In 1975, the volume of reports of crimes committed by the dictatorship was increasing both in Chile and abroad. Manuel Contreras, director of the DINA, then decided to create a bloodthirsty and publicity-driven campaign to resolve the issue.

It has not been easy for the detectives of the Investigative Brigade for Human Rights Crimes to determine the fate of the 119 people detained by the DINA in 1974-75, as they were never heard from again.

In 1975, the volume of reports of crimes committed by the dictatorship was increasing both in Chile and abroad. Manuel Contreras, director of the DINA, then decided to create a bloodthirsty and publicity-driven campaign to resolve the issue.

With the support of newspapers that favored the military regime ("exterminated like rats," La Segunda), he made the national and international public believe that the kidnappings and alleged disappearances were false and that 119 forcibly disappeared persons had fled to Argentina and died there in clashes with that country's security forces or due to settling of scores among themselves.

Of the 98 individuals prosecuted by Judge Víctor Montiglio, barely a dozen are officers who held command in the detention and torture centers through which 41 of the victims included in this ruling passed.

One of the main arguments of Manuel Fuenzalida (see interview) for questioning the judicial decision and remaining a fugitive to this day is that he only performed guard duties and did not touch any detainee.

But upon reading the statements of each of the agents (members of the Armed Forces, Investigations, and Carabineros), it is surprising that they all agree on the same thing: they claim to have performed guard duties, that they did not have operational tasks, that they did not detain people or participate in torture sessions, and, certainly, neither in the events that ended in the disappearance of the 119.

The defendants shift all responsibility for the violent acts to the agents whose participation is more clearly proven, that is, the members who made up the Mulchén, Purén, or Caupolicán brigades. Many of them are serving sentences for other crimes.

However, all these "guards" passed through Tejas Verdes, the training center for DINA agents. One of the defendants, Eduardo Reyes Lagos, a retired Army non-commissioned officer, acknowledges that "it was my duty to accompany several detainees who, once the task was completed, were transferred to Villa Grimaldi, but after a time some of them were taken to the facilities of Cuatro Álamos or Tres Álamos, from where their trail was lost.

I am not clear if I participated in interrogations, but apparently not in Villa Grimaldi itself, but on several occasions I had to interview different people, as a result of the investigations we were tasked with doing.

I did not participate in interrogation sessions or the application of torture." Another of the defendants, Juan Duarte Gallegos, a former Carabineros non-commissioned officer, declares that he was only responsible for performing guard services and forming a reaction unit, whose mission was to provide support in case of emergency to any group. "It consisted of performing surveillance duties at the barracks, receiving and guarding detainees, who were transported by the different operational groups." This guard remained in active service until 1986, in the CNI.

Nelson Eduardo Iturriaga Cortés, a former Carabineros non-commissioned officer, points out that "I do not remember who transported these detainees or the guards," adding that "during my time at this facility, I never detained, interrogated, or tortured these political persons, nor did I witness these procedures." This guard passed through Villa Grimaldi, the Purén Brigade, Cuatro Álamos, José Domingo Cañas, and also ended his career in the CNI.

Iturriaga also clarifies that "all the time I served as a DINA agent, as well as in the CNI, I was never tasked with interrogating, torturing, or killing any person who was detained, just as I never witnessed any torture session." Manuel Fuenzalida was also trained at Tejas Verdes.

In his statement, he says he was at Londres 38 and Villa Grimaldi, where he says he carried out work in the Logistics Department of the Metropolitan Intelligence Brigade. "Specifically, I performed work as a guard at that facility," he says.

Source: La Nación, June 1, 2008

Miguel Krassnoff, Marcelo Moren Brito, and Raúl Iturriaga Neumann are some of those involved.

The minister on special assignment for Human Rights violation cases of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Hernán Crisosto, sentenced 77 agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) this Monday for their responsibility in the kidnapping of Héctor Garay Hermosilla in 1974.

Garay Hermosilla, a member of the Revolutionary Student Front (FER), was 19 years old when he was detained near his home on July 8, 1974. Days later, his name appeared in the national press on a false list of 119 people killed due to alleged internal disputes within the MIR, in what was called "Operation Colombo." According to the judge's findings, "the publications that declared the victim Garay Hermosilla dead had their origin in disinformation maneuvers carried out by DINA agents abroad." According to the reconstruction of the events carried out by the visiting minister, the DINA agents who captured Garay "put him in the back of a gray Chevrolet C-10 pickup truck and took him to the home of a friend of the victim, who was also forced to enter the aforementioned pickup truck, to be driven in an unknown direction." "Subsequently, it was possible to establish, through testimonies, the passage of Héctor Marcial Garay Hermosilla through the clandestine detention center known as 'Londres 38,' which was guarded by armed guards and to which only DINA agents had access," the ruling continues, establishing that to date there is no further information on Garay's whereabouts. The convicted In the resolution, the presiding judge sentenced the following to 13 years in prison: César Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Marcelo Luis Moren Brito, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, as authors of the crime perpetrated in 1974. Meanwhile, the following former agents must serve 10 years in prison, also as authors: Gerardo Ernesto Urrich González, Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García, Ricardo Víctor Lawrence Mires, Ciro Ernesto Torré Sáez, Sergio Hernán Castillo González, Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos, José Nelson Fuentealba Saldías, Basclay Humberto Zapata Reyes, José Enrique Fuentes Torres, José Mario Friz Esparza, Julio José Hoyos Zegarra, Nelson Alberto Paz Bustamante, Claudio Orlando Orellana de la Pinta, Enrique Tránsito Gutiérrez Rubilar, Gustavo Galvarino Caruman Soto, Hiro Álvarez Vega, José Alfonso Ojeda Obando, Olegario Enrique González Moreno, Orlando Jesús Torrejón Gatica, Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera, Alfredo Orlando Moya Tejeda, Carlos Alfonso Sáez Sanhueza, Fernando Enrique Guerra Guajardo, Hernán Patricio Valenzuela Salas, Hugo Rubén Delgado Carrasco, Juan Alfredo Villanueva Alvear, Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Lautaro Eugenio Díaz Espinoza, Leónidas Emiliano Méndez Moreno, Pedro Ariel Araneda Araneda, Rafael de Jesús Riveros Frost, Víctor Manuel Molina Astete, Máximo Ramón Aliaga Soto, Manuel Rivas Díaz, Juan Ángel Urbina Cáceres, Risiere del Prado Altez España, Raúl Juan Rodríguez Ponte, Hermon Helec Alfaro Mundaca, and Hugo del Tránsito Hernández Valle. As accomplices to the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Garay Hermosilla, the presiding judge sentenced the following to 4 years in prison: Luis Eduardo Mora Cerda, José Jaime Mora Diocares, Camilo Torres Negrier, Carlos Justo Bermúdez Méndez, Claudio Enrique Pacheco Fernández, Fernando Adrián Roa Montaña, Gerardo Meza Acuña, Héctor Raúl Valdebenito Araya, Jaime Humberto Paris Ramos, Jorge Laureano Sagardia Monje, José Dorohi Hormazábal Rodríguez, José Manuel Sarmiento Sotelo, José Stalin Muñoz Leal, Juvenal Alfonso Piña Garrido, Luis René Torres Méndez, Manuel Antonio Montre Méndez; Moisés Paulino Campos Figueroa, Nelson Aquiles Ortiz Vignolo, Nelson Eduardo Iturriaga Cortés, Pedro Segundo Bitterlich Jaramillo, Reinaldo Alfonso Concha Orellana, Sergio Hernán Castro Andrade, Víctor Manuel de la Cruz San Martín Jiménez, Gustavo Humberto Apablaza Meneses, Héctor Carlos Díaz Cabezas, Jorge Antonio Lepileo Barrios, Óscar Belarmino la Flor Flores; Rufino Espinoza Espinoza, Héctor Manuel Lira Aravena, Víctor Manuel Álvarez Droguett, Sergio Iván Díaz Lara, Juan Miguel Troncoso Soto, and Roberto Hernán Rodríguez Manquel. Meanwhile, Rodolfo Valentino Cocha Rodríguez and Armando Segundo Cofre Correa were acquitted due to lack of participation in the events.

Source: t13.cl, August 31, 2015

In mid-1981, General Augusto Pinochet gave the order for the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE), commanded by General Arturo Álvarez Scoglia, to assassinate Tucapel Jiménez, president of the National Association of Fiscal Employees (ANEF), who had emerged as the main Chilean union leader and was planning, along with other opposition leaders, a major national strike against the military government.

Álvarez Scoglia created a special group to carry out the mission and designated three officers as members of the execution command. However, the agents showed an evident "lack of commitment" to the assigned task, and the DINE command had to replace them by turning to two officers who had been members of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) and, in that year of 1981, were assigned to the National Information Center (CNI), created in 1977 to succeed the DINA.

They were Lieutenant Colonel Maximiliano Ferrer Lima and Captain Carlos Herrera Jiménez, alias "Mauro" or "Bocaccio." Both officers settled in at the beginning of November in the facilities of the Counter-Espionage Unit, dependent on Department II of Counterintelligence of the Army Intelligence Corps (CIE), located at Avenida Echeñique 5995, in the commune of La Reina.

That unit was part of the intricate and highly secret structure of the DINE, in charge of Commander Víctor Pinto Pérez. Ferrer Lima and Herrera Jiménez, along with two teams of agents under their command, then set out to prepare every detail of the plan to assassinate Tucapel Jiménez.

They were in the middle of this when the various services of the military dictatorship's intelligence community learned that former president Eduardo Frei Montalva had decided to check into the Santa María clinic to undergo surgery for a bothersome hiatal hernia.

At the beginning of the spring of 1981, the CNI was certain that the much-feared opposition union unit was coming together rapidly and that its main architect was Tucapel Jiménez. The matter was even more serious because Jiménez was also holding conversations with several of the main political leaders of the dissidence, among them Eduardo Frei Montalva.

The ANEF leader and the former president had already met at the Vicarage of the Workers' Pastoral along with some dignitaries of the Catholic Church. CNI analysts reached the conclusion that a broad national strike with unpredictable consequences was being prepared, with the support, moreover, of numerous bodies and governments from all over the world.

The task of the CNI From its inception, the CNI exercised close surveillance over the union world through the Labor Brigade or Political-Union Brigade, which depended directly on the Metropolitan Intelligence Division, commanded by Army Colonel Roberto Schmied Zanzi.

The head of the brigade since 1979 was Carabineros Captain Miguel Eugenio Hernández Oyarzo ("Felipe Bascur"), who had performed similar functions in the DINA in 1977, from the "Ollagüe" barracks, located on Calle José Domingo Cañas, in the commune of Ñuñoa.

By mid-1979, the brigade moved to a new secret barracks on Calle Agustinas and was divided into four groups, each under the command of Army Captain Raúl Lillo Gutiérrez ("Manolo Arriagada"), Héctor Lira ("Julián Reyes"), Nelson Fernández Franco ("Carlos Santander"), and Jorge Ramírez Romero ("Carlos de la Fuente"), respectively.

