Gerardo Ernesto Silva Saldívar, single, university student, and MIR militant, was detained under the following circumstances: on the afternoon of December 10, 1974, plainclothes agents belonging to the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA), traveling in a green pickup truck, detained the victim at the library of the School of Statistics of the Universidad de Chile, where he was studying, located at the corner of Calle Agustinas and San Martín.

It should be added that hours earlier (around 2:00 a.m.), the same group had raided the home of Silva Saldívar’s parents, located at Calle Cinco Poniente 5857, Población José María Caro. They did not find him and identified themselves as members of the Servicio de Inteligencia Militar (SIM), leaving the site but leaving two men on guard, who did not leave until 16:00 hours.

The detainee had left his parents' home about two months prior to live with his girlfriend, Bernardita Nuñez Rivera, at Calle Verona 1476, Las Barrancas. The latter was also apprehended by the DINA on the same day as her partner at this last address, as will be detailed later.

Five days later, a friend of the forcibly disappeared man, Alfredo Alejandro Provoste Cáceres, was visited by two subjects who also claimed to be from the SIM—though they were from the DINA—regarding a monetary debt the latter had with the victim.

It should be added that Provoste’s personal information appeared in the agenda that Gerardo Silva Saldívar was carrying at the time of his arrest, and the agents admitted to the fact of his detention.

Provoste would later declare that the subjects arrived at his workplace inquiring about his connection to Silva, how long he had known him, and other information about both. They added that the money the prisoner had lent him belonged to the MIR and that he had to return it.

The men returned days later, and Provoste handed over the required sum of money, which he had obtained from his employer (Provoste does not specify the amount), and was made to write in his own handwriting—and subsequently sign—a statement indicating how long he had known Silva and why, among other circumstances of their relationship, before they left.

The victim was seen by other detainees starting December 10, 1974, at the secret DINA barracks at the corner of Calle Los Plátanos and Irán, known as "Venda Sexy" or "Discotheque Peñalolén." On December 24, 1974, he was taken from there to Villa Grimaldi, where he remained until the beginning of 1975, after which he was taken to an unknown destination; his whereabouts remain unknown to this day.

As mentioned, the victim’s partner, Bernardita Núñez Rivera, was detained at her home that same day by the DINA and taken to the barracks on Calle Los Plátanos, or "Venda Sexy." While being led to the bathroom, she was able to see Gerardo on one occasion, hear him being called by his name for several days, and, on one occasion, even speak with him for a few moments in a hallway of the facility.

There, the prisoner told her that he had been detained at the library of the School where he was studying. The detainee remained at "Venda Sexy" until December 17, when she was transferred to 4 Alamos, another detention center controlled by the DINA, where she remained until December 30.

She was able to speak with another captive, Fátima Mohor, who stated that she had been at the Los Plátanos barracks, where she had spoken with the victim.

She also learned from prisoner Laura Ramsay Acosta that on December 24, a group of detainees at "Venda Sexy" (among whom was Gerardo) was taken from there to a destination unknown to her.

The testimony of other detainees confirms the above. Héctor González Osorio stated that he was held by the DINA from December 6, 1974, to September 4, 1975, and was subjected to all kinds of torture. When he was at Villa Grimaldi in December 1974, a facility directed by DINA Colonel Pedro Espinoza Bravo, he shared a room with several detainees, among whom were Gerardo Silva Saldívar, as well as Humberto Menanteaux, William Beausire Alonso, Anselmo Radrigán Plaza, Hugo Martínez, Patricio Negrón, and José Carrasco Tapia.

He adds that he was forced, along with other MIR militants, to give a press conference at the Diego Portales building, acknowledging the movement’s defeat and calling on members to lay down their arms.

The event was broadcast nationwide via radio and television. He notes that it was Pedro Espinoza who pressured him to participate in said press conference. He provides no further details regarding Silva Saldívar, adding that the torture he received (blows to the ears and different parts of the body, the "parrilla" electric shock torture on his genitals and other parts of his body, beatings, insults, being chained by the arms and feet, as well as being blindfolded for weeks and sometimes months) may have clouded his memories somewhat.

Beatriz Constanza Batasew Contreras would later declare that she was apprehended by DINA agents on December 12, 1974, while looking for her contact in the MIR, Mario Fernando Peña Solari—also a forcibly disappeared person—and that when she was at "Venda Sexy" from December 13 to 17, 1974, she saw the victim detained there as well.

Gerardo Silva Saldívar appeared on a list of 119 people in publications made by the magazine Lea in Buenos Aires and the weekly O'Dia in Paraná, Brazil. In the former, where Gerardo Silva’s name appeared, there was a list of 59 names, indicating that they had been killed by their own MIR comrades in internal disputes.

