On September 11, 1973, the group leaving the Palace via Calle Morandé was detained by military forces, who forced them to lie face down on the ground. This group was composed of presidential advisors, members of the GAP, doctors who provided services at La Moneda, and officials from the Investigations Service.

Most of the doctors present (with the exception of some who served as presidential advisors and who will be mentioned later) were released at that time. The rest of the detainees were then moved to the sidewalk, where they remained lying down.

At 18:00 hours, this group was taken to the Tacna Regiment in two military vehicles. They remained in that facility lying on the ground, face down, with their hands behind their necks, from the afternoon of September 11 until midday on September 13.

On September 12, the members of the Investigations Service were released, except for one who also remained in that facility until midday on the 13th, at which time he was released.

According to the information gathered, the Commission can state that the group that remained at the Tacna Regiment until midday on the 13th was composed, on one hand, of nine advisors and members of the Presidency of the Republic and, on the other, of fifteen members of the GAP.

As indicated above, the information gathered allows us to state that the former Director of Investigations, Eduardo Paredes, was also detained at the Tacna Regiment until September 13. For this Commission, the version published in the press at that time, which maintained that Paredes had died in a confrontation, is implausible.

From this group, the advisors and members of the Presidency of the Republic were:

Jaime BARRIOS MEZA, 47 years old, former General Manager of the Central Bank, Advisor to the President; Daniel ESCOBAR CRUZ, 37 years old, militant of the Communist Party, Chief of Staff to the Undersecretary of the Interior; Enrique HUERTA CORVALAN, 48 years old, Palace Intendant; Claudio JIMENO GRENDI, 33 years old, sociologist, leader of the Socialist Party, advisor to the President; Jorge KLEIN PIPPER, 27 years old, psychiatrist, leader of the Communist Party, advisor to the President; Eduardo PAREDES BARRIENTOS, 34 years old, surgeon, leader of the Socialist Party, former Director of Investigations, Director of Chile Films, advisor to the President; Enrique PARIS ROA, 40 years old, psychiatrist, leader of the Communist Party, advisor to the President; Héctor PINCHEIRA NUÑEZ, 28 years old, doctor, information advisor to the President; and Arsenio POUPIN OSSIEL, 38 years old, member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Party, lawyer, former acting Director of the Investigations Police, advisor to the President.

In the same group were the following members of the Presidential Security Detail (GAP): Manuel CASTRO ZAMORANO, 23 years old; Sergio CONTRERAS CONTRERAS, 40 years old, journalist, Head of Public Relations for the Intendancy; José FREIRE MEDINA, 20 years old; Daniel GUTIERREZ AYALA, 25 years old; Oscar LAGOS RIOS, 21 years old, leader of the Socialist Youth; Oscar MARAMBIO ARAYA, 20 years old; Juan MONTIGLIO MURUA, 24 years old; Julio MORENO PULGAR, 24 years old, telephone operator and orderly at La Moneda; Jorge ORREGO GONZALEZ, 29 years old; Oscar RAMIREZ BARRIA, 23 years old; Luis RODRIGUEZ RIQUELME, 26 years old; Jaime SOTELO OJEDA, 33 years old, Chief of the President's escort; Julio TAPIA MARTINEZ, 24 years old; Oscar VALLADARES CAROCA, 23 years old; and Juan VARGAS CONTRERAS, 23 years old. All of them were, in addition, militants of the Socialist Party.

The members of the group composed of the President's advisors and members of the GAP, with their hands and feet tied, were loaded onto military trucks and taken from the Regiment to an unknown destination.

Consistent testimonies indicate that the military vehicle headed to Peldehue, to the grounds assigned to the Tacna Regiment, where they were allegedly executed and buried. Since that date, they have all remained in the status of forcibly disappeared.

The Commission learned that one of the members of the GAP managed to evade his captors by switching from his group to another and was later released. It is highly improbable that he is one of those just mentioned.

