him. At that same moment, two agents arrived and lifted him by the arms.

The fallen man opened his eyes and looked at me directly. He had no blood anywhere on his body, except for a scrape on the right temple, which could have been caused by the fall or the graze of a bullet [...] The two men who had approached him grabbed him firmly by the arms, lifted him up, and said he was wounded and had to be taken to the hospital" (fs. 18345).

José Abel Aravena Ruiz, a Carabineros non-commissioned officer and member of the Blue Brigade, commanded the team in charge of tracking Herrera and, together with Sergio Agustín Mateluna Pino, a civilian Army agent and member of the CNI's regional Anti-Subversive Division in Concepción; Luis Enrique Andaur Leiva, a Carabineros corporal and operational guard at the CNI's Cuartel Borgoño; and a fourth agent to this day unidentified, whose alias was allegedly "Cárdenas," put him in a car and drove him toward Santa Juana.

There, in a vacant lot, Luis Andaur Leiva shot him in the forehead.

Nelson Herrera's autopsy concluded that the cause of death was a craniocerebral wound resulting from a point-blank shot, which penetrated through the middle nasofrontal region and whose star-shaped appearance indicates it was inflicted from a distance of two or three centimeters.

Furthermore, it revealed the presence of ecchymosis with blood infiltration on his wrists, indicating they were tied at the time of death. Nelson Adrián Herrera Riveros was 30 years old, a father of one daughter, and a member of the MIR.

As stated at fs. 4601—and established at fs. 3089, 3419, 2700, and 2557—the day before the operation, "a meeting was held in which it was decided who was to be detained and who was to be eliminated. In that meeting, photographs were placed, and those who were to be eliminated were marked with a cross; among these were Herrera and Lagos." The meeting was led by Derpich and Mandiola, and the entire command participated, meaning, in addition to them: Corbalán, González Cortés, Krantz Johans Bauer Donoso, and "the CNI officer known at the Cuartel Borgoño specifically as ‘don Oscar,’ who corresponds to Jorge Claudio Andrade Gómez." Krantz Bauer (†) was to be in charge of the teams that would operate in Los Ángeles, and for that reason, he moved to the regiment in that city that night.

Around 17:00 on August 23, Bauer Donoso received the order to operate and informed the teams under his command to proceed with the planned actions. Bruno Antonio Soto Aravena, an Army non-commissioned officer and member of the Concepción DAS; José Artemio Zapata Zapata, a civilian Army agent and member of the Concepción DAS; and Rafael de Jesús Riveros Frost, a civilian Army agent and member of the Caupolicán, Rojo, and Azul brigades, arrived at 841 Bombero Carlos Vyhmeister Street in the Orompello neighborhood, where Mario Mujica Barros, a MIR leader and member of the TOS, lived.

As stated in the file, the three members of the team commanded by Soto Aravena had arrived in the city of Los Ángeles the first week of August to follow him. On the day of the events, the team remained waiting for him to leave his home, but Mujica did not move.

About twelve agents positioned themselves in front of and on the sides of the house, and once the perimeter was secured, the team began the attack by entering the home. Simultaneously, the other teams fired into the air to give the impression of a confrontation.

But, as stated at fs. 309, Mario Mujica was subdued inside his home, placed on his knees, and executed with a point-blank shot. Subsequently, and to continue with the facade, the agents continued firing, climbing onto the roofs of neighboring houses and stationing themselves in the rear alley, while a large number of Carabineros provided perimeter support (fs. 146; 191).

The autopsy report for Mario Mujica indicated as the cause of death a bullet wound to the neck with involvement of the trachea and blood vessels, hemorrhage, and anemia. Likewise, Police Report No. 44 of the PDI's Criminalistics Department indicated that at the moment of receiving the homicidal impact, Mario Mujica could have been at a lower height than the person who fired the shot, either crouching or on the floor, or partially with his back turned, with his head and neck tilted (fs. 390).

Mario Ernesto Mujica Barros was 32 years old, a father of one son, and a member of the MIR.

As in Concepción, and as stated at fs. 392 and 291, a meeting was held in Valdivia on August 22, 1984, to plan the operation in that city. The meeting was led by Patricio Lorenzo Castro Muñoz, an Army lieutenant and second-in-command of the Yellow Brigade; Luis Alberto Moraga Tresckow, an Army captain and head of the CNI in Valdivia; and Oscar Alberto Boehmwald Soto, an Army captain and head of the CNI in Puerto Montt.

There, the teams that would operate the following day and the day after in the city were assigned.

On August 23, 1984, around midday, the three teams led by Patricio Castro detained Rogelio Tapia de la Puente and Raúl Jaime Barrientos Matamala, MIR leaders and members of the TOS, in the center of Valdivia.

The three groups formed a caravan along with two other teams, one of which was commanded by Moraga Tresckow, and headed along the route to Niebla until they reached the Estancilla Bridge, where they stopped in the middle of an open field.

A red van was also in the caravan. There, one of the vehicles moved about two hundred meters toward Niebla to cut off traffic, while another did the same with the flow coming from Valdivia. The detainees, tied, blindfolded, and gagged, were forced to get out and were immediately murdered by about five or six shooters, the first of them being Patricio Castro.

He was followed by "Miguel Aliaga," Gerardo Meza Acuña, Francisco Orellana Segel, Fernando Ramírez Romero, Alberto Moraga Tresckow, and another agent to this day unidentified. Subsequently, these same agents fired at the red van that had parked nearby to simulate a confrontation.

Ernesto Arnoldo Barría Ordoñez, captain of the ferry Caupolicán, which followed a route on the Valdivia River, noted that from midday on that August 23, many vehicles with Santiago license plates began to pass, crossing from Las Mulatas toward Torobayo, and that in the afternoon, some people in civilian clothes who claimed to be from the CNI approached him, accompanied by several Carabineros.

They asked him to suspend service, and since there were orders from the Maritime Governorate, he had to obey. After approximately an hour and a half, a Carabineros chief told him to cross to pick up a hearse to transport the bodies of two MIR members who had died in a confrontation. "The hearse was black, but it had the Carabineros logo.

I asked a known Carabineros officer for authorization to see the bodies." There he recognized Barrientos, because they lived in the same neighborhood (fs. 287).

The autopsies confirmed that Rogelio Tapia received six bullet impacts to the face, thorax, and abdomen, and Raúl Barrientos, three impacts to the head and thorax. Rogelio Tapia de la Puente was 31 years old, a father of two daughters, and a member of the MIR. Raúl Barrientos Matamala was 23 years old and a member of the MIR.