Among the agents were Pedro Alfaro Fernández, Juan Araos Araos, Carlos Asalgado Martínez, Edmundo Alberto Asenjo Gálvez, Daniel Cancino Varas, Gustavo Caruman Soto, Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Germán Erazo Ahumada, Ricardo Erazo Ahumada, Héctor Alfredo Flores Vergara, Segundo Gangas Godoy, Enrique Gutiérrez Rubilar, Luis Gutiérrez Uribe, Guido Jara Brevis, Jaime Márquez Campos, Luis Mora Cerda, José Mora Diocares, José Muñoz Leal, Enrique Naranjo Muñoz, Nelson Ortiz Vignolo, Manuel Poblete Vergara, Luis Tomás Rojas Torres, Manuel Tapia Tapia, and Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera.

The Labor Brigade achieved an important success when it managed to recruit for its tasks Luis Becerra, Frei Montalva's driver, a man who, moreover, was of absolute trust to the former president and knew very closely the activities and the inner circle of the Christian Democratic leader.

In 1977, the Ministry General Secretariat of Government created, under the dependency of the Directorate of Civil Organizations, the National Secretariat of Guilds and placed Misael Galleguillos at its head, a Mathematics professor from the Valparaíso branch of the University of Chile, an active militant of Patria y Libertad during the Popular Unity government.

His apparent mission was to form pro-government union leaders, but in truth, his main role consisted of monitoring and infiltrating opposition union leaderships and passing all that information to the CNI.

One of the actions with the greatest public impact by Galleguillos, who also directed the National Syndicalist Revolutionary Movement (MRNS), was the boycott of an ANEF press conference, in which Guillermo Henríquez, Jorge Salazar Hojman, Genaro Pozo, and Jorge Baldrich Camus burst in shouting "traitor" and "sellout" at Tucapel Jiménez.

The following day, Baldrich appeared photographed in El Mercurio. He later declared that the order had been given to him by the then Minister General Secretary of Government, General Sergio Badiola Brodeg, who was seconded by the undersecretary of the portfolio, the lawyer Jovino Novoa Vásquez.

Galleguillos also had a secret informant among the opposition who anticipated all the activities of the "Group of Ten." It was Federico Mujica Canales, a short man of radical origin, a constant pipe smoker, who presided over the Confederation of Private Employees of Chile (Cepch).

Very soon, the CNI refined its methods of tracking, surveillance, eavesdropping, and penetration. The information gathered was incorporated into individual files, and their contents were periodically replicated, with copies sent to the central barracks on Calle República.

There, they were received by Mirtha Espinoza Caamaño, the secretary of Colonel Roberto Schmied, head of the Interior Department, who was later appointed commander of the Metropolitan Intelligence Division, where the various anti-subversive brigades were located.

Under Schmied's direct command were Major Zanelli and Captain Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, in charge of operational tasks. One of the most secret paid snitches that the repressive agency maintained in the leadership circles of the opposition union movement could only be identified in the first semester of 2009.

It was the socialist Víctor Hugo Gac, a member of the executive committee of the CNS, a man then very close to Arturo Martínez. The secretary recorded the information in control books, with the date of entry, the originating unit, and a brief description of the content.

Acronyms and codes were used according to the respective units and sections. Thus, for example, F.1.1 corresponded to the head of the division; F-1.2 to the deputy head, and so on, according to the various departments into which the CNI was divided.

Leaders such as Tucapel Jiménez, Eduardo Ríos, Ernesto Vogel, and Manuel Bustos, among others, had their telephones tapped, and all correspondence sent to them and their families from abroad and within the country was reviewed by the unit the CNI maintained at the Post Office.

A file was kept for each one with their personal, work, and family background, in addition to their contact networks. In 1976, a CNI agent nicknamed "Omar" recruited as an informant the employee who worked as an assistant for the ANEF, at its three-story headquarters located at Alameda and Riquelme.

The "junior" was named Julio Olivares Silva and was the son of a friend of Tucapel Jiménez. Twice a week, the young man delivered his reports to the Labor Brigade barracks, where in exchange he received a cash payment.

In 1977, Olivares Silva was incorporated into the CNI staff under the alias "Gabriel Carrasco González," although everyone called him "Barnabás." Valericio Orrego, for his part, also became a paid collaborator of the CNI.

He infiltrated Carlos Santa María, a leader of the Group of Ten, by recruiting an employee of his in a business he had at Bandera and General Mackenna. The informant was named Patricio Pezoa and had to report periodically to "Manolo" or "Carlos de la Fuente," his control agents in the CNI.

One of the most secret paid snitches that the repressive agency maintained in the leadership circles of the opposition union movement could only be identified in the first semester of 2009. It was the socialist Víctor Hugo Gac, a member of the executive committee of the CNS, a man then very close to Arturo Martínez.

The hard road to unity At the end of May 1976, ten important union leaders, nine of them linked to the PDC, who claimed to represent 400 unions and more than 600,000 workers, sent a document to the military government where they complained about the new labor legislation that was being imposed and the marginalization of workers from political decisions.

The signatories were Tucapel Jiménez (ANEF), Ernesto Mellado (peasants), Pedro Cifuentes (Iansa), Antonio del Campo (bank employees), Guillermo Santana (Copper Workers Confederation, CTC), Manuel Bustos (textiles), Ernesto Vogel (Fifch), Federico Mujica (Cepch), Antonio Mimiza (oil), and Eduardo Díaz (ComaCh).

From that moment on, they were known as the Group of Ten, and very soon other important union organizations joined them, such as the Plastic Workers Confederation, the Federation of Professionals and Technicians of the National Health Service, and the Federation of Unions of the Banco Español.

At the end of the summer of 1978, former deputy Gladys Marín entered the country clandestinely, followed by Manuel Cantero Prado, both members of the political commission. Two months later, in May, the new Interior Direction Team (EDI) was constituted, headed by Marín, along with Cantero ("Miguel"), Oscar Riquelme ("El viejo Pablo"), and Nicasio Farías ("Héctor"), who took charge of the Infrastructure Front, entrusted with all the logistical work and the search for resources and materials for clandestine tasks. "Mariana," meanwhile, had to assume the delicate management of the party's finances. One of the main tasks of the EDI was to rebuild the internal structures and, in particular, the union fabric. To this end, Moisés Labraña, responsible for that sector in the JJ.CC. (Communist Youth), was promoted to union manager of the party and integrated into the EDI. Labraña had a determined team in which Héctor Cuevas, Alamiro Guzmán, and José Lecaros, among others, stood out. The PC unionists managed to refine links with the main labor leaders of the Christian Democracy, among whom were Manuel Bustos, of the textile workers; Eduardo Ríos, of the maritime workers; and Ernesto Vogel, of the railway workers; and with other historical figures, such as the octogenarian Clotario Blest. The leftist union movement grouped itself, meanwhile, into the National Union Coordinator (CNS), created under the wing of the Labor Studies Center, dependent on the Cardijn Foundation, which in turn was closely linked to the Catholic Church. The CNS appeared publicly in 1978, representing, as it maintained, some 400 grassroots unions, mainly industrial, of small and medium-sized mining and the peasantry. Among the members, the Mining Confederation, Fensimet, Fenamex, Fiemec, Ranquil, UOC, Association of Pensioners, Water Works Workers, the Painting Federation, and the Graphic Union stood out. There also existed the Workers' Unitary Front (FUT), a small formation of Christian unionists, led by Carlos Frez, the dismissed president of the Port Workers' Union, linked long before to the Young Christian Workers and the Workers' Movement for Catholic Action. Thus, more than three thousand workers from these three union references converged on May 1, 1978, toward Plaza Almagro, a few blocks south of La Moneda, to commemorate Labor Day. Carabineros forced them to disperse, but they regrouped a few blocks from there, at the San Francisco church, next to the Alameda Bernardo O’Higgins, where they were again driven away. By mid-afternoon, pickets of workers were still shouting slogans in various places in downtown Santiago. By nightfall, the balance of the demonstrations indicated nearly 400 detainees, several foreigners and religious figures among them. The military dictatorship and the pro-government press were forced to acknowledge, for the first time, the dissident street demonstrations. On May 22, relatives of the forcibly disappeared occupied simultaneously the offices of UNICEF and the parishes of Jesús Obrero, on General Velásquez, in the western sector of the capital; La Estampa, in Independencia, a few meters from Plaza Chacabuco, in the northern sector; and Don Bosco, on Gran Avenida, in the southern zone. They stayed there until June 7, demanding to know the fate of their relatives. Neither the CNI nor the police dared to evict them because the Catholic Church was involved and, moreover, the demonstration coincided with the arrival in the country of five high-ranking representatives of the American union AFL-CIO and with a visit by prosecutor Eugene Propper, who was investigating the assassination of Orlando Letelier in Washington. On June 7, two surprise marches were carried out through the downtown streets of Santiago in solidarity with the relatives of the disappeared. The presence of dissident pamphlets in places of high foot traffic became frequent in those days, and graffiti on walls in neighborhoods and on the main avenues began to multiply.

of the city. In university centers, flash protests emerged, and folk music clubs (peñas) multiplied under the shelter of religious venues and some nightclubs. In working-class neighborhoods, meanwhile, all kinds of community organizations began to be created, and in the factories, workers slowly dared to meet to stammer out their demands.

In August, at the Chuquicamata division of Codelco, near the city of Calama, copper miners decided to go to the cafeterias at lunchtime with their empty "lunchboxes." The prolonged protest movement for labor demands was named the "viandazo."

At the beginning of September, surprised and irritated by the symptoms of union unrest, the dictatorship decreed a State of Siege in the degree of internal commotion. The right of amparo (habeas corpus) before the courts of justice was limited, the arrest and internal exile of persons were authorized, as well as the cancellation of nationality and the prosecution of detainees in military courts.

Almost a month later, on October 20, 1978, the illegality of the main entities that made up the CNS was decreed; union headquarters were raided, assets and bank accounts were confiscated, and numerous leaders were arrested.

At the same time, the renewal of union leaders in the private sector was decreed, and many employers took the opportunity to fire opposition workers who could potentially be elected. In the following weeks, some nine thousand labor leaders were replaced.

Several of the main global union organizations then intervened, and the powerful American AFL-CIO threatened a boycott of Chilean exports starting in early 1979. Alarmed, the military government announced the appointment of a new Minister of Labor, the economist José Piñera, who took office on December 26, pledged to normalize labor relations, and announced the promulgation of a Labor Plan in mid-1979 that would put an end to the problems.

Neither the PC nor the other leftist parties, nor the Christian Democrats, correctly perceived the effects that the Labor Plan designed by Minister Piñera would have on the workers. In July 1979, the main decrees that imposed the new labor institutional framework were promulgated: union membership ceased to be mandatory, and the formation of several unions within the same company was authorized; collective bargaining became company-based rather than industry-based; the dismissal of workers "due to company needs" was authorized; the right to strike was restricted to 60 days, after which workers could be replaced; and retirement was postponed from 60 to 65 years for men and from 55 to 60 for women, among other measures. Those provisions were devastating; the union movement was extremely weakened, and a fear of "losing the job" was imposed.

In 1980 and 1981, despite protests from union leaders, Piñera's Labor Plan was consolidated. The "Group of Ten" transformed into the Democratic Workers' Union (UDT), although without several Christian Democratic leaders who were marginalized, such as Manuel Bustos, who became the leader of the new National Labor Coordinator (CNS).

