b) Other political executions

On March 18, 1978, the lifeless body of Jorge Lenin VERNAL HONORES, a member of the PS and former head of the Housing Department of the Caja de Previsión de Empleados Particulares, was found. He had been detained by the DINA between March and April 1974. On March 16, 1978, he was detained again from his home, and his lifeless body was found on the date indicated above.

The Carabineros report states that the body was found on the north bank of the Mapocho River, opposite Calle Barnechea. The autopsy protocol records the cause of death as asphyxia by submersion in water and craniocerebral and spinal trauma.

It further indicates that "the traumatic injuries could be explained by the dragging of the body by the water or have another origin, especially the fracture of the spinal column."

In contradiction to the above is the planimetric report that was submitted to the judicial investigation. It clearly shows that the body was found on Calle Barnechea, several meters from the Mapocho River.

In this same case, it is possible to highlight a series of other irregularities that account for the involvement of state agents in the events. Among them, the following can be mentioned:

The falsification of the extrajudicial statements of the family members submitted by Investigaciones, in which they appear to say that the victim was a habitual drunkard, which they later had to refute before the Court.

The fact that Carabineros was unable to inform the Judge of the names of the officers who found the body, as that information had allegedly not been recorded due to an omission, and it was impossible for them to ascertain it.

The expansion of the autopsy report and the report from the Department of Criminalistic Medicine of Investigaciones put forward other contradictory hypotheses regarding the injuries on the body. The former indicates that they could have been produced by the action of one or more blunt objects, or other mechanisms, or by the action of the body being dragged by the water; the latter indicates that they could have been caused in a traffic accident and that he had subsequently fallen into the water.

The Commission, considering Jorge Vernal's political affiliation, the fact that he had been detained when the events that cost him his life occurred, and the obstructions to the course of justice, has reached the conviction that he was executed, and it can be presumed that state agents are responsible for these events, considering his death a violation of human rights.