Date of Birth: 04-11-39, 33 years of age at the time of his detention. Address: Arquitecto Mosquera 3210, San Joaquín, Santiago. Marital Status: Married, 1 child. Occupation: Presidential escort. Repressive Status: Chief of the Presidential Guard escort, GAP. Member of the Partido Socialista. Date of Detention: September 11, 1973.

REPRESSIVE SITUATION

Jaime Sotelo Ojeda, married, with one child, a member of the Partido Socialista, served as the chief of the President of the Republic's escort. On September 11, 1973, he was at the Palacio de La Moneda.

Sotelo Ojeda, along with about fifty other people, was detained and taken to the Regimiento Tacna, where they remained until September 13, the date on which several of the detainees were transported in a military truck to an unknown location. He has been forcibly disappeared since that date.

Sotelo Ojeda was a member of the Presidential Guard, better known by the acronym GAP, "Grupo de amigos personales" (Group of Personal Friends), alluding to an expression used by the President of the Republic himself.

On September 11, Sotelo was performing his security duties at the presidential residence known as "El Cañaveral"; it appears he was called to La Moneda given the coup d'état that was unfolding at that time. Sotelo, along with other members of the Presidential Guard, headed to La Moneda.

During the morning, Sotelo spoke by phone with his spouse. He also communicated with a member of the Partido Socialista, who asked him for instructions on how to act. This person noted that he communicated by telephone with La Moneda and spoke with Carlos Alamos, referring to Jaime Sotelo.

The Palacio Presidencial de La Moneda, the seat of government, was taken by Army infantry and tank units, led by General Javier Palacios, to which Carabineros forces were later added. At 11:00 in the morning, the bombing by the Fuerza Aérea de Chile began, which destroyed a large part of La Moneda.

At that same hour, the women who were in La Moneda left the premises during an agreed-upon truce. Among them was Hilda Rosas Varas Gaete, a nursing assistant, who declared that during her time on the first floor of La Moneda, she was able to see Carlos Alamos, among others, and before leaving the premises, she said goodbye to him and other members of the Guard.

She added that Carlos Alamos (Sotelo Ojeda) was married, of medium height, dark-skinned, of medium build, and that he performed leadership duties in the GAP.

The members of the Presidential Guard and other individuals remained in the Palace until they received the order from President Salvador Allende to leave, which was done through a door at Calle Morandé 80 of the Palacio de La Moneda.

There, they were held at gunpoint and beaten by the military and ordered to lie on the ground with their hands on the backs of their necks, being constantly threatened, even with being crushed by a tank that moved toward that location.

Two members of the Presidential Guard, Antonio Aguirre Vásquez and Osvaldo Ramos Rivera, were taken prisoner inside La Moneda and were sent to the Posta de la Asistencia Pública because they were wounded; a few days later, these wounded men were detained and disappeared.

Other members of the GAP who were coming from the presidential residence of El Cañaveral did not manage to enter La Moneda and were detained in its vicinity. Among them were Gonzalo Jorquera Leyton, Williams Osvaldo Ramírez Barría, Carlos Cruz Zavala, and Domingo Blanco Tarrés, who were part of a group of approximately 13 people, some of whom were subsequently executed, while others remain in the status of forcibly disappeared.

The people detained at La Moneda remained on Calle Morandé until 18:00. At that hour, these prisoners were taken in two military vehicles to the Regimiento Tacna, located about 12 blocks from the Palacio de La Moneda and under the command of Colonel Joaquín Ramírez Pineda.

Survivors of these events have provided information that allows for the reconstruction of these facts: the prisoners remained in the aforementioned Regiment until September 13. While detained in that Regiment, they were forced to crawl on their knees, lie down with their arms on the backs of their necks, or stand with their arms raised.

For nearly 48 hours, they had to remain in painful positions on rough or gravel ground, being trampled by soldiers who ran over them and beat them with the butts of their weapons or inflicted wounds with their bayonets, under the constant surveillance of guards armed with machine guns, who threatened them and asked the officers to execute them immediately.

Subsequently, they remained in the area known as the "boxes" or former stables; from there, the prisoners were taken to an office located on the second floor of the Regiment, where they were tortured and interrogated by personnel from the Servicio de Inteligencia Militar, SIM.

Afterward, they were returned, in poor physical condition, to rejoin the other prisoners and continue in the painful positions assigned to them. Each change of guard began with a beating of the prisoners with rifle butts.

These prisoners numbered 49 people. Of them, the release of the 17 detectives who made up the presidential protection team was ordered, and some other prisoners were separated. Finally, a group of people remained as prisoners, 21 of whom have been identified: ten advisors to the President of the Republic or government officials, ten members of the Presidential Guard, and one laborer.

