Rafael Agustín González Verdugo, a former counterintelligence agent for the FACh (Chilean Air Force) with badge number 27759, prosecuted for the murder of the American Charles Horman, has a story fit for a movie.

He holds the status of "political exonerated person," was reinstated with honors into the "Air Force Family," and is imprisoned in Punta Peuco because the Air Force did not want him detained in its own barracks.

Film director Costa-Gavras is evaluating the idea for a sequel to "Missing." In the judicial investigation into the crime against Charles Horman in Santiago in 1973, ten times more is known today than was known at the time.

It was a twisted military intrigue hatched by high-ranking commanders that ended with the American being riddled with bullets. Army Generals (Ret.) Herman Brady and Sergio Arellano could be among the new individuals prosecuted by the visiting judge Jorge Zepeda as instigators of the homicide.

This is because Vice Admiral (Ret.) Patricio Carvajal and General (Ret.) Augusto Lutz are dead. Both also bore responsibility for the crime. Until now, only the incredible officer (Ret.) Rafael Agustín González Verdugo has been charged as an accomplice.

He was a counterintelligence civilian linked for decades to the Air Force in the Department II of Intelligence of the National Defense General Staff (EMDN), assigned the rank of colonel.

His history as an undercover agent appears in the case file as if it were for another movie. "My name is Rafael Agustín González Verdugo, a former intelligence officer of the Air Force, and my serial number was 27759," this character introduced himself in January 1977 to the United States embassy officials who interviewed him at the Italian embassy, where he sought refuge due to alleged internal problems he claims to have had with the DINA.

On January 31, 1974, by Decree No. 90, the Military Junta recognized 20 years of his work in the EMDN Intelligence Department. In other words, González, who is now 69 years old, has been a spy for almost his entire life. He spied on Horman and Frank Teruggi, the other American murdered after the military coup, in the months leading up to September 11, 1973.

Horman was investigating the links between Chilean officers and conspicuous right-wing and Christian Democrat political leaders with the CIA and the Richard Nixon administration to prevent Allende from assuming the Presidency of Chile in 1970. The plot ended with the assassination of the Army Commander-in-Chief, General René Schneider, for which an ultra-right-wing commando was used.

In the proceedings, members of the patrol that detained Horman have been identified, and it is becoming increasingly clear that he did not die on September 18, 1973, as was officially reported, but rather some days later. Military personnel who transferred him from one place to another have also been identified.

Liaison Officer

Horman was in Lutz's office in the Ministry of Defense building (the current Armed Forces building), who was the head of the Army Intelligence Directorate. During those first days, González acted in that building as the intelligence liaison officer regarding the detainees who were arriving.

González Verdugo, who later changed the V in his surname to a B, interrogated Horman at the Ministry of Defense, as he speaks perfect English. According to him, Lutz ordered Horman's elimination. González says he worked in 1970 under Lutz's command at the EMDN.

General Herman Brady was, as of September 1973, the head of the Santiago garrison, and Arellano Stark was the commander of the Combat Group of downtown Santiago. Patricio Carvajal was the Minister of Defense.

With the help of the vast amount of information provided to the investigation by documents declassified by the United States, it was established in the case that officials from the American embassy and consulate also participated in the criminal intrigue, at least as accessories to the homicide, such as Consul Frederick Purdy, who lives in Chile and is also a candidate to be prosecuted in the case.

As a good nest for CIA agents at the time of the intrigue, Purdy's "driver" jumped overnight to become the second-in-command of the United States Embassy in Santiago. A certain "Thompson."

On October 30, 1973, General Lutz drafted a report in which he gave an account of "the investigation" carried out by the military regime regarding the "deaths" of Horman and Teruggi, at the request of American Ambassador Nathaniel Davis.

He delivered the report to the embassy's Defense Attaché, Colonel W. M. Han. The story Lutz told in that document is as deceitful as the entire official history told by the dictatorship about its crimes. "The information available is that the citizens Horman and Teruggi were killed by extremists disguised as military personnel," Lutz told the Americans, who certainly did not believe a word of it because they already knew the truth about the murders.

A Super-Spy

Today, González is imprisoned in Punta Peuco because the FACh did not want him detained in any of its barracks. Having infiltrated countless companies, institutions, and groups during his long life as a spy since the 1960s, it is unknown if he is still spying for someone.

His counterintelligence work was so dedicated that the investigation contains "excellence" ratings signed by Army General (Ret.) Ernesto Baeza; FACh General (Ret.) Vicente Rodríguez Bustos; Navy Captain (Ret.) Rodrigo Fuenzalida; and Vice Admiral (Ret.) Patricio Carvajal. "It's just that I also worked for several services," he told the Americans.

The Bitter Tea of Horman's Father

In March 1973, González Verdugo received an order from Minister of Defense Patricio Carvajal to present himself to the United States Vice Consul in Santiago, James Anderson, to accompany him to the General Cemetery to retrieve Horman's body for repatriation to his country.

This occurred, according to declassified documents, after the United States agreed to sell weaponry to the Army and the FACh in exchange for them handing over Horman's corpse to his family, as the case had generated a "pretty scandal."

Cruelty was committed with Horman's body. It was kept without refrigeration for 20 days so it would decompose and was buried clandestinely. Later, it was exhumed twice and reburied in secret. But on that day, March 21, 1974, González knew exactly where to find it to hand it over to Anderson.

Together, they took it to the San Pancracio funeral home to be embalmed. With eight bullets in him, the remains were definitively repatriated four days later.

González's cynicism reached such an extreme that in 1980, posing as a "dissident" of the regime in the United States, he went to have tea with Horman's father. When he returned to Chile shortly after the end of the dictatorship, he presented himself as a "political exonerated person," and the Concertación government granted him recognition.

He never stopped receiving his pension from the National Defense Social Security Fund as someone "discharged" by the FACh, which he has been receiving for at least 30 years. The crowning moment of this very special episode occurred at the beginning of December 2003, when the accomplice to the Horman crime received in Quintero, from the hands of Minister of Defense Michelle Bachelet, the badge to reintegrate into the "Air Force Family," alongside some of his former comrades-in-arms, true victims of Pinochet's terror.

When González was prosecuted on December 10, 2003, the FACh declared that when the Horman crime occurred, "Mr. González Verdugo did not belong to the institution," adding that he only did so "from April 1974 until September 1975, as a civilian employee."

But González told the Americans in his long interviews in 1977, "I was the only Air Force officer who participated in the takeover of La Moneda on September 11, 1973."

Source: La Nación, January 20, 2004

A former intelligence officer of the Chilean Air Force (FACh) became the first person prosecuted today for the case of the detention and death of American journalist Charles Horman. Judge Jorge Zepeda prosecuted the former Lieutenant Colonel Rafael González, a former agent of the aviation general staff's intelligence department, as an "accomplice to qualified homicide," reported Radio Bío Bío.

The officer, currently retired, confessed to having interrogated Horman regarding a journalistic investigation the reporter was conducting in Chile about the assassination of the former Army Commander-in-Chief, René Schneider.

According to González's testimony, after interrogating Horman in 1973, he handed him over to the authorities in charge of the National Stadium, a facility that served as a concentration camp for political prisoners after the 1973 Military Coup.

The American journalist was murdered in that place, and his remains were recovered from the Legal Medical Institute by his father, who traveled to Chile specifically for that purpose.

Source: El Mercurio, December 11, 2003

FACh denies that prisoner in Horman case was a member of the institution

The Air Force reported today that Rafael Agustín González Verdugo did not belong to the institution when the death of American journalist Charles Horman occurred, a reaction that arises after Minister Jorge Zepeda subjected González to prosecution yesterday as an accomplice to qualified homicide.

