Juan René Molina Mogollones, married, father of four, Agricultural Technician, and member of the MIR, was detained on January 29, 1975, around 5:00 PM, together with Patricia Zúñiga Barros—the mother of his youngest daughter—at the intersection of Avenida Matta and Portugal.

The apprehension was carried out by 10 agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) who were traveling in two vehicles, one of which was a red Chevrolet pickup truck, into which the victims were forced.

The operation had been orchestrated days earlier, when a detainee held at Villa Grimaldi—a secret DINA detention center—was forced to make a telephone call to the victim to arrange a meeting with him and Patricia Zúñiga for January 29 at 5:00 PM on Avenida Matta.

Juan René Molina and Patricia Zúñiga—who was pregnant—were taken immediately to Villa Grimaldi. There, amidst numerous threats and beatings, they were ordered to strip off their clothes and personal belongings, beginning interrogation and torture sessions in which Marcelo Moren Brito and Osvaldo Romo Mena participated. Juan René was assigned number 924 at that facility.

Despite being pregnant, Patricia Zúñiga, in addition to being confronted with the victim, was subjected to various types of torture: application of electric shocks, beatings, and hanging. Likewise, the victim was subjected to similar treatment: he was hung and, simultaneously, beaten and given electric shocks all over his body; he was placed on "the grill," subjected to "the telephone" (heavy blows to the ears), and kept on a glucose-free diet.

These facts were corroborated by the testimonies of approximately 15 people who were detained alongside the victim at Villa Grimaldi. Erick Zott saw him enter the "casas corvi" (small wooden cells) on the night of January 29, 1975, showing clear signs of torture.

Horacio Brain Pizarro shared the same cell, No. 4, with the victim, along with Julio Torres and Abel Vilches (a forcibly disappeared person from Valparaíso).

Nubia Becker remembers seeing Juan René when, one night, he approached the window of the women's room to see Patricia Zúñiga, who was bedridden due to her pregnancy and the mistreatment she had received.

On February 11, the victim, Patricia Zúñiga, and 18 other detainees were transferred to the section of Villa Grimaldi known as "La Torre" (The Tower), where Juan René was also seen by witnesses. Miguel Angel Montecinos was with him for a week.

For her part, Rosa Lizama recalls that around February 20, 1975, a guard arrived at "La Torre" and called out some of the detainees, including Juan René Molina and the 8 forcibly disappeared persons from Valparaíso (see case of Horacio Neftalí Carabantes Olivares). All were taken out of Villa Grimaldi to an unknown destination. (Testimony also corroborated by other declarants).

Subsequently, in July 1975, the victim's name appeared on the list of 119 Chileans who had allegedly died in clashes abroad. The veracity of this fact could never be proven; furthermore, no government, not even the Chilean one, officially ratified it.

The victim's name appeared in the newspaper "O'Día" of Curitiba (Brazil), a publication that did not exist until that single day; 59 names were published in this media outlet and another 60 in the Argentine magazine LEA. These 119 people had disappeared after being detained between June 1974 and February 1975, and the vast majority had been seen by witnesses in secret DINA detention centers.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

On February 10, 1975, a writ of amparo (habeas corpus) was filed on behalf of the victim before the Santiago Court of Appeals, registered under No. 207-75. During its processing, reports were requested from the Ministry of the Interior and the Headquarters of the State of Siege Zone.

Both authorities responded that the person in question was not being held under their orders. Based on this information, the Court rejected the appeal.

On August 28, 1975, a criminal complaint for the kidnapping of the victim was filed in the 4th Criminal Court of Santiago, registered under No. 107.781. On September 9 of the same year, Division General and Minister of the Interior, Raúl Benavides Escobar, informed the Court that Molina was not being held by order of that Ministry.

Without further proceedings, on April 29, 1976, the case was temporarily dismissed, a ruling that was ratified by the Court of Appeals on June 17 of the same year. The resolution was made despite the plaintiff's request—in order to establish the reality of Juan René's detention—to summon 15 witnesses who had been detained with the victim to testify. The Court denied the request as "inconclusive."

In addition, Juan René Molina's family members carried out various efforts to locate the victim. Among these was a note addressed to Minister of the Interior Raúl Benavides Escobar on March 4, 1976, requesting information on the matter. Minister Benavides responded on March 12 of the same year that he lacked information regarding the victim.

