Cardiologists, psychiatrists, dentists, traumatologists, pediatricians, psychologists, gynecologists, and otolaryngologists applied the knowledge they acquired to save lives toward the administration of torture and executions against hundreds of political prisoners.

Most of them are still employed in public hospitals, private clinics, and health institutions of the Armed Forces. The Hippocratic Oath states in some of its parts: "I swear by Apollo the Physician and Asclepius and Hygeia and Panacea and all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfill this oath according to my ability and judgment.

I will hold him who taught me this art as equal to my parents; he will share in my livelihood and if he wishes, he will share in my goods. I will consider his offspring as my brothers, teaching them this art without charging them, if they wish to learn it.

I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of the sick, and I will abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous. I will not give a deadly drug to any, though it be asked of me, nor will I counsel such.

In like manner, I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion; I will keep my life and my art pure. Now, if I fulfill this oath and do not violate it, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and art, being honored by all men forever; but if I transgress and forswear myself, may the opposite befall me." Evidently, those who placed their knowledge at the service of torture and death violated this oath and all norms regarding the defense of human rights.

The worst part is that, with the protection of the Armed Forces or the extreme negligence of public hospital directors appointed by the Concertación, they remain in their positions, treating people who have not the slightest idea that "their doctor" has such a sinister past.

This is what happened when the public protests known as funas began, with hundreds of patients starting to call the doctors to confront them and cancel their visits upon learning of the facts. Among other cases, this occurred with Alejandro Forero at the INDISA Clinic, Sergio Muñoz at the Barros Luco Hospital, and Roberto Lailhacar at his office on Calle Obispo Salas in the commune of Providencia.

From the first days

The collaboration of doctors who had sided with the coup plotters began in the very first days of the Pinochet dictatorship. The case of José María Fuentealba, a health official for the Army, is one of them.

On October 27, 1973, Néstor Hernán Castillo Sepúlveda, 23, Regional Secretary of the Communist Youth; José Rosendo Pérez Ríos, 24, employee and MAPU militant; and Juan Vera Oyarzún, 53, laborer, Regional Secretary of the Communist Party, union leader, and former councilman of Punta Arenas, were handed over by the Argentine Gendarmerie to Chilean military personnel in the border town of Río Mayo.

On September 20, a group of four people, including Juan Vera, had crossed the border to seek political asylum in Argentina. Two days later, they were turned over to the Argentine Gendarmerie by the owner of a local ranch, taken to Aldea Veleiros, and subsequently to Río Mayo.

In this town, they remained under the custody of the 38th Squadron of the Gendarmerie. Furthermore, on September 28, José Rosendo Pérez and Néstor Castillo, who had also arrived from Chile days earlier, were arrested at a boarding house in Río Mayo.

Along with Juan Vera, they were tasked with performing labor at the Río Mayo Municipality while they remained detained. This lasted until October 27, when they were handed over to a military commando composed of Army Captain Joaquín Molina, a Carabineros officer named Salinas, Sub-officer Evaldo Reidlich Hains, and Dr.

José María Fuentealba Suazo, who were traveling in an ambulance from the Coyhaique Regional Hospital. According to the newspaper La Epoca on November 2, 1988, the military "informed them that their families were waiting for them at the border.

Once in Chilean territory, the military patrol forced the group to board a pickup truck and began the return trip toward the Las Bandurrias prison camp. Hours later, the vehicle arrived at the military facility.

Only the uniformed men and the doctor were inside. The three detainees have never appeared to this day." The justice system indicted Dr. Fuentealba Suazo and retired Sub-officer Evaldo Reidlich, while proceedings continue to identify the other member of the patrol, and inspections are being carried out at the Coyhaique Forest Reserve of the El Claro Cemetery, the place where the three Chilean citizens were allegedly executed and forcibly disappeared.

Joaquín Molina Fuenzalida, the captain who commanded the group, was murdered by Manuel Contreras Valdebenito, son of the head of the DINA. As in this case, the cardiologist from Punta Arenas, Guillermo Aranda, and Alejandro Babaich Schmith, Director of the "Cirujano Guzmán" Hospital in that city, also appear from the very beginning, recognized by many torture survivors from that locality.