Through a statement, the FACh specifies that González Verdugo entered the military branch starting in April 1974 and remained until September 1975, a period in which he served as a civilian employee, meaning "he only remained in the institution for a period of one year and four months." "It is not true that Mr.

González Verdugo was called to serve as an officer in active duty of the Chilean Air Force," the Air Force statement notes. Charles Horman was detained by a military patrol on September 17, 1973. Subsequently, he was transferred to the National Stadium, where he died.

His corpse was found weeks later in the General Cemetery, where it had been buried clandestinely. First person prosecuted for the Horman case, after 30 years Visiting Judge Jorge Zepeda subjected the former agent of the Department II of Intelligence of the National Defense General Staff (EMDN), Rafael Agustín González Verdugo, to prosecution as an accomplice to a conspiracy that culminated in the homicide of American journalist Charles Edmund Horman Lazar.

González was a civilian employee of the FACh, assigned to the EMDN, an organization that was commanded by Vice Admiral Patricio Carvajal until September 11, 1973. This is the first prosecution for the Horman case in Chile, 30 years after the events occurred.

Until now completely unknown in the realm of human rights violations, it is established in the investigation that González participated on September 17, 1973, in the interrogation of Horman on the upper floors of the Ministry of National Defense, the current Armed Forces building.

Horman was detained at his home in Santiago that same day by a military patrol that went looking for him, given that he and his wife had been followed for several weeks before the military coup. Horman was interrogated that day about an investigation he was conducting regarding the participation of Army General Roberto Viaux in the crime against Army Commander-in-Chief René Schneider, which occurred on October 22, 1970.

According to documents declassified by the United States Department of State, the crime was part of a plot by the American government, the CIA, high-ranking Chilean officers, and businessmen, including those from the newspaper El Mercurio, to prevent the socialist President-elect Salvador Allende from being ratified by the National Congress and assuming the Presidency of the Republic.

A military patrol brought Horman's bullet-ridden corpse to the Santiago Legal Medical Service on September 18, 1973. His body was buried clandestinely in the General Cemetery. González himself guided the authorities of the United States embassy and consulate in Santiago in March 1974 to exhume the body and send it to his parents in his country of birth.

Arellano and Brady accused Plaintiff lawyers Fabiola Letelier and Sergio Corvalán expressed their total satisfaction yesterday "with the success of the investigation so far" in the lawsuit filed in Chile in 2000 by Joyce Hamre, Horman's wife.

Also accused in this process are Army Generals (Ret.) Sergio Arellano and Herman Brady. In this same case, former American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was interrogated via a letter rogatory, which he finally answered after an insistence at the time by Judge Juan Guzmán, the previous judge of the case.

Former agent González Verdugo was notified of the prosecution and remains detained in a military facility. The Horman crime inspired filmmaker Costa-Gavras to film the movie "Missing." González Verdugo kept his participation hidden for 30 years, and even during the past dictatorship, he attempted at one point to leave for Italy, remaining as an asylum seeker for several months in that embassy in Santiago.

Source: La Nación, December 11, 2003

Horman Case: Court grants freedom to the accused

The Second Summer Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals granted conditional release on bail to Rafael González Verdugo, the only person prosecuted in the investigation into the homicide of American journalist Charles Horman, which occurred a few days after the 1973 coup d'état.

With this decision by the appellate court, which counted on the votes in favor of ministers Carlos Cerda and Raimundo Díaz, and the negative vote of Juan González, the ruling of the first instance by Judge Amanda Valdovinos, who is substituting for Jorge Zepeda in the investigation, was revoked.

In their resolution, the magistrates considered that "there are no qualified grounds" to deprive González Verdugo of his liberty, who is charged as an accomplice to a conspiracy that culminated in the journalist's murder.

Additionally, the appellate court resolved to grant access to the summary proceedings to the defense of the former intelligence agent, "considering the time elapsed since the start of the investigation." The former intelligence agent was linked to the National Defense General Staff, under the orders of Vice Admiral Patricio Carvajal.

Likewise, between 1974 and 1975, he served as a civilian official of the FACh. Journalist Charles Horman was investigating CIA activities against the government of Salvador Allende when he was arrested by a military patrol on September 17, 1973.

Transferred while still alive to the National Stadium, his corpse was found by his relatives weeks later in the capital's General Cemetery, where it had been buried clandestinely.

Source: El Mostrador, February 6, 2004

The photo of the Horman case spy

At noon, the "alarm went off" at the Palace of Justice. La Nación mobilized quickly but stealthily. The spy from the Horman case, the former FACh counterintelligence agent who spied for 40 years with a movie-like history, was remaining in some office in the palace.

The man who interrogated Charles Horman and later dug up his hidden body to hand it over to the United States embassy in 1974. A photo of him had never been published until today. The same man who was prosecuted as an accomplice in the American's crime, days after Minister of Defense Michelle Bachelet gave him the badge in Quintero in December to reintegrate into the "Air Force family" alongside his former comrades-in-arms.

Rafael Agustín González Verdugo received the status of "political exonerated person," alleging his "discharge" from the FACh due to alleged "differences" with the DINA. The same man who, paradoxically, on September 11, 1973, saved journalist Carlos Jorquera, a press advisor to President Allende, at La Moneda.

González Verdugo, 69 years old, whose agent badge was No. 27759, swiped his hand, attempting to prevent being photographed. He turned around a few times and left through a side door. He knew his face was "virgin" until now.

Hours later, under a different pretext, a Russian arrived at this newspaper to ask for the photo. In his audacity, in 1980, in the United States, he went to have tea with Horman's father. A true Chilean James Bond, infiltrating every organization that was convenient, receiving orders from the high commands of the Armed Forces as a FACh civilian agent assigned to Department II of the National Defense General Staff with the rank of colonel.

On January 31, 1974, by Decree No. 90, the Military Junta recognized 20 years of him operating as a spy in that department.

Source: La Nación, February 18, 2004

The Horman case spy remains prosecuted

The Fifth Chamber of the Court of Appeals confirmed by 3 to 0 the prosecution of the former FACh intelligence agent, Rafael González Verdugo, the only person charged so far for the crime against American Charles Horman after the 1973 military coup, which inspired the movie "Missing." The former agent, who for 40 years spied while infiltrated in companies, institutions, and social and political groups, interrogated Horman days after September 11 in the office of the Army's director of intelligence, General Augusto Lutz, at the Ministry of Defense, the current Armed Forces building.

According to Verdugo, it was Lutz who ordered Horman to be killed, but the deceased general cannot answer him. González Verdugo operated in the days following the military uprising as an intelligence liaison officer regarding the detainees who arrived at that ministry.

The spy was prosecuted on December 10, 2003, by Minister Jorge Zepeda as an accomplice to the homicide of Charles Horman. In the arguments, his lawyer was Cristián Espejo, while Sergio Corvalán argued for the Horman family.

Source: La Nación, Thursday, November 20, 2008

La Moneda bomber is a "political exonerated person"

Army Major (Ret.) Enrique Edgardo Cruz Laugier, who took heavy weaponry out of the Tacna Regiment on the day of the military coup to bomb La Moneda from the ground while Allende resisted inside, and the former intelligence agent and FACh Colonel (Ret.) Rafael Agustín González Verdugo, prosecuted until now as the only culprit in the post-coup assassination of American Charles Horman, today hold the status of "political exonerated persons." Their names appear on the list of the 145,000 recognized individuals.

Cruz Laugier was qualified as such on January 20, 2000, by the respective program of the Ministry of the Interior, while González Verdugo was qualified on November 19, 1999. Both stories are movie-like.

Under his signature, Cruz admitted in the case regarding the disappeared from La Moneda that on September 11, 1973, while being commander of the Tacna Artillery Group, the commander of the barracks, Joaquín Ramírez Pineda, handed him command of the barracks.

