On July 8, 1974, friends Héctor Marcial GARAY HERMOSILLA and Miguel Angel ACUÑA CASTILLO, both militants of the FER (a secondary student section of the MIR), were detained at their respective homes in the commune of Ñuñoa by unidentified agents.

There is no information regarding their subsequent whereabouts. The Commission has confirmed the detention of both young men. On this basis, and taking into account their militancy, their political and personal ties, the fact that they were detained on the same day, and the circumstance that nothing has been heard of either of them since, it considers them victims of human rights violations committed by State agents.

Source: (Rettig Report)

The book "Breaking the silence of children and adolescents who were victims of political execution during the civil-military dictatorship 1973-1990" incorporates testimonies, photographs, letters, and other documents that families and friends provided or wrote specifically for publication.

The book was produced by the Association of Relatives of Political Executed Persons (AFEP) with the support of the Ministry of Cultures, Arts, and Heritage, through the Culture, Memory, and Human Rights Unit, and the Human Rights Chair of the University of Chile.

The publication, based primarily on the Report of the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation (1991) and the Report of the National Commission for Reparation and Reconciliation (1996), seeks to reconstruct each of the victims' lives and stories in a comprehensive and careful manner.

During the research, access was granted to the archive of the Association of Relatives of Political Executed Persons, which houses documents that families have preserved over the years. Illustrations by Álvaro Gómez were also included.

The creative process was a complex challenge that required combining delicacy, respect, and methodological rigor to articulate a painful and inescapable truth in this work.

Source: cultura.gob.cl 20/4/2023

Date: 04-20-2023

39 former DINA agents convicted for Operation Colombo

In a ruling announced this Tuesday, the Santiago Court of Appeals convicted 39 former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their responsibility in the crime of aggravated kidnapping of secondary student leader Héctor Marcial Garay Hermosilla.

The kidnapping was perpetrated on July 8, 1974, in the commune of Ñuñoa, and the victim was forcibly disappeared within the framework of the so-called Operation Colombo. Garay Hermosilla was a 19-year-old student leader and MIR militant who was detained by DINA agents near his home.

He was taken by his captors to the secret facility at Londres 38, from where his trail was lost. In the ruling (case file 174-2016), the Second Chamber of the capital's appellate court—composed of ministers María Soledad Melo, Rafael Andrade, and acting lawyer María Cecilia Ramírez—sentenced former army officers César Raúl Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, Gerardo Ernesto Urrich González, Sergio Hernán Castillo González, and Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos; former carabineros officers Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García, Ricardo Víctor Lawrence Mires, and Ciro Ernesto Torré Sáez; and former agents Nelson Alberto Paz Bustamante, Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera, Pedro Ariel Araneda Araneda, Víctor Manuel Molina Astete, Máximo Ramón Aliaga Soto, Manuel de la Cruz Rivas Díaz, Risiere del Prado Altez España, Raúl Juan Rodríguez Ponte, Hermon Helec Alfaro Mundaca, Hugo del Tránsito Hernández Valle, Enrique Tránsito Gutiérrez Rubilar, José Alfonso Ojeda Obando, Fernando Enrique Guerra Guajardo, and Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos to 10 years and one day in prison as perpetrators of the crime. The Court reduced the sentences of Manríquez Bravo, Espinoza Bravo, Krassnoff Martchenko, and Iturriaga Neumann, who had been sentenced to 13 years in prison in the first instance. Meanwhile, former agents Hiro Álvarez Vega, Olegario Enrique González Moreno, Hernán Patricio Valenzuela Salas, Juan Alfredo Villanueva Alvear, Lautaro Eugenio Díaz Espinoza, Leonidas Emiliano Méndez Moreno, Rafael de Jesús Riveros Frost, Gustavo Humberto Apablaza Meneses, Héctor Carlos Díaz Cabezas, Jorge Antonio Lepileo Barrios, Óscar Belarmino La Flor Flores, Rufino Espinoza Espinoza, Víctor Manuel Álvarez Droguett, Sergio Iván Díaz Lara, and Roberto Hernán Rodríguez Manquel were sentenced to 4 years in prison, with the benefit of supervised release, as accomplices to the crime. The first-instance ruling had been issued in August 2015 by judge Hernán Crisosto Greisse. In the current resolution of the Court, the criminals Marcelo Morén Brito, Sergio Hernán Castillo González, Basclay Zapata Reyes, Juan Ángel Urbina Cáceres, José Mario Friz Esparza, Gustavo Galvarino Carumán Soto, José Nelson Fuentealba Saldías, Claudio Orlando Orellana de la Pinta, Manuel Antonio Montré Méndez, Hugo Rubén Delgado Carrasco, Héctor Manuel Lira Aravena, and Víctor Manuel San Martín Jiménez were acquitted due to their deaths, which occurred between that ruling and the date of the hearing. The name of Héctor Marcial Garay Hermosilla appeared on a list of 119 people published in the national press after it appeared on a list published in the Argentine magazine LEA on July 15, 1975, which attempted to make it appear that Héctor Marcial Garay Hermosilla had died in Argentina, along with 59 other people belonging to the MIR, due to internal disputes among those members. The publications that declared the victim Garay Hermosilla and all 119 people dead originated from disinformation maneuvers carried out by DINA agents abroad.

