The Director of the Cunco Hospital was detained on September 14, 1973, along with his wife, Natacha María Carrión Osorio, a physician who was in the third month of pregnancy with their second child. The arrest was carried out by Carabineros officers who arrived at the hospital during working hours; therefore, the procedure was witnessed by numerous people, almost all of whom were employees of the healthcare service.

Both were taken to the Cunco Carabineros Station and, on that same day, were handed over to FACH (Chilean Air Force) soldiers, who transported the detainees by helicopter to the Group 3 Helicopter Base (Maquehua) located in the city of Temuco.

At this latter facility, the couple was confronted with one another. Eduardo González had rubber objects placed over his nose and was beaten brutally until he lost consciousness. That same day, Natacha Carrión was transferred to the Women's Prison in the city, where she remained until August 1975.

On that date, the 3-year prison sentence she had received from a War Council was commuted to banishment, forcing her into exile in Belgium accompanied by her two young children, the youngest of whom was born while she was incarcerated at the Buen Pastor Prison.

She never again received news of her husband, nor any explanation from military authorities regarding his fate. His mother, Mrs. Martha Galeno Díaz, stated in a sworn declaration the circumstances of her son's arrest, adding that two months after the detention, she went personally to Cunco to retrieve some belongings from the couple's home.

There, she had the opportunity to speak with a man who was the hospital ambulance driver, who told her that while he was being held at the Air Base, he saw her son in very poor physical condition, though he knew nothing more about him, as this man was removed from the Base and taken elsewhere.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEEDINGS

On April 2, 1979, the Temuco Court of Appeals resolved to appoint a Visiting Minister to conduct a summary investigation into the forcibly disappeared persons from the Department of Temuco, among whom is the case of Eduardo González Galeno.

This responsibility fell to Minister Alfredo Meynet González, who issued an order to the Investigative Police to investigate. The institution informed the court that it was impossible to obtain information regarding the victim's situation, and that their records indicated that by a resolution dated October 1, 1973, his contract with the SNS (National Health Service) had been terminated due to political activities, and that he was listed with "UP-MIR" affiliation.

For its part, his family filed a complaint for alleged misfortune with the Minister, in which the circumstances of his detention and subsequent transfer to the FACH facility were set forth.

In June 1979, Sergio Fernández Fernández, Minister of the Interior, informed the Court that no order or resolution had been issued by that Secretariat of State against the affected party, nor was there any record that he had been detained by security service personnel.

In that same month and year, the FACH Group 3 of Helicopters informed the investigating minister that there were no records regarding Eduardo González Galeno in that military unit. And in July of that year, the 3rd Carabineros Station of Padre Las Casas, under whose jurisdiction the Cunco Precinct falls, reported that it had no record of the victim's detention and that the guard and population logs corresponding to 1973 had been incinerated in accordance with regulations; finally, it was insisted that there was no record in that station related to the detention of the affected party.

On October 25, 1979, the Visiting Minister declared himself incompetent and referred the records to the Military Justice system, on the grounds that the persons whose disappearance was being investigated were detained by uniformed personnel in the line of duty, presuming that some degree of responsibility for the events lay with them.

The IV Military Court accepted jurisdiction in December 1979 to hear the case and ordered the Cautín (Temuco) Legal Prosecutor's Office to conduct summary investigation 1192 bis-79. At the same time, it resolved to separate the files corresponding to 4 forcibly disappeared persons, including Eduardo González, because FACH personnel were implicated in their cases.

The Aviation Court, in turn, ordered the Puerto Montt Aviation Prosecutor's Office to conduct case 7-80, which was temporarily dismissed on July 23, 1981, a resolution that was approved by the Martial Court in October of that same year.

Source: Vicariate of Solidarity

Three children who lived with their mothers in the El Buen Pastor Prison in Temuco, Luis Eduardo in the center. I share with my former fellow prisoners from the Buen Pastor prison in Temuco, Chile, the opinion that, beyond the physical and psychological duress applied to us both individually and collectively after the 1973 military coup, the birth of Luis Eduardo, son of Dr.