On August 1, 1978, Juan René Molina's family, along with relatives of 70 other forcibly disappeared persons, went to the 10th Criminal Court of Santiago to file a complaint for the crime of kidnapping against General Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, Marcelo Luis Manuel Moren Brito, and Rolf Gonzalo Wenderoth Pozo, Colonel and Lieutenant Colonel of the Army, respectively.

On August 10 of the same year, the Judge declared himself incompetent and referred the case to the 2nd Military Court, which registered it under No. 553-78.

During the processing of this case, General Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, in his capacity as former director of the DINA, responded by official letter to the Military Prosecutor's Office on September 25, 1985.

In this response, he reaffirmed concepts he had previously stated before the Visiting Minister Servando Jordán: Villa Grimaldi was not a DINA detention center, but only a transit facility where detainees were processed to be released or placed at the disposal of the Ministry of the Interior; Osvaldo Romo Mena was only an informant for some DINA agents, and nothing more was heard of him; Marcelo Moren performed intelligence duties as an analyst.

Without any proceedings being carried out for four years, on November 20, 1989, Army Lieutenant Colonel Enrique Ibarra Chamorro, Military Prosecutor General, requested the application of the Amnesty Decree Law (D.L. 2.191) for this case, because the process had the exclusive purpose of investigating alleged crimes that occurred between September 11, 1973, and March 10, 1978, and because, during the 10 years of processing, it had not been possible to "determine the responsibility of any person." On November 30, 1989, the request was accepted by the 2nd Military Court, which dismissed the case totally and definitively, even though it was still in the summary stage, because "the criminal responsibility of the persons allegedly accused of the reported acts had been extinguished." The plaintiffs appealed this resolution to the Court Martial, which confirmed the ruling in January 1992. A Complaint Appeal was then filed before the Supreme Court of Justice, which, as of December 1992, had not yet issued its resolution. (Further background in the case of Eduardo Enrique Alarcón Jara, July 30, 1974).

Osvaldo Romo Mena, one of the agents identified in the interrogations to which René Molina was subjected at Villa Grimaldi, was arrested in November 1992 after long years of searching. The aforementioned agent had left the country at the end of 1975, at a time when he had been summoned by several courts handling human rights violation cases.

The DINA had provided him with the means for his transfer to Brazil and false identity documents for him and his family. His name was Osvaldo Andrés Henríquez Mena.

His location was the result of a series of proceedings ordered in the case of the disappearance of Alfonso Chanfreau Oyarce. Romo was first arrested and then expelled from Brazil.

As of December 1992, Osvaldo Romo Mena had been charged in six cases involving forcibly disappeared persons and had several pending court summons.

I did not have the luck to know him, I did not have the luck for him to hold me in his arms, to console me from my nightmares in childhood as I do today with my 4-year-old daughter; I never knew his smile. But, despite his absence, since I was very little, he is always with me; he is present in every important step of my life. I spoke to him and I still speak to him always.

As a teenager, I would look at the stars and we would have long, deep conversations.

When I traveled to Chile for the first time in June 1992, I was very clear that he was dead. But I ran to the airport exit; I was sure he was waiting for me. I only found the Andes mountains.

That trip was very intense. My mother had explained everything to me since I was very young: the militancy in the MIR, the fraternity and joy among the militants, the extraordinary solidarity during the clandestine period, the pride of fighting for another Chile in the resistance, being part of the MIR, the complicity they both had, the detention, the torture.

I met my grandmother Adriana, my dear aunt Rosa Esther, and some cousins. And I met my father's brother. It was—for the first time—seeing someone who looked like him.

I only have two photos of my father: the most well-known one is the one that appears in the CODEPU documentation where he is 18 years old and wearing a military suit.

When my uncle Lucho Flores told me that they were working and organizing an act in homage to my father, I was very happy and honored. I take these lines to thank him for the words he said to me the first time we met. I was 10 years old; it was in Swansea, Wales, in a pub.

He approached me with great delicacy. He was very moved and said to me: "You look so much like him, you have his eyes." I felt a tremendous pride. My father had bequeathed his gaze to me.

That night, he told me many anecdotes: the silly things they did together in childhood, stealing chickens, children's games.

You cannot imagine, Lucho, how much those words filled me with joy and happiness. From that moment on, I could close my eyes and imagine him in motion.

From my father, I know few things. But all the meetings with family, friends, and comrades of struggle and detention allowed me to build a personality. He was very attentive to others. And I know that he would have wanted me, loved me, he would have spoiled me. His children were his pride and the most important thing for him.

I never saw him as a hero; he was a militant, a revolutionary, just as today I am a militant, a revolutionary, the daughter of a MIR member. Talking about revolutionaries today seems anachronistic. Power has denatured this word, and the terrorist/revolutionary amalgam makes the very essence of these committed men and women opaque: the love of life.

