The visiting minister of the Concepción Court of Appeals, Carlos Aldana, has submitted retired Navy captain José Cáceres González to prosecution as the perpetrator of the aggravated kidnapping of Rudy Cárcamo, a leader of the MIR and former member of the Personal Friends Group (GAP) of President Salvador Allende.

Last Tuesday, Judge Aldana led a reconstruction of the scene of Cárcamo’s detention inside the Talcahuano Naval Base, which was decisive in the decision made official today. Cárcamo was a MIR leader and was captured on November 27, 1974.

He was then taken to the Navy redoubt, the place where his trail was lost. For this same case, Minister Aldana interrogated the former head of the dissolved National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), General (ret.) Manuel Contreras, last week, along with seven other high-ranking retired officers from the Army and Carabineros, who are implicated in various human rights cases being investigated in the Eighth Region.

Source: La Nación, February 23, 2006

The former uniformed officer, who was part of the Ancla Dos command, is the fifth to be prosecuted for human rights violations against a member of the MIR.

Visiting minister Carlos Aldana has submitted retired Navy captain and officer José Cáceres González to prosecution for the aggravated kidnapping of MIR member and member of Salvador Allende’s Personal Friends Group (GAP), Rudy Cárcamo Ruiz, who has been forcibly disappeared since November 1974.

Cáceres is the fifth member of the Ancla Dos command to be charged in cases of human rights violations against security agents close to former President Allende. The magistrate became convinced that the retired officer participated in the events following the reconstruction of the scene on Tuesday, February 21, where the events were relived as it is presumed the young MIR member died due to torture inside the Talcahuano naval base.

Retired Navy captain Cáceres joins the list of former uniformed officers charged in this case, which includes retired Navy captain Hugo Nelson González Darcangelis; retired Navy lieutenant Víctor Donoso Barrera; former detective Osvaldo Harnisch Salazar; and retired Carabineros colonel Conrado Scesnic.

Source: Cooperativa.cl, February 2006

5 former security agents sentenced for aggravated kidnapping

A group of former political prisoners from the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) arrived at the Concepción Palace of Justice as the sentencing of 5 defendants in the case of the disappearance of Rudy Cárcamo was announced.

The Minister of the Concepción Court of Appeals, Carlos Aldana, notified the five individuals linked to and convicted of the kidnapping and subsequent disappearance of Rudy Cárcamo Ruiz, a former MIR militant whose trail was lost in November 1974.

José Raúl Cáceres González, Captain (ret.), Hugo Nelson González, Corvette Captain (ret.), Osvaldo Harnish Salazar, Conrado Sesnic, Carabineros Colonel (ret.), and Eugenio Garay, detective (ret.), received a sentence of 5 years and one day. They will serve their sentences at the Punta Peuco and Puerto Montt detention centers.

Source: 24horas.cl, July 20, 2012

Supreme Court issues ruling in human rights case

The Supreme Court issued a final judgment in the investigation into the aggravated kidnapping of Rudy Cárcamo Ruiz, which occurred in Talcahuano on September 27, 1974. In a unanimous ruling, they determined to apply sentences of 5 years and one day of imprisonment without benefits to Hugo Nelson González D’Arcangeli, Víctor Ernesto Donoso Barrera, Conrado Alfredo Sesnic Guerricabeitia, Osvaldo Francisco Harnish Salazar, and José Raúl Cáceres González.

In the first instance—and confirmed by the Concepción Court of Appeals—a sentence of 541 days had been issued for each defendant with the benefit of conditional remission of the sentence.

Source: Fasic.org, May 25, 2012

Murderous officers go to prison

On May 24, the Supreme Court confirmed the conviction of the operational command of the Regional Intelligence Center (Cire) for the kidnapping and forced disappearance of Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) militant Rudy Cárcamo Ruiz.