The execution of Operation Alfa Carbón 1 culminated on August 24 at 643 Rubén Darío Street, in the Corvi neighborhood of Valdivia. The previous day, most of the teams that had moved to Valdivia were monitoring the home of Juan José Boncompte Andreu, a MIR leader and member of the TOS, waiting for him to leave so they could execute him.

Among them were the chiefs Boehmwald Soto, Ema Verónica Ceballos Núñez, and Luís René Torres Méndez. However, Boncompte did not leave that day. The agents returned on the 24th with the order to enter his home.

Patricio Castro Muñoz entrusted Boehmwald Soto to lead the operation after midday. The team leaders, in addition to agents Patricio Castro, Pedro María Rojas Vásquez, Zinaida Lena Vicencio González, Aquiles Poblete Palominos, and Carlos Alberto Ejía López, among others, entered through the front door, while several teams surrounded the house and the entire block.

Eladio Washington Ilabel Poblete, a neighbor in the sector, noted that on the day of the events, he saw a black taxi park in front of Boncompte's house. Four individuals got out, knocked on the door, and entered.

After one or two minutes, he heard several shots: "Out of curiosity, I climbed onto the roof of my house and observed that a man came running out toward the lot (backyard) and was riddled with bullets by several people, as many were coming from the front of the house.

I also remember that an armed woman approached the body of the person who had been shot and lifted his nose, and I heard her say: 'He was a pretty guy,' as if laughing, and then she shot him with her weapon" (fs. 286).

According to the autopsy, Boncompte had 22 bullet impacts: nine in the thorax, four in the right arm, two in the right forearm, three in the right thigh, three in the left leg, and one in the face. Juan José Boncompte Andreu was 31 years old, a father of two children, and a member of the MIR.

Narda Flandes, also a neighbor of Boncompte, noted at fs. 279 that one of the subjects who shot him turned him over with his foot so he would be face up, and together with others, "they threw his body into a bag. I left the place, running toward the corner to keep watching. In that interval, I saw when they took out a pregnant girl and put her in the van."

In the statement she gave on October 5, 1990, for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Inés Díaz Vallejos noted:

I, Inés Díaz Vallejos, born in Quillota, Chilean citizen, with date of birth April 25, 1952, identity card 7.152.059-5, Santiago, professor by profession, with current address at Sodra Ledningsgatan 39, Lilla Edet, Sweden, come to declare that:

1) Approximately at 16:00 on that day, a group of people dressed in civilian clothes appeared at our home. Some wore an armband identifying them as members of the Army. Those people entered our house when I opened the door.

My partner, Juan José, remained in the bedroom. I was assaulted by four or five of the people who entered and was thrown to the floor of the living room. While lying there, I heard firearms being discharged inside the house.

At those moments, I was subjected to mistreatment by a group of those individuals. They demanded answers to questions about where there might be weapons, explosives, etc. I replied that I had no knowledge of such things.

These people insisted that I answer, and to that end, they subjected me to blows and kicks all over my body. I must emphasize that when this happened, I was 28 weeks pregnant. I lived with Juan José, and he is the father of my daughter.

After a while, I was removed from the house and taken to police facilities in Valdivia. That same day, almost at dusk, I was transferred again, this time to the men's prison in Valdivia. There I remained, kept incommunicado. This lasted six days (although I remained) detained until the week of the birth in November 1984, without being accused or convicted.

2) On November 28, 1984, my daughter Javiera was born, affected by generalized spastic tetraparesis. This implies a state of total physical impairment that is irreparable. My daughter is not in a condition to use her legs or arms, nor can she speak.

The impairment is physical in nature. My daughter's mental capacity is intact, with an evident degree of intelligence. All medical evaluations indicate without a doubt that the physical disability is due to the mistreatment I received on August 24, 1984.

The judicial history of this case begins on that same August 23, 1984, in the military prosecutor's offices of Concepción and Valdivia with proceedings against the 16 MIR members detained in both cities and those responsible for the "unnecessary violence" that caused the death of Luciano Aedo, Mario Lagos, Nelson Herrera, Mario Mujica, Rogelio Tapia, Raúl Barrientos, and Juan José Boncompte.

That same year, Monsignor José Manuel Santos, Archbishop of Concepción—whose denunciations were picked up by Cauce magazine in a report titled "I Accuse"—requested a visiting judge from the Court of Appeals and, faced with its refusal, presented all the background information he could gather to the Supreme Court.

But the case remained in the military justice system, most of the time under prosecutor Pedro Marisio, the same one who took statements from the detainees when they left the CNI barracks and were sent to prison.

Marisio interrogated six agents knowing they were using false names instructed by the lawyer Miguel Ángel Parra. Claudio Rodrigo Rozas Fernández, Antonio Martínez López, Jaime Marinovic Palma, Juan Machuca Fuenzalida, Ricardo Labórquez Maturana, and Raúl González López are the "aliases" they used.

In 1998, prosecutor Marisio dismissed the case, declaring that it was not possible to find the true identities of those responsible. The lawyer representing the families of the MIR members murdered in Concepción and Hualpencillo appealed, but the Court Martial confirmed the dismissal.

The lawyer then filed an appeal for cassation with the Supreme Court, which ordered the investigation to continue. Only in 2003 did military prosecutor Fernando Grandón, faced with a new attempt at dismissal, request that the Fifth Department of the PDI be tasked with investigating.

It was the detectives of this brigade who found the first two names: Hugo José Hechenleitner Hechenleitner and Víctor Muñoz Orellana. Finally, in 2007, lawyer Magdalena Garcés took over representing the majority of the victims' families and succeeded in having the case transferred to the civil justice system.

In 2009, Judge Aldana reopened the process for the death of Mario Mujica—which had been dismissed in 1998—and in 2011, he consolidated the three cases (Valdivia, Concepción, and Los Ángeles) into one (12-2009 of the Concepción Court of Appeals) for qualified homicide and illicit association against Marcos Derpich, Álvaro Corbalán, and others.

On June 20, 2012, Judge Aldana resolved to indict only ÁLVARO CORBALÁN CASTILLA and MARCOS DERPICH MIRANDA for illicit association and, for qualified homicide, in addition to them, 13 agents (see list below).

At the beginning of 2013, Magdalena Garcés and Patricia Parra (a lawyer for the Ministry of the Interior's Human Rights Program, which also became a party to the process) presented two requests to expand the indictment.