The President's advisors were Jaime Barrios Meza, presidential advisor and General Manager of the Banco Central de Chile; Sergio Contreras, public relations officer for the Intendencia and journalist; Daniel Escobar Cruz, Chief of Cabinet for the Undersecretary of the Interior; Enrique Huerta Corvalán, Palace Intendant; Claudio Jimeno Grendi, presidential advisor; Eduardo Paredes Barrientos, presidential advisor and former Director of Investigations; Enrique París Roa, psychiatrist, presidential advisor, and member of the Superior Council of the Universidad de Chile; Héctor Ricardo Pincheira Núñez, presidential advisor; and Arsenio Poupin Oissel, Undersecretary General of Government and presidential advisor. The members of the Presidential Guard who have been identified are as follows: José Freire Medina, Daniel Gutiérrez Ayala, Oscar Lagos Ríos, Juan Montiglio Murúa, Julio Hernán Moreno Pulgar, Luis Rodríguez Riquelme, Jaime Sotelo Ojeda, Julio Tapia Martínez, Héctor Urrutia Molina, Oscar Valladares Caroca, and Juan Vargas Contreras. Additionally, there was the laborer Oscar Luis Avilés Jofré, who had gone to La Moneda in support of the government.

Juan Seoane, one of the detectives who was among these prisoners and who was later released, declared that among the GAP members he remembers seeing at the Regimiento Tacna was "Carlos (Alamos) whose real name was Jaime Sotelo."

Around 14:00 on September 13, 1973, these prisoners, with their hands and feet tied, were thrown into a military truck, one on top of the other, and were taken out of the Regiment to an unknown destination.

Almost all the members of the Presidential Guard who were at La Moneda on September 11, 1973, were executed or disappeared. However, one who managed to survive and has contributed to reconstructing these facts is Juan Bautista Osses Beltrán, who was taken prisoner to the Regimiento Tacna but was incorporated into another group of prisoners, which allowed him to leave alive after being imprisoned at the Estadio Chile and the Estadio Nacional.

Osses points out in his extensive statement that a group of 13 members of the Presidential Guard accompanied Allende to La Moneda and were detained inside. Subsequently, along with the other prisoners, he was taken to the Regimiento Tacna, where they were informed that they would be executed by firing squad at midnight, later that the execution would be at 3:00, and later still, at 6:00.

Osses has acknowledged that among those detained at the Regimiento Tacna were Héctor Daniel Urrutia, Daniel Gutiérrez, Enrique Huerta, Oscar Lagos Ríos, Juan Montiglio, Julio Moreno, Eduardo Paredes, Enrique París, Georges Klein, Héctor Pincheira, Arsenio Poupin, Luis Rodríguez Riquelme, and Oscar Valladares.

The witness was taken out of the Regimiento Tacna in the early hours of September 13, 1973, and taken along with other detainees to the Estadio Chile.

Beatriz Celsa Parrau Tejos, who was detained at the Regimiento Tacna, is the one who has been able to provide some important background information. She was at INDUMETAL, where they detained several people who were taken to a police station and, on the same day, transferred to the Regimiento Tacna.

There, she learned that those who had been captured at La Moneda were being held, and despite being separated from that group, she had the opportunity to see them when they went to the bathroom or when they were taken for interrogations.

There, she saw several doctors she knew from their professional activities and government leaders. She also observed numerous groups of other prisoners entering or leaving. On September 13, at noon, through the cracks of the shed where about 90 women were locked up, Celsa Parrau was able to see a truck leave the Regiment carrying bundles that looked like human bodies.

When they were taken out of the aforementioned shed at 14:30, she observed that the prisoners from La Moneda were no longer there.

For his part, the Chief of Investigations at La Moneda, detective Juan Seoane, remained among the La Moneda detainees until after the afternoon of September 13, at which time he was able to witness how the prisoners were taken away in a military truck.

According to the testimonies of the survivors, they heard from the military personnel who participated in the operation that they had been taken to the Peldehue military camps, located in Colina, where they were allegedly executed by firing squad and buried.

A soldier from the Regimiento Tacna, who was able to witness part of the events, recounted that the prisoners were tied with wire and thrown into an Army Pegaso truck that was part of a convoy that left the barracks at approximately 14:00, while all conscripts were ordered to remain confined to their quarters and not to walk through the courtyards.

In the afternoon, the contingent that had been part of the convoy returned, and word spread among the military that the prisoners had been taken to the property that the Regimiento Tacna has in the Peldehue military camps in Colina; there, they were allegedly killed in front of a hole or pit, about five to six meters in diameter and several meters deep, which existed a short distance from the dwelling used by the property's guard personnel.

The prisoners were placed in groups of four at the edge of the pit and shot. Once executed and thrown into the bottom of the pit, grenades were allegedly thrown inside, and thus the executions continued four by four.