Rudy Cárcamo was kidnapped from his home in Talcahuano on the night of November 27, 1974, and held at the Talcahuano Naval Base. There, he was tortured to death in the locker rooms, used as cells, at the Francisco Acosta stadium in the Naval Base sports complex, adjacent to the indoor gymnasium and the access to the Asmar shipyard.

Those sentenced to 5 years and 1 day of imprisonment are the head of the Navy Intelligence Department (Ancla Dos), Frigate Captain Hugo Nelson González D’Arcangeli; the assistant to the head of the Intelligence Department, Navy Lieutenant Víctor Ernesto Donoso Barrera; Carabineros Captain Conrado Alfredo Sesnic Guerricabeitia; inspector of the former Investigations Service, currently the PDI, Osvaldo Francisco Harnish Salazar; and, finally, Navy Second Lieutenant José Raúl Cáceres González.

All sentences are without benefits, meaning they must serve the prison terms effectively. They were also sentenced to the accessory penalties of absolute and perpetual disqualification from public office and political rights.

The military and police ranks mentioned are those they held at the time of the kidnapping. Due to their repressive services, they later attained high ranks in their institutions. In Concepción, both the investigating minister, Carlos Aldana, and the Court of Appeals had sentenced them to 541 days of imprisonment, with the benefit of remission of the sentence, meaning they would only serve time in prison if they committed a new crime.

In short, a laughable sentence, effectively judicial impunity for the criminals. The Supreme Court, however, in a split decision, increased the sentence to five years and one day of effective imprisonment and perpetual disqualification of their political rights.

Minister Milton Juica was in favor of increasing them to ten years and one day, given the nature and gravity of the illicit act investigated, while Minister Hugo Dolmestch was in favor of maintaining the first-instance sentences of 541 days, with remission.

DINA EXTENSIONS

The Regional Intelligence Centers were created in 1974 throughout the country and operated in places where the DINA did not reach, but they acted in coordination with it. They were composed of the intelligence departments of the different branches of the Armed Forces, Carabineros, and Investigations.

In Concepción, it had its clandestine facilities on the third floor of the corner of Barros Arana and Pasaje Portales, above what was the Pujol Delicatessen, currently Banco Santander. Its commander was always an Army lieutenant colonel, and its operational command was made up of those currently convicted and Carabineros Captain Sergio Arévalo Cid, all of them acting as heads of a large contingent of marines, infantrymen, Army non-commissioned officers and troops, Carabineros, and detectives.

Since its creation in 1974, the Cire of Concepción—known as Ancla 2—had a prisoner camp in the sports complex of the Talcahuano Naval Base, where it operated until mid-1975, when it was moved to the old facilities of the El Morro fort, adjacent to the El Morro stadium on Avenida Blanco Encalada.

It remained in this latter place until approximately 1982. In its facilities at the Talcahuano Naval Base, in addition to Rudy Cárcamo, they murdered the Brazilian internationalist Jane Vanini in December 1974, and the socialist mayor of Cañete, Elías Jana Santibáñez, in February 1975 (Jane Vanini was secretary of Punto Final).

In September of that year, they murdered Oscar Arros in Lota when they were taking him from the El Morro fort to force him to denounce his comrades in that city, which he refused to do. In coordination with the DINA, they murdered Eulogio Fritz Monsalves in Santiago in February 1975, who had assumed the regional leadership of the MIR in September 1973.

Hundreds of political prisoners were kidnapped by agents of this repressive body and tortured both at the Francisco Acosta stadium at the Naval Base and at the El Morro fort. Almost all of them were MIR militants who had organized to resist the military dictatorship from the very moment of the 1973 coup d'état.

The imposition of the accessory penalty on all those convicted, of perpetual disqualification from public office and political rights, places them outside of society. They have been stripped of their status as citizens, the maximum sanction in the political and social order of our homeland.

THE RUDY CARCAMO CASE

Rudy Cárcamo Ruiz, married, one child, a worker and MIR militant, was detained on November 27, 1974, around 10:00 PM. Cárcamo lived at his in-laws' house, who witnessed the arrest along with his spouse, Lilian Alegría Erices.

