The Santiago Court of Appeals has indicted twelve individuals, including retired General Ramsés Alvarez Scoglia, former director of Army Intelligence, for the homicide of labor leader Tucapel Jiménez Alfaro, committed on February 25, 1982.

The appellate court thus accepted the requests of the plaintiffs and reopened the investigation, which had been closed by visiting judge Sergio Valenzuela Patiño, who had only kept retired Major Carlos Herrera Jiménez under indictment; the court modified the charges against him to aggravated homicide.

Six of the indictments are for the status of alleged perpetrators of the homicide, five as accomplices, and one for concealment. In addition to General Alvarez and Herrera Jiménez, the indicted individuals are as follows: retired Army Captain Raúl Descalsi Sporke; former CNI agent Humberto Calderón Luna; retired Army Brigadier Víctor Pinto Pérez; former DINE official Maximiliano Francisco Ferrer Lima; and former CNI agent Galvarino Ancavil Hernández.

Also charged were Valericio Orrego Salas, former president of the Public Works workers; Misael Galleguillos Vásquez, who headed the General Secretariat of the Guilds; and former members of the CNI labor brigade Jorge Fernando Ramírez Romero, Raúl Lillo Gutiérrez, and Nelson Edison Hernández Franco.

For his part, the individual indicted for concealment is retired Army Major Arturo Rodrigo Silva Valdés.

Source: fasic.org, March 31, 1999

In mid-1981, General Augusto Pinochet gave the order for the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE), under the command of General Arturo Álvarez Scoglia, to assassinate Tucapel Jiménez, president of the National Association of Fiscal Employees (ANEF), who had emerged as the main Chilean labor leader and was planning, along with other opposition leaders, a major national strike against the military government.

Álvarez Scoglia created a special group to carry out the mission and designated three officers as members of the execution command. However, the agents showed an evident "lack of commitment" to the assigned task, and the DINE command had to replace them by turning to two officers who had been members of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) and, in that year of 1981, were attached to the National Information Center (CNI), created in 1977 to succeed the DINA.

These were Lieutenant Colonel Maximiliano Ferrer Lima and Captain Carlos Herrera Jiménez, alias "Mauro" or "Bocaccio." Both officers settled in at the beginning of November in the facilities of the Counter-Espionage Unit, dependent on Department II of Counterintelligence of the Army Intelligence Corps (CIE), located at Avenida Echeñique 5995, in the commune of La Reina.

That unit was part of the intricate and highly secret structure of the DINE, in charge of Commander Víctor Pinto Pérez. Ferrer Lima and Herrera Jiménez, along with two teams of agents under their command, then dedicated themselves to preparing every detail of the plan to assassinate Tucapel Jiménez.

They were in the midst of this when the various services of the military dictatorship's intelligence community learned that former president Eduardo Frei Montalva had decided to check into the Santa María clinic to undergo surgery for a bothersome hiatal hernia.

At the beginning of the spring of 1981, the CNI was certain that the much-feared opposition labor unit was being formed rapidly and that its main architect was Tucapel Jiménez. The matter was even more serious because Jiménez was also holding conversations with several of the main political leaders of the opposition, among them Eduardo Frei Montalva.

The ANEF leader and the former president had already met at the Vicaría de la Pastoral Obrera along with some dignitaries of the Catholic Church. CNI analysts reached the conclusion that a broad national strike with unpredictable consequences was being prepared, with the support, furthermore, of numerous entities and governments from around the world.

The Task of the CNI

From its inception, the CNI exercised close surveillance over the labor world through the Labor Brigade or Political-Labor Brigade, which depended directly on the Metropolitan Intelligence Division, under the command of Army Colonel Roberto Schmied Zanzi.

The head of the brigade since 1979 was Carabineros Captain Miguel Eugenio Hernández Oyarzo ("Felipe Bascur"), who had performed similar functions in the DINA in 1977, from the "Ollagüe" barracks, located on Calle José Domingo Cañas, in the commune of Ñuñoa.

By mid-1979, the brigade moved to a new secret barracks on Calle Agustinas and was divided into four groups, each under the command of Army Captain Raúl Lillo Gutiérrez ("Manolo Arriagada"), Héctor Lira ("Julián Reyes"), Nelson Fernández Franco ("Carlos Santander"), and Jorge Ramírez Romero ("Carlos de la Fuente"), respectively.

The Labor Brigade achieved an important milestone when it managed to recruit Luis Becerra, Frei Montalva's driver, for its tasks—a man who was also in the absolute confidence of the former president. Among the agents were Pedro Alfaro Fernández, Juan Araos Araos, Carlos Asalgado Martínez, Edmundo Alberto Asenjo Gálvez, Daniel Cancino Varas, Gustavo Caruman Soto, Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Germán Erazo Ahumada, Ricardo Erazo Ahumada, Héctor Alfredo Flores Vergara, Segundo Gangas Godoy, Enrique Gutiérrez Rubilar, Luis Gutiérrez Uribe, Guido Jara Brevis, Jaime Márquez Campos, Luis Mora Cerda, José Mora Diocares, José Muñoz Leal, Enrique Naranjo Muñoz, Nelson Ortiz Vignolo, Manuel Poblete Vergara, Luis Tomás Rojas Torres, Manuel Tapia Tapia, and Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera. The Labor Brigade achieved an important milestone when it managed to recruit Luis Becerra, Frei Montalva's driver, for its tasks—a man who was also in the absolute confidence of the former president and knew the activities and the inner circle of the Christian Democrat leader very closely.

In 1977, the Ministry General Secretariat of Government created, under the dependency of the Directorate of Civil Organizations, the National Secretariat of Guilds and placed Misael Galleguillos at its head, a Mathematics professor from the Valparaíso branch of the University of Chile, an active militant of Patria y Libertad during the Unidad Popular government.

His apparent mission was to form pro-government labor leaders, but in truth, his main role consisted of monitoring and infiltrating opposition labor leaderships and passing all that information to the CNI.

One of the actions with the greatest public impact by Galleguillos, who also directed the National Syndicalist Revolutionary Movement (MRNS), was the boycott of an ANEF press conference, in which Guillermo Henríquez, Jorge Salazar Hojman, Genaro Pozo, and Jorge Baldrich Camus burst in, shouting "traitor" and "sell-out" at Tucapel Jiménez.

The following day, Baldrich appeared photographed in El Mercurio. He later declared that the order had been given to him by the then-Minister Secretary General of Government, General Sergio Badiola Brodeg, who was seconded by the undersecretary of the portfolio, the lawyer Jovino Novoa Vásquez.

Galleguillos also counted on a secret informant among the opposition who anticipated all the activities of the "Group of Ten." It was Federico Mujica Canales, a short man of radical origin, a constant pipe smoker, who presided over the Confederation of Private Employees of Chile (Cepch).

Very soon, the CNI refined its methods of tracking, surveillance, wiretapping, and penetration. The information gathered was incorporated into individual files, and their contents were periodically replicated, with copies sent to the central barracks on Calle República.

There, they were received by Mirtha Espinoza Caamaño, the secretary to Colonel Roberto Schmied, head of the Interior Department, who was later appointed commander of the Metropolitan Intelligence Division, where the various anti-subversive brigades were located.

Under Schmied's direct command were Major Zanelli and Captain Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, in charge of operational tasks. One of the most secret paid snitches that the repressive agency maintained within the leadership circles of the opposition labor movement could only be identified in the first semester of 2009.

It was the socialist Víctor Hugo Gac, a member of the executive committee of the CNS, a man then very close to Arturo Martínez. The secretary recorded the information in control books, with the date of entry, the originating unit, and a brief description of the content.

Acronyms and codes were used according to the respective units and sections. Thus, for example, F.1.1 corresponded to the division chief; F-1.2 to the deputy chief, and so on, according to the various departments into which the CNI was divided.

Leaders such as Tucapel Jiménez, Eduardo Ríos, Ernesto Vogel, and Manuel Bustos, among others, had their telephones tapped, and all correspondence sent to them and their families from abroad and within the country was reviewed at the unit the CNI maintained at the Post Office.

A file was kept on each one with their personal, work, and family background, in addition to their contact networks. In 1976, a CNI agent nicknamed "Omar" recruited as an informant the employee who worked as an assistant at the ANEF, in its three-story headquarters located at Alameda and Riquelme.

The "junior" was named Julio Olivares Silva and was the son of a friend of Tucapel Jiménez. Twice a week, the young man delivered his reports to the Labor Brigade barracks, where he received a cash payment in exchange.

In 1977, Olivares Silva was incorporated into the CNI staff under the alias "Gabriel Carrasco González," although everyone called him "Barnabás." Valericio Orrego, for his part, also became a paid collaborator of the CNI.

He infiltrated Carlos Santa María, a leader of the Group of Ten, by recruiting an employee of his at a business he owned at Bandera and General Mackenna. The informant was named Patricio Pezoa and had to report periodically to "Manolo" or "Carlos de la Fuente," his control agents at the CNI.

One of the most secret paid snitches that the repressive agency maintained within the leadership circles of the opposition labor movement could only be identified in the first semester of 2009. It was the socialist Víctor Hugo Gac, a member of the executive committee of the CNS, a man then very close to Arturo Martínez.

The Hard Road to Unity

At the end of May 1976, ten important labor leaders, nine of them linked to the PDC, who claimed to represent 400 unions and more than 600,000 workers, sent a document to the military government complaining about the new labor legislation that was being imposed and the marginalization of workers from political decisions.

The signatories were Tucapel Jiménez (ANEF), Ernesto Mellado (peasants), Pedro Cifuentes (Iansa), Antonio del Campo (bank employees), Guillermo Santana (Copper Workers Confederation, CTC), Manuel Bustos (textiles), Ernesto Vogel (Fifch), Federico Mujica (Cepch), Antonio Mimiza (oil), and Eduardo Díaz (ComaCh).

From that moment on, they were known as the Group of Ten, and very soon other important labor organizations joined them, such as the Plastic Workers Confederation, the Federation of Professionals and Technicians of the National Health Service, and the Federation of Unions of the Banco Español.

At the end of the summer of 1978, former deputy Gladys Marín entered the country clandestinely, followed by Manuel Cantero Prado, both members of the political commission. Two months later, in May, the new Interior Leadership Team (EDI) was constituted, headed by Marín, along with Cantero ("Miguel"), Oscar Riquelme ("El viejo Pablo"), and Nicasio Farías ("Héctor"), who took charge of the Infrastructure Front, entrusted with all the logistical work and the search for resources and materials for clandestine tasks. "Mariana," meanwhile, had to assume the delicate management of the party's finances. One of the main tasks of the EDI was to rebuild the internal structures and, in particular, the labor fabric. To this end, Moisés Labraña, responsible for that sector in the JJ.CC. (Communist Youth), was promoted to the party's labor officer and integrated into the EDI. Labraña had a determined team in which Héctor Cuevas, Alamiro Guzmán, and José Lecaros, among others, stood out. The PC labor leaders managed to refine ties with the main labor leaders of the Christian Democrats, among whom were Manuel Bustos, of the textiles; Eduardo Ríos, of the maritime workers; and Ernesto Vogel, of the railway workers; and with other historical figures, such as the octogenarian Clotario Blest. Left-wing labor unionism grouped itself, meanwhile, into the National Labor Coordinator (CNS), created under the wing of the Labor Studies Center, dependent on the Cardijn Foundation, which in turn was closely linked to the Catholic Church. The CNS appeared publicly in 1978, representing, as it maintained, some 400 base unions, mainly industrial, of small and medium mining, and of the peasantry. Among the members, the Mining Confederation, Fensimet, Fenamex, Fiemec, Ranquil, UOC, Association of Pensioners, Sanitation Workers, the Painting Federation, and the Graphic Union stood out. There also existed the Unitary Workers Front (FUT), a small formation of Christian labor leaders, led by Carlos Frez, the dismissed president of the Port Workers Union, linked long before to the Young Christian Workers and the Christian Workers' Action Movement. Thus, more than three thousand workers from these three labor references converged on May 1, 1978, toward Plaza Almagro, a few blocks south of La Moneda, to commemorate Labor Day. Carabineros forced them to disperse, but they regrouped a few blocks from there, at the San Francisco church, next to the Alameda Bernardo O’Higgins, where they were again chased away. By mid-afternoon, pickets of workers were still shouting slogans in various places in downtown Santiago. By nightfall, the balance of the demonstrations indicated nearly 400 detainees, several foreigners and religious figures among them. The military dictatorship and the pro-government press were forced to acknowledge, for the first time, the dissident street demonstrations. Neither the PC nor the other left-wing parties nor the Christian Democrats perceived well the effects that the Labor Plan designed by Minister Piñera would provoke among the workers. On May 22, relatives of the forcibly disappeared occupied simultaneously the offices of UNICEF and the parishes of Jesús Obrero, on General Velásquez, in the western sector of the capital; La Estampa, in Independencia, a few meters from Plaza Chacabuco, in the northern sector; and Don Bosco, on Gran Avenida, in the southern zone. They remained there until June 7, demanding to know the fate of their relatives. Neither the CNI nor the police dared to evict them because the Catholic Church was involved, and, furthermore, the demonstration coincided with the arrival in the country of five high-ranking representatives of the American AFL-CIO and a visit by prosecutor Eugene Propper, who was investigating the assassination of Orlando Letelier in Washington. On June 7, two surprise marches were held through the downtown streets of Santiago in solidarity with the relatives of the disappeared. The presence of dissident pamphlets in crowded places became frequent in those days, and graffiti on walls in neighborhoods and on the main avenues of the city began to multiply. In university headquarters, flash rallies emerged, and folk music clubs (peñas) multiplied under the wing of religious venues and some nightclubs. In the working-class neighborhoods, meanwhile, all kinds of community organizations began to be created, and in the factories, slowly, the workers dared to meet to stammer their demands. In August, at the Chuquicamata division of Codelco, next to the city of Calama, the copper miners decided to go to the cafeterias at lunchtime with their empty "lunchboxes." The prolonged protest movement for labor demands received the name of "viandazo." At the beginning of September, surprised and infuriated by the symptoms of labor unrest, the dictatorship decreed a state of siege in the degree of internal commotion. The right of amparo (habeas corpus) before the courts of justice was limited, the arrest and internal exile of persons were authorized, the cancellation of nationality, and the prosecution of detainees in military courts. Almost a month later, on October 20, 1978, the illegality of the main entities that made up the CNS was decreed, labor headquarters were raided, assets and bank accounts were confiscated, and numerous leaders were arrested. At the same time, the renewal of labor leaders in the private sector was also decreed, and many businessmen took the opportunity to fire opposition workers who could be elected. In the following weeks, some nine thousand labor leaders were replaced. Several of the main world labor organizations then intervened, and the powerful American AFL-CIO threatened a boycott of Chilean exports starting in early 1979. Alarmed, the military government announced the appointment of a new Minister of Labor, the economist José Piñera, who took office on December 26, committed to normalizing labor relations, and announced the promulgation in mid-79 of a Labor Plan that would put an end to the problems.

