The individuals involved were prosecuted for the crime of kidnapping resulting in death.

SANTIAGO.— The Mulchén court of law prosecuted five Carabineros officers yesterday for the crime of kidnapping resulting in death, perpetrated against 18 peasants in late 1973. On that date, Jorge Maturana Concha, Osvaldo Enrique Díaz Díaz, Jacob del Carmen Ortiz Palma, Juan de Dios Higuera Álvarez, and Héctor Armando Guzmán Saldaña detained the 18 peasants, among whom were the brothers José and Manuel Rubilar Gutiérrez, in the foothills sectors of Carmen and Maitenes.

Subsequently, they were taken to the administrative houses of the estates, where they were interrogated, beaten, and forced to fight among themselves. They were then taken 50 meters from those houses, where they were forced to dig pits. Finally, their hands were tied with wire, and they were shot with SIG rifle fire.

Source: El Mercurio, July 31, 2002

5 former Carabineros prosecuted for the massacre of 18 peasants in Mulchén

It was one of the most shocking cases known in the Bío Bío region: the detention and murder of 18 peasants in the rural area of Mulchén by a patrol composed of military personnel, Carabineros, and civilians in October 1973.

Thirty-five years later, five former Carabineros were subjected to prosecution for the crimes of kidnapping and homicide. It was a massacre. That is the only way to describe it. There is no other way to qualify the slaughter that occurred in the foothills of Mulchén on October 5, 6, and 7, 1973, when a patrol composed of military personnel, Carabineros, and civilians detained 18 peasants from three estates in that commune of the Bío Bío region and subsequently put them to death.

Before that occurred, they were tortured and humiliated. They were even made to dance among themselves and tell jokes before being murdered. Nearly 35 years passed, and this Wednesday the 25th, the case once again came to light when the special minister for human rights cases of the Concepción Court of Appeals, Carlos Aldana, subjected five former Carabineros who participated directly in the events to prosecution and ordered their detention.

He prosecuted them for the crimes of aggravated kidnapping and homicide and denied them release on bail. For one of them, former lieutenant Jorge Maturana Concha, he deemed him a danger to society, and for the other four, he cited pending proceedings.

But this case is of long standing. It was investigated in 1980 by visiting minister Carlos Cerda of the Concepción Court of Appeals, which ended with the application of the Amnesty Law in favor of the alleged perpetrators.

Several years passed until, thanks to information provided by the Supreme Court and obtained through the Dialogue Table in 2001, the judge of the Third Court of Law of Mulchén, Rosa Giacaman, had to initiate an investigation to clarify the detention and death of the brothers José Lorenzo, José Liborio, and Manuel Florencio Rubilar Gutiérrez, who were detained by a group of about thirty uniformed men on the afternoon of October 6, 1973, at the “Carmen Maitenes” estate, located about 100 kilometers from Mulchén.

During 2002, the judge prosecuted the same five former Carabineros officers as perpetrators of the crime of kidnapping resulting in death against three of the executed victims. They are Jorge Maturana Concha, a Carabineros lieutenant and head of the Mulchén station at that time; Osvaldo Enrique Díaz Díaz, also known as “El Alicate,” who was no more than 23 years old at the time; Héctor Armando Guzmán Saldaña; Jacob del Carmen Ortiz Palma; and Juan de Dios Higuera Alvarez, all former Carabineros.

However, in August 2002, the Fifth Chamber of the Concepción Court of Appeals unanimously revoked the indictments. Its ruling was based on the July 25, 1996, resolution of the Martial Court, which definitively dismissed the case after applying the Amnesty Law.

In other words, it invoked the concept of res judicata, which, according to some jurists consulted, would not be appropriate because not all those responsible for the events being investigated have been identified.

Nevertheless, the appellate court ordered a series of proceedings, “given that the location of the forcibly disappeared constitutes an inalienable right of the victims' families and of Chilean society.” Case reactivated Over time, the investigation stalled, and the case was temporarily dismissed.

Time passed again, and as a result of reports regarding the illegal burial of remains corresponding to the forcibly disappeared, a series of proceedings were opened that began to be instructed by Minister Carlos Gajardo of Santiago, an investigation known as “Operation Television Removal” (Operación Retiro de Televisores).

In that context, Gajardo also learned of the Mulchén case. But the filing of a complaint for kidnapping and aggravated homicide before the special minister for human rights cases of the Concepción Court of Appeals, Carlos Aldana, by Pedro Roa Riquelme—son of Juan Roa Riquelme, also a victim of this patrol in Mulchén, whose remains were found during the investigations carried out by Minister Carlos Cerda—led Minister Aldana to take charge of this process, which was referred to him by his colleague on March 27 of this year.

After familiarizing himself with the investigation, Aldana ordered a physical inspection of the estates where the events took place, which was carried out on April 2 and 3 of this year, with the participation of family members, witnesses, and the main defendants.

According to what lawyer Raquel Mejías, former executive secretary of the Human Rights Program of the Ministry of the Interior and the main promoter of the reactivation of this case, recalls, “the proceeding was very good and also very dramatic and shocking.” And although during their statements, former Carabineros Guzmán, Díaz, Higuera, and Ortiz had denied their participation in the events, during the reconstruction they ended up acknowledging what happened, pointing out the places and what they did.

All of this was followed in moving silence by the family members present. For lawyer Raquel Mejías, this proceeding was key for Minister Aldana to adopt his resolution, and she said that it has sufficient support to stand, as the facts are duly accredited.

In that sense, she recognized the work of the magistrate who dared to continue investigating and to issue indictments. Some details: Minister Aldana had planned to carry out the reconstruction of the scene only at the Pemehue estate, where Juan Roa Riquelme was detained along with the brothers Felidor and Alberto Albornoz González and Fernando Gutiérrez Asencio and Jerónimo Sandoval Medina, and to only conduct an inspection of the El Morro and Carmen Maitenes estates.

For this, he had set January 31 as the date. But he chose to postpone the proceeding, which was finally carried out in the first days of April with great thoroughness and rigor, according to lawyer Patricia Parra, a plaintiff in the case.

