On October 3, 1974, DINA agents violently entered the Andrónico Antequera family home located in the La Granja commune, detaining MIR militants Jorge Elías ANDRONICOS ANTEQUERA and Luis Francisco GONZALEZ MANRIQUEZ, along with another person who was released hours later.

The agents remained in the house and, in the early hours of the 4th, detained Juan Carlos ANDRONICO ANTEQUERA, also a MIR militant, upon his arrival.

There are witnesses who state that the detainees were taken to the José Domingo Cañas facility and later transferred to Cuatro Álamos, from where they were forcibly disappeared while in the custody of the DINA. The Commission is convinced that the disappearance of both men was the work of State agents, who thereby violated their human rights.

Jorge Elías Andrónicos Antequera, 25 years old, married, a graduate in Electrical Engineering from the Universidad Técnica del Estado, and his brother Juan Carlos, 23 years old, single, a university student, both members of the MIR, were detained under the following circumstances: on October 3, 1974, around 16:30 hours, a group of 8 plainclothes agents belonging to the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA) arrived at their home (which they shared with their mother and siblings).

The group was led by the then-Army Lieutenant assigned to that agency, Fernando Laureani Maturana. Most of the agents were carrying submachine guns and proceeded to raid the property and interrogate its residents on the premises, intimidating and beating them.

The raiding group included an unidentified woman and DINA agent Osvaldo Romo Mena (known as "El Guatón Romo"). After a while, most of the individuals left, but Laureani and three other men remained from that day until Saturday, October 5, without leaving the house, keeping the occupants under house arrest, in addition to others who were detained during those days.

Laureani's identity was discovered by the victims' sister, Arety Andrónicos Antequera, after he ordered her to iron one of the officer's shirts. The young woman discovered his Armed Forces Identification Card (TIFA) in a pocket, without the agent noticing. The brothers' mother (Mrs. Herminia Antequera Latrille) later recognized Laureani in court. Osvaldo Romo was identified through photographs.

During the family's house arrest, some of the subjects who had previously left returned, taking with them Jorge Elías Andrónicos and Luis Francisco González Manríquez (also a forcibly disappeared person), as well as Carlos Rojas Rey; the latter was released after 12 days of captivity.

This occurred on October 3. The following day, around 03:00 AM, the rest of the group returned and took Juan Carlos Andrónicos. The other DINA agents, always under Laureani's command, withdrew from the house on October 5, apparently once they confirmed that no one else of interest to them would arrive at the location.

The aforementioned events were witnessed by Arety Andrónicos Antequera (sister of the two victims), Patricia Ramos Casanueva (spouse of Jorge Elías, who was 9 months pregnant), and the mother of the Andrónicos brothers.

The first two were also interrogated in separate rooms, insulted, and intimidated by the assailants, who questioned them about the detainees' friends and activities for more than two hours.

The victims were transported from their home to the DINA-run barracks on Calle José Domingo Cañas at the corner of República de Israel in a new, light-green Chevrolet Luv pickup truck with a dark canopy.

They remained at that facility until the 5th or 6th, and were then transported to the Cuatro Alamos detention center, also controlled by the DINA (corresponding to the incommunicado pavilion of the Tres Alamos detention facility).

From there, the Andrónicos brothers were taken to an unknown destination on November 11, 1974, the last time they were seen. Their whereabouts remain unknown to this day.

Carlos Roberto Rojas Rey, who had no political background and was at the detainees' home only because he was Arety Andrónicos's boyfriend, was released after 12 days of captivity after being abandoned at the 12th bus stop on Gran Avenida.

He states that he was indeed detained along with the victims, remaining in the same room as them, almost always blindfolded. He adds that they only treated him harshly at the beginning, but later the captors ignored him. On the night of his release, they left him at the aforementioned location, still blindfolded, ordering him to "count to twenty," and the subjects immediately drove away.

Before their detention, the Andrónicos brothers had been expelled from the university. They were never given concrete reasons to justify such measures.

Later, at the beginning of 1976, according to the victims' mother, the house they lived in was confiscated by the authorities, despite the fact that they only lived there as tenants, thus continuing the pressure on the family. There are numerous testimonies regarding the victims' confinement in José Domingo Cañas and Cuatro Alamos, which we summarize below.

Cristián Bisquert, mentioned by the mother of the disappeared as the person she met in court some time after the events, told her that he had been detained by the DINA and had seen both brothers at the Cuatro Alamos facility, where they were held between at least October 5 and 15, 1974, the date on which Bisquert was released.

Cecilia Jarpa Zúñiga, detained on October 3, 1974, by the DINA, shared a room on October 5 at the José Domingo Cañas barracks, and again on the 12th of the same month, with the victims.

Rosalía Martínez Cereceda, detained on September 23, 1974, testified that she saw the disappeared brothers at José Domingo Cañas, along with other detainees such as Cecilia Jarpa, Amelia Bruhm, Luis González Manríquez, Marta Caballero, Alfredo Rojas Castañeda, and David Silbermann.

Cristián Esteban Van Yurick Altamirano states that he shared room number 13 at Cuatro Alamos with the victims, from whom he learned that they had also been at José Domingo Cañas. In addition to the Andrónicos, other captives were with him, such as David Silbermann and Alejandro Parada González.

The head of Cuatro Alamos at the time of the victims' captivity, José Manzo Durand, then a Gendarmerie Lieutenant, later appeared in court, maintaining that he did not know or know anything about them, adding that this was understandable because many used false names.

He also did not recognize the photographs of the disappeared. The previous version is implausible, as it contradicts the facts already outlined.

