The criminal complaint for human rights violations filed last week against the second-in-command of the Navy, Vice Admiral Cristián Gantes Young, for the torture committed on the training ship Esmeralda, where the priest Miguel Woodward died, is, for the leader of the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared (AFDD) Mireya García, "a great contribution to the cause of justice in cases of human rights violations."

"The filing of the complaint serves to ensure that human rights violators never feel that justice will not reach them, because it is a social responsibility that there be justice in this country for human rights violations," she stated.

García downplayed the fact that Gantes is still in active service, as in her opinion "there are many who are in service because the hand of justice has not yet reached them. There is an entire generation that participated in human rights violations that has managed to remain unscathed and free of all responsibility, but at some point, the hour of justice will arrive for them."

Regarding the repercussions that the lawsuit filed by lawyer Daniela Marzi might have within the Navy, the AFDD leader pointed out that "without a doubt, their stance will be the same as always: a stance of justification and that they are not responsible; in short, I imagine hearing what I have always heard, without assuming social responsibility for the events."

In this vein, she finally added that the Navy "should call Gantes to retire, but they will not do so, because with that they would feel that they are casting aside one of their own and that they are not covering for him, providing the security that they have given to human rights violators for all these years." She added that "it would be appropriate for them to do so from a moral point of view, but I see it as very difficult.

Furthermore, regardless of the position he holds (active or retired), the important thing is that a group identifies him as a human rights violator."

Source: Generacion80.cl, March 25, 2009

A criminal complaint for a human rights case was filed last week against the second-in-command of the Navy, Vice Admiral Cristián Gantes Young, in the case being processed by Judge Eliana Quezada of the Valparaíso Court of Appeals regarding the torture committed on the training ship Esmeralda, where the priest Miguel Woodward died.

The lawsuit was filed by lawyer Daniela Marzi and also includes the current fiscal prosecutor of the State Defense Council (CDE) of the Fifth Region, Enrique Vicente, who served as a prosecutor for that branch of the Armed Forces at the time of the Military Coup.

According to sources close to the case, the complaint is based on the contradictions into which Gantes Young, an electronics expert who is about to retire, allegedly fell.

The legal action could tarnish the administration of Commander-in-Chief Rodolfo Codina, who has maintained good relations with the government, giving positive signals regarding the issue of human rights violations, including the visit made by those detained after the coup to the Isla Dawson base, where the current Minister of Public Works, Sergio Bitar (PPD), was held.

Added to this is the delivery to the proceedings of the Esmeralda's logbook, which had been "lost" for more than three decades.

As indicated, Gantes allegedly declared that on September 11 itself, while a lieutenant, he had been transferred from the Esmeralda to another ship and then to the Juan Fernández island, a version that is not credible to the plaintiffs due to his low seniority at that time.

Last year, Gantes was summoned to testify as an accused by the magistrate to determine if he was on the Esmeralda at the time Woodward died.

The first clue the judge had was an anonymous letter sent, with copies to La Moneda, the Senate, and the port city's court, as noted in a piece published last year by the newspaper La Nación. The content of the letter detailed exactly which officers were on the training ship at that date, including Gantes.

In his testimony, Gantes indicates that he was on the Esmeralda just until September 11, at which point his assignment to the destroyer Blanco Encalada was issued.

"In my case, I was transferred to the destroyer Blanco Encalada (...). From that moment on, I completely disassociated myself from the training course of the training ship Esmeralda," Gantes declared.

The latter, in 1973, was in the middle of a midshipman course, in charge of Fernando Espinoza Simonetti, and had just returned from a trip to Europe.

According to Gantes, "on September 12, 1973, I had to travel by air to the aforementioned city (Talcahuano), where I boarded said ship (the Blanco Encalada) and joined its crew around noon."

Subsequently, his statement continues, the warship returned to Valparaíso on September 17 and five days later headed to the Juan Fernández island.

Other prosecuted individuals

Currently, those prosecuted for the death of Woodward, as authors of qualified kidnapping, are Navy Captain Ricardo Riesco Cornejo, then in charge of the interrogators of the Navy and Carabineros on the Esmeralda and at the War Academy.

He is followed by Juan Mackay, who would reach the admiralty years later; Vice Admirals Sergio Barra von Kretschmann, who held the position of deputy director of the DINA; Guillermo Aldoney; and Adolfo Walbaum Wieber, commander of the First Naval Zone; and the then-first lieutenant of the Medical Corps, Carlos Costa Canessa.

The latter is prosecuted as a cover-up agent, as he was the one who signed Woodward's death certificate.

In the document, Costa wrote that the priest died of cardiac arrest on the street. However, he never saw the body to certify his decision.