Cruz says that early on, he went out with his troops to downtown Santiago and installed artillery pieces on the south side of La Moneda, beginning to bomb from the ground before the Hawker Hunters did.

Later, he maintains that he went with his troops and attacked the headquarters of the PC's Ramona Parra Brigades in República with artillery fire, and he did the same with the MAPU militants who were at the headquarters on Calle Carrera.

Once democracy was reborn, the character installed himself as head of security for the Senate in Valparaíso, where he remained until December 2004, when the Internal Regime Commission fired him following the article that LND ("Sleeping with the Enemy") published in 2004.

Cruz sued for "injury and slander," but the court ruled that such crimes did not exist. The case of González Verdugo is worthy of a second part of Costa-Gavras's movie "Missing," inspired by the crime against Charles Horman.

González, a civilian assigned to the FACh who today holds the rank of Colonel (Ret.), worked for 40 years as an intelligence agent for that institution. In the days following the coup, he led Horman to the Ministry of Defense to interrogate him in the office of the then-head of Army intelligence, General Augusto Lutz.

Days later, Horman was found riddled with bullets. For this reason, Minister Jorge Zepeda prosecuted him on December 10, 2003, as an accomplice to the assassination. When at the beginning of December 2003, the then-Minister of Defense and current President, Michelle Bachelet, gave the FACh officers and non-commissioned officers (Ret.) who were victims of repression a badge in Quintero to "reintegrate into the Air Force family," the former agent González received it and posed for the photo.

In 1980, and posing in the United States as a "dissident" of Pinochet, he had the coldness to go have tea with Horman's father. Another character who appears on the list of qualified individuals is the so-called "Prince," Edwin Dimter Bianchi, to whom witnesses in the case attribute the crime against Víctor Jara at the Estadio Chile, although he has not been prosecuted for it.

Dimter was qualified as such on January 20, 2000, but the Ministry of the Interior's program revoked that qualification in 2006 after considering his personal background related to this case and the frustrated coup of June 29, 1973, known as the "Tancazo."

Source: La Nación, November 28, 2008

CIA DECLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS PROVIDE BACKGROUND ON REPRESSION IN CHILE UNDER THE DICTATORSHIP

FACh COLONEL (RET.) AND MEMBER OF THE SIM REVEALED BACKGROUND ON THE ASSASSINATION OF JOSE TOHA, MINISTER OF DEFENSE AND INTERIOR UNDER SALVADOR ALLENDE AND FATHER OF CAROLINA TOHA, PRESIDENT OF THE PPD.

HE ALSO REVEALED OTHER CASES FACh Colonel (Ret.) Rafael González, a former agent of the Military Intelligence Service, who sought asylum in the Italian embassy in 1975, recounted to CIA agents details of the detention and death of former minister José Tohá and other detainees by security agencies.

This is proven in numerous documents declassified by the American government. On April 27, 1976, when the Military Intelligence Service defector Rafael González had already been a refugee for seven months in the Italian embassy in Chile, he decided to write to General Pinochet to request the safe-conduct that would allow him to leave the country.

On that occasion, trying to demonstrate loyalty to the general, he revealed several details surrounding the detention of former minister José Tohá. "When you were in Paraguay, General Arellano, head of the II Division (...) ordered the 'suiciding' of former Minister of Defense José Tohá.

This was brought to the attention of General Leigh, who reported it to General Arellano, who immediately, as Military Prosecutor, ordered the transfer of Tohá, despite the fact that the Aviation Prosecutor, Col.

II Otaíza (R.I.P.), did everything possible to retain him," he points out in part of the letter intercepted by CIA agents and included among the documents declassified by the American government. "The undersigned saw José Tohá leave the Air War Academy on a stretcher to the Military Hospital, and Tohá did not have the strength even to tie his own shoe and barely enough to eat," he adds.

That was not the only thing. Trying to soften the general's heart, he added some passages from his curriculum of service to the homeland. "It was I who handed over José Tohá, Daniel Vergara, Fernando Flores, Osvaldo Puccio (father and son), Aníbal Palma, and Allende's press attaché, Carlos Jorquera, to Admiral Carvajal," lists the man who claimed to be "the only FACh officer in the assault on the La Moneda Palace" on September 11, 1973.

The officer, who was a civilian official attached to the Military Intelligence Service, SIM, between 1969 and 1975, was in charge of handing over Charles Horman's remains to the American consulate on March 21, 1974.

In fact, the first document sent from Chile to the United States regarding Colonel (Ret.) Rafael González Verdugo is a memorandum in which American consulate official James E. Anderson informs Washington about the details of the delivery of the body of Charles Horman, an American citizen detained and murdered in Chile in September 1973, whose case served as inspiration for the creators of the movie "Missing." In it, the official relates that "at 11:30 hours, on March 21, 1974, a man who identified himself as Colonel Rafael González, of the Chilean Air Force, came to the consulate to say that he was in charge of obtaining the documents to enable the shipment of the remains of Mr. Charles Horman to the United States." The SIM defector sought asylum in September 1975 in the Italian embassy in Chile and remained there at least until February 1977. During that time, he gave an interview to The Washington Post in which he acknowledged that he was present when Charles Horman was taken to the Ministry of Defense and saw him in the company of General (Augusto) Lutz and two other men, one of whom he identified as an American. According to what was stated on that occasion, González heard General Lutz tell the others that "Horman knew too much, so he had to disappear." Among the data that Horman allegedly possessed—according to González—were some proofs of the CIA's actions in Chile. González ratified this statement several times in his interviews with different American officials. But that was not the only topic he spoke about. González provided his SIM ID number—27759. He acknowledged that he had lived in the northern country between 1969 and 1972, performing intelligence work in relation to an embezzlement at CORFO. His son, then 6 years old, had been born there and possessed American nationality. As an undercover agent at CORFO, González was also a witness to the detention and torture of the former secretary-general of CORFO, Roberto Ceballos Cornejo. The Ceballos case, the DINA, and Amy Conger "Mr. Ceballos was tortured in a bestial manner. I did this because... as I had a group of agents. Mr. Ceballos was detained and then taken first to the house that the DINA had for torture, located on the street Londres with París," González relates to his American interlocutors. Then he adds that "between the last week of January or the first of February," he was transferred to the Tejas Verdes camp. "There he was tortured again, but in a terrible way. A statement was given to him that he had to sign," he continued. González finished recounting the Ceballos case, referring that he was later transferred to the Estadio Chile in Santiago, from there to the Aviation Prosecutor's Office in times of war, and then to the Air Force Hospital. "This man, after 60 days, had black wrists because they had kept him hanging; he had a swollen liver from the kicks they had given him. He had a bad arm from the hanging. He had his whole body burned. He had his penis with the head as if it were two, because they had applied current to him. I know this because I saw him in the Hospital." In his statements, González also provided the Americans with information about the DINA. He said that according to what he knew, this organization had been created in 1974, but it had been operating since 1973. "The operational head of the DINA was Colonel Jahn, in the year '74 and '75. It was not Colonel Contreras. That is, he was the one who really handled things." He also added that Jahn had planned the disappearance of hundreds of people, creating "a tremendous problem for the Government." According to what he knew, the DINA had already set up an office in Europe by that date "headquartered in Madrid." Likewise, González related that "on one occasion" he saw the young Amy Conger at the War Academy. Conger, of American nationality, denounced in Washington having been the object of torture in Chile. "I was passing by the Air War Academy and, at that moment, I went to pick up some photographs on the second floor and I ran into her. I spoke in English with her, while she handed me some photographs. But she was very well. Everyone treated her well, they were very courteous to her," he related. Then he added that while she was handing him the photographs, "she was having a dialogue with a person from Patria y Libertad who is called Claudio Rosenbaum Cut, who is a pilot for Lan Chile and is on special service... in Patria y Libertad. He spoke perfect English and was talking to her."