Manuel Jesús Salinas Letelier, who remained detained between January 1974 and November 1976, points out that when he was at Cuatro Alamos, he shared room No. 13 with several detainees, including the Andrónicos brothers, until November 11, 1974, the date on which he was transferred to Tres Alamos, losing sight of them.

In room 13, he was with several other captives who were later disappeared, such as Arturo Barría Araneda, Carlos Gajardo Wolf, Néstor Gallardo Agüero, and David Silbermann Gurovich.

The victims appeared on a list of 119 people, all of whom had been previously detained and whose whereabouts remain unknown, according to publications in the magazine Lea of Buenos Aires and O'Dia of Paraná, Brazil.

Jorge Elías Andrónicos Antequera appeared in the former and Juan Carlos in the latter. The magazine Lea stated in its first and only issue that 59 Chilean MIR members had been killed by their own comrades in internal disputes within the movement, attaching a list of the deceased.

O'Dia maintained, on the other hand, that 60 MIR members had been killed by Argentine security forces in the province of Salta, also indicating their names.

As stated, that was the first and only appearance of the magazine Lea, and neither its address nor the identity of its editor and director corresponded to reality, with each copy showing only an unintelligible imprint.

As for O'Dia, it reappeared to report that "news" after long years of silence, only to fall completely out of circulation again. It also lacked a genuinely identified address or responsible director.

The 119 people cited in the lists of both publications all coincide with disappeared persons for whom judicial and administrative actions had been filed here in Chile to determine their whereabouts. It was verified by the Latin news agency and Argentine authorities that none of the 119 alleged dead had ever set foot on Argentine territory.

On the other hand, on August 20, 1975, the Command of the Santiago Garrison, in response to a letter from the victims' mother, signed by Colonel Hernán Ramírez Ramírez, claimed that "your sons, Jorge Elías and Juan Carlos Andrónicos Antequera, are at liberty, but are fleeing from MIR threats, and there is a possibility that they may have left the country illegally."

To date, Jorge Elías and Juan Carlos Andrónicos Antequera remain forcibly disappeared.

Judicial and/or Administrative Actions

On October 11, 1974, a Recurso de Amparo (writ of habeas corpus) was filed on behalf of the victim and his brother before the Santiago Court of Appeals, which was registered under No. 1233-74.

On January 17, 1975, the Santiago Court of Appeals rejected the amparo filed in October on behalf of the detainee and his brother, after the Ministry of the Interior denied the existence of their apprehension.

During the same year, 1975, a complaint for "Presumed Misfortune" (disappearance) was filed before the 4th Criminal Court of San Miguel, where the mother and sister of the detainees, as well as Jorge Elías's spouse and Carlos Roberto Rojas Rey, testified.

Sworn statements from Cecilia Jarpa Zúñiga (made in Paris) and Rosalía Martínez Cereceda (made in Tel Aviv and later in Paris), both of whom were detained in the same places as the Andrónicos brothers, were also added to the file.

The court provisionally dismissed the case on two occasions, in accordance with the grounds of Article 499 No. 1 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, that is, because the investigated fact was not proven, but on both occasions, the San Miguel Court of Appeals revoked those resolutions, ordering the summary to be reopened.

On April 13, 1978, a criminal complaint was filed against Fernando Laureani Maturana and other responsible parties for the crime of kidnapping. This case is being processed in the 4th Criminal Court of the Presidente Aguirre Cerda Court, under file No. 9298-2, and in it, Laureani testified that although he worked for the DINA at the time of the victims' detention, his work was only administrative and he never had anything to do with detentions.

He maintains his statements in confrontations with the mother of the Andrónicos brothers and Carlos Rojas Rey, also denying knowing "El Guatón Romo."

The former top head of the DINA, Juan Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, also testified, acknowledging that Romo was an informant for said security agency, although he claimed to be unaware of further details regarding his participation as well as his current whereabouts.

He adds that although the DINA had the barracks at José Domingo Cañas, the one at Irán corner of Los Plátanos, and the one on Calle Londres, they were only "transit places for prisoners," as "no one was ever interrogated there." The only place for interrogations was Villa Grimaldi, according to his version.

Regarding the DINA's documents and archives, they were inherited by the Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI), its legal successor, without any handover record being drawn up.

At the end of 1991, Laureani's defense requested the definitive dismissal of the case through the application of Decree Law 2191 (Amnesty Law), which was rejected by the court. Hearing the appeal, the San Miguel Court issued an indictment against the officer for the crime of kidnapping.

The officer filed a complaint before the Supreme Court, which granted a stay of proceedings while the merits of the matter are resolved, a situation that persists as of December 1992.

In November 1992, Osvaldo Romo Mena, a DINA agent who participated in the detention and kidnapping of the Andrónicos Antequera brothers, was arrested upon arriving in Chile after being expelled from Brazil.

He had been residing in that country under the false name of Osvaldo Andrés Henríquez Mena since the end of 1975, the time when the DINA implemented his departure from the country. The agent was sought by several courts that were processing cases of human rights violations and was located after several proceedings ordered in the case of the disappearance of Alfonso Chanfreau Oyarce.

As of December 1992, the former agent had testified in several trials for forcibly disappeared persons and had been charged in six of them.

There are numerous efforts and letters sent by the victims' relatives to the Ministry of the Interior and other agencies without results, highlighting the response obtained from the Command of the Santiago Garrison, signed by Colonel Hernán Ramírez Ramírez, already mentioned above.

Source: Vicaría de la Solidaridad