Another is Darwin Arraigada Loyola, at that time a leader of the Medical Association of Chile, who was subsequently appointed by the Military Junta as Director General of Health and who is accused, among other things, of turning in numerous leftist doctors—more than 30 of whom were murdered—and participating in the plan to administer drugs in food to kill political prisoners.

The doctor Raúl Díaz Doll, an official of the General Directorate of the National Health Service, was a member of the military commission that investigated the political affiliation of doctors. He organized the spying within the service and participated personally in the interrogations of detained and tortured doctors.

In Iquique, the pediatrician Werner Gálvez, a Colonel in the Medical Corps, administered intravenous injections of sodium pentothal, alternating with biological serum, during the interrogation of prisoners of war.

Meanwhile, in Valdivia, the traumatologist Fernando Jara de la Maza participated directly in the application of torture to detainees. In the province of Concepción, a Carabineros doctor named Minoletti advised the torturers of Fuerte Borgoño and issued "natural death" certificates to cover up the crimes.

Meanwhile, in Tejas Verdes, the cradle of the DINA, Dr. Vittorio Orvieto Teplizky performed collaborative functions in the tortures committed at the Prisoner Camp Number Two of that military facility; he would later join the Health Brigade of said illicit association, appearing as director of the clandestine Santa Lucía clinic.

In the vicinity of Santiago, the radiologist Bernardo Pulto, together with the military prosecutor of Melipilla, personally took part in the torture sessions of prisoners.

The Health Brigade

The DINA had its own team for the care of service personnel, collaborating prisoners, and the application of torment to those it considered its "enemies." Along with the aforementioned Vittorio Orvieto Teplizky, the team included Werner Zanghellini, Hernán Taricco, Nader Nasser, Osvaldo Eugenio Leyton Bahamondez, Rodrigo Vélez, Samuel Valdivia Soto, Luis Hernán Santibáñez Santelices, Eduardo Contreras Balcarce, the gynecologist Juan Pablo Figueroa Yáñez, the otolaryngologist Eugenio Fantuzzi Alliende, the psychiatrist Roberto Lailhacar Chávez, the dentist Sergio Roberto Muñoz Bonta, and the nurse María Eliana Bolumburú Taboada. Another doctor, of whom only the surname is known, is the psychologist Bassaure. Without being part of the structure, the doctor Gregorio Burgos of the Los Angeles Regiment collaborated with DINA agents, looking for ways to torture without the detainee losing consciousness. Many of them seem to no longer practice in their respective areas, although they remain nearby, such as the nurse María Eliana Bolumburú, who works in a chemical laboratory on Calle Ejército. Others remain active and assume prominent roles in their profession, such as Roberto Emilio Lailhacar Chávez, who in the late 90s and until 2001 held the position of president of the Chilean Society of Sexology and Sexual Education, whose headquarters operated out of his private office at Obispo Salas 290 in the commune of Providencia. The lawyer Víctor Manuel Avilés Mejías, a member of the DINA's Legal Department, joined this organization as a "natural person." For his part, the dental surgeon Sergio Muñoz Bonta, who worked at the clandestine Santa Lucía and London clinics, treated, among other people, Marcia Merino, "la flaca Alejandra," and was a "founding partner" of the front company Pedro Diet Lobos, through which the DINA laundered money from the State, arms and drug trafficking, and legalized the theft of houses, cars, and assets of those prisoners who were forcibly disappeared. Here he was a "colleague," for example, of Francisco Ferrer Lima, Emilio Sajuria Alvear, Ricardo Lawrence Mires, Fernando Gómez Segovia, Augusto Pinochet Hiriart, and Pedro Espinoza Bravo. Luis Hernán Santibáñez Santelices appears implicated in the disappearance of Juan Elías Cortés Alruiz, a communist militant kidnapped in April 1976, a case for which he was even called to testify by Judge Servando Jordán in 1980, along with Germán Barriga Muñoz, Emilio Troncoso Vivillos, Heriberto Acevedo, Vianel Valdivieso, and Julio Leyton Robles, brother of Manuel Leyton, who died under strange circumstances at the London clinic. Dr. Santibáñez acknowledged on July 17, 1980, that he had been part of the DINA as a doctor. He reported that the London Clinic existed on Calle Almirante Barroso, which was under the charge of Dr. Taricco. When shown a photo of Cortés, he said the face looked familiar and that he might have seen that person at the San Juan de Dios Hospital. In the same proceeding, he was questioned about the case of Gabriel Castillo Tapia, who has been missing since August 5, 1976. Another doctor, Osvaldo Leyton Bahamondes, is implicated in the death of Manuel Leyton Robles; he signed a death certificate stating that the DINA agent had died due to an epileptic seizure and cardiac arrhythmia. The death allegedly occurred at Almirante Barroso No. 76, where the London Clinic operated. The truth is that Manuel Leyton was murdered by his "colleagues" after his role as a DINA member was discovered following his participation in a job commissioned by Germán Barriga: the theft of a Renault car. For his part, Sergio Marcelo Virgilio Bocaz, after finishing his work at the DINA, based at the Santa Lucía Clinic, continued working at the CNI Logistics Command, and toward the end of the dictatorship, he appeared in various types of advertising, such as for Nescafé, Tritón cookies, and financial institutions. He still works at the Félix Bulnes Hospital. Dr. Eugenio Fantuzzi has his private practice and is Head of the Otolaryngology Service at the Dávila Clinic. The gynecologist Juan Pablo Figueroa sees patients from Monday to Friday at the Arauco Clinic, and Hernán Taricco Lavín continues to work for the Army at the Maipú Military Medical Center (see box). Werner Zanghellini Martínez, who injected the detainee Jorge Fuentes Alarcón with the rabies virus, quickly abandoned his office, located at Galvarino Gallardo 1983, when he was confronted by dozens of people a couple of years ago. It is known that he continues to see patients at an office on Avenida Providencia that belongs to a relative, although his name does not appear on the plaque attached to the door.