Three individuals in civilian clothes, armed with submachine guns, appeared and identified themselves as police. After asking for the person in question, they proceeded to take him away, stating that they were taking him to the Investigations barracks.

However, he was immediately taken to the Talcahuano Naval Base, where, that same night, another detainee, Jaime Oehninger Gatica, had to identify him. At the Naval Base, he was placed in the gymnasium, isolated in a room.

According to the testimony of Luis Enrique Peebles, who was a prisoner in the same facility in December of that year, the detainees were assigned a number by which they were called. He was in a room in the gymnasium, and in the adjacent room was prisoner No. 105, isolated from the rest.

According to what Jaime Oehninger told him, this detainee was Rudy Cárcamo. Peebles was taken out on December 24, 1974, and upon returning on the 31st of the same month, he no longer heard any noises in the adjacent room, and when the guard relief took roll call, No. 105 was no longer called out.

Another detainee who saw Cárcamo at the Naval Base was Sergio Armando Medina Viveros. Previously, on October 16, 1973, Rudy Cárcamo was detained at his home at the time, the Lenín neighborhood of Talcahuano, where he was an active participant in community activities.

During this detention, he was taken to Quiriquina Island and later to the Talcahuano Naval Base gymnasium, where he remained until July 21, 1974, when he was released without being prosecuted. He then went to live at his in-laws' house, from where he was detained three months later.

Source: puntofinal.cl, June 8, 2012

Supreme Court grants parole to Talcahuano Naval Base torturer

The Supreme Court issued a ruling favorable to former Carabineros colonel Conrado Alfredo Sesnic Guerricabeitía, a torturer who was part of ANCLA 2 at the Talcahuano Naval Base and was convicted for the crime against MIR militant Rudy Cárcamo Ruiz, who had been detained at Punta Peuco since 2012.

The Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Parole Commission and ordered that the criminal against humanity be granted parole. Conrado Alfredo Sesnic Guerricabeitía, a former Carabineros colonel and one of the interrogators at the Talcahuano Naval Base along with other criminals such as Hugo González D'Arcangelli, Víctor Donoso Barrera, Osvaldo Harnish Salazar, and José Cáceres González, was granted parole following a ruling issued by the Supreme Court.

The ruling, retrieved by La Tercera, states: "The decision adopted on August 11 by the Santiago Parole Commission is rendered ineffective, only insofar as it resolved to reject the parole benefit requested by the petitioner, and in its place, it is decided that it is granted, with his immediate release to be arranged for the effective enjoyment of the benefit." The defense for the criminal against humanity filed an amparo (habeas corpus) appeal against the Parole Commission of the Santiago Court of Appeals, which had refused to grant the benefit on August 11.

Sesnic Guerricabeitía has been denounced in many human rights violation cases in the region. He was part of the regional repressive police force that sought to annihilate the MIR. Because of these actions, Sesnic is linked to the torture and disappearance of Talcahuano MIR militant Rudy Cárcamo Ruiz, known as "the Vietnamese," a case for which he was convicted along with other criminals against humanity.

Rudy Cárcamo was kidnapped from his home in Talcahuano at midnight on Friday, November 27, 1974, and held at the Chilean Navy's Talcahuano Naval Base. There, he was tortured to death in the locker rooms—used as cells—at the Francisco Acosta Stadium in the Naval Base sports complex, adjacent to the indoor gymnasium and the access to the Asmar shipyard.

His body was allegedly buried in the gardens of the Hualpén Museum and his remains were subsequently exhumed in the so-called "Operation Television Removal," ordered personally by Pinochet, with the trail of his remains being lost.

In said judicial case, in a ruling issued by the Supreme Court of Justice, former Navy officers Hugo Nelson González D'Arcangeli, Víctor Ernesto Donoso Barrera, and José Raúl Cáceres González, as well as former Carabineros colonel Conrado Alfredo Sesnic Guerricabeitía and former investigations officer Osvaldo Francisco Harnish Salazar, were sentenced to five years and one day of imprisonment, without benefits.

