Social media erupted during the broadcast of the report by the Chilevisión program "En la Mira," which showed the faces of the most emblematic physicians who participated in acts of torture during the Pinochet regime.

The program aired a report titled "Torturer Doctors," which investigated cases of individuals who were tortured, with these professionals tasked with monitoring their conditions and determining whether or not the detainees could continue with the torture session.

In other cases, such as that of Dr. Guido Díaz Pacci, the investigation incriminated him in the execution of Jorge Jordan, a doctor from the Communist Party who was tortured and murdered in 1973 in the Coquimbo Region at the age of 29.

In this regard, Díaz Pacci is allegedly the one who delivered the coup de grâce to the physician. Several cases were shown in this Wednesday's report, illustrating the cruelty exercised in military regiments across the country, such as those in Arica, La Serena, and Tejas Verdes, where sexual torture was also practiced and in which the majority of the repression agents participated.

The report also showed the case of Dr. Raúl Navarro Quintana who, like all the alleged torturer physicians, still treats patients and moves about the streets in absolute impunity. In the case of Navarro Quintana, he is accused of having been a member of the death squad and is held responsible for the deaths of Absalon Wegner and the former detective Rigoberto Achú.

Aside from Navarro Quintana, the report by journalist Alejandro Vega named other professionals who are also involved in some way in the "work" entrusted to them by the repressive apparatuses of the dictatorship to "keep alive" those being tortured.

Among those named are Vittorio Orvietto, an ophthalmologist at the Clínica Plus Médica; Manfred Jurgensen, a former member of the CNI; Alejandro Forero, a doctor who allegedly participated in the Caravan of Death and currently practices at the Clínica Indisa; and Eugenio Fantuzzi, in charge of the DINA health department, who was expelled from the Medical Association.

The raw report detailed many cases of torture narrated by victims and witnesses who saw the horrendous actions of some professionals. In the final part of the segment, journalist Alejandro Vega and his cameraman confronted some of those involved, who were surprised by the arrival of the camera and immediately denied their participation with phrases accompanied by evident nervousness that even caused them to stumble over their words.

The Chilevisión program also revealed the friendship that existed between the former commander-in-chief of the army, Juan Emilio Cheyre, and one of the alleged torturers, Dr. Guido Díaz Pacci. In this regard, both victims and witnesses of the macabre events pointed out that the two functioned as a duo that abused and denigrated the detainees.

Finally, it was reported that this Thursday, lawyer Cristian Cruz filed a complaint for torture regarding the case of the torturer doctors broadcast by the program "En la Mira."

Source: La Nación, May 29, 2014

The so-called Joint Command (CC) was an intelligence group that operated approximately between the end of 1975 and the end of 1976, and whose main objective was the repression of the Communist Party and the Communist Youth.

During this period, according to the Rettig Report, it was responsible for the disappearance of nearly 30 people. Other sources cite more than 70. The CC was formed mainly by agents belonging to the Air Force Intelligence Directorate (DIFA) and later had significant participation from personnel of the Carabineros Intelligence Directorate (DICAR).

It also had, to a lesser extent, the participation of agents from the Naval Intelligence Service (SIN) and some personnel from the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE). In addition, members of the Chilean Investigative Police and civilians from Patria y Libertad collaborated in that Command.

BARRACKS OF HORROR

Among the first torture centers, even before being called the Joint Command, appears the Air War Academy (AGA), which operated from late 1973 until late 1974, formally under the charge of the Aviation Prosecutor's Office, which in practice coordinated closely with the Air Force Intelligence Service (SIFA).

General Bachelet and many FACH officers were tortured in its basement. Jose Luis Baeza Cruces, a member of the PC Central Committee who is currently forcibly disappeared, was also there. Fernando Matthei, the Director of the AGA at the time, has been summoned to testify in this case.

In January 1975, when the SIFA vacated the AGA, it moved the detainees to a house in Santiago, located in the Apoquindo sector, about two blocks from the Las Condes Municipality. This property was used as a secret detention center until March 1975 and was under the charge of agents from the recently created DIFA.

After that date, the DIFA offices moved to Juan Antonio Ríos No. 6, while the detainees were distributed between the Colina Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment ("Remo Cero") and a hangar inside the Cerrillos airport.

Another clandestine torture center is the one known as "Nido 20," located at Santa Teresa 037, near the 20th stop of Gran Avenida, in Santiago. As a result of the torture inside, Alonso Gahona Chávez, currently a forcibly disappeared person, died.

Humberto Castro Hurtado was also beaten to death here. Today, the house hosts the National Corporation of Laryngectomees (those operated on for laryngeal cancer). The facility called "Nido 18" was used exclusively to practice torture.

It is a location situated at Peru 9053, in the La Florida commune in Santiago, near the 18th stop of Vicuña Mackenna. In this center, according to witnesses, Arsenio Leal Pereira took his own life under the pressure of the torture to which he was being subjected.

In "Remo Cero," along with FACH agents, members of the Naval Intelligence Service and some Army agents operated. The staff of the Carabineros Intelligence Directorate was more numerous. Civilians from Patria y Libertad also acted here.

Several detainees were allegedly taken from there by helicopter to be thrown into the sea, among them Humberto Fuentes Rodríguez and Luis Moraga Cruz. There are also witnesses who state that Ricardo Weibel Navarrete, Ignacio González Espinoza, Miguel Rodríguez Gallardo, and Nicomedes Toro Bravo were taken from here to be murdered and buried on the military grounds of Peldehue.

Some detainees died in this facility as a result of torture, among them José Sagredo Pacheco. This location was frequently visited by a doctor who treated several detainees and supervised the torture. A facility located at Dieciocho No. 229, which had been occupied by the newspaper El Clarín and passed into the hands of the Carabineros, was known as "La Firma." The Carabineros Intelligence School was installed there, some of whose professors were members not only of DICAR but also of the Joint Command.

Adjacent to this building is another property connected to it, in the rear of which the Joint Command operated. In this second property, various PC prisoners were kept in secret detention, among them Carlos Contreras Maluje, Juan René Orellana, Luis Emilio Maturana, and Juan Antonio Gianelli, who were taken from that place to be murdered and buried clandestinely in the Cuesta Barriga, and José Weibel Navarrete, who was subsequently murdered in the Cajón del Maipo sector.

In 1985, it would be used to kidnap a dozen teachers and the three communist professionals who would later appear with their throats slit on a rural road in Quilicura. Other properties used by the SIFA or the Joint Command, where detainees were held temporarily, included a property in the Barrio Bellavista, where single members of the CC lived, as well as the Las Tranqueras Police Station, used while a United Nations human rights delegation was visiting, so that such detainees could not be located in the better-known detention centers.

AGA: THE PREDECESSOR

Witnesses who survived the torture at the Air War Academy remember their captors and torturers, among others, as General Orlando Gutiérrez Bravo; commanders Sergio Lizasoain, Edgar Ceballos Jones, Jaime Lavín, Juan Bautista González, and Humberto Velásquez Estay; captains León Duffey, Juan Carlos Sandoval, Jaime Lemus, Florencio Dublé, Contreras, and Fullogher (head of the permanent guard); lieutenants Juan Carlos Sandoval, Luis Campos, Matig, and Pérez; Sergeant Hugo "chuncho" Lizana, Corporal Eduardo Cartagena, and 2nd Corporal Gabriel Cortés (who changed his name). "The torturers at the Air War Academy were almost all from the Aerophotogrammetry specialty, both officers and non-commissioned officers. They belonged to the courses that graduated in 1967 and others later. They were directly under the command of Commander Otaiza, also called 'pata de oso' (bear paw). Also interrogating were those from the military instructor course of the School of Specialties who graduated in 1968, the same year as my graduation. Subsequently, in mid-1974, I was also taken to the Air War Academy from the Public Jail. There I was able to verify that Colonel Matthei directed and selected those who had to be tortured and interrogated. He, along with a lieutenant nicknamed 'el loquillo' (the crazy one), beat two prisoners who were standing and blindfolded. 'El loquillo' also hit me with the butt of a rifle. From the AGA, I was taken to the Polytechnic Academy for 24 hours; on this journey, there was fear of the application of the so-called 'law of flight' (execution from behind and abandonment in some vacant lot). From the APA, I was transferred back to the AGA; finally, I was transferred to the Public Jail." (Sergio Lontano Trureo. 51 years old. ID 57.88167-4. Domiciled at 290 South Lambeth Road, London SWB.1 JUG. England. Legal Executive. Held the rank of 1st Corporal as of September 11, 1973).

PROSECUTED AND RESPONSIBLE

The commanders and agents involved in the actions of the Joint Command are: Manuel Barra Von Kretschmann (ID 1.614.559-9), head of the Naval Intelligence Service in the Intelligence Community (José Antonio Ríos 6).

Frigate captain at the time of the coup d'état, part of the DINA leadership in 1974 and deputy director in 1975. In 1976, he became part of the CNI. He was prosecuted as an accomplice to criminal conspiracy and the kidnapping of Edras Pinto and Reinalda Pereira by Judge Cerda.

Luis Rolando Pacheco Valdés, (ret.) Colonel of the FACH. Head of the Colina Air Base at the time the "Remo Cero" torture center operated inside it. Prosecuted by Judge Cerda as the author of criminal conspiracy.

Rubén Samuel Romero Gormaz, (ret.) General of the Carabineros, head of the DICAR at J.A.R. 6. Prosecuted by Carlos Cerda as the author of criminal conspiracy and accomplice to the kidnapping of Edras Pinto and Reinalda Pereira.

Freddy Enrique Ruiz Bunger, (ret.) General of the FACH. Head of the DIFA at J.A.R. 6. Prosecuted as the author of criminal conspiracy and accomplice to the kidnapping of Edras Pinto and Reinalda Pereira.

He is currently being prosecuted by the head of the 25th Criminal Court of Santiago for the kidnapping of Víctor Vega. Mario H. Vivero Ávila, (ret.) General of the FACH, Aviation judge and commander of the Santiago garrison in 1976.

Prosecuted as the author of criminal conspiracy by Carlos Cerda. Currently, Judge Hazbún of the 25th Criminal Court is prosecuting him as a cover-up for criminal conspiracy and the disappearance of Víctor Vega.