The CNI and the Joint Command

Although the presence of other doctors is known within the Joint Command, which was basically composed of members of the Air Force, the one who has been prosecuted as a permanent part of this illicit association is the cardiologist Alejandro Jorge Forero Alvarez, a squadron commander in the FACH and an official at the institutional hospital.

Named in most of the cases involving the Joint Command, it is known that in 1976 he served as a second soldier at the El Bosque Air Base and at the Colina Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment, used as a clandestine detention center by the FACH.

In this place, he allegedly participated by supervising tortures and drugging prisoners who were taken out to be forcibly disappeared. Forero participated in Patria y Libertad during the government of the Unidad Popular, where he met Roberto Fuentes Morrison, alias "el Wally." Already during the dictatorship, he was prosecuted by Judge Carlos Cerda, but that process was closed and amnestied by a judge appointed specifically for that purpose.

For the crimes of illicit association and illegal detention of Víctor Vega Riquelme, he was prosecuted along with 20 other members of the Joint Command. In the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE), Jorge León Alessandrini, a dentist and civilian agent, appears implicated in the murder of union leader Tucapel Jiménez, where he allegedly acted by providing the murder weapon.

The CNI also had its own medical team, especially in the clandestine torture centers located in Santiago, such as the Borgoña Barracks, and others in the regions. Cases that have gained notoriety have exposed some of them, for example, those implicated in the death by torture of the teacher Federico Alvarez Santibáñez in August 1979.

The young MIR militant was handed over by Carabineros to the CNI, where he was subjected to terrible duress while being "monitored" by health professionals to prevent his death. Among these appear Luis Losada Fuenzalida, Manfred Jurgensen Caesar, and Camilo Azar Saba, all sanctioned by the Medical Association on March 31, 1986.

Losada Fuenzalida signed a report indicating that the teacher was in good physical condition only an hour before the death of Alvarez Santibáñez. Camilo Azar is a traumatologist and orthopedist, so he knew perfectly well the most sensitive areas of the body that could cause the greatest pain with the least danger of death.

However, in this case, they did not serve: Federico Alvarez died due to multiple contusions, hemoptysis, and pulmonary insufficiency. Another case is that of the transport worker from La Serena, Mario Fernández López, kidnapped by the CNI in October 1984.

After the death by torture of Fernández, doctors Víctor Carcuro Correa and Guido Mario Félix Díaz Paci, participants in the application of torment to the detainee, were sanctioned by the Medical Association.

Guido Díaz Paci, a well-known Army doctor, lied to the doctors on duty at the La Serena Hospital, claiming that the detainee came from a Carabineros station and not from the CNI, and requesting that the doctors hide the detainee's condition.