Natacha Carrión and her husband—also a physician and a forcibly disappeared person, Eduardo González—was the event that most shocked us as women, as people, and as political prisoners during our period of captivity.

When I arrived at the prison as a political prisoner at the end of September 1973, Natacha Carrión was already there. She had been detained by Carabineros personnel immediately after the military coup at her home in the rural town of Cunco, near Temuco, along with her husband, then director of the only local hospital where both practiced their medical profession.

Natacha was five months pregnant and had another child, César, three years old, who had been taken to Santiago by his maternal grandparents when his parents were detained. A provision of Chilean prison legislation prevents mothers from living in prison with their children if they are older than two years, so César only lived sporadically and for very brief periods with Natacha.

A few days after her entry into the prison, Natacha began to request an interview with her husband from the Carabineros prosecutor's office. After his arrest, he had been transferred to the Air Force (FACH) Base in Temuco, but the uniformed police always denied her, without further explanation, which led her to suspect that Eduardo González had been forcibly disappeared, as was happening to many of our friends and acquaintances at that time.

I do not remember if the Prosecutor's Office or the Air Force Base in Temuco ever acknowledged that all information regarding the whereabouts of the Cunco hospital director was lost at that location, which in fact occurred with the complicit silence of the military and the Carabineros.

Natacha suffered this situation with great dignity, without crying in front of the other prisoners. She channeled her energy into preparing for the birth of the child she was expecting and into organizing the companions who were arriving in increasing numbers.

Most of us knew each other because we shared the same political ideals, studied at the University, or worked in spheres of the democratic government of Allende. Furthermore, more than once we had coincided in one of the many public demonstrations that occurred—even with some spontaneity—in a region as effervescent and polarized as the province of Cautín.

Added to the problems common to the rest of Chile was the mobilization of the Mapuche peasant movement for the recovery of their ancestral lands, a claim supported by political organizations of the revolutionary left and their fronts in the student movement, workers, and poor or landless peasants.

One day, Judith arrived at the prison as a detainee, a young communist midwife from a town near Temuco, an event that some of us saw as the arrival of a guardian angel for Natacha, who had repeatedly expressed her determination not to go to the Temuco Regional Hospital at the time of her delivery.

She feared that her medical colleagues—mostly known to be right-wing and pro-coup—could attempt to take her life or that of her unborn child as revenge for her political militancy and that of her husband.

Those of us who knew of her determination feared that the birth in prison would be complicated, with serious consequences for her or the child, since there was no medical equipment, not even pain-relieving medication.

However, Natacha's stance remained firm: the child must be born in prison to safeguard its security and her own. Judith assumed her task with great responsibility, and we often saw her auscultate the fetus and measure the growth of Natacha's belly in a quite artisanal manner.

She would attend the birth, discussing decisions at every moment with Natacha, counting on the help of two companions who would serve as assistants. Obviously, the fact that Natacha knew the details of a birth exactly, having participated in many of them as a physician, would facilitate the procedure, but it did not diminish the serious risks she could face if the child came with problems, as there were no technical means available to face that situation.

I do not remember what day in January 1974 Natacha and Judith told Magaly and me—the two inexperienced assistants—that the moment for which they had prepared us so precariously had arrived. That day, the contractions had begun to become more frequent, so both had decided to try to begin the labor once we were locked up at night in the room that served as our collective dormitory cell.

Only a few detainees were notified, as we feared that someone might make a comment in the courtyard and that the information would be given to the nuns or the guards by the common prisoners with whom we shared that space, which would mean the immediate transfer of Natacha to the hospital, with the consequent danger to her physical integrity and that of her child.

Fortunately, in the days prior, family members or friends had managed to pass through the entrance control a needle of the type used in operations and alcohol for disinfection. Those, and a pair of scissors sterilized with boiling water, constituted the reduced set of instruments that Judith used in the birth.