Considering that this group of the President's collaborators left the La Moneda Palace via Calle Morandé at approximately 14:00 hours, where they were detained by State agents, held in a military facility, and from there taken by them to an uncertain destination, this Commission is convinced of the victim status of all of them, as their disappearance is the responsibility of the State agents who held them in detention.

Source: Rettig Report

Jorge Osvaldo Orrego Gonzalez, disappeared. La Moneda, Santiago, September 1973. Jorge Orrego, 29 years old, married and father of five children. He was an accounting student and a member of the Presidential Security Detail (GAP).

He was a militant in the Socialist Party. He was detained by military personnel on September 11, 1973, when the last group of people inside the La Moneda Palace left. Transferred to the Tacna Regiment, on September 13 he was taken along with the other detainees from the Presidential Palace in a military vehicle to an unknown destination. Since that date, his whereabouts remain unknown.

Source: memoriachilena.gob.cl

Santiago Court orders the State to pay $1.225 billion in compensation to families of GAP members who were executed or are disappeared

The Santiago Court of Appeals confirmed the resolution ordering the State to compensate the families of the forcibly disappeared Domingo Bartolomé Blanco Tarrés and José Belisario Carreño Calderón; and of the illegally executed Gonzalo Mario Jorquera Leyton, Carlos Alfonso Cruz Zavala, Luis Alfredo Gamboa Pizarro, Pedro Juan Garcés Portiagliati, Óscar Osvaldo Marambio Araya, Edmundo Enrique Montero Salazar, Jorge Osvaldo Orrego González, William Osvaldo Ramírez Barría, and Enrique Andrés María Ropert Contreras, members of the so-called "Group of Personal Friends" (GAP) of President Salvador Allende, detained on September 11, 1973, in the vicinity of the La Moneda Palace.

The Second Chamber—composed of ministers Omar Astudillo, María Soledad Melo, and Maritza Villadangos—confirmed the State's responsibility for the execution of crimes against humanity perpetrated by its agents, but decreed the acquittal of retired Air Force General Vicente Rodríguez Bustos, solely due to his having passed away after the first-instance ruling; and of retired Carabineros General Patricio de la Fuente Ibar, due to a lack of evidence of his participation in the events.

Regarding the civil aspect, they deemed that crimes against humanity are imprescriptible and increased the compensation amount to be received by the mothers, spouses, and children of the victims, while lowering it for siblings and nephews, meaning the State must pay a total of $1,225,000,000 for moral damages.

"Regarding the exception of the statute of limitations for civil action, the truth is that it is imprescriptible, as jurisprudence has repeatedly declared. It must be remembered that the criminal offenses that have given rise to this civil liability correspond to crimes against humanity, so the right to reparation for the families of the victims of these types of illicit acts also finds its foundation in the general principles of International Human Rights Law and in the regulations of international treaties ratified by our country, which oblige the State of Chile to recognize and protect the right to full reparation, by virtue of the provisions of the second paragraph of Article 5 and Article 6 of the Political Constitution of the Republic," the ruling maintains.

The resolution adds: "Thus, if it is considered that the criminal action for this type of attack on human dignity is imprescriptible, it is not coherent to maintain at the same time that the civil indemnity action can be extinguished by the statute of limitations, through the application of internal civil law, as this would mean contradicting the will expressed by international Human Rights regulations, which are part of the national legal system by provision of the second paragraph of Article 5 of the Fundamental Charter.

Furthermore, if criminal liability is imprescriptible, the civil liability of the State—which stems from those same facts—must follow the same fate; that is to say, it is not extinguished by the passage of time, as it is accessory and dependent on the criminal liability of a State agent, which is declared in this ruling."

Regarding the regulation of compensation or the reparatory amount, the Santiago Court of Appeals reiterates that "(...) the difficulty that exists in determining the compensation for moral damage quantitatively and economically is known.

