Edgardo Agustín Morales Chaparro, married, with one daughter, a union leader and member of the Socialist Party, was detained for the first time on August 13, 1974, by Carabineros officers and taken to the Rosita Renard police station located on Los Tres Antonios street.

He remained there until 8:00 p.m. that day, when he was made to sign a document stating that he had been released. However, he was removed from the police facility by DINA agents who transported him, blindfolded, to a secret detention center he could not identify, where he was interrogated and tortured for approximately 6 days.

At the end of this period, he was transferred to 4 Alamos and was ultimately released on September 2, 1974. The day before that arrest, on August 12, his home had been raided by a large group of civilians who violently searched the premises and destroyed belongings.

From September 2 onwards, both he and his home were subjected to intense surveillance, which culminated on September 6, 1974, around 5:00 p.m. At that date and time, a man and a woman appeared at his home on Carmen Covarrubias street.

Despite his mother, Ema Chaparro Farías, telling them that he was not in a condition to receive anyone, as he was still recovering from his previous detention, they entered his bedroom, with the agent stating, "You already know me." The victim did indeed recognize the civilian from his previous apprehension.

They told him he had to accompany them to sign some papers, after which his situation would be fully regularized. They gave him time to get dressed and took him away, telling his mother he would be back shortly. He was never seen again. The civilian who apprehended him was heavy-set, solid, dark-skinned, and had a mustache.

Subsequently, on December 6 of that year, while his spouse, Juana Valenzuela Huerta, was at her workplace, she was approached by two civilians who told her she had to accompany them to her home. Upon arriving at her house, she found about 20 men raiding the property, turning over all the furniture and objects in search of weapons, as they claimed.

The agent acting as the leader matched the description of the civilian who had arrested her husband on September 6. She asked him about her spouse, and he replied that she should not worry about him, "that he would be in the north or the south, or somewhere," refusing to provide any information that would reveal the fate of Morales Chaparro.

His name appeared on a list of 119 Chileans killed abroad in clashes between rival ultra-leftist groups or in confrontations with the Argentine Armed Forces. These lists were released by the magazines LEA in Argentina and O'DIA in Brazil, publications that issued only one edition without a responsible editor and whose addresses listed in the imprint turned out to be false.

The names of these 119 people correspond to cases of individuals who had been detained by Chilean security services, especially the DINA, and who have remained in the status of forcibly disappeared since the moment of their detention.

His family carried out countless efforts and inquiries to determine his whereabouts. They submitted various requests to administrative and military authorities and made multiple petitions to international personalities and organizations to intervene on his behalf. All these efforts were fruitless, and they still do not know the fate he met at the hands of the DINA.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEEDINGS

Following his first detention, his spouse filed a writ of amparo on August 27, 1974, with the Santiago Court of Appeals, case file 996-74, in which she set forth the circumstances of the deprivation of liberty he suffered at the hands of the Carabineros, who had taken him to the Rosita Renard police station.

On September 10, while reports requested from the Ministers of the Interior and Defense and the Prefect of Carabineros were still pending, the petitioner informed the Court that the detainee had been released from the 3 Alamos camp on September 2. However, she noted that on September 6, he was detained again by two civilians, including a woman, who took him to an unknown destination.

On November 3, the Ministry of the Interior informed the Court that the detainee was not being held by order of any administrative authority and that the Ministry was unaware of his current whereabouts.

That same Ministry of State responded to the official letter sent to the General Prefect of Carabineros. With this information, on November 29, the Court of Appeals rejected the writ of amparo and resolved to refer the records to the Eighth Criminal Court of Santiago to investigate the disappearance of the victim.

On December 5, 1974, the Eighth Criminal Court opened case file 11.528, while simultaneously declaring itself incompetent to continue hearing the facts and referring the records to the Second Military Court of Santiago.

That court did not accept jurisdiction, leading to a jurisdictional dispute which, upon being resolved by the Supreme Court, resulted in the case being assigned to the Eighth Criminal Court. In the investigation order carried out by the Investigative Police, the complainant was interviewed, and inquiries were made at the Legal Medical Institute, cemeteries, emergency clinics, hospitals, and the Civil Registry, none of which yielded any results.