The assistants waited that night for the companions to fall asleep to hang a pair of sheets to isolate the area where Natacha was going to give birth, and in a silence interrupted only by some request for help from Judith, we worked to have hot water, gauze, diapers, etc., prepared.

The delivery table was improvised by removing half the mattress and placing towels and a wide container that was usually used for washing on the empty part of the bed frame. Natacha was a remarkable woman in labor: she pushed with strength and did not utter a single cry of pain, as no one outside of us could find out what was happening.

In an adjoining room-cell, about twenty common prisoners were sleeping, who did not even wake up with the crying of Luis Eduardo at birth, which to us seemed like celestial music. He was a normal child, and the birth had been a success, thanks to the courage and integrity of Natacha and the professionalism of Judith.

It was difficult to fall asleep that night; we were too excited. We felt that this child was a gift for Natacha, but he also came to brighten the lives of all of us and to renew hopes for a better tomorrow for all the Chilean people, far from the hatred and violence that were being unleashed against them at that time.

I think the only one who really slept was Natacha, who was exhausted from the effort.

Luis Eduardo, named in honor of his disappeared father, I believe was the first and only child of political prisoners born in prison in Chile. All of us had the privilege of accompanying this brave mother in her feat of defying her jailers to defend the life of a child who arrived in the world marked by the political and social commitment of his parents, which had already claimed the life of his father and forced his mother to live with him incarcerated in a prison, far from her other child and her family, and prevented from being able to exercise her freedom, her rights, and her profession in the service of others.

Other children, three in addition to Luis Eduardo, lived for different periods with their mothers and us in the Buen Pastor Prison in Temuco, but they were not born inside the prison.

Testimony of Fireley Lely Elgueta Jaramillo

Journalist, political prisoner from September 27, 1973, to October 22, 1975, in the Buen Pastor Prison of Temuco, Chile.

Source: agenciadenoticias.org, August 21, 2013

Date: 08-21-2013

The beneficiaries were being held in Punta Peuco and Colina 1. The decision has been widely criticized by human rights organizations; in fact, the Association of Relatives of Forcibly Disappeared Persons called for a demonstration at the Courts for this Wednesday, August 1.

Eduardo Alberto González Galeno was the director of the Cunco Hospital in the Araucanía Region. He was 31 years old when, on September 14, 1973, he was detained for being a member of the MIR. According to testimonies, during his captivity, he was beaten brutally until he lost consciousness. Today, the physician by profession swells the vast list of the forcibly disappeared during the dictatorship.

Retired Sub-officer Gamaliel Soto was sentenced to ten years for this case, as he was one of the perpetrators of the kidnapping; however, the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court decided this Tuesday to grant him parole.

Along with him, four other former uniformed members of the Carabineros and Armed Forces imprisoned in Punta Peuco and Colina 1 were released, as the country's highest court accepted their appeals for protection (recursos de amparo).

They are the aforementioned Gamaliel Soto Segura; retired Carabineros Colonel Manuel Pérez Santillán; and former Army officers José Quintanilla Fernández, Hernán Portillo Aranda, and Felipe González Astorga, all convicted of crimes against humanity.

The Second Chamber—composed of ministers Hugo Dolmestch, Carlos Künsemüller, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, and lawyers Ricardo Abuauad and Antonio Barra—accepted the appeals and ordered parole, arguing good behavior and the fact that they had served half of their sentences.

However, for human rights lawyer Nelson Caucoto, these justifications are not enough to grant parole, as the beneficiaries have not shown repentance; therefore, they have not been rehabilitated, a fundamental requirement for granting benefits of this type.

“One must keep in mind that parole is justified only for people who have been rehabilitated. It makes no sense to grant freedom to people to live with others if they have not recognized the gravity of their crimes, nor have they shown repentance, beyond the fulfillment of certain formalities that are indicated in a decree-law that is much older than the occurrence of these crimes, because when the decree-law under which parole is regulated was issued, no one imagined that so many crimes against humanity would be committed in our country.”