Edgar Benjamín Ceballos Jones, (ret.) Colonel of the FACH. Director of the DIFA and later of the SIFA, torturer at the Air War Academy, and boss of Roberto Fuentes Morrison in the CC. Alias "Inspector Cabezas." Prosecuted by Carlos Cerda as the author of criminal conspiracy and accomplice to the kidnapping of Edras Pinto and Reinalda Pereira.

Carlos Arturo Madrid Hayden, (ret.) Commander of the FACH. Vice-commander of the Colina Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment where the "Remo Cero" torture center operated. Prosecuted by Cerda as the author of criminal conspiracy, while Judge Hazbún considers him an accomplice to the kidnapping of Víctor Vega.

Germán Alfredo Esquivel Caballero, (ret.) Lieutenant Colonel of the Carabineros, in charge of counterintelligence at DICAR. Prosecuted as the author of criminal conspiracy and accomplice to the kidnapping of Edras Pinto and Reinalda Pereira.

Daniel Luis Enrique Guimpert Corvalán, (ret.) Lieutenant of the Navy (ID 4.638.149-1). Prosecuted as the author of criminal conspiracy and accomplice to the kidnapping of Edras Pinto and Reinalda Pereira.

Currently being prosecuted by Judge Carlos Hazbún for the kidnapping of Víctor Vega. Jorge Rodrigo Cobos Manríquez, FACH reserve lieutenant. Alias "Kiko" or "Elefantito" (ID 5.890.505-4). Prosecuted by Judge Cerda as the author of criminal conspiracy and accomplice to the kidnapping of Edras Pinto and Reinalda Pereira.

Judge Hazbún submitted him to prosecution for the disappearance of Víctor Vega. Jorge Arnoldo Barraza Riveros, (ret.) Commissioner of the Investigative Police. Alias "El Zambra." Prosecuted as an accomplice to criminal conspiracy.

Pedro Ernesto Caamaño Medina, (ret.) Non-commissioned officer of the FACH. Alias "Peter" (ID 7.024.319-9). Operational agent at the "La Firma" torture center. Prosecuted by Judge Carlos Hazbún for the kidnapping of Víctor Vega.

Germán Enrique Pimentel Ceballos, (ret.) Commander of the FACH. Prosecuted by Judge Cerda as the author of criminal conspiracy and accomplice to the kidnapping of Edras Pinto and Reinalda Pereira. Luis Enrique Campos Poblete, (ret.) Commander of the FACH.

Prosecuted by Carlos Cerda as the author of criminal conspiracy. Manuel Agustín Muñoz Gamboa, (ret.) Major of the Carabineros. Alias "El Lolo." He stood out for his cruelty in the CC, where he participated in dozens of kidnappings, torture, and disappearances, returning with the rank of captain to the Carabineros to continue being linked to the repressive apparatuses.

In the DICOMCAR, he shared duties with his "colleague" from the CC, Miguel Estay Reyno. In this organization, he appears involved in the murder of Juan Antonio Aguirre Ballesteros in 1984. He was prosecuted by Judge Cerda, subsequently sentenced to 5 years and one day for his participation in the murder of José Manuel Parada, Manuel Guerrero, and Santiago Nattino.

Today he appears prosecuted for the kidnapping and disappearance of Alonso Gahona, in the 4th Criminal Court of San Miguel, and in the case handled by Judge Hazbún for the kidnapping and disappearance of Víctor Vega.

Eduardo Enrique Cartagena Maldonado. Alias "Lalo." ID 5.083.760. (Ret.) Non-commissioned officer of the FACH. Agent of the CC since 1975, participating in kidnappings, torture, and disappearances of numerous communist leaders between that year and 1976.

After the dissolution of this organization, he joined the Air Force Intelligence Service (SIFA). He is being prosecuted in the 4th Criminal Court of San Miguel for the kidnapping and torture that caused the death of Alonso Gahona Chávez, disappeared since September 8, 1975.

He also appears indicted in the process opened by the judge with preferential dedication Carlos Hazbún, head of the 25th Criminal Court, regarding the kidnapping and disappearance of Víctor Vega Riquelme that occurred on January 3, 1976.

His last known address is Del Rey 394, Maipú. Miguel Arturo Estay Reyno. Alias "El Fanta." Former communist militant, he went from informant to agent after being detained in 1975 by members of the Joint Command.

Knowledgeable about the internal structures of the Communist Youth and the PC, he was a vital piece in the formation of the organizational charts that led to the detention of its main leaders, among whom were Carlos Contreras Maluje, José Weibel, Fernando Ortiz, and Waldo Pizarro.

He participated in the kidnapping of his former comrade Manuel Guerrero, who was one of the few who managed to escape the clutches of the CC, but in 1985 he kidnapped him again, this time with the agents of the DICOMCAR, to finally slit his throat along with José Manuel Parada and Santiago Nattino.

Prosecuted by Judge Cerda and amnestied by Silva Ibáñez, today he is serving his life sentence in Colina for the murder of the three communist professionals and is being prosecuted for the disappearance of Víctor Vega.

César Luis Palma Ramírez. Alias "El Fifo." ID 6.387.372-1. As a militant of Patria y Libertad, he participated in numerous terrorist attacks against the UP government; he was detained in August 1973 for his participation in the homicide of presidential aide-de-camp Arturo Araya, amnestied after the coup d'état by Admiral Adolfo Waulbaum.

A friend of Fuentes Morrison, who brought him to the CC, he became his right-hand man in the execution of repressive tasks. According to CC defector Andrés Valenzuela, "El Fifo" participated directly in the murders of José Weibel Navarrete, Miguel Rodríguez Gallardo, Humberto Fuentes Rodríguez, and agents of the same organization Carol Flores and Guillermo Bratti, all disappeared to date.

He is also named among those who executed communist leaders Lincoyán Berríos, Fernando Navarro, Fernando Ortiz, Waldo Pizarro, Luis Lazo, Juan Gianelly, Horacio Cepeda, Héctor Véliz, and Reinalda Pereira, who was in an advanced state of pregnancy, at Cuesta Barriga.

Prosecuted by Judge Cerda, he appears today in the cases of Alonso Gahona and Víctor Vega. His last known address is El Quilo 5535, Quinta Normal, where the cooling equipment factory FRIGOMET LTDA. operates, where they claim they do not know him; however, his phone-fax 7738010 continues to be in the name of Palma Ramírez.

Roberto Alfonso Flores Cisterna. Alias "El Huaso." ID 7.767.975-8. (Ret.) Soldier of the FACH. On September 11, 1973, as a FACH soldier at the El Bosque Air Base, he participated in interrogations and torture of detainees.

Because of his "ability," he was sent to continue his work at the Air War Academy under the command of Edgard Ceballos. In 1975, he became part of the CC, being responsible for the kidnapping, torture, and disappearance of dozens of communist militants.

Until the mid-90s, he continued in active service in the SIFA; today he appears working in the commercial sector. His last known address is Villa Tantauco, Block 10282, Apt. 31, San Bernardo. Alejandro Jorge Forero Álvarez.

Cardiologist. Medical Association Registry 9580-K. Squadron Commander and doctor who was working at the FACH Hospital at the time of the coup d'état. In 1976, he provided services as a second soldier at the El Bosque Air Base and at the Colina Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment.

In this place, he participated in the CC, supervising the torture and drugging the prisoners who were taken out to be disappeared. He was submitted to prosecution by Judge Carlos Cerda in the middle of the dictatorship and today is again required by Judge Hazbún in the case of Víctor Vega.

He was the first to be "funado" (publicly exposed) in Chile, on October 1, 1999, at his office in the INDISA Clinic. He is a member, among other organizations, of the Chilean Society of Intensive Medicine, where he is listed with the INDISA address, and of the Chilean Society of Cardiology, in which he appears with his private practice: Av.

Apoquindo 6275, office 116, and the email address forero@entelchile.net. His last known address is Camino La Brisa 14.199-2, Lo Barnechea, telephone 2161253. Juan Francisco Saavedra Loyola. Alias "Jano." ID 4.124.917-K. (Ret.) Officer of the FACH.

On September 11, 1973, he was serving as group commander of the Air War Academy, where he was in charge of the interrogation and torture of his fellow soldiers loyal to the constitutional government, among them Alberto Bachelet.

In 1976, he was appointed Director of the Colina Air Base and joined the CC, replacing Edgard Ceballos in the position. In 1977, he moved to the Intelligence Community that operated at Juan Antonio Ríos 6 (Alameda with Santa Rosa).

Until the early 90s, he was active in the FACH with the rank of colonel. He was prosecuted by Judge Carlos Cerda and today is required by Judge Hazbún in the case of the disappearance of Víctor Vega. Otto Silvio Trujillo Miranda.

Civilian agent. DC militant in his youth, he later joined Patria y Libertad where he met "Wally," who would take him to the CC and save his life in a dispute between this organization and the DINA when, together with Carol Flores and Guillermo Bratti, they provided information to Contreras's men.

Since before the coup d'état, he belonged to the Military Intelligence Service (SIM); later he was called by Fuentes Morrison to be part of the security team of the Ministry of Agriculture and the CC. He participated in the kidnapping, torture, and disappearance of dozens of left-wing militants until his expulsion due to the incident with the DINA.

His "contacts" allowed him to take charge of a security company in the south of Chile, after which he was involved in numerous lawsuits for fraudulent check issuance. He is on the list of those prosecuted by Carlos Cerda and in the processes opened for the disappearance of Alonso Gahona and Víctor Vega.

Guillermo Antonio Urra Carrasco. Alias "Willy." ID 6.687.227-0. (Ret.) 2nd Corporal of the FACH. Operational agent of the CC since its formalization in 1975. He was prosecuted by Judge Carlos Cerda for his participation in the kidnapping, torture, and disappearance of dozens of left-wing militants.

According to direct witnesses, he is responsible for the execution of prisoners in the Cajón del Maipo (among them José Weibel and agents Carol Flores and Guillermo Bratti), in Cuesta Barriga (among others Horacio Cepeda, Fernando Ortiz, and Reinalda Pereira), and the throwing of others into the sea off the coast of Quintero.