Source: RESUMEN.CL 6/4/2020

Date: 06-04-2020

Judge Crisosto sentences 77 DINA agents for the case of a young student disappeared in Operation Colombo

The minister on extraordinary assignment for human rights violation cases of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Hernán Crisosto Greisse, sentenced 77 agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their responsibility in the aggravated kidnapping of Héctor Garay Hermosilla, a victim of the so-called "Operation Colombo." In the resolution, the presiding judge sentenced César Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Marcelo Luis Moren Brito, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann to 13 years in prison as perpetrators of the crime committed starting in 1974.

During the investigation stage, Judge Crisosto Greisse established the following sequence of events: "On the night of July 8, 1974, Héctor Marcial Garay Hermosilla, 19, a member of the Revolutionary Student Front (FER), was detained as he arrived at his home located at Calle Los Aromos 2770-I, in the commune of Ñuñoa, by agents belonging to the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), who forced him into the back of a gray Chevrolet C-10 pickup truck and took him to the home of a friend of the victim, who was also forced into the aforementioned truck, to be taken to an unknown destination.

Subsequently, it was established through testimonies that Héctor Marcial Garay Hermosilla passed through the clandestine detention center known as 'Londres 38,' which was guarded by armed guards and to which only DINA agents had access.

During his stay at the Londres 38 barracks, the victim Garay Hermosilla remained without contact with the outside world, blindfolded and tied up, and was continuously subjected to interrogations under torture by DINA agents operating in said barracks for the purpose of obtaining information regarding members of his group in order to proceed with the detention of the members of that organization.

The last time the victim Garay Hermosilla was seen by other detainees occurred on an undetermined day in the months of July and August 1974, and to date, there is no information regarding his whereabouts.

The name of Héctor Marcial Garay Hermosilla appeared on a list of 119 people published in the national press after it appeared on a list published in the Argentine magazine LEA on July 15, 1975, which reported that Héctor Marcial Garay Hermosilla had died in Argentina, along with 59 other people belonging to the MIR, due to internal disputes among those members; the publications that declared the victim Garay Hermosilla dead originated from disinformation maneuvers carried out by DINA agents abroad."

Source: elmostrador.cl 8/31/2015

Date: 08-31-2015

Pinochet is prosecuted again and remains under arrest.

Judge Víctor Montiglio has again prosecuted Augusto Pinochet as the perpetrator of the aggravated kidnapping of three new victims from the 119 disappeared in Operation Colombo. However, the judge dismissed the case against the former dictator regarding four other victims, applying the legal principle of "res judicata," which will be appealed by the plaintiffs.

Added to the new prosecutions is the indictment that affected the former army chief—on November 24—when the magistrate prosecuted him for six victims of the Colombo operation and ordered his house arrest.

Thus, Pinochet remains indicted in this trial and under house arrest, given that the Sixth Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals rejected last Friday the writ of amparo filed by his defense, which sought to annul the first six indictments and revoke his preventive detention.

Regarding this amparo, the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court will likely rule tomorrow, once it hears the arguments of the parties. Of the fifteen cases of disappeared persons from Operation Colombo for which the courts stripped Pinochet of his immunity, he has already been indicted for nine victims and dismissed for four.