Furthermore, the jurist stated that granting parole to criminals against humanity, as is the case, violates international agreements that Chile has signed on the matter.

For his part, DC deputy and member of the Chamber's Human Rights Commission, Mario Venegas, maintained that it is necessary to raise the requirements for granting this type of benefit, although he avoided evaluating the Supreme Court's decision.

“It is an issue that, when dealing with crimes against humanity, the standards for granting parole should be much more demanding and, certainly, consider that there has been effective repentance, but we as a body cannot question a decision that is within the powers that are proper to another branch of the State, such as the judiciary.”

The person who did have words to refer to the actions of the judiciary was the president of the Association of Relatives of Forcibly Disappeared Persons, Lorena Pizarro. For her, the Supreme Court's decision deciphers an “immoral but resolute” political message to the country.

“Today we are facing a political decision by the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court, which is provocatively releasing five agents, placing itself in the position of the genocidaires, of the violators of human rights.

Whatever argument they might have put forward, what they are seeking is, more than anything, to send a signal. There are five agents released, and the judges know the stir this was going to cause; therefore, what they are doing is taking a political position in the face of genocidal human rights violators.”

The leader also stated that they will not stand idly by and will exhaust all possible resources to denounce and reverse the decision of the Chilean justice system; in fact, she confirmed that they are already talking with some lawyers.

For the moment, the Association of Relatives of Forcibly Disappeared Persons has called for a demonstration in front of the courts for this Wednesday, August 1, at 11:00 in the morning, due to their “immoral” decision.

On the other side of the coin, Senator Iván Moreira, who was stripped of his parliamentary immunity to be investigated for cases of illegal political financing, criticized those who oppose the freedom of the convicted, and pointed out that the left “has a pact with the devil,” as he said they are full of hatred and do nothing but seek revenge.

Meanwhile, UDI deputy Osvaldo Urrutia indicated that those who benefited from parole did not commit crimes against humanity, but were convicted for that reason.

Source: radio.udechile.cl 07/31/2018

Date: 07-31-2018

U. de Chile inaugurated a memorial that remembers the disappeared and executed of the North Campus (excerpt)

A Contribution to the Historical Memory of our University

A sculpture and a plaque located at the Central SEMDA are a testament to the students, academics, and staff of the health programs who were victims of political execution or were forcibly disappeared during the civil-military dictatorship led by Augusto Pinochet starting in 1973.

With the presence of family members, friends, representatives of professional associations, authorities, and members of the university community, this memorial was inaugurated on Thursday, December 21, to remember all those individuals linked to the North Campus of the University who are currently forcibly disappeared or were murdered by the dictatorship.

In total, there are twenty-eight people—including students, academics, and staff from the health units—who lost their lives due to the actions of State agencies between 1973 and 1990, beginning with Salvador Allende himself, who died in the Palacio de La Moneda during the coup d'état on September 11.

The memorial site consists of a sculpture created by artist Miguel Lecaros, as well as a plaque with the names of the victims. Its construction was made possible through the joint efforts of the School of Public Health of the Faculty of Medicine, the Vice-Rectorate for Student and Community Affairs, the Human Rights and Public Health Days collective, the Center for Mental Health and Human Rights, and the Projects, Memorials, and Institutional Management Area of the Ministry of Justice's Human Rights Program.

The ceremony, which was hosted by actress Malucha Pinto and featured a performance by singer-songwriter Elizabeth Morris, began with the words sent by President Michelle Bachelet for the occasion. In her message, she highlighted the tribute to the victims of our institution:

“I am honored to know that the Universidad de Chile, your House of Studies, your refuge, your home, honors your memory today with this work, and through it, also honors the persistence and courage of your family members, your friends, and your colleagues.