Today he is being prosecuted again, this time for the Víctor Vega case. His last known address is Santa Blanca 1990, Las Condes. Roberto Fuentes Morrison. Alias "Wally." During the Unidad Popular, he stood out in the paramilitary groups of Patria y Libertad, where he met several of those he would later take to the CC.

As a FACH Squadron Commander, he joined this criminal conspiracy, becoming one of the operational chiefs recognized as one of the cruelest torturers. He was prosecuted by Carlos Cerda due to his participation in dozens of kidnappings, tor tortures, executions, and disappearances of MIR and PC militants. In mid-1989, he was riddled with bullets outside his home.

Fernando Patricio Zuñiga Canales. Alias "Chirola". Sub-officer (R) of the FACH. As a soldier at the El Bosque Air Base, on September 11, 1973, he participated in the torture of his comrades-in-arms. He was later transferred to the Air War Academy to perform the same duties, and from there, he became part of the DIFA.

In 1975, he joined the CC, where he participated in the kidnapping, torture, and disappearance of dozens of leftist militants, including Victor Cardenas, Carlos Duran, Luis Maturana, Humberto Castro, and David Urrutia. He was also present at the execution of Bratti and Flores.

He belonged to the FACH Intelligence Service (SIFA) at least until the early 90s. He was prosecuted by Minister Cerda and currently appears in the cases of Alonso Gahona and Victor Vega.

His last known address is Pasaje Simon Bolivar 1298, San Bernardo. Alex Damian Carrasco Olivos, FACH official, bodyguard for Leigh, Fernando Matthei, and Ramon Vega. Alias "Loco Alex" (I.D. 6.243.426-7).

Operational agent of the Comando Conjunto.

Juan Arturo Chavez Sandoval, corporal (r) of the FACH. Alias "Peque", "Rucio", or "Pol". Torturer at the AGA and operative of the CC. Prosecuted for the kidnapping of Victor Vega.

Marco Alejandro Cortes Figueroa, inspector (r) of the Investigative Police. Alias "Yoyopulus". Prosecuted as an accomplice to criminal conspiracy in the Cerda case.

Raul Horacio Gonzalez Fernandez, official (r) of the FACH. Alias "Rodrigo" or "Wally Chico". Witnesses state that he participated in the detention of Jose Weibel. Prosecuted as an accomplice to the illegal detention of Amanda Velasco Pedersen in the 25th Criminal Court.

Viviana Lucinda Ugarte Sandoval, soldier (r) of the FACH, assigned to the DIFA and the Comando Conjunto. Alias "La Pochi". Prosecuted by Minister Cerda as a perpetrator of criminal conspiracy and an accomplice to the disappearance of Reinalda Pereira and Edras Pinto.

Pablo Arturo Navarrete Arriagada, colonel (r) of the Carabineros assigned to DICAR. Prosecuted as an accomplice to criminal conspiracy by Minister Cerda. Antonio Benedicto Quiros Reyes, colonel (r) of the FACH and head of the Counterintelligence Department during the years of the CC. Prosecuted by Carlos Cerda as a perpetrator of criminal conspiracy.

Andres Pablo Potin Lailhacar, civilian agent of the CC. Alias "Yerko". A member of Patria y Libertad arrested in August 1973 for his participation in the homicide of presidential aide-de-camp Arturo Araya. Prosecuted by Judge Hazbun as a participant in the kidnapping of Victor Vega. Today, he is listed as a businessman in the computer sector with an office at Americo Vespucio Norte 2506.

Manuel Antonio Salvatierra Rojas, sub-prefect (r) of the Investigative Police. Alias "Negro" (I.D. 6.195.828-2). Prosecuted by Minister Cerda as a perpetrator of criminal conspiracy.

Robinson Alfonso Suazo Jaque, soldier (r) of the FACH. Alias "Jonathan". Torturer at the AGA. Prosecuted in the 25th Criminal Court for the kidnapping and disappearance of Victor Vega.

Humberto Villegas, second sergeant (r) of the Carabineros. Alias "Don Beto". Prosecuted by Carlos Cerda as a perpetrator of criminal conspiracy and an accomplice to the disappearance of Reinalda Pereira and Edras Pinto. Pedro Juan Zambrano Uribe, FACH official. Alias "Chino".

Prosecuted by Minister Hazbun as a perpetrator of the kidnapping of Victor Vega. Other individuals prosecuted by Minister Carlos Cerda included Gustavo Leigh and Julio Benimelli Ruiz, who died under various circumstances.

Charged as accomplices of the CC are the colonels (r) of the Carabineros Italo Astete Sermini, Gonzalo Jimenez Huerta, Raul Enrique Montt Carvajal, and Federico Luis Smith Ibarra. Also charged are lieutenant colonels Graciano Bernales Perez, Juan Bezzemberger Schwarz, and Luis Humberto Villagra Rebeco.

Charged as accessories to the kidnappings of Reinalda Pereira and Edras Pinto were the sub-commissioner of the Investigative Police Federico Infante Lillo and officer Jorge Mondaca Gonzalez, both retired. In the proceedings opened by Carlos Hazbun, Carlos Pascua Riquelme, Juan Chavez Sandoval, and Alejandro Saez Mardones (serving a life sentence for the "degollados" case) were indicted.

by Julio Oliva Garcia

Source: elsiglo.cl, 2005

Torturers and murderers: Doctors of death.

Cardiologists, psychiatrists, dentists, traumatologists, pediatricians, gynecologists, and otolaryngologists applied the knowledge they acquired to save lives toward the administration of torture and executions against hundreds of political prisoners.

Most of them are still working in public hospitals, private clinics, and health institutions of the Armed Forces.

The Hippocratic Oath states in part: "I swear by Apollo the Physician, and Asclepius, and Hygieia and Panacea and all the gods and goddesses as my witnesses, that I will fulfill this oath according to my ability and judgment.

I will hold him who has taught me this art as equal to my parents and live my life in partnership with him, and if he is in need of money, give him a share of mine, and will regard his offspring as equal to my brothers in male lineage, and will teach them this art, if they desire to learn it, without fee and covenant.

I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice. I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect.

Similarly, I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art. Now if I carry out this oath, and break it not, may I gain for ever reputation among all men for my life and for my art; but if I break it and forswear myself, may the opposite befall me."

Evidently, those who placed their knowledge at the service of torture and death violated this oath and all norms related to the defense of human rights. The worst part is that, with the protection of the Armed Forces or the extreme negligence of public hospital directors appointed by the Concertación, they remain in their positions, treating people who have no idea that "their doctor" has such a sinister past.

This occurred when the public denunciations known as funas began, with hundreds of patients starting to call the doctors to confront them and cancel their visits upon learning of the facts. Among other cases, this happened with Alejandro Forero at the INDISA Clinic, Sergio Muñoz at the Barros Luco Hospital, and Roberto Lailhacar at his office on Obispo Salas street in the Providencia commune.

From the first days

The collaboration of doctors who had sided with the coup plotters occurred from the very first days of the Pinochet dictatorship. The case of José María Fuentealba, a health official for the Army, is one of them.

On October 27, 1973, Néstor Hernán Castillo Sepúlveda, 23, Regional Secretary of the Communist Youth; José Rosendo Pérez Ríos, 24, employee and MAPU militant; and Juan Vera Oyarzún, 53, worker, Regional Secretary of the Communist Party, union leader, and former councilman of Punta Arenas, were handed over by the Argentine Gendarmerie to Chilean military personnel in the border town of Río Mayo.

On September 20, a group of four people, including Juan Vera, had crossed the border to seek political asylum in Argentina. Two days later, they were handed over to the Argentine Gendarmerie by the owner of a local ranch, taken to Aldea Veleiros, and subsequently to Río Mayo. In this town, they remained under the custody of Squadron No. 38 of the Gendarmerie.

On the other hand, on September 28, José Rosendo Pérez and Néstor Castillo, who had also arrived from Chile days earlier, were arrested at a boarding house in Río Mayo. Along with Juan Vera, they were tasked with performing labor at the Río Mayo Municipality while they remained detained.

This lasted until October 27, when they were handed over to a military command consisting of Army Captain Joaquín Molina, a Carabineros officer named Salinas, Sub-officer Evaldo Reidlich Hains, and Dr. José María Fuentealba Suazo, who were traveling in an ambulance from the Coyhaique Regional Hospital.

According to the newspaper La Epoca on November 2, 1988, the military "informed them that their families were waiting for them at the border. Once in Chilean territory, the military patrol forced the group to board a truck and began the return trip to the Las Bandurrias prisoner camp.

Hours later, the vehicle arrived at the military facility. Only the uniformed men and the doctor were inside. The three detainees have never appeared to this day."

The justice system prosecuted Dr. Fuentealba Suazo and retired sub-officer Evaldo Reidlich, while continuing efforts to identify the other member of the patrol and conducting inspections at the Coyhaique Forest Reserve of the El Claro Cemetery, the place where the three Chilean citizens were allegedly executed and forcibly disappeared.

Joaquín Molina Fuenzalida, the captain who commanded the group, was murdered by Manuel Contreras Valdebenito, son of the head of the DINA.

As in this case, the Punta Arenas cardiologist Guillermo Aranda and Alejandro Babaich Schmith, Director of the "Cirujano Guzmán" Hospital in that city, also appear from the very beginning, recognized by many tortured individuals from that locality.

Another is Darwin Arraigada Loyola, at that time a leader of the Medical Association of Chile, who was subsequently appointed by the Military Junta as Director General of Health and who is accused, among other things, of turning in numerous leftist doctors—more than 30 of whom were murdered—and participating in the plan to administer drugs in food to murder political prisoners.

Doctor Raúl Díaz Doll, an official of the General Directorate of the National Health Service, was part of the military commission that investigated the political affiliation of doctors. He organized the snitching within the service and participated personally in the interrogations of detained and tortured doctors.

In Iquique, pediatrician Werner Gálvez, a Health Colonel, administered intravenous injections of sodium pentothal, alternating with biological serum, during interrogations of prisoners of war. Meanwhile, in Valdivia, traumatologist Fernando Jara de la Maza participated directly in the application of torture to detainees.