Once Mario Fernández died, Díaz Paci tried to get the physician who had performed emergency surgery on the victim to falsify the diagnosis of his death, hiding the true reasons for the passing. Back in 1974, when he participated in the exhumation of the body of María Avalos, murdered along with her husband Bernardo Lejdermann in December 1973 by a patrol from the Arica Regiment of La Serena, he lied when issuing a death certificate, claiming that the woman had blown herself up with dynamite.

Like many of these "doctors of death," Díaz Paci continues to work in La Serena.

The workplace H. Darwin Arraigada Loyola, General Medicine. Sees patients at Santa María 217, office 34, commune of Independencia. Phone 7372626. Dr. Eugenio Fantuzzi Alliende, Otolaryngologist. Chief Physician of the Otolaryngology Service at the Dávila Clinic, located at Avenida Recoleta 464, Santiago.

Private Office at Luis Thayer Ojeda Norte 073, office 606, Providencia. Phone 233 7524. Fax 234 1740. Dr. Juan Pablo Figueroa Yáñez, Gynecologist and Obstetrician. Sees patients from Monday to Friday at the Arauco Clinic, located at Parque Arauco.

Avenida Kennedy 5413-B. Phone 2990299. Werner Zanghellini Martínez, Cardiologist. Last known address: Galvarino Gallardo 1983, Providencia. Now sees patients without advertising at a relative's office in the same commune.

Sergio Marcelo Virgilio Bocaz, General Medicine. Still employed at the Félix Bulnes Hospital, located at Leoncio Fernández 2655, Quinta Normal, Santiago. Hernán Horacio Taricco Lavín, Pediatrician. Sees patients Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, from 12:00 to 14:30, at the Maipú Military Medical Center, located at Avenida Ramón Freire No. 6097, Villa Militar Oeste, Paradero 3 1/2 de Pajaritos, Comuna Estación Central.

Phones: 450 8564, 450 8565, 450 8566. Fax: 4508563. Manfred Jurgensen Caesar, General Medicine. Works at the Military Hospital of Santiago. Alejandro Forero Alvarez, Cardiologist. Works at the INDISA Clinic, Avenida Santa María 1810, phone 2254555.

Private Office Apoquindo 6275, office 116. Guido Díaz Paci, Pediatrician. Sees patients at the No. 21 "Arica" Infantry Regiment of the Second Army Division based in La Serena, under the command of Brigadier General José Gabriel Gaete Paredes.

Camilo Azar Saba, Traumatologist. Since August 1, 2003, sees patients at Integramedica Alto Las Condes, located at Avenida Kennedy 9001, 7th floor, Mall Alto Las Condes. Phones: 6366666, 6796500, 6796566, and 6796567.

Assistant: Fabiola Banda, phone 6796576. Sergio Roberto Muñoz Bonta, Dentist. Sees patients at the Barros Luco-Trudeau Hospital and at the "San Lucas" dental office at José Domingo Santa María 1338. Phones 7377674 and 7379978. Roberto Lailhacar Chávez, Psychiatrist. Continues to see patients at Obispo Salas 290, Office 168. Phone 2239405. By Julio Oliva García

Source: elsiglo.cl, February 13, 2004

A little-known history: Doctors who participated in torture and death during the dictatorship

In Chile, human rights violations during the dictatorship have been associated primarily with members of the Armed Forces. However, other perpetrators have gradually come to light: doctors who turned into criminals, supervising and participating in torture and murder.

Several doctors have been accused in various human rights cases. It will be recalled that Judge Alejandro Madrid once prosecuted doctors Eduardo Arriagada Rehren and Sergio Rosende for qualified homicide, for the poisoning of prisoners during the dictatorship, and for the attempted murder of other prisoners as part of tests to prove the effectiveness of botulinum toxin, which was later used in the assassination of President Frei Montalva.

Various medical professionals from different specialties actively lent themselves to and participated in crimes against humanity. Reneging on their oath, they applied the knowledge they had acquired to save lives toward the administration of torture and executions against hundreds of political prisoners.

Some were dismissed in "special trials" conducted by military courts. Others continue to practice to this day in various public entities as well as in private clinics such as Dávila and Indisa.

