Minister Jorge Zepeda issued an indictment in the investigation into the aggravated kidnapping of Pedro Juan Merino Molina, which occurred beginning on September 14, 1974, in the city of Coronel, Bio Bio region.

The magistrate indicted Sergio Rigoberto Aplazaba Rojas, Manuel Rioseco Paredes, Orlando José Manzo Durán, Juan Manuel Guillermo Contreras Sepúlveda, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Paul Schäfer Schneider, Fernando Gómez Segovia, and Gerd Seewald Lefevre as responsible for the aforementioned crime.

The magistrate determined that the victim: “after being detained by State agents in the early hours of September 14, 1974, at the home he occupied in the Yobilo Dos neighborhood, Calle Aconcagua No. 817, in the city of Coronel, was taken to the “Lo Rojas” Carabineros station and immediately driven to Parral, specifically to the clandestine detention center of the former Colonia Dignidad, where a record was kept of the interrogations conducted by German colonists, who acted alongside State agents belonging to the National Intelligence Directorate, DINA; with whom the former cooperated in the persecution, deprivation of liberty, and elimination of civilians for political or ideological reasons; said agents proceeded to keep the aforementioned victim deprived of liberty, causing him to be forcibly disappeared to this day.”

Source: La Nación, July 17, 2009

Manuel Contreras sentenced in human rights case at Colonia Dignidad

Visiting Minister Jorge Zepeda handed down a first-instance sentence in the case regarding the disappearance of communist militant Pedro Merino Molina, which occurred on September 14, 1974. The case refers to one of the facets of the proceedings regarding human rights violations that occurred inside the former Colonia Dignidad.

In this way, the magistrate determined to acquit the main defendant, Paul Schäfer, of all charges, as he is deceased and cannot be subject to criminal action. However, he handed down sentences of 5 years of minor imprisonment in its maximum degree without any type of benefit to the person who served as head of the dissolved DINA, General (ret.) Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda.

The same sentence was received by the head of the repressive body in the city of Parral, Fernando Gómez Saravia, and Brigadier (ret.) Pedro Espinoza Bravo. The resolution also determines that the Chilean Treasury must pay a total compensation of $155 million to the mother and siblings of the victim, divided into $50 million for the woman and $15 million for each of the seven siblings of Merino Molina.

Judge Zepeda also ordered the acquittal of Orlando Manzo, Sergio Apablaza, Manuel Rioseco, and former colonist Gerd Seewald due to a lack of participation.

Source: La Nación, June 29, 2011

Dignity Case: Minister prosecutes former colonists for illicit association

Among the 18 people charged by Magistrate Jorge Zepeda are also members of the DINA, General (ret.) Manuel Contreras, Brigadier (ret.) Pedro Espinoza, Armando Fernández Larios, and Fernando Gómez Segovia.

SANTIAGO.— A total of 18 people, including former colonists and former members of the DINA, were prosecuted today by special judge Jorge Zepeda for the crime of illicit association allegedly committed inside the former Colonia Dignidad, which was led by Paul Schaefer.

Among the former members of the German enclave charged are Paul Schaefer, Gerhard Mucke, Karl Van Den Berg, Kurt Schnellenkamp, Hartmut Hopp, and former leader Albert Schreiber, who is currently residing in Germany and against whom an extradition request is already pending.

In addition, the four former protectors of Schaefer who still reside in Argentina are being prosecuted, among them the leader's adopted daughter, Rebeca Schaefer. In the same situation are Dr. Gerd Seewald and his wife, Dr.

Gisela Gruhlke. Among the DINA members charged are General (ret.) Manuel Contreras, Brigadier (ret.) Pedro Espinoza, Major (ret.) Armando Fernández Larios, and Colonel (ret.) Fernando Gómez Segovia. What the resolution establishes In an extensive resolution, the magistrate details a series of crimes that were committed in association between both entities, including human rights violations, violations of the arms law, mistreatment of people, and abuse of minors. "Under the protection of the Dignidad Beneficent and Educational Society, a hierarchical structure was organized that planned and executed multiple crimes, integrated by people who were members and collaborators of that corporation, an activity that began at least from the year 1970 onwards, as is reliably proven by the documentation found during the year 2005 inside the former 'El Lavadero' estate, currently Villa Baviera," the ruling maintains. The text also adds that said structure "perfectly organized with the purpose of acting illicitly, had a superior or responsible command, which was also very well informed with a system created for that purpose, and although this did not formally imply constituting a traditional military organization, it was so in terms of the application of rules, experiences, and training typical of an activity of that nature." In this way, the judge establishes that under the wing of Paul Schaefer and in collaboration with the DINA, the colony kept war materiel hidden outside of all legal control, with an "unlawful purpose of the hierarchical superior of Villa Baviera to arm himself and profit through arms trafficking, after his flight and when the opportunity allowed it." Regarding human rights violations, "it appears from the background gathered by this court that after September 11, 1973, the DINA, with the knowledge and in concert with the heads of Colonia Dignidad, implemented part of its activities using the facilities of the aforementioned colony, kidnapping civilians who were taken there and kept in that condition inside." The extensive resolution also details that it was proven that the organization "developed its activity through the creation of files containing the data and background of people identified as leftists, many of whom remain missing to this day, shedding light, through the interrogations whose records have been found, that the last days in which there was news of them, they were kidnapped in the former Colonia Dignidad." In addition to referring in detail to the commission of sexual crimes against minors and the mistreatment suffered by a dozen young people, who were administered psychotropic drugs and subjected to electroshock, the minister specifies that the colonists intercepted coded messages from the Armed Forces through the complex communications system they possessed. The case of Gerd Seewald The minister issued the resolution today, as the five-day deadline to define the procedural situation of Gerd Seewald, who was detained last Thursday after being interrogated for several hours in judicial facilities, was expiring. Seewald is being prosecuted for being the author of the more than 40,000 files that were found inside the enclave in June of last year. The new indictment—the first issued by Minister Zepeda for illicit association—responds to the request made in January by both the Ministry of the Interior and the State Defense Council (CDE), both plaintiffs in the case. Last September, Zepeda annulled a prosecution for illicit association that had been issued by the Parral judge Jimena Pérez, considering that the legal requirements to constitute the crime were not met. At this time, the accused are being notified of their new procedural situation.

