José Enrique Corvalán Valencia, married, father of 6, union leader, and Communist militant, was detained by the DINA on August 9, 1976, around 10:00 a.m., at the home of Mr. Juan Sánchez, 70 years old, located at Ayacara 8523 in the Población San Ramón, La Granja.

On that same occasion, the homeowner, already identified, and another person whose identity remains unknown—who arrived at the house while the agents were inside—were also detained.

The 3 detainees were taken to 4 Alamos, from where Mr. Alfredo Sánchez was released the following day under the threat of not speaking about what had happened. The Rettig Report states that José Corvalán Valencia remained held at Villa Grimaldi, where his trail was lost, as was the case with other members of the Communist Party detained on August 9.

They are: Víctor Hugo Morales Mazuela, Pedro Silva Bustos, Jorge Orosman Salgado Salinas, and Mario Jesús Juica Vega. All of them, like José Corvalán, were union leaders and are classified as forcibly disappeared.

In the respective judicial proceedings regarding his disappearance, there are judicial statements from Mr. Juan Enrique Sánchez Guzmán, who states that when Corvalán was detained, he was inside his home; it was near 9:30 a.m. when there was a sudden knock at the door and Corvalán went to open it.

Immediately, one person entered while two other subjects remained outside for about 5 minutes guarding Corvalán. Meanwhile, the individual who entered the house interrogated him about a supposed meeting at his home and about his visitor.

Subsequently, they took Corvalán into a room in the building where he was violently beaten. At that moment, a friend of Corvalán arrived at the house and was immediately detained and taken away with him in a small, dark cherry-red car, make and model unknown.

He was taken in another gray car. They were taken to 4 Alamos, where he was interrogated and released at night, with the warning that if anyone asked what happened, he should say he had been in jail. He adds in his statement that the agents who arrived in the car were apparently called by radio by one of the agents who arrived first, as the radio equipment they were carrying inside a bag was placed on a kitchen cabinet and they began to transmit, but he did not hear the message because they made him leave the room.

In the month prior to his detention, July 1976, the Government acknowledged the existence of an ongoing investigation regarding the Communist Party, as well as the detention of "an important group of clandestine Communist militants and leaders" (statement by the National Directorate of Social Communication, published in the press on July 17).

In the days, weeks, and months that followed, many Communist Party militants and leaders were detained, among them José Corvalán Valencia.

His family carried out multiple efforts and inquiries to locate his whereabouts and, on more than one occasion, obtained promises from the military government to investigate the reported cases. Promises that were never kept or whose results were never made known. They still do not know the fate he met at the hands of the DINA.

In one of these investigations carried out by the military government, on February 15, 1977, two individuals in civilian clothes arrived at the victim's home claiming to be officials of Social Communication from the Ministry of the Interior; they asked for the disappeared man and then forced the only family member present at that moment, Ms.

Margarita Gutiérrez Calderón, to sign a document stating that José Corvalán "was at liberty." Alone and intimidated by the individuals, Margarita Gutiérrez signed the document.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

On August 13, 1976, a writ of amparo (habeas corpus) was filed on his behalf before the Santiago Court of Appeals, case file 748 76, which set forth the circumstances of the arrest, requesting that the Court order the detainee to be brought before the Court from the 4 Alamos Camp, or at least that the Court communicate by telephone with the Chief of the aforementioned Camp or the appropriate authority, in order to clarify the status and conditions under which the detainee was being held.

The Court only requested a report from the Ministry of the Interior and rejected the aforementioned measures. For its part, the Ministry of the Interior indicated that the victim was not being held by order of that department.

Based on this information from the administrative authority, the appeal was rejected on September 17, 1976, and the records were sent to the 4th Criminal Court of San Miguel to initiate proceedings for the victim's disappearance.

On October 13, 1976, the 4th Court opened case 11.310, issuing an order to investigate, which, when carried out by the Investigations service, yielded no results. On February 1, 1977, Mr. Juan Enrique Sánchez Guzmán appeared and recounted the facts already exposed.

That same month, the complainant, Ms. Hilda Marina Flores Aravena, gave a statement ratifying the terms of the complaint. After receiving a response from the Legal Medical Institute stating that he did not appear in the registry of incoming bodies, on March 15, 1977, Judge Patricio Villarroel Valdivia temporarily dismissed the case on the grounds that "notwithstanding the exhaustion of the investigation, the perpetration of the reported act is not fully justified in the records." On May 2 of that year, the Santiago Court of Appeals revoked the dismissal order, considering that the investigation had not been exhausted.

On June 15, 1977, the Judge realized that case 11.206 regarding the alleged disappearance of José Enrique Corvalán Valencia was being processed in the same Court, which dealt with the same facts, and decided to consolidate the files into case 11.206.

In that case, initiated on September 8, 1976, the statements of the complainant Hilda Marina Flores Aravena and Mr. Juan Enrique Sánchez Guzmán are recorded. Likewise, there is a negative response from the Ministry of the Interior and the order to investigate carried out by Investigations, in which the complainant and Mr.