In the Concepción province, a Carabineros doctor named Minoletti advised the torturers of Fuerte Borgoño and issued "natural death" certificates to cover up the crimes. Meanwhile, in Tejas Verdes, the cradle of the DINA, Dr.

Vittorio Orvieto Teplizky performed collaborative functions in the tortures committed at Prisoner Camp Number Two of that military facility; he would later join the Health Brigade of said criminal conspiracy, appearing as director of the clandestine Santa Lucía clinic.

In the vicinity of Santiago, radiologist Bernardo Pulto, together with the military prosecutor of Melipilla, personally took part in the torture sessions of prisoners.

The Health Brigade

The DINA had its own team for the care of service personnel, collaborating prisoners, and the application of torment to those it considered its "enemies." Along with the aforementioned Vittorio Orvieto Teplizky, the following performed functions: Werner Zanghellini, Hernán Taricco, Nader Nasser, Osvaldo Eugenio Leyton Bahamondez, Rodrigo Vélez, Samuel Valdivia Soto, Luis Hernán Santibáñez Santelices, Eduardo Contreras Balcarce, gynecologist Juan Pablo Figueroa Yáñez, otolaryngologist Eugenio Fantuzzi Alliende, psychiatrist Roberto Lailhacar Chávez, dentist Sergio Roberto Muñoz Bonta, and nurse María Eliana Bolumburú Taboada. Another doctor, of whom only the surname is known, is the psychiatrist Bassaure. Without being part of the structure, doctor Gregorio Burgos of the Los Angeles Regiment collaborated with DINA agents, looking for ways to torture without the detainee losing consciousness.

Many of them seem to no longer practice in their respective areas, although they remain close, such as nurse María Eliana Bolumburú, who works in a chemical laboratory on Ejército street. Others remain active and assume prominent roles in their profession, such as Roberto Emilio Lailhacar Chávez, who in the late 90s and until 2001 held the position of president of the Chilean Society of Sexology and Sexual Education, whose headquarters operated out of his private office at Obispo Salas 290 in the Providencia commune.

This organization included, as a "natural person," the lawyer Víctor Manuel Avilés Mejías, a member of the DINA Legal Department.

For his part, dental surgeon Sergio Muñoz Bonta, who worked at the clandestine Santa Lucía and London clinics, treated, among other people, Marcia Merino, "la flaca Alejandra," and was a "founding partner" of the front company Pedro Diet Lobos, through which the DINA laundered money from the State, arms and drug trafficking, and legalized the theft of houses, cars, and assets of those prisoners who were forcibly disappeared.

Here he was a "colleague," for example, of Francisco Ferrer Lima, Emilio Sajuria Alvear, Ricardo Lawrence Mires, Fernando Gómez Segovia, Augusto Pinochet Hiriart, and Pedro Espinoza Bravo.

Luis Hernán Santibáñez Santelices appears implicated in the disappearance of Juan Elías Cortés Alruiz, a communist militant kidnapped in April 1976, a case for which he was even called to testify by Minister Servando Jordán in 1980 along with Germán Barriga Muñoz (a retired colonel who committed suicide), Emilio Troncoso Vivillos, Heriberto Acevedo, Vianel Valdivieso, and Julio Leyton Robles, brother of Manuel Leyton, who died under strange circumstances at the London clinic.

Dr. Santibáñez acknowledged on July 17, 1980, that he had been part of the DINA as a doctor. He reported that the London Clinic existed on Almirante Barroso street, in charge of Dr. Taricco. When shown a photo of Cortés, he said the face looked familiar and that he might have seen that person at the San Juan de Dios Hospital.

In the same proceeding, he was questioned about the case of Gabriel Castillo Tapia, disappeared since August 5, 1976.

In the death of Manuel Leyton Robles, another doctor appears implicated: Osvaldo Leyton Bahamondes, who signed a death certificate stating that the DINA agent had died due to an epileptic seizure and cardiac arrhythmia.

The death allegedly occurred at Almirante Barroso No. 76, where the London Clinic operated. The truth is that Manuel Leyton was murdered by his "colleagues" when his role as a DINA member was discovered after participating in a job commissioned by Germán Barriga: the theft of a Renault 4.

For his part, Sergio Marcelo Virgilio Bocaz, after finishing his work at the DINA, based at the Santa Lucía Clinic, continued working in the CNI Logistics Command, and at the end of the dictatorship, he appeared in various types of advertising, such as one for Nescafé, another for Tritón cookies, and for financial institutions.

He still works at the Félix Bulnes Hospital. Dr. Eugenio Fantuzzi has his private practice and is Head of the Otolaryngology Service at the Dávila Clinic. Gynecologist Juan Pablo Figueroa sees patients from Monday to Friday at the Arauco Clinic, and Hernán Taricco Lavín continues to work for the Army at the Maipú Military Medical Center.

Werner Zanghellini Martínez, who injected the detainee Jorge Fuentes Alarcón with the rabies virus, quickly abandoned his office, located at Galvarino Gallardo 1983, when he was funado (publicly denounced) by dozens of people a couple of years ago.

It is known that he continues to see patients at an office on Avenida Providencia that belongs to a relative, although his name does not appear on the plaque attached to the door.

The CNI and the Comando Conjunto

Although the presence of other doctors is known in the Comando Conjunto, which was basically composed of members of the Air Force, the one who has been prosecuted as a permanent part of this criminal conspiracy is cardiologist Alejandro Jorge Forero Alvarez, a FACH squadron commander and official at the institutional hospital.

Named in most of the cases involving the Comando Conjunto, it is known that in 1976 he served as a second soldier at the El Bosque Air Base and at the Colina Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment, used as a clandestine detention center by the FACH.

In this place, he allegedly participated by supervising the tortures and drugging the prisoners who were taken out to be forcibly disappeared. Forero participated in Patria y Libertad during the Unidad Popular government, where he met Roberto Fuentes Morrison, alias "el Wally."

Already in the dictatorship, he was prosecuted by Minister Carlos Cerda, but said process was closed and amnestied by a judge appointed specifically for that purpose. For the crimes of criminal conspiracy and illegal detention of Víctor Vega Riquelme, he was prosecuted along with 20 other members of the Comando Conjunto.

In the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE), Jorge León Alessandrini appears, a dentist and civilian agent, implicated in the assassination of union leader Tucapel Jiménez, where he allegedly acted by providing the murder weapon.

The CNI also had its own medical team, especially in the clandestine torture facilities located in Santiago, such as the Cuartel Borgoña, and others in the regions. Cases that have reached notoriety exposed some of them, for example, those implicated in the death by torture of teacher Federico Alvarez Santibáñez in August 1979.

The young MIR militant was handed over by the Carabineros to the CNI, where he was subjected to terrible duress while being "monitored" by health professionals to prevent his death. Among these appear Luis Losada Fuenzalida, Manfred Jurgensen Caesar, and Camilo Azar Saba, all sanctioned by the Medical Association on March 31, 1986.

Losada Fuenzalida signed a report indicating that the teacher was in good physical condition only one hour before the death of Alvarez Santibáñez. Dr. Camilo Azar Saba (he currently has a website and a blog: http://camiloazar.blogspot.com/ and http://www.camiloazar.com/) is a traumatologist and orthopedist, so he knew perfectly well the most sensitive areas of the body that could cause the greatest pain with the least danger of death.

However, in this case, they did not serve: Federico Alvarez died due to multiple contusions, hemoptysis, and pulmonary insufficiency. Another case is that of the La Serena transporter Mario Fernández López, kidnapped by the CNI in October 1984.

After the death by torture of Fernández, doctors Víctor Carcuro Correa and Guido Mario Félix Díaz Paci, participants in the application of torment to the detainee, were sanctioned by the Medical Association.

Guido Díaz Paci, a well-known Army doctor, lied to the doctors on duty at the La Serena Hospital, claiming that the detainee came from a Carabineros station and not from the CNI, and asking the doctors to hide the detainee's condition.

Once Mario Fernández had died, Díaz Paci tried to get the physician who had performed emergency surgery on the victim to falsify the diagnosis of his death, hiding the true motives for the passing.

Back in 1974, when he participated in the exhumation of the body of María Avalos, murdered along with her husband Bernardo Lejdermann in December 1973 by a patrol from the Arica Regiment of La Serena, he lied when issuing a death certificate, asserting that the woman had blown herself up with dynamite.

Like many of these "doctors of death," Díaz Paci continues to work in La Serena.

The workplace H. Darwin Arraigada Loyola, General Medicine. Sees patients at Santa María 217, office 34, Independencia commune. Phone 7372626. Dr. Eugenio Fantuzzi Alliende, Otolaryngologist. Chief Physician of the Otolaryngology Service at the Dávila Clinic, located at Avenida Recoleta 464, Santiago.

Private Practice at Luis Thayer Ojeda Norte 073, office 606, Providencia. Phone 233 7524. Fax 234 1740. Dr. Juan Pablo Figueroa Yáñez, Gynecologist and Obstetrician. Sees patients from Monday to Friday at the Arauco Clinic, located at Parque Arauco.

Avenida Kennedy 5413-B. Phone 2990299. Werner Zanghellini Martínez, Cardiologist. Last known address: Galvarino Gallardo 1983, Providencia. Now sees patients without advertising at a relative's office in the same commune.

Sergio Marcelo Virgilio Bocaz, General Medicine. Still working at the Félix Bulnes Hospital, located at Leoncio Fernández 2655, Quinta Normal, Santiago. Hernán Horacio Taricco Lavín, Pediatrician. Sees patients Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, from 12:00 to 14:30, at the Maipú Military Medical Center, located at Avenida Ramón Freire No. 6097, Villa Militar Oeste, Paradero 3 1/2 de Pajaritos, Estación Central commune.

Phones: 450 8564, 450 8565, 450 8566. Fax: 4508563. Manfred Jurgensen Caesar, General Medicine. Works at the Military Hospital of Santiago. Alejandro Forero Alvarez, Cardiologist. Works at the INDISA Clinic, Avenida Santa María 1810, phone 2254555.