It should be noted that in the first instance, these same defendants had been sentenced by Minister Aldana to only 541 days of imprisonment with conditional remission of the sentence, meaning they would serve the punishment in full freedom, which constituted a travesty of the work of justice.

This ruling had been ratified by the Concepción Court of Appeals, confirming the trend of judicial poor judgment. Today, this judicial poor judgment scales to the highest judicial authority in the country, which today once again becomes part of the impunity enjoyed by the criminals of the dictatorship.

Source: resumen.cl, September 13, 2016

The Supreme Court issued a ruling favorable to former Carabineros colonel Conrado Alfredo Sesnic Guerricabeitía, a torturer who was part of ANCLA 2 at the Naval Base

In a questionable decision by the judiciary, the Santiago Court of Appeals accepted the amparo appeal presented by Víctor Ernesto Donoso Barrera—a member of Ancla 2 belonging to the CIRE (Regional Intelligence Center) convicted for the aggravated kidnapping of MIR member Rudy Cárcamo—against the Ministry of Justice, declaring the actions of the latter, which refused to sign the decree granting freedom to the former sailor, to be arbitrary.

Donoso Barrera is serving a sentence of 5 years and one day for the aggravated kidnapping of Rudy Cárcamo in 1974, the year since which he has been disappeared. The parole commission of the Santiago Court of Appeals granted him, despite being a prisoner convicted of crimes against humanity, a sentence reduction of 10 months, meaning he would be in a position to be released. "It is an undisputed fact that the convicted person began serving the sentence on July 20, 2012, ending on July 17, 2017.

Under these circumstances, the Sentence Reduction Commission has reduced the petitioner's sentence by a total of ten months, through resolutions dated November 14, 2013, with two months; November 17, 2014, with two months; November 19, 2015, with three months; and November 15, 2016, with 3 months, respectively.

Consequently, as of September 18, 2016, the petitioner has completed the corporal sentence," the ruling maintains. Donoso Barrera, a former naval officer along with other beasts, such as the head of Naval Intelligence in the area, Hugo González D'Arcangelis; naval officer José Cáceres González; Investigations official Osvaldo Harnisch Salazar; and Carabineros officer Conrado Sesnic—the latter also granted parole—was part of the Regional Intelligence Center (CIRE), a repressive organization that was in charge of detaining, torturing, and disappearing left-wing militants in the Eighth Region.

Through their hands passed, to mention only 3 emblematic cases, the forcibly disappeared Rudy Cárcamo—the Vietnamese, a MIR member from Talcahuano—Jane Vanini—a militant internationalist MIR member—and the former mayor of Cañete, Elías Jana, who died under torture.

Source: resumen.cl, January 3, 2017

Minister Yolanda Méndez prosecutes military (ret.) for kidnapping and torture at Talcahuano fort