The Hour of the Executioners

When the plan to assassinate Tucapel Jiménez was already underway and the military dictatorship learned that Frei Montalva was going to be hospitalized for surgery, a parallel operation was apparently activated to eliminate the former president and cover up the homicide as a series of post-surgical complications. However, Judge Alejandro Madrid was unable to specify the details of the conspiracy.

He convicted former captain Raúl Lillo Gutiérrez, a former member of the CNI and later of the DINE, and the driver Luis Becerra, but could not clarify from which branch of the military dictatorship the order to assassinate him originated.

Lillo Gutiérrez was the agent who controlled Becerra and Genaro Cerda Weber, a DC militant and husband of Hilda Navarro Varas, secretary of that same party. Lillo, transferred in the late 80s to the DINE, participated in the assassination of the chemist Eugenio Berríos in Uruguay, and for that crime, he was sentenced in August 2013 to ten years and one day in prison.

For many years, it was presumed that the chemist Berríos was the one who had inoculated the former president with some poison or other toxic substance while he was in the clinic. In fact, the former director of the Investigative Police (PDI), Nelson Mery, asserted during the trial that Berríos was murdered to prevent him from speaking about the assassination of Frei Montalva.

Judge Madrid also convicted four doctors: one—gastric surgeon Patricio Silva Garín—as the principal perpetrator; another—Pedro Valdivia Soto, a former member of the DINA—as an accomplice; and the two remaining—pathologists Helmar Rosenberg Gómez and Sergio González Bombardiere—as accessories.

The magistrate also failed to establish whether these doctors colluded with each other for the crime and/or obeyed orders to commit it.

Human rights lawyers, very close to the PDC, who requested that their names be withheld, told INTERFERENCIA that they considered the more than 800-page ruling very weak and that, in their opinion, both the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court will have to make strenuous efforts to draft a new and better resolution.

Source: interferencia.cl, February 29, 2019

Among the accused, all retired, are eight colonels and 23 non-commissioned officers of the Army, 40 officers and non-commissioned officers of the Carabineros, two former FACH agents, one former Navy agent, and seven former Investigative Police agents.

The biggest blow to the repression of Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship was dealt yesterday by Minister Víctor Montiglio, by prosecuting 98 former agents from different branches of the Armed Forces, Carabineros, and Investigations for 42 victims of Operation Colombo.

This is the most numerous resolution issued among the nearly 400 cases of human rights violations being investigated in the country. It even surpassed the 67 former agents prosecuted by the same Judge Montiglio in 2007 for the crimes of the Brigada Lautaro and its Grupo Delfín at the Simón Bolívar barracks.

Among those accused for Colombo are eight Army colonels (R), six of whom had not been prosecuted before in any case. Also declared defendants were 23 Army non-commissioned officers (R), of whom at least 50 percent appear for the first time in this type of case.

Among these non-commissioned officers is Juvenal Piña, alias "El Elefante," a former agent of the Brigada Lautaro, who was the one who suffocated the communist leader in hiding (1976) Víctor Díaz with a plastic bag over his head, before injecting him with cyanide.

In addition, the magistrate prosecuted 40 former officer and non-commissioned officer agents of the Carabineros, among whom are Ricardo Lawrence, Heriberto Acevedo, Claudio Pacheco, and José Mora, all former members of the same Brigade.

Among those prosecuted are also former agents who belonged to the Investigative Police. The only civilian (Army) is Juan Suárez. Of the total list, at least thirteen are already serving sentences for other cases (see list).

As of the closing of this edition, the accused continued to be arrested to be interned in different places, such as the Peñalolén Military Police Battalion. Among the 42 victims for whom the minister issued his resolution are María Angélica Andreolli, Miguel Acuña Castillo, Juan Carlos Perelmann Ide, Juan Chacón Olivares, Jorge Müller Silva, Luis Guendelmann Wisniak, Mario Calderón Tapia, and Carmen Bueno Cifuentes.

Operation Colombo and the Media

The list of the 119 was published in the magazine Lea (Buenos Aires) and the newspaper O Dia (Brazil) in 1975, information that was also false. Both publications were created by DINA agents. Operation Colombo was part of Operation Condor and consisted of a setup by the dictatorship to make the population believe that 119 forcibly disappeared persons had clandestinely left for Argentina and died there in confrontations with police and Army forces during the phase prior to the 1976 military coup in Argentina.

Some of those names appeared as militants "murdered" in Buenos Aires and its surroundings, with signs on their bodies stating they had been executed by their own comrades in a settling of scores due to internal disputes.

However, this also turned out to be a setup. The list of the 119 was published in the magazine Lea (Buenos Aires) and the newspaper O Dia (Brazil) in 1975; this information was also false. Both publications were created by DINA agents abroad and had only one edition.

In Chile, the pro-dictatorship press, such as the newspapers El Mercurio, La Tercera, Las Ultimas Noticias, and La Segunda, reproduced the intelligence services' setup. The headline of the evening paper remains in memory: "Exterminated like rats: 59 Chilean MIR members fall in military operation in Argentina." They were part of the list of the 119 disappeared of Colombo.

The former fugitive Raúl Iturriaga, who was one of the heads of the DINA's foreign department, was the one who first gave light to this operation in Buenos Aires. According to former civilian agent Enrique Arancibia Clavel, convicted in Buenos Aires for the crime of General Carlos Prat and his wife, it was Iturriaga who met with him at the beginning of 1975 to ask him to prepare what was necessary because "we have to make some dead people from Operation Colombo appear." It was about preparing the appearance of the supposed bodies of Jaime Robotham and Luis Guendelmann as part of the setup.

List of the Prosecuted

Army (all retired)

Víctor Molina Astete (colonel); Sergio Castillo González (col); Eduardo Guerra Guajardo (col); Víctor San Martín Jiménez (col); José Fuentes Torres (col); Manuel Carevic Cubillos (col); Jaime Paris Ramos (col); César Manríquez Bravo (col); Raúl Toro Montes (NCO); Eduardo Reyes Lagos (NCO); Orlando Torrejón Gatica (NCO); Osvaldo Tapia Alvarez (NCO.

Committed suicide); Juvenal Piña Garrido (NCO. "El Elefante"); Juan Suárez Delgado (civilian); Nelson Paz Bustamante (NCO); José Aravena Ruiz (NCO); Luis Torres Méndez (NCO); Raúl Soto Pérez (NCO); Jorge Andrade Gómez (NCO); Juan Escobar Valenzuela (NCO); Rolando Concha Rodríguez (NCO); Gustavo Apablaza Meneses (NCO); Hiro Alvarez Vega (NCO); Víctor Alvarez Droguett (NCO); Jorge Venegas Silva (NCO); Carlos Rinaldi Suazo (NCO); Carlos Letelier Verdugo (NCO) Reinaldo Concha Orellana (NCO); Máximo Aliaga Soto (NCO); Hugo Clavería Leiva (NCO); Samuel Fuenzalida Devia (NCO);

Investigations Juan Urbina Cáceres; Hugo Hernández; Manuel Rivas Díaz; Herman Alfaro; Eugenio Fieldhouse; Osvaldo Castillo;

Carabineros (officers and NCOs all retired)

Gerardo Godoy García; Ciro Torres Sáez, Alejandro Molina Cisternas; Camilo Torres Negrier; Héctor Lira Aravena; José Fritz Esparza; Claudio Pacheco Fernández; Jorge Sagardia Monge; Sergio Castro Andrade; Luis Villarroel Gutiérrez; Armando Cofré Gómez; Fernando Roa Montaña; Gerardo Meza Acuña; Enrique Gutiérrez Rubilar; Luis Mora Cerda; José Muñoz Leal; Juan Duarte Gallegos; Carlos Miranda Meza; Rufino Jaime Astorga; Luis Urrutia Acuña; Luis Zúñiga Ovalle; Pedro Alfaro Hernández; Orlando Inostroza Lagos; Rosa Ramos Hernández; Gustavo Caruvan Soto; Héctor Valdebenito Araya; Manuel Avendaño González; José Mora Diocares; Guido Jara Brevis; Nelson Ortiz Vignolo; Ruderlindo Urrutia Jorquera; Héctor Flores Vergara; Jerónimo Neira Méndez; Manuel Montré Méndez Heriberto del Carmen Acevedo; Claudio Orerllana de la Pinta; Nelson Iturriaga Cortés; Luis Gutiérrez Uribe; José Ojeda Obando;

Air Force Delia Gajardo Cortés; Hernán Avalos Muñoz

Navy Teresa Navarro Osorio;

Prosecuted who are already serving sentences

Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda; Pedro Espinoza Bravo; Raúl Iturriaga Neumann; Marcelo Moren Brito; Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko; Ricardo Lawrence Mires; Basclay Zapata Reyes; Conrado Pacheco; Francisco Ferrer Lima; Gerardo Urrich; Orlando Manzo Durán; Rizier Altez España; Fernando Lauriani Maturana

Source: lanacio.cl, May 27, 2008

78 Former DINA Agents Sentenced for the Disappearance of Miguel Acuña in Operation Colombo

The visiting minister of the Santiago Court of Appeals issued a sentence against 78 former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their responsibility in the aggravated kidnapping of Miguel Acuña Castillo, a forcibly disappeared person since July 8, 1974, and one of the victims of the so-called "Operation Colombo." Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, César Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Espinoza Bravo, Marcelo Luis Moren Brito, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann were sentenced to 13 years.

The magistrate established that: "In the night hours of July 8, 1974, Miguel Angel Acuña Castillo, a militant of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), was detained in the vicinity of his home located at Pasaje Talca No. 2033 in the Macul commune, by state agents belonging to the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) who put him in the back of a pickup truck and transported him to the clandestine detention center called 'Yucatán' or 'Londres 38,' located at that address in the city of Santiago, which was guarded by armed guards and to which only DINA agents had access.

