The Seventh Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals, in a unanimous ruling, ratified this Tuesday the indictment against Colonel (Ret.) José Núñez Magallanes, as the perpetrator of the crime of torture committed inside the Tejas Verdes regiment, in the Fifth Region.

In this way, the appeals court confirmed the ruling of the visiting judge Alejandro Solís, who in March of last year indicted a series of former uniformed officers as perpetrators of unlawful coercion and the application of torture at said facility between 1973 and 1974.

Also indicted in the case are General Manuel Contreras, Colonels Claudio Kossiel Horning and Vittorio Orvietto, Lieutenant Colonels Raúl Quintana Salazar and Daniel Miranda, Major Mario Jara Seguel, Sergeant Major Patricio Carranca Saavedra, and detective Nelson Valdés Cornejo, all of whom are retired.

The Corporation for the Defense of the People's Rights (Codepu), a plaintiff in the case represented by lawyer Hiram Villagra, highlighted that the appeals court's ruling allows for progress in clarifying human rights violations. "The confirmation of the indictments against those who violated human rights constitutes an advance in the search for truth and the effective access of torture survivors to justice, in the conviction that this is the most effective mechanism for reparation and non-repetition," the entity stated.

Source: El Mostrador, August 26, 2006

Six officers (Ret.) convicted for Tejas Verdes victim

Among them are Army officers who had not been previously sentenced in another case for crimes against humanity. Six retired officers were sentenced by Judge Alejandro Solís to prison terms, among them once again the former head of the DINA, Manuel Contreras, as co-perpetrators of the aggravated kidnapping of Rebeca Espinoza Sepúlveda, who has been forcibly disappeared since January 3, 1974, from the Tejas Verdes concentration camp in the city of San Antonio in the Fifth Region.

Among those convicted are Army officers who had not been previously sentenced in another case for crimes against humanity. The perpetrators affected by prison sentences are Contreras, 15 years and one day; the prefect of the Investigative Police Nelson Valdés Cornejo, 5 years and one day; Lieutenant Colonel Raúl Quintana Salazar, 5 years and one day; Lieutenant Colonel David Miranda Monardes, 5 years and one day; Colonel Claudio Kossiel Hornig, 5 years and one day; and the doctor with the rank of colonel Vittorio Orvietto Teplitzki, 5 years and one day.

For all of them, except for Contreras who is already serving prison time for other cases, the prison sentence will be made effective once the sentence becomes final after being reviewed by the Santiago Court of Appeals and the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court, provided that the courts maintain the applied sentences and do not reduce them, granting benefits to the convicted that would allow them to serve their sentences in freedom.

Rebeca Espinoza was 40 years old, had five children, had no known political affiliation, and was a secretary at the Institute for Agricultural Development (INDAP) when she was detained in the vicinity of the Plaza de la Constitución along with José Miguel Rivas Rachitoff and José Leonardo Pérez Hermosilla, socialist militants, who had a similar itinerary to Espinoza and are also currently forcibly disappeared.

Among the Army officers who operated at Tejas Verdes is the current mayor of Providencia, Colonel (Ret.) Cristián Labbé, who has been questioned in the cases regarding those disappeared from this concentration camp.

There are several former prisoners who mention Labbé's presence at that location; some even accuse him of witnessing torture, but until now, no one has accused him of personally committing the acts of torture.

In the case of the military doctor Vittorio Orvietto, after being indicted by Judge Solís, he returned from the United States in April 2005 to turn himself in. After examining them, Orvietto was the one who gave the approval for prisoners to continue being tortured.

On September 11, 1973, when he began to build the DINA a few days later, Manuel Contreras held the rank of lieutenant colonel and was the chief of the state of siege zone in the province of San Antonio.

Working closely with him was the journalist Carlos Roberto Araya Silva, who became a DINA agent and later joined Televisión Nacional. In 1975, along with journalists Julio López Blanco and Claudio Sánchez, he was part of the staging of the Rinconada de Maipú case. For this, they were sanctioned by the Journalists' Association and later sued for their complicity in the DINA operation.

Source: La Nación, July 16, 2008

Communist militant and former GAP member. Tejas Verdes officers indicted for kidnappings and torture after the coup

The disappearance of two opponents of the regime and cruel coercion against another are attributed by Judge Alejandro Solís to the uniformed officers responsible for the Fifth Region regiment. Among those indicted are Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, Mario Jara Seguel, Nelson Valdés Cornejo, Patricio Carranca Saavedra, Klaudio Kossiel Horning, and Vittorio Orvietto Teplizki.

On Friday, Judge Alejandro Solís indicted the former officials responsible for the Tejas Verdes regiment as perpetrators of the crime of aggravated kidnapping and torture shortly after the 1973 military coup.