Visiting minister submitted Hugo Nelson González D’Arcangeli, Víctor Ernesto Donoso Barrera, and Conrado Alfredo Sesnic Guerricabeitía to prosecution as co-perpetrators of the crimes. The visiting minister extraordinary for human rights violation cases of the Concepción Court of Appeals, Yolanda Méndez Mardones, submitted three former members of the Regional Intelligence Center (Cire) of Bío Bío to prosecution for their responsibility in the crimes of kidnapping with serious harm and repeated application of torture against Desiderio Ceballos Parra, Tito Gerardo Carrillo Mora, Alberto Francisco Vidal Sáez, Carlos Roberto Sandoval Ambiado, and Juan Toribio Riveros Astete. These illicit acts were perpetrated in October 1975 in the communes of Coronel, Penco, Concepción, and Talcahuano. In the resolution (case roll 8-2018), the visiting minister submitted Hugo Nelson González D’Arcangeli, Víctor Ernesto Donoso Barrera, and Conrado Alfredo Sesnic Guerricabeitía to prosecution as co-perpetrators of the crimes. In this process, Minister Méndez Mardones has established the following facts: “In the year 1975, the Regional Intelligence Center (CIRE), directed by the Head of the Third Army Division of Concepción and the Chief of Staff of the Second Naval Zone of Talcahuano, and composed of officials from the Army, Navy, Carabineros, and Investigations, within the framework of a repression plan that had the precise objective of neutralizing people who were considered militants or sympathizers of left-wing political parties, carried out various actions tending to dismantle, in the case at hand, the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) that was supposedly operating in the Bío Bío Region. Thus, on October 13, 1975, a group of State agents, armed and dressed in civilian clothes, detained Mr. Tito Gerardo Carrillo Mora at his parents' house at 201 Luis Emilio Recabarren Street, in the La Colonia neighborhood of Coronel; later, in the early hours of October 14, 1975, Mr. Desiderio Ceballos Parra was detained at his home located at 74 La Obra, Villa Mora, also in Coronel; a few days later, on October 19, 1975, in the early hours, Mr. Carlos Roberto Sandoval Ambiado was detained at his home located at 480 Freire Street, Penco commune; and on the same day, they detained Mr. Alberto Francisco Vidal Sáez on the public thoroughfare, near noon, at the corner of San Martín and Paicaví streets in Concepción; and finally, on October 31, 1975, around 9:30 PM, Mr. Juan Toribio Riveros Astete was detained at his parents' house located at 1098 Cruz Street, Concepción.” For the minister: “The circumstances of their detentions are similar, in that they were all detained with great violence by State agents dressed in civilian clothes, armed, mobilized mainly in unmarked pickup trucks, and who did not exhibit any competent order authorizing their apprehension; the detainees, in each case, were blindfolded, kicked and punched, and transported to a place designated precisely by the CIRE authorities as a detention center, that is, the El Morro Fort in Talcahuano, located at Jordán Valdivieso s/n in that commune, a fact recognized by Raúl Benavides Escobar, Minister of the Interior at the time, and by Nilo Floody Buxton, Regional Intendant, in October 1975, as evidenced by the amparo appeals reviewed, which were filed in favor of the victims after their detention on different dates in that month of October 1975.” “Taken to the El Morro Fort,” she continues, “they were interrogated through torture by State agents who were members of the CIRE, in an underground area that the torturers called ‘The Embassy,’ employing torture techniques such as beatings, the ‘submarine’ (waterboarding), the ‘grill,’ forced positions since they had to remain standing for hours, sleep deprivation, among other methods, in addition to suffering psychological torture such as mock executions or being forced to witness torture sessions of other fellow detainees.” “The victims in the case remained locked in that place without a competent judicial order, and were only placed at the disposal of the ‘Head of Department I of the III Army Division’ at the end of November 1975, by the ‘Head of the Regional Intelligence Center Concepción,’ Hugo González D’Arcangeli, as evidenced by the police report CIRE RES. No. 2410/408 of November 26, 1975, with 36 detainees, including the plaintiffs in the case, all of which is in the Military Justice case, Roll 1.004-75, of the Third Military Court of Concepción, being transferred on December 5, 1975, to the public jail of this city, and finally sentenced by a War Council on June 23, 1976, some of them acquitted or released after the sentence, such as Desiderio Ceballos Parra and Carlos Sandoval Ambiado; others, sentenced to sentences of relegation, such as Tito Carrillo Mora, Juan Riveros Astete, and Alberto Vidal Sáez, and the latter had his relegation sentence commuted to expulsion in March 1978.”

Source: pjud.cl, December 16, 2021

Former Navy officers prosecuted for kidnapping and torture at Talcahuano Naval Base in 1974

The visiting minister extraordinary for human rights violation cases of the Concepción Court of Appeals, Yolanda Méndez Mardones, issued an indictment against five former Navy officers for their responsibility in the crime of kidnapping with serious harm against Rubén Ángel Roca Zapata, perpetrated in July 1974 at the Talcahuano Naval Base and Quiriquina Island.