Private Practice Apoquindo 6275, office 116. Guido Díaz Paci, Pediatrician. Sees patients at the Infantry Regiment No. 21 "Arica" of the Second Army Division based in La Serena, under the command of Brigadier General José Gabriel Gaete Paredes.

Camilo Azar Saba, Traumatologist. email: camiloazar@vtr.net . Phones: (56-2) 679 65 00. Sergio Roberto Muñoz Bonta, Dentist. Sees patients at the Barros Luco-Trudeau Hospital and at the "San Lucas" dental medical office at José Domingo Santa María 1338. Phones 7377674 and 7379978. Roberto Lailhacar Chávez, Psychiatrist. Continues to see patients at Obispo Salas 290, Office 168. Phone 2239405.

Source: El Siglo, February 13, 2004

Prosecution of FACH commander for disappearance of communist militant revoked

The Seventh Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals revoked this Monday the indictment that weighed against the health commander of the Air Force, Alejandro Forero Alvarez, for the disappearance in 1976 of a communist militant.

As reported by the newspaper “La Segunda,” the appellate court also granted the benefit of release on bail—of 500,000 pesos—to the retired general of that same institution, Enrique Ruiz Bunger.

The resolution was made by the chamber composed of ministers Rubén Ballesteros, Hugo Dolmestch, and Juan Muñoz Pardo.

Source: El Mercurio, May 6, 2002

Doctor from the Comando Conjunto is a candidate to be the new medical director of the FACH Hospital

“If there is no justice, there is a funa (public protest/shaming).” This is the motto with which the organization Acción Verdad y Justicia, H.I.J.O.S. Chile, justified the series of protests they organized starting in the late nineties against torturers, murderers, and accomplices to the human rights violations of Augusto Pinochet’s government, who, according to the group, enjoyed anonymity and impunity.

On October 1, 1999, the physician Alejandro Jorge Forero Álvarez, a cardiologist who was then working at the Indisa clinic, was the first person to be “funado.”

According to a report by El Dínamo this Wednesday, Forero could take over as medical director of the Chilean Air Force (FACh) Hospital starting in April, replacing Colonel Fernando Verdugo. The position is listed in the institution’s organizational chart as one of the four most important, following that of the Air Brigadier General, Javier del Río Valdovinos, the current general director.

The facility’s communications department confirmed the information, specifying that the decision will be made between two people, without providing further details about the other candidate.

Furthermore, the digital media outlet records statements from the president of the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared (AFDD), Lorena Pizarro, who maintained that this situation is “a consequence of the impunity that exists in Chile.” Pizarro argued that “despite their dark past as torturers, and a betrayal of the medical code of ethics, these criminal subjects can continue to hold positions.”

The human rights website Memoria y Justicia includes the name of Alejandro Jorge Forero in a list of torturers, specifically in a section on networks of complicity in state violence, which was prepared for the Comisión Funa.

This portal details that the cardiologist was a “Squadron Commander and physician who was working at the FACh Hospital at the time of the coup d’état. In 1976, he served as a second soldier at the El Bosque Air Base and at the Colina Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment.

In this place, he participated in the Comando Conjunto, supervising tortures and drugging prisoners who were taken away to be forcibly disappeared. He was prosecuted by Judge Carlos Cerda in the midst of the dictatorship.”

The aforementioned process refers to the case of Víctor Vega Riquelme, who was detained on January 3, 1976. The investigation was closed at that time, and the physician was granted amnesty. In February 2002, due to the insistence of Nelson Caucoto, the judge of the 5th Criminal Court of Santiago, Carlos Hazbún, prosecuted Dr.

Forero along with about twenty former members of the Comando Conjunto for the crimes of illicit association and illegal detention regarding the kidnapping and disappearance of the communist militant. The case is known for being one of those that best illustrates the role played by Miguel Estay Reyno, alias “El Fanta,” in the detention of his former communist comrades and close friends, as Vega was.

In May 2002, the 7th Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals, which then included the current president of the Supreme Court, Rubén Ballesteros, revoked the decision on the grounds of res judicata.

The Comando Conjunto was an intelligence group that operated approximately between 1975 and 1976, tasked with the repression of the Communist Party and the Communist Youth. During this period, according to the Rettig Report, it was responsible for the disappearance of nearly 30 people.

Source: El Mostrador, January 11, 2012

Torturer Physician and Ex-CNI Agent Alejandro Forero Álvarez is Head of Cardiology at Indisa Clinic

The denunciation came to light through social networks; on Twitter, it is being disseminated that the torturer physician and former CNI agent who currently works at the Indisa clinic, Alejandro Jorge Forero Álvarez, a specialist in Cardiology and internal medicine, occupies the 10th spot on a list of torturer physicians currently in service.

This is one of the few chains that, out of moral duty, must be disseminated. It is already known with certainty that torturers are walking free everywhere. Hopefully, this will at least serve to detect them, since they will likely never face justice. The physicians who broke the Hippocratic Oath:

“I swear by Apollo the Physician and by Asclepius and by Hygieia and Panacea and by all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfill this oath according to my ability and judgment… I will follow that regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, will benefit my patients and will protect them from harm and terror.

I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a course. Similarly, I will not give a woman an abortive remedy; I will keep my life and my art pure… Now, if I fulfill this oath and do not break it, may the fruits of life and art be mine, may I be honored by all men for all time, and may the opposite befall me if I break it and am forsworn…”

Alejandro Jorge Forero Álvarez

Cardiologist. Medical Association Registry 9580-K. ID 5228186-5. Squadron Commander and physician who was working at the FACh Hospital at the time of the coup d’état. In 1976, he served as a second soldier at the El Bosque Air Base and at the Colina Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment.

In this place, he participated in the Comando Conjunto, supervising tortures and drugging prisoners who were taken away to be forcibly disappeared. He was prosecuted by Judge Carlos Cerda in the midst of the dictatorship. Recently, he has been summoned again in new proceedings regarding the Comando Conjunto.

For more information, you can read the Valech Report.

Source: Revoluciontrespuntocero, July 24, 2013

CHV Program Reveals the Identity of “Torturer Physicians”

The program “En la Mira” on Chilevisión aired a report last night that revealed the identities of the so-called “torturer physicians,” doctors who are currently practicing despite having been accused of participating in human rights violations during the dictatorship.

One of them is Guido Díaz Pacci, who works in La Serena. He is accused of having murdered pediatrician Jorge Jordan with a coup de grâce.

“I have nothing to do with that mess; I was a doctor at the Arica regiment and nothing more,” the professional maintained. When confronted by the victim’s sister, the doctor replied: “Shut your mouth, don’t say stupid things, dear.”

Another of the “torturer physicians” is former CNI member Manfred Jurgensen, who also works in La Serena. “I have had a terrible time. I have never participated in anything that is unethical, never in my life as a doctor,” he said.

“I was involved in something that is not appropriate; I did a replacement shift, and that has meant a Calvary for my entire life,” he added.

For his part, the case of Alejandro Forero was shown, who allegedly participated in the Caravan of Death and currently sees patients at the Indisa Clinic.

“I was judged and found free of all guilt by the Court of Appeals, during the government of Ricardo Lagos,” the doctor pointed out.

Also appearing in the report was Eugenio Fantuzzi, who was in charge of the DINA health department and was expelled from the Medical Association.

“I was very young and we dedicated ourselves only to attending to people who were members (…) things also happen for different reasons; one must remember that my industry was taken over by the UP (Popular Unity),” he indicated.

Source: El Mostrador, May 29, 2014

The Exorbitant Fiscal Expenditure on Armed Forces Pensions: $3.8 Trillion Between 2011 and 2015

2016 marked a milestone for Codelco. It was not one of those that draws applause. For the first time in its history, and as a result of the sustained drop in the price of copper, the main state-owned company had to go into debt to meet its financial commitments.

One of them is the delivery of US$707 million to the Armed Forces—an amount recorded as of September 2016—by virtue of the Copper Law (which is no longer classified).

The milestone only served to illustrate the extent to which the Copper Law has become a straitjacket for Codelco. By forcing the copper company to hand over 10% of its sales to the Armed Forces, the State is stripped of a significant flow of funds for public policy.

One only needs to look at the figures to quantify the legal diversion of resources that was imposed under the dictatorship (by changing 10% of profits to 10% of copper sales): in 2015, some US$858 million went to the Armed Forces (see note in El Mercurio).

Added to the cut the Armed Forces take from the State through the Copper Law is the other capital flight that it means for the Treasury that the uniformed personnel were the only sector to maintain the privilege of the old pension system when the AFP (Pension Fund Administrators) came into effect in 1980.

According to information provided by Cristián Rojas, executive vice president of the National Defense Pension Fund (Capredena), to the Chamber of Deputies commission investigating irregularities in the pensions of the Armed Forces and Order, in 2015 Capredena distributed $911 billion in pensions. 94% of that figure is a fiscal contribution, and only the remaining 6% corresponds to the contributions of the uniformed personnel.

Between 2011 and 2015, the State has disbursed a total of nearly $3.8 trillion (millions of millions of pesos) to support the Capredena retirement fund. The figure is equivalent to 119 Teletones (based on 2016 fundraising) or the cost of building 42 hospitals with state-of-the-art equipment, like the one inaugurated in Rancagua in April 2016 ($90 billion).

With the money of all Chileans, a system is financed that serves almost 107,000 former officials of the Armed Forces (and their families through pensions and survivor benefits). All of them enjoy privileges that expose the shortcomings of the individual capitalization system that governs the rest of the population, where as of November of this year, the average old-age pension does not exceed $192,000, according to the Superintendence of Pensions.

CIPER had access to the payroll of former officers of the Army, Navy, and Air Force (FACh) who retired in the 2006-2016 period and who receive pensions from Capredena. There are 3,090 cases that represent 13%—the highest stratum—of the beneficiaries of this system.

The average pension for Armed Forces officers is close to $2.3 million. In the list of officers pensioned by Capredena, 17 former members of the Armed Forces stand out with pensions of over $4 million.

The highest corresponds to that of former FACh Brigadier General Patricio Franjola Buigley, who retired in July 2012 with a pension of $5.9 million. Because Capredena pensions are adjusted by 100% according to the variation of the Consumer Price Index (CPI), what Franjola receives today, four and a half years after his retirement, is $6.8 million.