It is thanks to all of them that our executed and disappeared have never died, because they live on as an example in the memory of each one of us who recognize in their life stories, testimonies of conviction and tenacity.”

Following this, on behalf of the Undersecretary of Human Rights, Lorena Fríes, María Soledad Silva, coordinator of the Projects and Memorials Area, read a greeting that highlighted the memorial within the framework of promoting a society where dialogue and peace prevail: “Projects like these contribute to integrating civil society and new generations, raising awareness about the importance that human rights have for each individual and for society as a whole.”

Also present at the event were the Vice-Rector for Student and Community Affairs, Juan Cortés; the Vice-Rector for Research and Development, Flavio Salazar; the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Manuel Kukuljan; the Director of the School of Public Health, Patricia Frenz; the academic coordinator of the Human Rights Chair of the Vice-Rectorate for Extension and Communications, Claudio Nash; and former directors of the School of Public Health, Giorgio Solimano and Óscar Arteaga, among other authorities and former authorities of our institution.

Rescuing the values of the public sphere, truth, and justice

Rector Ennio Vivaldi spoke at the event, noting the need for a cultural change that would prevent society from falling back into the abuses committed during the military regime, and he also highlighted everything that was lost along with the people who were victims:

“Each of these people represents the best that Chile had to offer, the transcendent values that our country possessed, and which we were able to know,” he indicated.

Those values, he noted, can be brought into the present to analyze how we face, for example, the current educational situation:

“Today we can see how distorted a concept as essential as ‘the public’ has become in its sense of common good, of something that belongs to us all and makes us feel solidarity. It is impressive how those concepts are lost at the same time that the people who were persecuted were lost.” (excerpt) among them Eduardo Alberto González Galeno 10.9.1973

Source: uchile.cl 21/12/2017

Date: 21-12-2017

Supreme Court Plenary issues ruling on civil aspect of human rights case for the first time (excerpt)

By a vote of nine to seven, the ministers of the highest court accepted the State's argument that the civil action is time-barred, since the imprescriptibility determined by international legislation for the criminal aspect does not extend to the civil one.

They specified, however, from when the period should begin to be counted. The pronouncement had been requested by the State Defense Council due to the discrepancies existing in various judicial resolutions regarding compensation for moral damages in human rights violation cases.

The plenary of the Supreme Court settled today one of the most controversial issues in human rights violation cases: whether or not the civil action is time-barred in these cases. The answer from the ministers of the highest court was that it is.

And, sharing the State's argument, they established that the imprescriptibility determined by international legislation for the criminal aspect does not extend to the civil one.

This is the first time that the members of the Supreme Court, acting as a collegiate body, have issued a sentence regarding an indemnity process for moral damages in human rights matters. It is a special pronouncement contemplated by Article 780 of the Code of Civil Procedure when there are diverse judicial decisions on a specific matter.

The sentence, by a vote of nine to seven, accepts the cassation appeal filed by the State—represented by the State Defense Council (CDE)—in which it was requested to annul a ruling of the Santiago Court of Appeals, which had granted compensation of $50 million to the sister of the physician Eduardo González Galeno, who disappeared starting on September 14, 1973, in the town of Cunco, La Araucanía Region.

In that filing, the state defense agency had also requested the pronouncement of the plenary of the highest court due to the existence of discrepancies in sentences regarding reparation compensation for moral damages in processes linked to human rights violations between September 11, 1973, and March 11, 1990.

The decision was adopted in a split ruling, and the majority vote came from ministers Nibaldo Segura, Patricio Valdés, Héctor Carreño, Pedro Pierry, Gabriela Pérez, Guillermo Silva, Rosa María Maggi, Rosa Egnem, and María Eugenia Sandoval.

In the dissent, meanwhile, were ministers Milton Juica, Sergio Muñoz, Hugo Dolmestch, Juan Araya, Carlos Künsemüller, Haroldo Brito, and Juan Escobar, who were in favor of rejecting the cassation appeal and extending imprescriptibility to the civil aspect of the sentence (see box).

