The magistrate also determined that the two convicted individuals and the Chilean Treasury must jointly pay compensation of $30,000,000 to Patricia Paredes Parra, a plaintiff in the case. Special judge Joaquín Billard Acuña handed down a sentence in the investigation into the qualified homicides of the former mayor of Chillán, Ricardo Lagos Reyes, his spouse Alba Ojeda Grandón, and their son Carlos Lagos Salinas, which occurred on September 16, 1973, in the capital of the Ñuble province.

The magistrate determined a sentence of 5 years of imprisonment with the benefit of supervised release for Carabineros officer Luis Gajardo Arenas; and three years and one day of imprisonment with the benefit of supervised release for former uniformed officer Patricio Jeldres Rodríguez.

Meanwhile, Pedro Loyola Osorio and Arturo Alarcón Navarrete were acquitted due to a lack of participation. Likewise, the magistrate determined that the two convicted individuals and the Chilean Treasury must jointly pay compensation of $30,000,000 to Patricia Paredes Parra, a plaintiff in the case.

Killed in their home On September 16, 1973, the former mayor of Chillán and member of the Partido Socialista, Ricardo Raúl Lagos Reyes , his spouse Alba Ojeda Grandón , who was pregnant, and their son Carlos Eduardo Lagos Salinas , a university student, were killed in their home.

The information provided by the local authority indicated that the victims had allegedly engaged in a confrontation with Carabineros personnel when they arrived at their home to arrest them. However, witnesses to the events have pointed out that when the group of Carabineros and military personnel arrived, the home was raided, the Lagos family was subsequently executed, and there was no confrontation with public forces.

Other testimonies add that the operation had begun hours earlier, with the access points to the Lagos family home being closed off. The death certificate for Lagos Reyes lists the cause of death as: “Multiple gunshot wounds.” The bodies of the three victims of political execution were removed from the Chillán morgue by two doctors who were friends of the family, who took charge of their burial.

Source: El Mostrador, Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Harsh criticism of Judge Billard for light sentences in triple crime

Plaintiff lawyer Eduardo Contreras stated that he will appeal the sentence because “this is not justice.” Lawyer Hugo Gutiérrez described the minister's resolution as “shameful and aberrant.” Human rights lawyers formulated harsh criticisms of Santiago Court of Appeals minister Joaquín Billard, who yesterday handed down light sentences and granted the benefit of "supervised release" to those who, on September 16, 1973, murdered the socialist mayor of Chillán, Ricardo Lagos Reyes, his wife Alba Ojeda Grandón—seven months pregnant—and their 19-year-old son Carlos Lagos Salinas.

In a resolution—described by lawyer Hugo Gutiérrez as "shameful and aberrant" and which the plaintiff in the case, Eduardo Contreras, considered as "not doing justice and promoting impunity"—Billard sentenced retired Carabineros Colonel Luis Gajardo Arenas to five years in prison as the perpetrator of the triple homicide, granting him the right to serve the sentence under a "supervised release" regime due to his "impeccable conduct." The judge also sentenced retired Carabineros Lieutenant Colonel Patricio Jeldres Rodríguez to three years in prison as an accessory, granting him the same benefit. The lawyers also considered the acquittal issued by Billard for those who appear, according to plaintiff Contreras, to be the material authors of the triple crime—retired Carabineros non-commissioned officers Juan Opazo Guerrero, Pedro Loyola Osorio, and Arturo Alarcón Navarrete—to be a "legal aberration." Eduardo Contreras declared to La Nación that "we will certainly appeal this first-instance sentence because we consider it unjust and because these rulings do not provide justice to the victims and their families." The appeal must be heard by a chamber of the Santiago Court, which has the authority to modify Billard's ruling. The matter will then reach the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court, which has also distinguished itself in the last two years by substantially reducing sentences and granting benefits for "impeccable conduct" to military personnel who committed crimes during the past dictatorship. At noon on Sunday, September 16, 1973, about 30 Carabineros and Army personnel entered Mayor Lagos's house in Chillán, taking him along with his wife and son to the backyard of the house, where they killed them with multiple shots, despite the mayor's pleas not to kill his wife due to her advanced state of pregnancy. Two workers who happened to be in the house because they had delivered merchandise ordered by the mayor were locked in a storage room by the military; they testified during the proceedings regarding Lagos Reyes's pleas for them not to kill his wife and son. They were also witnesses to the cruelty with which the perpetrators treated the family and the mockery they made of the mayor's pleas. Subsequently, the head of the state of emergency zone in Chillán, Army Colonel Juan Guillermo Toro Dávila, disguised the murder as a "confrontation." Lawyer Contreras, who was a communist deputy for Chillán at the time, extended his criticisms to Billard "because he also left Toro Dávila unpunished, who clearly bears full criminal responsibility for this triple crime." The mayor was the father of Ricardo Lagos Salinas, a member of the PS Central Committee who remains forcibly disappeared. Compensation In any case, the lawyers said that "at least" the judge did not apply the amnesty law or the statute of limitations for the crime, declaring that the crime is one of those considered a "crime against humanity," and in this regard, international criminal legislation that protects human rights must be applied. At the same time, in the sentence, Billard partially accepted a civil lawsuit and ordered the Treasury and the two retired Carabineros officers to pay the family the sum of 30 million pesos for moral damages.

Source: La Nación, Thursday, August 21, 2008

Retired Carabineros officer serving sentence for human rights violations dies in Punta Peuco

Retired Colonel

Luis Gajardo Arenas , who was being held at the Punta Peuco prison, where he was serving a sentence for human rights violations, passed away this morning at the Dipreca Hospital. As confirmed to Emol by Gendarmerie sources, the death occurred at 01:00 hours today, due to multi-organ failure, suffered after an initial decompensation that occurred at the aforementioned prison.

Following this, he was transferred to the uniformed police medical facility, where he suffered a pre-infarction and subsequent failure. Luis Gajardo was serving a 5-year effective prison sentence for the murder of the mayor of Chillán, Ricardo Lagos Reyes , his 19-year-old son Carlos Lagos Salinas , and his wife, who was seven months pregnant, Alba Ojeda Grandón , an event that occurred on September 16, 1973.

He began serving his sentence on September 27, 2010, and the period was set to end on June 19, 2015.

Source: El Mercurio, October 24, 2013