The soldier adds that he had to go to the aforementioned property at the end of September 1973 and found the aforementioned pit covered. There, it was confirmed to him that the executed had been buried in that place and that there were 26 or 27 of them.

However, this massacre of prisoners has never been officially acknowledged, nor have the bodies been returned, and the aforementioned persons, including Jaime Gilson Sotelo Ojeda, have been disappeared since September 13, 1973.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

On April 24, 1987, Sotelo's spouse filed a complaint for alleged disappearance in the Fifth Court of Greater Quantities of Santiago. In the initial document, she states that she had not heard from her husband since September 11, 1973, as she had called him by telephone at 11:00 that day, and he told her to take good care of herself, to also take care of their son, and that he did not know when they would see each other again.

In that document, she also reported that shortly after the military coup, she was interrogated by the Investigations police in relation to her husband, but being very frightened by what was happening in the country, she declared that she had been separated from him for some time.

A factor that pushed her to file this complaint is that, having had her husband disappear so long ago, the press reported in May 1987 that the military government had decided to authorize the entry of 504 exiles, and her husband's name appeared on this list.

Consequently, she requested that certain measures be taken: to officially request the Minister of the Interior to report on the background information used to include Jaime Sotelo in the official lists prohibiting entry into the country; to officially request the Advisory Commission of the Ministry of the Interior to report on the background information it had to authorize the entry of her spouse; and, finally, to officially request the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to report on the background information it had to, first, prohibit entry and, later, to authorize the entry of Jaime Sotelo into the country.

The judge decided not to grant the complaint and that it should be considered only as a report, which was registered under Case No. 126.465-6, and initiated the summary proceedings by requesting the Civil Registry and Identification Service for the affiliation and possible death of the affected party. The Minister of the Interior was also officially requested to report.

The aforementioned Service sent the affiliation extract and reported that there was no record of his eventual death.

The Advisory Commission of the Ministry of the Interior reported in confidential Official Letter 123 of May 15, 1987, that the name of Jaime Gilson Sotelo Ojeda was included in a list prepared by the Ministry of the Interior in which the Commission's opinion was requested and that, as there was no background information that would prevent such entry, the Commission ruled favorably.

The Ministry of the Interior never reported the circumstances under which the affected party was included in the list of entry prohibitions, but limited itself to sending a confidential Official Letter, 2109, informing that Jaime Gilson Sotelo Ojeda was excluded from the list of persons requiring prior consultation to enter the country according to Exempt Decree No. 6246 of May 4, 1987.

The Court insisted that it be informed on the basis of what background information the decision was adopted by the government authorities. The response of September 10, 1987, reiterated the previous information, adding that it lacked any other information regarding Mr.

Jaime Gilson Sotelo Ojeda. Finally, it sent a copy of the decree containing the list, without any special explanation regarding Sotelo's case.

The Investigations Police, through the reporting detective Sub-commissioner José Galdámez Albistur, reported that all inquiries regarding "Jaime Gilson Sotelo Ojeda" had not yielded positive results. The conclusion of the report was: "The effectiveness of what was reported was not proven."

On December 16, 1987, the judge decided that no further progress could be made in the investigation, closed the case, and temporarily dismissed the proceedings with consultation to the Court of Appeals.

In a report, the Prosecutor of the Court reported nothing more and nothing less than "complainant, Elsa Pavez Cornejo, reports" that her husband Jaime Gilson Sotelo Ojeda worked as a group leader of the G.A.P. - Group of Personal Friends of the Ex-President of the Republic, His Excellency Salvador Allende Gossens - and that he was at La Moneda on the day of September 11, 1973... "In April 1987, she filed a complaint for the alleged disappearance that may have happened to her husband." "It seems like a naive act, to say the least, just as it seems like another naive act that the Advisory Commission of the Ministry of the Interior should rule favorably for the entry of Jaime Gilson Sotelo Ojeda into the country because there is no background information that prevents it."

"A third and final naive act seems to be the summary proceedings ordered to be instructed to find out whether or not a misfortune happened to the disappeared Sotelo; let it serve as an excuse, and a very valid one, that the Law imperatively ordered it to be done, despite the 14 years that have passed and after everything that happened at La Moneda that morning of September 11, 1973, was public and notorious."

This report ends by requesting that the dismissal of the case be approved.

The Court of Appeals of Santiago, on April 13, 1978, approved the consulted dismissal.

On June 27, 1991, Elsa Pavez filed a new criminal complaint before the Fifth Criminal Court of Greater Quantities of Santiago for the crimes of kidnapping or illegal arrest, homicide, and probably illegal burial committed to the detriment of her spouse Jaime Sotelo and against all those who turn out to be authors, accomplices, or cover-ups of these crimes, Case No. 126465-6.