Source: Cedec.cl, June 28, 2010

Court of Appeals confirms prosecution in Horman case

The appellate court ratified the indictment issued by Judge Jorge Zepeda against Rafael González Verdugo. SANTIAGO.— In a unanimous ruling, the Fifth Chamber of the Court of Appeals confirmed the prosecution of the civilian, attached to the Army with the rank of Captain (Ret.), Rafael Agustín González Verdugo, for the homicide of American journalist Charles Horman.

Last week, the visiting judge, Jorge Zepeda, charged González under the count of accomplice to a conspiracy that culminated in the homicide of the American professional. The tribunal, composed of ministers Raúl Rocha, Jaime Rodríguez, and the participating lawyer Paulina Veloso, were in favor of maintaining the indictment, thereby confirming the magistrate's actions.

Horman was detained on September 17, 1973, and after being murdered, his body was exhumed on three occasions.

Source: Emol.com, December 15, 2003

Disappeared: Herman Brady prosecuted for qualified kidnapping

He is held responsible for the case of 12 people who were at La Moneda.

Herman Brady, who on September 11, 1973, was the head of the Santiago garrison and head of the Second Division of the Army, was prosecuted as the author of the qualified kidnapping of the 12 detainees who disappeared after the bombing of La Moneda.

It is the first time that General (Ret.) Brady has been prosecuted for human rights violations. The case is handled by the judge with exclusive dedication Juan Carlos Urrutia, of the 5th Criminal Court of Santiago.

Abundant evidence against Brady, and the confrontation to which he was subjected with General Joaquín Ramírez Pineda, commander of the Tacna Regiment in 1973, where the prisoners from La Moneda were taken, determined his prosecution.

Ramírez held him responsible for what happened to the detainees. Rafael Agustín González Verdugo, the only person prosecuted as an accomplice for the disappearance of American journalist Charles Horman, also testified against Brady.

Source: El Mercurio, February 5, 2004

Among those favored are

Enrique Cruz Laugier, who bombarded La Moneda from the ground on September 11; Patricio Kellet Oyarzún, head of Intelligence in charge of the detention of persons in Valdivia; Juan Campos Cifuentes, liaison between the Carabineros and the Navy Intelligence Service at the main Navy torture center in Valparaíso; and, Rafael González Berdugo, prosecuted for the crime of Charles Horman.

Also included is the case of Edwin Dimter Bianchi—who brought tanks into the streets against Allende and was the alleged "Prince" of the Estadio Chile, prosecuted for the assassination of Víctor Jara—whose benefit was only revoked in 2006.

After nine o'clock in the morning on September 11, 1973, Major Enrique Cruz Laugier prepared his troops and heavy artillery pieces. Three hours earlier, Cruz, who was the commander of the Artillery Group of the Tacna Regiment, had received command of the barracks from his commander, Colonel Joaquín Ramírez Pineda.

That morning, Cruz positioned himself with his troops and heavy weaponry in front of La Moneda on the south side and opened fire on the seat of government. Inside, Allende resisted the military attack with a submachine gun in hand. In a coordinated manner, Cruz ordered a ceasefire shortly before the Hawker Hunter jets dropped bombs on the Palace.

Once the attack ended, Major Cruz commanded the assault on the headquarters of the Ramona Parra Brigades of the Communist Party on Avenida República. He did the same with the headquarters of the Santiago Regional branch of the Movement of Unitary Popular Action (Mapu) on Calle Carrera.

On the night of that same day and the days that followed, he and his men were in charge of raiding homes and detaining people. Starting in 1990, he was installed as head of Security for the Senate in Valparaíso.

In 2004, he was expelled from his position after a report by La Nación Domingo revealed his history, which Cruz himself recounted on August 30, 2002, in a judicial statement regarding the forcibly disappeared of La Moneda. He was classified as a "political exonerated person" on January 20, 2000.

Patricio Kellet Oyarzún is today a retired Army major. On September 11, 1973, he was the head of Intelligence for the Cazadores Regiment of Valdivia, then commanded by the former member of the Military Junta, Santiago Sinclair.

In his capacity as head of Intelligence, Kellet detained dozens of people in Valdivia and its surroundings, as he admitted in his judicial statement of May 9, 2003, in the trial for the crimes of the Caravan of Death in Valdivia.

José Liendo Vera, "Comandante Pepe," and 11 other MIR militants were murdered there. It was from that same regiment that a military convoy departed on October 9, 1973, toward the Panguipulli Forestry and Lumber Complex in the foothills of Valdivia.

The troops murdered 17 peasants in the Baños de Chihuío sector and later hid their bodies in a clandestine grave. In 1978, they unearthed them and threw them into the sea. Kellet is now an agricultural businessman.

Curiously, the former head of Intelligence told the Qualification Commission of the Office of the Political Exonerated of the Ministry of the Interior that the Army exonerated him for reasons "beyond" his control.

On March 6, 2002, he was classified as a "political exonerated person." But a year later, in his aforementioned judicial statement, he maintained that "in 1985 I retired for personal reasons and currently I dedicate myself to agriculture."

Rafael González Berdugo is a civilian who operated as a counterintelligence agent for the Air Force, but was incorporated into the FACH with the rank of colonel. He always served in the Department II of Intelligence of the National Defense General Staff.

In the first hours of the military coup, he acted as a liaison officer at the Ministry of Defense between the different branches of the Armed Forces and the detainees who arrived at that location. There, and in the office of the Army's head of Intelligence, General Augusto Lutz, he was the interrogator of the murdered U.S. citizens Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi.

His agent identification number was 27759, and he had been infiltrating various social and political organizations since the 1960s. His story is that of a Chilean James Bond. He has been prosecuted since 2003 for the crime of Horman.

In January 1977, officials from the United States embassy interrogated him at the Italian embassy, where he had sought asylum, claiming that DINA agents were pursuing him. In that interview, he told the officials, "I was the only Air Force officer who participated in the takeover of La Moneda on September 11, 1973." He finally left Chile, and in 1980, posing as a dissident of the Pinochet dictatorship, he went to have tea with Charles Horman's father.

In 1974, he directed the exhumation of Horman's body to hand it over to the United States embassy, which repatriated it to his country. As established in this case, the order to murder Horman and Teruggi came from General Lutz's office, following González Berdugo's interrogations.

Years later, he changed the V in his second surname to a B. When he returned to Chile after the dictatorship ended, he posed as a political exonerated person, obtaining such accreditation.

Juan Campos Cifuentes is a strange character. He was a Carabinero officer in Valparaíso and has had his brother, José Alejandro, disappeared since 1981, when he attempted to enter Chile clandestinely from Argentina during the MIR's "Operation Return" and was detained in the foothills of Valdivia.

Along with 200 Carabineros from the Fifth Region, he was one of the 16 officers from this group who, after the coup d'état, took the special "commando" course at the Marine Infantry's Fort Miller in Las Salinas, Viña del Mar.

There, he learned to kill and torture. He was also instructed in Intelligence. Once the instruction provided by the "dogs" of the Infantry—as he calls them himself—was finished, he went to perform duties at the Naval War Academy (AGN) on the Playa Ancha hill in the port.

There, he was a "liaison officer" between the Carabineros prefecture of the Fifth Region and the Naval Intelligence Service, known as "Ancla 2," which had that Academy under its control. That was the main Navy detention and torture center in the entire port region.