Doctor and member of the CNI

A case of proven participation in torture, death, and the subsequent attempt to cover it up involved Dr. Guido Mario Félix Díaz Paci. He was an Army doctor and, at the time, also attached to the CNI. This military health officer of the Army participated in the tragic circumstances that ended in the death of the transporter Mario Fernández López (DC) in La Serena.

This DC leader died as a consequence of torture applied at the CNI barracks in that city in October 1984. He was transferred to the La Serena Hospital, at which time "Doctor" Díaz Paci lied to the doctors on duty at that medical center, claiming that the detainee had come from a Carabineros station and not from the CNI, requesting that the doctors conceal the detainee's condition.

Once Mario Fernández López had died, this doctor and CNI agent attempted to have the professional who had performed emergency surgery to try to save his life falsify the death certificate, concealing the true causes of death. Guido Díaz Paci was expelled from the Medical Association.

This was not his only intervention in human rights matters: In 1974, he exhumed the body of María Ávalos, who had been murdered along with her husband, Bernardo Lejdermann, in December 1973 by a patrol from the Arica Regiment of La Serena.

In the death certificate, this doctor claimed that the woman had blown herself up with dynamite. He has also been accused of being the author of the tiro de gracia (coup de grâce) against fellow doctor Jorge Jordán.

The Coyhaique Case

A few were convicted. This is the case of doctor José María Fuentealba Suazo, who was sentenced in case file No. 16.996-A and B, known as the "Coyhaique Case." He was sentenced to seven years of presidio mayor in its minimum degree as the perpetrator of the crimes of qualified kidnapping of three people. He died in 2012.

In October 1973, Fuentealba traveled to Río Mayo, Argentina. His mission was to transport 3 detainees, Juan Vera, Néstor Castillo, and José Rosendo Pérez, who had been captured by the Argentine Gendarmerie while they were escaping to that country in search of political asylum.

The group in charge of transporting the prisoners was led by Captain Joaquín Molina. It also included a Carabineros officer named Salinas and Non-Commissioned Officer Evaldo Reidlich Hains.

The three prisoners were loaded into a vehicle with the markings of the Coyhaique Regional Hospital and transported in the direction of Chile. They never reached their destination, the Las Bandurrias prison camp.

The vehicle did reach the military compound, but only the two uniformed men and the doctor were inside. The three detainees never appeared. María Vera, daughter of one of the forcibly disappeared, Juan Vera, stated that "the prisoners at Las Bandurrias told me that the doctor (Fuentealba) looked pale, that he didn't speak, and that he was trembling."

The following is a transcript of the statement given before Judge Sepúlveda by an employee of the Coyhaique Regional Hospital: "(...) Unfortunately, I do not remember the exact date, (...) but I can tell you that, one night in the early morning (1 or 2 a.m.), Dr.

Fuentealba ordered me to help unload some bodies from a Mercedes Benz truck (UNIMOG) that were wrapped in Army blankets (there were about six corpses). Afterward, they were left in the Coyhaique Hospital morgue, and out of curiosity, a colleague and I checked the bodies, one by one.

I recognized a man with the surname Mansilla (in his personal statement, he changes this name to Vera) and a classmate of mine for more than six years, José Rosendo Pérez Azócar, if I remember correctly (40 years ago).

At that moment, Dr. Fuentealba appeared, put his pistol to my colleague's chest, and said: 'You didn't see anything here!' And we went back to work. Later, when we returned the next day, the bodies were gone.

It should be noted that Dr. Fuentealba was dressed in Army attire (camouflage clothing) and carried a SIG rifle plus a pistol, just like the other military men who accompanied him, all armed, except for the CNI officials."

Supervising torture

Many doctors not only witnessed the torture but assisted in it. They applied various medications during interrogations, such as the so-called "truth serum" (sodium pentothal). As indicated, they also falsified documents, adulterated medical records, and issued death certificates with causes of death that concealed the responsibility of intelligence agencies in the deaths of the victims.

When mandatory membership was removed from professional associations, those entities, and in particular the Medical Association, lost the power to exercise ethical controls over those who were not their members.

It has sanctioned several of them, although the maximum sanction has been expulsion from the guild. The dictatorship stripped this power from professional associations, and it remains so to this day.

Doctors were required to certify the condition of the tortured to ensure they would not die before extracting the information the torturers required. They had to ensure they did not lose consciousness, and for that, it was necessary to "diagnose" the type of torture that should be applied in each case.