Thus, by filing this criminal action, she intends to collaborate in the search for a concrete answer regarding what happened to Jaime Sotelo. Said case is currently in the summary stage of processing.

Complaints were also made to the International Red Cross, and information was requested from SENDET (National Executive Secretariat for Detainees) without obtaining positive results.

Source: Vicaría de la Solidaridad

The Second Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals sentenced seven members of the Army as co-perpetrators of the crimes of homicide and aggravated kidnapping of 23 victims, all direct collaborators of former President Salvador Allende, who were detained on September 11, 1973, at the La Moneda palace following the military coup.

Among the victims, who were executed by firing squad and blown up with grenades in the Peldehue sector, were political advisors, members of President Allende’s security detail (GAP), doctors, economists, and officials from the Chilean Investigative Police, among others.

Ultimately, the Chamber, which was composed of justices María Soledad Melo, Gloria Maria Solis, and Inelie Durán, confirmed the ruling issued in May 2018 by investigating judge Miguel Vásquez Plaza in his first-instance judgment, and sentenced the then-Army military officer Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo to twenty years of presidio mayor in its maximum degree as a co-perpetrator of the crimes of aggravated homicide of 15 of the 23 victims.

These victims are: Jaime Antonio Barrios Meza, an economist who served as general manager of the Central Bank; Egidio Enrique Paris Roa, former secretary-general of the University of Chile; Georges Klein Pipper, a doctor and advisor to the General Secretariat of Government; Claudio Raúl Jimeno Grendi and Héctor Ricardo Pincheira Núñez, also presidential advisors; and Luis Avilés Jofré, Manuel Ramón Castro Zamorano, Oscar Reinaldo Lagos Ríos, Julio Hernán Moreno Pulgar, Luis Fernando Rodríguez Riquelme, Jaime Gilson Sotelo Ojeda, Luis Fernando Tapia Martínez, Héctor Daniel Urrutia Molina, Juan Alejandro Vargas Contreras, and Juan José Montiglio Murúa, all members of the GAP.

Furthermore, Teobaldo Segundo Mendoza Vicencio, Eliseo Antonio Cornejo Escobedo, Bernardo Eusebio Soto Segura, and Jorge Ismael Gamboa Álvarez were sentenced to 7 years of presidio mayor in its minimum degree as co-perpetrators of the crimes of aggravated homicide of the same individuals.

Meanwhile, Servando Elías Maureira Roa and Jorge Iván Herrera López, who is currently deceased, were sentenced to 9 years of presidio mayor for the same crime.

Maureira Roa and Herrera López were also sentenced as authors of presidio menor in its maximum degree as co-perpetrators of the crimes of aggravated kidnapping of 8 of the 23 victims. These are: Juan Eduardo Paredes Barrientos, former head of the Investigative Police; Arsenio Poupin Oissel, former secretary-general of Government; Sergio Contreras; Enrique Huerta Corvalán, former Palace intendant; Daniel Escobar Cruz, chief of staff to the Undersecretary of the Interior; and former GAP members José Freire Medina, Daniel Gutiérrez Ayala, and Oscar Enrique Valladares Caroca.

Plaintiff lawyer Nelson Caucoto described the sentence as "bittersweet, because 48 years later, a trial of historical significance is coming to an end. These are events that occurred at the Palacio de La Moneda, that is, in the heart of Chile's political and republican institutionalism, which was razed by blood and fire by the coup-plotting military," he noted.

Caucoto added that "there are 23 victims, collaborators of President Allende who were with him until the very last moment on that crucial day. They were taken to the Tacna Regiment, tortured, and finally executed by firing squad in Peldehue by their captors.

Of those 23 victims, whose remains were removed 5 years later, 15 were successfully identified, which led to the legal classification of aggravated homicides. The remaining 8 led to aggravated kidnappings."

"And the bitter part," the lawyer explains, "is precisely because it is in these last 8 crimes that we disagree with the penalty and the determined participation, both in the first and second instance. We trust that the Supreme Court will be able to rectify this part of the sentence so that we may have full justice."

According to the investigation substantiated by judge Miguel Vázquez, it was established that the victims were inside the Palacio de La Moneda on September 11, 1973, and that they exited through the Morandé N°80 door, were detained, and transported to the Tacna Regiment, where they remained until September 13 of the same year, the date on which they were taken from the premises with their hands and feet tied with wire in a Pegaso truck.

They were then transported to the "Fuerte Arteaga" military facility in Peldehue; in this location, the victims were executed by firing squad and blown up with grenades.

Five years after being executed, their bodies were exhumed and disappeared again. However, bone splinters and other skeletal remains were left at the site, which allowed for the identification of 15 of the 23 victims.