He transferred prisoners from the AGN to the prison ships Maipo and Lebu. Together with a platoon of Carabineros, they killed an opponent of the dictatorship in the Plaza Aníbal Pinto. Juan Campos recounted his curriculum to historian Jorge Magasich, author of the book Los que dijeron No (Those Who Said No), which recounts the trial of the constitutionalist sailors conducted by the Naval Prosecutor's Office of Valparaíso, in a recorded interview.

However, Campos says that he never tortured at the AGN, but was only in charge of analyzing documentation and the interrogations of the prisoners. He was recognized as a "political exonerated person" on November 19, 1999.

Erwin Dimter was classified as a "political exonerated person" on January 20, 2000, but the benefit was canceled in 2006. He already appeared as the alleged "Prince" of the Estadio Chile linked to the assassination of singer-songwriter Víctor Jara.

Six years later, he was prosecuted as an accomplice for this crime, along with seven other retired Army officers. But Dimter already had coup-plotting behavior before September 11, 1973. On June 29 of that year, he participated in an uprising against the government of Salvador Allende by bringing tanks into the streets.

The mutiny was led by Lieutenant Colonel Roberto Souper Onfray, another of those indicted for the Víctor Jara case.

Source: El Mostrador, July 15, 2013

The Nazi Connection in the Horman Case

The resolution was significant. But there are still chapters in the shadows. Last December, Judge Jorge Zepeda prosecuted the former civilian agent of the Department II of Intelligence of the National Defense General Staff, Rafael Agustín González Verdugo, as an accomplice to the homicide of the American journalist Charles Edmund Horman Lazar.

After 30 years, it is the first prosecution in the case that inspired the book The Execution of Charles Horman by Thomas Hauser, which in turn inspired the film Missing, directed by Constantin Costa-Gavras and featuring performances by Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek.

The testimony of González, who sought asylum in the Italian Embassy in September 1975, was collected there. He stated at the time that he had seen Horman on the 9th floor of the Ministry of Defense, where General Augusto Lutz, director of the Military Intelligence Service (SIM); Colonel Víctor Hugo Barría, second-in-command of the organization; and an American he could not identify were located.

He said that they agreed to eliminate Horman because "he knew too much": "His detention and death were carried out between the CIA and local authorities."

However, Judge Zepeda has now established that González interrogated the young American a couple of hours after his arrest on September 17, 1973. Thus, he transformed from a principal witness into the sole defendant.

A week before the prosecution, González had appeared at the "Air Force Family Reunion" ceremony that the FACH held at the Quintero Air Base with its political exonerated persons, which included the participation of the Minister of Defense, Michelle Bachelet. His only link to the institution dated back to April 1974, when he joined the SIFA.

Half a century ago

But these are not the only dark aspects of this character. Franz Pfeiffer Richter was the "national commander" of the National Socialist Workers' Party (PNSO), the only group with legal existence—between 1962 and 1969—that has reclaimed the use of the swastika, the figure of Adolf Hitler, and, in general, the ideological conceptions of German National Socialism.

He was the brother of the president of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Alfredo Pfeiffer, and passed away in 1997. Although he is currently almost unknown, he exerted enormous influence on Alexis López and Eugenio Lutz, who today head the two main groups that identify with National Socialism: Patria Nueva Sociedad (PNS) and the Nazi Movement of Chile (MNCH).

Pfeiffer's political career began in 1954 in the "National Syndicalist Revolutionary Movement" (MRNS), a group created five years earlier by a collective of admirers of Spanish Falangism, the only fascist experience that remained standing after the Third Reich and the Italian Social Republic were defeated in World War II. It still exists and is the oldest "nationalist" group in the country.

Among the founders were Ramón Callís and the priest Osvaldo Lira, who years later became the "spiritual advisor" to Manuel Contreras and was on the verge of assuming the role of DINA chaplain.

In its early days, other people who would later acquire public notoriety passed through its ranks, such as Federico Mujica, Gastón Acuña, and Mario Barros, according to the book Camino de Victoria (Path of Victory), published in 1987 by Misael Galleguillos, who is today the main leader of the group.

He is the same person who was prosecuted in 2000 for the assassination of the president of the ANEF, Tucapel Jiménez.

In November 1984, Pfeiffer wrote an autobiography titled Memorias de 30 Años (Memoirs of 30 Years), of which only 250 copies circulated underground.

Due to his German ancestry, he sympathized with the Third Reich at the time he finished his secondary studies and joined the MRNS, thinking it would resolve those political concerns. It was not so, because "ultimately, it was not Nazi," he said.

But he was not frustrated. Although the group was not Nazi, "some who did consider themselves as such passed through its secretariat." One night, "a young member invited me to his house. There, he had a portrait of the Führer and countless objects related to and relics of the martyrs of the Workers' Insurance." In fact, "his room was full of portraits, books, and (National Socialist) documents, which he claimed to revere."

It was none other than Rafael González Verdugo. The "little swastika."

Franz Pfeiffer recalled that "among the things that Rafael González kept and that I saw that night was the shirt from Héctor Thennet's uniform. In its pockets was a photo of the Führer." Thennet was one of the 59 young people of the National Socialist Movement (MNS) who was massacred in the Workers' Insurance Building on September 5, 1938.

He verified that night, as he noted, that "González was not really a Hitlerite, but rather a 'Hollywood-style Nazi,' as there are so many today. If he could have, he would have dressed up as a Marshal, with a monocle and everything. For him, uniforms, weapons, and war anecdotes were more important—anything, except the doctrine."

The link, in any case, was useful for Pfeiffer, as he was "initiated" into Nazism by the man now prosecuted for the "Horman Case." He recounted that "through González, I found out that not only did National Socialist organizations continue to exist in Europe, but there were other Nazi groups in Chile itself."

Pfeiffer established new contacts and formed the "Group 88," which became the Chilean branch of the Ku Klux Klan. He installed explosives at the Synagogue on Calle Santa Isabel, the "Maccabi Club" on Calle Serrano, and a headquarters of the Socialist Party.

He was arrested in May 1958. However, his steps had been followed by the Police for quite some time before. Rafael González, "aware of some details, had gone to none other than the United States embassy to denounce us."

Later, Pfeiffer linked up with the "estanquero" nationalists, led by Jorge Prat Echaurren. Later, he formed the PNSO.

Dr. Jorge Vargas Díaz is a witness to a good part of the history of Chilean "nationalism" of the postwar period, which he came to know in the 30s, when he was very young and his uncle Gustavo Vargas Molinari was one of the three Nazi deputies.

His first militancy was also the National Syndicalist Revolutionary Movement. And he has not forgotten Rafael González Verdugo. "Indeed, in those years he was one of the prominent young militants of the MRNS," he said. With a huge smile, he adds: "We called him 'svastiquita' (little swastika), because of his manifest inclination for German National Socialism."

In 1954, González allegedly began working as an undercover agent for the Intelligence Department of the National Defense General Staff (EMDN). On the other hand, as he later acknowledged to U.S. officials, he also initiated a relationship with U.S. intelligence.

The Schneider Case

In the mid-60s, Juan Diego Dávila Bastérrica was one of the members of the "High Command" of the PNSO, according to Pfeiffer in his Memorias de 30 Años. He was a character with a significant political history. So much so that on April 18, 2000, the writer Miguel Serrano pointed out to La Segunda that in Chile there are only two "authentic Nazis: myself and a gentleman named Juan Diego Dávila."

After participating in the MNS, he joined the "Nationalist Movement of Chile" formed by Guillermo Izquierdo Araya and General Ariosto Herrera Ramírez, who attempted a coup d'état against Pedro Aguirre Cerda.

In the early years of Gabriel González Videla's government, he joined the Chilean Anti-Communist Action (ACHA), a political and paramilitary group—formed by Arturo Olavarría and Jorge Prat—that made contact with the United States to outlaw the PC.