Source: Emol.com, April 10, 2006

Colonia Dignidad: New conviction for Manuel Contreras for kidnapping

Facts affected Pedro Merino Molina, detained in Coronel in 1974.

The visiting minister of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Jorge Zepeda, handed down a sentence for the kidnapping and disappearance of Pedro Merino Molina, who was detained by State agents on September 14, 1974, in Coronel, and taken to Colonia Dignidad.

For the former head of the DINA, Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, a penalty of five years of imprisonment was determined. The same sentences were handed down to Pedro Espinoza Bravo and Fernando Gómez Segovia.

Sergio Apablaza Rozas, Orlando Manzo Durán, Manuel Rioseco Paredes, and Gerd Seewald Lefevre were acquitted. The deceased leader of Colonia Dignidad, Paul Schaefer, who was serving a sentence for violation of the arms law and injuries in the Penal Hospital, was also dismissed from the case.

The background of the process determined that Merino Molina was detained and taken to Colonia Dignidad, a clandestine DINA detention center, where a written record of the interrogations to which he was subjected remained.

The last one was on October 13, 1974. Zepeda ordered the Treasury and the sentenced parties to pay a total compensation of $155 million, divided into $50 million for Ana Molina Palacios, the victim's mother, and $15 million pesos for each of the seven siblings of Pedro Merino.

Source: El Mercurio, June 30, 2011

Justice convicts former DINA members for disappearance of communist militant

Pedro Merino was kidnapped in 1974 and disappeared after passing through Colonia Dignidad.

Judge Zepeda sentenced Manuel Contreras, Pedro Espinoza, and Fernando Gómez to five years. The visiting minister of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Jorge Zepeda, handed down a sentence for the kidnapping and disappearance of Pedro Merino Molina, who was detained by State agents on September 14, 1974, in the city of Coronel, in the Biobío Region, and taken to Colonia Dignidad.

For this case, the former head of the DINA, Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, and members of the dictatorship's repressive body, Pedro Espinoza Bravo and Fernando Gómez Segovia, were sentenced to five years of imprisonment without benefits.

Meanwhile, Sergio Apablaza Rozas, Orlando Manzo Durán, Manuel Rioseco Paredes, and Gerd Seewald Lefevre were acquitted. The accused Paul Schaefer was dismissed from this crime because he died while serving a sentence for violation of the arms law and injuries in the Penal Hospital.

The background of the process determined that Merino Molina, a militant of the Communist Youth, was detained and taken to Colonia Dignidad, a clandestine DINA detention center, where a written record of the interrogations to which he was subjected remained, the last one on October 13, 1974.

Magistrate Zepeda also ordered the Treasury and the sentenced parties to pay a total compensation of 155 million pesos, divided into 50 million pesos for Ana Molina Palacios—the victim's mother—and 15 million pesos for each of the seven siblings of Pedro Merino Molina.

Source: Cooperativa.cl, June 30, 2011

Gerhard Mücke, former leader of Colonia Dignidad, prosecuted for torture

The German citizen was sentenced along with the former head of the DINA in Parral, General (ret.) Fernando Gómez Segovia, in a lawsuit filed by teacher Adriana Bórquez, who was kidnapped in Talca in 1975.

The Eighth Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals determined to prosecute the former leader of Colonia Dignidad, Gerhard Mücke Hoschitzke, and General (ret.) Fernando Gómez Segovia, former head of the DINA in Parral, for torture, after verifying the complaint filed against them by teacher Adriana Bórquez.

The court determined that "it can be considered proven, at this stage of the investigation, that Ms. Adriana Alicia Bórquez Adriasola was deprived of liberty on April 23, 1975, in the city of Talca, at 03:00 hours." At that moment, the sentence continues, she was "taken to the facilities of Colonia Dignidad where she was illegally detained, interrogated, and subjected to illegitimate coercion," being "allegedly taken later to the city of Santiago, to a DINA barracks known as 'Venda Sexy' or the 'Discotheque'." Adriana Bórquez, linked at the time to the Catholic Church, was detained at her home on April 23, 1975, in the framework of a massive raid against opponents in Talca and, after this traumatic experience, she took refuge in England, where she lived a long exile. The ruling states that "Fernando Gómez Segovia is prosecuted as the author of the crime provided for and punished in articles 148 and 150 of the Penal Code, and Gerhard Mücke Hoschitzke as the author of the crime provided for and punished in article 141 of the same Code." The sentence corresponds to the Eighth Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals, presided over by Minister Juan Escobar Zepeda and composed of Gloria Ana Chevesich Ruiz and lawyer Emilio Pfeffer Urquiaga.

Source: La Tercera, September 14, 2011

Former Colonia Dignidad leader convicted for the first time for human rights violations

For the first time, a former leader of the German enclave is prosecuted in the framework of a lawsuit for torture filed by teacher Adriana Bórquez Adriazola. After the coup d'état in Chile, Colonia Dignidad was used by the military regime's intelligence services as a center for torture and detention of opponents.

People from the Biobio and Maule regions belonging to the Catholic Church, left-wing parties, and the Christian Democrats were detained and interrogated in the enclave. Many of them were executed and buried on the grounds of Schäfer's sect; others were taken to other detention and torture centers.