The lawyers' requests are for the judge to expand the indictment for the crime of illicit association and to indict: JORGE CLAUDIO ANDRADE GÓMEZ and AQUILES MAURICIO GONZÁLEZ CORTÉS as authors of the qualified homicide of all the victims; JORGE CAMILO MANDIOLA ARREDONDO as author of the qualified homicide of Luciano Humberto Aedo Arias, Mario Octavio Lagos Rodríguez, Nelson Adrián Herrera Riveros, and Mario Ernesto Mujica Barros; HUGO JOSÉ HECHENLEITNER HECHENLEITNER and EGON ANTONIO BARRA BARRA as authors of the crime of qualified homicide of Mario Octavio Lagos Rodríguez; RAFAEL DE JESÚS RIVEROS FROST as author of the crime of qualified homicide of Mario Ernesto Mujica Barros; FRANCISCO JAVIER ORELLANA SEGUEL and JORGE FERNANDO RAMÍREZ ROMERO as authors of the qualified homicide of Rogelio Humberto Tapia De la Puente and Raúl Jaime Barrientos Matamala; and agents CARLOS ALBERTO EGUÍA LÓPEZ, LUIS RENÉ TORRES MÉNDEZ, PEDRO MARÍA ROJAS VÁSQUEZ, ZINAIDA LENA VICENCIO GONZÁLEZ, and AQUILES POBLETE PALOMINOS as authors of the crime of qualified homicide of Juan José Boncompte Andreu.

An illicit association composed of only two people, as Judge Aldana intends, is laughable in this context. Indeed, Article 292 of the Penal Code provides that any association formed with the object of attacking the social order, good customs, persons, or property constitutes a crime that exists by the mere fact of organizing.

Likewise, Article 293 of the Penal Code sanctions with the penalty of presidio mayor in any of its degrees the leaders, those who have exercised command, and their instigators when the agreement of wills has had as its object the perpetration of crimes, as occurs in this case.

Added to this, Judge Aldana has decided to prosecute only the "material" authors of the case, ignoring both the rationality and hierarchy with which the repressive apparatuses functioned in Chile, as pointed out by the progress of jurisprudence in this regard.

To be able to judge the crimes committed by the Nazis, international jurisprudence replaced the distinction between material author and intellectual author with one that would allow for the accounting of the way complex organizations operate.

Currently, a distinction is made between the immediate author and the mediate author, who is, ultimately, the one who gives the order and "has control over the act." For this reason, the fact that Hugo Salas Wenzel (second-in-command of the CNI), Jorge Mandiola Arredondo (head of the CNI in Concepción), Jorge Andrade Gómez (second-in-command of the Anti-Subversive Division commanded by Corbalán), and Aquiles González Cortés (head of the Blue Brigade in charge of the extermination of the MIR) are not being prosecuted in this case, when their participation in the crimes is proven, constitutes sufficient evidence to affirm that the courts lack the will and conviction to effectively investigate and punish the State agents who committed criminal acts during the dictatorship.

The set of statements from witnesses, agents, and survivors is not sufficient for the judge, who seems to ignore that in human rights cases, obtaining the confession of the accused is almost impossible.

Therefore, convictions in these cases are based not on conviction, but on the configuration of well-founded presumptions: the immediate authors and m immediate subordinates have not confessed, nor will they confess their crimes.

Therefore, if there are two or more statements indicating that an agent presided over a meeting and showed photographs marked with crosses; commanded a team and gave the order to execute; fired at a man who was on the street or inside his home; or occupies a position in the organizational charts that the agents themselves created to map out the CNI’s operational command—as is the case throughout the 20 volumes that make up the case—that person should be prosecuted for both illicit association and aggravated homicide.

Finally, even if Judge Aldana were to prosecute all the most obvious commanders and immediate perpetrators, as requested by lawyers Garcés and Parra, the sentences would be insufficient. Operation Alfa Carbón 1 involved around one hundred agents from Santiago, Concepción, Valdivia, Puerto Montt, and other cities in the south of the country in a massacre that ended the lives of seven people and for which only 15 individuals are currently being tried.

What do the judge and the Chilean justice system need to recognize the logic of extermination that prevailed in Chile between 1973-1990 and proceed accordingly?

Source: Ciperchile.cl, June 4, 2013

Concepción Court confirms sentence for 17 former CNI agents for the murder of resistance fighters against the dictatorship in Operation Alfa Carbón

In a resolution released today, the Concepción Court of Appeals ratified the sentences against 17 agents of the Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI) who were convicted in a first-instance ruling issued in May 2018 by Judge Carlos Aldana.

After more than four years of unjustified delays and obstructive maneuvers introduced by the criminals' lawyers, this stage of the process, which had remained stagnant in the tangle of the courts, has been brought to an end.

Darío Núñez The case known as the "Vega Monumental Massacre" (docket No. 11-2009) substantiates the criminal investigation into the aggravated homicides of seven militants of the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) committed by agents of the defunct CNI on August 23 and 24, 1984, in a coordinated repressive action called "Operation Alfa Carbón," which took place in the cities of Concepción, Los Ángeles, Temuco, and Valdivia.

The repressive action culminated in the murder of Luciano Humberto Aedo Arias, in the current commune of Hualpén; Nelson Adrián Herrera Riveros and Mario Octavio Lagos Rodríguez, in Concepción; Mario Ernesto Mujica Barros, in Los Ángeles; and Rogelio Humberto Tapia de la Puente, Raúl Jaime Barrientos Matamala, and Juan José Boncompte Andreu, in Valdivia.

In the ruling, the Sixth Chamber of the Concepción appellate court, composed of judges Rodrigo Cerda San Martín, Rafael Andrade Díaz, and Claudia Montero Céspedes, rejected the appeals for cassation filed by the criminals' lawyers and confirmed the sentence convicting six former Army officers who operated as commanders in the CNI.

Former Army Brigadier Marcos Spiro Derpich Miranda, alias "Gitano," head of the CNI's Regional Division at the time of the events, and former Lieutenant Colonel Álvaro Julio Federico Corbalán Castilla, alias "Faraón," head of the CNI's Anti-subversive Division, were sentenced to 20 years in prison as co-perpetrators of all the aggravated homicides and to 5 years and one day in prison as co-perpetrators of illicit association.

Former Captain Patricio Lorenzo Castro Muñoz, alias "BJ," must serve a sentence of 15 years and one day in prison for the three homicides in Valdivia, and 5 years and one day as a co-perpetrator of illicit association.