On July 23, 1975, after the complainant appeared before the Court to ratify the complaint, the case was temporarily dismissed on the grounds that the evidence gathered in the files did not justify the existence of any crime.

On September 26, 1975, the Court of Appeals deemed the investigation incomplete and set aside the dismissal order. The victim's affiliation record was added to the file, and on November 3, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs informed the Court, in relation to the case of "the 119," that there was no official record that the people named in the lists published in "LEA" and "O'DIA" had died abroad.

On April 13, 1976, the complainant appeared in the proceedings once again and ratified her statements. On May 11, 1976, the Ñuñoa Sur Sub-station, located at Rosita Renard and Tres Antonios, informed the Court that Edgardo Morales Chaparro had been detained on August 13, 1974, as a suspect by First Sergeant Carlos Valdés Silva and First Corporal Sergio Ferreira Ordenes, both of that unit, and was released on the same day, August 13, at 10:00 p.m.

On August 26, 1976, the case was again temporarily dismissed for lack of evidence of a crime. This time, the dismissal order was approved by the Santiago Court of Appeals, despite the fact that there is no record in the proceedings that the police officers who appear as the victim's apprehenders were summoned to testify in order to identify the civilians who took the detainee from the police facility.

On December 17, 1974, Juana Valenzuela Huerta filed a complaint for kidnapping with the Eighth Criminal Court, case file 11.576. Ema Rosa Chaparro Farías and the minor Elizabeth Morales Valenzuela, the victim's mother and daughter respectively, appeared as witnesses to his arrest.

The investigation order carried out by the Investigative Police yielded no results. On February 28, 1975, the Ministry of the Interior reported that the victim was not being held by order of that Ministry.

With this information, on March 5, 1975, the Court temporarily dismissed the case on the grounds that the existence of the investigated crime had not been proven. Judge Juan Rivas Larraín apparently did not notice that case file No. 11.528, which covered the same facts, was being processed in the same court.

The dismissal order was approved by the Court of Appeals on May 23. Subsequently, following a submission by the complainant to the President of the Court of Appeals to investigate the list of 119 dead Chileans published on July 23, 1975, by the national press—which reproduced the news released by two foreign magazines of non-existent origin—the Court ordered the reopening of the case and resolved to send an official letter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to report on the veracity of said news.

That Ministry reported in the same terms as in the previous case. Based on the information from that Ministry of State, the case was archived again. On December 14, 1976, the complainant requested that the case be returned to the summary stage, considering that the investigation had not been exhausted. This request was rejected by the Court.

On July 6, 1977, the complainant again requested the reopening of the summary, this time attaching a response letter from Carabineros Captain Rubén Aracena González, Chief of the Documentation Center of the General Secretariat of Government, in whose final paragraph it reads: "...Furthermore, your spouse was released; his activities or current whereabouts are not known to the Government." The request was addressed to General Pinochet.

Also attached to the submission was a sworn statement from the complainant, in which she recounts a strange visit by unidentified civilians who interrogated her about the victim's situation. The Judge accepted the submission, set aside the dismissal order, and ordered official letters to be sent to the General Secretariat of Government, the Ministry of the Interior, and the General Directorate of Investigations to report whether they had ordered any investigation regarding the forcibly disappeared persons, and to the various security agencies to report if they had information on the victim.

Of the responses received—all of which were negative—the one from Carabineros Captain Rubén Aracena González stands out, as he indicated that he was not authorized, nor did he have the information required, as that was the responsibility of the Ministry of the Interior.

For its part, that Ministry of State indicated that the statement by the Chief of the aforementioned Center could easily have been misinterpreted.

On August 24, 1977, Juana Valenzuela Huerta filed a criminal complaint for the crime of kidnapping against her husband, in which she provided a detailed account of the events that culminated in the arrest and subsequent disappearance of the victim.

She also stated that she had been summoned several times to the Investigations office as a result of the judicial proceedings. During one of these summons, on February 11, 1975, Detective Vicente Carrasco, who was in charge of the investigation, told her that the Service could do nothing more to locate her husband.