Adriana Bórquez, linked at the time to the Catholic Church, was detained at her home on April 23, 1975, in the framework of a massive raid against opponents in Talca. After a traumatic experience in Dignidad, the teacher was taken to “La Venda Sexi” in the city of Santiago and several months later took refuge in England, where she lived a long exile.

From there, she participated in the defense of human rights and in actions denouncing Colonia Dignidad for the atrocities committed. She participated in the Bonn trial and later returned to Chile to continue working on human rights issues.

In 1997, after testifying in countless proceedings against the enclave, Adriana Bórquez sued Colonia Dignidad for torture and degrading treatment. A score of other former prisoners in the Colony did the same.

For more than 10 years, the proceedings were closed and appealed in the courts, despite the colonists' own recognition of the aberrant practices of Schäfer and the regime's repressive services. On September 12, the Eighth Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals determined that “it can be considered proven, at this stage of the investigation, that Ms.

Adriana Alicia Bórquez Adriasola was deprived of liberty on April 23, 1975, in the city of Talca, at 03:00 hours, and taken to the facilities of Colonia Dignidad where she was illegally detained, interrogated, and subjected to illegitimate coercion, and allegedly taken later to the city of Santiago, to a DINA barracks known as “Venda Sexy” or the “Discotheque.” Therefore, “Fernando Gómez Segovia is prosecuted as the author of the crime provided for and punished in articles 148 and 150 of the Penal Code, and Gerhard Mücke Hoschitzke as the author of the crime provided for and punished in article 141 of the same Code.” The sentence corresponds to the Eighth Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals, presided over by Minister Juan Escobar Zepeda and composed of Gloria Ana Chevesich Ruiz and lawyer Emilio Pfeffer Urquiaga. The sentence is significant for the hundred people subjected to coercion and torture in Colonia Dignidad who, for nearly four decades, have awaited the action of justice. The prosecution of Gerhard Mücke, one of Schäfer's bodyguards, and Fernando Gómez Segovia, a former member of the intelligence services during the military dictatorship, opens the door to new prosecutions of the Dignidad leadership, who until now have enjoyed total impunity for the crimes of torture committed against Chilean citizens.

Source: Elmaule.cl, September 13, 2011

Schäfer, for whom the files were prepared, wanted to have information on everyone, and that is how the vast majority of the files are related to people without any political or military connotation. There are files on stevedores from the port of Lirquén, on taxi drivers, on teachers (many) from high schools and universities, on workers at service stations, in industries, in supermarkets, and even on prostitutes.

In the 45,000 files declassified this year, there is everything: espionage on the "friends" and "enemies" of the colony, wild rumors, obsessions with the Rosicrucians, the Masons, and the Church, evidence of cronyism with the DINA, and even files on port workers, teachers, service station attendants, and even prostitutes, showing a Manichaean world full of prejudices.

I would lack the adjectives to describe what I have read in the last five months, during which I have been immersed in reviewing the 45,000 intelligence files of Colonia Dignidad that were declassified this year by Judge Jorge Zepeda, after he kept them secret for nine years following the discovery of the archive in 2005.

The first thing that must be said in this regard is, just as lawyer Hernán Fernández explained to me in an article I wrote some time ago regarding a particular episode contained in the files (the siege by Paul Schäfer of the nuns of San Manuel), the colony was three things at the same time: a sect erected based on the pedophilic desires of its supreme leader, an illicit association dedicated to torture, the forcibly disappeared, and arms trafficking (as established by the courts), and, furthermore, an intelligence agency.

It is not that the colony possessed an intelligence team, but rather that it was an intelligence agency itself, parallel to the DINA and the CNI, with which it cooperated closely, to such an extent that they shared the same phobias and rivalries, for example, toward the Military Intelligence Service (SIM); that is, the Army's formal intelligence apparatus, which was never viewed favorably by the DINA.

Like this organization, the colony had a good number of informants, operational agents (mostly Germans) who carried out surveillance and photographed people, and kept an enormous Kardex with information, which contained—among many other things—the almost complete list of those who were part of the SIM at different times, with greater emphasis on the military personnel who performed such functions in regiments in Concepción, Chillán, Talca, Los Ángeles, and other cities located within the colony's zone of influence.

However, they also spied on their friends, as there are many files relating to DINA and CNI agents. The two most peculiar ones refer to the men the DINA installed next to the Germans in Parral: Fernando Gómez Segovia and his successor, Eduardo Guy Neckelmann Schütz.

The files for both are the only ones that show sequences of some type of code. Gómez Segovia's contains an alphanumeric code, while Neckelmann's, incredible as it may seem, possesses handwriting (the only file that has something written in that way, as everything else was typed), with inscriptions that appear to be runic alphabet, like that used by ancient Germanic peoples, just as can be seen in the main photo.

“Don Mamo”

The symbiosis between the DINA and the colony, which in the eyes of the justice system formed a single illicit association, is well illustrated in the two files dedicated to Eduardo Soto Henríquez, an Army corporal belonging to the ranks of Manuel Contreras and stationed inside the enclave, in whose file number 1 it is noted that “this official has shown to date an excessive interest in finding out or inquiring about activities that are purely private in the Colony, with which he has caused distrust and fear on the part of its inhabitants.”

[citation]Certainly, the most relevant of all the information contained in the files is that which relates to the forcibly disappeared and those people who were tortured and interrogated inside the colony.

In addition to keeping files on all those who were made to disappear in the midst of “Operation Colombo,” the Dignidad archives contain transcripts of numerous interrogations carried out inside the enclave and confirm facts that, until the 2005 discovery, were not fully verified.[/citation]

Among those activities was having shown himself to be “keenly interested in knowing the corresponding code” after passing through a door that obviously had a security system. In addition to that, he “asked two different people what the origin of the rifles was.”