That the victim Acuña Castillo, during his stay at the Londres 38 barracks, remained without contact with the outside, blindfolded and tied up, being continuously subjected to interrogations under torture by DINA agents who operated in said barracks with the purpose of obtaining information regarding the members of the MIR, to proceed with the detention of the members of that organization; That the last time the victim Acuña Castillo was seen alive occurred on an undetermined day in the month of July or August 1974, and he remains disappeared to this date; That the name of Miguel Ángel Acuña Castillo appeared on a list of 119 people, published in the national press after it appeared on a list published in the magazine Novo O’ Día of Curitiba, Brazil, dated June 25, 1975, in which it was reported that Miguel Ángel Acuña Castillo had died in Argentina, along with 58 other people belonging to the MIR, due to internal disputes that arose between those members; That the publications that declared the victim Acuña Castillo dead had their origin in disinformation maneuvers carried out by DINA agents abroad." For this act, the magistrate sentenced the former DINA members detailed below to the following penalties: To 13 Years of Major Imprisonment in its medium degree, as perpetrators of the crime: 1- Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda. 2- César Manríquez Bravo. 3- Pedro Espinoza Bravo. 4- Marcelo Luis Moren Brito. 5- Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko and 6- Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann To 10 years of major imprisonment in its minimum degree as perpetrators of the crime: 7- Gerardo Ernesto Urrich González. 8- Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García. 9- Ricardo Víctor Lawrence Mires. 10- Ciro Ernesto Torré Sáez. 11- Sergio Hernán Castillo González. 12- Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos. 13- José Nelson Fuentealba Saldías. 14- Basclay Humberto Zapata Reyes. 15- José Enrique Fuentes Torres. 16- José Mario Friz Esparza. 17- Julio José Hoyos Zegarra. 18- Nelson Alberto Paz Bustamante. 19- Claudio Orlando Orellana de la Pinta. 20- Enrique Tránsito Gutiérrez Rubilar. 21- Gustavo Galvarino Caruman Soto. 22- Hiro Álvarez Vega. 23- José Alfonso Ojeda Obando. 24- Luis Salvador Villarroel Gutiérrez. 25- Olegario Enrique González Moreno. 26- Orlando Jesús Torrejón Gatica. 27- Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera. 28- Alfredo Orlando Moya Tejeda. 29- Carlos Alfonso Sáez Sanhueza. 30- Fernando Enrique Guerra Guajardo. 31- Hernán Patricio Valenzuela Salas. 32- Hugo Rubén Delgado Carrasco. 33- Juan Alfredo Villanueva Alvear. 34- Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos. 35- Lautaro Eugenio Díaz Espinoza. 36- Leónides Emiliano Méndez Moreno. 37- Pedro Ariel Araneda Araneda. 38- Rafael De Jesús Riveros Frost. 39- Víctor Manuel Molina Astete. 40- Manuel Rivas Díaz. 41- Hugo del Tránsito Hernández Valle. 42- Juan Ángel Urbina Cáceres. 43- Risiere del Prado Altez España. 44- Hermon Helec Alfaro Mundaca and 45- Raúl Juan Rodriguez Ponte To 4 years of minor imprisonment in its maximum degree, as accomplices of the crime: 46- Luis Eduardo Mora Cerda. 47- José Jaime Mora Diocares. 48. Camilo Torres Negrier. 49- Carlos Justo Bermúdez Méndez. 50- Claudio Enrique Pacheco Fernández. 51- Fernando Adrián Roa Montaña. 52- Gerardo Meza Acuña. 53- Héctor Raúl Valdebenito Araya. 54- Jaime Humberto Paris Ramos. 55- Jorge Laureano Sagardia Monje. 56- José Dorohi Hormazabal Rodríguez. 57- José Manuel Sarmiento Sotelo. 58- José Stalin Muñoz Leal. 59- Juvenal Alfonso Piña Garrido. 60- Luis René Torres Méndez. 61- Manuel Antonio Montre Méndez. 62- Máximo Ramón Aliaga Soto. 63- Moisés Paulino Campos Figueroa. 64- Nelson Aquiles Ortiz Vignolo. 65- Nelson Eduardo Iturriaga Cortes. 66- Pedro Segundo Bitterlich Jaramillo. 67- Reinaldo Alfonso Concha Orellana. 68- Sergio Hernán Castro Andrade. 69- Víctor Manuel de la Cruz San Martin Jiménez. 70- Gustavo Humberto Apablaza Meneses. 71- Héctor Carlos Díaz Cabezas. 72.- Jorge Antonio Lepileo Barrios. 73- Oscar Belarmino La Flor Flores. 74- Rufino Espinoza Espinoza. 75- Roberto Hernán Rodríguez Manquel. 76- Víctor Manuel Álvarez Droguett. 77- Héctor Manuel Lira Aravena and 78- Sergio Iván Díaz Lara.

ACQUITTED

79- Rodolfo Concha Rodriguez 80- Armando Cofre Correa. Regarding Víctor Manuel De la Cruz San Martín Jiménez, due to having fallen into dementia, the fulfillment of the sentence is suspended, and he must, in due course, be handed over under custody bail to a family member who must propose his defense within five days of this sentence becoming final.

Source: reddigital.cl, October 22, 2015

Minister Hernán Crisosto Issues Sentence Against 76 DINA Agents for Kidnapping of "Operation Colombo" Victim

The visiting minister for human rights violation cases of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Hernán Crisosto Greisse, sentenced 76 former members of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their responsibility in the aggravated kidnapping of Sergio Arturo Flores Ponce, a victim of the so-called "Operation Colombo." In the resolution, Minister Crisosto sentenced the following agents to 13 years in prison as perpetrators: Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda César Manríquez Bravo Pedro Espinoza Bravo Marcelo Moren Brito Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko and Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann Meanwhile, the following agents must serve 10 years in prison, also as perpetrators: Gerardo Ernesto Urrich González Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García Ricardo Víctor Lawrence Mires Ciro Ernesto Torré Sáez Sergio Hernán Castillo González Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos José Nelson Fuentealba Saldías Basclay Humberto Zapata Reyes José Enrique Fuentes Torres José Mario Friz Esparza Julio José Hoyos Zegarra Nelson Alberto Paz Bustamante Claudio Orlando Orellana de la Pinta Enrique Tránsito Gutiérrez Rubilar Gustavo Galvarino Caruman Soto Hiro Álvarez Vega José Alfonso Ojeda Obando Olegario Enrique González Moreno Orlando Jesús Torrejón Gatica Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera Alfredo Orlando Moya Tejeda Carlos Alfonso Sáez Sanhueza Fernando Enrique Guerra Guajardo Hernán Patricio Valenzuela Salas Hugo Rubén Delgado Carrasco Juan Alfredo Villanueva Alvear Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos Lautaro Eugenio Díaz Espinoza Leónidas Emiliano Méndez Moreno Pedro Ariel Araneda Araneda Rafael de Jesús Riveros Frost Víctor Manuel Molina Astete Manuel Rivas Díaz Juan Ángel Urbina Cáceres Risiere del Prado Altez España Raúl Juan Rodríguez Ponte Hermon Helec Alfaro Mundaca and Hugo del Tránsito Hernández Valle Likewise, the following were sentenced to 4 years in prison as accomplices to the crime: Luis Eduardo Mora Cerda José Jaime Mora Diocares Camilo Torres Negrier Carlos Justo Bermúdez Méndez Claudio Enrique Pacheco Fernández Gerardo Meza Acuña Héctor Raúl Valdebenito Araya Jaime Humberto Paris Ramos Jorge Laureano Sagardia Monje José Dorohi Hormazábal Rodríguez José Manuel Sarmiento Sotelo José Stalin Muñoz Leal Juvenal Alfonso Piña Garrido Manuel Antonio Montre Méndez Máximo Ramón Aliaga Soto Moisés Paulino Campos Figueroa Nelson Aquiles Ortiz Vignolo Nelson Eduardo Iturriaga Cortés Pedro Segundo Bitterlich Jaramillo Reinaldo Alfonso Concha Orellana Sergio Hernán Castro Andrade Víctor Manuel de la Cruz San Martin Jiménez Gustavo Humberto Apablaza Meneses Héctor Carlos Díaz Cabezas Jorge Antonio Lepileo Barrios Óscar Belarmino la Flor Flores Rufino Espinoza Espinoza Héctor Manuel Lira Aravena Sergio Iván Díaz Lara Víctor Manuel Álvarez Droguett Juan Miguel Troncoso Soto and Roberto Hernán Rodríguez Manquel Agents Luis René Torres Méndez and Fernando Adrián Roa were acquitted due to a lack of evidence of participation in the events. The Facts According to the information gathered during the investigation stage, Minister Crisosto Greisse was able to verify the following sequence of events: -That in the afternoon of July 24, 1974, Sergio Arturo Flores Ponce, a militant of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), was detained at the corner of Diagonal Paraguay and Portugal, in the Santiago commune, by state agents belonging to the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), who transported him to the clandestine detention center called "Yucatán" or "Londres 38," located at that address in the city of Santiago, which was guarded by armed guards and to which only DINA agents had access. -That the victim Flores Ponce, during his stay at the Londres 38 barracks, remained without contact with the outside, blindfolded and tied up, being continuously subjected to interrogations under torture by DINA agents who operated in said barracks, regarding his party activities and the name and address of his political group comrades in order to proceed with their detention. -That the last time the victim Flores Ponce was seen by other detainees occurred on an undetermined day in the month of August 1974, and there is no information regarding his whereabouts to this day. In the civil aspect, the magistrate resolved to order the State of Chile to pay compensation for moral damages of $100,000,000 to the victim's father.

Source: pjud.cl, July 26, 2015

Minister Hernán Crisosto sentences DINA agents for the kidnapping of a Music Teacher in 1974

The minister for extraordinary causes for human rights violations of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Hernán Crisosto Greisse, issued a sentence on Tuesday, November 10, in the investigation into the aggravated kidnapping of Arturo Barría Araneda, a music teacher at the Liceo Darío Salas.

The crime was perpetrated beginning on August 28, 1974, in the Metropolitan Region. The victim is part of what is known as "Operation Colombo."

In the resolution (case file 2182-98), the presiding judge sentenced former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) César Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, and Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann to 13 years of effective imprisonment as authors of the crime.

Meanwhile, former members of the organization Orlando José Manzo Durán, Manuel Heriberto Avendaño González, Alejandro Francisco Astudillo Adonis, and Demóstenes Eugenio Cárdenas Saavedra were sentenced to 10 years, also as authors.

Additionally, Minister Hernán Crisosto imposed a sentence of 3 years and one day of effective imprisonment on former DINA member Luis Humberto Pavez Parra, as an accomplice.

The following individuals were acquitted due to a lack of participation in the events: Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García, Alejandro Francisco Molina Cisterna, Samuel Enrique Fuenzalida Devia, Máximo Ramón Aliaga Soto, Gustavo Galvarino Carumán Soto, Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Carlos Enrique Letelier Verdugo, Herman Eduardo Ávalos Muñoz, Raúl Bernardo Toro Montes, Alfonso Humberto Quiroz Quintana, Héctor Raúl Valdebenito Araya, José Stalin Muñoz Leal, Gerardo Ernesto Urrich González, Julio José Hoyos Zegarra, Silvio Antonio Concha González, José Mario Friz Esparza, Luis Rigoberto Videla Inzunza, Jorge Segundo Madariaga Acevedo, Teresa del Carmen Osorio Navarro, Ricardo Víctor Lawrence Mires, Ciro Ernesto Torré Sáez, Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos, Basclay Humberto Zapata Reyes, Rosa Humilde Ramos Hernández, Pedro René Alfaro Fernández, Luis René Torres Méndez, Rodolfo Valentino Concha Rodríguez, Juan Angel Urbina Cáceres, Jerónimo del Carmen Neira Méndez, Luis Fernando Espinace Contreras, Palmira Isabel Almuna Guzmán, Leonidas Emiliano Méndez Moreno, Juan Ignacio Suárez Delgado, Raúl Alberto Soto Pérez, José Jaime Mora Diocares, Víctor Abraham González Salazar, Eugenio Jesús Fieldhouse Chávez, Daniel Valentín Cancino Varas, Jaime Humberto Paris Ramos, Juan Carlos Escobar Valenzuela, Pedro Segundo Bitterlich Jaramillo, Luis Eduardo Mora Cerda, Juvenal Alfonso Piña Garrido, Osvaldo Octavio Castillo Arellano, Víctor San Martín Jiménez, Reinaldo Alfonso Concha Orellana, Fernando Enrique Guerra Guajardo, Guido Arnoldo Jara Brevis, Hugo Hernán Clavería Leiva, Carlos Enrique Miranda Mesa, Víctor Manuel Álvarez Droguett, Víctor Manuel Molina Astete, Olegario Enrique González Moreno, Miguel Ángel Yáñez Ugalde, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and Héctor Carlos Díaz Cabezas.