Juan Sánchez were interviewed. With these proceedings, on December 31, 1976, the case was temporarily dismissed because the existence of the investigated crime had not been proven. That resolution was revoked by the Court of Appeals on April 6, 1976, because it found the investigation incomplete.

In the meantime, the aggrieved party had informed the Court of the visit that two individuals made to the victim's house on February 15, 1977, in which the only resident present was coerced into signing a document stating that José Corvalán was at liberty.

On May 3, 1977, Mr. Juan Sánchez Guzmán appeared again, specifying in more detail the circumstances he had experienced. Negative responses were also received from the various cemeteries of the Capital, from International Police, and from the Civil Registry and Identification Service.

Subsequent to the consolidation of the two cases, a new negative response was received from the Legal Medical Institute and International Police—"no travel records"—and the affiliation extract of José Corvalán was added to the process, which was sent without his photograph.

On November 25, 1977, the Ministry of the Interior responded to an official letter originally addressed to the SICAR (Carabineros Intelligence Service), stating that the Director of Order and Security of the Carabineros indicated having no information related to the citizen José Enrique Corvalán Valencia.

On July 13, 1978, Ms. Katia Corvalán Reyes, the victim's daughter, appeared before the Court and added as information that, upon learning of her father's detention, she went to 4 Alamos, where a Carabineros officer told her that José Corvalán's documents were there, without specifying if he was being held in that unit.

On August 4, 1978, the case was temporarily dismissed on the grounds that it was not justified in the process that the event that gave rise to its formation constituted a crime.

The Supreme Court rejected a cassation appeal and confirmed the sentence that convicted five leaders of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their responsibility in the repeated crime of qualified kidnapping of union leaders José Enrique Corvalán Valencia (46), Jorge Orosmán Salgado Salinas (42), and Pedro Silva Bustos (39), crimes perpetrated starting August 9, 1976, in Santiago.

In a split decision issued this Wednesday the 14th (case file 62.032-2016), the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed of ministers Milton Juica, Carlos Künsemüller, Lamberto Cisternas, Jorge Dahm, and the member lawyer Jean Pierre Matus—confirmed the appealed sentence that imposed sentences of 10 years and one day in prison on former army officers Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Carlos José Leonardo López Tapia, Rolf Arnold Wenderoth Pozo, Juan Hernán Morales Salgado, and former Carabineros officer Ricardo Víctor Lawrence Mires, as authors of the repeated crimes of qualified kidnapping of the aforementioned victims.

The ruling was adopted with the dissenting vote of Minister Lamberto Cisternas, who was in favor of accepting the cassation appeal filed by the criminals and, consequently, applying the partial statute of limitations and reducing the sentences for all those convicted.

In the first instance in June 2015, visiting judge Leopoldo Llanos sentenced the repressive agents to 15 years in prison; this sentence was reduced in June 2016 by the Santiago Court of Appeals to 10 years in prison. This last sentence is the one that has now been ratified by the Supreme Court.

During the investigation stage, Judge Llanos managed to establish the following facts:

«a) That the events investigated in this process occurred in the clandestine detention center known as "Cuartel Terranova" or "Villa Grimaldi," located at Avenida José Arrieta No. 8200 in the commune of Peñalolén in the Metropolitan Region.

At Villa Grimaldi, a group of agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) operated, whose Director was Colonel Juan Manuel Guillermo Contreras Sepúlveda, under whose hierarchical dependency were several officers and other officials from the different branches of the Armed Forces, Carabineros, and Investigations, as well as some civilians; all of whom, holding various levels of hierarchy in the command, ordered some and executed others, the capture of people who were militants or sympathizers of political parties or leftist movements, whom they illegally imprisoned in the place, breaking them under physical torture of various kinds, with the object of making them provide information about other people of the political left in order to apprehend them.

b) The aforementioned agents were part of the "Caupolicán" Brigade.

c) The first detainees arrived in mid-1974 at "Villa Grimaldi"; and in January 1975, it became the operations center of the Metropolitan Intelligence Brigade, which exercised the function of internal repression in Santiago.

d) The detainees were kept blindfolded at all times, in deficient hygienic conditions, and with scarce food, which they did not receive during the first three days. The most characteristic places where the detainees were kept were called "La Torre," "Casas Chile," and "Casas Corvi."

e) The following people were taken to "Villa Grimaldi" as detainees:

1.-José Enrique Corvalán Valencia; married, six children, union leader, member of the Communist Party, was detained by DINA agents on August 9, 1976, around 10:00 a.m. at the home located at Calle Ayacara No. 8583, Población San Ramón, La Granja, and taken to Villa Grimaldi.

2.-Jorge Orosmán Salgado Salinas; married, five children, union leader, member of the Communist Party, was detained by DINA agents on August 9, 1976, in the afternoon in the vicinity of the Vega Central where he worked as a loader, along with Pedro Silva.