The amount of the pensions of Armed Forces officers, in contrast to those of the civilian world, is not the only thing that stands out from the list of more than three thousand former officers reviewed by CIPER.

The enormous resources that the State injects to sustain that pension system—0.9% of the national GDP in 2012, according to the Bravo Commission—are also used to cover millionaire pensions for former uniformed personnel convicted or being prosecuted for human rights violations and for various types of fraud.

The average monthly pension received by this group of 38 retired uniformed personnel amounts to $2.7 million.

In the more than three thousand cases reviewed, there appear, for example, high-ranking officers convicted of homicide and aggravated kidnapping at the Pisagua Prison Camp; a lieutenant colonel subjected to a double trial for the aggravated homicide of five MIR leaders on Janequeo and Fuente Ovejuna streets; a colonel involved in the disappearance of 14 peasants in Paine, another in the murder of singer-songwriter Víctor Jara, and a third in the brutal attack against Rodrigo Rojas de Negri and Carmen Gloria Quintana (“Caso Quemados”).

There is also a physician and colonel—prosecuted in 2002—accused of supervising torture and drugging prisoners whose whereabouts are still unknown; private secretaries of Pinochet convicted of embezzlement of public funds in the “Riggs Case”; a dozen uniformed personnel involved in acts of corruption such as the “Frigate Case,” the “Mirage Case,” or “Milicogate”; and even a captain who became one of the biggest drug trafficking kingpins in Chile.

According to CIPER’s calculations, the annual amount of pensions paid by Capredena to these 38 uniformed personnel involved in illicit acts who retired between 2006 and 2016 amounts to more than $1.2 billion.

In the list of these pensioners, CIPER also identified more than 20 former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) and the National Intelligence Center (CNI), repressive agencies of Augusto Pinochet’s regime. Their pensions reach an average of $2.5 million. The serious matter is that some remain linked to the Armed Forces, mainly in educational tasks in different Army units.

CIPER’s investigation detected at least half a dozen former CNI and DINA agents who appear re-hired at the War Academy and also at the Military School as Contract Personnel (PAC) or Civilian Professors (PC). That means that all of them receive significant remuneration in addition to their pensions.

An internal Army document obtained by CIPER shows that a retired military officer with the rank of general can receive $2.5 million if re-hired to perform PAC duties in the institution. An amount that is added to that of his retirement, which for retired generals averages over $3.2 million.

PENSIONS AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Between late September 1973 and June 1974, 26 people were executed at the Pisagua Prison Camp (Tarapacá Region). Among them was the young conscript and PC militant, Miguel Nash Sáez, who opposed repressing the population and was riddled with bullets in the back. His body has still not been found.

In January 2009, retired Army Colonel Roberto Ampuero Alarcón was prosecuted as a co-author of the kidnapping and aggravated homicide of Nash and other Pisagua prisoners. Ampuero had retired 10 months earlier, in March 2008, with a pension of $2.6 million.

In August 2016, Ampuero was sentenced to 15 years and one day of major imprisonment in its maximum degree, as the author of the repeated crime of aggravated kidnapping of Nash, Jesús Cañas Cañas, and Juan Jiménez Vidal. Also as the author of the aggravated homicide of Marcelo Guzmán Fuentes, Juan Calderón Villalón, and Luis Alberto Lizardi Lizardi.

To date, Ampuero’s adjusted pension is close to $3.6 million.

Also involved in these crimes was retired Colonel Gabriel Guerrero Reeve, who retired in January 2010 with a pension of $2.1 million. Guerrero, also sentenced last August to 15 years and one day, receives a pension of almost $2.6 million today. On December 26, the case in which Ampuero and Guerrero are involved was elevated to the Santiago Court of Appeals for review.

In August 2016, retired Army Colonel Pedro Collado Martí was sentenced as the author of the aggravated kidnapping of socialist militants Jorge Marín Rossel and Williams Millar Sanhueza, both detained in September 1973 in Iquique.

Collado, prosecuted in 2008 and sentenced to 10 years and one day, receives a pension of $2.6 million. Currently, the court is closing the notification process of the ruling to those convicted in this case.

Retired Colonel Carlos Durán Low was sentenced in February 2016 along with five other former CNI agents to 10 years and one day of major imprisonment in its medium degree for the aggravated homicide of professor and MIR member Federico Álvarez Santibáñez in September 1979 in Santiago.

Durán retired in March 2007 and today receives a pension of $2.5 million. In April 2016, the ruling was appealed, and the Court ordered new proceedings.

Retired General and former member of the Army Intelligence Battalion (BIE), Julio Cerda Carrasco, was sentenced to five years and one day as an accomplice to the aggravated kidnappings of five members of the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (FPMR) perpetrated in September 1987.

Cerda, prosecuted since May 2007, retired in March of that same year and today enjoys a pension of $3.1 million. The sentence in this case—in which 33 former CNI agents are involved—was ratified by the Court of Appeals in June 2015 and is currently in the highest court.

Retired Army Colonel Osvaldo Andrés Magaña Bau was subjected to prosecution in July 2015 for the aggravated kidnapping of 14 peasants from the Villa el Escorial settlement in Paine, all of them executed between September and October 1973 (Cuesta Chada).

The colonel retired in February 2007 and today has a pension of $2.6 million. A figure similar to the pension received by retired Army Colonel Jorge Smith Gumucio, accused in July 2015 of being one of the authors of the kidnapping and aggravated homicide of Víctor Jara and the former director of the Gendarmerie, Littré Quiroga.

It was in 2015 that the justice system prosecuted active-duty Colonel Julio Castañer González for his alleged responsibility in the death of photographer Rodrigo Rojas de Negri and for the serious injuries suffered by Carmen Gloria Quintana after they were burned alive in July 1986 in Santiago.

Castañer was accused by a former conscript of being the one who set fire to the bodies of De Negri and Quintana after they were doused with gasoline. The colonel retired in January 2016 with a pension of $2.8 million. In October 2016, the lawyers for the accused requested the dismissal of the case, which was denied. Furthermore, new proceedings were ordered.

Physician and retired Aviation Colonel Alejandro Forero Álvarez has had a brilliant career as a cardiologist at the Indisa Clinic. His resume has a black mark. He is accused of being one of the physicians who provided services to the so-called “Comando Conjunto,” supervising torture and drugging prisoners who are now disappeared.

Forero was prosecuted in 2002 along with about twenty members of that repressive agency for illicit association and the illegal detention of communist militant Víctor Vega Riquelme (January 1976). In May 2002, the justice system revoked those prosecutions, but not because they were innocent, but because the crimes had prescribed.

Forero retired in August 2014 and today receives a pension of $2.5 million.

In the list of Capredena pensioners obtained by CIPER, there also appears retired Army General Víctor Lizárraga Arias, an important BIE officer. In 2010, he was convicted of being part of the illicit association that participated in the murder of the colonel and then head of acquisitions of the Army Logistics Directorate, Gerardo Huber (1992).

On November 18, Lizárraga—who today receives a pension of $3.1 million—was sentenced to 205 days of effective imprisonment as the author of five repeated crimes of bribery in the so-called “Frigate Case.” Lizárraga was accused of bribing a Korean public official so that the arms brokerage company the officer represented would obtain commissions for sales of war devices to the Army.

The illicit acts were committed between 2007 and 2008, when the general was already being prosecuted for the crime of Huber.

FROM THE MIRAGE CASE TO MILICOGATE

Retired FACh General Florencio Dublé Pizarro was prosecuted at the beginning of 2009 as an accomplice to the embezzlement of public funds in the controversial trial over bribes in the purchase of 25 Mirage aircraft.

The investigation by Minister Omar Astudillo determined that US$15 million had been allocated in the transaction for the payment of illicit commissions and that Dublé received at least one bank transfer for US$60,000. Florencio Dublé retired in December 2006 and today receives a pension of $3.1 million. The sentence for the case should be known in the coming days.

The name of retired Army Colonel Clovis Montero Barra came to the fore in March 2015 after the latest of the great scandals within the Army broke out: the fraud of nearly $5.5 billion perpetrated by military personnel with Copper Law funds (“Milicogate”).

In February 2016, Montero was prosecuted by Minister Omar Astudillo as the author of the repeated crime of fraud against the state and document forgery. Montero is also being sued by the Internal Revenue Service (SII) for tax crimes.

The colonel—who retired in May 2015 and receives a pension of $2.5 million—is accused of obtaining more than 160 invoices from a supplier for nearly $980 million for non-existent services or acquisitions.

In this same case, retired Colonel Jorge Frez Ramírez is being prosecuted, who served as head of the Army Treasury Finance Department. It was Montero himself who declared that Frez knew of the falsity of the documents, also accusing him of receiving money for the processing and payment of the false invoices.

Frez—who is imprisoned at the Military Police Regiment No. 1 in Peñalolén—retired in February 2015 with a pension of $2.5 million.

In the payroll to which CIPER had access, there also appear two high-ranking officers convicted in one of the branches of the “Riggs Case” (the ruling is under appeal). They are two of the officers who were private secretaries to Augusto Pinochet: retired Colonels Gabriel Vergara Cifuentes and Juan Mac-Lean Vergara, both sentenced in the first instance to four years of supervised release for embezzlement of public funds.

Mac-Lean retired in April 2009 and today receives a $2.9 million pension. Vergara, meanwhile, did so in July 2011, and his pension amounts to $2.6 million.

In July 2009, retired Frigate Captain Jesús Sáez Luna retired and today receives a pension of $2.1 million. Three years later, 150 kilos of cocaine and base paste were seized from Sáez at a residence in Valparaíso.

The Prosecutor’s Office established that Sáez was the operational head of the gang: “He is the highest-ranking defendant we have managed to capture, because the subject was a true mafia kingpin,” noted the prosecutor in charge of the investigation.

Sáez’s departure from the Navy was not with honors. Shortly before his retirement, he was accused of the theft of a hyperbaric chamber.