Scope of the ruling

For the majority of the plenary—as the CDE proposed—the civil action is time-barred, since the imprescriptibility determined by international legislation for the criminal aspect does not extend to the civil one.

But the judges established in the ruling that the prescription period must begin to be counted from the moment the victims' relatives had certainty of the illicit act perpetrated and not from the date of the disappearance, establishing that this fact occurred with the publication of the Report of the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, or Rettig Report.

The sentence further determines that “from the content of international treaties, it is also necessary to note that none of the normative bodies cited in the challenged ruling establishes the generic imprescriptibility of actions aimed at obtaining the recognition of the extra-contractual liability of the State or its institutional bodies.”

And, in that sense, it adds that “the American Convention on Human Rights itself does not contain any precept that establishes the imprescriptibility alleged by the appellant” and that “none of the provisions cited in the appeal excludes the application of national law regarding the matter in controversy.

Indeed, Article 1 only establishes a duty of the member States to respect the rights and freedoms recognized in that Convention and to guarantee their free and full exercise, without any discrimination; and Article 63.1 imposes on the Inter-American Court of Human Rights a certain procedure if it is decided that there was a violation of a protected right or freedom.”

Regarding the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War, the ruling states that “it must necessarily be understood as referring to infractions of a criminal nature, which is clear from reading Articles 129 and 130 of said Convention, which allude to acts against persons or property, citing to that effect intentional homicide, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, the act of forcing a prisoner to serve in the armed forces of the hostile power, or depriving him of his right to a fair and regular trial in accordance with the prescriptions of the Convention.”

Finally, the resolution points out that the 1968 Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity also refers “only to criminal action.”

With these arguments in view, the judges conclude that “prescription constitutes a general principle of law intended to guarantee legal certainty, and as such it acquires presence across the entire spectrum of the different legal systems, unless otherwise determined by law or in consideration of the nature of the matter, that is, the imprescriptibility of actions.

To this, it should be added that there is no rule that establishes the generic imprescriptibility of actions aimed at obtaining the recognition of the extra-contractual liability of the State or its institutional bodies; and, in the absence of them, it corresponds to abide by the rules of common law referring specifically to the matter (...) That our Civil Code in Article 2497 prescribes that: ‘The rules relating to prescription apply equally in favor of and against the State, churches, municipalities, national establishments and corporations, and private individuals who have free administration of their own property’.” (excerpt)

The criminal aspect of the case

Regarding the criminal aspect, on June 25, the ministers of the criminal chamber of the Supreme Court, Milton Juica, Hugo Dolmestch, Carlos Künsemüller, Haroldo Brito, and Guillermo Silva, in a unanimous ruling, rejected the cassation appeal filed and sentenced former Carabineros Gamaliel Soto Segura and Clenardo Figueroa Cifuentes to 10 years and one day in prison for the kidnapping of Eduardo González Galeno.

Source: elmercurio.com 22/01/2013

Date: 22-01-2013

Supreme Court ruling annulling reparation to the family of Dr. Eduardo González is an act of cruelty

Last Monday, January 21, 2013, in a split ruling, the plenary of the Supreme Court accepted an appeal filed by the State Defense Council to annul the sentence of the Court of Appeals that ordered the State to pay compensation to the family of Dr. Eduardo González Galeno for the crime against the physician, which occurred on September 14, 1973.

The Plenary resolved that the civil action is time-barred, defining that the civil liability of the State prescribes four years after the crime was perpetrated. However, in human rights matters, the period begins from the moment the Report of the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation (Rettig) was delivered in 1991, the moment when the relatives would have become aware of the facts, and that it is not appropriate to apply the principle of reparation through compensation for the moral damage caused by the State of Chile.

Dr. González Galeno was the Director of the Hospital of Cunco, in the Araucanía region. He was detained along with his wife, Natacha Carrión Osorio, a physician who was in the third month of pregnancy with their second child.