The remaining 8 were not found, and the whereabouts of Sergio Contreras, Daniel Escobar Cruz, José Freire Medina, Daniel Gutiérrez Ayala, Enrique Huerta Corvalán, Juan Eduardo Paredes Barrientos, Arsenio Poupin Oissel, and Oscar Enrique Valladares Caroca remain unknown to this day.

Source: caucoto.cl 11/4/2021

Date: 11-04-2021

FORMER MILITARY PERSONNEL SENTENCED FOR THE "11TH" DETAINEES AT LA MONEDA WHO WERE EXECUTED BY FIRING SQUAD

Visiting judge Miguel Vásquez Plaza sentenced seven retired Army officers for their responsibility in the crimes of kidnapping and homicide of 23 collaborators and GAP members of President Salvador Allende, who were detained at La Moneda on September 11, 1973, among them the former director of the Investigative Police, Eduardo "Coco" Paredes, Dr. Enrique Paris, and Undersecretary Arsenio Poupin.

In the ruling, the judge sentenced Brigadier (ret.) Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo to 20 years in prison as a co-perpetrator of the crimes of aggravated homicide of Óscar Luis Avilés Jofré, Jaime Antonio Barrios Meza, Manuel Ramón Castro Zamorano, Claudio Raúl Jimeno Grendi, Georges Klein Pipper, Óscar Reinaldo Lagos Ríos, Julio Hernán Moreno Pulgar, Egidio Enrique Paris Roa, Héctor Ricardo Pincheira Núñez, Luis Fernando Rodríguez Riquelme, Jaime Gilson Sotelo Ojeda, Luis Fernando Tapia Martínez, Héctor Daniel Urrutia Molina, Juan Alejandro Vargas Contreras, and Juan José Montiglio Murúa.

Meanwhile, former military personnel Servando Elías Maureira Roa and Jorge Iván Herrera López must serve 9 years in prison, while Teobaldo Segundo Mendoza Vicencio, Eliseo Antonio Cornejo Escobedo, Bernardo Eusebio Soto Segura, and Jorge Ismael Gamboa Álvarez were sentenced to 7 years in prison, all as co-perpetrators of the crimes of aggravated homicide.

In the case of former military personnel Servando Elías Maureira Roa and Jorge Iván Herrera López, they were also given a 5-year prison sentence as co-perpetrators of the crimes of aggravated kidnapping of Sergio Contreras, Daniel Francisco Escobar Cruz, José Freire Medina, Daniel Antonio Gutiérrez Ayala, Enrique Lelio Huerta Corvalán, Juan Eduardo Paredes Barrientos, Arsenio Poupin Oissel, and Óscar Enrique Valladares Caroca.

In the investigation, the judge determined that on the day of the coup, military troops who entered La Moneda proceeded to detain a group of around 50 people, consisting of direct political advisors, members of President Allende’s security detail (GAP), doctors, and officials of the Chilean Investigative Police, who surrendered to the military forces occupying the Palacio de La Moneda.

On September 13, 1973, the aforementioned victims—who were still being held at the Tacna Regiment—were tied hand and foot with wire, then loaded onto a military truck, guarded by officers and military personnel, and immediately transported to the Peldehue military facility in Colina.

"Upon arriving at said place in Peldehue, the aforementioned detainees were taken off the military truck and, according to the evidence gathered in the investigation, the installation of a machine gun was ordered, with which they fired upon said prisoners, who were tied hand and foot with wire, and who were placed at the edge of a well or empty pit previously excavated on said property, and who, upon receiving the bullet impacts, fell into the interior of said pit," the ruling states.

"Once the executions were concluded, the military personnel threw grenades into the pit, which exploded at the site, subsequently covering them with earth and thus burying the bodies of such prisoners; actions that were controlled and verified by an officer of the Army Intelligence Directorate who witnessed the executions from a distance close to the site of the events," it adds.

Further on, the resolution mentions that the Army leadership ordered the remains to be removed from the place where they had been executed, transporting them to an unknown destination (apparently thrown into the sea or in the high mountain range); however, after excavations were carried out at the site where the execution took place, remains were found that were positively identified by the Legal Medical Service, which also established that the deaths were caused by hemorrhagic shock as a consequence of firearm injuries, the medico-legal etiology of the death being of a violent, homicidal nature.

"The rest of the people who were detained at La Moneda on September 11, 1973, and taken out of the Tacna Regiment, namely: Sergio Contreras, Daniel Francisco Escobar Cruz, José Freire Medina, Daniel Antonio Gutiérrez Ayala, Enrique Lelio Huerta Corvalán, Juan Eduardo Paredes Barrientos, Arsenio Poupin Oissel, and Óscar Enrique Valladares Caroca, were not identified among the skeletal remains found there, and their whereabouts remain unknown to this date," it concludes.

Regarding civil matters, most of the claims presented were accepted, ordering the payment of compensation to the victims' families in amounts detailed in the sentence.