This allowed the court to learn about what happened, clarify doubts, and with a clear picture, issue the indictments of the main individuals responsible for the detention and death of 18 peasants almost three months later.

It is said that there was a lot of revenge in this action, although the search for Carlos Altamirano in the area has also been cited as a cause, since his family had a property in Mulchén. There is also talk of revenge for the agrarian reform, which would explain the participation of civilians in the events.

Be that as it may, the important thing is that the process is moving forward, but now we must wait for what the Court of Appeals decides.

Source: El Mostrador, June 26, 2008

Operation Television Removal

Operation “Television Removal” was the solution provided by Augusto Pinochet to cover up the massacres that occurred throughout Chile after the coup d'état. This cruel decision was made by him and the Military Junta after the discovery of the bodies of 11 peasants and 4 youths from Isla de Maipo in the ovens of Lonquén.

It was the second-to-last day of November 1978 when the horror emerged from abandoned lime kilns in the town of Lonquén, a few kilometers from Santiago. The report had reached the Vicariate of Solidarity from the mouth of a peasant who was scouring the land looking for his forcibly disappeared son.

At first, it was a secret known only to Cardinal Silva Enríquez, the Vicar of Solidarity Cristián Precht, and a small group of collaborators of the Vicariate of Solidarity; then, it became a raw reality regarding the fate of 15 detained persons who were missing until that moment.

The news of this discovery unsettled Pinochet; it was not on his agenda. He was clear that the disappeared had not escaped the country, that they were not wandering the world discrediting the military dictatorship.

He knew that behind every forcibly disappeared person was his hand, so he called an emergency meeting of the Military Junta to find a quick solution and prevent possible accidental discoveries of burials throughout the country.

It was a hot summer for the dictatorship. The discovery of bodies buried clandestinely and their rapid dissemination in the international press was added to the strong pressures from the American government to extradite Manuel Contreras and Pedro Espinoza for the terrorist attack in Washington against Orlando Letelier, further weakening his position on the international stage at a time when he was facing a serious border crisis with Argentina.

That year, the pressures from the White House over the attack in Washington had forced Pinochet to make the decision to end the DINA, but he could not be left without an intelligence service that responded to his interests.

Thus, on August 12, he promulgated two decree-laws: 1876, which ended the DINA, and 1878, which created the National Intelligence Center (CNI). To ensure everything was in order, he promoted Manuel Contreras to General of the Republic, completing the requirements demanded by the position of director of the nascent CNI.

The American pressures continued, as did the investigations, which is why Pinochet decided to retire his loyal servant and look for a general who would provide guarantees to him and the Americans. The chosen one was retired general Odlanier Mena.

Odlanier Mena was a man of Military Intelligence who had retired after intense fights with the director of the DINA, Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda. Pinochet, to reassure him, had given him the position of ambassador to Uruguay, a not insignificant post for a retired general, since it was close to home and there were no conflicts or shocks with the civil-military dictatorship of José María Bordaberry, an ally of the Chilean military dictatorship.

On November 3, 1977, Contreras was called to retirement and replaced by General Odlanier Mena. The change was not easy. Contreras had accumulated much power and influence over his people, who, thanks to the prevailing impunity, had earned a reputation for being unscrupulous among their peers.

Mena was reluctant when they requested him for the position and expressed this to Pinochet. The most compelling argument was that he could not assume it because he was a retired general, and the law created expressly stated that its director must be an active-duty general.

Pinochet, demonstrating his power, replied that there were no problems, that he would immediately order a change stating that the director could be an active-duty or retired general. He was in the midst of this in December 1978 when he went to Pinochet's office to have him sign several documents.

At the entrance, he came face to face with General Mendoza, who was leaving the office very disturbed. They did not have time to greet each other; he only heard, “Odlanier, we are discussing the Lonquén discovery and the enormous public commotion this event produced in the country.

I have been ordered to present a detailed report because I myself was unaware of this situation.” Surprised, he opened the door slightly and saw Admiral Merino, General Leigh, and Pinochet arguing. At that moment, an aide-de-camp let him in.

They greeted him without paying much attention to his presence and continued making comments, analyzing possible scenarios, and looking for ways to cover up the crimes. Mena listened attentively in a corner of the table.

At some point, the idea arose of using the institutions to carry out “the search for clandestine cemeteries throughout the country” in order to erase all traces of criminal activity. The idea contained a terrifying vision; it was a double crime: after death, disappearance.