The arrest was carried out by Carabineros officers, who arrived at the hospital during working hours, which was witnessed by numerous people. Both were taken to the Cunco Carabineros Station and, that same day, were handed over to FACH soldiers who transported the detainees by helicopter to the Group 3 Base located in the city of Temuco.

At this last facility, Eduardo González was beaten brutally until he lost consciousness. That same day, Natacha Carrión was transferred to the Women's Prison in the city, where she remained until August 1975, the date on which she had to leave for forced exile in Belgium in the company of her two young children, the youngest of whom was born while she was held in the Buen Pastor Prison.

She never again received news of her husband nor any explanation from the military authorities regarding his fate.

In the case of Dr. González Galeno, we are faced with a Judiciary that, instead of acting in the name of justice, delivers a ruling that is contrary to all perception of basic morality, of placing good over evil; freeing from its responsibility the primary party responsible for the crime committed: the State.

This ruling has been a true blow to the foundations of what we consider justice: the right to know, the condemnation of the guilty, the reparation to the victims, and the attempt to ensure that these types of criminal actions never happen again.

How should a mother, a brother, or a son who has searched for 40 years for their loved one, who has waited for decades for the answer of the courts of justice to the question "where are they?", interpret this ruling? Who has trusted—despite everything—that the voice of the courts of justice would be capable of saying loud and clear that this must never happen again.

What must hundreds of Chilean families think in the face of the violent contradiction that means that, on one hand, the State offers legal assistance to victims by filing complaints to investigate the crimes, and on the other, the same State, through the Defense Council, seeks legal technicalities to deny full justice.

This ruling represents an enormous blow to the families, an act of infinite cruelty, where time and again the State violates their rights, proposing to them through a poor argument that it is no longer time to exercise their rights.

If the State continues to consider the act of compensating families for serious human rights crimes as a merely economic expense, we will never find a construction of justice that is noble and protective of the rights of those whom the State itself must defend and protect above all jurisprudential technicalities.

Collaboration from a member of Villa Grimaldi. Journalist. Relative of a political execution victim. In tribute to Dr. Eduardo González Galeno, the Hospital of Cunco was named after him. His mother and brother attended the placement of the official plaque.

Source: villagrimaldi.cl 21/01/2013

Date: 21-01-2013

Justice issues conviction for qualified kidnapping of physician in 1973

Minister Alejandro Solís sentenced two former Carabineros to 10 and three years in prison. The magistrate also refused to grant compensation for damages.

The investigating judge of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Alejandro Solís, issued a first-instance sentence this Thursday in the investigation into the qualified kidnapping of the physician and Director of the Hospital of Cunco, Eduardo González Galeno, who was abducted in September 1973 in the La Araucanía Region.

For these events, the magistrate determined to sanction retired Carabinero Clenardo Figueroa Cifuentes with 10 years and one day in prison for his responsibility as the perpetrator of the qualified kidnapping.

Likewise, he sentenced the former police officer Gamaliel Soto Segura to three years and one day in prison for his responsibility as an accomplice to the qualified kidnapping.

Minister Solís also dismissed the claim for compensation for damages filed against the State of Chile, accepting the plea of lack of jurisdiction of the court.

Source: latercera.cl, December 10, 2009

Date: 10-12-2009

FACH officer (R) prosecuted for disappearance of physician in 1973

Visiting Minister Alejandro Solís prosecuted yesterday the former commander of the Maquehue Helicopter Group No. 3 in Temuco, Andrés Pacheco Cárdenas, and Carabineros non-commissioned officer Clenardo Figueroa Cifuentes, as perpetrators of the kidnapping of the director of the Hospital of Cunco, Eduardo González Galeno, which occurred on September 14, 1973.

Meanwhile, Carabineros corporal Gamaliel Soto Segura was charged as an accomplice to the illicit act, as he is identified as the one who detained the victim.