The Facts During the investigation stage, Magistrate Crisosto Greisse established the following sequence of events:

• On August 27, 1974, Arturo Barría Araneda, a music teacher at the Liceo Darío Salas in Santiago and a member of the Communist Party, was summoned by the military overseer of that educational institution to the Army Non-Commissioned Officers School, located at the intersection of Calle Blanco Encalada and San Ignacio, along with two other teachers and a student, for allegedly participating in political demonstrations during the funeral of a student from the school at the General Cemetery;
• The following day, August 28, Barría Araneda went to the Army Non-Commissioned Officers School, accompanied by witnesses, where he was deprived of his liberty and subsequently sent to the Military Institutes Command, and later to the clandestine DINA detention center known as "Cuatro Álamos," located at Calle Canadá No. 3000, which was guarded by armed guards and accessible only to DINA agents;
• During his stay at the Cuatro Álamos barracks, Barría Araneda remained without contact with the outside world and, on one occasion, was taken out by agent Osvaldo Romo Mena to be interrogated at Villa Grimaldi, being returned to "Cuatro Álamos" the same day;
• The last time the victim, Barría Araneda, was seen by other witnesses at the "Cuatro Álamos" facility was on an undetermined day in September 1974, and he remains forcibly disappeared to this day;
• The name of Arturo Barría Araneda appeared on a list of 119 people published in the national press after it appeared in a publication of the Brazilian magazine "O'DIA" on June 25, 1975, which claimed that Arturo Barría Araneda had died in Argentina, along with 58 other people belonging to leftist groups, due to internal disputes among those members; and
• The publications that declared the victim, Barría Araneda, dead originated from disinformation maneuvers carried out by DINA agents abroad.

Source: pdjud.cl, November 12, 2015

Prison sentences handed down to 21 former DINA agents for the disappearance of a Socialist Party militant

Magistrate Hernán Crisosto established that the dictatorship's intelligence agents participated as authors in the aggravated kidnapping of Bernardo Castro López, who later appeared on a supposed list of people killed in clashes in Argentina.

The minister for extraordinary causes for human rights violations of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Hernán Crisosto, issued a sentence on January 6 in the investigation into the aggravated kidnapping of Bernardo de Castro López, an event that occurred beginning on September 14, 1974.

In the case, the magistrate sentenced former National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) agents Juan Manuel Guillermo Contreras Sepúlveda, César Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Gerardo Ernesto Urrich González, Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos, and Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann to 13 years of imprisonment as authors.

Likewise, Minister Crisosto sentenced Orlando Manzo Durán, Pedro René Alfaro Fernández, Armando Segundo Cofré Correa, Héctor Alfredo Flores Vergara, Enrique Tránsito Gutiérrez Rubilar, Hugo del Tránsito Hernández Valle, Manuel Rivas Díaz, Risiere del Prado Altez España, Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Manuel Heriberto Avendaño González, Alfredo Orlando Moya Tejeda, Alejandro Francisco Astudillo Adonis, Demóstenes Eugenio Cárdenas Saavedra, Hernán Patricio Valenzuela Salas, and Alejandro Francisco Molina Cisternas to 10 years of imprisonment as authors of aggravated kidnapping.

Meanwhile, he sentenced Nelson Eduardo Iturriaga Cortez and José Dorohi Hormazábal Rodríguez to 4 years of imprisonment without benefits as accomplices, and acquitted Basclay Zapata Reyes.

THE RULING

According to the resolution, Minister Hernán Crisosto established the following facts: "On the afternoon of September 14, 1974, Bernardo de Castro López, a member of the Socialist Party, was detained at his home located at Calle Bilbao No. 1236, in the commune of Providencia, and taken to a barracks of the Chilean Investigative Police, where he was interrogated and then handed over to DINA agents, who took him to the clandestine detention center known as 'Venda Sexy,' located at Calle Irán No. 3037, in Santiago, and subsequently transferred to the clandestine detention center known as 'Cuatro Álamos,' located at Calle Canadá No. 3000, in the commune of Santiago, facilities that were guarded by armed guards and to which only DINA agents had access," he states in the first point.

In the second point, he notes that "During his stay at the 'Venda Sexy' barracks, De Castro López remained without contact with the outside world, blindfolded and tied up, and was continuously subjected to interrogations under torture by DINA agents operating in said barracks for the purpose of obtaining information regarding members of his political group, in order to proceed with the detention of the members of that organization, an isolation that continued at the Cuatro Álamos Center."

"The last time the victim, De Castro López, was seen alive by other detainees occurred on an undetermined day in the month of October 1974, and he remains disappeared to this day," he states in the third point.

In the fourth, "the name of Bernardo de Castro López appeared on a list of 119 people, published in the national press after it appeared on a list published in the Argentine magazine LEA on July 15, 1975, which claimed that Bernardo de Castro López had died in Argentina, along with 59 other people belonging to leftist groups, due to internal disputes among those members; and the publications that declared the victim, De Castro López, dead originated from disinformation maneuvers carried out by DINA agents abroad."

As a fifth point, he established that "the facts established in the previous consideration constitute the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Bernardo de Castro López, provided for and sanctioned in Article 141, paragraph 3 of the Penal Code of the time, in relation to the first paragraph of the same article, since the deprivation of liberty or confinement of the victim lasted for more than 90 days, and therefore produced serious damage to the person, which ultimately resulted in his disappearance."

Source: lanacion.cl, January 8, 2015

Miguel Angel Acuña Castillo: The disappearance of the 19-year-old in Londres 38

He was detained in July 1974 in the commune of Macul. Numerous witnesses saw him at the Londres 38 torture and extermination center. He is one of the victims of "Operation Colombo." The justice system sentenced 78 former DINA agents for this crime against humanity.

The minister of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Hernán Crisosto, issued a first-instance sentence for the kidnapping and disappearance of Miguel Angel Acuña Castillo.

The magistrate established that the young man, a member of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), was detained in the vicinity of his home located at Pasaje Talca No. 2033 in the commune of Macul by State agents belonging to the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), among them Osvaldo Romo Mena, alias "El Guatón Romo."

His sister, Rosa Acuña Castillo, declared that her father tried to climb onto the back of the covered pickup truck as they were taking him away, but he was struck in the mouth by one of the subjects and fell to the ground.

A week after the kidnapping, Romo returned to their home and told her that her brother was in good condition along with Héctor Garay Hermosilla, who is also disappeared. Both were members of the Revolutionary Student Front (FER) at the Liceo 7 in Ñuñoa.

Judge Crisosto determined that the DINA agents "transferred him to the clandestine detention center known as 'Yucatán' or 'Londres 38'."

Acuña Castillo belonged to the secondary student structure of the MIR's Military Political Group 3 (GPM3), an organization that grouped militants from the eastern part of the capital and was led by Agustín Reyes González, and his trail was lost forever at Londres 38.

There, he "remained without contact with the outside world, blindfolded and tied up, being continuously subjected to interrogations under torture by DINA agents," and the last time he was seen alive "occurred on an undetermined day in the month of July or August 1974, and he remains disappeared to this day," the first-instance ruling states.

Laughing in Londres 38 with Héctor Garay Hermosilla

At the "Yucatán" barracks, he was seen by Erika Hennings, who was detained on July 30, 1974. "I can say that he was very young, I think they called him 'El Pampa'," she asserted during the process. She heard that the detainees were called to roll call twice a day.

On July 31, 1974, she heard the name of Miguel Angel Acuña Castillo, who answered "present." She never heard him called again. "They took them out of Londres 38 just like other detainees, among whom she remembers María Inés Alvarado," a 21-year-old forcibly disappeared person.

Hugo Chacaltana Silva, detained on May 4, 1974, a former student of the Liceo Manuel de Salas and member of the Revolutionary Student Front (FER), also saw him at Londres 38. He recounted that in the early hours of July 8 to 9, 1974, Miguel Angel Acuña arrived along with Héctor Garay Hermosilla, whom they called "Titín." He was able to see them through a gap that formed between his nose and cheekbones under the blindfold.

Chacaltana noted that he met Castillo in 1971, when both were secondary students. Both coincided in meetings held at the time between members of the FER, the judicial ruling notes. He remembers "Miguel Ángel as a young man of great leadership capacity and much physical resistance."

He stopped seeing him on September 11, 1973. He met him again at Londres 38. He arrived with Héctor Garay to the same room where he was lying on the floor. "At that moment I did not address Miguel Ángel," on the contrary, he pretended not to notice his presence. "The next day, when the mattresses on which we detainees lay were removed and replaced by chairs, I sat down and, to one side, I observed that they were still sitting.

It struck me that both were talking and laughing, which made me think that they were unaware of the magnitude of what awaited them. Miguel Ángel approached him at Londres 38, saying, 'I know you'."

His mother found out at the hair salon that her son was at Londres 38

León Gómez, detained on July 15, 1974, and transferred to Londres 38, saw Miguel Angel along with Héctor Garay, whom he knew. Someone commented to him that among the detainees was "Pampino," which he corroborated upon hearing him "with his typical jokes that he made to the guards, as if giving the impression that what was happening in the place was of no importance.

Even Titín and Pampino would drive the guards crazy. They were very irreverent."

David Cuevas Sharon, detained on May 4, 1974, also testified to having seen him. "Pampino, despite showing signs of mistreatment, seemed to have great presence of mind; he was very physically strong." He shared space with him for at least five days.

When Cuevas was released, Acuña Castillo remained a prisoner. His maternal grandmother had a hair salon in Ñuñoa, and one of her clients was Miguel Angel's mother. In a conversation, "she found out about the problem she had with a disappeared son.

Given this, my grandmother had her come to the hair salon, where she met Pampino's mother and told her what she knew about him, specifically the place where he had been imprisoned with him."

Regarding the torments applied to the detainees at Londres 38, including Miguel Angel, Minister Crisosto incorporated statements from Osvaldo Romo, who stated that among other tortures, detainees were subjected to "the dry submarine, which was covering the detainees' breathing with a plastic bag placed over their heads; their eyes would look like 'fried eggs,' and blood would come out of their noses and eardrums.

After the interrogations and duress, the detainees would be exhausted."

Another former agent, Samuel Fuenzalida Devia, specified in this regard that "the general treatment of the prisoners was to keep them blindfolded, they were not allowed to wash, there were no beds for them to sleep on, the food was scarce, and they were subjected to intense interrogations in which they were subjected to electricity, especially on their genitals and breasts.

Another form of torture consisted of keeping the detainees sitting in chairs, tied by their feet and hands, while current was applied to them with magnets, although common electric current was also applied, which burned those people, a procedure in which many people died."

Eugenio Fieldhouse Chávez maintains that as an official of the Investigative Police, in mid-June 1974, he was assigned to that repressive agency and indicated that the same DINA agents who intervened in the detention and interrogation of the detainees, once the information sought was obtained, were the ones in charge of making them disappear, following an order from DINA superiors.