However, it was verified that this publication—which had a first and only issue—lacked a real identification of its responsible director, and its address was false. As for the newspaper O'Dia, it reappeared after long years of silence only to publish the "news" that 60 MIR members had been killed in Salta by Argentine security forces.

This media outlet also had no known responsible director or address, and after the aforementioned publication, it never circulated again.

The 119 names appearing on both lists correspond to people who were forcibly disappeared in our country, for whom judicial and administrative actions had been filed without results.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

On December 18, 1974, a recurso de amparo (habeas corpus) was filed on behalf of the detainee, Number 1617-74, which was rejected by the Santiago Court of Appeals following negative reports from the Ministry of the Interior and the Headquarters of the State of Siege Zone regarding the acknowledgment of his detention, though the Court ordered an investigation by the competent court.

Subsequently, a criminal complaint for kidnapping was filed before the 2nd Criminal Court of Santiago, case file 84.227-5, on November 7, 1975, to which case file 23.607 of the 3rd Court of San Miguel for illegal arrest and the investigation ordered in the aforementioned recurso de amparo were joined.

In this case, Bernardita Núñez Rivera, the partner of the disappeared man, who had also been held at the "Venda Sexy" facility, and Alfredo Alejandro Provoste Cáceres testified, providing their versions of the events mentioned in this report.

When witness Fátima Mohor, who as stated was a captive at the time of the victim’s detention, was summoned to the proceedings, the Carabineros reported that she had been expelled by decree of the Ministry of the Interior on February 2, 1976.

The case was dismissed in accordance with Article 409 No. 1 of the Code of Criminal Procedure on July 10, 1976, which was approved by the Court of Appeals on August 11 of the same year. The case of Gerardo Ernesto Silva Saldívar was included in the complaint against DINA director Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda and other DINA agents, filed before the 10th Criminal Court of Santiago in 1978.

In said complaint, in addition to Contreras, other DINA agents were identified: Osvaldo Romo Mena, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, Marcelo Moren Brito, Rolf Wenderoth Pozo, and Marcia Merino Vega. The Court declared itself incompetent and referred the records to the Military Justice system.

After several complaints before higher courts, in May 1979, the case was assigned to the 2nd Military Prosecutor’s Office, under case file 553-78. In January 1983, the prosecutor reviewed the records of the case regarding forcibly disappeared persons processed by Visiting Judge Servando Jordán.

On March 17, 1983, the prosecutor dismissed the case, a resolution that was revoked in October by the Court Martial. Between 1984 and 1985, some proceedings were carried out, one of which was the statement by rogatory commission of General (Ret.) Contreras, who denied the existence of the Intelligence Brigades and said that agents Krassnoff, Laureani, Moren, Valdivieso, and Wenderoth only performed functions as analysts; that Romo was only an informant for an agent; that the facilities of Villa Grimaldi, Londres 38, the corner of Irán and Los Plátanos, and José Domingo Cañas were not detention centers; and that the Clínica Santa Lucía only provided medical care to DINA officials. He added that he did not remember the names of those responsible for the DINA archives. (For complete details of the complaint against Manuel Contreras, see the case of Eduardo Alarcón Jara).

Without any proceedings being carried out for four years, on November 20, 1989, Army Lieutenant Colonel Enrique Ibarra Chamorro, Military Prosecutor General, requested the application of the Amnesty Decree Law (D.L. 2.191) for this case because the process had the exclusive purpose of investigating alleged crimes that occurred during the period between September 11, 1973, and March 10, 1978, and because during the 10 years of processing, it had not been possible to "determine the responsibility of any person." On November 30, 1989, the request was accepted by the 2nd Military Court, which dismissed the case totally and definitively—which was still in the summary stage—due to "the criminal responsibility of the persons allegedly accused in the reported facts being extinguished." The plaintiff parties appealed said resolution to the Court Martial, which confirmed the ruling in January 1992. A Recurso de Queja (complaint appeal) was then filed before the Supreme Court of Justice, which, as of December 1992, had not yet issued its resolution.

One of the agents against whom this complaint was directed, Osvaldo Romo Mena, was arrested in November 1992 as a result of proceedings ordered in the case regarding the disappearance of Alfonso Chanfreau Oyarce.

Agent Romo had remained in hiding in Brazil for 17 years. He had gone to that country on instructions from the DINA, evading summons from courts processing cases of human rights violations. The DINA provided him with false identity documents for himself and his family group; his new name was Osvaldo Andrés Henríquez Mena.

As of December 1992, Romo had testified in several cases of forcibly disappeared persons and had been charged in six of them.