Source: lanacion.cl 5/5/2018

Date: 05-05-2018

SML delivers the remains of four former GAP members detained at La Moneda in 1973

The remains of 6 of the 33 people who were detained at La Moneda on September 11, 1973, were delivered by the Legal Medical Service (SML) to their families after verifying their identities.

The skeletal remains were found in 2001 at Fuerte Arteaga, a military facility located in Colina, to which the detainees were transported from the government palace. These remains are part of the bodies that were not removed during the operation known as "Retiro de Televisores" (Television Removal).

The first group of skeletal remains was delivered yesterday. They correspond to Oscar Luis Avilés Jofré, Luis Rodríguez Riquelme, Jaime Gilson Sotelo Ojeda, and Manuel Castro Zamorano, all members of the Group of Friends of President Salvador Allende (GAP).

The results of DNA tests and analysis of the dental pieces found at the site concluded that they died two days after the military coup due to the multiple projectile wounds they presented. The genetic tests were carried out abroad by the Innsbruck laboratory in Austria.

Source: latercera.com 25/9/2010

Date: 09-25-2010

Remains of former GAP members passed in front of Morandé 80

The SML delivered the remains of Óscar Luis Avilés Jofré, Luis Rodríguez Riquelme, JAIME GILSON SOTELO OJEDA, and Manuel Castro Zamorano; who were part of Allende's personal guard.

The hearses with the remains of four members of the Group of Friends of President Salvador Allende, who were detained in the vicinity and at La Moneda after the military coup of September 11, 1973, passed by the outside of Morandé 80, the place where their families and loved ones paid tribute to them.

The Legal Medical Service delivered the remains of Óscar Luis Avilés Jofré, Luis Rodríguez Riquelme, Jaime Gilson Sotelo Ojeda, and Manuel Castro Zamorano; who were part of Allende's personal guard.

At the site, Patricio Castro, brother of Manuel Castro, sketched out some heartfelt words in which he highlighted that "it is a day of great joy to find our loved ones; I wish all the disappeared people would appear one day. They left through this door and they arrived at this door, and I know that God received them a long time ago."

Subsequently, the caravan will head to the Memorial for the Forcibly Disappeared at the General Cemetery, the place where the remains of Óscar Luis Avilés Jofré and Luis Rodríguez Riquelme will rest; they will be joined by Enrique Paris Roa and Héctor Pincheira Núñez, Allende's advisors, whose remains were delivered by the SML.

A tribute and a symbolic funeral will be held at the site. The remains of Manuel Castro Zamorano and Jaime Sotelo Ojeda will be transported by their families to Santa Cruz and Maipú, respectively. In all cases, these are findings of remains at Fuerte Arteaga that were not removed during the inhumations carried out by dictatorship agents in the so-called "Operación Retiro de Televisores."

Source: ADNRADIO.CL 25/9/2010

Date: 09-25-2010

11 advisors to Salvador Allende murdered in Peldehue identified: The other traces of La Moneda

The confirmation of identities was made by the Human Rights Unit of the Legal Medical Service with the support of an Austrian genetic laboratory. They suffered a double death: the bullets of the machine gun and the exhumation to be disappeared at sea.

On September 11, 1973, at La Moneda and its surroundings, nearly 40 people were arrested, most of them advisors and GAP members of Allende.

The remains of 11 forcibly disappeared persons arrested on the day of the military coup at the Palacio de La Moneda were definitively identified by the Legal Medical Service with the collaboration of the genetics laboratory in Innsbruck, Austria.

The information was delivered yesterday to the families by the director of the SML, Dr. Patricio Bustos, who had previously delivered the reports to Judge Juan Fuentes Belmar, who is investigating the case of the disappeared from La Moneda.

The identities correspond to Enrique Paris Roa, 40 years old at the time of his detention; Héctor Pincheira Núñez (28); Óscar Lagos Ríos (21); Julio Moreno Pulgar (24), Julio Tapia Martínez (24), Héctor Urrutia Molina (22), Juan Vargas Contreras (23), Óscar Avilés Jofré (28), Jaime Sotelo Ojeda (33), Manuel Castro Zamorano (23), and Luis Rodríguez Riquelme.

From this list, Paris and Pincheira were advisors to President Salvador Allende and the rest were members of the President's personal security (GAP). The identities of Lagos, Moreno, Tapia, and Vargas appeared as "thrown into the sea" in the report on the final destination of 200 forcibly disappeared persons that the Army delivered in January 2001, following the human rights dialogue table held in 2000.

"Despite the passage of time, technological limitations, and the obstacles placed by the perpetrators of these acts, we have managed, with the multidisciplinary team of the Human Rights Unit of our service, to advance in the process of identifying victims of the dictatorship with a very meticulous methodology in the area of Archaeology, Anthropology, as well as foreign laboratories accredited for DNA extraction, obtaining positive results," said Dr.

