The deterioration of diplomatic relations between Chile and Venezuela will apparently not stop with the return of Ambassador Fabio Vió to Caracas. Since January, there has been annoyance in Venezuelan diplomatic circles regarding the ties that the Consul General of Chile in that country, Jorge Garretón Iturra, may have had with the former National Intelligence Directorate (DINA).

This lawyer, a current Christian Democrat (DC) militant and former naval officer, arrived in Caracas on June 12, 2002. This was his first diplomatic appointment abroad since he joined the foreign service after the military coup.

The information linking him to the secret services was published by several media outlets sympathetic to President Hugo Chávez and sent to some officials at our country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Despite this, it has not been given much relevance, nor has it caused much of a stir.

In Chile, meanwhile, the consul is being investigated by the 17th Criminal Court of Santiago, after the children of the former naval aide-de-camp to Salvador Allende, Captain Arturo Araya Peeters, filed a complaint against Garretón and three other navy officials for "denial of justice." The current diplomatic official was the secretary of the Naval Tribunal that handled the case of the aide-de-camp's assassination at the hands of an ultra-right-wing group.

All the accused, despite the fact that they acknowledged and felt proud of their participation in the crime, were acquitted, and the case was classified as "assault on personnel of the armed forces." The children of Araya Peeters had no idea that the former Navy officer was providing diplomatic services for the State of Chile, and they do not know if he has testified officially, as the case is under summary secrecy.

First accusation in the press The first press report regarding the questions surrounding the consul appeared on page 17 of the newspaper “Vea,” in an article titled “Chilean Consul a member of Pinochet’s Gestapo,” which states in its main part: "It has become known in diplomatic circles and among circles of Chileans living in Caracas that the current consul of Chile in Venezuela, Jorge Esteban Garretón Iturra, was a member of Pinochet’s DINA, the police and intelligence agency famous for having tortured thousands of Chileans and for forcibly disappearing people.

According to information on the matter, Garretón Iturra is linked to the denunciation of people and to having participated in acts of torture against detainees." The newspaper is directed by Guillermo García Ponce, who is the "head of the Political Command of the Bolivarian Revolution, a group of parties that support the government of President Hugo Chávez." Conflict-ridden stay at the Foreign Ministry Since Garretón entered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the 1970s, his stay has not been free of controversy.

He belongs to the generation known disparagingly in the Ministry as the ventaneros—that is, officials who entered the service between 1974 and 1975 thanks to the arrival of the dictatorship, allowing them to opt for high ranks in the diplomatic hierarchy without the need for a career path, and who generally came from the various prosecutor's offices of the branches of the Armed Forces.

A lawyer by profession, he arrived from the naval prosecutor's office in Valparaíso and never had good relations with his colleagues in foreign affairs. As recalled, when he was in Santiago, he lived alone in a hotel and was not known to have a family.

He would lead the same lifestyle in Venezuela. But his loneliness was not the biggest problem. According to the opinion of a member of the ministry, he allegedly has "disturbed mental faculties, which is not just a saying (...) He should not be in Caracas, but in a psychiatric hospital." Strangely, and despite being a career official, he never wanted to leave Chile.

No one knows very well why. For this reason, he was assigned for five years on a service commission outside the Foreign Ministry, because no one wanted him inside. Despite all this background, his continuity in the ministry has never been questioned, because a "sort of impunity" operates, the same that has occurred in cases of other officials linked to the Letelier and Prats cases.

The troublesome DC factor Aside from this background and unaware of the complaint that exists in Chile for "denial of justice," diplomatic circles have severely questioned the role that the Christian Democratic party has played in Venezuelan internal politics.

Fundamentally, they say that “the Chilean Foreign Minister, Soledad Alvear, who is also a Christian Democrat and the wife of the President of the Christian Democrat Organization of America (ODCA), Gutenberg Martínez, are equally questioned by the other members of the Chilean coalition.