Nothing messianic, sacrificial, or cult-of-death. The revolutionary loves life and life loves him.

Memory does not surrender; memory does its work.

I was born in exile, I was tortured in my mother's womb, and yet, despite the absence of my father, despite the pain, my father was never a shapeless specter; he has always been with us, among us. The MIR has been my family, and it is a great family full of true life that welcomes me in the vast world.

I am proud of my parents, proud of my history. Thank you for having been what you were, thank you for being what you are, thank you for having made me who I am.

I will always respect their militancy. My father never wanted to die. The DINA killed him, they made him disappear, they threw him into the sea with other militants on February 22, 1975, three weeks after his detention at Villa Grimaldi.

In July 2011, I met with Judge Solis, who was in charge of the case I filed. The judge wanted to know if I had any questions. I answered by saying that I lived in France, that I lived very far away, and that the most important thing for me was to one day have the answer regarding my father's final destination.

I demanded an answer for the right of relatives to know the whole truth about the conditions of my father's forced disappearance.

That day he gave me the answer: the arrest with my mother on January 29, 1975, and on February 20, they took him with other comrades to Tejas Verdes. And on February 22, he would be thrown into the sea with the same group, all alive.

Leaving the judge's office, I walked through the streets of Santiago, smiling and crying; I had my answer. It was an incredible relief. Forced disappearance is psychological torture for the relatives. He must have been cold, he must have been hungry, how much he suffered from the torture, was he afraid, and for how long.

Now, looking at the Pacific, I know he is there. He is inside that sea, so beautiful but also so brutal. And now, thanks to the Association of Relatives of Forcibly Disappeared and Politically Executed Persons of Talca, I will have a place where I can go to reflect.

I want to thank all those who participated and made the realization of this event possible. From a distance, I send you all my gratitude and infinite thanks. Thank you for keeping the memory of my father alive, of the militant that he was. Soon, I will come with my partner and our daughter Iara Lilén to visit you and hug you.

Infinite thanks. From a distance, I will be with you on August 31.

Until always! Comrade René Molina! Now and always! Present!

Paris, August 21, 2024

My partner René Molina Mogollones was a militant of the MIR, a member of the Regional leadership of Talca, Curicó, and Colchagua. He worked for CONAF (National Forestry Corporation) and was the president of the union for the Curicó area.

He participated actively in the creation of the Peasant Communal Council. The same day of the coup d'état, we had gone into hiding together, constantly changing houses, places, regions. René never thought of leaving Chile.

In January 1975, René was 29 years old and had 3 children with his wife. On the 29th of that month, we were detained by the DINA in Santiago, at the corner of Avda. Matta and Portugal, and taken immediately to Villa Grimaldi. René was given number 924 and I was given number 925.

It was during the first days at Villa Grimaldi that I had the certainty that I was pregnant. On February 4, while they were taking us to the bathroom, I was able to see under the blindfold that covered my eyes the pants and shoes of René, and I let him know.

On February 11, they locked us in a place we called "the tower" with 14 other comrades. Each cell measured less than one square meter. It was summer and it was terribly hot. Like the rest of the prisoners, we were taken out of there only to be interrogated and tortured or to be taken to the bathroom.

Although we lived through very hard moments, the solidarity among us was immense. I want to tell you simply something that happened in those days, so that you can imagine our comrades.

I was on the 2nd floor with Rosa Lizama, 6 and a half months pregnant, and Maria Isabel Gutierrez. We could only sleep in shifts. Knowing this situation, the 4 comrades from a cell on the first floor, who had a slightly larger surface area than ours, asked the guards if we could exchange.

That is how we found ourselves in a cell adjacent to that of René and Rosa's husband, which allowed us to communicate while the guards were absent and to be somewhat more comfortable, although our comrades were in a more critical situation. It was gestures like these that made us live and be human.

On the morning of February 20, 1975, DINA agents took out a group of nine comrades, among whom were René and María Isabel. We never heard from them again and I could never obtain more information.

In the month of July 1975, in the town of Curitiba, Brazil, a newspaper called "O Dia" published an article that gave a list of 59 Chilean nationals who had allegedly died as a result of armed clashes. René's name appeared there. From that moment on, I had the feeling that I would not see him again.

Now we know that this publication corresponded to the Operation called Colombo by the DINA, which was an attempt by the dictatorship to hide its responsibility for the execution and disappearance of 119 prisoners and one of the first actions of "Plan Condor": a transnational collaboration destined to exterminate left-wing militants.