The name of Miguel Ángel Acuña Castillo appeared among the 119 Chileans of Operation Colombo, on a list disseminated in the national press, after it appeared in publications that appeared only once in Brazil and Argentina, "which reported that Miguel Ángel Acuña Castillo had died in Argentina, along with 58 other people belonging to the MIR, due to internal disputes."

The sentences "The publications that declared the victim, Acuña Castillo, dead originated from disinformation maneuvers carried out by DINA agents abroad," determined Judge Crisosto, who sentenced 78 former DINA agents for his disappearance.

The magistrate handed down a sentence of 13 years of major imprisonment in its medium degree to Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, César Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Espinoza, Marcelo Luis Moren Brito, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and Raúl Iturriaga Neumann.

He also sentenced the following to 10 years of major imprisonment in its minimum degree: Gerardo Ernesto Urrich González, Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García, Ricardo Víctor Lawrence Mires, Ciro Ernesto Torré Sáez, Sergio Hernán Castillo González, Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos, José Nelson Fuentealba Saldías, Basclay Humberto Zapata Reyes, José Enrique Fuentes Torres, José Mario Friz Esparza, Julio José Hoyos Zegarra, Nelson Alberto Paz Bustamante, Claudio Orlando Orellana de la Pinta, Enrique Tránsito Gutiérrez Rubilar, Gustavo Galvarino Carumán Soto, Hiro Álvarez Vega, José Alfonso Ojeda Obando, Luis Salvador Villarroel Gutiérrez, Olegario Enrique González Moreno, Orlando Jesús Torrejón Gatica, Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera, Alfredo Orlando Moya Tejeda, Carlos Alfonso Sáez Sanhueza, Fernando Enrique Guerra Guajardo, Hernán Patricio Valenzuela Salas, Hugo Rubén Delgado Carrasco, Juan Alfredo Villanueva Alvear, Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Lautaro Eugenio Díaz Espinoza, Leónides Emiliano Méndez Moreno, Pedro Ariel Araneda Araneda, Rafael De Jesús Riveros Frost, Víctor Manuel Molina Astete, Manuel Rivas Díaz, Hugo del Tránsito Hernández Valle, Juan Ángel Urbina Cáceres, Risiere del Prado Altez España, Hermon Helec Alfaro Mundaca, and Raúl Juan Rodríguez Ponte.

As accomplices to the kidnapping and disappearance of the 19-year-old, he sentenced the following to 4 years of minor imprisonment in its maximum degree: Luis Eduardo Mora Cerda, José Jaime Mora Diocares, Camilo Torres Negrier, Carlos Justo Bermúdez Méndez, Claudio Enrique Pacheco Fernández, Fernando Adrián Roa Montaña, Gerardo Meza Acuña, Héctor Raúl Valdebenito Araya, Jaime Humberto Paris Ramos, Jorge Laureano Sagardia Monje, José Dorohi Hormazabal Rodríguez, José Manuel Sarmiento Sotelo, José Stalin Muñoz Leal, Juvenal Alfonso Piña Garrido, Luis René Torres Méndez, Manuel Antonio Montre Méndez, Máximo Ramón Aliaga Soto, Moisés Paulino Campos Figueroa, Nelson Aquiles Ortiz Vignolo, Nelson Eduardo Iturriaga Cortes, Pedro Segundo Bitterlich Jaramillo, Reinaldo Alfonso Concha Orellana, Sergio Hernán Castro Andrade, Víctor Manuel de la Cruz San Martin Jiménez, Gustavo Humberto Apablaza Meneses, Héctor Carlos Díaz Cabezas, Jorge Antonio Lepileo Barrios, Oscar Belarmino La Flor Flores, Rufino Espinoza Espinoza, Roberto Hernán Rodríguez Manquel, Víctor Manuel Álvarez Droguett, Héctor Manuel Lira Aravena, and Sergio Iván Díaz Lara.

Regarding Víctor Manuel De la Cruz San Martín Jiménez, due to having fallen into dementia, the fulfillment of the sentence is suspended, and he must, in due course, be handed over under custody bail to a family member.

Source: Villa Grimaldi.cl, February 3, 2015

26 former DINA agents sentenced for the kidnapping of Miguel Acuña

The Santiago Court of Appeals sentenced 26 former members of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their responsibility in the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Miguel Ángel Acuña Castillo, an illicit act committed beginning on July 8, 1974, which is part of what is known as "Operation Colombo."

In a unanimous ruling, the Fifth Chamber of the appellate court sentenced agents César Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann to 13 years of imprisonment as authors of the crime.

Meanwhile, former agents Gerardo Ernesto Urrich González, Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García, Ricardo Víctor Lawrence Mires, Ciro Ernesto Torré Sáez, Sergio Hernán Castillo González, Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos, Basclay Humberto Zapata Reyes, José Enrique Fuentes Torres, Julio José Hoyos Zegarra, Gustavo Galvarino Carumán Soto, José Alfonso Ojeda Obando, Luis Salvador Villarroel Gutiérrez, Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera, Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Pedro Ariel Araneda Araneda, Víctor Manuel Molina Astete, Manuel Rivas Díaz, Hugo del Tránsito Hernández Valle, Juan Ángel Urbina Cáceres, Risiere del Prado Altez España, Hermon Helec Alfaro Mundaca, and Raúl Juan Rodríguez Ponte must serve 10 years of imprisonment as authors.

Within the framework of this case, 46 other agents were also acquitted.

Source: latercera.cl, November 27, 2017

In the first case, it sentenced César Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Espinoza Bravo, and Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko to 10 years in prison for their responsibility as authors of the kidnapping of the MIR militant, which occurred starting on September 16, 1974.

The Supreme Court confirmed the sentences that convicted former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for the qualified kidnappings of Héctor Zúñiga Tapia and Bernardo de Castro López, both of whom were forcibly disappeared and victims of the disinformation operation known as "Operation Colombo."

In the first case (docket 1.030-2018), the Second Chamber of the high court—composed of ministers Hugo Dolmestch, Carlos Künsemüller, Lamberto Cisternas, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, and Jorge Dahm—sentenced César Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Espinoza Bravo, and Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko to 10 years in prison for their responsibility as authors of the kidnapping of the MIR militant, which occurred starting on September 16, 1974.

Meanwhile, Alejandro Astudillo Adonis, Demóstenes Cárdenas Saavedra, Manuel Avendaño González, Nelson Paz Bustamante, and José Aravena Ruiz must serve a sentence of 5 years and one day in prison for their responsibility as authors of the aforementioned crime.

The investigation by the visiting judge Hernán Crisosto Greisse established that: "That in the afternoon of September 16, 1974, Héctor Cayetano Zúñiga Tapia, a militant of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), was detained on a public street by agents belonging to the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) who placed him in the back of a Chevrolet C-10 pickup truck and transported him to a clandestine DINA detention center; he was subsequently transferred to the clandestine detention center known as 'Cuatro Álamos,' located at Calle Canadá No. 3000 in Santiago, facilities that were guarded by armed guards and to which only DINA agents had access;

That the victim, Zúñiga Tapia, during his detention was severely beaten and tied up, and during his stay in the DINA barracks, he remained without contact with the outside world, under the custody of DINA agents who operated in the clandestine detention barracks;

That the last time the victim, Zúñiga Tapia, was seen alive occurred on an undetermined day in the month of October 1974 at the 'Cuatro Álamos' barracks, and to date, there is no information regarding his whereabouts.

That the name of Héctor Cayetano Zúñiga Tapia appeared on a list of 119 people, published in the national press after it appeared on a list published in the Brazilian magazine 'O'DIA,' dated June 25, 1975, which reported that Héctor Cayetano Zúñiga Tapia had died in Argentina, along with 58 other people belonging to the MIR, due to internal disputes that had arisen among those members.

That the publications that declared the victim, Zúñiga Tapia, dead had their origin in disinformation maneuvers carried out by DINA agents abroad."

In the civil aspect, the State was ordered to pay compensation of $400,000,000 (four hundred million pesos) to the victim's family members.

Bernardo de Castro López

In the second case (docket 3.322-2018), the Second Chamber of the high court—composed of ministers Hugo Dolmestch, Carlos Künsemüller, Lamberto Cisternas, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, and Jorge Dahm—sentenced César Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Espinoza Bravo, Gerardo Urrich González, Manuel Carevic Cubillos, and Raúl Iturriaga Neumann to 10 years and one day in prison for their responsibility as authors of the kidnapping of the Socialist Party militant, detained starting on September 14, 1974.

Additionally, Pedro René Alfaro Fernández, Armando Segundo Cofré Correa, Héctor Alfredo Flores Vergara, Enrique Tránsito Gutiérrez Rubilar, Hugo del Tránsito Hernández Valle, Manuel Rivas Díaz, Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Manuel Heriberto Avendaño González, Alfredo Orlando Moya Tejeda, Alejandro Francisco Astudillo Adonis, Demóstenes Eugenio Cárdenas Saavedra, Hernán Patricio Valenzuela Salas, and Alejandro Francisco Molina Cisternas were sentenced to 5 years and one day in prison for their responsibility as authors of the crime.

The investigation by Judge Hernán Crisosto Greisse established:

"That in the afternoon of September 14, 1974, Bernardo de Castro López, a militant of the Socialist Party, was detained at his home in the commune of Providencia, being taken to a PDI barracks and then handed over to agents belonging to the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) who took him to the clandestine detention center known as 'Venda Sexy,' located at Calle Irán No. 3037 in Santiago, and he was subsequently transferred to the clandestine detention center 'Cuatro Álamos,' located at Calle Canadá 3000 in the commune of Santiago, facilities that were guarded by armed guards and to which only DINA agents had access;

That the victim, during his detention at 'Venda Sexy,' remained without contact with the outside world, blindfolded and tied up, being continuously subjected to interrogations under torture by DINA agents who operated in said barracks, with the objective of obtaining information regarding his political group, isolation that continued at 'Cuatro Álamos.'

That the last time the victim was seen alive by other detainees occurred on an undetermined day in the month of October 1974, and to date, there is no information regarding his whereabouts.

That the name of Bernardo de Castro López appeared on a list of 119 people, published in the national press after it appeared on a list published in the Argentine magazine 'LEA,' dated July 15, 1975, which reported that he had died in Argentina, along with 59 other people belonging to leftist groups, due to internal disputes that had arisen among those members.

That the publications that declared the victim dead had their origin in disinformation maneuvers carried out by DINA agents abroad."

Source: diarioconstitucional.cl, October 8, 2019

35 former DINA agents convicted for the crime of a veterinarian in Operation Colombo

The Santiago Court of Appeals convicted 35 agents of the defunct National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their responsibility in the crime of qualified kidnapping of the veterinarian Juan Rosendo Chacón Olivares, 29 years of age, a crime perpetrated from his home in the capital on July 15, 1974, within the framework of the so-called "Operation Colombo."

In the sentence (case docket 419-2016), the Eighth Chamber of the appellate court—composed of ministers Mario Rojas, Jaime Balmaceda, and Juan Carlos Silva Opazo—upheld the first-instance sentence in the part that convicted former army officers César Raúl Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann as authors of the crime to 13 years in prison.