The ODCA has met on several occasions in Caracas with the sectors most strongly opposed to President Chávez’s government, compromising the independence of Chilean foreign policy.” Finally, they point out that “Venezuelan business sectors have reiterated to local media that the appointment of a high-level political figure, removed from the internal controversies of the Christian Democratic Party of Chile, could be the beginning of conversations aimed at improving relations, especially economic ones, between both countries.

For those sectors, the return of the current Ambassador Vió would be negative for those purposes.” However, Vió is already in Caracas.

Source: February 12, 2004, El Mostrador

The hidden history of the Consulate

Chilean diplomacy stars in a dramatic Venezuelan soap opera

In an official letter sent to the Foreign Ministry, Consul General Jorge Garretón Iturra described the publications by pro-Chávez media outlets linking him to the DINA as an "infamy" and accused a subordinate of being the "intellectual author" of the accusations.

But this is not the first time Garretón has stirred the waters in foreign affairs. In 1999, he sparked a scandal in the Foreign Ministry by accusing a superior of "sexual harassment." A true Venezuelan soap opera is taking place at the Consulate General of Chile in Caracas.

The protagonists: the Consul and the person in charge of managing the financial and accounting aspects of the diplomatic representation. Last Thursday, El Mostrador.cl exclusively reported on the accusations that the press politically linked to President Chávez was making against the Consul General of our country.

In the newspaper VEA, it was stated verbatim: “It has become known in diplomatic circles and among circles of Chileans living in Caracas that the current consul of Chile in Venezuela, Jorge Esteban Garretón Iturra, was a member of Pinochet’s DINA, the police and intelligence agency famous for having tortured thousands of Chileans and for forcibly disappearing people.

According to information on the matter, Garretón Iturra is linked to the denunciation of people and to having participated in acts of torture against detainees.” At the same time, our media outlet managed to establish that Jorge Garretón Iturra, now a DC militant, was the secretary of the Naval Tribunal, which, in the opinion of the children of Salvador Allende’s former aide-de-camp, Arturo Araya, "denied justice" in their father’s case.

The accused in the aide-de-camp’s assassination belonged to a splinter faction of Patria y Libertad, an extreme right-wing group that instigated the military coup. Everyone was set free. However, the story did not end there.

The Consul sent his defense to the Foreign Ministry, where he pointed out that the publications that appeared in the newspaper VEA in January were an "infamy" and blamed a female official for being the "intellectual author" of the act.

Side A: Rosalía Vásquez According to investigations carried out by El Mostrador.cl, the official is none other than the General Administrator of the consulate: Rosalía Vásquez. Vásquez is allegedly a close friend of a Chinese businessman who has his official residence in the city of Iquique and at the same time possesses investments in Caracas, among which are several restaurants spread throughout that Venezuelan city.

The wife of this businessman, due to the close relationship he has with the official of the representation, motivated the official wife to appear before the Chilean consulate, complaining about the "unpresentable" nature of this relationship.

This controversial oriental businessman was also one of the people who testified in favor of the president of Fedecamaras, Pedro Carmona Estanga. Carmona Estanga was the one who assumed the Presidency of Venezuela after the attempted coup in that country on April 11, 2002.

His mandate lasted only one day. Consequently, he was later tried in Caracas. The president of Fedecamaras, something similar to the Sofofa in Chile, led the fierce opposition of the business sector to the Chávez government, considering that it "promoted statism and hindered private property and free enterprise." Rosalía Vásquez is also one of the highest-paid officials at the consulate.

Added to this is the fact that she handles the accounting and "works little." According to sources close to the case, she always makes excuses that she "is sick." Faced with this irregular conduct, Jorge Garretón Iturra allegedly called her attention, demanding that she comply with the corresponding schedules.

This allegedly motivated Rosalía Vásquez to resort to her contacts in the pro-Chavista press so that they would finally publish the article in VEA linking him to the DINA. The administrator’s poor behavior had already been warned by the consuls prior to Garretón, as she ultimately absented herself from work for three or four days without any type of restriction.