Pérez Zujovic, Frei, Jaime Castillo, and Modesto Collados

Neither the PC nor the other left-wing parties nor the Christian Democrats perceived well the effects that the Labor Plan designed by Minister Piñera would provoke among the workers. In July 1979, the main decrees that imposed the new labor institutional framework were promulgated: union membership ceased to be mandatory, and the formation of several unions in the same company was authorized; collective bargaining became by company and not by productive branch, the dismissal of workers "due to company needs" was authorized, the right to strike was restricted to 60 days, with the possibility of replacing workers after that period, and retirement was postponed from 60 to 65 years for men and from 55 to 60 for women, among other measures. Those provisions were devastating; the labor movement was weakened to the extreme, and the fear of "losing the job" was imposed. In 1980 and 1981, despite the protests of labor leaders, Piñera's Labor Plan was consolidated. The Group of Ten was transformed into the Democratic Workers' Union (UDT), although without several Christian Democrat leaders who were marginalized, such as Manuel Bustos, who became the leader of the new National Labor Coordinator (CNS).

The Hour of the Executioners

When the plan to assassinate Tucapel Jiménez was already underway and the military dictatorship learned that Frei Montalva would check in for surgery, a parallel operation was apparently activated to eliminate the former president and cover up the homicide as a series of post-surgical complications.

However, Judge Alejandro Madrid could not specify the details of the conspiracy. He convicted former Captain Raúl Lillo Gutiérrez, a former member of the CNI and later of the DINE, and the driver Luis Becerra, but he could not clarify from which instance of the military dictatorship the order to assassinate him came.

Lillo Gutiérrez was the agent who controlled Becerra and Genaro Cerda Weber, a DC militant and husband of Hilda Navarro Varas, secretary of that same party. Lillo, transferred at the end of the 80s to the DINE, participated in the assassination in Uruguay of the chemist Eugenio Berríos, and for that crime, he was sentenced in August 2013 to ten years and one day in prison.

For many years, it was presumed that the chemist Berríos was the one who had inoculated the former president with some poison or other toxic substance while he was in the clinic. In fact, the former director of the Investigative Police (PDI), Nelson Mery, asserted in the trial that Berríos was assassinated to prevent him from talking about the assassination of Frei Montalva.

Judge Madrid also convicted four doctors, one—the gastric surgeon Patricio Silva Garín—as the main perpetrator; another—Pedro Valdivia Soto, a former member of the DINA—as an accomplice; and the remaining two—the pathologists Helmar Rosenberg Gómez and Sergio González Bombardiere—as concealers.

The magistrate also failed to establish whether these doctors colluded with each other for the crime and/or obeyed orders to commit it. Human rights lawyers, very close to the PDC, who requested anonymity, told INTERFERENCIA that they considered the more than 800-page ruling very weak and that, in their opinion, both the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court will have to make strenuous efforts to draft a new and better resolution.

Source: interferencia.cl, December 19, 2019

In another decision by the court, release was granted to two individuals indicted for the crime of Tucapel Jiménez. Retired Aviation Colonel Edgard Ceballos Jones regained his freedom yesterday by decision of the Sixth Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals.

With the votes of minister Domingo Kokisch and member lawyer Raúl Allendes, the court resolved that there are no pending proceedings that merit the officer continuing to be deprived of his liberty. Member lawyer Benito Mauriz voted to maintain the decision of the Ninth Criminal Court of Santiago, which had denied the release.

The judicial process against Ceballos will remain in effect, although the colonel will now face it in freedom, after remaining in preventive detention at an institutional facility since he was indicted at the end of January.

The case against the retired FACh (Chilean Air Force) officer refers to the disappearance of eleven left-wing leaders and the homicide of the communist Alfonso Carreño Díaz. His defense valued yesterday that the Santiago Court of Appeals "recognized his right to provisional freedom." For lawyer Jorge Balmaceda, justice is beginning to be done for the military personnel indicted for human rights cases.

The professional hopes to soon have access to the summary to request the annulment of the officer's indictment. Balmaceda estimates that there are no grounds to maintain the case against his client. Likewise, he advocated yesterday for the remaining proceedings of the case to be carried out as soon as possible.

Logically, the plaintiff lawyer Francisco Bravo expressed a different position regarding the retired colonel's responsibility. He considered the court's resolution "unprecedented and disappointing." He recalled that Ceballos's indictment is based on the crimes of aggravated homicide, genocidal illicit association, and kidnapping.

In his opinion, it is inconceivable that a person should be granted release under circumstances where they are accused of those crimes and there are 45 pending proceedings in the case. This process was recently requested by the military justice system, but the Penal Chamber of the Supreme Court, with the dissenting vote of the Army auditor, Justice Brigadier Juan Romero, resolved to keep it in the Ninth Criminal Court of Santiago.

Edgard Ceballos Jones was head of the Intelligence Service of the Chilean Air Force (SIFA). The plaintiffs hold him responsible for actions against members of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) and the Communist Party.

Resolution in the Tucapel Jiménez Case

Yesterday, two individuals indicted for the homicide of labor leader Tucapel Jiménez also regained their freedom. By resolution of the Third Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals, release was granted to Humberto Calderón Luna and retired Carabineros non-commissioned officer Héctor Lira Aravena.

The court, with the votes of minister Juan González and member lawyer María Cristina Navajas, granted freedom to both indicted individuals. Magistrate Alejandro Solís voted to keep them in preventive detention.

Former members of the Labor Brigade of the National Information Center (CNI) Jorge Ramírez Romero and Nelson Hernández Franco had also requested release. But regarding them, the court estimated that there are pending proceedings that make it necessary to keep them detained for now.

Calderón Luna is indicted as the alleged perpetrator of the homicide, while Lira Aravena is attributed alleged responsibility in the surveillance of Tucapel Jiménez prior to his death.

Source: El Mercurio, October 12, 1999

Seven People Acquitted in Tucapel Jiménez Crime

These individuals are Miguel Galleguillos, Valericio Orrego, Raúl Lillo, Nelson Hernández, Jorge Ramírez, Héctor Lira, and Raúl Descalzi; the first six were prosecuted as accomplices and the latter as the perpetrator of the assassination.

SANTIAGO.— Minister Sergio Muñoz issued a resolution today absolving 7 people of responsibility—6 former CNI agents and 1 former DINE agent—who had been prosecuted for the assassination of labor leader Tucapel Jiménez.

These individuals are Miguel Galleguillos Vásquez, Valericio Orrego Salas, Raúl Lillo Gutiérrez, Nelson Hernández Franco, Jorge Ramírez Romero, and Héctor Lira Aravena, all of whom were prosecuted as accomplices.

In addition, the former member of the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE), Raúl Descalzi Sporke, who was under prosecution as the perpetrator of the assassination, was also absolved. There are still 14 people remaining under prosecution for this case: 4 former CNI agents and 10 former DINE agents.

Source: Emol.com, June 16, 2000

Crime of TUCAPEL JIMENEZ: Another Prosecution Against a Retired General

Visiting Minister Sergio Muñoz has now indicted three former intelligence chiefs.

With the indictment of retired General Hernán Ramírez Rurange as an alleged accessory to the homicide of labor leader Tucapel Jiménez, visiting Minister Sergio Muñoz has now indicted three former intelligence chiefs.

Since receiving the case from Minister Sergio Valenzuela Patiño last year, the magistrate has issued nine indictments against officers, non-commissioned officers, and now three generals, bringing the total number of those indicted in the case to 22.

Retired General Ramsés Alvarez Sgolia, who was the chief of the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE) at the time of the assassination, is being prosecuted as the alleged perpetrator of the homicide that occurred on February 25, 1982.

Retired General Humberto Gordon Rubio, who was the director of the National Information Center (CNI) in 1982, is being prosecuted as an alleged accomplice. Now, the magistrate has determined there is well-founded evidence to believe that retired Major General Hernán Ramírez Rurange may have participated as an accessory to Major (ret.) Carlos Herrera Jiménez, who was the only person prosecuted in the case until last year.

The magistrate’s presumptions are based on the Santiago Court of Appeals' finding that Herrera was assisted in leaving the country in 1991 to evade the reach of justice. Responsibilities for being an accessory refer to acts committed after the crime that assist the perpetrator(s) in avoiding prosecution.

Herrera left Chile while he was a wanted man in the case. He was arrested in Argentina in 1992 and extradited by that country in 1993. According to the conclusions reached by the magistrate thus far, Herrera was allegedly assisted in his departure from Chile by Army Intelligence Directorate member Arturo Silva Valdés.

The link between the cover-up and General Ramírez is established by his position as the superior of both Silva and Herrera Jiménez, who was also assigned to DINE. General Hernán Ramírez Rurange, who is under house arrest, held various important positions during his career.

In his final years of service, he was Commander-in-Chief of the Second Army Division, which required him to serve as a military judge. In that capacity, he had to request the extradition of Herrera Jiménez from Argentina in 1993, as the major was required to serve a sentence imposed by military justice for the 1984 death of transport worker Mario Fernández in Ovalle.

The 22 Indicted For the Homicide With the new indictment, the landscape of the case is now complete with 22 individuals prosecuted. Plaintiffs estimate that this resolution brings the summary investigation close to its conclusion.

The thesis that has prevailed in the case thus far points to the alleged authorship of DINE agents in service in 1982, the complicity of CNI members and unionists, and the cover-up by military intelligence agents in 1991.

Those prosecuted as alleged perpetrators include retired General Ramsés Alvarez Sgolia, retired Major Carlos Herrera Jiménez, retired non-commissioned officers Manuel Contreras Donaire and Miguel Letelier Verdugo, retired Lieutenant Raúl Descalsi Sporke, Brigadier Víctor Pinto Pérez, retired Lieutenant Colonel Francisco Ferrer Lima, and retired non-commissioned officer Humberto Calderón Luna.

Galvarino Ancavil, whose whereabouts are unknown, was also indicted as an alleged perpetrator. Those prosecuted as alleged accomplices include retired General Humberto Gordon Rubio, retired Carabineros non-commissioned officer Luis Pino Moreno, retired Brigadier Roberto Schmied, former members of the CNI labor brigade Raúl Lillo Gutiérrez, Nelson Hernández Franco, Jorge Ramírez Romero, retired Carabineros Captain Miguel Hernández, former junior staff member of the National Association of Fiscal Employees Julio Olivares Silva, retired Carabineros non-commissioned officer Héctor Lira Aravena, and former union leaders Misael Galleguillos and Valericio Orrego Salas. General (ret.) Hernán Ramírez Rurange and Arturo Silva Valdés are now listed as alleged accessories.

Source: El Mercurio, April 4, 2000

Berríos Case: Extradition of Uruguayan Military Personnel Requested and New Indictments Issued

Visiting Minister Alejandro Madrid will request the extradition of three Uruguayan military officers for their alleged responsibility in the assassination of former DINA agent Eugenio Berríos. The resolution affects Uruguayan Army officers Tomás Casella, Eduardo Radaelli, and Wellington Sarli.

The three were prosecuted by Judge Madrid alongside Chilean military personnel for the crime of illicit association, which is in addition to the charges of kidnapping and homicide for which some Chilean officers are already indicted.

The new indictments target Generals Hernán Ramírez Rurange and Eugenio Covarrubias, as well as officers Juan Pérez Santillán and Marcelo Sandoval and non-commissioned officer Nelson Román, the latter three of whom are on active duty.

Also included are civilians Nelson Hernández, Raúl Lillo Gutiérrez, and the former secretary of the Special Unit, Erika Silva, as well as former majors Arturo Silva and Jaime Torres, who are also prosecuted as perpetrators.

The Chilean defendants also face charges of misappropriation of public funds and falsification of public documents. Eugenio Berríos, a chemist by profession, worked for the DINA in the production of sarin gas, and it is presumed he was involved in the death of former President Eduardo Frei Montalva in 1982.

Likewise, his name has been linked to the 1976 kidnapping and assassination of the Spanish United Nations diplomat Carmelo Soria. In 1991, when he was scheduled to testify in the trial for the crime of former Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier, Berríos was surreptitiously taken out of Chile and brought to Uruguay, where he was last seen in November 1992, when he appeared at a police station to report that he was being held against his will.