The judge still needs to rule on two other situations. The three new victims for whom Pinochet was prosecuted are Juan Carlos Perelman Ide (MIR, disappeared in 1975), Héctor Garay Hermosilla (MIR, 1974), and Antonio Cabezas Quijada (PS, 1974).

Source: December 6, 2005 La Nacion

Date: 12-06-2005

Ambush on key cases of the DINA, the Joint Command, and the CNI.

On Monday, the Administrative Corporation of the Judiciary must report the cost of appointing special judges. Meanwhile, the human rights community hopes that they will make progress where their efforts have so far been fruitless: the cases benefiting from a judge with exclusive dedication correspond mostly to disappearances perpetrated by the DINA, the Joint Command, and an emblematic case of the CNI.

The hour of the DINA The net is tightening around the DINA with the case of MIR militant Carlos Cubillos Gálvez, detained in 1974 on a street in the commune of Ñuñoa. Witnesses indicated that he was taken to the Londres 38 facility and nothing more was heard of him.

His case—file 11337/6—is in the Eighth Criminal Court of Santiago. In that same court is the case of MIR militant Juan Carlos Perelman (file 12193-8), who was detained in 1975 by DINA personnel along with his partner, who was released some time later.

The Rettig Commission affirmed that his disappearance was the responsibility of State agents. On August 1, 1974, Sergio Sebastián Montecinos Alfaro was detained; at 28 years old, he was the union coordinator of the political parties that had joined the UP in the Western Zone of Santiago.

He was taken from his home by DINA personnel and last seen at the Londres 38 facility. His case, No. 2310-00, is also in the Eighth Court of Santiago. The kidnapping of Luis Jaime Palominos Rojas on December 7, 1974, is the responsibility of the same security agency.

The case of this MIR militant, labeled number 2808-5, will also be investigated by a special judge in the 11th Criminal Court of Santiago. The judge with exclusive dedication of that same court will focus on the case of Jaime Cadiz Norambuena (case 768-6).

This MIR militant was detained in the José María Caro housing project and disappeared from the DINA facility at Londres 38. Number 2161-8 of that court records another DINA case that the judge will emphasize.

MIR member Jorge Humberto D´orival Briceño was detained at his home in the commune of Conchalí and later seen, along with two other detainees, at Villa Grimaldi. The trail for all three was lost at the Cuatro Alamos facility.

The judge with exclusive dedication of the Third Criminal Court of San Miguel will investigate the case of Leopoldo Muñoz Andrade, a MIR militant who disappeared from the DINA facility at Cuatro Alamos.

It will also be up to this magistrate to clarify the disappearance of another MIR member, Daniel Reyes Piña, who was last seen at Londres 38. The disappearance of Víctor Fernando Olea Alegría on September 11, 1974, is also attributed to that repressive agency.

He was 24 years old when he was detained by agents on a public street. His case is based in the Ninth Criminal Court of Santiago under number 76667. Another case that will receive special attention will be that of Washington Cid Urrutia, who disappeared in 1974 from Villa Grimaldi.

His case is based in the Tenth Criminal Court of Santiago and is attributed to the DINA. Towards other repressive agencies Not only the DINA will be investigated by the special judges. The criminal actions perpetrated by the Joint Command will have the same fate.

In fact, the Supreme Court's mandate touches the threads of one of the cases that offers the greatest contradictions with the Armed Forces' report: the disappearance of Communist Youth militant Carol Fedor Flores Castillo.

The military report states that Flores Castillo was detained in 1976, killed, and thrown into the sea off the coast of San Antonio. However, Flores was captured along with his brothers in 1974 and remained imprisoned for six months.

In 1976, he began to collaborate with the Joint Command, a process that lasted until June 7 of that year. Former Joint Command agent Andrés Valenzuela confessed that he was killed along with a soldier in the Cajón del Maipo and thrown into the river.

Now his crime will be investigated by the judge of the Tenth Court of Santiago. In the Fourth Criminal Court of San Miguel, under number 10161, is the case of Alonso Gahona Chávez, who allegedly died as a victim of repeated torture along with Humberto Castro in the so-called "Nido 20." This was the name of the secret detention and torture facility located at Calle Santa Teresa 037, near the 20th stop of the Gran Avenida in Santiago.

