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 agents of the FACH (Air Force), one former agent of the Navy, and seven former agents of the Investigations Police.

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

This is the largest resolution issued among the nearly 400 cases of human rights violations currently being investigated in the country. It even surpassed the 67 former agents indicted 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 indicted for Colombo are eight Army colonels (Ret.), six of whom had not been indicted before in any case. Also declared defendants were 23 Army non-commissioned officers (Ret.), of whom at least 50 percent appear for the first time in these types of cases.

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 he was injected with cyanide.

In addition, the magistrate indicted 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 Investigations 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 were still being detained to be held in different locations, 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; this information 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 detainees who were forcibly disappeared 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 as 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, which reported: "Exterminated like rats: 59 Chilean MIR members fall in military operation in Argentina." They were part of the list of the 119 Colombo forcibly disappeared.

The former fugitive Raúl Iturriaga, who was one of those in charge of the DINA's foreign department, was the one who first shed light on this operation in Buenos Aires. According to the former civilian agent Enrique Arancibia Clavel, convicted in Buenos Aires for the crime of General Carlos Prats 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 indicted

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 (non-commissioned officer); 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 non-commissioned officers, 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 Orellana de la Pinta; Nelson Iturriaga Cortés; Luis Gutiérrez Uribe; José Ojeda Obando;

Air Force Delia Gajardo Cortés; Hernán Avalos Muñoz

Navy Teresa Navarro Osorio;

Indicted individuals 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: La Nacion, May 27, 2008

"Calle Conferencia" Case: Judge Vázquez issued indictments against 79 former DINA agents

Court of Appeals Minister Miguel Vázquez, who is investigating the "Calle Conferencia" case, issued the indictment of 79 former DINA agents for the disappearance of 7 militants of the Communist Party between May 1976 and January 1977, a list that includes Manuel Contreras, Pedro Espinoza, and Miguel Krassnoff.

The victims of the repressors correspond to the first political commission that the PC (Communist Party) organized in hiding during the dictatorship: Mario Zamorano Donoso, Jorge Muñoz Poutays, Uldarico Donaire Cortés, Jaime Donato Avendaño, Elisa Escobar Zepeda, Lenin Díaz Silva, and Eliana Espinoza Fernández; and for the qualified homicide of Víctor Díaz López.

The resolution by Vázquez, which continued the investigations of judges Juan Guzmán and Víctor Montiglio, constitutes one of the final actions prior to the first-instance sentence for the qualified kidnappings. According to Cooperativa, the list of the 79 accused is as follows:

01. Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda. 02. Pedro Espinoza Bravo. 03. Carlos López Tapia. 04. Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko. 05. Ricardo Lawrence Mires. 06. Jorge Madariaga Acevedo. 07. Eugenio Fieldhouse Chávez. 08.

José Fuentealba Saldías. 09. Hugo Clavería Leiva. 10. José Soto Torres. 11. Raúl Soto Pérez. 12. Juan Carlos Escobar Valenzuela. 13. Jerónimo Neira Méndez. 14. Héctor Briones Burgos. 15. Pedro Mora Villanueva. 16.

Roberto Rodríguez Manquel. 17. Leonidas Méndez Moreno. 18. Jorge Andrade Gómez. 19. Nelson Herrera Lagos. 20. Juan Morales Salgado. 21. Jorge Sagardía Monje. 22. Héctor Valdebenito Araya. 23. Federico Chaigneau Sepúlveda. 24.

Bernardo Daza Navarro. 25. Sergio Escalona Acuña. 26. Guillermo Ferrán Martínez. 27. Gladys Calderón Carreño. 28. Elisa Magna Astudillo. 29. Heriberto del Carmen Acevedo. 30. Emilio Troncoso Vivallos. 31.

Claudio Pacheco Fernández. 32. Jorge Díaz Radulovich. 33. Orlando Altamirano Sanhueza. 34. Eduardo Cabezas Mardones. 35. Jorge Escobar Fuentes. 36. René Riveros Valderrama. 37. Jorge Pichunmán Curiqueo. 38.

Orfa Saavedra Vásquez. 39. Celinda Aspe Rojas. 40. Teresa Navarro Navarro. 41. Berta Jiménez Escobar. 42. Adriana Rivas González. 43. Jorge Arriagada Mora. 44. Pedro Bitterlich Jaramillo. 45. Eduardo Oyarce Riquelme. 46.

Guillermo Díaz Ramírez. 47. Ana Vilches Muñoz. 48. Italia Vacarella Gilio. 49. Jorge Manríquez Manterola. 50. Orlando Torrejón Gatica. 51. José Manuel Sarmiento Sotelo. 52. Manuel Obreque Henríquez. 53.

Gustavo Guerrero Aguilera. 54. Eduardo Garea Guzmán. 55. Juvenal Piña Garrido. 56. Rufino Jaime Astorga. 57. Luis Lagos Yáñez. 58. María Angélica Guerrero Soto. 59. Sergio Castro Andrade. 60. Manuel Montre Méndez. 61.

Pedro Gutiérrez Valdés. 62. Claudio Orellana de la Pinta. 63. Joyce Ahumada Despouy. 64. Hiro Álvarez Vega. 65. José Miguel Meza Serrano. 66. José Ojeda Obando. 67. Carlos Bermúdez Méndez. 68. Víctor Manuel Álvarez Droguett. 69.

Eduardo Reyes Lagos. 70. Marilin Silva Vergara. 71. Hernán Sovino Maturana. 72. José Friz Esparza. 73. Carlos Miranda Mesa. 74. Camilo Torres Negrier. 75. Orlando Inostroza Lagos. 76. Carlos López Inostroza. 77. José Seco Alarcón. 78. Lionel Medrano Rivas. 79. Juan Suazo Saldaña.

Source: The Clinic, October 22, 2013