The agent was handed over by the police to military personnel who arrived after him, and nothing more was known until April 1995, when his corpse, bound and with gunshot wounds to the skull, was found on a beach near Montevideo.

In the trial in Chile, former majors Arturo Silva and Jaime Torres are prosecuted as perpetrators, and several other officers are prosecuted for obstruction of justice, including retired Generals Hernán Ramírez Rurange and Eugenio Covarrubias, both former chiefs of the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE).

Last July, the Santiago Court of Appeals recommended a series of investigative steps to Judge Madrid, including the potential stripping of immunity from former Army Commander-in-Chief Augusto Pinochet and the investigation of 18 other military personnel, including retired General Fernando Torres, former Army Auditor General.

Lawyer Fabiola Letelier, a plaintiff in the case, stated that the resolution is based on the judge's certainty regarding the existence of an illicit association formed within the DINE with the objective of kidnapping and assassinating Eugenio Berríos.

Letelier, sister of Orlando Letelier, the former foreign minister who was assassinated in Washington in 1976, added that once she studies the resolution, she will decide whether to request the reopening of the investigation into her brother's crime.

For that death, former DINA chief Manuel Contreras and Brigadier Pedro Espinoza, his second-in-command, served prison sentences of seven and six years, respectively. Meanwhile, another of the plaintiff lawyers in the case, Tomás Ehrenfeld, noted that the ruling is "praiseworthy" and "an action of pure justice." The jurist indicated that this resolution marks the beginning of the "structural work of what this operation to kill Berríos and obstruct justice truly meant."

Source: lanacion.cl, December 29, 2003

Secret CIA Document Reveals Stunning Background on Assassination of Former President Eduardo Frei

The shocking revelations in the attached document are part of the archive maintained by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at the United States Embassy in Santiago. The reasons and circumstances under which this documentation is in our possession will be disclosed first to the respective courts investigating the subjects and cases concerned, as a matter of elementary civic duty.

For the moment, we can say that this is a collection of approximately forty documents, totaling more than two hundred pages, which illuminate with disturbing flashes and contribute to understanding the particular configuration of the Chilean transition, the actions of the political class within it, and the original accumulation of certain business groups in the country, in a way that the attached document is merely a preview.

Without prejudice to the above, and since knowledge of these facts constitutes not only a citizen's right but also a dark area of our history that deserves to be unveiled, we are in a position to announce that the entirety of the information will be published in the form of a book that will appear as soon as our own investigation, cross-referencing, and verification of the documents are complete.

In the meantime, the originals of the documents, and a legalized copy of each, will remain in custody at two different notary offices, from where a mechanism to make them public immediately will be activated in the event of any contingency.

Nomenclature The report with which we inaugurate the publication of the Secret CIA Documents in Chile corresponds to the translation of a compilation of information regarding Operation Coihueco, the code name for the assassination of Tucapel Jiménez; Operation Valquiria, the code name for the assassination of former President Eduardo Frei Montalva; and Operation Cóndor 2, the code name for the assassination of the chemist Eugenio Berríos, which record entries for the years 1984, 1986, and 1999.

The original in English was sent to Washington D.C. under the classification Secret-3290, while the "Eyes Only" notation implies that it is a read-only document, indicative of its high confidentiality.

As far as we know, WSA is the agency responsible for monitoring and intervening in major media outlets. AMCO, American Communications, is the embassy's communications department. APO is a section dependent on the CIA in any country, which establishes that documentation with the "APO" designation can only be handled and compiled by "authorized personnel," who, only after checking it, send it to other agencies.

Once APO compiles it, ARA enters the documentation into a registry file at the local CIA station, based on information provided by operational teams. Specifically, in the case of the attached document, it was provided by the G12 and G14 groups, responsible for the infiltration of political and labor areas, which, moreover, remain fully active.

The veracity of the information contained in the document "Action Copy 9091 to 9097" is for the competent courts to determine, as they have the powers, authority, and means to do so. For our part, the decision to publish said document is due both to the background information it can provide to visiting Minister Alejandro Madrid—who, not by chance, is handling the investigation of both the Frei and Berríos cases—and to the results of our own cross-referencing of the information, which, sufficiently for journalistic standards, ethics, and methods, points to the authenticity of the data.

Judicial Merit The breakdown of information in section 9091, regarding the Operational Designation Coihueco—that is, the assassination of Tucapel Jiménez Alfaro, which occurred on February 25, 1982—does not offer substantive differences from the investigation of visiting Minister Sergio Muñoz, but it does provide some previously unknown background.

For starters, the participation, in varying degrees, of Generals Arturo Alvarez Sgolia, Hernán Ramírez Rurange, Humberto Gordon, and Fernando Torres Silva, of Major Carlos Herrera Jiménez, of Colonel Arturo Silva Valdés, and of non-commissioned officers Miguel Letelier Verdugo and Manuel Contreras Donaire, appears substantiated to the point of the conviction of most of them.

In contrast, the ruling does not establish the intervention of the UAT (Military Intelligence Special Unit, according to the CIA document), a little-known direct intervention unit that reported directly to Pinochet, above the hierarchical command of formal intelligence services, and which appears directly implicated in the homicides of Tucapel Jiménez, Eduardo Frei, Eugenio Berríos, and Gerardo Huber Olivares, with the motive of "neutralizing" potential threats to the dictatorship in the first two cases, and preventing possible leaks of those operations to the courts in the latter two.

There is also no novelty regarding the participation of the CNI Labor Brigade and the General Secretariat of Guilds in prior intelligence work and subsequent cover-up. The names of Misael Galleguillos, Raúl Lillo Gutiérrez, Miguel Hernández, Francisco Ferrer Lima, Valericio Orrego, and Eduardo Arriagada Rehren appear profusely mentioned in the proceedings, as does Jovino Novoa Vásquez, current President of the Senate.

But the CIA report implicates the Minister of the Interior at the time, Sergio Fernández Larraín, and adds two names that do not appear in the investigation: Nelson Hernández Franco, whom the same document later identifies as a liaison with Agustín Edwards, and Luis Becerra, who served for nearly twenty years as the driver for Eduardo Frei Montalva.

A disturbing sequel emerges from cross-referencing the dates recorded in the document—1984, 1986, and 1999—in circumstances where, while Minister Sergio Valenzuela Patiño was aware of it, the process was virtually paralyzed, and it was only in the last two years prior to the ruling, registered on August 5, 2005, that Minister Sergio Muñoz managed to unravel the plot.

This means, neither more nor less, that since 1984, and certainly by 1999, the CIA—and therefore the U.S. government—had complete knowledge of the conspiracy to assassinate Tucapel Jiménez, attributed to Pinochet in person, and of those involved in it.

It is easy to deduce the bargaining power assigned by the possession of information of such caliber. Operation Valquiria The second chapter begins with information unknown until today. In operational code, the assassination of former President Eduardo Frei Montalva was called Operation Valquiria, the same name used by the conspirators who attempted to kill Adolf Hitler with an explosive attack on July 20, 1944.

Many of the names of those involved are repeated because, according to the CIA report, "two parallel fronts of action were created for the development of these two objectives, Valquiria and Coihueco." Furthermore, it specifies that "through the Military Intelligence Special Unit, UAT, which depends directly on the Commander-in-Chief General Augusto Pinochet, the operational unit Valquiria, DC was developed.

Its main objective was to neutralize and eliminate Eduardo Frei Montalva." Still according to the document, the economic and logistical aspects were handled by the company Elissalde y Poblete, one of the fronts used by the DINA to finance its operations.

Names such as Luis González Sepúlveda, Juan Jara Quintana, Alicia Uribe, Alejandro Campos, Fernando Arancibia Reyes, and Fernando Suau Baquedano appear frequently mentioned both in judicial proceedings and in investigative journalism.

According to the document, the operational aspects involved the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE), the Counter-Espionage Unit (CIE), the Tactical Support Command (CAT), the Foreign Department of the National Information Center (CNI), and the Army Chemical Complex (IST).

Among the names are agents who also appear mentioned in the assassinations of Eugenio Berríos and/or Tucapel Jiménez, such as Fernando Torres Silva, Hernán Ramírez Rurange, Eugenio Covarrubias Valenzuela, Arturo Silva Valdés, and Raúl Lillo Gutiérrez, all of whom are under prosecution by Minister Alejandro Madrid in the Berríos case.

In the words of the CIA report, the assassination of former President Frei was carried out by the inoculation, during each of the four surgical operations, of substances such as mustard gas and the Clostridium botulinum bacillus, introduced by DINE agents infiltrated into the Chilean Foreign Ministry.

The document reports direct or indirect actions by doctors Patricio Silva Garín, Augusto Larraín Orrego, Eduardo Wainstein, Rodrigo Vélez Fuenzalida, Sergio Virgilio Bocaz, Pedro Samuel Soto, Helmar Rosenberg, Eduardo Arriagada Rehren, Sergio Rosende Oyarzún, Alejandro Goic, and Enzo Fujide.

In the task of embalming the corpse and blocking evidence of the toxins, doctors Patricio Rojas Saavedra, Patricio Silva Garín, Hernán Barahona, Helmar Rosenberg, and Sergio González Bombardiere are mentioned, as well as the assistant Humberto Gallardo.

For the undersigned, none of this information constitutes a novelty, since it aligns with millimeter precision with the lines of investigation being carried out by Minister Alejandro Madrid, as we noted in editions 1447 and 1437.

But it is possible that the Minister may be interested in interrogating Juan Renán Quintana, María Eugenia Valenzuela, and Julio Lobos Romero. It is presumed that Minister Alejandro Madrid will issue his first resolutions in the course of this year.

Therefore, it is highly striking that the CIA has managed this information since at least 1999. Berríos Package Many of the names, such as Ramírez Rurange, Covarrubias Valenzuela, Silva Valdés, Lillo Gutiérrez, and Herrera Jiménez reappear in the operation of "extraction" from the country and subsequent assassination of the chemist Eugenio Berríos because, according to the CIA document, it was also an operation carried out by the UAT.

To make a long story short, all the names that appear in sections 4, "Berríos Package"; 5, "Extraction from Chile"; and 6, "Execution Berríos Package," are under prosecution by Minister Alejandro Madrid for their participation in varying degrees in the assassination of the chemist, which occurred between January and March 1993 in Uruguay.

The greatest novelty provided by the document relates to the fact that it was allegedly a tip-off from the CIA station in Buenos Aires that allowed for the arrest of Herrera Jiménez; a significant detail, as upon his return to Chile, he was one of the first to break the chain of loyalty, as he began to provide classified information that would lead to the clarification of the assassination of Tucapel Jiménez.