This facility operated during 1975 under the control of DIFA agents, with whom civilians from nationalist or far-right groups collaborated. The external security of the facility was in charge of students from the Air Force School of Specialties.

Gahona, a leader of the La Cisterna Municipality workers and a communist militant known as "Yuri," had been detained on September 8, 1975, on a public street. His body was allegedly wrapped in plastic and, apparently, thrown into the sea.

Miguel Rodríguez Gallardo was taken from the facility called "Remo Cero," of the Colina anti-aircraft artillery regiment, and possibly buried on military land in Peldehue. Case 10617 of the Fourth Court of San Miguel will attempt to reach the foundations of the Joint Command.

A special judge will also investigate the fate of at least one of the disappeared detainees from La Moneda. In the Ninth Criminal Court of Santiago is case 17584, which corresponds to Osvaldo Ramos Rivera, a member of the GAP who was only 22 years old.

Ramos was detained inside the government palace by military personnel, along with Antonio Aguirre Vásquez. Due to their injuries, both were taken to the Posta Central, where there is a record of their stay.

They were removed from there by uniformed personnel, and their whereabouts have been unknown since then. In the Eighth Criminal Court of Santiago, the case of another GAP member, Mario Ramiro Melo, a retired Army officer who disappeared on September 29, 1973, will be investigated.

The case of Miguel Acuña Castillo, labeled number 11509-8 in the Eighth Court of Santiago, will also be investigated. Acuña was a leader of the MIR's secondary student section when he disappeared in 1974, along with his friend Héctor Garay Hermosilla.

The work of the special judges will also extend to the Air Force War Academy. In the Ninth Criminal Court of Santiago, the case of José Luis Baeza, 41, a salesman and member of the PC Central Committee, will be reviewed.

He was apprehended along with three other people in a house in Santiago that served for meetings and contacts for members of that group. The perpetrators of the detention were identified as members of the Air Force Intelligence Service, commanded by a well-known Intelligence Chief.

Baeza was taken to the institution's War Academy, where he was seen by several witnesses. These testimonies contradict the official version provided by the Minister of the Interior, who at the time denied his detention.

Source: Primera Linea June 22, 2001

Date: 06-22-2001

Hector Garay (18) Detained and disappeared

"July 8, 1974, Héctor Garay Hermosilla, 18 years old, first year of a History degree at the University of Chile, 10 at night. His mother, Mrs. Inelia Hermosilla, was waiting for her youngest son with concern, as these were difficult and dangerous days.

Tito arrived, wearing a sheepskin coat his mother had bought on installments at Falabella, and in his hands, the leather folder she bought with pride when one of her children entered the University. Tito was the third, and only boy.

His father had died 2 years earlier, and Mrs. Inelia had clung with pride to this pampered and intelligent offspring. - 'Titín!' - they heard in the hallway. - 'Leave me the folder while I serve you, son!' - 'No, Mom, I'll be right back!' He had heard the voice of a friend, the first of three forcibly disappeared persons.

Mrs. Inelia went out to look. She faced 'Guatón' Romo; the friend was not alone. - 'What's happening?' - 'Don't get involved, ma'am, your son will be here before twelve! Tito!' - 'No, you are stealing my son from me.' First warning: with a machine gun crossed against her chest, they shouted at her to go back to her apartment.

Desperation. She went down two floors after them, even more so when she saw the weapons and that they were putting her son into the white pickup truck; she tried to cling to the truck by the bumper. The blow with the rifle butt was now right in her face, and another, which knocked her to the ground, and she had to crawl to the condominium gate on Juan Gómez Millas.

That night she wandered with her daughter through all the detention centers. They took him to Londres, and she spent three months, all day and all night, asking about him or calling out to him when she saw a pickup truck leaving.

They would detain her for a while and then release her. Later it was Villa Grimaldi, but no one told her anything. She was one of the founding mothers of the Association of Forcibly Disappeared Persons of Chile and lived at the Vicariate, along with Sola Sierra.