Former Lieutenant Colonel Jorge Camilo Mandiola Arredondo, at the time of the events the regional head of the CNI in Concepción, was sentenced to 15 years and one day in prison as a co-perpetrator of the aggravated homicides in Talcahuano, Concepción, and Los Ángeles.

However, he was acquitted of the crime of illicit association. Former Lieutenant Colonel Luis Alberto Moraga Tresckow, regional head of the CNI in Valdivia and a material perpetrator of the crimes committed at Puente Estancilla, was sentenced to five years of supervised release.

Former Major Oscar Alberto Boehmwald Soto, regional head of the CNI in Puerto Montt, was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Meanwhile, agents Roberto Antonio Farías Santelices, alias "Petete," and Luis Hernán Gálvez Navarro, alias "Vitoco," were sentenced to 10 years and one day in prison as co-perpetrators of the aggravated homicide of Luciano Aedo Arias committed in Hualpén.

Meanwhile, José Abel Aravena Ruiz, alias "Muñeca," Sergio Agustín Mateluna Pino, alias "Guatón Órdenes," Luis Enrique Andaur Leiva, and Patricio Alfredo Bertón Campos were sentenced to 10 years and one day in prison as co-perpetrators of the aggravated homicide of Nelson Herrera Riveros committed at Kilometer One of the road to Santa Juana, in the Idahue sector.

The only defendant and accused person whom Judge Aldana had decreed for the aggravated homicide of Mario Lagos Rodríguez, committed at the Vega Monumental, the criminal Manuel Ángel Morales Acevedo, alias "Baretta," was acquitted by the judge.

Regarding Los Ángeles, the ruling states that Bruno Antonio Soto Aravena, alias "Chico Pato," and José Artemio Zapata Zapata, alias "Huaso," must serve a sentence of 10 years and one day in prison as co-perpetrators of the aggravated homicide of Mario Mujica Barros.

As for the events in Valdivia, Gerardo Meza Acuña, alias "Patitas," and Luis René Torres Méndez, alias "Negro Mario," were sentenced to 15 years and one day as co-perpetrators of two aggravated homicides committed at Puente Estancilla, on the road to Niebla, against Rogelio Tapia De La Puente and Raúl Barrientos Matamala.

For this same event, Luis Alberto Moraga Tresckow was sentenced to 5 years in prison, with the benefit of supervised release. Finally, Oscar Alberto Boehmwald Soto and Ema Verónica Ceballos Núñez, alias "Flaca Cecilia," were sentenced to 10 years and one day as co-perpetrators of the aggravated homicide of Juan José Boncompte Andreu, committed in the Población Teniente Merino.

Three of the criminals involved died in the period between the first-instance ruling and the Court's resolution; in September 2019, the convicted criminal José Zapata committed suicide; in July 2020, the also-convicted Gerardo Meza Acuña passed away; and in December 2021, "Baretta," Manuel Ángel Morales Acevedo, passed away, whose acquittal—unusually, even though he had not been convicted by Aldana—was appealed by the plaintiff lawyers.

It should be noted that during the course of the process, Judge Aldana refused to prosecute Moraga Tresckow and Boehmwald Soto for illicit association, and in his first-instance ruling, he did not convict Mandiola Arredondo for this crime—the head of the CNI in Concepción and the manager of the concerted action of surveillance, tracking, and preparation of the operation that culminated in the crimes of August, in which, moreover, Mandiola participated actively.

Likewise, Judge Aldana refused to prosecute another dozen implicated agents, a decision that was endorsed by the Concepción Court at the time. Tribute ceremony for the murdered militants. Concepción. Photograph by Natalia Figueroa.

Alfa Carbón Precisely during the investigation stage, Judge Aldana managed to establish that in 1984, the head of the CNI in Concepción, Army Major Jorge Mandiola, received information about the re-articulation of the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) in the area, managing to detect some of its leaders.