THE SHADOW OF THE DICTATORSHIP

In December 2006, Army General Ricardo Hargreaves Butrón was discharged from the institution. In the middle of that month, days after the death of Augusto Pinochet, in an interview with the Prensa Austral of Punta Arenas, Hargreaves (Commander-in-Chief of the V Division, Magallanes Region) referred to the dictator in the following terms: “I was a participant in Pinochet’s cause and I continue to share it (…) we owe him many things, not only as an Army, but as a country.”

The Commander-in-Chief of the Army at the time, Óscar Izurieta, asked for his resignation. It was a clear signal of the new times that were running in the military institution, which was reinforced in 2009, when Izurieta put an end to...

the fee-based contracts held by a group of former DINA and CNI agents involved in human rights trials. At the time, there was talk of a cleanup within the institution. But Hargreaves’ discharge did not mean his departure from the Army.

He remained linked to the institution as Corporate Affairs Manager of the Army’s Factories and Arsenals of Chile (FAMAE), and also as a professor at the Military School. According to the Capredena payroll, Hargreaves did not retire until August 2014 and today receives a pension of $3.5 million .

Added to that amount are his fees for academic work. At least until November of last year, the retired general was president of the Military School’s Teachers’ Center.

UNDER THE SHELTER OF THE ACADEMY

The Army War Academy is also a refuge for many uniformed personnel who, once retired, remain linked to the institution as Contract Personnel (PAC) or Civilian Professors (PC). This allows them to add regular income to their pensions or even, after at least three years of service, to recalculate their pensions upward.

A confidential Army document accessed by CIPER indicates that a retired officer with the rank of colonel or general hired as a PAC can earn between $1.5 million and $2.5 million per month . For brigadier generals, the salary as a PAC, separate from the pension they receive, reaches $2,526,910 .

That of a colonel, lieutenant colonel, or major reaches $1,458,112 ( see document ). A former civilian Army official who requested anonymity defined the War Academy as a “cash box for favors” and as a “protection network” among former uniformed personnel. –There are retired military personnel hired as PACs at the War Academy for administrative tasks who also teach classes and have contracts as civilian professors (PC) for up to 12 hours.

It is impossible for them to fulfill the duties of both contracts. The control system is a signature book that no one audits– a former uniformed officer who knows how the War Academy operates told CIPER.

Another uniformed officer told CIPER that both the War Academy and the Military School still employ as teachers or administrative staff (as PCs and PACs) former officers linked to the dictatorship’s repressive agencies, several of whom enjoy lucrative pensions.

CIPER’s investigation detected at least half a dozen former uniformed personnel in that situation on official payrolls. One of them is Colonel (ret.) Rodolfo Ortega Prado , who was head of the CNI in Punta Arenas between 1985 and 1989 (he used the alias “ Rodrigo ”).

On February 29, 2004, La Nación Domingo published a report titled “ A CNI in Madrid ”. In it, Ortega appears involved in the 1988 death of the 23-year-old socialist Susana Ovando Coñué , in Punta Arenas.

When the report appeared, which states that at least 10 former CNI agents identified him as their chief in Punta Arenas the same year as Ovando’s murder, Ortega was Chile’s military attaché at the embassy in Madrid.

In March 2004, the retired colonel appeared before the courts as a witness in this case. This was the version the colonel gave to La Nación regarding the death of Susana Ovando: “ The CNI in Punta Arenas was a minimal office in charge of administrative matters, without the operational capacity to detain.

During the period I was head of the CNI in Punta Arenas, no one was ever detained”. Ortega retired in February 2007 and his pension amounts to almost $2.6 million . But the former head of the CNI in Punta Arenas has remained linked to the Army, receiving other high fees.

He is the director of the Master’s in Military History and Strategic Thought at the War Academy. CIPER had access to the payroll of academics who will teach subjects at the War Academy in 2017. In that Excel spreadsheet, the names of the professors, the modules, and the academic hours contemplated for each course appear.

There, Colonel (ret.) Ortega –who holds a doctorate from the Complutense University of Madrid– appears as a professor in the subjects of “ JGS Execution (War Games)” and “ Geostrategy ”, which are taught in the modules “ Command and Advisory II ”, “ Command and Advisory III ”, and “ Strategy II ”.

Another former CNI agent who also appears on the War Academy’s list of professors for 2017 is the former Chief of the Army General Staff, General Guillermo Castro Muñoz : as a Civilian Professor (PC) in tasks of “ research and publication ”.

Castro is also president of the War Academy Graduates’ Center . General Castro belonged to the National Intelligence Center between 1979 and 1982. He himself acknowledged this in a 2003 judicial statement (as a witness) in the trial for the massacre of 22 peasants in Paine (October 1973).

In January 2008, Castro gave a second statement in which he admitted that he was part of a rifle company at “Cuartel Dos” of the San Bernardo Infantry School , used as a detention center (Cerro Chena), a unit that participated in the murders of the 22 peasants.

And he stated that he never saw detainees at that barracks and that he only found out some time later through the press that there were any. General Castro has not been prosecuted by the courts. In June 2015, Colonel Carl Marowski Pilowsky retired; he appears on the list of CNI members that the Army sent to the current Supreme Court minister, Sergio Muñoz, when he was investigating the crime of Tucapel Jiménez.

There are several tasks that Marowski currently continues to perform in the Army, which allow him to inflate his pension of $2.8 million . Sources consulted by CIPER indicated that the retired colonel is reportedly hired as a PAC in the Army’s Education and Doctrine Command (Education Division).

Marowski also serves as an academic for the Diploma in Higher Military Education at the War Academy and appears on the 2017 payroll as a “Civilian Professor” (PC) with tasks of “ research and publication ”.

In September 2016, Carl Marowski attended the Defense Commission of the Chamber of Deputies. He did so in his capacity as “secretary general of the War Academy”. Another retired military officer linked to the War Academy who belonged to Pinochet’s escort group that gave rise to the DINA’s Mulchén Brigade is General (ret.) Eduardo Ludovico Aldunate Hermann .

On the 2017 list of professors, Aldunate –who retired in July 2009 and today receives a pension of $3 million – appears with fees for “ strategic research ” tasks. Aldunate was also head of Chilean troops in Haiti before retiring.

Colonel (ret.) José Francisco Enberg Castro also joined the CNI. He retired in February 2014 and currently receives a pension of $2.8 million . On the list of subjects to be taught by the War Academy in 2017, Enberg appears as a “Civilian Professor” (PC) in “ teaching management ”.

In June 2013, a list of 1,500 uniformed personnel and civilians who were former DINA agents was leaked to the press. On that list appears the name of General (ret.) Enrique Slater Escanilla , who retired in September 2010.

In a note published on the Military School’s website in October 2015, Slater appears as a Civilian Professor (he has been teaching at the Military School for more than 10 years) and also as head of the institution’s Academic Department.

Slater, whose pension is now $3.2 million , also appears as an advisor (between March and August 2016) to the Army’s Education Division . His task: “ to provide axiology advice for the drafting of the Ethos regulation of the Chilean Army ”.

Source: ciperchile.cl, January 16, 2017

Unbelievable: Supervisor of tortures inflicted by the DINA works as a cardiologist at Clínica Indisa

Doctor Alejandro Forero participated in the "Joint Command" and was in charge of supervising the torture and drugging of prisoners who were taken away to be forcibly disappeared. Cardiologists, psychiatrists, dentists, traumatologists, pediatricians, gynecologists, and otolaryngologists put their knowledge, acquired to save lives, into the application of torture and political executions against hundreds of political prisoners during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

Several of them are still working in public hospitals, private clinics, and Armed Forces health institutions, attending to patients who have no idea that “their doctor” violated the Hippocratic Oath, by which he committed to using his knowledge for the benefit of the sick and to keep them from harm and terror.

This is the case of Alejandro Jorge Forero Álvarez, who is listed in the cardiology and internal medicine specialties at Clínica Indisa. Almost 24 years ago, specifically on October 1, 1999, this doctor became the first person to be “funado” (publicly shamed) by the Comisión Funa, intended to confront and make visible the crimes of those who were not judged judicially, socially, or politically.

The action took place precisely at his office at Clínica Indisa. Participation in the “Joint Command” According to the Human Rights website Memoria y Justicia, the cardiologist supervised the torture inflicted by the DINA in clandestine detention centers.

Alejandro Forero was a “Squadron Commander and doctor who was working at the time of the coup d’état at the FACh Hospital. In 1976, he provided services as a second lieutenant at the El Bosque Air Base and at the Colina Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment.

In this place, he participated in the “Joint Command”, an intelligence group that operated approximately between 1975 and 1976, in charge of the repression of the Communist Party and the Communist Youth.

During this period, according to the Rettig Report, he was responsible for the disappearance of nearly 30 people. Specifically, Forero was in charge of supervising the torture and drugging of prisoners who were taken away to be forcibly disappeared.

He was prosecuted by Judge Carlos Cerda in the middle of the dictatorship, but managed to go free after denying all the crimes that the survivors had accused him of. The aforementioned process refers to the case of Víctor Vega Riquelme, detained on January 3, 1976.

The investigation was then closed and the doctor was amnestied. In February 2002, at the insistence of Nelson Caucoto, the judge of the 5th Criminal Court of Santiago, Carlos Hazbún, prosecuted Dr. Forero along with a score of former members of the Joint Command for the crimes of illicit association and illegal detention regarding the kidnapping and disappearance of the communist militant.

The case is known for being one of those that best illustrates the role played by Miguel Estay Reyno, alias “El Fanta”, in the detention of his former communist comrades and close friends, as Vega was.

In May 2002, the 7th Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals, which then included the current president of the Supreme Court, Rubén Ballesteros, revoked the decision on the grounds of “res judicata”. “I was judged and found free of all guilt by the Court of Appeals, during the government of Ricardo Lagos,” the doctor stated in declarations offered to the Chilevisión program “En la Mira” in 2014.

In April 2022, the Fifth Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals sentenced Alejandro Forero to 5 years and 1 day of major imprisonment in its minimum degree as an accomplice to the crimes of qualified kidnapping of Luis Desiderio Moraga Cruz and Ricardo Manuel Weibel Navarrete.