The Operation Despite the detailed description that Mena gives of that meeting to the justice system, he replied that he had no further information on the fate of the idea of searching for “clandestine cemeteries.” It was Minister Juan Guzmán who managed to clarify the course that meeting took and how the removal of graves had been ordered through “Operation Television Removal.” In 2004, Judge Guzmán and the Fifth Department of the Investigative Police received the testimony of an intelligence non-commissioned officer who indicated having received an A-1 category cryptogram—a nomenclature that determines the level of urgency and secrecy of the mission—while he was at the Húsares Regiment in Angol in 1979. The non-stop account detailed data and situations that spoke of the context of the time and began to give body to a series of voids that had remained after the opening of graves in Liquiñe and other points in the country. According to his statement, due to the category of the cryptogram, he had run to the decoding machine to decipher it. When he was able to read it, upon seeing that it came from General Pinochet himself, he took it immediately to the office of the regiment commander. His impression was so great that he did not forget its text, and as if he were reading it just then, he told the Judge that it “ordered the exhumation of all bodies of political prisoners executed in the regiment's jurisdiction and to make them disappear.” The text of the cryptogram added that if any body were found after that cleanup operation in the area, the officers in charge of the mission would be retired. Mulchén Massacre The order began to be executed in the Húsares Regiment, but its commander remembered that the massacre of 18 peasants near the Termas de Pemehue was not in his jurisdiction and called the No. 17 Reinforced Mountain Infantry Regiment of Los Ángeles to communicate the order they had received. The next day, three non-commissioned officers from Department II of the III Army Division, based in Concepción, arrived at the No. 17 Mountain Infantry Regiment. All had gone through courses at the School of the Americas and had specialties in counterinsurgency warfare. They organized an eight-person team made up of officers and non-commissioned officers who headed to the Termas de Pemehue area. They went in two vehicles, equipped with pickaxes, shovels, crowbars, and some black bags. Previously, they had established contact with a relative of a military man to guide them to the place where the bodies were supposed to be. The task was easy; the damp earth allowed them to reach the bodies, which were only 50 centimeters deep. Some still had the remains of their humble clothes, which were torn apart as they were pulled out, leaving small traces of the crime in the pieces of fabric and buttons that remained in the earth. In total, 12 bodies were exhumed. The bags were loaded into the vehicles, and they headed toward Concepción. The place chosen to put an end to the task was a brick kiln of Department II. One by one, they threw the bodies in to be incinerated, just as the Nazis had done during World War II. Among the accounts is the reference to an officer who commented to them, while they were digging the earth in search of the bodies, that he had learned to incinerate corpses in a course he had taken in Germany. He gave them gruesome details, such as that a large grill should be prepared to place the bodies on and that abundant firewood should be lit under it, adding oil continuously. He advised them that they had to be burned until they turned to ashes. The Mulchén massacre occurred between October 5, 6, and 7, 1973, at the El Morro, Carmen y Maitenes, and Pemehue estates. On the evening of October 5, 1973, the patrol arrived at the Los Morros estate. They brought a list with the names of peasants. They called them out loud, and they surrendered without complaint: Juan de Dios Laubra Brevis, 26 years old; Domingo Antonio Sepúlveda Castillo, 29 years old; José Edmundo Vidal Aedo, 20 years old; Celsio Nicasio Vivanco Carrasco, 26 years old; and José Florencio Yáñez Durán, 34 years old. All were tied with wire, beaten, tortured, and taken to the banks of the Renaico River to be executed. The next day, they went up to the Carmen y Maitenes estate looking for 8 peasants: Miguel del Carmen Albornoz Acuña, 20 years old; Daniel Alfonso Albornoz González, 28 years old; Alejandro Albornoz González, 48 years old; José Guillermo Albornoz González, 32 years old; Luis Alberto Godoy Sandoval, 23 years old; Manuel Florencio Rubilar Gutiérrez, 25 years old; José Liborio Rubilar Gutiérrez, 28 years old; and José Lorenzo Rubilar Gutiérrez, 33 years old. All were taken to the main house. There, they were subjected to violent beatings until, amidst taunts and laughter, Lieutenant Concha Maturana made them play the Roman circus, where they would hit each other and the losers would fall under the bullets. Seven were coldly executed, making them dig their own graves and forcing them to lie face down inside them to shoot them in the back. The only one who was not executed that day was José Guillermo Albornoz González, whom they tied to a trailer. The last stop was at the Pemehue estate. There, they took Felidor Exequiel Albornoz González, 33 years old; Alberto Albornoz González, 41 years old; José Fernando Gutiérrez Ascencio, 25 years old; Jerónimo Humberto Sandoval Medina, 22 years old; and Juan de Dios Roa Riquelme, 35 years old, from their homes. Here they repeated the same sadism they had displayed at the Carmen y Maitenes estate. The next morning, Army Sergeant Luis Díaz Quintana realized that José Guillermo Albornoz González was still tied to the trailer. He approached and saw that he was alive, despite his bleeding wounds, a fractured jaw, having not eaten for two days, swollen from the sleet that had fallen, and without water. Together with Carabinero Jacob del Carmen Ortiz Palma, they took him to the banks of the Renaico River and murdered him. As in all the massacres that occurred in the peasant areas, terror took hold of the community; the law of the strongest was imposed, and the victims' families were left exposed to arbitrariness. Some managed to bury their dead; others did not dare to look for the bodies for fear. Hindered by the fear inspired by the estate owners, they did not dare to rescue the bodies, nor did they think that the evil would go as far as the elimination of any vestige of their relatives' lives. Those responsible for these atrocious crimes are the Carabineros lieutenant of Mulchén, Jorge Maturana Concha, and the Carabineros Osvaldo Díaz Díaz, alias “Alicate,” and Héctor Guzmán Saldaña. Along with them, several civilians participated, among whom are Romualdo Guzmán Saavedra, Francisco Urrizola Elías, Ramón Elías Abella, Aquiles Guzmán Fritz, Carlos Lehman, and a sergeant from the No. 17 Reinforced Mountain Regiment. Buin Regiment Just as in the Húsares Regiment of Angol, in December 1978, Department II of the Buin Regiment received an encrypted message from the Commander-in-Chief. More than 20 years later, Lieutenant Pedro Andrés Rodríguez Bustos declared before Judge Juan Guzmán that the message was signed by Augusto Pinochet and had precise orders “to gather the officers and non-commissioned officers who had been serving in those units between the years 1973 and 1974. Said meeting should try to obtain from that personnel the information they had regarding the whereabouts of the bodies of people executed and buried inside military units or, in this specific case, in the Peldehue military camp, given that that camp