Edwards and Co. In the parts where the document reaches its climax in terms of impact and novelty are titles 7, "Special Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence Operations"; 8, "Intelligence Objectives and Criminal Operations"; and 9, "Asset Laundering and Operational Financing." For starters, in the planning, development of logistical means, and companies used for the cover-up of actions by the Army Intelligence School (EIE), the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE), the Military Intelligence Special Unit (UAT), and the National Information Center (CNI), the document implicates Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, Agustín Edwards Eastman (owner of the company El Mercurio S.A.P.), and his firstborn son, Agustín Edwards del Río. The report adds that Pinochet personally entrusted the planning, development, and execution of operations Valquiria and Coihueco to the then-Major Arturo Silva Valdés. Furthermore, it maintains that in both operations, active and retired Army personnel were used, who were transferred, in the words of the document, to the private security service of Agustín Edwards Eastman and Agustín Edwards del Río, "collaborators and informants of this agency since 1968." It adds that Arturo Silva Valdés, Nelson Hernández Franco, Marcelo Sandoval, Nelson Román, Erika Silva, and Eduardo Martínez Wogner were used as liaisons. This background corroborates the chronicle published by the defunct newspaper Siete + 7 on August 1, 2003, titled "I Loved an Assassin," signed by journalists Verónica Foxley and Mónica González, which recounted the retirement of Arturo Silva Valdés from the Army: "He materialized his plans in 1994. Vanward was born. And in September 1994, they sent him on a commission of service to work for the personal security of Agustín Edwards, the owner of El Mercurio. Joining Valdés in that mission were Nelson Hernández Franco, also a member of the secret DINE unit who served in the CNI under the alias 'Marcos de la Fuente,' prosecuted for the assassination of Tucapel Jiménez; Marcelo Sandoval; and Nelson Román. There was also a woman: Erika Silva. The entire team would later be headed by Major Eduardo Martínez Wogner, who was an aide to CNI director Humberto Gordon." Therefore, it is possible that said information is already established in the case being heard by Minister Alejandro Madrid. But it also falls within the probabilities that he is unaware of the information regarding asset laundering for the financing of operational actions, for which a network of front companies was created, such as Serprotec S.A.; Consultsistem Chile S.A.; Inversiones Canelo Seis; Compañía de Inversiones Nacionales; Inmobiliaria Santa Raquel; Ecogas; Focus Investment; and a company that is not identified, which would be linked to Jovino Novoa Vásquez, then news editor of the newspaper El Mercurio. Our own investigation yielded surprising results, and in many cases consistent with the information in the CIA document. Serprotec S.A. is a company incorporated by a deed published in the Official Gazette on August 18, 1992, whose partners are Inversiones Canelo Seis y Cía, with a contribution of 4,900,000 pesos, and Juan Luis Armando Herrera Villena, who contributed the sum of 10,000 pesos. Consultsistem Chile S.A. is a company incorporated by a deed published in the Official Gazette on October 15, 1996, which registers a subscribed and paid-in capital of 6,000,000 pesos, contributed in equal parts by partners Arturo Rodrigo Silva Valdés and Eugenio Augusto Covarrubias Benavides. Canelo Seis is an investment company incorporated on September 3, 1986, by Agustín Edwards Eastman and the Compañía de Inversiones Samotracia, composed of Javier Duarte García de la Huerta and Jorge Eyzaguirre Correa, formed with the purpose of triangulating and liquidating the substantial debt that the company El Mercurio S.A.P. was accumulating at the time, amounting to 5.2 million Unidades de Fomento, equivalent today to 109.111 billion pesos, or just over 190 million dollars. The El Mercurio rescue operation concluded on March 8, 1990—that is, the last business day before the dictatorship formally left power—with substantial loans granted by the Banco del Estado, among many other maneuvers, while it was presided over by Alvaro Bardón Muñoz. The lawsuit filed by Andrés Sanfuentes, President of the Banco del Estado in 1990, established that the direct patrimonial loss of the Bank from the cited operations amounted to at least 25 million dollars, equivalent to 70% of the Bank's profit in the 1989 balance sheet, and 8% of its total capital and reserves. The first reference to Inversiones Nacionales S.A. in the National Registry of Partners and Companies of the National Chamber of Commerce dates back to June 6, 1989, when Mauricio Andrés Parot Medina and Mikel Ugarte Larrazábal appear as partners. The next entry of interest appears in the Official Gazette on February 28, 1992, with Inversiones Nacionales S.A. already converted into the parent company of the business holding of Francisco Javier Errázuriz, with its subsidiaries Comercial e Industrial Unimarc, Hipermarc Internacional, Inversiones Salmones Unimarc, Compañía Minera Nacional, and Ingeniería e Informática Nacional, among others that appear in the deed. No less surprising is the corporate link that the tracking of the deeds allows to be established between Comercial Canelo S.A. and Inversiones Nacionales S.A., of Francisco Javier Errázuriz. In the extract from notary Iván Torrealba, published on June 10, 1994, in the Official Gazette, it reads: "On May 18, 1994, the minutes of the Extraordinary Shareholders' Meeting of Comercial Canelo S.A. were reduced to a public deed before me, in which the shareholders Agustín Edwards Eastman, Inversiones Nacionales S.A., and Agustín Edwards del Río agreed to the division of Canelo S.A. into two companies, distributing the assets, liabilities, and equity between them in the form and terms agreed upon in the Meeting," establishing a capital amounting to $4,835,928,564, divided into 1,450,000,000 registered shares without nominal value. The links between Inversiones Canelo Seis and Inversiones Nacionales are reproduced in the Sociedad de Inversiones Rahue S.A., incorporated on December 20, 2008, and in the Sociedad de Inversiones Pozo Almonte, published in the Official Gazette on October 4, 2008. New revelations from the Secret CIA Documents will be made known as the verification and cross-referencing of background information yield convincing and verifiable results.

Source: elsiglo.cl, August 12, 2009

35 Years After the Assassination of Orlando Letelier, There Is Still No Final Verdict in the "Berríos Case"

September 21 marks 35 years since the forgotten assassination of Orlando Letelier in Washington. Although there are several books about the crime against the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, former Minister of Defense, and former ambassador to the United States under the government of Salvador Allende, these texts only address the investigation conducted by the justice system of the northern country.

In this interview, his sister—the lawyer Fabiola Letelier—complains that the details of the trial she pursued in Chile to prosecute the main intellectual and material authors of her brother's assassination remain unknown.

The guilty parties were sentenced to derisory terms: 7 years for former General Manuel Contreras, the head of the DINA, and 6 years for his henchman, former Colonel Pedro Espinoza. The final ruling for the “Berríos Case” is still pending; this is a branch of the main “Letelier Case” trial that led to the unprecedented extradition and imprisonment in Chile of three high-ranking officers of the Uruguayan Army involved in the kidnapping and murder of the DINA civilian chemist Eugenio Berríos Sagredo, nicknamed “Hermes.”

More than a year ago, on September 10, 2010, Magistrate Alejandro Madrid Crohare, a “minister in extraordinary visitation,” issued his extensive ruling of nearly 500 pages for a process that technically began with a complaint from the government of Patricio Aylwin, filed with the courts on June 15, 1993, regarding the “alleged disappearance of the Chilean citizen Eugenio Berríos Sagredo, who has been missing from his home for several months to date, with his current whereabouts unknown.”

Judge Madrid established that Berríos met his end murdered in Uruguay and sentenced the Chilean and Uruguayan culprits, but they appealed to the higher court, and Madrid’s first-instance sentence has been stalled in the Chilean Prosecutor's Office since August 19, 2011, awaiting the start of the appeal process that would allow for the hearing of the case.

In other words, the Prosecutor's Office must place the case on the docket so that the sentence can be ratified or modified by the Court of Appeals.

Human rights lawyer Fabiola Letelier participates tenaciously in numerous proceedings that take years to process in the Chilean courts. Among many other ongoing cases, she seeks justice for the young American journalist Charles Horman, murdered by the Army on September 18, 1973, whose case inspired the film “Missing” (1982) by Costa-Gavras, which—to this day—has never been shown in movie theaters in Chile.

This interview focuses on the “Berríos Case,” one of the unknown backstories of the “Letelier Case” in Chile, a trial initiated by Fabiola Letelier when Pinochet was still feared and maintained a significant share of the State’s “de facto power” as Commander-in-Chief of the Army, under the elected civilian governments of Patricio Aylwin and Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle.

Berríos manufactured the sarin gas that was intended to kill Letelier in a plan that was later discarded by the DINA, and in 1991, in the midst of “democracy,” Pinochet ordered him to be taken out of the country to prevent him from testifying before the courts investigating the assassination of Allende’s former Foreign Minister.

Berríos met his end murdered in Uruguay at the hands of Chilean and Uruguayan military personnel.

–“The Letelier Case in Chile,” would that be the title of the book that is missing? –I want to make known in this country—especially to the socialists who have been poor companions to Orlando Letelier—what the Letelier trial was like in Chile.

Nobody knows it. Everyone knows what happened in the US because very important books have been written: “Labyrinth,” by former prosecutor Eugene Propper and writer Taylor Branch; and above all “Assassination on Embassy Row,” by John Dinges and Saul Landau.

This book has been awarded and recognized everywhere, but that text recounts the crime of Orlando Letelier, which occurred in the US on September 21, 1976, and describes the investigative work carried out by the US government.

From 1976 to 1978, they investigated the crime of Orlando Letelier until they decided to send a request for the extradition of Manuel Contreras [former general, head of the DINA], Pedro Espinoza [colonel and henchman of Contreras], and Armando Fernández Larios [lieutenant of the Caravan of Death, also sent to the United States with false documentation to prepare for Letelier’s assassination] to the Supreme Court.

–How did the trial for the assassination of Orlando Letelier originate in Chile? –The Supreme Court, then presided over by Israel Bohórquez, rejected the extradition request. And since passports had been forged to carry out missions preparing for this illicit act in the United States, it was only then that they sent the file to the military justice system.

And that is where I intervened. I became a party before the military courts. I spent 10 years investigating with Jaime Castillo Velasco [PDC human rights lawyer, who died in 2003] and, later, when the transition came, it passed to a Supreme Court minister [Adolfo Bañados Cuadra], who investigated until he issued the sentence.

But this case, that investigation of Orlando Letelier in Chile, has been absolutely covered up; it is not published, nor anything else. Only the final outcome appears, which was the first time that Contreras and Espinoza were convicted, but with sentences that are absolutely inadequate, because they were 7 and 6 years, respectively.

But the entire assassination of Orlando was an intelligence operation that was devised and planned in Chile and in which, therefore, a very significant number of elements from the Army and, fundamentally, from the intelligence services—the DINA—participated to carry out this act of international terrorism in the United States.

So, that is a commitment I have, which I cannot abandon, and I am going to do it… I hope to have the life to do so.

Berríos Case: “Project Andrea”

–How did the “Berríos Case” emerge? –From the investigation into Orlando’s crime, other cases emerged, such as that of Eugenio Berríos. The process that Minister Madrid ruled on refers to the kidnapping and homicide of Eugenio Antonio Berríos Sagredo.

–Who was Berríos Sagredo? –He was a chemist who was a member and agent of the DINA, who set up a chemical laboratory in Lo Curro [Vía Naranja No. 4925] in the house where Michael Townley lived with Mariana Callejas, a property purchased by General Contreras with public funds.

Townley’s family lived there, but a part of that building was destined for a chemical laboratory, clandestine of course, which was set up after several trips by Townley to European countries to buy elements that, of course, entered Chile without the corresponding payments and customs inspections.

–What did they do in that laboratory? –The chemical laboratory had the purpose of creating and developing sarin gas, and other toxicological elements, which were developed by the DINA with the goal of obtaining a modern chemical weapon that would allow them to carry out elimination cases. This is “Project Andrea.”

–And a weapon for probable wars that were being discussed at the time? –Of course. At that time, there was a possibility of war with Argentina and, evidently, it was viewed with great interest. Furthermore, Berríos was a chemist who, like Townley and Mariana Callejas, belonged to the Patria y Libertad movement.

There, Townley and Berríos had formed a good friendship. And Berríos, who had studied in Concepción as a chemist, was undoubtedly a person quite specialized and trained in chemical matters and had written a special thesis on “boldine,” a substance extracted from the boldo [Peumus boldus].

Berríos is a man who, by being part of Patria y Libertad, appears linked to Townley and people from the DINA and enters this project. Manuel Contreras had gone to the house where he was in Lo Curro several times; that is to say, he is an element who knows exactly…

–And he manufactured sarin gas there? –He developed the sarin gas there, and this gas was even sent in liquid state to the US, in a Chanel perfume bottle. At one point, Townley took it to the US [it is presumed to use it in a “plan B” against Letelier], and it is maintained that it might have been used in Chile as a lethal repressive element of the DINA in some cases.

A real estate registrar [Renato León Zenteno] is even mentioned, who had died from the application of sarin gas in 1976, and not because of Zenteno’s profession, but because he was allegedly homosexual and had had some problem of that type… They would have eliminated him.

And, of course, there are other cases that have been mentioned a lot, among other people that of Carmelo Soria [Spanish citizen, international official, and book editor], who was killed by the DINA in an operation that was carried out there in Lo Curro, and some have maintained that sarin gas might have been applied to him as well.

And others, such as Army non-commissioned officer Manuel Leyton Robles, who at one point had allegedly stolen a car that belonged to a person on the left [Daniel Palma] and that he had appropriated it, etc.

Well, there are cases that demonstrate that this sarin gas was indeed applied, but fundamentally it was a lethal weapon that the DINA had in its hands, a weapon that could be used in a conflict, even with other countries in Latin America.

–Did Berríos have assistants? –Berríos did not work alone; he had the collaboration of another Chilean, Francisco José Oyarzún Sjoberg, the son of a Foreign Ministry official, who seconded Townley there in Lo Curro.

But when Townley’s situation came to light, when he was about to be arrested, etc., etc., Oyarzún went to Europe and was never heard from again, although all the background information exists. That is where that gas was manufactured.

–Now, how does Berríos appear? –The truth is that Berríos appears in the investigation conducted by Minister Adolfo Bañados Cuadra. Based on the information he has in the process, he calls him to testify. Berríos does not appear. He reiterates the summons…

–Who is Minister Bañados? –Bañados is the Supreme Court minister who led the process in Chile after the information was sent to him from the military court. So, he took the case, and in 2005, the Supreme Court issued the final ruling, and Contreras was sentenced to 7 years and Espinoza to 6 years.

I have the honor of having participated in that…, in the first important process against the DINA that ended with a final sentence, and after that…

–Was this process motivated by…? –It was broadcast on television to the whole country…

–Yes, but the motive, was it the Orlando case…? –It was the crime against Orlando, on September 21, 1976, in the city of Washington, with an explosive bomb that was placed in the car, under the seat of the person who was driving, who was Orlando, and which also caused the death of an American citizen, Ronni Karpen Moffitt…

–In this investigation process, did Minister Bañados…? –After passing through the military court and passing to the Supreme Court, he conducted the investigation…

–And he discovered… because we are talking about Berríos, right? –The minister considered it important for Berríos to appear before him to testify about his relationship and his involvement in this case, since other information indicated that he was a chemist who manufactured compounds on a property that belonged to the DINA.

He did not appear. Therefore, the minister, at the moment he was ready to issue an arrest warrant so that Berríos would appear…

–Why was Berríos so important? –Why all this? Because Berríos was a civilian, not a military man. Because he had participated with Townley, who is one of the main executors of the crime against Orlando.

So, he was from the DINA, he had participated in the DINA, he knew Lo Curro, the place that various high-ranking members of the DINA frequented; he was involved, precisely, in all this repressive and illicit activity of the DINA.

Well, it turns out that Berríos did not appear, and then an intelligence operation of the Chilean Army was carried out—and we are talking about the year 1991 [under the government of Patricio Aylwin and with Pinochet as Commander-in-Chief of the Army]—concocted by the highest authorities of the DINE, which is the Army Intelligence Directorate.

The DINA, the CNI, or anything else no longer existed. There was the DINE, which was led by an Army general named Hernán Ramírez Rurange. This Army Intelligence Directorate decided, after an interview that Berríos had with General Hernán Ramírez Rurange, to order that Berríos be taken out of Chile to prevent him from appearing to testify before the Supreme Court minister who was handling the Orlando Letelier case.