For the disappearance of two opponents of the regime, Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, Mario Jara Seguel, Nelson Valdés Cornejo, Raúl Quintana Salazar, David Miranda Monardes, Patricio Carranca Saavedra, Klaudio Kossiel Horning, and Vittorio Orvietto Teplizki were indicted.

Community leader and Communist Party (PC) militant Miguel Heredia Vásquez (23) was detained on December 26, 1973, by members of the Chilean Air Force (FACH) at his workplace, the Barros Luco Hospital clinic.

Subsequently, he was taken to the institution's specialty school and from there transferred on approximately January 9, 1974, to the prisoner camp located at the military unit in the Fifth Region. Félix Vargas Fernández (31), a member of President Salvador Allende's personal guard, suffered similar events.

In January 1974, he was deprived of his liberty without any judicial process and transferred from Santiago to Tejas Verdes, in San Antonio. In addition to all the officers mentioned above, Jorge Núñez Magallanes was indicted for the crime of torture committed against Anatolio Zárate Oyarzún.

An employee of Pesquera Arauco, the victim was detained on September 11, 1973, in San Antonio and placed under house arrest. 10 days later, he was called to his workplace, detained, and taken to Tejas Verdes until October 30.

There, he was placed with his forehead against a wall, hands tied, and legs spread. He received blows to different parts of his body with blunt objects and was subjected to electric shocks to his anus, mouth, nose, and nipples.

Anatolio Zárate was also forced to maintain forced positions to cause localized, high-intensity pain, and the form of coercion known as "the dove" (la paloma) caused a fracture in his spine. According to the ruling, he was also the victim of six mock executions and was forced to listen to the torture of other detainees while waiting for his own.

Due to the above, he suffers from chronic post-traumatic stress and emotional and psychological sequelae derived from the torture and kidnapping.

Source: El Mostrador, September 22, 2006

The human rights bloodhounds

A group of detectives uncovered some of the most emblematic cases of crimes against humanity committed during the dictatorship. A clockwork operation carried out by judges who decided to investigate. Below are some of the secret keys that allowed justice to reach into dark and intricate corners of history.

After the results of the Rettig Report were made known in 1991, the courts were flooded with cases of human rights violations that occurred between 1973 and 1990. Each judge worked with members of the Investigative Police according to their own criteria, and soon the number of police officers was insufficient.

In 1992, the first outline of specialization for these cases was created. It was called the Institutional Analysis and Coordination Commission and depended on the Fifth Department (DQ) until '94, when it was merged into that unit.

Later, the orders to investigate from the judges decreased, and it seemed that the cases had no future. But the arrest of Pinochet in London (1998) and the first lawsuit against him for "Calle Conferencia" caused the number of cases related to human rights to skyrocket.

By 2000, the DQ, conceived for "internal investigations," had lost that character, as 60 of its 70 members were dedicated to elucidating crimes committed during the dictatorship. In 2001, along with the creation of judges with exclusive dedication, the director of the Investigative Police, Nelson Mery, appointed Rafael Castillo as head of the DQ, who created new work teams for these cases.

Soon, the change in structure had its first success by getting 90% of the sub-officers of the firing squad in the Caravan of Death case to confess their participation in the events. The origin. Rafael Castillo took over the DQ due to his accumulated experience.

In 1991, from the Homicide Brigade (BH), together with a team of detectives, he investigated the assassination of Orlando Letelier, which was being prosecuted in Chile by Judge Adolfo Bañados. That year, they obtained accurate information about the actions, financing, and missions of the DINA abroad.

Thanks to this, they contacted Michael Townley, who told them about the operations in which he participated. This opened doors to judicially clarify in Chile the crime of Letelier, the assassination of Carmelo Soria, the attack on Bernardo Leighton, and other similar crimes.

The same thread also helped them solve the 1993 assassination of Eugenio Berríos in Uruguay. In the house where the DINA chemist stayed, they found checks from his salary, and other data were provided by military personnel.

With this information, in 2002, the judge of the Sixth Criminal Court of Santiago, Olga Pérez Meza, indicted six active and retired military personnel for the case which—despite there being no convictions—is solved from a police perspective, as the material perpetrators, Majors (Ret.) Arturo Silva Valdés and Jaime Torres Gacitúa, are reportedly confessed.

In 2004, Arturo Herrera assumed the position of director of the Investigative Police, who returned the DQ to its old organizational structure and created the Special Affairs and Human Rights Brigade (BAES), under the command of Sub-commissioner Sandro Gaete.

To date, the BAES is in charge of 95% of the cases of crimes against humanity and is directed by Commissioner Abel Lizama, who reports to the National Headquarters Against Organized Crime, led by the now Prefect Inspector Rafael Castillo.

In 2005, this unit was the best-evaluated in the institution. That same year, the executive director of the Americas division of Human Rights Watch, while visiting Chile, highlighted the work of the BAES, pointing to it as one of the most outstanding police efforts on the planet.