Letters were sent to the Ministry of the Interior, which denied the detention of Gerardo Silva, to the International Commission of Jurists, and to the President of the United States, without results.

Source: Vicaría de la Solidaridad

U. de Chile to award posthumous degrees to 104 executed and disappeared persons (excerpt)

Symbolic recognition will be directed at former students murdered during the military regime.

Through exempt decree number 0030766 of the Universidad de Chile, authorized by the Comptroller General of the Republic on September 4 of this year, said university was enabled, for the first time in its history, to award posthumous and symbolic degrees to students who were victims of political executions and those who became forcibly disappeared during the military regime.

The official ceremony, which will be led by Rector Ennio Vivaldi, will take place next Monday the 11th, in the Domeyko courtyard of the central campus, starting at 12:30. For Vivaldi, "this initiative has two very profound meanings.

On one hand, it is a gesture of reparation for the victims themselves and for their families, who also affectively associate their loved ones with this great institution that is the U. de Chile. On the other hand, the U. de Chile feels it is fulfilling its moral duty by not granting the dictatorship the terrible objective of, in addition to having cut their lives short, erasing their achievements as students and future professionals for Chile." The list includes 104 former students of the university who were murdered by State agents between 1973 and 1989.

Among the most remembered cases is that of history student Jécar Nehgme, who also appears as the last victim of the Augusto Pinochet regime. This former leader of the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) appeared dead on September 4, 1989, on Calle General Bulnes, a few days before the elections that would mark the return to democracy.

After a long judicial process, which was resolved in 2008, it was established that the authors of the murder were the metropolitan chief of the CNI, Brigadier (Ret.) Enrique Levy Araneda; Colonel (Ret.) Pedro Guzmán Olivares; and Captain (Ret.) Luis Sanhueza Ross.

Social organizations valued the gesture. The president of the Association of Relatives of Political Executed Persons (Afep), Alicia Lira, noted that "it is a great gesture, which we recognize enormously.

With this, Rector Vivaldi fulfills a pending task that the Universidad de Chile had, since similar gestures had already been carried out by other universities such as the U. de Santiago and the Austral de Valdivia.

But it is a huge signal for democracy and for a true 'never again' to be fulfilled in Chile." Among all the honored students is GERARDO ERNESTO SILVA SALDIVAR, a statistics student who was forcibly disappeared on 12/10/1974. (excerpt)

Source: latercera.com 8/09/2017 Date: 08-09-2017

Chile: DINA agents sentenced for three kidnappings and disappearances at the "La Venda Sexy" torture center.

The Santiago Court of Appeals sentenced five former agents of the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA) this morning for their responsibility in the crimes of qualified kidnapping of Eduardo Aliste González, Gerardo Silva Zaldívar, and María Eugenia Martínez Hernández, perpetrated between September and December 1974 at the detention and torture center known as "La Venda Sexy." In a split decision, the Fourth Chamber of the appellate court—composed of ministers Juan Cristóbal Mera, Pedro Advis, and lawyer (i) Jaime Guerrero—confirmed the sentence that condemned agents Raúl Iturriaga Neumann, Risiere Altez España, Hugo Hernández Valle, and Gerardo Urrich González to 15 years and one day in prison as authors of the crimes. Likewise, the sentence to be served by agent Manuel Carevic Cubillos was reduced to 5 years and one day in prison. The victims are Gerardo Ernesto Silva Saldívar, 23 years old, a statistics student at the Universidad de Chile and a militant of the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria. From the same organization was María Eugenia Martínez, 25, who worked as a textile worker at the Industria Labán company. Eduardo Aliste González, meanwhile, was 19 years old and was attending high school at the time of his detention, while also being a militant in the Socialist Party. All three remain disappeared to this day. Irán 3037: The horrors of Venda Sexy The facility called "Venda Sexy" or "La Discotheque," located at Calle Irán No. 3037 at the corner of Los Plátanos, in the commune of Ñuñoa, was used by the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA) as a secret detention and torture center, operating from mid-1974 until 1975. This facility was a two-story house with a basement where torture sessions were also carried out. Many female detainees were held here, kept blindfolded, with men and women separated in different rooms. Operational agents carried out interrogations under torture, for which they used methods such as "the parrilla," which involved the application of electric shocks to different parts of the body. In addition, a common practice as a method of torture in this facility was sexual abuse. This facility was characterized by continuously playing strident music at a high volume, which became more intense during the torture and sexual abuse sessions of the detainees. In this regard, the book "Olderock, la mujer de los perros" was released, which tells the story of Ingrid Olderock, the DINA agent who trained dogs for these abuses.

Source: cctt.cl 21/02/2017 Date: 21-02-2017