But that was not his only sin. Point 4 of the report notes that he “began to open drawers of an emergency kit, looking at their contents” and that (point 5) “although his companion told him that they were going to continue their trip immediately, he got out of the vehicle in which they were traveling and lifted the tent at an entrance door to look inside.”

“Luckily, the things that Don Mamo already knows were not there at that moment,” the document says intriguingly, without explaining what it was that the all-powerful head of the DINA, Manuel Contreras, better known as “El Mamo,” already knew.

The text continues with several other “faults” committed by the indiscreet visitor, and then notes that “it is left to Don Mamo’s discretion whether he should continue working with the colony or be changed.”

Fortunately for Soto, as the same file points out, he was only sanctioned “for his behavior on the estate.” Neither he nor his girlfriend, whose address appeared in the file, suffered harm (as far as is known), unlike other wayward agents, such as Miguel Angel Becerra, murdered inside the premises with toxic elements compatible with sarin gas, or Juan René Muñoz Alarcón, the “hooded man of the National Stadium,” who spent long periods in the colony, only to end up stabbed to death in Santiago after he decided to tell the Vicaría de la Solidaridad what he had seen in Paul Schäfer’s empire and in the DINA barracks.

A Right-Wing Stasi

And this is the second thing that must be understood: they filed anyone, and any information was useful to them. In the files relating to Carabineros Major Carlos Dondero, who was a commissioner in Parral, he is highlighted as “an upright man,” who had been Allende’s bodyguard in the UP and who from there “reported on the GAP.” In addition to that, it was recounted that he had been in Iran for a year and had brought back a Volkswagen car.

Likewise, the file describes him as “tall and thin” and also notes something even more irrelevant that even sounds a bit fanciful: “…the informant has never seen someone who enjoys eating so much. Once he ate 24 empanadas, and on another occasion 8 to 10 hot dogs.”

Schäfer, for whom the files were prepared, wanted to have information on everyone, and that is how the vast majority of the files are related to people without any political or military connotation. There are files on stevedores from the port of Lirquén, on taxi drivers, on teachers (many) from high schools and universities, on workers at service stations, in industries, in supermarkets, and even on prostitutes.

Likewise, anyone who had any contact with the colony, or who was of interest to them, was filed, spied on closely (in cities like Concepción or Chillán), and/or photographed by the Germans, the same as happened with almost all visitors to the “family casino” in the commune of Bulnes, where they also photocopied the identity documents of many of those who arrived there.

Most of the information comes from a hundred sources that were defined by acronyms. The one that is repeated the most is the one that—with different variants—referred to the then-Army Major Fernando Gómez Segovia, the first head the DINA had in Parral, which operated in a house that was owned by the colony.

Such data shows that the DINA and the colony functioned as a sort of Chilean Stasi, controlling everyone’s movements, making lists of suspects for anything, and, above all, collecting every rumor heard and incorporating it into their databases.

Certainly, most of the rumors portray a bipolar world, in which all opponents (supposed or real) to Pinochet were immoral, dirty, thieving people, dedicated to shady business, who hid weapons in their houses and who did not hesitate to deceive anyone to achieve their perverse objectives—disqualifications that are repeated regarding a series of Catholic priests and Army and Carabineros officers who, in one way or another, were not addicted to the colony, who, if they did not show themselves to be submissive to Schäfer’s dictates, it was not because they were doing their job, but because they were leftists (or so the Germans believed).

An example of this is the file relating to Carabineros Major Manuel Valdebenito Remsses, one of whose officials inspected (in 1974) a truck loaded with weapons that was destined for Colonia Dignidad. The card says (in which, of course, there is no mention of the weapons) that “before 9-11-73, Valdebenito bought the newspaper Clarín and in his language used UP terms.”

The “nationalists,” on the other hand, were good people, honest and upright, examples of virtue and rectitude. This is evident, for example, in the case of former Army generals Bruno Siebert and Julio Canessa, both qualified as an “excellent person” in their respective files.

As in every sect, in this paranoid and Manichaean world, the “good” was the leader and his acolytes, or those he sanctioned as positive elements for the community, while the “bad” was related to whatever represented a thought different from theirs, starting with the Catholic Church, continuing with Silo, and even the Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis (AMORC), which seemed to have many members in the city of San Carlos, and which earned the attention of one of the colony’s most famous Chilean informants, Óscar Muñoz Hildebrandt, better known in the files by his initials (“OMH”), who “infiltrated” that group in order to obtain details of those who formed it.

The same happened with Freemasonry. There are many people identified as such, and in the file of a teacher surnamed Godoy, from San Carlos, it is noted that he is “the only Godoy on the list of Masons.”

In addition, they did not miss the opportunity to write “Jew” in the file of every person they believed was of that ancestry.

And a not insignificant detail is that in the various files, all kinds of crimes are attributed to different people: drug trafficking, homicide, robbery, theft, misappropriation, driving under the influence, etc., but there is not a single file that speaks of sexual abuse, the favorite sin of the pedophile Schäfer.

The Disappeared

Certainly, the most relevant of all the information contained in the files is that which relates to the forcibly disappeared and those people who were tortured and interrogated inside the colony. In addition to keeping files on all those who were made to disappear in the midst of “Operation Colombo,” the Dignidad archives contain transcripts of numerous interrogations carried out inside the enclave and confirm facts that, until the 2005 discovery, were not fully verified.