Source: Monday, March 23, 2009, El Mostrador

The priest Woodward officially died aboard the Esmeralda

This is established by the training ship's logbook

The investigation by Judge Eliana Quezada reveals details regarding the case of the priest, who was tortured to death in Navy facilities. The documents indicate that he was taken off the training ship at 12:30 on September 22, 1973, half an hour after his death.

Miguel Woodward's last breath was likely taken aboard the Esmeralda and not on the way to the Naval Hospital, as the sailors who have testified in the case of the Anglo-Chilean priest's death claim. They probably did not want a man of the Church to be the first and only fatal victim aboard the "White Lady." But the data that confirms this is the judicial investigation, carried out based on the training ship's own logbook.

34 years after the religious man's death, the investigation managed to establish that Woodward was taken off the ship on September 22 at 12:30 in the afternoon. If one adds to this data that the death certificate indicates that the death occurred exactly at noon, it is logical to conclude that the religious man died before reaching land.

In 2006, and after the Navy delivered a photocopy of the Esmeralda's logbook, the minister of the Valparaíso Court of Appeals, Eliana Quezada, in charge of the investigation, summoned the two midshipmen who recorded Woodward's entry and exit from the training ship to testify. They are retired officers Thomas Ilich and Humberto Toro Santa María.

Asked by the judge if they knew the reason for the summons, both responded affirmatively, as they said they had already been interviewed on the subject by the then-auditor general of the Navy, Rear Admiral José Antonio Galván Bernabeu, who retired in December 2006. Two weeks ago, and summoned to testify for this reason, Galván had to give explanations in court about the proceedings carried out.

About a month ago, UDI Senator Jorge Arancibia stated in a letter that the minister's investigation was "dark" and defended those prosecuted in the case. But, despite his remarks—which received the support of the Gremialista bench and cost him a protest at Congress—there are practically no doubts left about the fundamental aspects of the Woodward case.

Even the prosecuted individuals themselves, in their judicial confessions, debunk Arancibia's version, as published by LND two weeks ago.

Today, the investigation seeks to clarify the only aspect of the case that is not fully cleared up: who detained the priest and at what time. It is only known that it was at night, probably on September 20, at his house on Cerro Los Placeres, and that from there he was taken to the War Academy in Playa Ancha, where he suffered torture. He allegedly remained in this place for at least three days.

KEY TESTIMONY

Vice Admiral Cristián Gantes Young The main testimony in the case, which confirms the duress Woodward received in that place, was that of retired Carabineros Captain Nelson López Cofré, who was a member of the team that interrogated the religious man.

According to what López declared to the justice system, Woodward was tied to a chair, beaten, and interrogated for about an hour by a group of 10 people, among whom were Navy and Carabineros officials.

In his statement, the former police officer named the prosecuted individuals Juan Mackay Barriga and Ricardo Riesco Cornejo, both Navy men, and five Carabineros, including Sergeant (R) Jorge Leiva Cordero.

The police officer also said that the team of torturers had used a machine that produced electricity and, although he claimed he had not participated in the illegal duress beyond an occasional blow, he detailed minutely the type of cable and the wooden box used, as well as the sections of the detainee's body where "the others" applied the current.

Another judicial statement in this case, from María Elena Gálvez Valdenegro, who was detained in that same facility starting September 18, 1973, sheds light on the state Woodward was in during his time at the War Academy.

Gálvez says she saw a man in front of the building whom the guards identified as a "revolutionary priest who trained university students in the hills." According to her testimony, it was a tall, thin man who was blindfolded, had his hands tied behind his back, and was standing barefoot on a tile.

When he lost his balance, his jailers forced him back into his original position with violent blows from rifle butts.

THE LAST MOMENTS

It is also not yet clear why Woodward was taken from the War Academy and brought, in terrible physical condition, to the Esmeralda, which was docked at the breakwater. When the van transporting him arrived at that location, two men dressed in blue denim suits, in charge of his custody, got out.

There, according to statements in the proceedings, a strong argument took place between the commander of the training ship, Navy Captain (R) Jorge Sabugo Silva, and his second-in-command, Eduardo Barison Roberts.

While the latter insisted that Woodward should not board the training ship due to the terrible state he was in and the wounds that made him bleed profusely, Sabugo, who is now dead, indicated the opposite. Finally, the ship's commander imposed his rank and the priest was taken on board.

In the proceedings, however, the decision is blamed on the then-Chief of Staff of the First Naval Zone, Guillermo Aldoney Hansen. He declared that he had received a call from Sabugo requesting approval to embark the detainee, and that he ordered him to proceed because the ship's commander assured him that Woodward was suffering from pneumonia.