In the same office where she was speaking with the detective, she saw the heavy-set man who had arrested her husband and later raided her home. She mentioned this to the officer, Carrasco, but he merely shrugged his shoulders, saying that perhaps it was so; the heavy-set subject pretended not to recognize her. The complaint was accepted for processing and consolidated with case file No. 11.576.

On November 22, 1977, Detective Vicente Carrasco Delorme appeared before the Court and stated that it was possible the complainant had visited the Eighth Judicial Barracks, but he did not remember which coworker might be the person she mentioned.

On November 21, International Police reported that the victim had registered an exit to Argentina on April 30, 1974, and an entry on June 30 of that same year; there is no record of any exit after that date.

After receiving new negative reports from the Ministry of the Interior—responding to an official letter to the CNI—and from the security agencies of the various branches of the Armed Forces, on May 2, 1978, the Judge considered it pointless to continue the investigation and, in accordance with the Amnesty Decree Law published on April 19, 1978, definitively dismissed the case.

However, the Court of Appeals rejected the dismissal and ordered the case to return to the summary stage.

On March 29, 1979, the case was referred to the Visiting Minister Servando Jordán López, who was investigating the cases of forcibly disappeared persons in the Department of Santiago. In the investigation order issued by the Minister and carried out by the Investigative Police, it was reported that several neighbors of the property on Covarrubias street were interviewed.

Of great interest was the statement by Jorge Ledesma Zamora, who said that prior to Morales Chaparro's detention, plainclothes personnel entered his home in order to observe Morales's house from there, looking for an opportunity to detain him.

Subsequently, he saw vehicles of different types and makes, apparently watching his neighbor's house. In November 1980, Minister Servando Jordán López closed the summary. Previously, he had rejected a series of investigative steps requested by the complainant, considering that they contributed nothing to the clarification of the facts.

This resolution was appealed by the complainant, a motion that was rejected by the Court of Appeals on October 21, 1981.

Source: Vicariate of Solidarity

Higinio Espergue, director of the Villa Grimaldi Peace Park Corporation, said that their memory is alive because they were men and women committed to dreams of a more just society. Alicia Lira, of the Association of Political Executions, called for the closing of the Punta Peuco prison, while Roberto D’Orival said that Agustín Edwards must answer for instigating and promoting the coup d'état and the violation of human rights.

Dozens of relatives and friends of the 119 forcibly disappeared persons whom the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) tried to make appear as dead in internal struggles held a peaceful demonstration this Thursday in front of the government headquarters, commemorating 39 years since the media operation.

The protesters marched for more than an hour around the La Moneda Palace and demanded justice as they commemorated 39 years since the media operation.

Operation Colombo was a media stunt by the dictatorship that sought to discredit reports about forcibly disappeared persons who had been kidnapped by the DINA.

On July 24, 1975, Chileans read headlines at newsstands such as "The MIR murders 60 of its men abroad" in La Tercera, "60 MIR members identified, executed by their own comrades" in El Mercurio, "Bloody MIR struggle abroad" in Las Últimas Noticias, and "Exterminated like rats" in La Segunda.

Roberto D’Orival, brother of Jorge D’Orival, a forcibly disappeared person and coordinator of the 119 Collective, Relatives and Companions, pointed out that the activity sought to "demand a clearer and more decisive attitude against impunity from the government, President Michelle Bachelet, and all of society."

"One of the relevant milestones in this sense is that Agustín Edwards, the owner of El Mercurio, must pay and answer to justice for his responsibility in instigating and promoting the coup d'état and the violation of human rights," he said.

"It is not democratic that a promoter of human rights violations, a promoter of the civil-military coup, continues to set the political agenda of this country," he expressed.

Likewise, he stated that "justice has a very great responsibility, since at first, the judges of the Supreme Court denied the existence of our relatives in the DINA facilities; through a simple procedure, they would call Manuel Contreras, and he would say 'they are not in our hands,' and with that, they would not accept the writs of amparo."