However, in the need to carry out its valuation and given the lack of sufficiently established statistical or technical benchmarks, it is appropriate to turn to parameters that can serve as guiding criteria for those purposes, inspired by considerations of prudence, equity, and experience.

Thus, as far as possible, one must tend toward the consideration of objective data—the proven facts—the nature of the damage, and the search for some degree of proportionality between the entity of that damage and the sum to be compensated."

"From that perspective, by applying rules of experience, those that allow confirming that pain or suffering is especially related to the bond of kinship and affection that one has or has had with the direct victim of the crime or crimes committed against their person, it is considered appropriate and reasonable to carry out the regulations indicated below: a) For those who have the status of spouse or mother of the affected person, the sum of $80,000,000; b) For those who have demonstrated the status of children of the direct victim, the amount of $50,000,000; c) For those who sue as siblings, the amount of $20,000,000; and d) For those who prove the status of nephew of one of the victims, the sum of $5,000,000," it resolves.

The facts of the process that were proven in the first-instance ruling by Minister Mario Carroza:

1.- That during the presidential term of President Salvador Allende Gossens, a security detail was formed, composed of young men, armed and with paramilitary training in some cases, known as the GAP or 'Group of Personal Friends of the President,' and that this group included, among others, José Belisario Carreño Calderón, Carlos Cruz Zavalla, Luis Gamboa Pizarro, Pedro Juan Garcés Portigliati, Gonzalo Mario Jorquera Leyton, Óscar Marambio Araya, Edmundo Montero Salazar, Jorge Osvaldo Orrego González, William Ramírez Barría, Domingo Blanco Tarrés, the latter being one of the leaders of this detail, and Enrique Ropert Contreras, who at the time was a university student and son of Miria Contreras, private secretary to President Allende; 2.- That in the early hours of September 11, 1973, the Commanders-in-Chief of the Army, Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, and of the Air Force, Gustavo Leigh Guzmán; the Admiral of the Navy, José Toribio Merino Castro, and the General of the Carabineros of Chile, César Mendoza Durán, proceeded to carry out a Coup d'État against the Government of the then-President Salvador Allende Gossens, as a result of which the head of state, who was at the presidential residence on Calle Tomás Moro, moved accompanied by a group of his escorts and Carabineros to the La Moneda Palace; 3.- That, aware of these events, the head of the GAP, Domingo Blanco Tarrés, who was at the presidential residence of Cañaveral, decided to move along with members of said group, identified in the first section, accompanied by the President's Secretary Miria Contreras Bell and her sons Max and Enrique Ropert Contreras, to the Tomás Moro residence to meet with President Allende; but upon arriving, they learned that he had already left the place for the La Moneda Palace, so Blanco Tarrés, along with his other escorts, traveled in a pickup truck from Tomás Moro to that location; Miria Contreras and her son Enrique Ropert Contreras did the same in a "Renoleta," with Max Ropert Contreras remaining at Tomás Moro; 4.- That upon arriving in the city center and entering via Calle Morandé, near the La Moneda vehicle parking lots, Blanco Tarrés along with José Belisario Carreño Calderón, Carlos Cruz Zavalla, Luis Gamboa Pizarro, Pedro Juan Garcés Portigliati, Gonzalo Mario Jorquera Leyton, Óscar Marambio Araya, Edmundo Montero Salazar, Jorge Osvaldo Orrego González, and William Ramírez Barría got out armed, but were discovered and ordered to surrender their weapons by a contingent of Carabineros belonging to the mobile group directed by an Officer who belonged to the Prefecture located in the Intendancy of Santiago; due to this incident, Miria Contreras Bell, who arrived at the moment the detention was occurring, asked her son Enrique Ropert Contreras to find out what had happened, but upon doing so, he also became detained by the Police Forces, and Miria Contreras could not prevent it, so she decided to escape toward La Moneda. All members of President Allende's personal guard, along with Enrique Ropert Contreras, were transferred to the