During the first Te Deum of the dictatorship at the Cathedral, she was able to hide in a confessional, and before they gave Pinochet the Host, she shouted: 'NO!! HE HAS BLOOD-STAINED HANDS!!' She says she ran to the Vicariate and hid in the room of the Vicar of the Pastoral, who protected her for weeks until she could leave in disguise.

She is still alive, she is 95 years old, she is the only survivor of the Association of Forcibly Disappeared Persons. No Concertación government has been able to give her an answer. Tito's name appeared in 1975 on the list of the 119 in Salta, Operation Colombo, along with those headlines that still wound her: 'EXTERMINATED LIKE RATS!' Thirty-two years, and she is still waiting." PS: Mrs.

Inelia died on August 22, 2007, from a stroke, waiting for her son. (Andrea Castillo).

Source: archivochile.com no date

The disappearance of Héctor Garay and the endless search of Inelia Hermosilla

“I toast to truth, justice, and reason, so that oppression and such inequality may not exist. With courage and dignity, we must emerge from this evil; we are going to rebuild with firm foundations, so that this is never lived in Chile again.” It is highly probable that hundreds of thousands of people in Chile and around the world heard those words recited with firmness and heartbreak by an elderly woman with white hair and clear eyes during the “Cueca Sola” performed by the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared (AFDD).

Her name was Inelia Hermosilla Silva and she was one of the founders of the AFDD. It is said that she practically lived in the offices of the Vicariate of Solidarity of the Archdiocese of Santiago, in the heart of the Plaza de Armas.

She also had the occasion to dance this cueca, which moved Sting. And she was one of the voices that rang out strongly in February 1998 at the National Stadium, for U2’s first visit to the country. “I am the mother of Héctor Marcial Garay Hermosilla, forcibly disappeared on July 8, 1974. I demand justice!” she cried out from the microphone to which she had been invited by the singer Bono.

Héctor was born on March 5, 1955, in Santiago. He was 19 years old when he was kidnapped from his home at Calle Los Aromos 2770–I in Ñuñoa. He was a member of the FER (Front of Revolutionary Students), which he joined while attending secondary school at Liceo N° 7 in Ñuñoa, at the intersection of Irarrázaval and Carmen Covarrubias.

These were the times of the government of Salvador Allende, and he stood out in that institution for his leadership, at a time when the Federation of Secondary Students (FESES) had attained special prominence.

At the time of his detention, he was studying Primary Education with a specialization in Natural Sciences at the University of Chile. Subsequent investigations showed that those responsible were agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA).

I remember her voice breaking when she told her story. She pointed out that she had done everything within the AFDD. Certainly, she always went out into the streets, brandishing a sign with the phrase “Where Are They?” along with an aged photo of her son and words written in marker that spoke of “our demand for justice” and claimed “no to impunity.” She participated in the Association’s folk group and was also one of the women who dedicated themselves to creating beautiful and emblematic arpilleras (patchwork tapestries).

The journalist Lucía Sepúlveda recounted that “Tito was the youngest of the three children in the Garay Hermosilla family, and he had two sisters, Mónica and Rosario. He attended primary school at Colegio San Marcos, when the family lived on Calle Bascuñán.

His father had been an employee of the Yarur textile industry and managed to fulfill the dream of home ownership through his work, moving to the commune of Ñuñoa. His mother worked as a floor supervisor at the Hotel Crillón, in downtown Santiago. It was not a family with political participation or concerns. Among their values was respect for study and knowledge” (“119 of Us”).

Héctor “was a very intelligent boy and the family was proud of the score he achieved on his academic aptitude test.” His mother recalled, she adds, that “he was mischievous, messy. I helped him with his homework.

His notebooks were a mess. He liked to draw. And later, I took his drawings as a source of inspiration for my arpilleras. They would come out soaked in tears. I also drew the scene of his detention on an arpillera.”

Mrs. Inelia told her that “Tito took great care of me; he wouldn’t let me eat anything heavy. He was very affectionate and tried to comfort me when his father was dying. Tito was born when I was 39. My fallopian tubes had been tied during an operation to remove an ovarian cyst, and they didn’t realize I was already twelve days pregnant.” Héctor’s father died of cancer three years before his detention.