“Operation Control of Casualties” + Operation Condor II

–How did they do it? –First, they hid him, and they kept him for about 15 to 20 days in what is known as the Army Intelligence Battalion, BIE [García Reyes No. 12, Santiago]. And he remained there as a civilian, in a basement where the commander of that military institution, the then-Colonel Manuel Provis Carrasco, provided him with food and took care of his subsistence.

None of this appears in investigations, meetings, etc. The truth is that Berríos remained there while this intelligence operation was organized to take him out of the country under a false name, with the identity of “Manuel Morales Jara.” Major Arturo Rodrigo Silva Valdés [known as “El Príncipe” and head of the private security for Agustín Edwards, a service provided under the table to the owner of El Mercurio] was entrusted with the direction of this operation, in which other military personnel participated, among them the then-Captain Pablo Marcelo Rodríguez Márquez and a civilian who worked for the DINE named Raúl Lillo Gutiérrez.

The operation, called “Control of Casualties,” coordinated the transfer of Berríos to Punta Arenas. From there, Lillo Gutiérrez, Rodríguez Márquez, and his brother [former Carabineros lieutenant] Jorge Alejandro Guillermo Rodríguez Márquez transported him in a vehicle to Argentina on October 26, 1991, through the Monte Aymond pass, and in Río Gallegos, Berríos and Lillo boarded a plane bound for Buenos Aires, where they were received by Silva Valdés and stayed for two days, and from the Argentine capital, they continued by river to Colonia, Uruguay.

In other words, they made a tremendous detour and, of course, with false names, and Berríos was accompanied by military personnel who guarded him.

Upon arriving in Uruguay, the Uruguayan uniformed officers evidently began to appear, and there were three of them: Colonel Tomás Ventura Casella Santos, who is the most important, Eduardo Ernesto Radaelli Copolla, and Wellington Sarli Pose.

Those are the three, plus another one, for whom extradition was requested, but these are the three whose extradition was requested by us, through the Chilean Supreme Court, and approved by the Supreme Court of Uruguay.

Why these three military men? Because they intervened in the custody, in the meeting with Berríos, in his cover-up, and later they also intervened in the death of the chemist. This story is very long…

–How does it end? –Ultimately, these Uruguayan military men worked in coordination with the Chileans sent by the DINE to rent an apartment for Berríos. Later, Berríos became too complicated… he was an alcoholic, he became very… he was a difficult person to manage… So, in the end, they took him to a beach, to the house of a relative of Radaelli.

In other words, everything was perfectly synchronized, and there, while being on that beach, which is called Parque del Plata, one day he escaped and went to the police commissioner, and that is where this whole story appears that ends in a secret session of the Uruguayan Senate, behind closed doors.

The President of Uruguay, Luis Alberto Lacalle, who was in Europe at that time, returned… Everything that happened was a tremendous scandal.

All of this was absolutely financed with public funds from both countries. The Uruguayan Supreme Court, in order to grant the extradition, prepared an entire folder, analyzed it, public defenders intervened, they analyzed well whether to grant it or not, international norms were considered, which ones should apply or not, and finally, they agreed and handed these three military men over to Chile.

For the first time, Latin American military men were extradited from their country, due to a request from the Chilean Supreme Court on charges of having participated in a serious violation of human rights.

–What is the connection to the “Letelier Case”? –All of this is part of Orlando’s crime. That is what is in the process, the first element in this case, in the assassination of Orlando Letelier, the crime that occurred in Washington on September 21, 1976, a Chilean named Eugenio Antonio Berríos Sagredo, a chemist, who defied the Chilean justice system and did not appear to provide elements related to Orlando Letelier’s crime.

And that is why I have been involved in this story for 9 years. That is how long my cases are. In Orlando’s case, it was 15.

–What happened then? –They pressured the commissioner, who, since Berríos had escaped and had arrived saying that they were chasing him, sent him for a medical examination. The examination said that he was nervous but that he was a normal person, and at that moment, those who were in the house, fixing something on the roof, the Uruguayan military men came down and they all arrived at the commissioner’s office, and there, Tomás Casella, who is one of the extradited men, pressured Berríos and told him no, to withdraw the complaint, and he made him withdraw the complaint.

And Berríos left with Tomás Casella. That is the last moment of Berríos’s life that is known, together with this Uruguayan. And there he disappeared at the end of 1992, and after a long time, that is, a year, I think in April 1995, by chance, a person who went to a beach called El Pinar, in that seaside resort of Parque del Plata, found an element, I don’t know what, they pulled it out, and there was Berríos.

Murdered, with two bullets in his head. His date of death is defined as between January and June 1993.

–Did Pinochet also go to Uruguay at that time? –Pinochet went to Uruguay, evidently. He took a trip to Uruguay, and there is even a photograph in which I think he is with Tomás Casella. Ah, but the most important thing is the statements of the DINE general, Ramírez Rurange, before the minister who is investigating, Alejandro Madrid, a minister of an extraordinary court, in charge of this case.

There, in a judicial statement, Ramírez Rurange says that it was indeed not he who gave the order to take Berríos out of the country, but that the order to take Berríos out of Chile was given by Pinochet, then Commander-in-Chief of the Army.

And there is an entire volume that records how this situation is investigated, because Ramírez Rurange says that the order to take Berríos out of Chile was given to him by Pinochet at a lunch or dinner he had at his house, where there were other generals.

Everyone was summoned to testify and, of course, they denied having heard this, but the truth is that Ramírez Rurange maintains firmly that it was an order received from General Pinochet, and that is why Berríos arrived at the DINE to speak with the general, and that is where the whole operation was set up. That is the story.

–Did they kill him with bullets? –There is a version that says that they buried Berríos head down, as traitors die, I think they say, but the truth is that bullets were found, bullet elements. And there is an entire criminological investigation that is quite significant.

Now, the process, as you see, look at all those volumes [points to piles of volumes of judicial documents], it is not complete here, the last ones are missing…

–How many years has this process been going on? –From 2002 to 2011…

–Nine years… –Nine.

–And how many pages are there, more or less? –At this moment I would tell you that, at least, I have here with me, and I am missing pages… –Minister Alejandro Madrid is an extraordinarily efficient magistrate–, nine thousand, plus the last ones…

–No, it’s just a general figure… –I tell you that in any case there are more than 10,000 pages, volume thirty-something: more than 30 volumes…

–Is this trial to clarify the death of Berríos…? –The kidnapping, the homicide, and the illicit association, which is what matters to me.

–You are involved in this process as… –As a plaintiff lawyer… And my nephew José Ignacio Letelier Morel, Orlando’s son who resides on Easter Island, also became a party to this trial.

–So, is the “Berríos Case” a derivation…? –Of the “Letelier Case.” Of course! That is the importance of this case, because of the relevance of Berríos… I have a book that a Uruguayan wrote about the case, which at least is something… The book by journalist Samuel Blixen.

–When the final sentence is known, perhaps only a few lines will appear in the major media, and the “Berríos Case” will not be connected to the “Letelier Case”… –…If anything comes out at all… And they will only talk about Berríos, not Letelier, and no one will know what Berríos has to do with the “Letelier Case.” Furthermore, we are talking about armies and officers who all, all continued their careers, ascended in rank and category; now they are brigadiers, generals, because there are many who are involved.

–The case was instructed by Magistrate Alejandro Madrid… –Of the 6th Criminal Court. That is, he is an extraordinary minister appointed by the Court of Appeals to investigate the kidnapping and homicide of Berríos.

–I imagine that Berríos’s family is interested in this trial. –Look, Berríos married a very beautiful woman, whose name is Gladys Schmeisser, who was a dancer, and what have you, who has a quite complicated history, although I don’t get involved in personal lives, but Berríos also lived with an aunt who had a bakery, where he had installed a chemical laboratory to study boldine, all this in addition to being a member of the DINA.

–And he commercialized the boldine… –Of course, it is in the file, everything that was the degree thesis he did on boldine, which frankly is…

–…an infusion of the boldo leaf. –Of the boldo leaf, which has medicinal properties. Frankly, he was a high-flying chemist, let’s say.

–Which has medicinal properties to preserve life and then he started investigating products to do the exact opposite: take life. –Take life. Exactly! And this investigation has taken many years, in which Minister Madrid has carried out very important investigative steps regarding what the participation of the officers and members of the Army—they are all from the Army—who participated in this crime was.

And of course, in the sentence, we will have convicted not only Ramírez Rurange, since he retired, but also whoever followed in charge, who is a general named Adrián Covarrubias, who is also involved because he had full knowledge of what was happening with Berríos.

And furthermore, one with the surname Provis is also involved, who was the commander of the Intelligence Battalion, where Berríos was living for 15 days, protected in a military establishment. And it is shown that you cannot enter a military establishment to live there, to reside in the basement with the support of Commander Provis, without authorization from the Army, evidently.

So, in the entire investigation by Minister Madrid, it is shown that in all of this, Provis, the DINE general, and others were effectively colluding. This process demonstrates how the Chilean Army, after the dictatorship ended, continued to act in a coordinated manner to carry out this operation, because Berríos was not the only one who was taken out of the country to prevent him from testifying before the courts.

There are two other cases in the so-called “Operation Control of Casualties.” One is former Major Carlos Herrera Jiménez, whom they also took out of the country [he pleaded guilty to the murders of Tucapel Jiménez, former president of the ANEF (National Association of Fiscal Employees), under the orders of the DINE, and of the carpenter Juan Alegría Mundaca, on behalf of the National Intelligence Center, CNI].

The other is former CNI Army Captain Luis Arturo Sanhueza Ross. There are three members of the Army who, because they were involved in human rights violations, were taken out of Chile by order of the highest hierarchies of the Army, to avoid their appearance in court in the investigation of other crimes.

All three were in Argentina and Uruguay, protected by the Army to avoid their appearance for other crimes, such as the case of Tucapel Jiménez.

But, furthermore, and this is important, the Frei family has also presented to Minister Madrid, and fundamentally the former senator Carmen Frei, a lawsuit, an action, or a complaint, so that he investigates whether or not the former President of Chile Eduardo Frei Montalva was killed in the Santa María Clinic in Santiago by means of a chemical product of this type, in whose manufacture Berríos would also have participated.

Do you understand?

–These three men were taken out of Chile in democracy, financed with State funds… –The previous ones were taken out before… –In Uruguay, there was also a counterpart, the Army of that country, which did exactly the same thing and provided all the infrastructure, assumed expenses charged to the Treasury… –Of course! –And also under a democratic regime, right? –Exactly… –Luis Alberto Lacalle was governing… –Of course.

And when the scandal of Berríos’s flight from the seaside resort where he was occurs, President Lacalle was in Europe when he was informed that this uproar had occurred and that the fact that Uruguayans were colluding in this crime had arrived via an anonymous communication to the Senate, the head of state returned to his country and practically tried to keep everything covered up.

The “Frei Montalva Case”

–Judge Madrid is also investigating the death of Frei Montalva… –Madrid’s investigation has been so extraordinary because the “Berríos Case” is not only connected to the assassination of Orlando—through the part that falls to this chemist—but it is linked to the death of former President Eduardo Frei Montalva.

And that is another enormous amount of investigations and evidence that have had a lot of press, that has sparked support from the Senate, the Chamber of Deputies, and everything else, and that is a great concern.

I think it will be difficult for Minister Madrid—I don’t know what the final sentence will say—to prove that, with President Eduardo Frei Montalva in the Santa María Clinic, how they could have introduced, whether it was Berríos or one of those characters, to inoculate him with a toxicological element that would cause his death.

–What is your personal impression of that case? –I hope that everything they have established with great effort and with a lot of financial support—they have gone to Uruguay, they have appointed lawyers, and what have you—I hope Minister Madrid can prove it, but it is a very complex process that the magistrate has kept permanently under seal.

–What will be the next step in the “Berríos Case”? –The designation of the rapporteur. And the rapporteur is going to take time, because he has to know all the files…

–Is the sentence already in the Court of Appeals…? –But they have to appoint a rapporteur, and they are in that process. And the rapporteur, in order to be able to enter to argue in the courtroom of the Court of Appeals that is determined, where these complaints have to arrive, is going to take his time.

The rapporteur has to narrate the events, the evidence, and everything, so it is going to take time. That allows me to be able to effectively study all the documentation, because I am the plaintiff, so that I can argue, whether it be me or Sergio Corvalán, who is a great lawyer to whom I have given representation so that the two of us can follow this process.

First-instance sentences

? Arturo Rodrigo Silva Valdés, former major of the Chilean Army, was sentenced to 10 years and one day in prison in its medium degree “for his responsibility as the author of the crime of kidnapping with homicide of Eugenio Berríos Sagredo, described in the final paragraph of article 141 of the Penal Code, perpetrated in the town of Parque del Plata, Department of Canelones, Uruguay, on an undetermined date between November 15, 1992, and the month of April 1993.”

“Likewise, he is sentenced to the penalty of 3 years and one day of minor imprisonment in its maximum degree and to the accessory penalties of absolute perpetual disqualification for political rights and absolute disqualification for public offices and positions during the time of the sentence for his responsibility as co-author of the crime of illicit association described in article 292 and sanctioned in article 293 of the Penal Code, and which was formed in this city [Santiago de Chile], starting in the month of October 1991.”

? Hernán Ramírez Rurange, former Chilean general, was sentenced to 5 years and one day, absolute perpetual disqualification for public offices and positions and political rights, and absolute disqualification for titular professions while the sentence lasts, plus 3 years and one day, plus perpetual disqualification, as co-author of illicit association.