facilities of the police prefecture inside the Intendancy, without interventions from the Presidential Palace and the Director of Carabineros at that time succeeding in obtaining their release. The group was taken to the Intendancy, where they remained for a few hours, being subsequently loaded by order of Colonel Carlos Hinrichsen González, head of the mobile group, onto a Carabineros bus and taken to the 6th Police Station of Santiago, a police unit where Pedro Espinoza Bravo arrived first to speak with Commissioner Jorge Retamal Berríos, for the purpose of taking the detainees with him, which was denied due to the lack of a written order, with an Air Force Intelligence Major arriving later at the Station, armed with a written order from a War Council, who is the one who finally proceeds to take this group of detainees with him, before they were placed at the disposal of the Justice system; 5.- That all or part of this group of prisoners was transferred on September 12 or 13, 1973, to the Central Headquarters of the Investigations Police, a place where they were subjected to interrogations, among whom it is known with certainty was Domingo Blanco Tarrés, who was admitted to the Public Jail on September 15, 1973, by orders of the 2nd Military Prosecutor's Office; from there he was taken out on several occasions and brought to the Prosecutor's Office, where he was subjected to torture, interrogations, and confrontations with other members of the GAP, and he left the penitentiary facility on September 19, according to Gendarmerie records, by order of the 2nd Military Prosecutor's Office, with all trace of him being lost from that date, and his whereabouts currently unknown; 6.- That, on the other hand, the remains of José Belisario Carreño Calderón, which were initially identified as belonging to said person upon being found on September 19, 1973, at the Bulnes bridge, were subsequently ruled out according to DNA testing, so from the date he was transferred to the 6th Carabineros Station and removed by the Air Force Intelligence Officer, nothing more was known about his whereabouts; 7.- That, in turn, the bodies of Enrique Ropert Contreras, Carlos Cruz Zavalla, Luis Gamboa Pizarro, Gonzalo Mario Jorquera Leyton, Óscar Marambio Araya, Edmundo Montero Salazar, Jorge Osvaldo Orrego González, and William Ramírez Barría were found on September 19, 1973, on the banks of the Mapocho River, in the area of the Bulnes Bridge, and admitted on September 20, 1973, to the then-Legal Medical Institute, as accounted for by their autopsy protocols and body receipt records; 8.- That, in relation to Pedro Juan Garcés Portigliati, in the case files, it is duly accredited that his body entered the Legal Medical Institute, without any autopsy report or body receipt record existing for him, with this victim being among those identified by DNA tests performed subsequently on remains found in Patio 29; 9.- That, to date, and according to the information provided to the case, the following victims have been identified by DNA tests performed in foreign laboratories on bone remains found in the mass grave of Patio 29 of the General Cemetery: Carlos Cruz Zavalla, Luis Gamboa Pizarro, Pedro Juan Garcés Portigliati, Óscar Marambio Araya, Edmundo Montero Salazar, Jorge Osvaldo Orrego González, William Ramírez Barría, and Enrique Ropert Contreras; 10.- That according to the autopsy of the time and burial records, it is established that the remains of Gonzalo Mario Jorquera Leyton were recognized and handed over to his family in the days following the events.

Source: ENESTRADO.CL 7/5/2021 Date: 05-07-2021

Minister Miguel Vásquez issued an indictment for the kidnappings and homicides of 11 people at the La Moneda Palace on September 11, 1973. The individuals were inside the Government house during the development of the Coup d'État and all belonged to the Group of Personal Friends of President Salvador Allende (GAP).

In the case, the minister indicted retired Air Force General Vicente Rodríguez Bustos and retired Carabineros General Patricio de la Fuente Ibar for their responsibility in the qualified kidnappings of Domingo Blanco Tarrés and José Carreño Calderón.

Added to them are the qualified homicides of Gonzalo Jorquera Leyton, Carlos Cruz Zavala, Luis Gamboa Pizarro, Pedro Garcés Portigliati, Óscar Marambio Araya, Edmundo Montero Salazar, Jorge Orrego González, William Ramírez Barría, and Enrique Ropert Contreras.