There were special "health" units in some repressive units, composed of doctors, nurses, psychiatrists, and other "specialists."

DINA Health Brigade

Although it was created as a unit for the care of DINA service personnel, it ended up applying torment to political prisoners. According to judicial files, the following provided "services" there: Vittorio Orvieto Teplizky, Hernán Taricco, Werner Zanghellini, Nader Nasser, Rodrigo Vélez, Samuel Valdivia Soto, Luis Hernán Santibáñez Santelices, Osvaldo Eugenio Leyton Bahamondez, Eduardo Contreras Balcarce, the gynecologist Juan Pablo Figueroa Yáñez, the otolaryngologist Eugenio Fantuzzi Alliende, the psychiatrist Roberto Lailhacar Chávez, the dentist Sergio Roberto Muñoz Bontá, and the nurse María Eliana Bolumburú Taboada.

Luis Hernán Santibáñez Santelices appears implicated in the disappearance of Juan Elías Cortés Alruiz, a communist militant kidnapped in April 1976, a case for which he was even called to testify by Minister Servando Jordán in 1980, along with Germán Barriga Muñoz (a retired colonel who committed suicide), among others.

Dr. Santibáñez acknowledged having been part of the DINA as a doctor. He confessed that the London Clinic existed on Almirante Barroso Street, which was under the charge of Dr. Taricco. In the documentary evidence, when shown a photo of Cortés, he noted that "the face looked familiar."

Certifying sudden deaths

Dr. América González Figueroa performed duties at the Legal Medical Service (SML) during the dictatorship. There, she falsified information regarding the causes of death of several political executions. Among the cases in which she is implicated is the death of Carlos Godoy Echegoyen due to torture.

She also made the murder of Cecilia Magni Camino appear as a "sudden death," claiming that "she had drowned," concealing the traces of torture on her body. She also participated in certifications in the crime of the student leader of the State Technical University, the DC Mario Martínez, who appeared on the coast of Rocas de Santo Domingo after being kidnapped in Santiago.

She participated in the examinations that culminated in the declaration of Pinochet's dementia. In the final period, while still at the SML, she was appointed head of the Department of Thanatology and acting director of the service.

Doctors made torture "professional"

In Chile, torture was not a widespread practice before 1973. Even less was it a State policy, as it became after the coup d'état. Human rights organizations have concluded that, in 1973 and 1974, a large number of uniformed personnel and civilians supporting the military coup applied torture indiscriminately and as "something legitimate." Chilean military personnel were trained and assisted in the efficient application of torture.

So were civilians and health professionals. Brazilian and American military personnel acted as instructors in these matters, and in our country, there were prominent students. If, with the habitual practice of torture, those who executed it lost "sensitivity" and it was no longer uncomfortable to perform, imagine if the torturer was also a psychopath or sadist, as there indeed were.

The most prominent became true professional torturers. However, in the course of the first months of the repression, torture was carried out by uniformed personnel who had never executed it before and who could not be classified as psychopaths. (Association of Lawyers for Human Rights, n.d.).

The DINA and the CNI were the ones who applied it without any limits of any nature. Any means that humiliated the victim and obtained what was sought through torture was valid for the torturers. Physical and psychological violence, by personal means (feet and fists) or by material means (truncheons, electricity applied indiscriminately, etc.), and even through animals (rats and rape dogs), were the "specialty" of certain clandestine detention centers, such as the so-called "venda sexy."

The participation of professionals in torture sessions, especially doctors and psychologists, is a fact that is not only recorded in the minds and memories of those victims who survived them, but also in the thousands of files that account for the atrocities of the dictatorship.

There are also studies such as those by Becker and Pollarolo, 1983, and pronouncements by the Medical Association of Chile, 1983.

There were more than believed and many are unpunished

The list of doctors that was leaked by human rights organizations and funas (public protests) against criminals against humanity, apart from Díaz Paci and Fuentealba Suazo, is composed of, among others:

Darwin Arriagada; Camilo Azar Saba; Víctor Carcuro Correa; Raúl Díaz Doll; Guillermo Aranda; Alejandro Babaich Schmith; Gregorio Burgos; Alejandro Jorge Forero Álvarez; Werner Gálvez; Fernando Jara de la Maza; Manfred Jurgensen Caesar; Luis Losada Fuenzalida; Vittorio Orvieto Teplizky; Osvaldo Leyton Bahamondes; Bernardo Pulto; Sergio Marcelo Virgilio Bocaz; Luis Hernán Santibáñez Santelices; Hernán Horacio Taricco Lavín; Werner Zanghellini Martínez, among many others.