After informing Army Colonel Marcos Derpich Miranda, head of the CNI's Regional Division, and confirming the fact, the director of the CNI, General Humberto Gordon Rubio (now deceased), was informed, who determined that Army Major Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, in charge of the Anti-subversive Division and the Regional command, should coordinate the operations to neutralize the members of the MIR who were operating between the Biobío and Los Ríos regions, naming these actions "Operation Alfa Carbón." As a result of the above, Corbalán Castilla ordered several teams, composed of agents from the various Brigades of the Cuartel Borgoño in Santiago, consisting of two or three people and with transportation and funding provided by the Anti-subversive Division, to move to Concepción, Los Ángeles, Temuco, and Valdivia, so that, in coordination with members of the CNI's Regional divisions in those cities, they could carry out the tasks ordered by the various commands. He also ordered his subordinate Patricio Lorenzo Castro Muñoz to establish himself in Valdivia, in charge of the teams he brought from Santiago, to direct and carry out the operations in that region. In parallel, and for the same purpose, Marcos Derpich Miranda arranged for the head of the CNI's Chillán barracks, Héctor Reinoso Muñoz, to join his counterpart in Concepción; Mandiola and the head of Puerto Montt, Oscar Boehmwald, along with two agents from his unit, were to report to the head of Valdivia, Moraga Tresckow, to support the respective operations. Once in Concepción, the teams and commanders who arrived in the city, plus those from this region, met in the days around August 23, 1984, at the CNI barracks located on Avenida Pedro de Valdivia, where they coordinated the actions to be carried out, led by Álvaro Corbalán, Joaquín Molina (deceased), and Marcos Derpich. In that meeting, the decision was made to carry out various raids and arrests (without judicial orders or legal proceedings) and that the fate of the detainees would depend on the degree of danger they posed to the military regime prevailing in the country, assuming that some of them could end up dead. This operation included repressive actions in Talcahuano and Concepción as well as in Los Ángeles, Temuco, Valdivia, and other locations in the southern zone. The events On the morning of August 23, 1984, several CNI teams set up surveillance actions on three members of the MIR at the Plazoleta El Ancla in Talcahuano. One of them, Luciano Humberto Aedo Arias, boarded a public transport bus heading toward the Hualpencillo sector, where he got off the vehicle and tried to flee on foot, being intercepted by CNI members—around noon—at the corner of Grecia and Nápoles streets, where agent Luis Hernán Gálvez Navarro shot him with a firearm he was carrying, causing him to fall wounded to the ground. Agent Roberto Antonio Farías Santelices then approached and finished him off with a burst from his AK-47 rifle in his back. The other two MIR members detected and monitored earlier in Talcahuano, Nelson Adrián Herrera Riveros and Mario Octavio Lagos Rodríguez, boarded another bus heading to Concepción, which was followed by other CNI operational teams, who coordinated with the Carabineros along the way to intercept the bus—which was carrying passengers—in front of the Vega Monumental. When the vehicle arrived at that location, the CNI members intercepted the bus and ordered everyone to get off, but since some refused, including those being pursued, they threw tear gas canisters. When they descended, they shot Herrera and Lagos, causing them wounds. Lagos Rodríguez tried to flee, so an agent shot him with the AK rifle he was carrying, causing his death on the spot. For his part, Herrera Riveros was apprehended by CNI agents Sergio Mateluna Pino, José Abel Aravena Ruiz, Luis Andaur Leiva, and Patricio Alfredo Bertón Campos, who put him into one of their vehicles and headed to the Regional Hospital of Concepción for treatment of his wounds. However, during the journey, Derpich Miranda ordered his execution, so they took him to kilometer 0.9 of the road to Santa Juana, where they took him out of the vehicle and Aravena Ruiz ordered Andaur Leiva to carry out the crime; the latter shot him with his revolver in the forehead, causing a craniocerebral gunshot wound that caused his instantaneous death. Around 5:30 p.m. that same day, once the CNI agents from Concepción, José Zapata Zapata and Bruno Soto Aravena, who were following Mario Mujica Barros, along with several teams led by the late Karl Johans Bauer, following the instructions of their boss Jorge Camilo Mandiola Arredondo, approached Mujica Barros's home in the Población Orompello in Los Ángeles. They entered the property by surprise and violently, shooting the victim in the head while he was on the ground, causing his death. Meanwhile, at around 4:00 p.m. on August 23, 1984, CNI operational teams that had arrived from Santiago, led by Patricio Castro Muñoz, arrested Rogelio Tapia de la Puente and Jaime Barrientos Matamala near the Puente Las Ánimas in the city of Valdivia. Subsequently, they crossed the Calle Calle River on a ferry and transported them to the Puente Estancilla, located on the road from Valdivia to Niebla, in the Torobayo sector, a place where traffic for all vehicles and people had previously been cut off by Carabineros. Under circumstances where the detainees had their hands tied and their eyes blindfolded, the agents proceeded to execute them, by order of Castro Muñoz, who fired, along with agents Luis René Torres Méndez and Gerardo Meza Muñoz and others not identified in the process. Likewise, the regional head of the CNI in Valdivia, Luis Moraga Tresckow, who had allegedly refused to shoot, finished them off after the repeated order from Castro Muñoz. The victims received multiple projectile wounds, some of which impacted Tapia de la Puente and Barrientos Matamala in the skull and thorax. Subsequently, weapons were placed in the hands of the deceased to simulate a confrontation. The next day, August 24, 1984, around 3:00 p.m., several CNI operational teams, led by Patricio Castro Muñoz, surrounded the home of Juan José Boncompte Andreu, located in the Población Teniente Merino in Valdivia, entering it to arrest Boncompte Andreu, who tried to flee from his captors, being wounded by shots from Oscar Boehmwald Soto, falling to the ground, where Ema Verónica Ceballos Núñez shot him in the head with her firearm, causing his death.

Source: resumen.cl, June 10, 2022

Supreme Court confirms sentences of 15 CNI agents for crimes of Operation Alfa Carbón

The Supreme Court confirmed the sentences imposed on 15 former agents of the National Information Center (CNI) for their responsibility in the qualified homicides of seven militants of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), perpetrated on August 23 and 24, 1984, in a coordinated repressive action carried out in the cities of Concepción, Los Ángeles, Temuco, and Valdivia.

The operation was named "Operation Alfa Carbón" by the repressive organs, but is popularly known as the "Vega Monumental Massacre."

The repressive operation culminated on August 23 with the murder of Luciano Humberto Aedo Arias, 34, committed in the current commune of Hualpén; in Concepción, in front of the Vega Monumental, Nelson Adrián Herrera Riveros, 30, and Mario Octavio Lagos Rodríguez, 34, were killed.

That same day in Los Ángeles, Mario Ernesto Mujica Barros, 32, was murdered, and in Valdivia, Rogelio Humberto Tapia de la Puente, 31, and Raúl Jaime Barrientos Matamala, 23, were executed. The following day, Juan José Boncompte Andreu, 31, was executed.

Furthermore, as part of the repressive offensive, dozens of people—militants and those resisting the dictatorship—were detained in the aforementioned cities and in other towns and localities in the south.

In a unanimous ruling (Case Roll 75.716-2022), the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court—composed of ministers Haroldo Brito Cruz, Jorge Dahm Oyarzún, Leopoldo Llanos Sagristá, and acting attorneys Leonor Etcheberry C. and Gonzalo Ruz L.—rejected the cassation appeals in form and substance filed by eight of the convicted criminals and ruled out any legal error in the challenged sentence, which had been issued by the Concepción Court of Appeals in June 2022 (Roll 325-2019).

That ruling had ratified the first-instance sentence issued in May 2018 (Roll 11-2009), which convicted the accused for their responsibility in the crimes.

The criminals

With this resolution, the Second Chamber confirms the sentence convicting the 15 former CNI agents; two others convicted in the first instance passed away during the course of the proceedings. The convicted include six former Army officers who operated as commanders within the CNI: former Brigadier Marcos Spiro Derpich Miranda, who at the time of the events was head of the CNI Regional Division, and former Lieutenant Colonel Álvaro Julio Federico Corbalán Castilla, head of the CNI Anti-Subversive Division.

Both were sentenced to 20 years in prison as co-authors of all the qualified homicides and to 5 years and one day in prison as co-authors of illicit association.

Former Captain Patricio Lorenzo Castro Muñoz, alias "BJ," must serve a sentence of 15 years and one day in prison for the three qualified homicides committed in Valdivia, and 5 years and one day in prison as a co-author of illicit association.

Former Lieutenant Colonel Jorge Camilo Mandiola Arredondo, who at the time of the events was the CNI regional head in Concepción, was sentenced to 15 years and one day in prison as a co-author of the qualified homicides committed in Talcahuano, Concepción, and Los Ángeles.

Former Lieutenant Colonel Luis Alberto Moraga Tresckow, who at the time of the events was the CNI regional head in Valdivia and a material author of the crimes perpetrated at Puente Estancilla in Valdivia, was sentenced to five years of supervised release.