And in October 1970, he was the "operational chief" of the commando that attempted to kidnap and ultimately assassinated the commander-in-chief of the Army, René Schneider. This event was the culmination of a plot, directed by the CIA, which was led by General Roberto Viaux.

A year earlier, Viaux had organized the uprising of the Tacna Regiment. After that event, a group of "nationalists," such as Jorge Prat, Gastón Acuña, and Juan Diego Dávila, approached the general and incited him to continue conspiring.

Thus, a huge number of those involved in the conspiracy against Schneider came from the ranks of "nationalism."

This fact appears extremely significant, because—as González declared to Judge Zepeda—what interested military intelligence most about Charles Horman was an investigation he was conducting into the assassination of Schneider.

Until now, the dominant hypothesis regarding the causes of Horman's death held that it was the result of him being in Viña del Mar on September 11 and having interacted, by chance, with U.S. officers (Patrick Ryan, Arthur Crater, and Ray Davis), who had allegedly hinted at their participation in the coup d'état.

With the new data, it is plausible to infer that the execution of the American journalist was the result of his investigations into the Schneider Case, in which González's old "nationalist comrades" were compromised. And the CIA as well.

Source: Zonaimpacto.cl, February 5, 2004

Judge Zepeda issued convictions for the crimes of Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi in 1973

Missing: Espinoza, González, and the Mysterious Gringo Davis

Forty-one years after the murders of American journalist Charles Horman and political science student Frank Teruggi—also a U.S. national—which occurred at the Estadio Nacional following the coup d'état, Judge Jorge Zepeda sentenced Brigadier and former DINA second-in-command Pedro Espinoza Bravo to 7 years in prison as the perpetrator of both homicides.

He also sentenced former Chilean Air Force civilian agent Rafael González Berdugo to two years of supervised release as an accomplice to Horman’s murder. At the same time, he ordered the state to pay $200 million to Horman’s widow, Joyce, and the same sum to Janis Teruggi, Frank’s sister.

On the night of September 10, 1973, Horman and his friend Terry Simon arrived late in Viña del Mar. At 11:00 p.m., they entered the Hotel Miramar and requested a room. They were given room 315. Joyce, Horman’s wife, could not travel with them to Valparaíso and Viña because she needed to renew her passport.

It was a trip intended to show Terry the beauty of both cities. But Horman was not in Chile for tourism. Like Teruggi, he had settled in the country to follow the revolution toward socialism closely.

Both were part of the press agency Fuente de Investigación Norteamericana (FIN), of which Horman was a co-founder. Horman sensed that a coup d'état against President Salvador Allende would occur in the coming hours, and that it would be initiated by the Navy in Valparaíso.

However, what he did not know was that Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Navy Captain Ray E. Davis had been tracking his steps for some time. He was also tracking Teruggi and all U.S. citizens established in Chile who showed sympathy for the Unidad Popular government.

The DIA was dependent on the U.S. Department of State and based in the Pentagon.

Davis was the Chief of the United States Military Assistance Group in Chile, the body responsible for centralizing the Richard Nixon administration’s coup-plotting intervention to overthrow Allende. He was a man accustomed to walking in the shadows, far from prying eyes.

On the night of the 10th, the U.S. Embassy in Santiago learned of Horman and Simon’s stay at the hotel, according to a declassified document: “The two registered at the Hotel Miramar in room 315. Horman gave the address of Paul Harris 425 in Santiago and said he was a writer.” The information came from U.S.

Navy officer Art Creter, who was also in Chile for the coup preparations and was staying at the Miramar.

In parallel, CIA agents stationed in Santiago had established what was called The MHCHAOS Program, the objective of which was the tracking, wiretapping, surveillance, and espionage of journalists and U.S. citizens remaining in Chile who were interested in covering the Allende government’s progress toward socialism. The file they created in this operation was called The Family Jewels.

After the coup, on September 15, Davis called Chilean Navy Captain Raúl Monsalve Poblete, a liaison officer between the Chilean Navy and the group commanded by Davis.

–I need a safe-conduct pass to travel in my car from Viña del Mar to Santiago… I am carrying guests.

Davis drove his car to the capital: his guests were Horman and Terry Simon.

During those hours in Valparaíso and Viña, they had been introduced by U.S. Army Colonel Patrick Ryan, who had been in Chile for nine months and came from the Pendleton Military Base in California. A fierce anti-communist, he had served in the Vietnam War and the Bay of Pigs.

At the Miramar, Ryan approached them in the lobby in a friendly manner to have the pleasure of meeting them, he told Horman and Terry.

Davis arrived at 3:00 p.m. in Santiago, which was besieged by military patrols, and dropped his guests off at the Hotel Carrera, diagonally across from the Palacio de La Moneda, where they tried to deceive him by saying they were staying there. But Davis knew it was a lie. The U.S. Embassy was located right in front of the Carrera on Agustinas.

Meanwhile, the Comando de Área Jurisdiccional de Seguridad Interior (Cajsi), created in Santiago with its five groups, had taken control of all repressive operations since September 11, establishing itself above the Estado Mayor de la Defensa Nacional (EMDN), which was presided over by Vice Admiral Patricio Carvajal and included Army General Augusto Lutz and Air Force General Nicanor Díaz.

Until then, the EMDN had always been the superior military command structure in Chile. The Cajsi were created in every province of the country, and the superior commands of the three branches of the Armed Forces and their respective intelligence services were represented within them.

In Lutz’s office

Left at the Hotel Carrera and due to the curfew, Horman and Simon decided to have dinner and stay there that night. The next morning, they left to go to where Joyce was waiting for them at a house on Avenida Vicuña Mackenna.

It was September 16. On the 17th, Terry stayed at the Hotel Riviera in downtown Santiago. Charles and Joyce were to pick her up there the following day, the 18th. The couple would handle the paperwork at the U.S. consulate across from Parque Forestal to try to get all three to travel back to their country quickly. Chile was now a guillotine hanging over their necks.

But they did not arrive on the 18th. On September 19, Joyce looked for her at the Riviera to give her the news through tears: “They arrested Charles the day before yesterday.”

Captain Davis had informed General Augusto Lutz, head of the Servicio de Inteligencia Militar (SIM), of Horman’s arrival in Santiago.

On the evening of the 17th, Horman was taken to Lutz’s office in the Armed Forces building, at the corner of Alameda and Zenteno.

Waiting for him there was the civilian-ranked Air Force Colonel Rafael González Verdugo, an old intelligence agent who had been infiltrating social and labor organizations since the early sixties. It was he who interrogated him.

The interrogation was extensive and exhausting, but without violence. From there, they took him to the Estadio Nacional, which was already operating as a center for political imprisonment and torture. He was only there for a few hours.

The next day, September 18, the date of the installation of the First Government Junta of Chile, his body appeared thrown on a street in Santiago with multiple bullet wounds. They admitted him to the morgue and buried him in a mass grave at the capital’s Cementerio General. He did not manage to cross paths with his friend Teruggi at the stadium.

On September 20, 1973, General Lutz contacted the Carabineros Intelligence Directorate and ordered Teruggi’s arrest. They arrested him along with his friend David Hathaway. They took them to the Carabineros Non-Commissioned Officers School.

The next day, they took them to the Estadio Nacional, where they killed Teruggi. On September 22, they dumped his body on the street, and it appeared in the morgue. Hathaway was released six days later and is still alive.

The Espinoza of power

Major Pedro Espinoza Bravo was in charge at the stadium. This is one of the novelties of Judge Zepeda’s investigation, because until now it was always known that the commander of that place was another Espinoza: Colonel Jorge Espinoza Ulloa.