He charged Tito with continuing his studies and taking care of his mother.

On August 22, 2006, she passed away from a stroke, at over 90 years of age, without having found her son and without justice for his disappearance. She was very ill. Her legs no longer responded. Shortly before, she told the Spanish historian Mario Amorós: “I have been looking for him for almost 30 years now (…) I am alone, very alone.

Yesterday the Association’s group came to see me and sing to me, and I was crying the whole time” (“After the Rain: Chile, the Wounded Memory”).

In the course of the week, almost 14 years after Mrs. Inelia departed this world, the Second Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals sentenced 39 DINA agents for their responsibility in the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Héctor Garay, according to the ruling in case file 174-2016, issued by judges María Soledad Melo, Rafael Andrade, and the lawyer (i) María Cecilia Ramírez.

In August 2015, the first-instance ruling had been issued by Judge Hernán Crisosto Greisse.

MIDNIGHT KIDNAPPING

On July 8, 1974, Héctor was kidnapped along with his friend Miguel Ángel Acuña Castillo, with whom he participated in the FER. Miguel Ángel was detained by a team of agents from the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), who arrived around 11:30 p.m. at his home at Pasaje Talca N° 2033, in the Rodrigo de Araya sector.

They arrived with Héctor, who had been captured shortly before at his home on Los Aromos. They were forced into the interior of a lead-colored Chevrolet C–10 pickup truck with a canopy: it was the model that the criminals of the dictatorship usually used.

Héctor and Miguel Ángel remain to this day in the status of forcibly disappeared.

A vigorous chronicle written by Andrea Castillo recounted: “July 8, 1974, 10 o’clock at night. Mrs. Inelia Hermosilla was waiting for her youngest son with concern. These were difficult and dangerous days.

Tito arrived, wearing a gamulán (sheepskin coat) that his mother had bought on installments at Falabella, and in his hands, the leather briefcase she bought with pride when one of her children entered university.

Tito was the third and the only boy. His father had died two years earlier and Mrs. Inelia had clung to this pampered and intelligent offspring. ‘Titín!’ they heard in the hallway. ‘Leave me the briefcase while I serve you, son!’ ‘No, Mom, I’ll be right back!’”

He had heard a friend’s voice. He went out to look. There he encountered Osvaldo Romo, better known as “Guatón Romo,” a former militant of the Popular Socialist Union who posed as an ultra-leftist during the Allende government in the Lo Hermida sector and who, after the coup d’état, appeared as one of the most repugnant repressors. “Don’t get involved, ma’am, your son will be back before twelve!” he snapped at Mrs.

Inelia. “Tito!… No, you are stealing my son from me…”

Castillo relates: “With a machine gun crossed over his chest, they shouted at her to go back to her apartment. Desperation. She went down two floors behind them. Even more so, when she saw the weapons and that they were putting her son in the truck, she tried to grab onto the bumper.

The blow from the rifle butt was now directly to her face, and then another that knocked her to the ground, and she had to crawl to the gate of the condominium on Juan Gómez Millas.”

“That night she wandered with her daughter through all the detention centers. They took him to Londres 38 and she spent three months, all day and all night, asking for him or calling out to him when she saw any truck leaving. They would detain her for a while and then release her. Later it was Villa Grimaldi, but no one would tell her anything.”

For a long time, Mrs. Inelia would stand on Avenida Gracia, near her home, to wait for her son’s return, even during curfew hours, until the soldiers forced her to return to her house. She began a tour of the detention centers that were known. “I kept Tito’s clothes intact, and I didn’t eat at home.

I always carried a bag for him, with toiletries and clothes. I would eat sweets or cookies on the street and when I arrived home, I would go to his room. I would leave in the morning and pray to Tito to guide me to where he was,” she told Lucía Sepúlveda.

Their names were included in a propaganda montage, of the kind to which the right and its servants have always been addicted. Its code name was “Operation Colombo.” Based on the coordination links established by the DINA in Operation Condor with the security services of Brazil and Argentina, and with the far-right of both countries, they were tasked with producing two apocryphal media outlets, the newspaper Novo O’Día and the magazine Lea, which appeared only once, in 1975, with the publication of a list of 119 people, all of them kidnapped by the tyranny and to this day disappeared, claiming that the “left-wing extremists” had killed each other.