The director and survivor of the Villa Grimaldi Peace Park Corporation, Higinio Espergue, said, "their memory is alive in each of us because they were men and women committed to dreams of building a more just and beautiful society for everyone."

"The meaning of what we do today is that new generations can gather these teachings from people who had an ethical commitment, of social service and struggle alongside their people," he pointed out.

Alicia Lira: Close Punta Peuco

For her part, Alicia Lira, President of the Association of Political Executions, indicated that we want "to show the citizens and the government, almost 41 years after the civil-military coup and 25 years of democratic governments, that these people—women and men—are still waiting for their crimes to be investigated and for justice to be served.

This is the symbol of the impunity that exists in this country; that is why we bring out their faces, of women and men who gave everything for their homeland."

"Here is the historical memory; their relatives and the citizenry are committed in this country so that there is truth and justice. International conventions and treaties must be applied, the amnesty decree law must be annulled, and the Punta Peuco Prison must be closed, which is an affront to the dignity of the relatives and the victims to have human rights violators in hotels."

Meanwhile, Beatriz Bataszew, a survivor and member of the Venda Sexy Torture House Association, called on the authorities to legislate "a legal initiative to classify the crime of sexual violence as a crime against humanity, distinct from torture, imprescriptible and non-amnestiable, without the right to a pardon, and with penalties consistent with the gravity of the crime."

Bataszew also urged the National Women's Service (Sernam) to "become a party before the Chilean courts in all complaints filed by women who were objects of torture and/or political sexual violence during the dictatorship."

Victims of Operation Colombo who passed through Villa Grimaldi

Jorge Isaac Fuentes Alarcón; Luis Gonzalo Muñoz Velasquez; Manuel Jesús Tamayo Martínez; Manuel Jesús Tamayo Martínez; Julio del Tránsito Valladares Caroca; René Roberto Acuña Reyes; Stalin Arturo Aguilera Peñaloza; Rubén David Arroyo Padilla; Antonio Arturo Barría Araneda; Carmen Cecilia Bueno Cifuentes; María Teresa Bustillos Cereceda; Cecilia Gabriela Castro Salvadores; Washington Cid Urrutia; Claudio Enrique Contreras Hernández; Manuel Edgardo del Carmen Cortez Joo; Jorge Humberto D´orival Briceño; Jacqueline Paulette Drouilly Yurich; María Teresa Eltit Contreras; Julio Fidel Flores Pérez; Carlos Alfredo Gajardo Wolff; Néstor Alfonso Gallardo Agüero; Alfredo Gabriel García Vega; Rodolfo Valentín González Pérez; Jorge Antonio Herrera Cofre; Jorge Antonio Herrera Cofre; Jorge Antonio Herrera Cofre; Sergio Hernán Lagos Hidalgo; Rodolfo Arturo Marchant Villaseca; Agustín Alamiro Martínez Meza; Eduardo Francisco Miranda Lobos; Eduardo Francisco Miranda Lobos; Edgardo Agustín Morales Chaparro; Vicente Segundo Palomino Benítez; Luis Jaime Palominos Rojas; Mario Fernando Peña Solari; Juan Carlos Perelman Ide; Anselmo Osvaldo Radrigán Plaza; Anselmo Osvaldo Radrigán Plaza; Hugo Daniel Ríos Videla; Jaime Eugenio Robotham Bravo; Ariel Martín Salinas Argomedo; Marcelo Eduardo Salinas Eytel; Miguel Angel Sandoval Rodríguez; Fernando Guillermo Silva Camus; Gerardo Ernesto Silva Saldívar; Rodrigo Eduardo Ugás Morales; Jilberto Patricio Urbina Chamorro and Jaime Enrique Vásquez Saenz.

By Carlos Antonio Vergara

Source: cronicadigital.cl 24/7/2014 Date: 24-07-2014

Confirmation of the date of death

According to the death certificate, which does not state a cause of death but does list a date that does not coincide with the information gathered in the official documents, it is registered as September 6, 1976, not 1974 as it appears elsewhere.

FOLIO: 500519841919

Verification Code: 974f79718b4f

Source: registrocivil.cl