was going to transfer part of its land to the Compañía Minera Andina and, for that same reason, it had to be known if there were clandestine burials on said land, since if so, the exact locations were required to proceed with the exhumation and elimination of the corpses.” Later, he would ratify his statements, pointing out that the order came from the Second Army Division, in charge of General Enrique Morel Donoso, and that it was sent to all garrisons in the country. He detailed the way in which the information was delivered by those who knew about the burials of political executions and emphasized the secret nature of the entire process, mentioning two officers who presented themselves to provide information to Commander Mario Navarrete Barriga: Juan Ibáñez and Jorge Aguilar. Despite the conclusiveness of his statement, it was dismissed at the time because it was considered that it could be an intelligence operation. Only in 2004 would it be concluded that “Operation Television Removal” was a decision thought out and decided at the highest levels in order to hide the massacres after the 1973 coup d'état. Fuerte Arteaga In 1999, while Augusto Pinochet was detained in London, the government of Eduardo Frei called on different sectors to participate in a Dialogue Table that would allow for information to be gathered on the fate of the victims of the military regime who were forcibly disappeared. Human rights lawyers, representatives of the Armed Forces and Order, representatives of the different religions existing in the country, academics, and government representatives participated in it. The organizations of families of the forcibly disappeared and human rights organizations refused to participate, considering that this instance was a lifebuoy for Augusto Pinochet. The work ended on June 13, 2000, with the delivery of the document of the agreements reached to President Ricardo Lagos. In it, the human rights violations that occurred during the military dictatorship were recognized by all those who participated in the Table; an absolute rejection of the use of violence as a method of political action was established, and a commitment as a society to generate the conditions that would lead to reconciliation, thereby facilitating the delivery of information on the fate of the forcibly disappeared. In January 2001, the Armed Forces delivered a report that provided data on the fate of 200 forcibly disappeared persons supposedly thrown into the sea, rivers, or high mountains. Of them, 180 appeared with names, surnames, and the date of their death. A report containing 45 cases of forcibly disappeared persons whose data contained coordinates and maps of their location was delivered to President Lagos, which led to the presumption that those remains would be found quickly. This complex situation caused public commotion, since it was the recognition of the existence of information on the fate of the forcibly disappeared within the Armed Forces; to this was added the anxiety of many family members who hoped to have answers about their loved ones. Given this situation, the president of the Supreme Court, Hernán Álvarez, decided to appoint visiting ministers to clarify the fate of the forcibly disappeared. In this framework, Judge Amanda Valdovinos was designated to investigate the information on the existence of a cave with 20 skulls of forcibly disappeared persons at Fuerte Arteaga and areas adjacent to the property surrounding this military facility. The accounts that emerged spoke of exhumations and transfers of remains to the slopes of the El Talhuenal mountain range. There, the minister focused her investigative work, together with a team of forensic anthropologists. The information that mentioned the “corner of the deceased” (rincón de los finados) recurrently to refer to a certain area of the military facility, where remains taken from other places had been buried, led her to determine that not all the exhumed remains had been thrown into the sea, and she reported this to the Supreme Court. In March of that same year, the investigations on the grounds of Fuerte Arteaga in Peldehue yielded results. In the Quebrada de los Ratones, the remains of Luis Rivera Matus were found, a communist union leader detained outside the Chilectra building on November 6, 1975, by men in civilian clothes who belonged to the Antisubversive Joint Command. His name appeared in the Armed Forces report as thrown into the sea off the coast of the central zone. This meant a new discredit for the Armed Forces; they were pointed out for delivering a list loaded with inaccuracies, causing new wounds among the families of the forcibly disappeared. The minister's findings gave rise to more information that ended with the prosecutions of Air Force generals (ret.) Freddy Ruiz Bunger and Carlos Madrid Hayden, Army major (ret.) Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, and DINE (Army Intelligence Directorate) officer (ret.) Sergio López Díaz. In 2004, the Minister of the Court of Appeals with special dedication for human rights cases, Joaquín Billard, sentenced General (ret.) Freddy Ruiz Bunger and Carlos Madrid Hayden to 600 days in prison as accessories to aggravated kidnapping in the person of Luis Rivera Matus. He sentenced Army major (ret.) Álvaro Corbalán Castilla and Army Intelligence officer (ret.) Sergio López Díaz to 10 years in prison as perpetrators of the aggravated kidnapping of Luis Rivera Matus. Three years later, the Supreme Court reduced the sentences, leaving only Álvaro Corbalán Castilla with an effective prison sentence. La Moneda Four months after the search began at Fuerte Arteaga, the investigations began to reveal what had happened more than twenty-five years earlier with those detained on September 11, 1973, at La Moneda. A large pit was excavated in the northern area of the campaign zone, and more than 500 bone pieces were recovered, which corresponded to fragments of limbs, teeth, pieces of skulls, and other parts of human bodies, in addition to war material and pieces of clothing. In these remains was the last piece of history of 12 of the 20 people detained on September 11, 1973, at La Moneda. Judge Valdovinos issued a conclusive report to the Supreme Court. In it, she spoke of the violence and irrationality that had dominated these deaths. She indicated that upon observing the remains found in the pit area, one could “categorically conclude the use of explosives of the grenade type to destroy the bodies,” due to the bone fragments that had remained embedded in the walls of the pit. She also referred to the tracks of heavy machinery in the exhumation of bodies. In June 2002, the Supreme Court decided to restructure the investigations of human rights violation cases and appointed Judge Juan Carlos Urrutia, of the Fifth Criminal Court, to be in charge of the Fuerte Arteaga case. Based on the bone fragments, the investigation for illegal exhumation began. One of the fundamental witnesses in this investigation was non-commissioned officer Eliseo Cornejo Escobar, who participated in the executions of the La Moneda detainees and five years later guided the search in the excavations to exhume the remains, within the framework of “Operation Television Removal.” That December 23, 1978, the supervision of the work was in charge of the commander of the Tacna Regiment, Hernán Canales Varas. According to the accounts, it was around 10:00 a.m. when Eliseo Cornejo marked the exact place where those detained on September 13, 1973, had been buried. A mechanical shovel began to dig the dry pit until reaching six meters deep.