? Eugenio Adrián Covarrubias Valenzuela, former Chilean general, 3 years and one day and perpetual disqualification for kidnapping, and 541 days, plus perpetual disqualification, for illicit association.

? Manuel Jorge Provis Carrasco, former Chilean brigadier, 5 years and one day and perpetual disqualification for kidnapping, and 3 years and one day, plus perpetual disqualification, for illicit association.

? Jaime Fernando Torres Gacitúa, former Chilean major, 5 years and one day and perpetual disqualification for kidnapping, and 3 years and one day, plus perpetual disqualification, for illicit association.

? Raúl Diego Lillo Gutiérrez, Chilean DINE civilian, 5 years and one day plus perpetual disqualification, and another 100 days for illicit association.

? Pablo Marcelo Rodríguez Márquez, Chilean lieutenant colonel, 3 years and one day and perpetual disqualification for kidnapping, plus 70 days for illicit association.

? Tomás Ventura Casella Santos, former colonel of the Uruguayan Army, 5 years and one day and perpetual disqualification for kidnapping, and 3 years and one day, plus perpetual disqualification for illicit association.

? Eduardo Ernesto Radaelli Copolla, former captain of the Uruguayan Army, 5 years and one day plus perpetual disqualification for kidnapping, and 70 days for illicit association.

? Wellington Sarli Pose, former colonel of the Uruguayan Army, 3 years and one day plus perpetual disqualification for kidnapping, and 60 days for illicit association.

? Manuel Antonio Pérez Santillán, former colonel of the Chilean Army, 3 years and one day and perpetual disqualification for complicity in kidnapping.

? Juan Fernando Alfredo Torres Silva, former general, former auditor of the Chilean Army, 3 years and one day and perpetual disqualification for illicit association.

? Nelson Williams Román Vargas, non-commissioned officer of the Chilean Army, 3 years and one day, plus perpetual disqualification for kidnapping, and 60 days for illicit association.

? Marcelo Ariel Sandoval Durán, non-commissioned officer of the Chilean Army, 3 years and one day and perpetual disqualification for kidnapping, plus 60 days for illicit association.

Acquittals and rejected charges

? Gines Emilio Rojas Gómez, Chilean civilian, the accusation of the State Defense Council as an accomplice to kidnapping and charges of obstruction of justice are rejected.

? Enrique Gabriel Ibarra Chamorro, former colonel of the Chilean Army, his responsibility as the author of the crime of illicit association is dismissed.

? Mario Enrique Cisternas Orellana (lieutenant colonel of the Chilean Army), Nelson Edison Hernández Franco (corporal of the Chilean Army, DINE), and Erika Silva Morales (secretary of the DINE) were acquitted of the charge of being authors of the crime of infringement of article 295 bis of the Penal Code.

The sentence also includes indemnifications and economic reparations in favor of the plaintiffs Fabiola Letelier del Solar, Gladys Schmeisser—Berríos’s widow—and Gonzalo Berríos Sagredo, charged to the State and the convicted parties, who—furthermore—must finance the legal costs.

• Ernesto Carmona, Chilean journalist and writer.

Source: alainet.org, September 15, 2011

35 years after the assassination of Orlando Letelier, there is still no final sentence in the “Berríos Case”

September 21 marks 35 years since the forgotten assassination of Orlando Letelier in Washington. Although there are several books about the crime against the former Chancellor, former Minister of Defense, and former Ambassador to the United States under the Salvador Allende government, those texts only address the investigation carried out by the justice system of the northern country.

In this interview, his sister—the lawyer Fabiola Letelier—complains that the details of the trial she pushed forward in Chile to prosecute the main intellectual and material authors of her brother's assassination remain unknown.

The guilty parties were sentenced to derisory terms: 7 years for former General Manuel Contreras, the head of the DINA, and 6 years for his henchman, former Colonel Pedro Espinoza. Still pending is the final sentence of the “Berríos Case,” a branch of the main “Letelier Case” trial, which led to the unprecedented extradition and imprisonment in Chile of three high-ranking officers of the Uruguayan Army implicated in the kidnapping and assassination of the DINA civilian chemist Eugenio Berríos Sagredo, nicknamed “Hermes.”

More than a year ago, on September 10, 2010, magistrate Alejandro Madrid Crohare, a “minister in extraordinary visitation,” issued his extensive ruling of nearly 500 pages for a process that technically began with a complaint from the government of Patricio Aylwin, filed with the courts on June 15, 1993, for the “alleged misfortune of the Chilean citizen Eugenio Berríos Sagredo, who has been missing from his home for several months to date, with his current whereabouts unknown.”

Judge Madrid established that Berríos met his end assassinated in Uruguay and sentenced the Chilean and Uruguayan culprits, but they appealed to the superior court, and Madrid’s first-instance sentence has been stuck in the Chilean Prosecutor's Office since August 19, 2011, awaiting the start of the appeal process that would allow for the hearing of the case.

In other words, the Prosecutor's Office must place the case on the docket so that the sentence can be ratified or modified by the Court of Appeals.

Human rights lawyer Fabiola Letelier participates tenaciously in numerous proceedings whose processing takes years in the Chilean courts. Among many other ongoing cases, she seeks justice for the young American journalist Charles Horman, assassinated by the Army on September 18, 1973, whose case inspired the film “Missing” (1982) by Costa-Gavras, which—to this day—has never been shown in Chilean movie theaters.

This interview focuses on the “Berríos Case,” one of the unknown backstories of the “Letelier Case” in Chile, a trial initiated by Fabiola Letelier when Pinochet was still feared and maintained a significant share of the State’s “de facto power” as Commander-in-Chief of the Army, under the elected civilian governments of Patricio Aylwin and Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle.

Berríos manufactured the sarin gas that was intended to kill Letelier in a plan that was later discarded by the DINA, and in 1991, in the midst of “democracy,” Pinochet ordered him to be taken out of the country to prevent him from testifying before the courts investigating the assassination of Allende’s former Chancellor.

Berríos met his end assassinated in Uruguay at the hands of Chilean and Uruguayan military personnel.

–“The Letelier Case in Chile,” would that be the title of that missing book?

–I want to make known in this country—especially to the socialists who have been poor companions to Orlando Letelier—what the Letelier trial in Chile was. Nobody knows it. Everyone knows what happened in the US because very important books have been written: “Labyrinth,” by former prosecutor Eugene Propper and writer Taylor Branch; and above all “Assassination on Embassy Row,” by John Dinges and Saul Landau.

This book has been awarded and recognized everywhere, but that text recounts the crime of Orlando Letelier, which occurred in the US on September 21, 1976, and describes the investigative work carried out by the US government.

From 1976 to 1978, they investigated the crime of Orlando Letelier until they decided to send a request for extradition to the Supreme Court for Manuel Contreras [former general, head of the DINA], Pedro Espinoza [colonel and henchman of Contreras], and Armando Fernández Larios [lieutenant of the Caravan of Death, also sent to the United States with false documentation to prepare the assassination of Letelier].

–How did the trial in Chile for the assassination of Orlando Letelier originate?

–The Supreme Court, then presided over by Israel Bohórquez, rejected the extradition request. And since passports had been forged to carry out missions preparing this illicit act in the United States, it was only then that they sent the file to the military justice system.

And that is where I intervened. I became a party before the military justice system. I spent 10 years investigating with Jaime Castillo Velasco [PDC human rights lawyer, deceased in 2003] and, later, when the transition came, it passed to a minister of the Supreme Court [Adolfo Bañados Cuadra], who investigated until issuing the sentence.

But this case, that investigation of Orlando Letelier in Chile, has been absolutely covered up; it is not published, nor anything else. Only the final outcome appears, which was the first time Contreras and Espinoza were convicted, but with sentences that are absolutely inadequate, because they were 7 and 6 years, respectively.

But the entire assassination of Orlando was an intelligence operation that was conceived and planned in Chile and in which, therefore, a very significant number of Army elements participated—fundamentally from the intelligence services, the DINA—to carry out this act of international terrorism in the United States.

So, that is a commitment I have, one I cannot abandon, and I will do it… I hope to live long enough for that.

Berríos Case: “Project Andrea”

–How did the “Berríos Case” emerge?

–From the investigation into Orlando’s crime, other cases emerged, such as that of Eugenio Berríos. The process that Minister Madrid ruled on refers to the kidnapping and homicide of Eugenio Antonio Berríos Sagredo.

–Who was Berríos Sagredo?

–He was a chemist who was a member and agent of the DINA, who set up a chemical laboratory in Lo Curro [Vía Naranja N° 4925] in the house where Michael Townley lived with Mariana Callejas, a property purchased by General Contreras with public funds.

Townley’s family lived there, but a part of that building was destined for a chemical laboratory, clandestine of course, which was set up after several trips by Townley to European countries to buy elements that, of course, entered Chile without the corresponding customs payments and inspections.

–What did they do in that laboratory?

–The chemical laboratory had the purpose of creating and developing sarin gas, and other toxicological elements, which were developed by the DINA with the goal of obtaining a modern chemical weapon that would allow them to carry out elimination cases. This is “Project Andrea.”

–And a weapon for probable wars that were being discussed at the time?

–Of course. At that time, there was a possibility of war with Argentina and, evidently, it was viewed with great interest. Furthermore, Berríos was a chemist who, like Townley and Mariana Callejas, belonged to the Patria y Libertad movement.

There, Townley and Berríos had formed a good friendship. And Berríos, who had studied in Concepción as a chemist, was undoubtedly a person quite specialized and trained in chemical matters and had written a special thesis on “boldine,” a substance extracted from the boldo [Peumus boldus].

Berríos is a man who, by being part of Patria y Libertad, appears linked to Townley and people from the DINA and enters this project. Manuel Contreras had gone to the house where he was in Lo Curro several times; in other words, he is an element who knows exactly…

–And he manufactures sarin gas there?

–He develops the sarin gas there, and this gas was even sent in liquid state to the US, in a Chanel perfume bottle. At one point, Townley takes it to the US [it is presumed to be used in a “plan B” against Letelier], and it is maintained that it would have been used in Chile as a lethal repressive element of the DINA in some cases.

A real estate registrar [Renato León Zenteno] is even mentioned, who had died from the application of sarin gas in 1976, and not because of Zenteno’s profession, but because he was allegedly homosexual and had some problem of that type… They would have eliminated him.

And, of course, there are other cases that have been mentioned a lot, among other people that of Carmelo Soria [Spanish citizen, international official, and book editor], who was killed by the DINA in an operation that was carried out there in Lo Curro, and some have maintained that sarin gas had also been applied to him.

And others, like the Army non-commissioned officer Manuel Leyton Robles, who at one point had allegedly stolen a car that belonged to a person of the left [Daniel Palma] and that he had appropriated it, etc.

Well, there are cases that demonstrate that this sarin gas was indeed applied, but fundamentally it was a lethal weapon that the DINA had in its hands, a weapon that could be used in a conflict, even with other countries in Latin America.

–Did Berríos have assistants?

–So Berríos does not work alone but has the collaboration of another Chilean, Francisco José Oyarzún Sjoberg, son of a Foreign Ministry official, who seconds Townley there in Lo Curro. But when Townley’s situation comes to light, when he was about to be arrested, etc., etc., Oyarzún goes to Europe and nothing more was ever heard of him, although all the background information exists.

That is where that gas is manufactured.

–Now, how does Berríos appear?

–The truth is that Berríos appears in the investigation carried out by Minister Adolfo Bañados Cuadra. Based on the background information he has in the process, he calls him to testify. Berríos does not appear. He reiterates the summons…

–Who is Minister Bañados?

–Bañados is the Supreme Court minister who led the process in Chile after the background information was sent to him from the military court. So, he takes the case, and in 2005, the Supreme Court issues the final ruling and Contreras is sentenced to 7 years and Espinoza to 6 years.

In that, I have the honor of having participated…, in the first important process against the DINA that ends with the final sentence, and after that…

–Was this process motivated by…?

–It was broadcast on television to the whole country…

–Yes, but the motive, was it the Orlando case…?

–It was the crime of Orlando, on September 21, 1976, in the city of Washington, with an explosive bomb that was placed in the car, under the seat of the person who was driving, who was Orlando, and which also caused the death of an American citizen, Ronni Karpen Moffitt…

–In this investigation process, did Minister Bañados…?

–After passing through the military court and passing to the Supreme Court, he conducts the investigation…

–And he discovers… because we are talking about Berríos, right?

–The minister considers it important that Berríos appear before him to declare his relationship and his involvement in this case, since from other background information it appeared that he was a chemist who manufactured compounds in a property that belonged to the DINA. He does not appear. Therefore, the minister, at the moment he is ready to issue an arrest warrant so that Berríos appears…

–Why was Berríos so important?

–Why all this? Because Berríos was a civilian, he was not military. Because he had participated with Townley, who is one of the main executors of Orlando’s crime. So, he was from the DINA, he had participated in the DINA, he knew Lo Curro, the place that several high-ranking members of the DINA frequented; he is involved, precisely, in all this repressive and illicit action of the DINA.

Well, it turns out that Berríos does not appear, and then, an intelligence operation of the Chilean Army is carried out, and we are talking about the year 1991 [under the government of Patricio Aylwin and with Pinochet as Commander-in-Chief of the Army], forged by the highest authorities of the DINE, which is the Army Intelligence Directorate.

The DINA, the CNI, or anything else no longer exist. There is the DINE, which is led by an Army general named Hernán Ramírez Rurange. This Army Intelligence Directorate decides, after an interview that Berríos has with General Hernán Ramírez Rurange, to order that Berríos be taken out of Chile to prevent him from appearing to testify before the Supreme Court minister who was handling the Orlando Letelier case.