The same one who later was the commander of the Secretaría Nacional de Detenidos (Sendet). Although the latter was in command of the stadium, he remained under the command of Espinoza Bravo.

Espinoza Bravo, the man of the Caravan of Death and many other caravans of terror, operated in the Department II of Counterintelligence of the EMDN and was the head of the same department of the Army. At the stadium, he was the one who decided who should die, both foreigners and Chileans.

And he not only decided it, but also took it upon himself to verify that the deaths occurred. This was established by the trial, although he continues to deny it.

On October 12, 1973, Captain Ray E. Davis and U.S. Ambassador Nathaniel Davis met with Pinochet to discuss the Horman case. But they reported nothing of his death to his father, who was already in Santiago looking for him. Nor did they inform his wife, Joyce, who resided in Chile.

On October 30 of that year, General Lutz issued an official report on the “investigation” carried out by the military regime regarding the deaths of Horman and Teruggi, requested by Ambassador Davis. “The information available is that the citizens Horman and Teruggi were killed by extremists disguised as soldiers,” Lutz reported.

Faced with pressure from the U.S. government, which described the Horman-Teruggi case as a “pretty scandal,” on March 21, 1974, agent González Verdugo, accompanied by U.S. Vice Consul James Anderson, located Horman’s body in the mass grave at the cemetery.

He had eight bullet wounds. They took him to the San Pancracio funeral home to be embalmed, and four days later his father was able to take him back to his country.

In 1982, filmmaker Costa-Gavras immortalized the Horman case with the film Missing.

Lawyer Sergio Corvalán, who represents Joyce Horman and Janis Teruggi in the proceedings, told El Mostrador that “the crimes committed against U.S. citizens at the Estadio Nacional occurred in the context of a genocide against foreigners after the military coup.”

According to official Chilean information, there were as many as 29 U.S. citizens detained at the Estadio Nacional.

The jurist added: “The Chilean military officers who detained and carried out the homicides of Horman and Teruggi did so in concert with the U.S. forces that intervened in the coup d'état. They used precise information provided by Navy Captain Ray E. Davis, who directed the secret investigations tracking U.S. citizens in the days leading up to the coup.”

The Chilean State is not a party to this trial through the Ministry of Interior’s Human Rights Program.

The final mystery

On October 18, 2012, the Chilean Supreme Court requested the extradition from the United States of Navy Captain Ray E. Davis, who had already been duly prosecuted in absentia by Judge Jorge Zepeda. But, faithful to always walking in the shadows, the “gringo” was hiding in Chile under a false identity and married to Patricia, a Chilean woman who now lives in Miami.

However, in Santiago, he continued to collect his pension as a former agent under his real name. U.S. authorities never informed the Chilean courts of any of Davis’s mysterious movements.

Far from the madding crowd, the key man and coordinator with the Chilean coup-plotters of U.S. activities in Chile to first destabilize the Unidad Popular government and then overthrow Allende, died on April 30, 2013, at the age of 88.

Abandoned by his wife, he was admitted to a nursing home in the Providencia commune. In the Cementerio Parque del Recuerdo, there is a record of his body’s cremation. His ashes disappeared.

Years after the murders of Horman and Teruggi, Rafael González Verdugo changed the V in his surname to a B. Now as Berdugo, in 1977 he sought asylum in the Italian embassy, claiming that the DINA was persecuting him.

There, in January of that year, he was interrogated by U.S. embassy officials. His agent ID card had the number 27759. “I was the only officer of the Chilean Air Force who participated in the takeover of the Palacio de La Moneda on September 11, 1973,” he told them.

Italy got him out of Chile. One afternoon in 1980, posing as a dissident of the Chilean dictatorship, he went to have tea with Horman’s father.

After 1990, he returned to Chile and posed as a political exile. Today he is accredited as such and receives a pension from the State.

Source: El Mostrador, February 3, 2015

Chilean judge sentences the murderers of Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi

Special Judge Jorge Zepeda Arancibia sentenced two intelligence officers for the murder of Americans Charles Edmond Horman, a 31-year-old journalist, and Frank Randall Teruggi Bombatch, a 24-year-old student, who were executed by firing squad at the Estadio Nacional one week after the coup led by Pinochet in Chile.

The 276-page sentence condemns Army officer Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo to 7 years in prison, who is serving time for other murders, while Air Force agent Rafael Agustín González Berdugo will serve two years of police surveillance as an accomplice in Horman’s homicide.

Judge Zepeda’s exhaustive investigation confirmed the direct intervention of the U.S. in the coup through Operation Unitas, carried out in Valparaíso simultaneously with the uprising, but it also unmasked the persecution ordered by the U.S. to the Chilean intelligence services against Americans living in Chile who were sympathetic to Salvador Allende, or simply interested in learning about and living through the peaceful revolution process led by the head of state overthrown by the U.S.

At the Estadio Nacional, there were up to 24 registered American detainees (Horman and Teruggi were not recorded), including men and women, students, academics, writers, and even two Maryknoll priests.

Instigators and cover-ups of this persecution of U.S. citizens were their own compatriots Ray Elliots Charles, a Navy captain and head of the U.S. military mission, seconded by Ambassador Nathaniel Davis.

Far from protecting their fellow citizens, they covered up murders and detentions of Americans, in addition to providing false information to relatives such as Edmond Horman, Charles’s father, who traveled to Chile to look for his son.

Ray E. Charles died in 2013 in Chile, where he lived in secret, protected by a network of supra-power protection that provided him with up to six identities. In 2012, the Supreme Court accepted the extradition from the U.S. requested by Judge Zepeda to bring him to testify in this case, but the former U.S. military man was actually residing in Chile, in a 5-star nursing home.

The Horman/Teruggi case was addressed in 1982 by the film Missing, by Costa-Gavras, starring Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek. The lawyers for this case were Fabiola Letelier del Solar and Sergio Corvalán Carrasco, who initiated this trial 15 years ago at the request of the victims’ relatives, Joyce Hamren de Horman, the journalist’s widow, and Janis Randall Teruggi Page, the student’s sister, after the failure in the United States of a lawsuit by the Horman family—boycotted by U.S. authorities—against then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Horman and Teruggi were kidnapped from their homes by uniformed personnel on different days. They were not registered as “prisoners” by the precarious bureaucracy of the prison into which the Estadio Nacional was transformed.

They suffered cruel torture and were murdered by firing squad the day after their apprehension in the same sports stadium. Charles Horman, taken from his home at Av. Vicuña Mackenna 4126, San Joaquín, Santiago, was executed on September 18, 1973, Independence Day. Frank Teruggi, kidnapped from his home at Hernán Cortés and Pedro de Valdivia, Ñuñoa, Santiago, was executed on September 22.

Seven years in prison for Espinoza Bravo and two of police surveillance (presumably in freedom) for González Berdugo seems like little punishment for these monstrous murders. (Verdugo, who first served as a “witness” but whom Judge Zepeda placed in the dock, legally changed his maternal surname to Berdugo).

The judicial investigation of this terrible episode showed the double face of the U.S. Embassy, which instead of protecting U.S. citizens, dedicated itself to covering up crimes against humanity committed by the civil-military dictatorship against its own nationals.

For example, when Ambassador Nathaniel Davis spoke with Edmond Horman, Charles’s father, he already knew that the journalist had been executed, without trial or right to defense, but he hid that information from the father and the victim’s family.

After multiple obstructions, several autopsies, burials, and exhumations, in April 1974 Charles Horman was finally interred at Greenwood Cemetery in New York. That is, seven months after his murder.