The disappeared physician was an active member of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), a situation for which he was detained along with his wife, Natacha Carrión, by Carabineros officers to be taken to the Cunco Station. In that place, they were interrogated separately to obtain information about weaponry.

“In these police and military facilities, officials operated who ordered or executed other captures of people who were militants of political parties, whom they imprisoned illegally, breaking them under physical torture of various kinds with the object of making them provide information about allegedly hidden weapons,” the resolution indicates.

The ruling establishes that González and Carrión were put on a helicopter, under the command of commander Benjamín Fernández, to be taken to the Maquehue Air Base in Temuco, commanded by officer Pacheco. On that occasion, his wife, three months pregnant, noticed that her spouse was very mistreated and had a bloodied face.

The physician told his wife, in a moment when they were left alone, that the interrogating officer mentioned to him that the weapons had been found in the walls of the house. This surprised Natacha, because she had been told they were found among the furniture. This was the last conversation the couple had before they were separated and González disappeared.

Source: La Nación, September 28, 2006

Date: 28-09-2006

Latent memories. Crimes with authors who are amnestied

Dr. Eduardo Alberto González Galeno was born on July 5, 1942, in the city of Antofagasta, the eldest son of Carlos González Saavedra and Marta Galeno Díaz, both now deceased; he is followed by his siblings Alejandro, nearly two years younger, and Nelly, born 10 years later.

Eduardo and his brother Alejandro began their studies at the Liceo de Hombres in Antofagasta, but when the family moved to Santiago, both brothers entered the Darío Salas Experimental Lyceum, located on Avenida España, a few meters from the house where Salvador Allende was born in 1908, as has been recently established.

The González-Galeno family would reside for a time in the Juan Antonio Ríos No. 2 neighborhood, near the J.J. Aguirre Hospital and the School of Medicine of the Universidad de Chile, where both brothers would study and complete their medical training. There, Eduardo met the woman who would become his wife, Dr. Natacha Carrión Osorio.

The couple of physicians moved in 1970, the year of Allende and the Popular Unity's victory, to the rural town of Cunco, where both would embark on the difficult task of obtaining the necessary resources to build a new hospital there, replacing the old and dilapidated house—lacking the most elementary sanitary conditions—that served as a hospital, so as to be able to provide adequate medical care to the inhabitants of the place, with the support of local peasant organizations.

When the coup and the dictatorship brutally erupted, those actions of the couple for the benefit of the community and the rural poor would be classified by the agents of the Dictatorship as forms of subversive training, which would mean for Eduardo being detained, tortured, and forcibly disappeared—that is, being secretly murdered.

His wife, pregnant, was also detained and gave birth to a son in a cell.

Eduardo was detained and, from that moment, all trace of his whereabouts was lost, as he was forcibly disappeared. His wife, Dr. Natacha Carrión, was also detained and sent to the Buen Pastor Prison. In those harsh conditions and without knowing what would happen to her, her maternal instinct led her to decide not to inform anyone of her pregnancy until the last minute, when she resorted to the help of a single fellow prisoner, of her absolute trust, in the face of the rumors circulating about the uncertain future that awaited her and her unborn child if she were treated in the public service.

And so, in those very harsh conditions, Luis came into this world, her second son. Subsequently, Dr. Carrión would be relegated, and in 1975 a War Council issued a sentence of banishment against her, which, thanks to the help of international organizations, allowed her to reach Belgium, the country where she and her children César and Luis reside to this day.

One of Eduardo's murderers was recently released by decision of the Supreme Court.

Among the prisoners of Punta Peuco, recently released by the prevaricating judges of the Supreme Court, is Gamaliel Soto Segura (72 years of age), who had been sentenced by the Supreme Court in June 2012 to 10 years and one day in prison for the qualified kidnapping of Dr. Eduardo González Galeno on September 14, 1973, in Cunco, La Araucanía Region.

Source: piensachile.com 2018