deep, where an iron bar appeared that Cornejo immediately identified. The shovel began to work slowly until the first body appeared. The bodies were almost intact, thanks to the clay soil that prevented the penetration of oxygen and the subsequent process of organic decomposition.

The bodies were removed manually so they would not fall apart; despite this, small fragments remained in the earth, as if refusing to disappear completely. Then they removed the remains and loaded them onto a Unimog truck. In total, there were 12 sacks, and all were transported to some parking lots in front of the San Martín highway.

Near 22:00 hours, the helicopter of the Army Aviation Command arrived, in charge of the then-colonel Fernando Darrigrandi. It was piloted by Emilio de la Mahotiere González, Luis Felipe Polanco, and Antonio Palomo Contreras, the same trio that flew the Puma helicopter in the Caravan of Death. The aircraft landed near where the sacks were; they were quickly loaded, and the helicopter departed.

As in the previous cases, "Operation TV Removal" had been carried out silently and opportunely. The order of the Commander-in-Chief of the Army was being fulfilled.

It was the realization of one crime to hide another, which had begun on September 12, 1973, with the arrival of Pedro Espinoza at the Tacna Regiment. The Intelligence officer carried an envelope containing precise orders from the Army General Command to the commander of the Tacna Regiment, Luis Ramírez Pineda.

In them, the people detained at La Moneda were sentenced to death, and it was ordered that they be transferred to Peldehue to carry out the order.

Ramírez Pineda had given orders to apply maximum brutality against the detainees who arrived that afternoon of September 11. In those tied and exhausted men, he deposited all his hatred against the Marxists. There were 49 detainees; the next day, it was ordered to release 17 officials from the Investigations police, and others were separated, reducing the La Moneda group to 21 people.

On the 13th, first thing in the morning, a truck parked in front of the barracks where the prisoners were. List in hand, they were taken out of the stables, tied with wire, and violently thrown into the truck.

Among the 21 were Jaime Barrios Meza, Sergio Contreras, Daniel Escobar Cruz, Enrique Huerta Corvalán, Claudio Jimeno Grendi, Jorge Klein Pipper, Oscar Lagos Ríos, Juan Montiglio Murúa, Enrique Paris Roa, Eduardo Paredes Barrientos, Julio Moreno Pulgar, Héctor Pincheira Núñez, Arsenio Poupin Oissel, Julio Tapia Martínez, Héctor Urrutia Molina, Oscar Valladares Caroca, Juan Vargas Contreras, Luis Rodríguez Riquelme, José Freire Medina, and Luis Avilés Jofré, who had arrived at the La Moneda Palace to support the government.

The truck headed north, guarded by military vehicles and followed by the watchful gaze of the then-colonel Pedro Espinoza Bravo, who was traveling in one of the column's vehicles. Espinoza was a high-ranking Army Intelligence officer whose role in the post-coup repression was decisive.

He was in charge of supervising the main extermination operations committed throughout the country, by order of the Intelligence General Staff.

Upon arrival, they went immediately to a dry well that was next to a building. There, they set up a machine gun operated by Lieutenant Jorge Herrera López and began to bring the detainees down, calling them by their names.

Without complaint and looking straight ahead, the 21 men faced death standing at the edge of the well. They faced the muffled sounds of the bullets that echoed in the solitude of the hills alone. When the last detainee fell, the order was given to throw grenades so that the walls of the well would collapse, thus covering up the crime.

The Process The case has had a long journey through the justice system. From the time Judge Amanda Valdovinos began the investigation into illegal burials to the present, the investigation has been in the hands of the judge of the Fifth Criminal Court, Juan Carlos Urrutia; the Minister of the Court of Appeals Alejandro Madrid Crohare; the Special Minister for human rights cases Juan Fuentes Belmar; and it is currently in the hands of the Minister of the Court of Appeals Miguel Vásquez Plaza.

Of the 21 victims, only 11 forcibly disappeared persons have been identified through the work of identifying remains and genetic analyses carried out by the Laboratory of the University of North Texas, United States, which included forensic examinations of the victims' bone samples and comparative tests on blood samples donated by the families.

Currently, retired General Luis Ramírez Pineda is being prosecuted as the perpetrator of the qualified homicide of 11 people detained at La Moneda on September 11, 1973, and transferred to the Tacna Regiment, where he was commander.

The expansion of the extradition is also being processed in the Argentine justice system, because it was initially requested for the charges of qualified kidnapping of 11 people, and he is currently being prosecuted for qualified homicide; upon changing the legal classification, it is required to request a change of extradition from the country granting it.

The resolution affected eight other retired members of the Army who confessed to having participated in the kidnappings of Jaime Barrios Meza, Daniel Escobar Cruz, Enrique Huerta Corvalán, Claudio Jimeno Grendi, Oscar Lagos Ríos, Juan Montiglio Murúa, Julio Moreno Pulgar, Arsenio Poupin Oissel, Julio Tapia Martínez, Oscar Valladares Caroca, and Juan Vargas Contreras.

The eight prosecuted as perpetrators of the crime of qualified kidnapping were retired Army Colonel Servando Maureira Roa, retired Army Major Jorge Iván Herrera López, retired Army Brigadier Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, and retired Army non-commissioned officers Eliseo Antonio Cornejo Escobedo, Jorge Ismael Gamboa Álvarez, Teobaldo Segundo Mendoza Vicencio, Juan de la Cruz Riquelme Silva, and Bernardo Eusebio Soto Segura.

Linares Artillery School

The same secret document that circulated through the barracks at the beginning of 1979 arrived at the Linares Artillery School. Without hesitation, the director of the Linares Artillery School, Lieutenant Colonel Patricio Gualda Tiffani, ordered the formation of a special team to exhume the bodies and placed Captain Mario Gianotti Hidalgo in charge of this mission.

He chose two officers, among whom was Lieutenant Hernán Véjar Sinning, and two non-commissioned officers to carry out the mission. To them was added an Intelligence non-commissioned officer from the III Army Division who had arrived along with two other members of that department to supervise the fulfillment of the order.

Equipped with shovels and pickaxes, they dug in different places inside the Regiment, finally finding two bodies that were without clothes. After putting them in bags, they kept them safe inside the Regiment and left for the city of Constitución to look for a clandestine burial that was in a cave at the mouth of the Maule River.

The constant rising of the river and the tides had changed the appearance of the terrain slightly, so it was difficult for them to find the exact place. Finally, they found three skulls, concluding that it was the place they were looking for. They exhumed them, put them in bags, and returned to the Artillery School.

With the first stage of the mission accomplished, they went to look for a metal drum, put oil in it, then put the five bodies inside, doused them again with oil, and set them on fire. The remains of five forcibly disappeared persons were turned into ashes, and the double crime was finalized.

In April 2003, Minister Alejandro Solís had begun investigations in the General Bari Polygon area, where, according to data provided by a former conscript, there had been a mass grave with the bodies of the forcibly disappeared persons from the area. The proceedings did not yield results, and only some traces of possible burials were found at the site.