Patricio Bustos.

On September 11, 1973, at La Moneda and its surroundings, nearly 40 people were arrested, most of them advisors and GAP members of Allende. The detainees were taken to the Tacna regiment and two days later, about 20 of them were taken out in two trucks, driven to the Peldehue training camp, north of Santiago, and killed by firing squad with a machine gun.

The commander of the Tacna at the time was Colonel Joaquín Ramírez Pineda.

Those who received the detainees in Peldehue to supervise that they were indeed eliminated were Major Pedro Espinoza Bravo, who later joined the Caravan of Death and the DINA, and Lieutenant Julio Vandorsee Cerda.

The then-sub-lieutenant of the Tacna, Jorge Iván Herrera López, operated the machine gun, killing them one by one, as he told La Nación Domingo in December 2002. The bodies were thrown into a dry well about 10 meters deep, which they then dynamited to cover the corpses.

THE EXHUMATION

Around Christmas 1978, a Tacna detachment now commanded by Colonel Hernán Canales Varas located the well and exhumed the bodies to put them in sacks and throw them into the sea aboard a Puma helicopter of the Army Aviation Command, then in charge of Colonel Fernando Darrigrandi Márquez.

The exhumation was part of the so-called Operation Retiro de Televisores, which was carried out throughout the country to exhume the bodies of murdered prisoners buried in clandestine graves and throw them into the sea or incinerate them, as happened in some southern regiments.

The order was issued by the dictator Augusto Pinochet through a cryptogram from the Army General Command sent to all regiments in the country at the end of 1978.

In the summer of 2001, Judge Amanda Valdovinos inspected the site in Peldehue and found the well from which the bodies were exhumed. From there, nearly 500 bone fragments were extracted that remained from the exhumation carried out with a backhoe.

The information had been provided under anonymity at the aforementioned dialogue table; however, it did not correspond to the site where the remains were finally found.

For the exhumation, nine retired officers and non-commissioned officers were sentenced to only 270 days in prison each, with supervised release.

The process for the crimes of the disappeared from La Moneda remains open, and among those processed are, among others, Pedro Espinoza himself, Ramírez Pineda, Jorge Iván Herrera, General (ret.) Herman Brady, who was the commander of the Santiago Military Garrison, and a group of already retired non-commissioned officers who participated in the transport of the prisoners to Peldehue and who later also formed part of the team that exhumed the bodies.

Some of them are Eliseo Cornejo, Bernardo Soto, Teobaldo Mendoza, and Juan Riquelme Silva.

Source: La Nación 26 January 2010

Date: 01-26-2010

Court approves extension of extradition for General (ret.) Joaquín Ramírez Pineda

The commander of the Tacna Regiment in 1973 is being prosecuted in Chile for aggravated kidnappings in the so-called Palacio de La Moneda case.

The Supreme Court extended the extradition request to Argentina for Luis Joaquín Ramírez Pineda, commander of the Tacna Regiment in 1973, who is detained in Buenos Aires.

Ramírez Pineda is being prosecuted in our country by Judge Juan Eduardo Fuentes Belmar in the investigation into aggravated kidnappings in the so-called Palacio de La Moneda case.

In a unanimous ruling, the ministers of the Second Chamber, Nibaldo Segura, Rubén Ballesteros, Jaime Rodríguez, Hugo Dolmestch, and Carlos Künsemüller, accepted the request made by Judge Fuentes Belmar in the case of 9 victims who have been disappeared since September 11, 1973.

They are Jaime Gilson Sotelo Ojeda, Sergio Contreras, Héctor Ricardo Pincheira Núñez, José Freire Medina, Juan Eduardo Paredes Barrientos, Egidio Enrique Paris Roa, Manuel Ramón Castro Zamorano, Daniel Antonio Gutiérrez Ayala, and Fernando Rodríguez Riquelme.

In 2003, the Supreme Court decided to send an extradition request for the person prosecuted for the kidnapping cases of Jaime Antonio Barrios Meza, Daniel Francisco Escobar Cruz, Enrique Lelio Huerta Corvalán, Claudio Raúl Jimeno Grendi, Jorge Klein Pipper, Óscar Reinaldo Lagos Ríos, Juan José Montiglio Murúa, Julio Hernán Moreno Pulgar, Arsenio Poupin Oissel, Julio Fernando Tapia Martínez, Óscar Enrique Valladares Caroca, and Juan Alejandro Vargas Contreras, also occurring from 1973 at the Palacio de La Moneda.

The background information for the extension of the extradition request has already been sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to be forwarded to Argentina for its processing in that country.