Former Major Oscar Alberto Boehmwald Soto, CNI regional head in Puerto Montt, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the qualified homicide perpetrated in the city of Valdivia against Juan José Boncompte Andreu.

Meanwhile, agents Luis Hernán Gálvez Navarro and Roberto Antonio Farías Santelices were sentenced to 10 years and one day in prison as co-authors of the qualified homicide of Luciano Aedo Arias committed in Hualpén.

José Abel Aravena Ruiz, Sergio Agustín Mateluna Pino, Luis Enrique Andaur Leiva, and Patricio Alfredo Bertón Campos were sentenced to 10 years and one day in prison as co-authors of the qualified homicide of Nelson Herrera Riveros, committed at Kilometer One of the Camino a Santa Juana, in the Idahue sector.

The only individual prosecuted and accused by the investigating judge Carlos Aldana for the qualified homicide of Mario Lagos Rodríguez, committed at the Vega Monumental—the criminal Manuel Ángel Morales Acevedo—was acquitted by the judge. Later, during the course of the process, this individual passed away in December 2021.

Regarding the crime committed in Los Ángeles, agent Bruno Antonio Soto Aravena must serve a sentence of 10 years and one day in prison as a co-author of the qualified homicide of Mario Mujica Barros. The other individual convicted in the first instance for this crime, José Artemio Zapata Zapata, committed suicide in September 2019.

For the criminal acts committed in Valdivia, agent Luis René Torres Méndez was sentenced to 15 years and one day in prison as a co-author of the two qualified homicides committed at Puente Estancilla, on the road to Niebla, against Rogelio Tapia De La Puente and Raúl Barrientos Matamala.

For this same act, agent Gerardo Meza Acuña had also been sentenced in the first instance to the same penalty, but this individual passed away in July 2020. Finally, in addition to Oscar Alberto Boehmwald Soto, agent Ema Verónica Ceballos Núñez was sentenced to 10 years and one day in prison as a co-author of the qualified homicide of Juan José Boncompte Andreu, committed in the Población Teniente Merino.

It should be noted that during the course of the process (Case Roll 11-2009), Judge Carlos Aldana refused to prosecute another dozen agents implicated in the criminal acts, a decision that was endorsed at the time by the Concepción Court of Appeals.

Likewise, Judge Aldana refused to prosecute the implicated officers Luis Moraga Tresckow and Oscar Boehmwald Soto for illicit association; and despite having indicted Jorge Mandiola Arredondo—the CNI head in Concepción and the architect of the concerted action of surveillance, tracking, and preparation for the operation that culminated in the August crimes, in which Mandiola Arredondo actively participated—he did not convict him for this specific offense.

Furthermore, the convicted criminal Patricio Castro Muñoz attempted to question the legality of the judicial process and the conviction against him, and in October of last year, he appealed to the Constitutional Court (TC), invoking vices of unconstitutionality in the trial and the conviction that affected him.

However, on January 9 of this year, the TC ruled the appeal presented by the criminal and his representative inadmissible, rejecting the petition.

Operation Alfa Carbón

During the investigation stage, it was established that at the beginning of 1984, the CNI head in Concepción, Major Jorge Mandiola, received information regarding the re-articulation of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) in the area, managing to detect some of its leaders and a large number of militants and resistors.

After informing his superior, Colonel Marcos Derpich Miranda, head of the CNI Regional Division, and having confirmed the detection of the MIR organization in the south, they informed the CNI director, General Humberto Gordon Rubio (now deceased), who determined that Major Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, in charge of the Anti-Subversive Division, should coordinate with the Regional leadership to carry out operations aimed at neutralizing the members of the MIR who were operating between the Biobío and Los Ríos regions, naming these actions "Operation Alfa Carbón."

As a result, Álvaro Corbalán ordered several teams—integrated by agents from different brigades of the Cuartel Borgoño (Blue, Yellow, Green, Brown, and Special) from Santiago, composed of two or three people and provided with transportation and funding by the Anti-Subversive Division—to move to Concepción, Los Ángeles, Temuco, and Valdivia, so that, in coordination with members of the CNI Regional units of those cities, they could carry out the tasks ordered by the various commands.

Likewise, Corbalán ordered his subordinate Patricio Lorenzo Castro Muñoz, deputy head of the Yellow Brigade, to establish himself in Valdivia, in charge of the teams brought from Santiago, to direct and carry out the operations in that region.

Similarly, he ordered Krantz Johans Bauer, deputy head of the Special Brigade, to establish himself in Los Ángeles to take charge of operational tasks, supported by joint teams from Santiago and the Regional units.

In parallel, and with the same goal, Marcos Derpich Miranda ordered the head of the CNI Chillán barracks, Héctor Reinoso Muñoz, and agents from his unit to integrate with their counterparts in Concepción, and for the head of Puerto Montt, Oscar Boehmwald, along with agents from his unit, to report to the head of Valdivia to support the repressive operations.

With the information accumulated through tracking, surveillance, and wiretapping, the CNI commanders decided to strike the final blow. In the days prior to the event, led by Álvaro Corbalán, Joaquín Molina Fuenzalida (deceased), Marcos Derpich, and others, the commanders, chiefs, and teams that had arrived in the city, plus local agents, met at the CNI barracks located at the corner of Calle Bahamondes and Avenida Pedro de Valdivia in Concepción, where they coordinated the actions to be developed.

At that meeting, the decision was made to carry out various raids and detentions (without any judicial orders or proceedings) and that the fate of the detainees would depend on their degree of danger to the military regime prevailing in the country.

There, the CNI commanders established that MIR members would be eliminated if they were detained at the moment of "breaking" or executing the operation. This operation included repressive actions in Talcahuano and Concepción, as well as in Los Ángeles, Temuco, Valdivia, and other localities in the southern zone.

The events

The date chosen by the CNI commanders was August 23, 1984. On the morning of the 23rd, in Concepción, several CNI teams set up surveillance on three members of the MIR, who converged at a restaurant located in the Plazoleta El Ancla in Talcahuano. They were Nelson Herrera, Mario Lagos, and Luciano Aedo.

Around noon, one of them, Luciano Humberto Aedo Arias, boarded a public transport bus in the direction of the Hualpencillo sector where he resided. He got off the bus upon noticing the obvious surveillance and tried to flee on foot, being intercepted by CNI agents at the corner of Grecia and Nápoles streets.