And to 60 days as an accomplice to the crime of simple kidnapping of Ignacio Orlando González Espinoza. Consultation at Clínica Indisa However, the doctor continues to offer consultations in the cardiology and internal medicine specialties at Clínica Indisa, but he only attends in Providencia, not in Maipú, and does not receive Fonasa patients.

As El Desconcierto was able to verify, the next available date for an appointment with Forero is September 13, 2023. Likewise, a CIPER report revealed that the “Joint Command” doctor retired in 2014 and receives a pension of 2.5 million pesos.

For the president of the Association of Relatives of Political Executions (AFEP), Alicia Lira, cases like that of the doctor “outrage and violate” them, especially 50 years after the coup d’état against Salvador Allende.

In conversation with El Desconcierto, she lamented that “this doctor Forero continues working despite the terrible crimes he committed against our relatives”. “As a doctor, he was more of a criminal because it is assumed that a doctor makes a commitment to life, to save the life of the person, that he has to attend with his maximum effort,” the social leader indicated. “However, he used his profession to measure how long the resistance of the political prisoner they were torturing could last, for which his crime is double that of someone who shoots a bullet into the head, because of his profession and because of the torment he created and allowed,” she stated. by Leonardo Buitrago

Source: elciudadano.cl, August 28, 2023

Confirmed: Alejandro Forero, former cardiologist at Clínica Indisa and DINA torturer, arrested

In April 2022, the Fifth Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals sentenced Alejandro Forero to 5 years and 1 day of major imprisonment in its minimum degree, as an accomplice to the crimes of qualified kidnapping of Luis Desiderio Moraga Cruz and Ricardo Manuel Weibel Navarrete.

Cardiologists, psychiatrists, dentists, traumatologists, pediatricians, gynecologists, and otolaryngologists put their knowledge, acquired to save lives, into the application of torture and political executions against hundreds of political prisoners during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

This is the case of Alejandro Jorge Forero Álvarez, who was listed in the cardiology and internal medicine specialties at Clínica Indisa. Almost 24 years ago, specifically on October 1, 1999, this doctor became the first person to be “funado” (publicly shamed) by the Comisión Funa, intended to confront and make visible the crimes of those who were not judged judicially, socially, or politically.

The action took place precisely at his office at Clínica Indisa. According to the Human Rights website Memoria y Justicia, the cardiologist supervised the torture inflicted by the DINA in clandestine detention centers.

He was even a “Squadron Commander and doctor who was working at the time of the coup d’état at the FACH Hospital. Specifically, the specialist was in charge of supervising the torture and drugging of prisoners who were taken away to be forcibly disappeared.

He was prosecuted by Judge Carlos Cerda in the middle of the dictatorship, but managed to go free after denying all the crimes that the survivors had accused him of. However, in April 2022, the Fifth Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals sentenced Alejandro Forero to 5 years and 1 day of major imprisonment in its minimum degree, as an accomplice to the crimes of qualified kidnapping of Luis Desiderio Moraga Cruz and Ricardo Manuel Weibel Navarrete.

And to 60 days as an accomplice to the crime of simple kidnapping of Ignacio Orlando González Espinoza. Finally, said sentence was ratified by the Supreme Court on April 24, 2024, while on May 7 he was arrested and will serve his sentence in the special module of Colina 1. El Ciudadano contacted Clínica Indisa, who confirmed that Alejandro Forero no longer practices at this health facility.

Source: elciudadano.cl, May 8, 2024

Supreme Court confirms convictions of 27 former agents of the Joint Command for crimes against five communist militants committed between 1975 and 1976

The Supreme Court rejected the appeals in substance filed by the defenses of the former agents of the so-called Joint Command against the sentence that convicted 27 of them for their responsibility in the crimes of simple kidnapping and qualified homicide of Ignacio Orlando González Espinoza and Juan René Orellana Catalán; and in the qualified kidnappings of Ricardo Manuel Weibel Navarrete, Luis Desiderio Moraga Cruz, and Luis Emilio Gerardo Maturana González, all militants of the Communist Party.

The crimes were perpetrated between October 1975 and June 1976, in the city of Santiago. The so-called Joint Command was a repressive apparatus created by the dictatorship under the tutelage of the Air Force (Fach) and the participation of agents from the Army, the Navy, the Carabineros, and civilian fascists, which operated mainly between the years 1975 and 1977, and whose reason for being was to compete in repressive and criminal tasks with the absolute power held by the DINA under the tutelage of the Army and the direction of Pinochet and Contreras.

In a unanimous ruling (case file 32.012-2022), the Second Chamber of the highest court -composed of ministers Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Jorge Dahm, Leopoldo Llanos, Minister María Teresa Letelier, and Minister Jean Pierre Matus- confirmed the challenged sentence, issued by the Santiago Court of Appeals, which sentenced former Fach officer Juan Francisco Saavedra Loyola and former Carabineros officer Manuel Agustín Muñoz Gamboa to sentences of 18 years of imprisonment, plus 13 years and plus 3 years of imprisonment, each.

Former Navy officer Daniel Luis Enrique Guimpert Corvalán to sentences of 18 years, plus 12 and plus 3 years of imprisonment. Former Army officers Álvaro Julio Federico Corbalán Castilla and Sergio Antonio Díaz López, and former Navy officer Jorge Aníbal Osses Novoa, to sentences of 12 years of imprisonment, plus 10 years and one day, plus 400 days of imprisonment each.

Agents Raúl Horacio González Fernández and Alejandro Julio Segundo Sáez Mardones to two sentences of 10 years and one day of imprisonment, plus 400 days of imprisonment each. Agents Roberto Alfonso Flores Cisterna and Juan Carlos Hernán Rodrigo Villarreal to sentences of 10 years and one day, plus 5 years and one day, plus 400 days of imprisonment each.

Civilian fascist Otto Silvio Trujillo Miranda to the sentence of 10 years and one day of imprisonment. Agent Lenin Figueroa Sánchez, two sentences of 5 years and one day, plus 400 days of imprisonment.

Agents Sergio Daniel Valenzuela Morales and Juan Atilio Aravena Hurtuvia, to sentences of 5 years and one day of imprisonment, plus 5 years, plus 400 days of imprisonment. Civilian fascists Andrés Pablo Potín Lailhacar, Viviana Lucinda Ugarte Sandoval, Emilio Mahias del Río, and agents Juan Luis Fernando López López, José Evaristo Rojas Alruiz, and Francisco Segundo Illanes Miranda, to sentences of 5 years and one day of imprisonment, plus 400 days of imprisonment.

Ernesto Arturo Lobos Gálvez and Alejandro Jorge Forero Álvarez, to sentences of 5 years and one day of imprisonment, plus 60 days of imprisonment. Roberto Francisco Serón Cárdenas, to the sentence of 5 years and one day of imprisonment.

Robinson Alfonso Suazo Jaque, Pedro Ernesto Caamaño Medina, Pedro Juan Zambrano Uribe, and José Hernando Alvarado Alvarado, to the sentence of 4 years, plus 60 days of imprisonment each. The also convicted Antonio Benedicto Quiros Reyes and Miguel Arturo Estay Reyno died during the course of the process.

In the judicial investigation and first-instance ruling, Minister Miguel Vásquez Plaza established that there existed a de facto group that operated clandestinely between the years 1975 and 1976, formed mainly by agents who belonged to the Air Force Intelligence Directorate, in addition to Carabineros de Chile, the Navy, and the Army, with the collaboration of civilians, whose main objective was the repression of the Communist Party Youth, for which they proceeded to detain several of them.

This group, called the Joint Command, used various facilities for detentions and torture: the Cerrillos Hangar; Nido 20, a secret detention and torture center located at Calle Santa Teresa N° 037, paradero 20 of Gran Avenida; Nido 18, a secret center located at Calle Perú N° 9053, La Florida, Santiago, which was used exclusively for torture; La Prevención or Remo Cero, which were dungeons located inside the Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment in Colina, all this during the year 1975; La Firma, at the beginning of 1976, when said group moved its operations to the rear of the property in charge of Carabineros de Chile, located at Calle Dieciocho, opposite N° 229, which belonged to the former newspaper Clarín, calling it La Firma. The operational action of the group consisted of detaining people with the modality of kidnapping, keeping them captive in secret centers, and subjecting them to interrogation and torture, physical and psychological, to obtain information and break their will, achieving the collaboration of some of them, to the point that some were assimilated as operational agents of the group, which provided greater effectiveness in the chain detention of communist militants, who were then forcibly disappeared; of some of them, over the years, part of their remains were found. On November 7, 1975, at approximately 10:00 PM, Ricardo Manuel Weibel Navarrete was detained at his home on Calle Río Maule in the Recoleta district by individuals wearing civilian clothes; he was kept deprived of liberty in the center called La Prevención or Remo Cero, located inside the Anti-Aircraft Regiment in Colina, the last place he was seen alive and, subsequently, his remains were found on the grounds of Fuerte Arteaga, Peldehue. On October 20, 1975, in the early hours of the morning, Luis Desiderio Moraga Cruz was detained at his home on Pasaje Tokio in the Juanita Aguirre neighborhood, Conchalí district, Santiago, by individuals wearing civilian clothes; he was kept confined in the Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment in Colina, inside which was the center called La Prevención or Remo Cero, this being the last place he was seen alive. On December 4, 1975, in the early hours of the morning, Ignacio Orlando González Espinoza was detained at his home on Calle Soberanía in the Santiago district by individuals wearing civilian clothes; he was kept deprived of liberty in the center called La Prevención or Remo Cero, located inside the Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment in Colina, the last place he was seen alive and, subsequently, he was executed on the grounds of Fuerte Arteaga, Peldehue, where his remains were found. On June 8, 1976, in the Estación Central sector, Luis Emilio Gerardo Maturana González met with Juan René Orellana Catalán, both militants of the Communist Youth in hiding due to the political persecution they were subjected to, with the purpose of giving Orellana Catalán party money for himself and for him to in turn give it to other party militants since Maturana González was in charge of distributing it; at that moment they were detained by operational agents of the aforementioned Joint Command, keeping them confined in the center called La Firma, from where their trail is lost. Subsequently, Orellana Catalán was executed at Cuesta Barriga, where his remains were found.

Source: resumen.cl, April 26, 2024