Source: El Mercurio 20 March 2009

Date: 03-20-2009

Judge dismisses case regarding the removal of bodies of forcibly disappeared persons

Judge Juan Eduardo Fuentes, in charge of investigating the removal of bodies from the Peldehue Regiment in 1978, dismissed the judicial action against retired members of the Army, considering that they are not connected to the main crime of the case, permanent kidnapping.

The judge's decision was applied in the case that occurred in 1978 with the bodies of the former advisors to President Salvador Allende who were detained at the Palacio de La Moneda on September 11, 1973.

As reported by Radio Cooperativa, the ruling renders ineffective the prosecutions that were pending against retired non-commissioned officers Fernando Remigio Burgos Díaz, Sergio Antonio Medina Salazar, Isidro Custodio Durán Muñoz, and retired officer José Jaime Darrigrandi Marques.

The ruling maintains that the act constitutes an infringement of Article 144 of the Sanitary Code and does not have the character of a "crime against humanity."

The prosecutions rendered ineffective corresponded to the alleged removal of the remains of former Central Bank manager Jaime Barrios Meza, Palace intendant Enrique Huerta Corvalán, PS leader Claudio Jimeno Grendi, communist leader Georges Klein Pipper, former Undersecretary General of Government Arsenio Poupin Oissel, and former chief of staff of the Undersecretariat of the Interior Daniel Escobar Cruz.

To them are added Oscar Lagos Ríos, Juan Montiglio Murúa, Julio Moreno Pulgar, Julio Tapia Martínez, Oscar Valladares, and Juan Vargas Contreras, all members of the Group of Friends of the President and militants of the Socialist Party.

Source: El Mercurio 1 September 2005

Date: 09-01-2005

Correspond to forcibly disappeared persons from La Moneda

Visiting judge Amanda Valdovinos, in charge of verifying information from the Dialogue Table regarding the location of the remains of about 20 forcibly disappeared persons inside the Justo Arteaga Regiment in Colina, discovered the exact place where the bodies were clandestinely inhumed after the military coup of September 11, 1973.

An exclusive source confirmed to La Voz that the remains are in a 15-meter-deep well.

Last January, excavation work on the land—which was donated by the Catholic Church to the Army for war practice before the military coup—focused on a 15 by 13-meter pit, from which more than 400 bone fragments scattered at a depth of about three meters have been extracted to date.

However, soil studies carried out by a botanist and by the National Geology and Mining Service (Sernageomin) made it possible to specify that the fragments correspond to the remains left by the removal of the bones at the end of the 70s.

The precision of the specialists is such that it was determined that, due to their location, they were dragged from one of the ends of the excavation site through the use of a backhoe, whose characteristics (make, model, and ownership) are accredited in the process.

Well equivalent to six floors

The fragments, including skulls, phalanges, vertebrae, teeth, and dental arches, come from a well about five meters in diameter and about 15 meters deep—equivalent to a six-story building—where the bodies were thrown once the detainees were executed by firing squad and dynamited (using grenades) inside.

In the coming days, excavations will focus on that place, and it is not ruled out that findings of great magnitude of bones will be verified.

So far, with the collections carried out, the Legal Medical Service has been able to approximate about ten people whose remains were at the site. However, with the dental pieces and the background information available in the process, five identities have been confirmed, which will only be officialized once the proceedings are exhausted.

The families of the alleged victims have been informed periodically by Judge Valdovinos. The latest report delivered by the judge to the Supreme Court also confirms errors in the report delivered by the Army to the Dialogue Table, since the place has been located thanks to testimonies from locals and former uniformed personnel who have approached the court voluntarily.

All the background information gathered by Judge Amanda Valdovinos will be referred to the corresponding criminal or military courts to determine those responsible for the homicides and the illegal inhumations and exhumations accredited in the investigation.

Who are they? According to the Rettig Report, 21 were the La Moneda detainees who ended tragically in Colina. President Allende's advisors: Eduardo Paredes Barrientos, former director of Investigations; Enrique París Roa; Jaime Barrios Meza, general manager of the Central Bank; Sergio Contreras; Daniel Escobar Cruz; Enrique Huerta Corvalán; Claudio Jimeno Grendi; Dr.

Georges Klein Pipper; Héctor Pincheira Núñez; and Arsenio Poupin Oissel, Undersecretary General of Government. The GAP members: José Freire Medina, Daniel Gutiérrez Ayala, Oscar Lagos Ríos, Juan Montiglio Murúa, Julio Moreno Pulgar, Luis Rodríguez Riquelme, Jaime Sotelo Ojeda, Julio Tapia Martínez, Héctor Urrutia Molina, Oscar Valladares Caroca, Juan Vargas Contreras, and Oscar Luis Avilés Jofré.

Source: Primera Linea 4 April 2002

Date: 04-04-2002