In 2008, the Minister of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Alejandro Solís, issued a sentence and set sentences of 15 years and one day for five defendants, and 10 years and one day for a sixth defendant for the disappearances of María Isabel Beltrán Sánchez, José Gabriel Campos Morales, Anselmo Cancino Aravena, Héctor Hernán Contreras Cabrera, Alejandro Róbinson Mella Flores, Arturo Enrique Riveros Blanco, Jaime Bernardo Torres Salazar, José Alfonso Saavedra Betancourt, and Jorge Bernabé Yáñez Olave, detained between September 1973 and February 1974.

On April 27, 2011, the Supreme Court reduced the sentences issued by Minister Solís, acquitting retired General Gabriel del Río Espinoza, who had been convicted for the disappearance of five people, and sentencing retired Army Colonel Juan Hernán Morales Salgado and Army Lieutenant Colonel Claudio Abdón Lecaros Carrasco to five years and one day in prison with the benefit of supervised release for the disappearance of María Isabel Beltrán, José Gabriel Campos, Anselmo Antonio Cancino, and Alejandro Róbinson Mella.

Retired Army non-commissioned officer Antonio Aguilar Barrientos was sentenced to five years and one day in prison with the benefit of supervised release for four counts of qualified kidnapping, and retired Army Colonel Antonio Cabezas Salazar for three counts of qualified kidnapping.

Retired General Humberto Lautaro Julio Reyes, who was Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs during the military dictatorship, was sentenced to three years in prison with the benefit of conditional remission, remaining on supervised release.

This was one of the most conclusive pieces of evidence available to demonstrate that Pinochet knew about the atrocities that occurred during his mandate. No one creates such a perverse mechanism to hide crimes if they are not directly involved.

Chihuío On October 9, 1973, the locals of Chihuío thought the worst of the period had passed. The arrests of workers in Neltume and the violence that the Llifén police had unleashed among the peasants of Chabranco, Arquilme, and Curriñe had spread like wildfire.

That day, a patrol set out in seven vehicles, consisting of 90 well-armed and equipped soldiers, to the foothills area, where only poor workers of the Panguipulli Lumber Company lived. They were from the No. 2 Armored Cavalry Regiment "Cazadores" of Valdivia, commanded by retired General Santiago Sinclair, who was later a member of the Military Junta and a designated senator at the beginning of the transition to democracy.

In charge was squadron commander Luis Osorio Gardasanich, and officers Patricio Keller, Lautaro Ortega, Marcos Rodríguez Olivares, and Luis Rodríguez Rogorrichi. In charge of the special unit was Lieutenant Cristián Labbé Galilea.

The patrol toured the towns and hamlets of the area, read lists with names, and proceeded to arrest them. The owner of the Chihuío estate, Américo González Torres, participated actively and enthusiastically in this journey of death.

Without any shame, they asked the locals for wires and ox yokes to drag the vehicles that had gotten stuck in the mud.

In the Curriñe administration office of the Panguipulli Lumber Complex, they tortured some detainees, while a patrol went up to arrest workers at the Folilco sawmill. Their last stop was in Chabranco, where they arrested the last workers.

With their cargo, they left for the main house of the Chihuío estate, where they took their cruelty out on the workers. According to testimony received by the Rettig Report, at first glance, there were no bullet impacts, but signs of cuts, throat-slitting, dismemberment of limbs, and other traces of torture impossible to describe.

The next morning, a local saw that there were some bodies covered with branches and logs, recognizing some of the victims as workers from the area. The corpses remained in the open for about 15 days and were then buried.

There were 17 workers from the area: Carlos Maximiliano Acuña Inostroza, José Orlando Barriga Soto, José Rosamel Cortés Díaz, Rubén Neftalí Durán Zúñiga, Luis Arnaldo Ferrada Sandoval, Eliecer Sigisfredo Freire Caamaño, Narciso Segundo García Cancino, Juan Walter González Delgado, Daniel Méndez Méndez, Sebastián Mora Osses, Pedro Segundo Pedreros Ferreira, Rosendo Rebolledo Méndez, Ricardo Segundo Ruiz Rodríguez, Carlos Vicente Salinas Flores, Manuel Jesús Sepúlveda Rebolledo, Rubén Vargas Quezada, and the minor Fernando Adrián Mora Gutiérrez, who, upon helping to pull a military vehicle out of the mud, saw that his father was among the detainees and asked the soldiers where they were taking him. They replied that if he wanted to go with his father, he should get into the vehicle, and he did so. At the end of 1978, a military operation returned to Chihuío and exhumed the bodies of the 17 peasants to throw them into the sea. The grave with the skeletal remains from the exhumation was found on June 17, 1990, by a group of relatives and friends of forcibly disappeared persons.

In the first days of July 2011, the director of the Legal Medical Institute, Patricio Bustos, announced the names of the first five people identified: Carlos Maximiliano Acuña Inostroza, 46 years old at the time of his death, agricultural worker; Luis Arnaldo Ferrada Sandoval, 42 years old at the time of his death, agricultural worker; Daniel Méndez Méndez, 42 years old, agricultural worker and peasant leader; Ricardo Segundo Ruiz Rodríguez, 24 years old, factory manager and member of the Socialist Party; and Manuel Jesús Sepúlveda Rebolledo, 28 years old, lumber worker.

On July 15, the director of the Valdivia Legal Medical Service, Patricia Benhe, handed over the few skeletal remains to the families so they could bury them.

The identifications were carried out with the fragments found in the clandestine grave, where the bodies were thrown and later removed to be thrown into the sea, within the framework of the so-called "Operation TV Removal."

In January 2011, the Supreme Court sentenced retired Army Colonel Luis Osorio Gardasanich to 10 years and one day as the perpetrator of the crime of qualified homicide of 17 people, including a minor.

Retired Carabineros officer Luis Eduardo Osses Chavarría was sentenced to 3 years and one day in prison for his role as an accomplice to 4 kidnappings. The civilian Bruno Esteban Obando Cárdenas was acquitted for having no participation in the events.

General Santiago Sinclair, who gave the orders, was acquitted. Meanwhile, retired Colonel Jerónimo Pantoja Henríquez died before the Supreme Court sentence.