The first-instance sentence of nearly 300 pages was concluded by Judge Zepeda on January 9, 2015, but it took three weeks to notify each of the parties involved. The accusing lawyers Letelier and Corvalán announced that they will object to the “irreproachable prior conduct” granted to Espinoza Bravo’s defense, because this character is involved in numerous crimes prior to that of Horman and Teruggi, in particular the murders of Salvador Allende’s direct collaborators executed in the first hours of the civil-military coup at the Peldehue military compound, after their transfer from the Palacio de La Moneda to the Tacna Regiment.

Source: periodistas-es.com, February 4, 2015

Supreme Court increases sentences for those convicted of crimes against two Americans in 1973

The Supreme Court resolved to increase the sentences that two former Chilean officers must serve for their responsibility in the crime of qualified homicide of U.S. citizens Charles Horman Lazar and Frank Teruggi Bombatch, illicit acts perpetrated in September 1973 at the Estadio Nacional in Santiago.

In a unanimous ruling (case file 20166-2015), the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed of ministers Milton Juica, Carlos Künsemüller, Haroldo Brito, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, and Jorge Dahm—sentenced former Army Brigadier Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo to 15 years and one day in prison as the perpetrator of both homicides; meanwhile, former civilian agent (assimilated to the rank of Air Force Colonel) Rafael Agustín González Berdugo was sentenced to 3 years and one day, with the benefit of supervised release, as an accomplice to the homicide of Charles Horman.

Charles Horman Lazar was a 31-year-old American journalist, filmmaker, and writer who was in Chile during the Allende government, reporting on the conspiratorial, pro-coup, and clandestine activities of the CIA, of figures from the United States diplomatic delegation in Chile, with reactionary sectors of the bourgeoisie and the Chilean armed forces.

The case of his detention, murder, and disappearance was reflected in the 1982 film Missing, directed by Costa-Gavras and starring Jack Lemmon, representing Edmund Horman, Charles’s father, in the search for his son in Chile.

In the first-instance ruling, visiting judge Jorge Zepeda had determined sentences of 7 years in prison for Espinoza Bravo and 2 years in prison for González Berdugo.

In the investigation stage for the homicide of Charles Horman, the magistrate managed to establish the following facts:

«On September 17, 1973, at approximately 5:30 p.m., U.S. citizen Charles Edmund Horman Lazar, a journalist and filmmaker by profession, was detained in Santiago by military personnel, at the same time that a military patrol was raiding his private home located at Avenida Vicuña Mackenna No. 4126, in this same city, who proceeded to remove various documents from inside the dwelling.

Between 6:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. on the same day, intelligence officers dependent on Department II of the Estado Mayor de la Defensa Nacional interrogated the detainee Charles Horman in the office of the Director of Intelligence Augusto Lutz Urzúa, located in the Ministry of National Defense building, with the military authority’s interest coinciding with the background information Horman had on the investigation of the “Viaux-Schneider” case, in addition to his work as a screenwriter at the Chilean state company Chile Films being classified as subversive.

On September 18, 1973, around 1:35 p.m., military personnel entered the remains of an unidentified male into the Legal Medical Service, to whom a fingerprint record was subsequently taken, resulting in him being Charles Edmund Horman Lazar, with the Legal Medical Service estimating that his death had occurred that day, at approximately 9:45 a.m.

The corresponding death certificate was issued on October 4, 1973, indicating multiple gunshot wounds as the precise and necessary cause of his death.

Joyce Horman, Charles Horman’s spouse, began the search for her husband before the Consulate and the Embassy of the United States, before the International Red Cross, and other organizations, which extended from September 20 to October 5, 1973, with fruitless results.

On October 3, Edmund Horman, Charles Horman’s father, arrived in Chile, who, after several meetings with the United States Ambassador to Chile Nathaniel Davis and U.S. Consul Frederick Purdy, finally returned to New York with his son’s spouse on October 20, 1973, without obtaining certain information about Charles Horman’s final destination.

Notwithstanding the above, at least by October 19, 1973, the Ministry of Interior and, therefore, also the Government of Chile, had full knowledge of the circumstances in which he was killed.

During the first fortnight of March 1974, the Minister of Defense of the time, following a request from the Chairman of the United States Senate Defense Committee, ordered the same individual who had participated in General Augusto Lutz Urzúa’s office in the interrogation of Charles Horman to hand over his body to the U.S. diplomatic authorities, which the intelligence official complied with on March 21, in the morning hours, proceeding, after preparing the corpse, to its transfer to the United States on March 25.

The decision to kill Charles Horman Lazar was ordered by Department II of the Estado Mayor de la Defensa Nacional, dependent on Army General Augusto Lutz Urzúa, and was executed by the Military Intelligence Battalion or Army Intelligence Headquarters, in charge of a specific officer of that department tasked with supervising the execution of detainees».

Student

Meanwhile, in the case of the murder of Frank Randall Teruggi Bombatch, a 24-year-old student, the judicial investigation determined that:

«Teruggi Bombatch, a native of the United States, entered Chile on January 9, 1972, and registered in the records of American residents at his nation’s Consulate, establishing his residence in the city of Santiago.

With his student visa, he enrolled in the Center for Economic and Social Studies of the Faculty of Economics at the University of Chile. Likewise, he joined the U.S. citizens who edited the bulletin: “Fuente de Información Norteamericana” (FIN) and, through that means, made publications contrary to the government of his country, in its relationship with the government of Chile, and Chilean information for the American left, which was considered subversive.

As with Charles Horman, the action against Teruggi Bombatch was inserted into the secret investigations carried out against Americans affected by the clandestine data collection activity they were conducting in the political sphere, which was carried out by agents of the U.S. Military Intelligence Group, directed by a Commander of the U.S. Military Mission Group in Chile.

The background information affecting Frank Teruggi was handed over by the U.S. agents to the Intelligence Service of the Estado Mayor de la Defensa Nacional, in charge of General Augusto Lutz Urzúa. Thus, on September 20, 1973, that military authority gave an order to the personnel of the Carabineros of the Carabineros Non-Commissioned Officers School to detain Frank Randall Teruggi Bombatch and his compatriot David Hathaway at their home at Hernán Cortés Street No. 2575, in the Ñuñoa commune, an address that had been obtained by U.S. intelligence and handed over to Chilean Army intelligence.

The detention of Teruggi Bombatch and David Hathaway was carried out around 8:15 p.m., in the presence of the latter’s future spouse. They were taken to the Carabineros Non-Commissioned Officers School in the Ñuñoa commune; after their interrogations, they were taken to the Estadio Nacional detention camp.

Both young Americans, already deprived of liberty, were interrogated in the early hours of Friday, September 21, by an Army officer and entered a locker room at the stadium where an indeterminate group of foreigners was located.

That same day, around 6:00 p.m., an Army officer called a group of detainees, among them Frank Teruggi Bombatch. David Hathaway never saw him again; however, he noticed that every day, after Friday, September 21, soldiers asked for and pretended to look for Charles Horman Lazar, without mentioning the name of Frank Teruggi Bombatch, both already dead and forcibly disappeared.

Consequently, between the night of September 21 and the early hours of September 22, 1973, Frank Randall Teruggi Bombatch was killed outside of any legal process by the State agents who had ordered his deprivation of liberty at the Estadio Nacional, who then abandoned his body on the streets of Santiago, with the purpose promoted by the perpetrators of preventing the action that determined his death from being known».

One of the main people responsible for these crimes, Augusto Lutz, was killed “in strange circumstances” (a euphemism used to qualify murders between repressive organs) in November 1974. For his part, the dark civilian character González Berdugo sought asylum in the Italian embassy in Santiago in September 1975 and some time later reappeared in the United States.

As often happens with Chilean justice, the investigation this time advanced and the case was clarified thanks to the persistence of the victims’ relatives, on one hand, and on the other, thanks to the revelation and declassification of information from the U.S. agencies themselves.

Source: resumen.cl, July 22, 2016