A spy However, this controversial official would not be viewed favorably by the Chávez Government either. There is a presumption that she had become an informant for the Americans, because for a time she worked closely with the wife of the former United States ambassador to Venezuela, Jhon Maito, who is currently his country’s representative to the Organization of American States (OAS).

Such a relationship would have allowed Rosalía to report on what was happening in the diplomatic corps, as she used her status as a consulate official to penetrate diplomatic circles. This attitude, in the year 2000, was questioned by the Nicaraguan ambassador, who sent a letter complaining to the Chilean mission about the penetration of the diplomatic corps by officials outside of it.

The former Chilean ambassador to Venezuela, Marcos Álvarez, called her in to clarify the strange situation and "reprimanded her for her intrusiveness in areas that were not her competence." Álvarez was the radical ambassador who served as a fuse when, in April 2002, he made the Chilean position known regarding the coup in Venezuela.

His statement said the following: Given the events that have occurred in the last few hours in Venezuela, the Government of Chile regrets that the conduct of the Venezuelan Government has led to the alteration of democratic institutionality, with a high cost in human lives and injuries, violating the Inter-American Democratic Charter through this crisis of governability.

At the same time, it urges the normalization of democratic institutionality, the maintenance of the traditional democratic principles of Venezuela, and that the necessary measures be adopted to call for free elections as soon as possible.

Side B: The Consul But this bad Venezuelan soap opera does not end there. Five years ago, in 1999, and before the Consul left for Caracas, Garretón starred in an episode in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that everyone would like to forget in those offices.

On that occasion, he went to a nearby police station and filed a complaint for "sexual harassment" against his superior at that time. A prestigious career professional who, to date, had been in the diplomatic service of Chile for 40 years and who retired once the government of Eduardo Frei Ruíz Tagle concluded.

In the multilateral affairs department, Garretón remained as head of the OAS. He was characterized by his "very surly behavior and did nothing." In addition, he expressed himself very poorly regarding the officials who were left under his charge at that time, so they requested to be transferred, as they could not bear the humiliating treatment to which they were subjected.

But Garretón’s hierarchical superior chose to call him to the carpet. This unleashed the wrath of the current Consul in Caracas, so he went to the nearest police station to file a complaint for "sexual harassment." The scandal was huge in foreign affairs.

This finally led to him being transferred on a service commission to the AGCI (International Cooperation Agency). The same year, the General Administrative Directorate ordered the execution of a summary investigation, which was in charge of the legal division.

The summary was instructed, among other things, because when he was part of the diplomatic representation in the Netherlands, he was involved in an unpleasant incident. For a time, those who worked in the Chilean delegation in the Netherlands received calls at late hours of the night.

The problem is that these were anonymous, so the police of that country were ordered to investigate who the person making those calls was. The Dutch police managed to determine that it was none other than Jorge Garretón Iturra.

The end of this soap opera is known. This lawyer, a former officer of the Chilean Navy and current Christian Democrat militant, is the current Consul General of Chile in Caracas.

Source: El Mostrador, February 16, 2004

Guillermo Claverie, convicted as the perpetrator of the crime of Allende’s aide-de-camp: “I did not kill Commander Araya”

His story is like a novel. He maintains that he was tortured and drugged to extract a confession, and that at the Naval Prosecutor’s Office, he signed his statements at gunpoint. The aide-de-camp’s children, who no longer believe he was their father’s murderer, are today his only light of hope.

For the first time, he tells his drama. He opens the door to his house with a smile, although he says that for him, his existence is destroyed. Cigarette in hand, shawl around his neck, and well-groomed, his friendly greeting fails to hide a grimace of suffering.

But a light, which seems to have come out of a good movie script, now turns on at the end of the dark tunnel that he has been crossing for 35 years. "I did not kill your father, I did not murder aide-de-camp Araya, believe me please!" cries Guillermo Claverie Bartet (62 years old) with a voice worn down by time, which has treated him with rigor.