Part of the Hippocratic Oath taken by doctors:

"I swear by Apollo the Physician and Asclepius and Hygeia and Panacea and all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfill this my oath to the best of my power and judgment (...) I will follow that regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of the sick, and I will abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous.

I will not give a deadly drug to any, even if asked for it, nor will I counsel such a course."

"Into whatever houses I enter, I will go for the benefit of the sick, abstaining from all intentional error and corruption (...) Now, if I fulfill this oath and do not break it, may the fruits of life and art be mine, may I be honored by all men for all time, and may the opposite occur if I break it and am a perjurer."

Source: semanario-alternativas.info, June 21, 2014

Valdivia: Doctor prosecuted as alleged accomplice to torture in the so-called "Plan Z"

The Justice system issued a prosecution against a military doctor for his alleged responsibility in the torture carried out in Valdivia during the dictatorship against former authorities and leftist leaders, within the framework of the so-called "Plan Z."

Minister Álvaro Mesa issued a prosecution against the doctor Marcelo Jara de la Maza, within the framework of the case for illegal coercion and torture against the former intendant of Valdivia, Sandor Arancibia, plus other former authorities and socialist leaders, after September 11, 1973.

The request for prosecution was made by Roberto Ávila (lawyer for the case), who is processing the complaint filed by the former regional authority and victims of the so-called Plan Z, in which opposition leaders to the nascent military regime were detained and tortured, labeled as participants in a fanciful plan to destabilize the Government of Augusto Pinochet.

The doctor is being prosecuted as an accomplice to the acts carried out at the Cazadores Regiment of Valdivia, as confirmed by the lawyer.

The lawyer reported that the resolution was issued this Monday. The prosecution is in addition to a dozen already underway, ranging from a corporal to the retired Army General Santiago Sinclair.

Source: biobio.cl, December 19, 2017

Chile – Case associated with Plan Zeta: Military doctor who assisted torturers prosecuted

Court Minister Álvaro Mesa submitted military doctor Marcelo Jara de La Maza to prosecution for torture. The victims are the intendant of Valdivia as of September 11, 1973, Sandor Arancibia, and the PS leadership of Valdivia headed by Uldaricio Figueroa.

The professional witnessed the torments and determined how much the prisoners could withstand. He is also accused of "advising" on determining which executed person needed to receive the tiro de gracia.

"This judicial resolution is important in the process, but it is even more so in society, as it allows us to appreciate the degree of perversion with which the genocidaires acted, for whom Mr. Kast now invokes forgiveness and forgetting.

This involves a doctor who violated his own Hippocratic oath by placing his art and knowledge at the service of death. He was part of the firing squads, determining who should receive the tiro de gracia.

He also swore to mitigate pain and disease, and he was an advisor to the torturers in terms of inflicting more pain and humiliation on the victims," plaintiff lawyer Roberto Ávila Toledo points out to Cambio21.

According to the prosecution, the Visiting Minister of the Temuco Court of Appeals for Human Rights violations, Álvaro Mesa Latorre, submitted military doctor Marcelo Jara de la Maza to prosecution under the charge of torture committed in military units in Valdivia.

According to the background information, this individual participated actively in 1973 in the team of interrogators led by intelligence officer Patricio Kellet Oyarzún, whose operations center was located in the gymnasium of the Cazadores Regiment of Valdivia.

The Angel of Death

According to the information handled in the area, there were nearly 3,000 people from Valdivia and surrounding areas who were arrested and became victims of political repression after the military coup.

Jara is recognized as the doctor who assisted the torturers in calibrating the torture. It is known from his own confessions that he attended the executions to determine whether or not a tiro de gracia was necessary—an angel of death.

The judicial case that led to his prosecution corresponds to the one reported by Cambio21 within the framework of the "Abject Plan Zeta," where the former intendant of Valdivia, Sandor Arancibia, was detained, tortured, imprisoned, and subsequently sent into exile.