The 17 workers belonged to the "Esperanza del Obrero" Peasant Union of the Panguipulli Lumber Complex. Most of them were evangelical believers who had organized to participate in the construction of a more just life.

Cuesta Barriga Enrique Erasmo Sandoval Arancibia was an army lieutenant when he was called to the DINA in 1976. Although he does not say much about his role in the repressive organization that year, he hints at his time at the Intelligence School in Rinconada de Maipú, which served to instruct Argentine, Uruguayan, and Chilean agents.

He also claims to have been part of the security for the VI OAS General Assembly held in Santiago, which Henry Kissinger attended. Disjointedly, he says that at the end of 1976, he became part of the Caupolicán Brigade, which was under the command of Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, assigned to the Cóndor group.

He claims not to remember names, nor the activity he carried out; he only remembers that he talked a lot with the former MIR member who collaborated with the DINA, named "Joel," Emilio Iribarren.

But "Pete el Negro," as he was known in the DINA, had a whole criminal history behind his apparent innocence before the courts. After the coup d'état and the indiscriminate repression, this man murdered the boy Carlos Fariña with a shot in the back and burned the corpse. In the 80s, he participated in the murder of Lisandro Sandoval.

In 1978, he joined the Red Brigade of the National Intelligence Center (CNI), in charge of the repression against the MIR. During his time there, he reported directly to Álvaro Corbalán.

He remembers that at the beginning of 1979, Jerónimo Pantoja, deputy director of the CNI, received information that a rabbit hunter had discovered an abandoned mine with bodies in Cuesta Barriga, and the information had been given to the Vicariate of Solidarity.

Faced with the alarm, Pantoja sent him to check the place, "which was a mine shaft, and I verified that it was true. It was full of rodents, bats, putrid remains, and there was an odor consistent with the remains. This odor would have alerted and disturbed the hunter's dogs, and that is how he would have arrived at the place."

With a photograph in hand, Lieutenant Sandoval arrived before Pantoja, who ordered him not to dynamite the mine and ordered him to use acid. Given the difficulty he had due to not knowing how to use chemicals, he called General Odlanier Mena at his vacation home in Mehuín to inform him of the situation.

The delicate information caused Mena to suspend his vacation, return to Santiago, and take charge of the removal of the bodies. For that, he entrusted Sandoval to remove the bodies with a trusted team. "My team was made up of 9 people, and we went to the mine for three days." He claims to have no idea how many bodies there were, but calculates that there were about 20, which were put into 50 potato sacks.

Some of the bodies were skeletonized; others still retained soft tissues.

When they finished removing the bodies, they took some dogs, killed them, and threw them inside to justify the presence of bones. Then they loaded the sacks onto a truck and took them to the Malloco plot that had belonged to the MIR Political Commission. Finally, the remains were transported to Peldehue and possibly thrown into the sea.

Operation TV Removal covered the entire national territory and is the clearest example of the policy of concealment of human rights violations that prevailed during the military dictatorship.

Source: elmostrador.cl, September 2013

Indictment issued against military and Carabineros for crimes against 18 peasants from Mulchén

The visiting judge for human rights violation cases of the Concepción Court of Appeals, Carlos Aldana, issued an indictment against former members of the Carabineros and the army for their responsibility in the crimes of qualified kidnapping, qualified homicide, illegal burial, and illegal exhumation of 18 workers from the El Morro, El Carmen-Maitenes, and Pemehue estates, located in the foothills sector of the town of Mulchén.

In the resolution (case file 30.2007), Judge Aldana indicted former Carabineros members: Jacob del Carmen Ortiz Palma, Juan de Dios Higueras Álvarez, Osvaldo Enrique Díaz Díaz, and Héctor Armando Guzmán Saldaña, as perpetrators of the qualified homicides of José Florencio Rubilar Gutiérrez, José Liborio Rubilar Gutiérrez, José Lorenzo Rubilar Gutiérrez, Alejandro Albornoz Acuña, Luis Alberto Godoy Sandoval, Miguel del Carmen Albornoz Acuña, Daniel Alfonso Albornoz González, Alberto Albornoz González, Felidor Exequiel Albornoz González, Jerónimo Humberto Sandoval Medina, Juan de Dios Roa Riquelme, and José Fernando Gutiérrez Ascencio, crimes perpetrated on October 6 and 7, 1973.

Former Carabineros who were also indicted as perpetrators of the crimes of qualified kidnapping of: Juan de Dios Laura Brevis, José Florencio Yáñez Durán, Celsio Nicasio Vivanco Carrasco, Edmundo José Vidal Aedo, Domingo Sepúlveda Castillo, and Guillermo José Albornoz González, perpetrated starting on October 5, 1973.

State agents who were also indicted as perpetrators of the crime of illegal burial of the 12 victims of the homicide crime.

Meanwhile, former army officers Jaime García Zamorano and Julio Reyes Garrido, and former non-commissioned officers José Puga Pascua, José Iturriaga Valenzuela, Jaime Muller Avilés, Julio Fuentes Chavarriga, Luis Palacios Torres, Juan Cares Molina, and Juan Carlos Balboa Ortega were indicted as accessories to 11 homicide crimes—except for that of Juan de Dios Roa Riquelme—and the crime of illegal exhumation of said victims.

During the investigation stage, the visiting judge managed to determine that the 18 victims were detained by army personnel from the No. 13 Regiment of Los Ángeles and the Mulchén Carabineros Station between October 5 and 7, 1973, at the El Morro, El Carmen-Maitenes, and Pemehue estates in the area, shot and buried in those places, others in the Mulchén Cemetery or on the banks of the Renaico River, places where the remains remained for more than 5 years.

Between the end of 1978 and the beginning of 1979, personnel from the "Húsares" Regiment of Angol, in compliance with a cryptogram from the Army General Command of the time, removed the remains of those who were executed in October 1973, and they were taken to an unknown destination, carrying out "Operation TV Removal," which was ordered by the dictator to make the remains of the murdered disappeared persons disappear.