Haunted by ghosts that have never surrendered to stop reminding him of the hours and the shots of that night of July 26, 1973, on Fidel Oteiza Street, in Providencia. The night of the crime of President Salvador Allende’s naval aide-de-camp, Arturo Araya Peeters. "They beat me, they tortured me, they threatened me with death, and I lost my family and the will to live, but they never managed to get me to confess to the crime I did not commit, although the naval justice system convicted me as the material perpetrator," he states, looking into one’s eyes.

His name remained etched in the collective memory as the official murderer of Allende’s aide-de-camp, after the plotters of the conspiracy to hasten the military coup—a group of the ultra-right and some high-ranking active-duty Navy officers in 1973—saw the plot they had planned to blame the crime on a leftist group, including some members of Allende’s personal guard, collapse.

Listening to Claverie’s account is overwhelming. It is the first time he has told his story, and it is not easy to convince him to speak with LND, because he still feels fear. "I could never read the statements they made me sign at the Naval Prosecutor’s Office.

And one day when I started to read one of them, after an interrogation, the secretary of the naval prosecutor Aldo Montagna, the officer Jorge Garretón Iturra, put his hand into his uniform jacket and pulled out a pistol.

And he said to me: ‘Hey, you idiot, you’re reading too much, be grateful that you’re still alive and sign there!’ And of course, that’s how I always signed everything." His confessions confirm what the aide-de-camp’s children have been discovering in recent years, digging into the file of the trial initiated by the naval justice system, which culminated in 1980 with a three-year sentence for Claverie as the sole material perpetrator, and with lower sentences for lesser crimes for other members of the group that acted that night: "It’s just that that investigation is riddled with flaws," maintains Arturo, the aide-de-camp’s eldest son, who is a lawyer. For almost five years, the children have been seeking a new trial to establish the truth of their father’s crime and to identify the true perpetrator(s), both material and intellectual. But they have encountered "strange situations" that make them suspect that there are still hands that want to cover up more than a few things. With these confessions from Claverie, the aide-de-camp’s children intend for the Santiago Court of Appeals to order the reopening of the new process initiated from the complaint they filed in 2003, but which a few months ago was dismissed and archived by the 18th Criminal Court of Santiago. That night Guillermo Claverie’s memory of what happened that night is still clear. When they entered Fidel Oteíza Street, where the aide-de-camp lived, it was close to midnight. "I saw a man who leaned out onto a balcony and we shouted at him to go inside. Shortly before, we had been creating chaos in the surroundings, as we were ordered. Suddenly I felt some isolated shots and shortly after a burst of machine-gun fire that came from the balcony. Then I saw the man who was holding a machine gun with his left hand, and he was aiming forward and not down, where we were passing." Immediately afterward, Claverie says, he saw the person on the balcony lean downward as if folding over. "I hadn’t fired yet," he clarifies. He states that the artificial light of the street allowed him to glimpse that the man on the balcony was wearing a robe "sort of green, with some drawings on the chest that seemed to me to be stains. Today I think they were bloodstains, because it was clear that the person was wounded." Claverie still hadn’t fired, but he did so moments after hearing the burst that the aide-de-camp fired forward. "I did it when I no longer had him in sight, because when I heard the burst, I ducked and sought to take refuge under the balcony, sticking myself against the wall; I stopped seeing him and then I finally fired a few shots. It is impossible that my shots even wounded the person on the balcony who was 4.5 meters above street level, because I couldn’t see him at all anymore." The impossibilities All these details, which Claverie has been providing to the aide-de-camp’s children and which he now agreed to tell LND, fully coincide with the ballistic expertise carried out by the Investigative Police for the process initiated in 1973 by the naval justice system. And they ratify the result of the autopsy performed on aide-de-camp Araya at the Military Hospital by Dr. Tomás Tobar Pinochet, considered an eminence by his peers and the same one who performed the autopsy on President Allende. Regarding the bullet that killed the aide-de-camp by hitting him in the chest, the forensic report by Dr. Tobar establishes: "The intracorporeal trajectory followed by the projectile while the body was in a normal position [standing] is from front to back, from left to right, and slightly from top to bottom. The shot corresponds to those called long-distance in legal medicine and is of the homicidal type." The precise scientific description destroys any possibility that Claverie’s shots, as he also states, could have killed or wounded the aide-de-camp. Unless the laws of physics and ballistics are profaned, or one intentionally wants to alter the circumstances of the crime. Dr. Tobar’s definition that the shot that caused Commander Araya’s death corresponded "to those called long-distance in legal medicine" coincides with Claverie’s version regarding his location that night: almost stuck to the wall of the house and 4.5 meters below the balcony where the commander was. Just as it is registered in the naval court file. That is to say, he was almost next to the victim. The traces of truth Ballistic expertise detected five