In his judicial statement, Barison confirms the poor condition in which the priest arrived. And his testimony is corroborated by the statement of another detainee during those days on the training ship, Jorge Basaude Sagredo.

According to the latter, when he arrived as a prisoner at the breakwater, before they took him onto the ship, he saw a man there who, he later learned, was a priest who worked in the Cerro Los Placeres sector. The detainee, he relates, was almost unconscious, although he managed to let out an agonizing moan, and his fingers were broken and blackish in color.

The then-first sailor Lorenzo Felipe Rivas adds in the proceedings that he saw three or four people not belonging to the Esmeralda moving the corpse of a person, about 35 years old, with a wound on his forehead. And he points out that he later found out it was a priest.

Now, Judge Eliana Quezada's efforts are focused on reconstructing the moments that preceded the priest's detention: where and at what time he was detained, and also if he was taken to another site before the War Academy. Those findings could not only lead to new prosecutions. They would also allow for the closing of one of the most controversial cases of the dictatorship.

The statement of the third-in-command of the Navy

The exact moment of Miguel Woodward's death is not the only novelty in the case being substantiated by Minister Eliana Quezada. In April of this year, the third-in-command of the Navy, Vice Admiral Cristián Gantes Young, was summoned to testify in the case, due to information indicating that he had been aboard the Esmeralda in the days when Woodward died.

The main clue was an anonymous letter that, in mid-2007, arrived simultaneously at La Moneda, the Senate, and the port city's court. The letter details, with an extreme degree of knowledge, the names of each of the high-ranking officers who had remained on the training ship after the military coup.

Of all of them, without a doubt, the most revealing name is that of Gantes, current Director of Navy Services and the only one of all the mentioned officers who remains in active service.

In his statement before Judge Quezada, Gantes points out that he remained on the Esmeralda just until September 11, the day a resolution was issued in which midshipman personnel were transferred from the training ship. "In my case, I was transferred to the destroyer Blanco Encalada (...).

From that moment on, I completely disassociated myself from the training course of the training ship Esmeralda."

At that time, Gantes was in the middle of the course—under the command of midshipman instructor Fernando Espinoza Simonetti—and on September 10, along with an extensive crew of officers, he had returned from the annual trip through Europe. The Esmeralda left for Talcahuano that same night, but returned to be absolutely operational on the day of the coup at the Valparaíso breakwater.

Gantes's statement also points out that to reach the Blanco Encalada, docked in Talcahuano, "on September 12, 1973, I had to travel by air to the aforementioned city, where I boarded said ship and joined its crew around noon." Further on, the vice admiral relates that, once aboard the Blanco Encalada, the ship headed to Valparaíso, where it arrived on September 17, to set sail the following day for the Juan Fernández island, from where it returned on the 22nd.

LND requested the service record and the transfer order of Gantes from the Navy's Public Relations Directorate, but there was no formal response to this request.

On Tuesday, the Human Rights Program of the Ministry of the Interior, one of the plaintiff parties in the case, requested that the judge summon Gantes's instructor, Fernando Espinoza Simonetti, and other crew members of the training ship to testify.

The prosecuted individuals

In April of this year, Minister Eliana Quezada prosecuted six retired Navy officers, in a resolution that, essentially, responds to the hierarchical structure of the time. Five are charged as authors of qualified kidnapping:

• Navy Captain Ricardo Riesco Cornejo, who was allegedly one of the heads of the interrogation teams—composed of Marine infantry and Carabineros—both on the Esmeralda and at the War Academy. At the head of the group was the deceased Jorge Román. According to Riesco's statement, electricity was applied during interrogations so that the detainees would provide information.
• Above Riesco in the chain of command was Juan Mackay Barriga, who was the operational chief, supervised interrogations, and, furthermore, reported directly to the Intelligence Service of the Command of the Jurisdictional Area of Internal Security (SICAJSI).
• Above Mackay was Vice Admiral Sergio Barra von Kretschmann, head of SICAJSI. Barra later served in the Joint Command and later even became deputy director of the DINA.
• Following the chain of command, the Chief of Staff of the First Naval Zone was Vice Admiral Guillermo Aldoney Hansen, in charge of dictating the rules to be followed by SICAJSI. His superior and the highest authority of the time was Vice Admiral Adolfo Walbaum Wieber, commander of the First Naval Zone.
• The only one prosecuted as a cover-up agent is the then-first lieutenant of the Medical Corps Carlos Costa Canessa, who signed Woodward's death certificate—where he indicates that he died of cardiorespiratory arrest on the public road—without ever seeing the priest's body.

Source: La Nación, May 31, 2008