On the other hand, the Court ratified the sentence of 10 years and one day in prison for the former officers: Gerardo Ernesto Urrich González, Ricardo Víctor Lawrence Mires, Ciro Ernesto Torré Sáez, Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos, and Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García, and the former agents Hermón Helec Alfaro Mundaca, José Enrique Fuentes Torres, Julio José Hoyos Zegarra, Nelson Alberto Paz Bustamante, Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera, Hiro Álvarez Vega, José Alfonso Ojeda Obando, Orlando Jesús Torrejón Gatica, Enrique Tránsito Gutiérrez Rubilar, Hugo del Tránsito Hernández Valle, Manuel de la Cruz Rivas Díaz, Raúl Juan Rodríguez Ponte, Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Víctor Manuel Molina Astete, Fernando Enrique Guerra Guajardo, Olegario Enrique González Moreno, Lautaro Eugenio Díaz Espinoza, Pedro Ariel Araneda Araneda, Carlos Alfonso Sáez Sanhueza, Juan Alfredo Villanueva Alvear, Alfredo Orlando Moya Tejeda, Rafael de Jesús Riveros Frost, Leonidas Emiliano Méndez Moreno, Demóstenes Eugenio Cárdenas Saavedra, Manuel Heriberto Avendaño González, and Hernán Patricio Valenzuela Salas, all of them as authors of the crime.

The first-instance ruling had been issued in December 2015 by Judge Hernán Crisosto Greisse. In the course of these 4 and a half years between that resolution and this one from the Court, 8 individuals initially convicted passed away; they are the former officer Sergio Hernán Castillo González and the former agents Basclay Zapata Reyes, José Mario Friz Esparza, Claudio Orlando Orellana de la Pinta, Gustavo Galvarino Carumán Soto, Juan Ángel Urbina Cáceres, Risiere del Prado Altez España, and José Nelson Fuentealba Saldías, who are now dismissed from the case.

The facts

In the investigation stage, the visiting judge Hernán Crisosto managed to establish the following sequence of events:

"That in the night hours of July 15, 1974, Juan Rosendo Chacón Olivares, a veterinarian and militant of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), was detained at his home, located at Calle Antonio Varas 240, in the commune of Providencia, by agents belonging to the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), being transferred to the clandestine detention center known as 'Londres 38,' located at that address in the city of Santiago, and then to 'Cuatro Álamos,' located at Calle Canadá No. 3000, in Santiago, which were guarded by armed guards and to which only DINA agents had access;

The victim, Chacón Olivares, during his stay in the Londres 38 and Cuatro Álamos barracks, remained without contact with the outside world, being kept blindfolded and tied up in the first facility; and subjected to constant interrogations under torture by DINA agents who operated in said barracks with the purpose of obtaining information regarding members of the MIR, to proceed with the detention of members of that organization;

The last time the victim, Chacón Olivares, was seen by other detainees occurred on an undetermined day in July or August 1974, and there is no information regarding his whereabouts to date;

The name of Juan Rosendo Chacón Olivares appeared on a list of 119 people, published in the national press after it appeared on a list published in the Brazilian magazine 'LEA,' dated July 15, 1975, which reported that Juan Rosendo Chacón Olivares had died in Argentina, along with 59 other people belonging to the MIR, due to internal disputes that had arisen among those members;

That the publications that declared the victim, Chacón Olivares, dead had their origin in disinformation maneuvers carried out by DINA agents abroad."

Source: resumen.cl, July 15, 2020

21 former DINA agents convicted for another Operation Colombo victim

The Santiago Court of Appeals convicted 21 former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their responsibility in the crime of qualified kidnapping of Ismael Darío Chávez Lobos, detained on July 26, 1974, in the commune of Quinta Normal, in Santiago.

The victim, 22 years of age, was a Social Sciences student at the University of Chile and, since his kidnapping, was forcibly disappeared within the framework of the so-called "Operation Colombo."

In a unanimous ruling released this Thursday (case docket 435-2016), the Second Chamber of the appellate court—composed of ministers María Soledad Melo, Jessica González, and the acting lawyer Jorge Benítez—convicted former army officers César Raúl Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann as authors of the crime to 10 years in prison.

Meanwhile, former army officers Gerardo Ernesto Urrich González and Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos, former Carabineros officers Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García, Ricardo Víctor Lawrence Mires, and Ciro Ernesto Torré Sáez, and former agents José Enrique Fuentes Torres, Julio José Hoyos Zegarra, José Alfonso Ojeda Obando, Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera, Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Pedro Ariel Araneda Araneda, Víctor Manuel Molina Astete, Manuel de la Cruz Rivas Díaz, Hugo del Tránsito Hernández Valle, Hermon Helec Alfaro Mundaca, Raúl Juan Rodríguez Ponte, and José Avelino Yévenes Vergara were all sentenced to 5 years in prison as authors of the crime, which represents a reduction of the sentences imposed by the judge investigating the process.

In the first instance, in a ruling issued in December 2015, the extraordinary visiting judge for Human Rights cases, Hernán Crisosto Greisse, sentenced the first-named individuals to 13 years in prison and the second group to 10 years.

Likewise, regarding that ruling, 14 agents were acquitted by the Court's decision, and another 12 were acquitted because they passed away between the dates of the two resolutions.

In the investigation of the case, Judge Crisosto Greisse managed to establish the following facts:

"a) In the night hours of July 26, 1974, Ismael Darío Chávez Lobos, 22 years old, a militant of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), was detained at his home located at Calle Los Copihues No. 1977 in the commune of Quinta Normal, by agents belonging to the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), who transported him to the clandestine detention center known as 'Londres 38,' located at that address in the city of Santiago, which was guarded by armed guards and to which only DINA agents had access.

b) The victim, in the Londres 38 barracks, remained without contact with the outside world, blindfolded and tied up, being subjected to interrogation under torture by DINA agents, with the purpose of obtaining information regarding the membership of the MIR, to proceed with the detention of other members of that organization.

c) The last time Chávez Lobos was seen by other detainees occurred on an undetermined day in the months of July and August 1974, and he remains disappeared to date.

d) The name of Ismael Darío Chávez Lobos appeared on a list of 119 people, published in the national press after it appeared on a list published in the Brazilian magazine 'O'DIA,' dated June 25, 1975, which reported that Chávez Lobos had died in Argentina, along with 58 other people belonging to the MIR, due to internal disputes that had arisen among those members.

e) The publications that declared the victim dead had their origin in disinformation maneuvers carried out by DINA agents abroad."

Source: resumen.cl, June 13, 2020

Supreme Court sends 59 former DINA agents to prison for Operation Colombo

Operation Colombo was a major intelligence operation and a communication setup by the DINA, which attempted to make 119 people kidnapped in Chile appear as having been killed abroad.

The Second Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court revoked a sentence that had acquitted more than 60 former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) and convicted them as responsible for the disappearance of 16 leftist militants, mostly from the MIR, in the process known as Operation Colombo, which in this case was perpetrated between June 17, 1974, and January 6, 1975, during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

The ruling was issued by ministers Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Jorge Dahm, Leopoldo Llanos, María Teresa Letelier, and Diego Simpertigue; they revoked the sentence issued by the Court of Appeals and sentenced former DINA chiefs and officers César Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Miguel Krassnoff, and Raúl Iturriaga Neumann to a penalty of 15 years and one day of major imprisonment in its maximum degree as authors of the crimes of qualified kidnapping of the victims.

Similarly, the court sentenced 53 former agents to an effective penalty of 10 years and one day of major imprisonment in its medium degree, as authors of the same crime, who had been acquitted previously by the capital's appellate court, despite having been convicted in the first instance as accomplices and authors.

Furthermore, this time all must enter prison, with some of them already in prison for other crimes against humanity.

These are former DINA agents Fernando Eduardo Lauriani Maturana, Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García, Manuel Andrés Carevic, Rosa Humilde Ramos Hernández, Nelson Alberto Paz Bustamante, Jose Abel Aravena Ruiz, Claudio Enrique Pacheco Fernández, Nelson Aquiles Ortiz Vignolo, Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera, José Alfonso Ojeda Obando, Manuel Heriberto Avendaño Gonzalez, Raúl Juan Rodríguez Ponte, Alejandro Francisco Astudillo Adonis, Daniel Alberto Galaz Orellana, Francisco Maximiliano Ferrer Lima, Leoncio Enrique Velásquez Guala, José Enrique Fuentes Torres, Julio José Hoyos Zegarra, Pedro René Alfaro Fernández, Orlando Jesús Torrejón Gatica, José Manuel Sarmiento Sotelo, Luis René Torres Méndez, Rodolfo Valentino Concha Rodríguez, Enrique Tránsito Gutiérrez Rubilar, Hugo Del Tránsito Hernández Valle, Manuel Rivas Diaz, Daniel Valentín Cancino Varas, Juan Evangelista Duarte Gallegos, Víctor Manuel Molina Astete, Fernando Enrique Guerra Guajardo, Leónidas Emiliano Méndez Moreno, Jorge Antonio Lepileo Barrios, Lautaro Eugenio Díaz Espinoza, Pedro Ariel Aravena Aravena, Carlos Alfonso Sáez Sanhueza, Juan Carlos Villanueva Alvear, Alfredo Orlando Moya Tejeda, Rafael De Jesús Riveros Frost, Silvio Antonio Concha González, Luis Fernando Espinace Contreras, Hernán Patricio Valenzuela Salas, Palmira Isabel Almuna Guzmán, Sylvia Teresa Oyarce Pinto, Osvaldo Pulgar Gallardo, José Avelino Yévenes Vergara, Olegario Enrique González Moreno, Werner Zanghellini, and Hector Flores Vergara.

Jaime Alfonso Fernández Garrido received a sentence of 5 years and one day of major imprisonment in its minimum degree as an author of the crime of qualified kidnapping of Ida Vera Almarza. Meanwhile, Samuel Fuenzalida Devia was sentenced to 541 days and one day for the same crime, but will not serve time in prison.

This is an extensive process that had its first first-instance sentence in 2017 at the hands of Judge Hernán Crisosto Greisse. In the course of the investigation, some agents have passed away, such as Basclay Zapata, Ciro Torré, Manzo Duran, Ricardo Lawrence, among others.

For Nelson Caucoto, the plaintiff lawyer representing 13 of the 16 victims, this is "a transcendent ruling in Chilean judicial history, since the Supreme Court has restored the sense of justice for crimes of this nature, which had literally been left in a situation of unacceptable impunity.

The high court has once again rejected the partial statute of limitations and the defense's appeals for the convicted, and has accepted the appeals of the plaintiffs," he noted.

Caucoto adds that "it is a modern ruling based on international law and domestic legislation. It is undoubted that justice operates in this case as a healing for so many relatives of victims who still survive, and it is a pity that others did not live to see this end."

Operation Colombo was a major intelligence operation and a communication setup by the DINA, which attempted to make 119 people kidnapped in Chile by the DINA appear as having been killed abroad, claiming they had perished after fighting among themselves.