"Operation TV Removal" is one of the most bestial actions committed by the military dictatorship, by express order of the tyrant, organized with promptness by the "impeccable" CNI chief, Odlanier Mena, and executed with criminal zeal by the hordes of agents who reveled in the terror they provoked and caused among their victims, the victims' families, and the population in general.

Facts like these cannot continue to go unpunished. It only remains to wait for Aldana and the courts to take care of applying justice.

Source: resumen.cl, July 15, 2016

Ridiculous sentences against former Carabineros and military for crimes and illegal burials in Mulchén

Indignation has been caused among the families of the victims of the Mulchén case by the ruling issued this Monday the 30th by the visiting judge for human rights violation cases of the Concepción Court of Appeals, Carlos Aldana, who sentenced 11 former members of the army and Carabineros for their responsibility in the crimes of qualified kidnapping, qualified homicide, illegal burial, and illegal exhumation of 18 victims executed in Mulchén in October 1973, and whose remains were subsequently illegally exhumed to make them disappear.

To all those prosecuted, Aldana sentences them to ridiculous penalties given the gravity and magnitude of the criminal offenses investigated and given the fact that these are crimes against humanity; furthermore, the ruling grants seven of the convicted the benefit of supervised release, which translates into disguised impunity.

Relatives of the victims and plaintiff lawyers have already expressed their willingness to appeal the ruling, seeking sentences in accordance with the crimes committed and the sense of justice.

In the ruling (case file 30-2007 and accumulated), Judge Aldana sentenced former Carabineros: Jacob del Carmen Ortiz Palma, Juan de Dios Higueras Álvarez, Osvaldo Enrique Díaz Díaz, and Héctor Armando Guzmán Saldaña to sentences of 10 years and one day in prison, as co-perpetrators of the crimes of qualified homicide of Florencio Rubilar Gutiérrez, José Liborio Rubilar Gutiérrez, José Lorenzo Rubilar Gutiérrez, Alejandro Albornoz González, Luis Godoy Sandoval, Miguel Albornoz Acuña, Daniel Albornoz González, Alberto Albornoz González, Felidor Albornoz González, Jerónimo Sandoval Medina, Juan de Dios Roa Riquelme, and José Gutiérrez Ascencio, 12 crimes committed in October 1973, at the Carmen, Maitenes, and Pemehue estates, in the commune of Mulchén. These four convicted are the only ones who, in Aldana's judgment, must serve an effective prison sentence.

Likewise, Ortiz Palma, Higueras Álvarez, Díaz Díaz, and Guzmán Saldaña must serve 5 years and one day in prison for their responsibility in the qualified kidnappings of 6 other victims, Juan de Dios Laubra Brevis, José Yañez Durán, Celsio Vivanco Carrasco, Edmundo Vidal Aedo, Domingo Sepúlveda Castillo, and Guillermo Albornoz González.

These crimes were committed in October 1973, at the El Morro estate. In addition to 541 days in prison for the illegal burial of the 12 homicide victims.

Meanwhile, the executors of "Operation TV Removal," former army officer Jaime Oscar García Zamorano, and former non-commissioned officers José María Iturriaga Valenzuela, Jaime Jorge Muller Avilés, Julio Hernán Fuentes Chavarriga, Luis Alberto Palacios Torres, and Juan Carlos Balboa Ortega were sentenced to only 3 years and one day in prison, only as accessories to the crime of simple homicide of 11 victims from the Carmen, Maitenes, and Pemehue estates, plus 541 days in prison for their responsibility in the illegal exhumation of said victims.

In the case of former army officer Julio Guillermo Humberto Reyes Garrido, also implicated in the operation to disappear the victims, the ruling sentenced him to serve a sentence of 3 years in prison as an accessory to 11 simple homicides, and to a sentence of 300 days in prison for his responsibility in the illegal exhumation of those victims.

In addition, Judge Aldana acquitted former non-commissioned officer José Francisco Puga Pascua, and Juan Luis Cares Molina was acquitted due to death.

"Operation TV Removal" is one of the most bestial actions committed by the military dictatorship, by express order of the tyrant, organized with promptness by the CNI and executed with criminal zeal by the hordes of agents who reveled in the terror they provoked and caused among their victims, the victims' families, and the population in general.

Between the end of 1978 and the beginning of 1979, personnel from the "Húsares" Regiment of Angol, after receiving a cryptogram from the Army General Command of the time, went to the sites of the illegal burials and exhumed the remains and made them disappear, despite the fact that a visiting judge of the Concepción Court of Appeals was investigating the events.

Facts like these cannot continue to go unpunished.

The convicted Jaime García Zamorano has remained in prison at the Punta Peuco Penal facility for a couple of years, where he is serving an effective seven-year prison sentence for two counts of homicide in other human rights cases.

The Facts During the investigation stage, the visiting judge managed to establish that on October 4, 1973, a corporal from the No. 13 Regiment of the Chilean Army based in the city of Los Ángeles, together with 3 conscripts from the same unit, was commissioned to be placed at the disposal of the Carabineros Station of the city.

That commission, accompanied by a Carabineros lieutenant and 4 officials from that unit, left for the foothills sector of the town to search for a list of people opposed to the government of the time.

On October 5, the group arrived at the "El Morro" estate in the foothills sector of Mulchén and detained, without a legitimate administrative or judicial order, 5 people who were interrogated at a temporary checkpoint and transferred to the "La Playita" sector of the Renaico River, where they were executed and their bodies made to disappear.

On October 6, the delegation arrived at the Carmen and Maitenes estates, where 7 people were detained and forced to dig a 6 by 4-meter grave to then be shot at the site and illegally buried. Hours later, another prisoner was detained at the site and was taken by the group to the main house of the Pemehue estate, where they arrived the following day.

On October 7, 5 people were detained at the Pemehue estate, who were executed at the site and their bodies left in clandestine graves, where they were found by their relatives.

Meanwhile, between the end of 1978 and the beginning of 1979, a section of the "Húsares" Regiment of Angol, after receiving a cryptogram from the Army General Command of the time, went to the sites of the illegal burials and exhumed the remains and made them disappear, despite the fact that a visiting judge of the Concepción Court of Appeals was investigating the events.

Source: resumen.cl, October 31, 2017