A sample of this is what happened to Mile Mavrosky, a funeral home businessman from San Carlos who was arrested in December 1973, accused of heading a plan called “Black Easter,” through which the MIR was supposedly going to assassinate all the prominent figures of that commune; that is, a sort of localized “Plan Z,” as unreal and absurd as the original.

Accused of this, Mavrosky was a prisoner for 11 months in a place he always believed was the colony. He never knew it in detail, as he remained all that time alone in a kind of dungeon, subjected to almost daily torture, deprived of food and water, lying on a kind of bed, shackled by his hands and feet, and blindfolded.

He was interrogated daily by men who spoke Spanish, but in the background, he heard the constant murmur of people talking in German.

I interviewed him recently. Very careful, he told me that he believed he had been in the colony, but he was not sure of it, as he did not see anyone. He only heard those voices. However, in the files, there is the detail of the interrogations to which he was subjected, the suspicions they had regarding him being a dangerous Marxist, and several other things, all of which were finally debunked, to the point that he was released after being returned to the Chillán regiment, “only” with a fracture in his left wrist, visible to this day.

Great luck for Don Mile, the same luck that was so scarce for so many others, such as the more than 100 disappeared who the same “hooded man of the National Stadium” said were alive inside the Parral property around 1977, the same ones who today continue to swell the lists of the forcibly disappeared and whose trail was lost in the foothills of the Seventh Region.

by Carlos Basso

Source: elmostrador.cl, December 12, 2014

In Chillán, 15 repressive agents are prosecuted for the homicides of three people in April 1974

This Tuesday, August 4, the minister visiting for Human Rights cases of the Court of Appeals of Chillán, Claudio Arias Córdova, indicted 16 former repressive agents, both civilians and military personnel, as authors of the crimes of qualified homicide of Rolando Gastón Angulo Matamala, Ogán Esteban Lagos Marín, and Bartolomé Ambrosio Salazar Veloz, illicit acts perpetrated between April 27 and 28, 1974, in the province of Ñuble.

The three victims were militants of the MIR in the region. Rolando Angulo was 26 years old and was a social worker; Bartolomé Salazar was 31 years old and was a high school teacher; Ogán Lagos was 20 years old and was an agronomy student at the University of Concepción (Chillán campus); he was the first of three brothers who were murdered by the dictatorship.

Those indicted are former DINA agents and former army officers: Fernando Gómez Segovia, head of the DINA Southern Brigade; Mario César Romero Godoy, military prosecutor at the time of the events; Osvaldo Enrique Ortega Echeverría; and DINA agents Froilán Enrique Aguilera Domínguez, Luis Enrique Troncoso Verdugo, Pedro Blas Vergara Mieres, Hugo Enrique Villamán Salazar, Patricio Orlando Marabolí Orellana, Humberto Artemio Olmedo Álvarez, Arturo Manuel Alarcón Navarrete, Fanor Eduardo Aguilera Pizarro, Luis Alberto Toledo Espinoza, and civilian employees Sergio Francisco Bustos Baquedano, Lincoyán Lagos Tortella, and Héctor Soto Hermosilla.

According to the background information gathered during the investigation stage, Minister Arias was able to establish that:

«On April 19, 1974, through a minor who arrived at the home of Rolando Gastón Angulo Matamala, a militant of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), where he lived with his spouse on Isabel Riquelme Street in this city, near the Municipal Market, who delivered a message for him to go to a person who knew him, he was detained by State Agents and subsequently transferred to a detention site located in the vicinity of San Carlos and from there to the No. 9 Mountain Infantry Regiment of Chillán, a place from which he was taken on April 27 of the same year to an unknown destination, his corpse being found on April 28, 1974, in the Camilo Bravo Canal of the Mutupín Estate, located 7 kilometers east of San Carlos, with bullet impacts on his body which were inflicted by third parties, thus configuring the crime of qualified homicide».

In relation to this event and according to the ruling, «sufficient and well-founded presumptions emerge to estimate that a culpable participation as authors of the crime of qualified homicide of Rolando Gastón Angulo Matamala corresponds to the accused Mario César Romero Godoy, who served at the date of the commission of the crime as Military Prosecutor of Chillán and from whom the orders to detain persons linked to the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) emanated; to Osvaldo Enrique Ortega Echeverría in his capacity as an official of the No. 9 Infantry Regiment of Chillán, in charge of the "Registry and Control Office"; to Fernando Gómez Segovia, Froilán Enrique Aguilera Domínguez, Luis Enrique Troncoso Verdugo, Pedro Blas Vergara Mieres, Hugo Enrique Villamán Salazar, Patricio Orlando Marabolí Orellana, Humberto Artemio Olmedo Alvarez, Arturo Manuel Alarcón Navarrete, Fanor Eduardo Aguilera Pizarro, Luis Alberto Toledo Espinoza, all of whom served at the time of the occurrence of the investigated events as State Agents, belonging to the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) and the Regional Intelligence Center (CIRE); and to Sergio Francisco Bustos Baquedano, Lincoyán Lagos Tortella, and Héctor Soto Hermosilla, who were part of the Civil Intelligence Service (SIC) in the city of San Carlos, who collaborated directly with the person in charge of the DINA in the Region, providing information and the means for the detention of persons linked to the MIR».

Regarding the homicide of Bartolomé Salazar, Minister Arias also deemed it proven that:

«on April 17, 1974, around 19:00 hours, Bartolomé Ambrosio Salazar Veloz, a militant of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), met for a few moments with his spouse in the Plaza de Armas of this city, to whom he stated that he would meet with a person to carry out a procedure, for which he waited, but he never returned, and subsequently on April 27, 1974, his body was found lifeless in the vicinity of Quinchamalí, Commune of Chillán, on the banks of a river, dead from bullet impacts inflicted by third parties, thus configuring the crime of qualified homicide of Bartolomé Ambrosio Salazar Veloz, provided for and sanctioned in article 391 No. 1 of the Penal Code, perpetrated in this jurisdiction».