All of this had the enthusiastic collaboration of the media in Chile. The newspaper La Segunda, owned by the Edwards Group, went down in national history of infamy with its front-page headline: “Exterminated like rats.”

Garay appeared on the list published in the magazine Lea, which asserted that he had died in Argentine territory, along with 59 other people, due to internal quarrels that had arisen among the “extremists.”

In the judicial investigation, it was proven that “Héctor Marcial Garay Hermosilla passed through the clandestine detention center known as Londres 38, which was guarded by armed guards and to which only DINA agents had access.” Garay remained in the place “without contact with the outside world, blindfolded and tied up, being continuously subjected to interrogations under torture by DINA agents who operated in said barracks with the purpose of obtaining information regarding members of his group, to proceed with the detention of the members of that organization.” The last time the victim “was seen by other detainees occurred on an undetermined day in the month of July and August 1974,” and there is still no information regarding his whereabouts.

The judicial inquiries also proven that the publications that declared Garay dead as a result of purges within the MIR “had their origin in disinformation maneuvers carried out by DINA agents abroad.”

Lucía Sepúlveda reproduced one of the memories that Mrs. Inelia treasured. In 1991, she traveled to Canada with people from the AFDD folk group: “After we sang and danced the Cueca Sola, a man approached me. And he told me that he had been in a cell at Cuatro Álamos with Tito. And that he had told him that he was thinking about his mom who had been left all alone.”

For this case, in 2005, Augusto Pinochet was indicted by Judge Víctor Montiglio. The case against him was dismissed following his death a little over a year later.

Despite those who work for impunity and those who deny the barbarity or justify it in private, there will never be oblivion.

Source: fundacionprogresa.cl (undated)

Another “brave” man who commits suicide without facing justice. Héctor Lira was found with a gunshot wound to the mouth in the Park

Héctor Manuel Lira Aravena was indicted in 2008, within the framework of the investigations into the so-called “Operation Colombo.” He was found with a gunshot wound to the mouth in Juan XXIII Park.

Héctor Manuel Lira Aravena, 69 years old, a former agent of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) and subsequently of the National Intelligence Center (CNI), committed suicide this morning in Juan XXIII Park in the commune of Ñuñoa.

According to initial reports, the subject committed suicide with a gunshot to the mouth. The body was found by people passing through the area.

Lira, who served as a Carabineros non-commissioned officer, received a 45-year sentence for human rights violations during the time of the dictatorship as an accomplice—among other crimes—to the kidnapping of Héctor Marcial Garay Hermosilla.

Lira had been sentenced in the first instance to 8 years for this case. Garay Hermosilla was part of the Front of Revolutionary Students (FER) and was 19 years old when, on July 8, 1974, he was detained near his home by unidentified agents, with no information regarding his subsequent whereabouts.

Days later, his name appeared in the national press on a list of 119 people killed due to alleged internal quarrels within the MIR, in what was later known as “Operation Colombo.” Also, while already part of the CNI agents assigned to the espionage of union and political leaders, he participated in the surveillance and collection of information on the union leader Tucapel Jiménez, who was assassinated on February 25, 1982.

According to the account of relatives to the police, the former agent left around 07:00 hours from his home located at Los Crisantemos 3510, Villa Los Prados 3, in the commune of Puente Alto, with his whereabouts unknown.

Carabineros Captain Rodrigo Mejías, of the 18th Precinct of Ñuñoa, indicated that the body of the former agent was found on Friday morning on a park bench after a call from a passerby to the uniformed police.

The body was found with a gunshot wound to the head and with a revolver in his hand, which was his property.

This seems to be a trend in recent years.

This is how our “brave soldiers” involved in human rights violations commit suicide.

Source: elciudadano.com (2014)

To Héctor Garay Hermosilla, an intimate friend of childhood and adolescence lost in that terrible night of gunfire, pain, and death

[Poetic text omitted for brevity in this translation excerpt, but preserved in the archive]

Diego Muñoz Valenzuela. In Historical Memory MIR

Source: DOSSIER – CASE OF THE 119 – OPERATION COLOMBO