This process investigated the fate of 16 of those 119 victims. They are Francisco Aedo Carrasco, Jorge Elías Andrónicos Antequera, Juan Carlos Andrónicos Antequera, Jaime Buzio Lorca, Mario Calderón Tapia, Cecilia Castro Salvadores, Rodolfo Espejo Gómez, Agustín Fioraso Chau, Gregorio Gaete Farías, Mauricio Jorquera Encina, Isidro Pizarro Meniconi, Marcos Quiñones Lembach, Sergio Reyes Navarrete, Ida Vera Almarza, Juan Carlos Rodríguez Araya, and Jilberto Urbina Pizarro.

Source: radio.uchile.cl, March 3, 2023

Operation Colombo: Supreme Court issues convictions against 32 DINA agents in cases of two victims

The Supreme Court issued separate replacement sentences that convict 32 former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their responsibility in the qualified kidnapping of two victims of the so-called Operation Colombo.

In separate cases and rulings, the high court issued a resolution on the cases of Ismael Darío Chávez Lobos, detained on July 26, 1974, and Jorge Alejandro Olivares Graindorge, detained on July 27, 1974, both in the commune of Quinta Normal, in Santiago.

In the first case, referring to the case of Ismael Chávez Lobos, in a unanimous ruling (case docket 79.461-2020), the Second Chamber of the high court—composed of ministers Jorge Dahm, Leopoldo Llanos, minister María Teresa Letelier, and acting lawyers Pía Tavolari and Gonzalo Ruz—established an error of law in the sentence issued by the Santiago Court of Appeals in June 2020, by acquitting the agents who performed operational functions and served as guards at the Londres 38 facility of responsibility for the proven facts.

For this reason, in the replacement sentence, it qualifies them as guilty and convicts them for the crime, while increasing the sentences of the other convicted individuals.

At the same time, it accepted the cassation appeals filed by the plaintiffs and, issuing a replacement sentence, convicted former DINA leaders and former army officers César Raúl Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann to sentences of 10 years and one day in prison, in the capacity of authors of the crime.

Meanwhile, also as authors of the crime, former Carabineros officer Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García, former army officer Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos, and former agent José Enrique Fuentes Torres were sentenced to 10 years in prison.

While former agents Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Pedro Ariel Araneda Araneda, Víctor Manuel Molina Astete, Manuel de la Cruz Rivas Díaz, Raúl Juan Rodríguez Ponte, Hermon Helec Alfaro Mundaca, Hugo del Tránsito Hernández Valle, Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera, Julio José Hoyos Zegarra, Nelson Alberto Paz Bustamante, Enrique Tránsito Gutiérrez Rubilar, Hiro Álvarez Vega, José Alfonso Ojeda Obando, Olegario Enrique González Moreno, Orlando Jesús Torrejón Gatica, Alfredo Orlando Moya Tejeda, Fernando Enrique Guerra Guajardo, Hernán Patricio Valenzuela Salas, Juan Alfredo Villanueva Alvear, Lautaro Eugenio Díaz Espinoza, Leónidas Emiliano Méndez Moreno, Rafael de Jesús Riveros Frost, Carlos Alfonso Sáez Sanhueza, Máximo Ramón Aliaga Soto, and José Avelino Yévenes Vergara must serve 5 years and one day in prison as authors of the crime.

In the second case, referring to Jorge Olivares Graindorge, in a unanimous ruling (case docket 122.171.2020), the Second Chamber, composed of the same ministers as the previous case, established an error of law in the sentence issued by the Santiago Court of Appeals in July 2020, by mistakenly acquitting agents who performed operational and guard functions at the Londres 38 facility.

For this reason, in the replacement sentence, it qualifies and convicts them as guilty of the crime.

Likewise, it increases the sentences of the other convicted individuals and sentenced former DINA leaders and former army officers César Raúl Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann to sentences of 10 years and one day in prison, in the capacity of authors of the crime.

Meanwhile, also as authors of the crime, former officers Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García and Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos, and former agent José Enrique Fuentes Torres were sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Similarly, for this crime, former agents Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Pedro Ariel Araneda Araneda, Víctor Manuel Molina Astete, Manuel de la Cruz Rivas Díaz, Raúl Juan Rodríguez Ponte, Hermon Helec Alfaro Mundaca, Hugo del Tránsito Hernández Valle, Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera, Julio José Hoyos Zegarra, Nelson Alberto Paz Bustamante, Enrique Tránsito Gutiérrez Rubilar, Hiro Álvarez Vega, José Alfonso Ojeda Obando, Olegario Enrique González Moreno, Orlando Jesús Torrejón Gatica, Alfredo Orlando Moya Tejeda, Fernando Enrique Guerra Guajardo, Hernán Patricio Valenzuela Salas, Juan Alfredo Villanueva Alvear, Lautaro Eugenio Díaz Espinoza, Leónidas Emiliano Méndez Moreno, Rafael de Jesús Riveros Frost, Carlos Alfonso Sáez Sanhueza, Máximo Ramón Aliaga Soto, and Osvaldo Enrique Pulgar Gallardo must serve sentences of 5 years and one day in prison as authors of the crime.

In both cases, twelve other agents convicted in the first instance passed away during the course of the process, among them former officers Gerardo Urrich González, Ricardo Lawrence Mires, Ciro Torré Sáez, and Sergio Castillo González, and agents Basclay Zapata Reyes, Risiere del Altez España, Juan Ángel Urbina Cáceres, José Nelson Fuentealba Saldías, Hugo Rubén Delgado Carrasco, José Mario Friz Esparza, Claudio Orlando Orellana de la Pinta, and Gustavo Galvarino Carumán Soto, who were acquitted of these crimes.

The victims

Ismael Darío Chávez Lobos, 22 years of age, was a Social Sciences student at the University of Chile and a militant of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR). He was detained in the night hours of July 26, 1974, at his home located at Calle Los Copihues No. 1977 in the commune of Quinta Normal, by agents belonging to the DINA, who transported him to the clandestine detention center 'Londres 38,' located at that address in the city of Santiago.

Jorge Alejandro Olivares Graindorge, 23 years of age, a gardener by trade, also a militant of the MIR, was detained by DINA agents on a public street in the afternoon of July 27, 1974, in the vicinity of his home located at Pasaje Salta 2258, in the commune of Quinta Normal. He was also transported by the agents to the clandestine detention center "Londres 38."

From this place of detention and torture, the trail of both detainees is lost. Subsequently, in July 1975, they appeared mentioned in the lists of the international disinformation maneuver known as "Operation Colombo," carried out by the DINA, which included 119 forcibly disappeared persons.

by Darío Nuñez

Source: resumen.cl, December 4, 2023

Operation Colombo: Supreme Court confirms convictions of 24 former DINA agents for qualified kidnapping of UdeC leader in Santiago in 1974

The Supreme Court rejected the cassation appeals in form and substance filed by the defenses against the sentence that convicted agents of the dissolved National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their responsibility in the crime of qualified kidnapping of sociology student Ariel Martín Salinas Argomedo, committed starting on September 25, 1974, in Santiago.

The name of Ariel Salinas Argomedo appeared, subsequently, on the list of 119 forcibly disappeared persons included in the disinformation maneuver implemented by the DINA and the dictatorship known as "Operation Colombo."

In a unanimous ruling (case docket 135.568-2020), the Second Chamber of the high court—composed of ministers Haroldo Brito, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Jorge Dahm, minister María Teresa Letelier, and acting lawyer Pía Tavolari—accepted the cassation appeal in form filed by the plaintiff, the Human Rights Program of the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, and consequently invalidated the challenged sentence, only in the part that acquitted the accused Manuel Heriberto Avendaño González and, in a replacement sentence, convicted him to 10 years in prison, in the capacity of author of the crime.

The Supreme Court ruling confirmed the sentences of former army officers and former DINA leaders César Raúl Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, who must serve 13 years in prison for their responsibility as authors of the qualified kidnapping.

Meanwhile, in addition to the aforementioned Manuel Heriberto Avendaño González, former officers Francisco Maximiliano Ferrer Lima, Fernando Eduardo Lauriani Maturana, Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos, Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García, Palmira Isabel Almuna Guzmán, and former agents Hermón Helec Alfaro Mundaca, Julio José Hoyos Zegarra, Silvio Antonio Concha González, José Alfonso Ojeda Obando, Luis Rigoberto Videla Inzunza, Teresa del Carmen Osorio Navarro, Claudio Enrique Pacheco Fernández, José Abel Aravena Ruiz, Alejandro Francisco Astudillo Adonis, Rosa Humilde Ramos Hernández, Pedro René Alfaro Fernández, Raúl Juan Rodríguez Ponte, Pedro Ariel Araneda Araneda, and Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos must serve 10 years of imprisonment, all convicted in the capacity of authors of the crime.

Another 12 agents, also convicted in the first-instance ruling issued by Judge Hernán Crisosto Greisse in October 2015, passed away during the course of the process.

Regarding the case of the accused Manuel Avendaño González, the Criminal Chamber points out: "(...) under such conditions, the appeal proposed by the Human Rights Program of the relevant Ministry must be accepted, since from the mere reading of the challenged sentence, grounds are evident that are completely contradictory, canceling each other out, making the decision that acquits the accused Avendaño González, which is declared in the operative part, devoid of all foundation, configuring the defect of invalidation denounced."

"In effect, at the time of the events, these accused were part, as hierarchical superiors and operational agents, together with other defendants whose participation would be analyzed in the following considerations, of the groups belonging to the National Intelligence Directorate that materialized the kidnapping of the members of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left, among whose members was Salinas Argomedo, in such a way that, despite not remembering the specific name of this one, it is indisputable to conclude, just as the lower court does, that they took part in the illegitimate deprivation of liberty of this one immediately and directly in the form provided by the recently cited norm and that, for the same reason, they are punishable co-authors of this illicit act."

Operation Colombo

Ariel Martín Salinas Argomedo was a former sociology student at the University of Concepción. The young man, 26 years old, married and father of a daughter, was a militant of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), was part of the university leadership of the MIR in Concepción, and, until the military coup, was president of the student center of the sociology program at the UdeC.

After the coup, he had to go into hiding to avoid being captured. He moved to Santiago to continue his militant activity and a year later was detained.

In the first-instance ruling, the judge Hernán Crisosto Greisse established that in the morning hours of September 25, 1974, Ariel Salinas was detained on a public street by agents belonging to the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), who transported him to the clandestine DINA detention center known as 'Ollagüe,' located at José Domingo Cañas No. 1367 in the commune of Ñuñoa.

Subsequently, he was transferred to the clandestine detention centers known as 'Villa Grimaldi,' located at Lo Arrieta No. 8200, in La Reina, and 'Cuatro Álamos,' located at Calle Canadá No. 3000, in the commune of Santiago, facilities that were guarded by armed guards and to which only DINA agents had access.

According to the testimony of surviving prisoners, during his stay in the José Domingo Cañas, Villa Grimaldi, and Cuatro Álamos barracks, the detainee Ariel Salinas remained without contact with the outside world. In the first two places, he was blindfolded and tied up, being continuously subjected to interrogations under torture by DINA agents who operated in said barracks.

The last time Ariel Salinas Argomedo was seen alive by other detainees occurred on an undetermined day in the month of November 1974, and he has been disappeared since that date.

by Darío Núñez

Source: resumen.cl, February 26, 2024