For this event, the document adds «That, from these same antecedents and from the statements of the accused Mario César Romero Godoy, who belonged to the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) and exercised the leadership of said Entity for the Seventh and Eighth Regions; and from Patricio Orlando Marabolí Orellana, who served at the time of the occurrence of the investigated events as head of the Regional Intelligence Center (CIRE) in this city; sufficient and well-founded presumptions emerge to estimate that a culpable participation as authors of the crime specified in article 15 No. 1 and 3 of the Penal Code corresponds to them».

Finally, and in relation to the homicide of Ogán Lagos, the visiting minister deemed it proven that: «in the early hours of March 15, 1974, from the house of a sister of the partner of Ogán Esteban Lagos Marín, a militant of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), located in Chillán Viejo, around 02:30 hours, a commando of approximately eight people, agents of the Carabineros and the Army, all in civilian clothes, raided the home, detaining him along with a brother, loading them into a green pickup truck, being transferred to the Investigations Barracks of Chillán and from there taken blindfolded to the Regiment where they were interrogated and subsequently transferred to the Public Jail of this city; from there he was taken on April 25, 1974, to an unknown destination by a group of Agents, his corpse being found near a house on the La Dehesa de Tanilvoro estate, as a consequence of bullet impacts inflicted by third parties on the 27th of the same month and year, thus configuring the crime of qualified homicide of Ogán Esteban Lagos Marín, provided for and sanctioned in article 391 No. 1 of the Penal Code». For this crime, an indictment was issued against «Fernando Gómez Segovia, Mario César Romero Godoy, Arturo Manuel Alarcón Navarrete, and Patricio Orlando Marabolí Orellana, as authors of the crime of qualified homicide of Ogán Esteban Lagos Marín, provided for and sanctioned in article 391 No. 1 of the Penal Code, perpetrated in this jurisdiction on April 27, 1974».

Minister Arias ordered the preventive detention of the 15 indicted individuals, for which he issued an order to the Investigative Brigade of Crimes Against Human Rights of the Investigations Police of Santiago and the Investigations Prefecture of this city.

In this regard, it must be noted that Fernando Gómez Segovia is serving a sentence at the Punta Peuco Prison for other human rights crimes.

Source: resumen.cl, August 7, 2015

Former DINA agent Fernando Gómez Segovia has died. Friend of San Carlos residents Mario Romero Godoy (deceased), Lincoyan Lagos (deceased), Héctor Soto Hermosilla, Ser

Fernando Gómez Segovia at the Prison and Torture House located on Plot 31 of the Pomuyeto Estate, owned by Lincoyan Lagos Tortella (deceased).

The news was delivered by the FACIR Multigremial through its Twitter account: “We communicate the sensitive passing of Army Colonel (R) Don Fernando Gómez Segovia, R.I.P. We express our condolences to the Chilean Army, to his comrades at Punta Peuco, and to his family. May the Lord receive him in his holy kingdom and may he receive the justice that this world denied him,” the statement concluded.

Fernando Gómez Segovia was transferred on December 20, 2017, from the Punta Peuco Prison to a house in the commune of San Carlos, located on Plot 31 of the Pomuyeto Estate, which served as a prison and torture center owned by Lincoyan Lagos Tortella (deceased), to participate in the reconstruction of scenes and thus clarify the death of three young members of the MIR.

The proceedings were directed by the minister in extraordinary visitation for human rights violation cases of the Court of Appeals of Concepción, Carlos Aldana.

The death of Gómez Segovia is added to the passing of former military prosecutor Mario Romero Godoy, which occurred this past January 11 at 05:45 hours at the Las Condes Clinic. His funeral was held "privately" on January 12 of this year; the place where he was buried was not reported, as published in the obituary of the printed newspaper El Mercurio.

Likewise, the passing of Lincoyan Lagos Tortella in May 2017, after suffering from biliary cancer. In the seventies, he was an active militant of the Nationalist Fatherland and Liberty Front (Patria y Libertad), a Chilean paramilitary movement of the extreme right with a nationalist ideology.

Lagos Tortella was indicted for the death of Rolando Angulo Matamala, a young militant of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), murdered on April 27, 1974.

In the investigation directed by Investigating Minister Claudio Arias of the Court of Appeals of Chillán, Lincoyan admitted to having provided his house “to be able to keep the political prisoners that Mario Romero wanted to be interrogated” at the request of his “friends from Patria y Libertad,” he stated.

Biological Impunity

Regarding the death of Fernando Gómez Segovia, it is worth recalling the statements made by the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared of Ñuble, after learning the news of the passing of former Military Prosecutor Mario Romero Godoy: "We have been witnesses to how they have limited justice through the Court of Appeals of Chillán and currently the Court of Appeals of Concepción when it comes to clarifying the kidnapping and homicide of so many victims, and how the justice system has conspired against the substantive progress that would allow us to know what happened to our relatives and who are the ones responsible for their disappearance and execution."

"The poorly named justice system in this country has led to the perpetrators being declared incapacitated due to dementia or biological impunity in this case. Violating every right of the relatives."

Minister in extraordinary visitation for human rights violation cases of the Court of Appeals of Concepción, Carlos Aldana.

Fernando Gómez Segovia was indicted for different cases associated with human rights violations in the Ñuble Region.

Among them, the crime of three young members of the MIR, an event that occurred on April 27, 1974. “They were part of the Regional Committee of the MIR, they were detained by this group of torturers, who are being confronted with Gómez Segovia, being taken to San Carlos to the Pomuyeto sector, owned by Lincoyan Lagos, to then be murdered, and their bodies were thrown in different parts of the province,” according to what Jorge Vera, a member of the Truth and Justice Committee of Chillán, stated to Diario El Itihue in the month of April 2015.