“Operation Control of Casualties” + Operation Condor II

–How do they do it?

–First they hide him, and they keep him for more or less 15 to 20 days in what is known as the Army Intelligence Battalion, BIE [García Reyes N° 12, Santiago]. And there he remains as a civilian, in a basement where the commander of that military institution, the then-colonel Manuel Provis Carrasco, provides him with food and looks after his subsistence.

All of this does not appear in investigations, meetings, etc. The truth is that Berríos remains there while this intelligence operation is organized to take him out of the country with a false name, with the identity of “Manuel Morales Jara.” Major Arturo Rodrigo Silva Valdés [known as “The Prince” and head of private security for Agustín Edwards, a service provided under the table to the owner of El Mercurio] is entrusted with the direction of this operation, in which other military personnel participate, among them the then-captain Pablo Marcelo Rodríguez Márquez and a civilian who worked for the DINE named Raúl Lillo Gutiérrez.

The operation, called “Control of Casualties,” coordinates the transfer of Berríos to Punta Arenas. From there, Lillo Gutiérrez, Rodríguez Márquez, and his brother [former Carabineros lieutenant] Jorge Alejandro Guillermo Rodríguez Márquez transport him in a vehicle to Argentina, on October 26, 1991, through the Monte Aymond pass, and in Río Gallegos, Berríos and Lillo board a plane bound for Buenos Aires, where they are received by Silva Valdés and stay for two days, and from the Argentine capital they continue by river to Colonia, Uruguay.

In other words, they make a tremendous detour and, of course, with false names, and Berríos is accompanied by military personnel who guard him.

Upon arriving in Uruguay, the Uruguayan uniformed officers evidently begin to appear, who are three: Colonel Tomás Ventura Casella Santos, who is the most important, Eduardo Ernesto Radaelli Copolla, and Wellington Sarli Pose.

Those are the three, plus another one, for whom extradition was requested, but these are the three whose extradition was requested by us, through the Chilean Supreme Court, approved by the Supreme Court of Uruguay.

Why these three military officers? Because they intervene in the custody, in the meeting with Berríos, in his cover-up, and later they also intervene in what is the death of the chemist. This story is very long…

–How does it end?

–Ultimately, these Uruguayan military officers work in coordination with the Chileans sent by the DINE to be able to rent an apartment for Berríos. Later Berríos becomes too complicated…—he was an alcoholic—he becomes very…—he was a difficult person to handle… So, in the end, they take him to a beach, to the house of a relative of Radaelli.

In other words, everything is perfectly synchronized, and there, while being on that beach, which is called Parque del Plata, one day he escapes from them and goes to the police commissioner, and that is where this whole story appears that ends in a secret session of the Uruguayan Senate, behind closed doors.

The President of Uruguay, Luis Alberto Lacalle, who at that time was in Europe, returns… Everything that happens is a tremendous scandal.

All of this is absolutely financed with public funds from both countries. The Supreme Court of Uruguay, to grant the extradition, prepared an entire folder, analyzed it, public defenders intervened, they analyzed well whether to grant it or not, international norms were considered, which ones should or should not apply, and, finally, they agreed and handed over these three military officers to Chile.

For the first time, Latin American military officers are extradited from their country, due to a request from the Chilean Supreme Court on charges of having participated in a serious violation of human rights.

–What is the connection to the “Letelier Case”?

–All of this is part of Orlando’s crime. That is what is in the process, the first element in this case, in the assassination of Orlando Letelier, the crime that occurred in Washington on September 21, 1976, a Chilean named Eugenio Antonio Berríos Sagredo, a chemist, who defied the Chilean justice system and did not appear to provide elements related to Orlando Letelier’s crime.

And that is why I have been involved in this story for 9 years. That is how long my cases are. In Orlando’s, it was 15.

–What happens then?

–They put pressure on the commissioner, who, since Berríos had escaped and had arrived saying that they were chasing him, the commissioner sends him for a medical exam. The exam says that he is nervous but that he is a normal person, and at that moment, those who were in the house, fixing something on the roof, the Uruguayan military officers come down and they all arrive where the commissioner is, and there, Tomás Casella, who is one of the extradited, puts pressure on Berríos and tells him no, to withdraw the complaint, and he makes him withdraw the complaint.

And Berríos leaves with Tomás Casella. That is the last moment of Berríos’s life that is known, together with this Uruguayan. And there he disappears at the end of 1992, and after a long time, that is, a year, I think in April 1995, by chance, a person who goes to a beach called El Pinar, in that seaside resort area of Parque del Plata, finds an element, I don’t know what, they pull it out and there is Berríos.

Assassinated, with two bullets in his head. His date of death is defined between January and June 1993.

–Did Pinochet also go to Uruguay during that time?

–Pinochet goes to Uruguay, evidently. He takes a trip to Uruguay and there is even a photograph in which I think he is with Tomás Casella. Ah, but the most important thing are the statements of the DINE general, Ramírez Rurange, before the minister who is investigating, Alejandro Madrid, an extraordinary court minister in charge of this case.

There, in a judicial statement, Ramírez Rurange says that it was indeed not he who gave the order to take Berríos out of the country, but that the order to take Berríos out of Chile was given by Pinochet, then Commander-in-Chief of the Army.

And there is an entire volume that records how this situation is investigated, because Ramírez Rurange says that the order to take Berríos out of Chile was given to him by Pinochet at a lunch or dinner he had at his house, where there were other generals.

Everyone was summoned to testify and, of course, they deny having heard this, but the truth is that Ramírez Rurange maintains firmly that it was an order received from General Pinochet and that is why Berríos arrives at the DINE to speak with the general and that is where the whole operation is set up. That is the story.

–Did they kill him with bullets?

–There is a version that says that they buried Berríos head down, as traitors die, I think they say, but the truth is that bullets were found, bullet elements. And there is an entire criminological investigation that is quite significant. Now, the process, as you see, look at all those volumes [points to stacks of volumes of judicial documents], it is not complete here, the last ones are missing…

–How many years has this process been going on?

–From 2002 to 2011…

–Nine years…

–Nine.

–And how many pages are there, more or less?

–At this moment I would tell you that, at least, I have here with me, and I am missing pages…—Minister Alejandro Madrid is an extraordinarily efficient magistrate—nine thousand, plus the last ones…

–No, that is just a general figure…

–I tell you that in any case there are more than 10,000 pages, volume thirty-something: more than 30 volumes…

–Is this trial to clarify the death of Berríos…?

–The kidnapping, the homicide, and the illicit association, which is what matters to me.

–You are involved in this process as…

–As a plaintiff lawyer… And my nephew José Ignacio Letelier Morel, Orlando’s son who resides on Easter Island, also became a party to this trial.

–So, is the “Berríos Case” a derivation…?

–Of the “Letelier Case.” Of course! That is the importance of this case, because of the relevance of Berríos… I have a book that a Uruguayan wrote about the case, which at least is something… The book by journalist Samuel Blixen.

–When the final sentence is known, perhaps only a few lines will appear in the major media and the “Berríos Case” will not be connected to the “Letelier Case”…

–…If anything comes out at all… And they will only talk about Berríos, not Letelier, and nobody will know what Berríos has to do with the “Letelier Case.” Furthermore, we are talking about armies and officers who all, all continued their careers, ascended in rank and category; now they are brigadiers, generals, because there are many who are involved.

–The case was instructed by magistrate Alejandro Madrid…

–Of the 6th Criminal Court. That is, he is an extraordinary minister appointed by the Court of Appeals to investigate the kidnapping and homicide of Berríos.

–I imagine that Berríos’s family is interested in this trial.

–Look, Berríos married a very beautiful woman, whose name is Gladys Schmeisser, who was a dancer, and what have you, who has a quite complicated history, although I do not get involved in personal lives, but Berríos also lived with an aunt who had a bakery, where he had installed a chemical laboratory to study.

the boldina, all this in addition to being a member of the DINA. –And the boldina was marketed by… –Of course, it is in the file, everything that was the degree thesis he did on boldina, which frankly is… –…an infusion of the boldo leaf. –Of the boldo leaf, which has medicinal properties.

Frankly, he was a high-flying chemist, let’s say. –Which has medicinal properties to preserve life and then he started investigating products to do the exact opposite: take life. –Take life. Exactly! And this investigation has taken many years, in which Minister Madrid has carried out very important investigative proceedings regarding what the participation of the officers and members of the Army –they are all from the Army– was, who participated in this crime.

And of course, in the sentence we are going to have convicted not only Ramírez Rurange, since he retired, but also the one who remained in charge, who is a general named Adrián Covarrubias, who is also involved because he had full knowledge of what was happening with Berríos.

And furthermore, one with the surname Provis is also involved, who was the commander of the Intelligence Battalion, where Berríos was living for 15 days, protected in a military establishment. And it is proven that you cannot enter a military establishment to live there, to reside in the basement with the support of Commander Provis, without authorization from the Army, obviously.

So, in the entire investigation by Minister Madrid, it is shown that in all of this, Provis, the general of the DINE, and others were effectively colluding. This process shows how the Army of Chile, after the dictatorship ended, continued acting in a coordinated manner to carry out this operation, because Berríos was not the only one who was taken out of the country to prevent him from testifying before the justice system.

There are two other cases in the so-called “Operation Control of Casualties.” One is the former major Carlos Herrera Jiménez, whom they also took out of the country [he pleaded guilty to the murders of Tucapel Jiménez, former president of the ANEF (National Association of Fiscal Employees), under the orders of the DINE, and of the carpenter Juan Alegría Mundaca, on behalf of the National Information Center, CNI].

The other is the former Army CNI captain Luis Arturo Sanhueza Ross. There are three members of the Army who, for being involved in human rights violations, were taken out of Chile by order of the highest hierarchies of the Army, to avoid their appearance in court in the investigation of other crimes.

All three were in Argentina and Uruguay, protected by the Army to avoid their appearance for other crimes, such as the Tucapel Jiménez case. But, in addition, and this is important, the Frei family has also presented to Minister Madrid, and fundamentally the former senator Carmen Frei, a lawsuit, an action or a complaint, so that he investigates whether or not the former President of Chile Eduardo Frei Montalva was indeed killed at the Clínica Santa María in Santiago by means of a chemical product of this type, in whose manufacture Berríos would have also participated.

Do you understand? –These three men were taken out of Chile in democracy, financed with State funds… –The previous ones were taken out before… –In Uruguay there was also a counterpart, the Army of that country, which did exactly the same thing and provided all the infrastructure, assumed expenses charged to the Treasury… –Of course! –And also under a democratic regime, right? –Exactly… –Luis Alberto Lacalle was governing… –Of course.

And when the scandal of Berríos’s flight occurs, from the resort where he was, that is when President Lacalle was in Europe when he is informed that this uproar has occurred and that, through an anonymous communication to the Senate, the fact that Uruguayans were colluding in this crime has arrived, the head of state returns to his country and practically trying to keep everything covered up.

The “Frei Montalva Case” –Judge Madrid also investigates the death of Frei Montalva… –Madrid’s investigation has been so extraordinary because the “Berríos Case” is not only connected to the assassination of Orlando –through the part that concerns this chemist–, but it is linked to the death of former president Eduardo Frei Montalva.

And that is another huge amount of investigations and evidence that have had a lot of press, which has sparked support from the Senate, the Chamber of Deputies, and all the rest, and which is a great concern.