The investigation, at this procedural stage, has allowed for the accreditation that all the aforementioned people were detained. Some of them, meanwhile, were executed by firing squad outside La Moneda, and others were made to disappear later in clandestine detention centers maintained by the dictatorship's repressive agencies.

Source: biobio.cl 16/4/2015 Date: 04-16-2015

According to information provided by the SML, they are Jorge Orrego González, Ramón Bernardo Beltrán Sandoval, and Jorge Reinaldo Torres Aránguiz. The Legal Medical Service (SML) reported this Wednesday that it managed to identify three new victims of human rights violations associated with the so-called Patio 29 case.

Yesterday, the investigating minister of the case, Alejandro Solís, along with the director of the SML, Dr. Patricio Bustos, met with the families of Jorge Orrego González, detained on September 11, 1973, whose identity was possible to obtain thanks to the forensic work of the agency and the genetic analyses performed by the laboratory in Innsbruck, Austria.

Meanwhile, during the current day, the SML confirmed the identities of Ramón Bernardo Beltrán Sandoval and Jorge Reinaldo Torres Aránguiz, detained on September 27 and 29, 1973, respectively, also obtained through the forensic examinations practiced by the forensic institution and the genetic analyses carried out by the University of North Texas laboratory.

According to the forensic reports, in all three cases, the cause of death was hemorrhagic shock resulting from wounds produced by firearm.

The victims

Jorge Orrego: He was a member of the Group of Personal Friends of the President (GAP) and a militant of the Socialist Party. He was 29 years old at the time of his detention, an event that occurred when he was evacuating the La Moneda Palace via Calle Morandé along with a group of people composed of advisors to former President Salvador Allende, other members of the GAP, doctors, and officials of the Investigations Police.

Ramón Beltrán: He was 24 years old at the time of his detention. Father of one child, he was a street vendor with no political affiliation. He was detained at the Ampliación de Conchalí camp. Jorge Torres: 19 years old, he was detained while waiting in line to buy at a commercial establishment in the 21 de Mayo neighborhood, in the La Pintana commune.

He was beaten and taken to a military facility of the Chilean Air Force, according to the Rettig Report.

Source: 24horas.cl 20/6/2012 Date: 06-20-2012

This concerns the crime against 11 members of the Group of Personal Friends of the socialist president detained at La Moneda during the 1973 coup d'état. The minister on special assignment for human rights violation cases of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Mario Carroza, sentenced retired Air Force General Vicente Rodríguez Bustos to 10 years and one day in prison as the perpetrator of the crimes of qualified kidnapping and qualified homicide of 11 collaborators and members of the Group of Personal Friends (GAP) of President Salvador Allende, in September 1973.

This concerns the kidnapping of Domingo Blanco Tarrés and José Carreño Calderón, and the homicide of Gonzalo Jorquera Leyton, Carlos Cruz Zavalla, Luis Gamboa Pizarro, Pedro Garcés Portiagliati, Óscar Marambio Araya, Edmundo Montero Salazar, Jorge Orrego González, William Ramírez Barría, and Enrique María Ropert Contreras.

Carroza established that on September 11, after being detained in the vicinity of the La Moneda Palace and the Metropolitan Intendancy, the GAP members were taken by Carabineros personnel to the 6th Police Station of Santiago and, subsequently, to the General Headquarters of the Investigations Police, where they were subjected to interrogations.

According to the minister, the detainees met different fates, with some being made to disappear in the following days; the bodies of other GAP members—exactly 8—were found on the banks of the Mapocho River or buried in the mass grave of Patio 29 of the General Cemetery.

Carroza decreed the acquittal of retired Carabineros General Patricio de la Fuente Ibar, as his responsibility for the aforementioned crimes was not proven. Regarding the civil aspect, the ruling ordered the State of Chile to pay a total compensation of $1,320,000,000 to the victims' families.

Source: elciudadano.com 7/6/2018