APRIL 2015 - COURT OF APPEALS OF CHILLÁN

Froilan Aguilera Domínguez, Army corporal (DINA); Pedro Vergara Mieres, Army corporal (DINA); Luís Troncoso Verdugo, Army corporal (DINA Linares); Luis Toledo Espinoza, Army corporal (DINA Linares); and Héctor Soto Hermosilla were confronted in the Court of Appeals of Chillán.

According to the information provided by Jorge Vera, a member of the Truth and Justice Committee of Chillán, the confrontation carried out this morning at the Court of Appeals of Chillán is to “clarify the death of three comrades of the MIR who were detained on April 7, 1974, by this group of six torturers together with Fernando Gómez,” and subsequently murdered.

“These young people were detained by the SIC of San Carlos (Civil Intelligence Service). The function that this repressive organization fulfilled in the first days of the coup d'état was: to detain, persecute, and raid the homes of figures of the Popular Unity and mainly of the MIR.”

SIC - DINA

The SIC and the DINA—once the DINA was installed in Chillán, the Michimalongo Brigade, the DINA South-Central Brigade, was formed, commanded by Fernando Gómez Segovia and a Carabineros sergeant with the surname Espinoza, who is currently deceased.

The prosecutor Mario Romero Godoy called on the SIC to collaborate with the DINA and give it all its support and collaboration in terms of infrastructure; this means that the SIC provided vehicles, properties, and estates so that the DINA could begin to operate between Linares and Chillán.

Héctor Soto Hermosilla, from San Carlos, was the head of the SIC. He constantly visited the house that served as a detention and torture center located on the Pomuyeto estate of Lincoyan Lagos in the city of San Carlos.

Soto Hermosilla received reports from the executioners who were there: Army corporal Vergara, Army corporal Troncoso, and the Army corporals from the Linares artillery regiment, Toledo and Olmedo.

Jorge Vera highlights that all of them “are being confronted with their supreme chief; all of them implicate Fernando Gómez Segovia, who had seen the three comrades of the MIR who were murdered alive: Ogán Lagos Marín, 22 years old, an agronomy student from Chillán; Rolando Angulo Matamala, 26 years old, a social worker at the Chillán Governorate; Bartolomé Salazar Veloso, a teacher at the Chillán Girls' High School; all of them were executed on April 27, 1974.”

Héctor Soto Hermosilla was head of the SIC from 1973 to 1974, together with Sergio Gómez Vera, and the rest of the members of the SIC, Lincoyan Lagos and Sergio Bustos Baquedano.

Source: diarioelitihue.blogspot.com, March 28, 2021

Investigation into the building where a DINA barracks operated in Colonia Dignidad

Erick Zott, who spent a week held in the facilities of the sect 50 years ago, was interrogated by an individual with a Portuguese accent, subjected to very peculiar tortures, and, furthermore, used in the middle of an intelligence training exercise intended for members of the dictatorship's secret police.

For many years, the former Army officer and agent of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), Fernando Gómez Segovia (now deceased), denied that the office of said organization that he directed in Parral had any working relationship with the Colonia Dignidad sect, which, in turn, also carried out intelligence work during the time of the military dictatorship, maintaining an immense card index with files on “enemies” of the colony, but also of those they considered their friends, while carrying out tracking, surveillance, and harassment in the same sector, but also in cities like Chillán, Concepción, and Los Angeles, as has become evident thanks to the 46,000 files that were found by the PDI in 2005.

However, Gómez Segovia, better known as “GURMIR” within the colony, began to drop some pieces of information in several of the judicial processes in which he was accused. In several of them, he recounted that in 1974 he was assigned as head of the DINA Regional Southern Brigade (BIRS), based in Parral, and that it was installed in a house located in the center of that commune that Paul Schäfer, the leader of the sect, offered them free of charge.

Also, in statements made within the framework of the investigation into the death of former President Eduardo Frei Montalva, he said that his second-in-command in said unit was former Army officer Gerardo Huber (murdered in the Cajón del Maipo in 1991) and that other officers who served as heads of the BIRS, which had jurisdiction over the entire south-central zone of Chile, were Eduardo Neckelmann and Maximiliano Peppi.

Perhaps the most surprising thing of all that he ever said was—within the framework of the investigation into the kidnapping of Alvaro Vallejos Villagrán, a case for which Gómez Segovia was sentenced to 10 years—that one day Schäfer asked him to accompany him to a property located within the village, near the entrance to the premises, “and there he showed me a construction that from the outside looked like a stable, but upon entering it was impressive, as they had practically reproduced the office I used in Parral, with all the comforts, telling me that that was my office, which I reproached, since our work was reserved. Schäfer got annoyed and later offered it to Guy Neckelmann, who succeeded me in the position,” but “the Mamo” did not want it,” he asserted.

The mention of that Kafkaesque replica of the city DINA office inside the enclave was the only statement that existed for many years regarding what was always an open secret: that the DINA had its own facilities inside the colony, in which agents of great relevance operated, such as Pedro Espinoza, Marcelo Morén Brito, Fernando Laureani, and others.

In fact, several people who were apprehended in the 70s by the DINA were convinced that upon being taken to the colony they had been inside that office, but it could never be located.

However, a couple of weeks ago, one of the survivors of the colony, Erick Zott, who today resides in Austria, participated in a key proceeding within the village, which was led by the minister visiting for human rights cases of the Court of Appeals of Santiago, Paola Plaza, as well as personnel from the PDI, in the midst of which the former political prisoner was able to recognize the place, a proceeding that today takes on a new relevance, given the actions that the judge has carried out during the last year in search of clues that allow finding the whereabouts of at least 30 people who were forcibly disappeared inside the sect, between 1974 and 1975.