I think it will be difficult for Minister Madrid –I don’t know what the final sentence will say– to prove that while President Eduardo Frei Montalva was at the Clínica Santa María, how they could have introduced, whether it was Berríos or one of those characters, inoculated him with a toxicological element that would cause his death. –What is your personal impression of that case? –I hope that everything they have established with great effort and with a lot of financial support –they have gone to Uruguay, they have appointed lawyers and what not– I hope Minister Madrid can prove it, but it is a very complex process that the magistrate has kept permanently under seal. –What will be the next step in the “Berríos Case”? –The designation of the rapporteur. And the rapporteur is going to take time, because he has to know all the files… –Is the sentence already in the Court of Appeals…? –But they have to appoint a rapporteur and they are in that process. And the rapporteur, in order to be able to argue in the chamber of the Court of Appeals that is determined, where these complaints have to arrive, is going to take his time. The rapporteur has to narrate the events, the evidence, and everything, so it is going to take time. That allows me to be able to effectively study all the documentation well, because I am the plaintiff, to be able to argue, whether it be me, or Sergio Corvalán, who is a great lawyer to whom I have given representation so that the two of us can continue this process. First instance sentences ? Arturo Rodrigo Silva Valdés, former major of the Chilean Army, was sentenced to 10 years and one day in prison in its medium degree “for his responsibility as author of the crime of kidnapping with homicide of Eugenio Berríos Sagredo, described in the final paragraph of article 141 of the Penal Code, perpetrated in the town of Parque del Plata, Department of Canelones, Uruguay, on a date not determined that occurred between November 15, 1992, and the month of April 1993.” “Likewise, he is sentenced to the penalty of 3 years and one day of minor imprisonment in its maximum degree and to the accessory penalties of absolute perpetual disqualification for political rights and that of absolute disqualification for public offices and positions during the time of the sentence for his responsibility as co-author of the crime of illicit association described in article 292 and sanctioned in article 293 of the Penal Code, and which was formed in this city [Santiago de Chile], starting in the month of October 1991.” ? Hernán Ramírez Rurange, former Chilean general, was sentenced to 5 years and one day, absolute perpetual disqualification for public offices and positions and political rights and absolute disqualification for titular professions while the sentence lasts, plus 3 years and one day, plus perpetual disqualification, as co-author of illicit association. ? Eugenio Adrián Covarrubias Valenzuela, former Chilean general, 3 years and one day and perpetual disqualification for kidnapping and 541 days, plus perpetual disqualification, for illicit association. ? Manuel Jorge Provis Carrasco, former Chilean brigadier, 5 years and one day and perpetual disqualification for kidnapping and 3 years and one day, plus perpetual disqualification, for illicit association. ? Jaime Fernando Torres Gacitúa, former Chilean major, 5 years and one day and perpetual disqualification for kidnapping, and 3 years and one day, plus perpetual disqualification, for illicit association. ? Raúl Diego Lillo Gutiérrez, Chilean DINE civilian, 5 years and one day plus perpetual disqualification, and another 100 days for illicit association. ? Pablo Marcelo Rodríguez Márquez, Chilean lieutenant colonel, 3 years and one day and perpetual disqualification for kidnapping, plus 70 days for illicit association. ? Tomas Ventura Casella Santos, former colonel of the Uruguayan Army, 5 years and one day and perpetual disqualification for kidnapping and 3 years and one day, plus perpetual disqualification for illicit association. ? Eduardo Ernesto Radaelli Copolla, former captain of the Uruguayan Army, 5 years and one day plus perpetual disqualification for kidnapping, and 70 days for illicit association. ? Wellington Sarli Pose, former colonel of the Uruguayan Army, 3 years and one day plus perpetual disqualification for kidnapping, and 60 days for illicit association. ? Manuel Antonio Pérez Santillán, former colonel of the Chilean Army, 3 years and one day and perpetual disqualification for complicity in kidnapping. ? Juan Fernando Alfredo Torres Silva, former general, former auditor of the Chilean Army, 3 years and one day and perpetual disqualification for illicit association. ? Nelson Williams Román Vargas, non-commissioned officer of the Chilean Army, 3 years and one day, plus perpetual disqualification for kidnapping, and 60 days for illicit association. ? Marcelo Ariel Sandoval Durán, non-commissioned officer of the Chilean Army, 3 years and one day and perpetual disqualification for kidnapping, plus 60 days for illicit association. Acquittals and rejected charges ? Gines Emilio Rojas Gómez, Chilean civilian, the accusation of the State Defense Council as an accomplice to kidnapping and charges of obstruction of justice are rejected. ? Enrique Gabriel Ibarra Chamorro, former colonel of the Chilean Army, his responsibility as author of the crime of illicit association is dismissed. ? Mario Enrique Cisternas Orellana (Chilean Army lieutenant colonel), Nelson Edison Hernández Franco (Chilean Army corporal, DINE) and Erika Silva Morales (DINE secretary), were acquitted of the charge of being authors of the crime of infringement of article 295 bis of the Penal Code. The sentence also includes indemnities and economic reparations in favor of the plaintiffs Fabiola Letelier del Solar, Gladys Schmeisser –Berríos’s widow– and Gonzalo Berríos Sagredo, charged to the State and the convicted, who –furthermore– must finance the legal costs. by Ernesto Carmona

Source: elclarin.cl, September 16, 2011

When Chilean unionists were watched, followed, and listened to

Since its inception in 1977, the CNI exercised close surveillance over the union world through the Labor Brigade. The head of the brigade from 1979 was Carabineros captain Miguel Eugenio Hernández Oyarzo (“Felipe Bascur”), who had performed similar functions in the DINA.

By mid-1979, the brigade moved to a new secret headquarters on Calle Agustinas and was divided into four groups, each of them under the command of Army captain Raúl Lillo Gutiérrez (“Manolo Arriagada”), Héctor Lira (“Julián Reyes”), Nelson Fernández Franco (“Carlos Santander”), and Jorge Ramírez Romero (“Carlos de la Fuente”), respectively.

Among the agents were Pedro Alfaro Fernández, Juan Araos Araos, Carlos Asalgado Martínez, Edmundo Alberto Asenjo Gálvez, Daniel Cancino Varas, Gustavo Caruman Soto, Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Germán Erazo Ahumada, Ricardo Erazo Ahumada, Héctor Alfredo Flores Vergara, Segundo Gangas Godoy, Enrique Gutiérrez Rubilar, Luis Gutiérrez Uribe, Guido Jara Brevis, Jaime Márquez Campos, Luis Mora Cerda, José Mora Diocares, José Muñoz Leal, Enrique Naranjo Muñoz, Nelson Ortiz Vignolo, Manuel Poblete Vergara, Luis Tomás Rojas Torres, Manuel Tapia Tapia, and Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera.

In 1977, the Ministry General Secretariat of Government created, under the dependence of the Directorate of Civil Organizations, the National Secretariat of Guilds and placed Misael Galleguillos at its head, a mathematics teacher from the Valparaíso branch of the University of Chile, an active militant of Patria y Libertad during the Popular Unity government.

His apparent mission was to train pro-government union leaders, but in truth, his main role consisted of watching and infiltrating opposition union leaderships and passing all that information to the CNI.

The directorate of the Secretariat of Guilds had its offices in the Diego Portales building, but most of its officials and collaborators worked near there, in a three-story house that stood on the corner of the Alameda and Calle Victoria Subercaseaux, next to Cerro Santa Lucía.

Galleguillos, enthusiastic about his task, recreated the National Syndicalist Revolutionary Movement, MRNS, -inspired by an old movement of the same name- with headquarters in a large house on Calle Vergara 180, in the old República neighborhood, southeast of the center of Santiago, and closely linked to the CNI.

In that place, several of the main pro-government union leaders gathered, among them René Sotolicchio, president of the National Association of Municipal Employees; Valericio Orrego Salas, president of the Association of Employees of the Ministry of Public Works; Carlos Navarrete, president of the Sindicato N° 1 of Ferias Libres of Santiago; and Jaime Tramont Castillo, a union leader from Valparaíso.

Galleguillos also summoned Werner Anís Bischosausen, Eugenio Cáceres Contreras, Ramón Callís Arrigorriaga, Iván Catalina Sánchez, Gustavo Cuevas Torrealba, Héctor Larenas Bugueño, Luis Lillo Abarca, Lázaro Maluenda, Claudio Matte, and Pedro Urquieta.

Claudio Matte and Héctor Larenas financed the rental of the headquarters, where the security officers were Hugo Cabezas Freire, a member of the CNI, and Rigoberto Moreno, a former official of the Navy.

The leadership of the movement, headed by Galleguillos, was made up of José Fernández Jorquera, Arturo Marshall de Amesti, Alfredo Urrutia, Fernando Muñoz Parra, and Marcelo Retamal Moreno, who dedicated themselves to planning shock actions, producing propaganda, and programming union training courses for the cadres and leaders they summoned to their meetings.

Luis Lillo Abarca was in charge of training and Héctor Larenas Buqueño of propaganda and public relations. Black shirts and Nazi salutes In another property, located on Calle Larraín 8081, in front of the Tobalaba airfield, or in a vacant lot in Farellones, paramilitary training was carried out for the militants who made up the shock groups.

This task was carried out by Fernando Muñoz, Genaro Pozo, and Manuel Hernández. The use of black shirts, the salute with the arm raised in the Nazi style, and the singing of military anthems were mandatory.

Other militants such as Pablo Medina, Jorge Salinas, former Patria y Libertad, nicknamed “Bombero Loco” (Crazy Firefighter), and Santiago Schesta assumed the preparation of explosives that they installed in previously determined zones and which press releases attributed to leftist groups.

One of the MRNS actions with public repercussions was the boycott of an ANEF press conference, in which Guillermo Henríquez, Jorge Salazar Hojman, Genaro Pozo, and Jorge Baldrich Camus burst in shouting “traitor” and “sell-out” at Tucapel Jiménez.

The next day Baldrich appeared photographed in El Mercurio. He declared later that the order had been given to him by the then Minister Secretary General of Government, General Sergio Badiola Brodeg, who was seconded by the undersecretary of the portfolio, the lawyer Jovino Novoa Vásquez.

Galleguillos also had a secret informant among the opposition who anticipated all the activities of the Group of Ten. It was Federico Mujica Canales, a short man, a constant pipe smoker, who presided over the Cepch.

Already in 1975, in the glory years of the DINA, opposition union leaders were closely watched and their meetings recorded by agents or collaborators infiltrated among them. Marcia Merino, “la flaca Alejandra,” a MIR member who collaborated with the DINA, received from Rolf Wenderoth at the central headquarters in Belgrado verbatim transcripts of the meetings of the Group of Ten, the National Union Coordinator, CNS, and the Unitary Workers’ Front, FUT.

Her task was to analyze the contents and infer probable courses of action of the unionists, returning them later to Wenderoth’s offices. After the installation of the CNI in 1977, the replacement for the DINA continued the same method of tracking, surveillance, listening, and penetration.

The information gathered was incorporated into individual folders and their contents were periodically replicated and copies sent to the central headquarters on Calle República. There they were received by Mirtha Espinoza Caamaño, the secretary of Colonel Roberto Schmied, head of the Interior Department, who was later appointed commander of the Metropolitan Intelligence Division, where the various anti-subversive brigades were located.

Under the direct command of Schmied were Major Zanelli and Captain Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, in charge of operational tasks. The secretary registered the information in control books, with the date of entry, the originating unit, and a brief description of the content.

Acronyms and codes were used according to the respective units and sections. Thus, for example, F.1.1 corresponded to the head of the division; F-1.2 to the deputy head, and so on, according to the various departments into which the CNI was divided.

Close surveillance was exercised over the union world through the Labor Brigade or Political-Union Brigade, which depended directly on the Metropolitan Intelligence Division, under the command of Colonel Schmied Zanzi.

The head of the brigade from 1979 was Carabineros captain Miguel Eugenio Hernández Oyarzo (“Felipe Bascur”), who had performed similar functions in the DINA, in 1977, from the “Ollagüe” barracks, located on Calle José Domingo Cañas, in the commune of Ñuñoa.

By mid-1979, the brigade moved to a new secret headquarters on Calle Agustinas and was divided into four groups, each of them under the command of Army captain Raúl Lillo Gutiérrez (“Manolo Arriagada”), Héctor Lira (“Julián Reyes”), Nelson Fernández Franco (“Carlos Santander”), and Jorge Ramírez Romero (“Carlos de la Fuente”), respectively.

Among the agents were Pedro Alfaro Fernández, Juan Araos Araos, Carlos Asalgado Martínez, Edmundo Alberto Asenjo Gálvez, Daniel Cancino Varas, Gustavo Caruman Soto, Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Germán Erazo Ahumada, Ricardo Erazo Ahumada, Héctor Alfredo Flores Vergara, Segundo Gangas Godoy, Enrique Gutiérrez Rubilar, Luis Gutiérrez Uribe, Guido Jara Brevis, Jaime Márquez Campos, Luis Mora Cerda, José Mora Diocares, José Muñoz Leal, Enrique Naranjo Muñoz, Nelson Ortiz Vignolo, Manuel Poblete Vergara, Luis Tomás Rojas Torres, Manuel Tapia Tapia, and Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera.

Leaders such as Eduardo Ríos, Ernesto Vogel, Manuel Bustos, and Tucapel Jiménez, among others, had their telephones tapped and all correspondence sent to them and their families from abroad and within the country was reviewed in the unit that the CNI maintained at the Post Office.

A folder was kept for each one with their personal, work, and family background, in addition to their contact networks. In 1976, a CNI agent, nicknamed “Omar,” recruited as an informant the employee who worked as an assistant for the ANEF, at its three-story headquarters located at Alameda and Riquelme.

The “junior” was named Julio Olivares Silva and was the son of a friend of Tucapel Jiménez. Twice a week the boy delivered his reports to the Labor Brigade barracks, where in exchange he received a cash payment.

In 1977, Olivares Silva was incorporated into the CNI staff under the alias “Gabriel Carrasco González,” although everyone called him “Barnabás.” Infiltration of leaderships Valericio Orrego, for his part, also became a paid collaborator of the CNI.

He infiltrated Carlos Santa María, a leader of the Group of Ten, recruiting an employee of his in a business he had at Bandera and General Mackenna. The informant was named Patricio Pezoa and had to report periodically to “Manolo” or “Carlos de la Fuente,” his control agents in the CNI.

One of the most secret paid snitches that the repressive organization maintained in the leadership circles of opposition unionism could only be identified in the first semester of 2009. It was the socialist Víctor Hugo Gac, a member of the executive committee of the CNS, a man then very close to Arturo Martínez, the current president of the CUT, to whom the CNI paid 40 thousand pesos per month for his reports.

Thus, at the beginning of the spring of 1981, the CNI had the certainty that the much-feared opposition union unity was being achieved and that the main forger of it was the president of the fiscal employees, Tucapel Jiménez.

The matter was even more serious because Jiménez also held conversations with some of the main political leaders of the dissidence, among them Eduardo Frei Montalva. The ANEF leader and the former head of state had already met at the Vicaría de la Pastoral Obrera together with some dignitaries of the Catholic Church.

The CNI analysts reached the conclusion that a national strike of unpredictable consequences was being prepared, with the support, furthermore, of numerous instances and governments of the entire world.

The information gathered by the CNI reached La Moneda and in the following weeks the director of the National Intelligence Directorate, DINE, General Ramsés Arturo Álvarez Sgolia, received from General Augusto Pinochet the order to eliminate Tucapel Jiménez. by Manuel Salazar Salvo

Source: interferencia.cl, May 5, 2020