bullet impacts on the walls of the naval captain’s house. "Three adjacent to the bedroom window, one on the upper edge of the window shutter [of the bedroom], and one in the vicinity of the place where Commander Araya was wounded [immediately below the edge of the balcony]." But the casings found in front of the house were only four. With the projectile that mortally wounded the aide-de-camp, and which entered directly without first bouncing off anything, the shots total six. But the other two casings were never found. And ballistic expertise established that none of the casings found in the street, corresponding to the shots fired by Claverie, belong to the projectile found in the aide-de-camp’s body. That means that the aide-de-camp was murdered with a different weapon, and he was shot from another place—presumably from the front of his house—slightly from top to bottom. Despite all this evidence, the naval investigation concluded that Allende’s aide-de-camp died from one of Claverie’s shots. Who fired the two shots that several witnesses, according to their statements in the Naval Court process, heard immediately before the aide-de-camp fired his burst forward and minutes before Claverie fired his four shots? This background squares with the six shots fired that night toward the aide-de-camp’s balcony: four casings found and two never found. Did the former naval cadet Jorge Ehlers Trostel hire a sniper to murder Commander Araya, taking advantage of the chaos that Ehlers himself ordered the ultra-right group to create that night in the vicinity of the aide-de-camp’s house? Why did Ehlers literally flee to Germany days after the aide-de-camp’s children filed the complaint in September 2003, taking refuge in that country until today? Why did no one take into account the statement of two prostitutes that appears in the naval justice file (whose names LND reserves), stating that, standing that night at the corner of Pedro de Valdivia and Providencia and seconds after hearing shots, they saw two men running out of a place, one of them with a rifle in his hand, and that they got into a van that had a disc that seemed to them to be a government vehicle? Upon studying the six thousand pages of the Naval Court file, as LND did, and analyzing the statements of the young ultra-rightists (some from Patria y Libertad) who acted that night, it is established that three coordinated groups acted while waiting for the aide-de-camp to arrive home from the Cuban Embassy, where he had accompanied President Allende to a reception for the anniversary of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. To make Commander Araya come out to the balcony, Juan Zacconi and Guillermo Necochea threw a bomb in front of his house. The aide-de-camp’s arrival at his house was announced to them by another bomb that exploded nearby, thrown by another group. The second bomb, that of Zacconi and Necochea, was the signal for the third group, which was supposed to enter through Fidel Oteiza Street, to do so. Torture at the AGA While Claverie was detained in the Public Jail of Santiago, one morning the guards took him out and led him to the office of the Naval Prosecutor’s Office. There, he says, he was received by naval officer Germán Arestizábal, who acted as an actuary. "He took me out and made me get into an Austin Mini, where I recognized the Air Force officer with the surname Schindler, a schoolmate." They blindfolded him and took him to the Air Force War Academy, in Las Condes. "There they tied me to a cot and started beating me on the soles of my feet with a stick or an iron bar. Later they injected into my vein what I believe was pentothal, because they still hadn’t extracted my own confession of the aide-de-camp’s crime, as they wanted. I never knew what I answered, but I couldn’t have said something that was false," he expresses. When they released him from jail, a year and a half later, he says that at his house in Santiago, a small party was held for him by the group with which he acted on the night of the crime. But during the party, he was in for more than one surprise. "That afternoon, the secretary of the Naval Prosecutor’s Office, Garretón Iturra, Arestizábal, and another officer whom I didn’t know, who said he came representing the Navy, also arrived. Jorge Ehlers also arrived, who strangely gave me a whole cheese, which in intelligence language means that you are giving a gift to a traitor." Days later, upon leaving an office where he had started working, a car approached him on the street, from which they forced him to get in. "It was Fifo Palma [César Palma Ramírez, who later joined the Joint Command] and in the car I saw about five machine guns. Fifo said to me: ‘Do you know that now we can kill you for going around talking, idiot?’ I asked him if it was because I said I wasn’t the murderer of Commander Araya, and he answered: ‘Ah, it seems you’re getting smart, idiot! You know that people who are now very important are involved in this. Don’t you forget it.’" An epilogue of emotion Claverie remains silent for a long time. Then he looks at Enrique, one of the aide-de-camp’s children present in the conversation, and says in a calm tone: "Having met you and talking with you has meant for me, after 35 years, the disappearance of that guilt that I never had, but that in the end they etched into my mind with blows and threats. Now I feel that with them, Commander Araya’s children, I share a pain and I have grown so fond of them that when I don’t hear from them on the phone, I miss them." The pardon that Augusto Pinochet granted him and the whole group on July 22, 1981, "for services rendered to the fatherland," did not manage to heal his wounds. "I have never seen so many cowards together!" he expresses, as if putting a seal on everything he had to live through after the crime.