3.-Pedro Silva Bustos; married, six children, union leader and regional leader of the Communist Party and member of the organization commission of the central committee of the Communist Party, was detained by DINA agents on August 9, 1976, in the afternoon in the vicinity of the Vega Central where he worked as a loader.

f) The consequences of these detentions is that the aforementioned persons are in the status of disappeared, since, deprived of liberty, they have not made contact with their relatives; nor have they carried out administrative procedures before State agencies or private organizations, nor do they have records of entry or exit from the country, with no record of their death either».

Source: resumen.cl 16/12/2016

Date: 16-12-2016

NEW CONVICTION FOR FUGITIVE RICARDO LAWRENCE FOR THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THREE COMMUNIST MILITANTS IN 1976

The visiting judge of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Leopoldo Llanos, issued a sentence in the cases he is substantiating for three cases of forcibly disappeared persons from the torture and extermination center of Villa Grimaldi.

The magistrate convicted six agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their responsibility in the qualified kidnappings of José Corvalán Valencia, Jorge Salgado Salinas, and Pedro Silva Bustos, crimes perpetrated starting August 9, 1976.

Manuel Contreras, Pedro Espinoza, Marcelo Moren Brito, Carlos López Tapia, Rolf Wenderoth Pozo, Juan Morales Salgado, and Ricardo Lawrence were sentenced to 15 years and one day in prison as authors of the three crimes.

Lawrence has been a fugitive since February, when he did not appear to be notified in the lawsuit for torture filed by thirty survivors of Villa Grimaldi. Subsequently, he was convicted by the Supreme Court for the disappearance of Alfonso Chanfreau from the torture and extermination center of Londres 38.

Also a fugitive is the former official of the Investigations Police, Daniel Cancino, in the trial for torture presented by more than 30 survivors of Villa Grimaldi.

In his sentence for the forcibly disappeared persons of the Communist Party from Villa Grimaldi, the magistrate managed to determine that José Enrique Corvalán Valencia; married, six children, union leader, member of the Communist Party (PC), was detained by DINA agents on August 9, 1976, around 10:00 a.m. at the home located at Calle Ayacara No. 8523, Población San Ramón, commune of La Granja.

On the same day, Jorge Orosmán Salgado Salinas; married, five children, union leader, also a member of the PC, was arrested "in the afternoon in the vicinity of the Vega Central where he worked as a loader, along with Pedro Silva."

Silva was married, had six children, was a union leader, a member of the regional branch of the PC, and of the organization commission of the central committee of the Communist Party. He was detained by DINA agents on August 9, 1976, in the afternoon in the vicinity of the Vega Central where he worked as a loader.

Source: cronicadigital.cl 1/7/2015

Date: 01-07-2015

ANEF inaugurates memorial for victims of the dictatorship with the presence of President Bachelet

In a solemn ceremony outside the ANEF headquarters, this Monday, September 8, a memorial was inaugurated in honor of public employees who were victims of the civic-military dictatorship. The ceremony was attended by the President of the Republic, Michelle Bachelet; the representatives of the Association of Relatives of Forcibly Disappeared Detainees (AFDD), Lorena Pizarro, and of Political Executions (AFEP), Alicia Lira; along with the Minister of Labor, Javiera Blanco; the Minister of Mining, Aurora Williams; the president of the CUT, Bárbara Figueroa; the Undersecretary of Labor, Francisco Díaz; Joan Jara, widow of Víctor Jara; parliamentarians Tucapel Jiménez, Maya Fernández, Lautaro Carmona, Hugo Gutiérrez, and Claudio Arriagada; as well as social and union leaders.

During the ceremony, the choir of former political prisoners dedicated some songs to the fallen of the ANEF. Then, Lorena Pizarro and Alicia Lira spoke, celebrating this act of memory and calling on the authorities to seek truth and justice in the cases that are still pending regarding forcibly disappeared persons and political executions.

"With this memorial, we close a debt of the ANEF to the State workers, executed and disappeared during the dictatorship, without forgetting that ours was one of the sectors most hit during this dark period," noted the president of the ANEF, Raúl de la Puente, in his speech.

De la Puente also recalled the resistance and struggle of some of those honored, such as Jorge Peña Hen, Reinalda Pereira, Carlos Prats, and the President's father, Alberto Bachelet. The memorial bears the names of 380 forcibly disappeared persons and political executions etched on elegant bronze plaques, public employees from various sectors who, according to information from the Ministry of the Interior, were victims of the tyranny.

"A solid community cannot be built without taking charge of the violence that fractured our society and ended the lives of wonderful people, like those who receive our tribute today," noted President Bachelet in her speech.

"We need that justice to be soon, and we need, for that to be possible, that those who have relevant information, whether civilians or military, provide it," stated the President, who urged the Justice system to work to find the truth.

After the ceremony, the plaques that make up the memorial at the entrance of the ANEF were shown to the attendees, where the priest Mariano Puga, a recognized collaborator of the workers, blessed the memorial.

Finally, it is worth highlighting the excellent organization of the event by the Secretariat of Culture, Recreation, and Sports, Nayadé Zúñiga.

Source: anef.cl 9/09/2014

Date: 09-09-2014