Under the same false charges of participating in Plan Zeta, the then-leadership of the Socialist Party in the region, presided over by Uldaricio Figueroa, was detained and flogged. All of them were, after torture, taken to a War Council. The accusation included directing the landing of Cuban troops, which the Valdivian judge has described in repeated resolutions as "fanciful."

Plan Zeta was the first and most crude infamy concocted during the dictatorship, which allowed for the execution and subjection to torment, depriving thousands of Chileans of their liberty. "Plan Zeta" was a creation of fevered minds that consisted—as was said in those years—of massively murdering personnel of the Armed Forces.

The CIA itself revealed in 1999 that such a plan "never existed" and that it was only "a psychological warfare operation by Pinochet."

Face to face with his torturer

"He was standing in front of me; they had me blindfolded and tied up, inert in front of the torturer. He began to speak; I recognized him by his professional language, he was a colleague, a dentist. In Valdivia, there were few at that time, and it was easy to know who it was.

He selected the tooth on which the torment should be applied; he had no mercy." This is how doctor and scientist Sandor Arancibia Valenzuela, who was Intendant in that southern city in 1973, recounts to Cambio21 his face-to-face encounter with the dictatorship.

"The interrogations were brutal; in them, they sought to ratify what they wanted to be declared, what was pre-established. Then one would go on to speak with the Prosecutor, where there was the right to coffee and a cigarette, of course, provided that what had been obtained under torture was ratified; otherwise, the 'chat' ended right there and one returned to the criminal interrogation session.

Among the Prosecutors who acted was Bernardo Puga, brother of the priest Mariano Puga," recalls Arancibia.

The testimony of paramedic Rolando Jaramillo, who declared on page 485 of the file before the Court, indicates that at the end of September '73, he was working in the Gendarmerie. From there, he was taken to the infirmary by an Army doctor with the "surname Saldías, who apparently was named Francisco; he asked me to go work and help there (since) there were many wounded as a result of the torture."

In Jaramillo's statements, the name of doctor (Marcelo) Jara de la Maza appeared, "who attended some cases and also verified the state in which some political prisoners returned who had been taken from the place by military patrols (...) the one who gave the orders to take the prisoners out was Lieutenant (Patricio) Kellet (Oyarzún); I remember that when he returned people, he threw them like rags, in very poor condition, and I had to go attend to them," affirmed Jaramillo in the process.

Revealing document

Cambio21 had access to a historical document, unknown until now, with the statements recorded in the Report of the Carabineros of Chile, 1st Police Station of Valdivia, Gil de Castro Station, signed on November 24, 1974, by René Quezada de la Plaza, Commissioner and Major of Carabineros, and by Rubén D. Aracena González, Lieutenant of Carabineros and head of the Station.

In the document addressed to the Army Prosecutor's Office of Valdivia (case file 1455-73), it was reported that the "Polar Unit, specifically the Socialist Party, prior to September 11, 1973, developed plans destined for the neutralization of the Armed Forces and Carabineros, and also began to plan the action to be developed in the face of the evidence of a confrontation, whether with civilians or the Armed Forces."

The document details actions consisting of the "kidnapping of family members of chiefs and personnel of the Armed Forces and Carabineros." The kidnapped, captured in "commando-type" actions, would be gathered in one place and then, once in captivity, would be exchanged for "weapons." It adds that those who resisted "would be shot." The document, made known to public opinion for the first time by Cambio21, also asserts that the neighborhoods of uniformed personnel would be surrounded and ordered to surrender their weapons and surrender.

Plan Z detailed, according to the police report that gave rise to the War Tribunals against Intendant Sandor Arancibia Valenzuela and other authorities, that it included "ambushing (military) patrols and obtaining the largest amount of weaponry." To carry out their plan, Arancibia and the other authorities of the time would use the support of Cuban barges that would arrive by river to Valdivia.

Arancibia has lived in the city of Montpellier, in the south of France, since he was exiled by commutation of his life imprisonment sentence. There, he stood out as an important scientist, just like his wife, Lucy. "In Valdivia, there was genocide, with more than 3,000 political prisoners, aberrant torture, crimes, and so many other abuses that it is difficult to relate.

It is a good sample of what happened in the entire country, starting from September 11, '73," affirms Arancibia.

Source: cambio21.cl, January 17, 2018