In the resolution (case roll 7-2018), Minister Méndez Mardones prosecuted Hugo Nelson González D’Argangeli, Víctor Ernesto Donoso Barrera, José Raúl Cáceres González, Luis Eduardo Kohler Herrera, and Julio Humberto Salvador Alarcón Saavedra as co-perpetrators of the crime, in the nature of a crime against humanity, against the laboratory technician of the Department of Organic Chemistry of the University of Concepción at the time of the events, who was detained at the Borgoño fort, the Talcahuano Naval Base, and Quiriquina Island in the Bío Bío region and, finally, transferred in April 1975 to the Tres Álamos prisoner center in the Metropolitan Region. For the court, the facts constitute the crime of kidnapping with serious harm provided for and sanctioned in Article 141, paragraph 3, of the Penal Code, in its text in force at the time of the investigated events, in the consummated degree, committed to the detriment of Mr. Rubén Ángel Roca Zapata. In this regard, the resolution specifies: “The aforementioned illicit act is also a crime against humanity, since the punishable acts were perpetrated in a context of grave, massive, and systematic human rights violations of detained persons, verified by State agents who had at their disposal all the material and economic means to carry out a State policy of exclusion, harassment, persecution, and/or extermination of citizens who, immediately and after September 11, 1973, were accused of belonging to or sympathizing with the political regime deposed by the military government that assumed control of the country from the indicated date,” it concludes. In the case, the visiting minister decreed the total house arrest of the defendants, while the Concepción Court of Appeals resolves the matter of provisional release on bail for the individuals. Likewise, she ordered the PDI’s Human Rights Crimes Investigation Brigade to personally notify the defendants Hugo Nelson González D’Argangeli, Ernesto Donoso Barrera, José Raúl Cáceres González, and Luis Eduardo Kohler Herrera of the issued resolution, while for Julio Alarcón Saavedra, said procedure will be carried out by Gendarmerie officials, as he is currently detained at the Punta Peuco Penitentiary Compliance Center. In the investigation stage, Minister Méndez Mardones gathered sufficient evidence to consider it proven that: “In the month of July 1974, Rubén Ángel Roca Zapata was ordered to be detained by the authorities of the Intelligence Service of the Interior Security Jurisdictional Area Command (SICAJSI) of Concepción, presumably due to his political orientation, and was transferred to the detention facility established since September 11, 1973, by the Navy, located at the Talcahuano Naval Base, where the Ancla II Intelligence Department of the Second Naval Zone operated, directed since the beginning of 1974 by Frigate Captain Hugo González D’Arcangeli, seconded by 2nd Lieutenant OM Víctor Donoso Barrera, and in which a group of interrogators was organized and coordinated by the military commands, with the objective that he provide information about his political activities and the locations or hiding places of weapons that had supposedly arrived from abroad at the port of Lirquén. The victim, a 25-year-old chemical laboratory technician at the time, an employee of the Department of Organic Chemistry of the Institute of Chemistry of the University of Concepción, and at the same time a third-year student of Pedagogy in Chemistry at the same university, was at the time a sympathizer of the MIR, but was not registered or a militant in any political party. The plaintiff, Rubén Ángel Roca Zapata, was detained on July 3, 1974, in the afternoon, at his workplace, located at the Institute of Chemistry of the University of Concepción, by three State agents—two of them Carabineros—who were dressed in civilian clothes, who took him to the Talcahuano Naval Base. Once there, they put a blindfold on him, and hours later they took him out of the gymnasium and took him to a room to be interrogated; in that place, he was stripped, handcuffed by his feet and hands behind his back, while they began to apply various tortures that were repeated at intervals over several days.”

Source: elrodriguista.org, September 6, 2023