On March 15, 1974, José TOHA GONZALEZ, a lawyer, Minister of Defense in the government of President Allende, and a socialist militant, died at the Military Hospital of Santiago.

On September 11, he was arrested at the La Moneda Palace along with a group of authorities and collaborators of the deposed government and transferred with them to the Escuela Militar, where he remained for several days.

Later, along with the majority of the Cabinet members, he was sent to Dawson Island, a place where he was subjected to repeated mistreatment and illegitimate coercion by the military personnel in charge of the facility.

While still deprived of his liberty, he was successively transferred to different hospital centers: the Armed Forces Hospital of Punta Arenas, the Fuerza Aérea Hospital, and the Military Hospital of Santiago.

As a result of his imprisonment and the treatment he received, his physical condition deteriorated severely; he lost 27 kilograms, reaching a weight of approximately 49 kilograms, despite being 1.92 meters tall.

The very reason for his transfer from the south to Santiago was the advanced state of malnutrition he was in, which prevented him from even moving from his bed once he was at the Military Hospital. In general, all testimonies received indicate that his physical and psychological state was severely deteriorated. The autopsy report itself notes his advanced state of malnutrition.

The official version of events provided to the victim's family states that he committed suicide by hanging himself by the neck with his belt in a closet—a version that his relatives do not accept, maintaining that his extreme state of weakness prevented him from even moving on his own and that José Tohá's height was greater than the space where they claim he had hanged himself.

In this regard, the Commission did not have sufficient evidence to conclude whether the hanging, the immediate cause of the death of former Minister Tohá, was the action of those who held him in detention or if, instead, he died by his own hand.

However, even in the latter event, the conviction was reached that José Tohá died a victim of human rights violations, since for this Commission, a person is considered as such when they take their own life if the circumstances in which it occurred allow one to judge in good conscience that the individual was driven to that determination by physical or psychological torture, by the conditions of their confinement, or by another situation of State responsibility, which in itself is a violation of human rights.