Source: April 20, 2008, La Nación Domingo

Reopening of case for Araya aide-de-camp crime ordered

In a unanimous ruling, the Eighth Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals ordered yesterday the reopening of the investigation into the homicide of President Salvador Allende’s naval aide-de-camp, Arturo Araya Peters, which occurred on Fidel Oteíza Street, in the commune of Providencia, on July 27, 1973.

The ruling gives course to the request of his relatives regarding carrying out new proceedings in the case, such as judicializing the statement of the former member of Patria y Libertad, Guillermo Claverie Bartet (62), convicted in 1980 by the naval prosecutor’s office to three years in prison as the material perpetrator of the crime, who—in his testimony legalized before a notary—assures that he did not shoot the deceased aide-de-camp.

This confession by Claverie allowed Araya’s children to request the reopening of the case after the 18th Criminal Court decreed the dismissal after considering that the investigation had been exhausted.

Judges Cornelio Villarroel, Mario Carroza, and the integrating lawyer Carlos López ordered that the case be referred to the corresponding court, since the old court that was instructing the process was merged.

Chronology of an Assassination: Plot to Assassinate Commander Araya Sent by: Miguelmo on Thursday, October 09, 2003 - 10:21 PM AST Former Naval Prosecutor, accused as an accomplice to these events, today holds the position of Head of the State Defense Council in the V Region.

The newspaper «La Nación» published an interview and report by journalist Jorge Escalante with the two children of the murdered commander and naval aide-de-camp to President Allende, naval commander Arturo Araya Peeters.

The officer was murdered—by machine-gun fire—on the balcony of his house on Fidel Oteiza Street in the commune of Providencia in the early hours of July 27, 1973. Everything points to the fact that his death was a cold and planned assassination directed by the coup-plotting command of the Navy and organized by the Naval Intelligence Service (SIN), with the collaboration of two civilian agents who recruited a command formed by militants of the Rolando Matus Command of the PN, of Patria y Libertad, and of the Radical Democracy.

Source: La Nación, April 29, 2008