At that moment, agent Luis Hernán Gálvez Navarro shot him with a firearm he was carrying, and Luciano fell wounded to the ground; then, agent Roberto Antonio Farías Santelices approached the fallen man and finished him off with a burst from an AK-47 rifle into his back.

A couple of hours later, and without perceiving what was happening outside, the other two MIR members detected and monitored at the restaurant in Talcahuano, Nelson Adrián Herrera Riveros and Mario Octavio Lagos Rodríguez, boarded another bus heading to Concepción.

They were followed by other CNI operational teams, who coordinated with the Carabineros along the way to intercept the bus—which was carrying passengers—in front of the Vega Monumental.

When the vehicle reached that location, the CNI members intercepted the bus and ordered everyone to get off. When some people refused, including the targets, they threw tear gas bombs inside the bus, forcing an evacuation.

Once the passengers had exited, the two MIR members got off the bus with their hands up, but the CNI agents immediately shot Herrera and Lagos, causing them wounds. Mario Lagos attempted to flee, so an agent shot him with the AK rifle he was carrying, causing his death on the spot.

For his part, Nelson Herrera Riveros was apprehended by CNI agents Sergio Mateluna Pino, José Abel Aravena Ruiz, Luis Andaur Leiva, and Patricio Alfredo Bertón Campos, who forced him into one of their vehicles and—as part of the cover-up—announced aloud that they were heading to the Concepción Regional Hospital to attend to the detainee's wounds.

However, they deviated from the route and took him to kilometer 0.9 of the road to Santa Juana, where they took him out of the vehicle and Aravena Ruiz ordered Andaur Leiva to execute the crime; the latter shot him with his revolver in the forehead, causing a gunshot wound to the skull and brain that caused instant death, just as Derpich Miranda had ordered them via radio.

To complete the farce, the executioners headed with the murdered man to the Regional Hospital and admitted him through the emergency room, already deceased. The agents left Nelson Herrera at the hospital handcuffed behind his back. They returned later to release and recover the handcuffs.

Los Ángeles

In Los Ángeles, around 5:30 PM on the same day, the 23rd, once the CNI agents from Concepción, José Zapata Zapata and Bruno Soto Aravena, who were following Mario Mujica Barros, along with several teams led by the deceased Krantz Johans Bauer, followed the instructions of their chief Jorge Camilo Mandiola Arredondo, they approached Mujica Barros's home in the Población Orompello in Los Ángeles.

They entered the property by surprise and violently, shooting the victim in the head while he was on the ground, causing his death.

Valdivia

Meanwhile, in Valdivia, around 4:00 PM on August 23, CNI operational teams that had arrived from Santiago, led by Patricio Castro Muñoz, detained Rogelio Tapia de la Puente and Jaime Barrientos Matamala near the Puente Las Ánimas in the city of Valdivia.

Subsequently, they crossed the Calle Calle River on a ferry and transported them to the Puente Estancilla, located on the road from Valdivia to Niebla, in the Torobayo sector.

At that location, where traffic for all vehicles and people had previously been cut off by Carabineros, and while the detainees were handcuffed and blindfolded, the agents proceeded to execute them by order of Castro Muñoz, who fired himself, along with agents Luis René Torres Méndez and Gerardo Meza Muñoz and others not identified in the process.

Likewise, the CNI regional head of Valdivia, Luis Moraga Tresckow, who initially had refused to shoot, upon the imperative order of Castro Muñoz, finished them off with shots from his weapon. The victims received multiple projectile wounds, some of which impacted Tapia de la Puente and Barrientos Matamala in the skull and thorax.

Subsequently, weapons were placed in the hands of the deceased to simulate a confrontation.

The following day, August 24, around 3:00 PM, several CNI operational teams, led by Patricio Castro Muñoz, surrounded the home of Juan José Boncompte Andreu, located on Calle Rubén Darío in the Población Teniente Merino in Valdivia, entering to eliminate Boncompte Andreu. He tried to flee from his captors through the backyard of the house, being wounded by Oscar Boehmwald Soto.

In the backyard, other agents were waiting in ambush and also shot him; once on the ground, agent Ema Verónica Ceballos Núñez finished him off by shooting him in the head with her firearm, ensuring his death. Juan José Boncompte received 22 bullet impacts.

Summary by Darío Núñez

Source: resumen.cl, March 5, 2024

Former CNI agent Marcos Derpich found dead: He was convicted and had an arrest warrant

The former CNI member Marcos Derpich, who was recently sentenced to 25 years in prison for crimes against MIR members during the Pinochet dictatorship, was found dead inside his vehicle, apparently by suicide. He had an active arrest warrant.

After being sentenced to 25 years in prison for human rights violations during the Pinochet dictatorship and before turning himself in to justice, the body of Marcos Derpich, a former member of the CNI, was found lifeless.

His body appeared inside his vehicle, parked in front of Plaza Las Lilas in Providencia, and initial hypotheses point to suicide.

It should be remembered that Derpich was convicted for the massacre of 7 militants of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) that occurred in 1984, for which he was to serve a sentence in Punta Peuco.

Who was Marcos Derpich?

According to the archives of Memoria Viva, Derpich was the head of the CNI Regional Division, as well as its deputy director, between March 1988 and September 1990.

A few days ago, he received the sentence for his proven participation in Operation Alfa Carbón, for which he had an active arrest warrant that was to be executed this Monday, March 18.

As he did not appear, personnel from the PDI Human Rights Brigade went to his home, where he was not found either. A few minutes after starting the search, he was found dead in his vehicle, and the first indications point to suicide.

Source: eldesconcierto.cl, March 18, 2024

The turns of Marcos Derpich, the last former CNI chief who evaded prison through suicide

Marcos Derpich played every card to avoid paying for his guilt in Operation Alfa Carbón. He directly ordered the death of MIR militants during the dictatorship. He dragged out the process for years, but two weeks ago, the Supreme Court declared him guilty definitively.

He tried to shift responsibility onto two figures: Álvaro Corbalán, another former CNI member known for having more than 100 years of prison to his name; and also onto Major Joaquín Molina, better known as the husband of comedian Gloria Benavides, who died in 1988 after being shot at a party by the son of the former DINA chief, Manuel "Mamo" Contreras.

This Monday, when the PDI arrived at his door to lock him up, he was already gone. With no way out, a few blocks from his home, he took his own life.

—"Prove something to me!!!"