The Return

Towards the beginning of 1975, Erick Zott was the head of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) in Concepción and, along with several other MIR members, was in Valparaíso, an occasion that the DINA—supported by members of the Military Intelligence Service of the Maipo Regiment—took advantage of to detain them.

They were held in the Maipo Regiment, where an episode that was never clarified took place, which culminated in the death of Captain Osvaldo Heyder, and after that, Zott was taken to Villa Grimaldi, but towards the second or third week of February, they transferred him to the Talcahuano Naval Base, where the SIRE (Regional Intelligence Service) operated, which had another member of the MIR from Concepción detained, Luis Peebles (who passed away at the end of January of this year).

From there, both were mobilized to an unknown destination by the DINA. Shortly after arriving at that place, however, they began to notice that they were in a detention center different from all those they had known up to that moment, because the vehicle in which they were traveling entered a gravel road and then they put cotton with water in their ears.

After that, when the pickup truck stopped, they were made to climb onto a kind of cement ramp, and after that, they were held in an office. Although they had been blindfolded for weeks, the non-commissioned officer who was driving the pickup truck allowed Zott to take it off for a few minutes so that he could clean his eyes.

That was how the prisoner managed to see that he was in an office that had a window that looked out to the exterior.

After that, they covered his eyes again and the interrogations began, very different from those they already knew by that point.

Zott recounts that they spent almost the entire day tied—with leather straps—to metal cots, completely unable to move and with the light on day and night, for which they lost the notion of time. From time to time, furthermore, they were subjected to a torture of which they had never heard: they were put in a very small wooden box, standing up, where a person barely fit, and they were left there for hours.

To that technique, of course, were added the classic beatings and the administration of electricity.

However, the interrogations were very different from those they had known up to that moment. In the case of Zott, the one doing it was an individual with a Portuguese accent and, unlike the modus operandi of the DINA, which only wanted names, this individual first asked them for all their personal data, as if he wanted to know about them, understand them, know about their lives, their fears, etc.

Furthermore, the individual with the Portuguese accent and others interrogated them simultaneously with other members of the DINA who were in Villa Grimaldi, by means of a high-power radio. The place was also disconcerting because when they were not being interrogated, the only sound that reached them, like a dull rumor, was the crackling of the radio that the DINA used, but nothing more.

Even both prisoners constantly had a guard, who was positioned behind their heads, but they never heard them utter a single word.

He remained there for about a week and when they were taking him back to another detention center in Santiago, the same Army non-commissioned officer, the only person who had humane treatment with him, told him that he had been in Colonia Dignidad and not only that, but he also explained to him that they had been there in the middle of an instruction “of an instruction for officers in the field of interrogations” (to this day Zott has tried to find him, which has been in vain).

The above made sense almost 40 years later, when the PDI found a booklet in the colony that evidenced that in November 1974 the DINA had carried out intelligence training for non-commissioned officers inside the colony.

Today, Zott understands that both he and Peebles were basically used as the subjects to be interrogated in said training, in which everything indicates that the foreign subject was Carlos Camacho Matos, an official of the Brazilian Army who in the early 70s infiltrated the MIR in Concepción and who was subsequently placed in the colony together with other Brazilians.

The Office

Zott is sure that the site where he and Peebles remained inside the colony was not the famous “Potato Warehouse,” where many other prisoners detained by the DINA in Santiago, Talca, Parral, or Coronel were held, and for a long time the doubt of where he had been exactly gnawed at him.

In 2007 he was inside the colony, trying—among other things—to locate the place, but he was unsuccessful. However, something peculiar happened during that visit, which was authorized by the delegate that the government of the time designated for the sect, Hermán Schwember, and which was guided by Udo Hopp, the older brother of the doctor Hartmutt Hopp.

In the midst of it, Zott told me who he was:

-I am a survivor from here, I was a prisoner here. My name is such and such—he explained to him. To his surprise, Hopp was moved.

-He stared at me as if in shock. And he looks at me again, approaches me, and gives me a hug, a thousand percent emotional. Tears fall from his eyes and he looked at my face again as if saying “I know him, I don't know him, I recognize him.”

After that, the guide told him that he was going to show him something.

-He took me to a place that I now, unfortunately, cannot recognize. I know how it looks inside, but I don't remember from which part we arrived at that place, and he tells me, this is the laboratory where my brother worked with the DINA people and he tells me, you know, they are all those chemicals that were elaborated, etc.—in reference to the chemical and probably bacteriological weapons that were produced inside the DINA.

However, the tour was interrupted, due to the opposition of other colonists and Hopp's own wife.

Fifty years after his confinement in the sect, Zott was finally able to identify the place. It was a construction that today is found almost in ruins, as it is full of waste materials, and which was previously known as the Hildegard Halle (Hildegard's shed), which possesses in its back part (where one enters) the cement ramp that Zott mentions, “the typical ramp of a warehouse in which trucks unload,” he explains.

It is a one-story wooden building of large size, divided into three naves, and which, after it was identified as the place where Zott was, is currently being studied by the PDI, especially given the suspicion that it possesses a hidden basement, as it must be remembered that only in the last two months has Minister Plaza, together with the detectives with whom she works, managed to find two underground bunkers and interrogate a series of witnesses who would be providing background information of utility for the reconstruction of the repressive activity in conjunction with the DINA and Colonia Dignidad, with the aim of finding the victims who were executed there.

by Carlos Basso Prieto

Source: elmostrador.cl, February 23, 2025