On May 13, the director of the DINA, Manuel Contreras, published a statement acknowledging the detention of 580 people, all of whom disappeared. Among them appears the name of René. The text says that during an "ambush by extremist snipers," René had been "killed in combat," and his body buried anonymously in one of the 7 courtyards of the General Cemetery.

What to do with this information? I can say that—on one hand—it is the first time it is acknowledged that the 119 were not killed by their comrades, that they were not murdered in Argentina or Brazil, that they were detained by security agencies of the dictatorship and executed by them in Chile.

But—on the other hand—there is the lie: René did not die in combat that January 29: we were not armed and we were detained and tortured. Furthermore, he was seen alive until February 20, 1975.

Renata, our daughter, was born in France on October 1, 1975.

The investigating judge, Juan Guzmán Tapia, prosecuted seven retired military officers for the crime of qualified kidnapping, for the disappearance of 23 people at the Villa Grimaldi torture center during the military government.

The former uniformed officers are the former director of the DINA, Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda; Colonel Marcelo Moren Brito; Brigadier Miguel Krasnoff; Sub-officer Basclay Zapata; agent Osvaldo Romo; the retired Carabineros officer, Conrado Pacheco; and agent Pedro Alfaro.

Source: La Tercera, July 22, 2002

Date: 07-22-2002

Santiago Court orders the state to pay compensation to the siblings of a forcibly disappeared person

In a unanimous ruling, the Second Chamber of the appellate court set at $60,000,000 the total amount of compensation that the state must pay to the siblings of Juan René Molina Mogollones, who was detained on January 29, 1975, by agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) and transferred to the clandestine center of Villa Grimaldi, from where his trail was lost.

The Santiago Court of Appeals set at $60,000,000 (sixty million) the total amount of compensation that the state must pay to the siblings of Juan René Molina Mogollones, who was detained on January 29, 1975, by agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) and transferred to the clandestine center of Villa Grimaldi, from where his trail was lost.

In a unanimous ruling (case file 8.793-2020), the Second Chamber of the appellate court—composed of ministers Omar Astudillo, María Soledad Melo, and lawyer (i) Pía Tavolari—confirmed the first-instance sentence that established the State's responsibility in a crime against humanity perpetrated by its agents, with the declaration that the compensation for moral damages that the Chilean state must pay to each of the plaintiffs is reduced to $20,000,000 (twenty million).

"That, in short, with the State bearing the obligation to repair the victim and their relatives as enshrined by international Human Rights regulations, domestic law does not become a sustainable argument to exempt it from compliance. Not only because of what has already been expressed, but because this duty of the State also finds its consecration in domestic law," the ruling states.

The resolution adds that: "Indeed, the State's responsibility system also derives from Article 3 of Law No. 18.575, the Organic Constitutional Law on the General Bases of State Administration, which provides that the State Administration is at the service of the human person, that its purpose is to promote the common good, and that one of the principles to which it must subject its action is that of responsibility; and, consequently, in its Article 4, it provides that 'the State shall be responsible for damages caused by the organs of the Administration in the exercise of their functions, without prejudice to the responsibilities that may affect the official who caused them.' Thus, it can only be concluded that the moral damage caused by the illicit conduct of the officials or agents of the State who are authors of the crimes against humanity on which this action is based must be compensated by the State."

"Consequently, the lower court correctly decides to dismiss the statute of limitations defense raised by the Chilean State," it adds.

Likewise, "(...) regarding the allegations of preterition and the plaintiffs having been satisfactorily compensated previously, these judges share the arguments given by the lower court judge to dismiss them," the resolution affirms.

"That—it continues—having said the above, this Court shares what was said by the lower court, regarding the appropriateness of compensation for moral damages in favor of the plaintiffs, who proved in the process the suffering and psychological sequelae suffered by them, in the face of the death of their brother."

For the appellate court: "Regarding the quantum of the compensation, which appears to be questioned by the Chilean State, in addition to the aspects commonly applied, that is, degree of kinship, closeness, and relationship with the victim, these judges differentiate, of course analyzing case by case, what is granted to spouses or partners regarding what is given to children and siblings."

"In the case of siblings, those who have effectively suffered the loss of a loved one, the moral damage must be valued in a smaller proportion, as this Court has repeatedly said, corresponding in this case to the sum of $20,000,000 for each of them," it reasons.

Source: pjud.cl 04/30/2021

Date: 04-30-2021