Marcos Spiro Derpich Miranda (85), alias "El Gitano," picked up his phone and started recording. It was November 22, 2018. He was with friends having coffee in the vicinity of Tobalaba, in the heart of Providencia. He was not far from his home on Calle El Vergel.

He didn't know it at the time, but in front of him was a group from the "Comisión Funa," who—as can be inferred from their name—publicly denounce the targets they choose. This time they had set their sights on him, a retired Army Brigadier with an extensive career in the National Information Center (CNI), the main repressive apparatus of the dictatorship, where he served as deputy director and head of the Regional Division.

Instead of returning to his apartment amidst the booing, he decided to confront them, although with a face that showed a mix of annoyance and surprise. They shouted at each other.

At that time, he had a first-instance ruling against him. Investigating Judge Carlos Aldana declared him guilty, along with Álvaro Corbalán and other agents, and sentenced him to 25 years in prison: 20 years for qualified homicide and 5 years and one day for illicit association.

All this within the framework of the so-called Operation Alfa Carbón, carried out between August 23 and 24, 1984, which allowed for the massacre of militants of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR).

Compared to his comrade Corbalán, Derpich had had "luck." For example, in 2009 he was acquitted in a kidnapping case due to lack of participation. Meanwhile, Corbalán has a life sentence, in addition to other convictions, totaling more than 100 years in prison.

Probably with that self-confidence, he confronted the protesters. And he even turned the situation to his advantage. According to voices present, the manager of the establishment served him a courtesy coffee for the "bad time."

He didn't feel guilty of anything. Five years after that episode, the scenario changed. Justice said otherwise.

RIP

—"He must be dispatched." —"Confirm the order."

—"RIP."

Although in April 2009 he escaped a kidnapping case, in September of that same year, justice returned to the charge. At that time, Judge Aldana's process began.

During the proceedings, the investigation showed that Derpich was one of the main chiefs in charge of Operation Alfa Carbón, along with Corbalán and Major Joaquín Molina, then a CNI analyst, better known as the husband of comedian Gloria Benavides, who died in 1988 after being shot at a party by the son of the former DINA chief, Manuel "Mamo" Contreras.

As justice established, to exterminate the seven MIR members they had been tracking, the teams moved to Los Ángeles, Concepción, and Valdivia. Prior to August 23 and 24, 1984, they met at the CNI barracks on Avenida Pedro de Valdivia, in the capital of the Bío Bío region.

From there, the homicides of Nelson Adrián Herrera Riveros, Mario Octavio Lagos Rodríguez, Luciano Humberto Aedo Arias, Mario Mujica Barros, Juan José Boncompte Andreu, Rogelio Tapia de la Puente, and Raúl Jaime Barrientos Matamala were coordinated.

The operation started on the morning of that Thursday, the 23rd. In the iconic Plaza El Ancla in Talcahuano, opposite where the commune's Bentoteca is today, the agents detected three MIR members: Herrera, Lagos, and Aedo.

After realizing it, they decided to flee by bus. The captors had firearms and even an AK-47 rifle. Aedo headed on a bus in the direction of Hualpencillo—today the commune of Hualpén, formerly Talcahuano—and the other two also boarded a bus, but toward Concepción.

The first one, when he got off, tried to flee on foot. But around noon, at the corner of Grecia and Nápoles streets, one of the agents shot him with his firearm. Immediately after, another CNI agent approached with the AK-47 and fired a burst directly into his back.

Other CNI agents followed Herrera and Lagos. Along the way, they coordinated with the Carabineros to intercept the bus, isolating the intersection of Avenida 21 de Mayo with Mencia de Los Nidos, in front of the Vega Monumental. There, the agents ordered the passengers to get off, but several refused, including the MIR members on board.

Immediately after, they threw tear gas bombs to force the passengers to get off. In the meantime, the agents managed to shoot both of them. Lagos tried to flee, but he suffered the same fate as Aedo: they killed him with the rifle. Herrera, meanwhile, was captured.

José Abel Aravena Ruiz, alias "El Muñeca," along with other CNI agents, threw him into one of their vehicles and took him to the Concepción Regional Hospital. Along the way, the latter received a radio order from Derpich. The detainee could not arrive alive at the medical center and had to be eliminated.

—"He must be dispatched," Derpich ordered. —"Confirm the order," "El Muñeca" asked him.

—"RIP."

No one questioned the mandate, and they diverted to the Idahue sector, at the beginning of the road to Santa Juana. Luis Andaur Leiva, alias "Caviedes," threw him to the ground, put a foot on his chest, and shot him with his revolver, two centimeters from his forehead.

He killed him instantly. Still handcuffed, they resumed the route and abandoned him at the emergency room of the Regional Hospital.

SUPREME CONFIRMATION

For the protest in 2018, there was still a long way to go. The Supreme Court ruling took time, but it arrived. Two weeks ago, on March 4, the highest court confirmed the 25-year prison sentence for Derpich and 14 other former CNI agents.

After repeated attempts to avoid it, there were no more judicial exits left. Those who knew the process closely emphasize that at all times his defense tried to blame the deceased Joaquín Molina or Corbalán. While the latter limited himself to saying that his role was to support Derpich, who served as the person in charge in the regions.

The same sources confide that Derpich's figure is a sign of the limitations that investigations into these cases have had outside the Metropolitan region, since in the regions a series of human rights violations were recorded, but it has rarely been possible to support them with sufficient evidence.

For this reason, it is likely that Derpich benefited from that "luck," unlike what happened with figures like Corbalán.

During the last week, he was formally notified of the conviction. Therefore, there was no other path than to actually go to prison.

After the Supreme Court's confirmation, the minister of the Concepción Court of Appeals, Carlos Aldana, sent the respective arrest warrant to the PDI Human Rights Brigade.

That is why on the morning of this Monday they arrived at his home in Providencia. However, they did not find him, and the police officers were received by his son.

By then, Derpich had traveled in his car to Calle Juan de Dios Vial Correa, in the heart of Plaza Las Lilas, a few blocks from his apartment on El Vergel. In the meantime, his family had noticed a farewell letter, in which he specifically indicated that he was going to be at that location.

That was how the PDI and his loved ones arrived there together, where they found him inside his car with a gunshot to the head. According to what was stated by the flagrancy prosecutor, Luis Jaramillo, and the sub-prefect Juan Luis Fonseca, head of the Metropolitan BH, there were no signs of third-party intervention at the scene. He committed suicide.

Source: biobio.cl, March 19, 2024