Conference of assassins. In the "Calle Conferencia" case, there were complex elements. In May 1976, the leaders of the PC Central Committee Mario Zamorano, Jorge Muñoz (husband of Gladys Marín), Uldarico Donaire, and Jaime Donato, as well as Elisa Escobar and Víctor Díaz, were kidnapped from a safe house located on that street.

All the writs of amparo (habeas corpus) filed were rejected, and the lawsuits were dismissed. In 1998, Gladys Marín and lawyer Eduardo Contreras filed a new lawsuit, and the case reached Judge Juan Guzmán Tapia, who worked with the DQ to determine the fate of the leaders.

In 2001, when the first indictments were issued, Colonel (Ret.) Germán Barriga, in charge of the kidnapping, jumped from a building under construction. "I reached the point of not being able to resist (...) political groups that have persecuted and pressured me (...) since I have been a retired uniformed officer." The "Calle Conferencia" case served to determine for the first time the final fate of the forcibly disappeared.

The civil police found a thread of the investigation in 2003 when a sub-officer (Ret.) of the Purén Brigade—created to annihilate the PC—under the command of then-Captain Germán Barriga, confessed that they took the detainees to the Tobalaba airfield, where—in a joint operation with the Army Aviation Command—they were placed in sacks, tied to rails, and thrown into the sea from Puma helicopters.

Two other former agents of that brigade confirmed the statements. The detectives registered all the pilots and aircraft mechanics who provided services during the indicated period. The pilots never acknowledged that work, but 12 mechanics indicated that DINA agents arrived at the base and that they loaded bundles onto the helicopters.

Subsequent estimates established that some 400 bodies were made to disappear in this way between 1974 and 1978. A macabre finding of the investigation was the case of PC leader Marta Ugarte, whose corpse was found in Los Molles in 1976.

An agent confessed that he tied her defectively and that is why her body did not reach the bottom of the sea. For the "Calle Conferencia" case, the former head of the DINA Manuel Contreras, agent Carlos López Tapia, pilots Emilio de la Mahotiere, Antonio Palomo, Óscar Vicuña, and Luis Felipe Polanco, and the former head of the Army Aviation Command Carlos Mardones Díaz are currently indicted.

Seeing underwater. With the agents' confessions, Judge Guzmán received a large amount of information about the possible whereabouts of the bodies. One of them indicated that in Quintero, "a diver named Luis" had found rails on the seabed.

In September 2004, after seven days of searching, one kilometer from the coast and at a depth of 30 meters, the rails appeared. Judge Guzmán described the finding as a success; the chemical expert report revealed that the evidence corresponded to Vignoles model rails, which are used on railway tracks to support and guide locomotives and wagons.

After Judge Guzmán's retirement in 2005, the case remained in the hands of Judge Víctor Montiglio. "No further proceedings were requested, and we did not return to that place, called 'Bajo Cochrane,' because of its shallow depth; that was the DINA's mistake.

But some preliminary testimonies indicated that a skull had been seen rolling on the seabed," says a high-ranking source from the Investigative Police. "Operation 'Retiro de Televisores'" (Television Removal Operation).

At the end of 1978 and the beginning of '79, a peremptory code arrived at all the garrisons in the country. The message emanated from Pinochet himself. The bodies of the executed had to be exhumed and made to disappear.

Some were burned—as in the case of the Los Ángeles Regiment—and others were thrown into the sea. The first glimpses of this operation had appeared in '99, when Captain (Ret.) Pedro Rodríguez declared to Judge Guzmán that the order to exhume the bodies came signed by Pinochet himself.

However, the version was distorted by other members of the Army, arguing that it was an intelligence operation. In 2002, the Investigative Police obtained a new signal when they were investigating the assassination of Víctor Jara and those kidnapped from La Moneda on September 11, 1973, and a sub-officer confessed to the exhumation of their bodies on a property in Peldehue.

The officer in charge brought two bottles of pisco. "We got drunk to endure the smell," he declared. However, only some time later did the thread appear to give validity to the thesis regarding the "Television Removal Operation." The brigade found out that a sub-officer requested an urgent audience with the then-commander-in-chief of the Army, Juan Emilio Cheyre, by means of a letter where he mentioned his participation in the operation and his discontent with the treatment received by his comrades.

Cheyre forwarded the letter to the courts, but as the sub-officer refused to cooperate, the matter was archived. But the DQ detectives found out about its existence and obtained an order to interview him.

In June 2004, Jaime Alberto Muller Avilés, an Army first sergeant and former member of the Los Ángeles Regiment, declared: "We excavated 80 centimeters, finding the bodies of five or six men dressed and wearing rubber boots.

We took out the remains and left them in plastic sacks." Later, many more spoke. As former CNI director Odlanier Mena declared to the press, the "Television Removal Operation" was motivated by the investigation initiated by the Vicariate of Solidarity after the 1978 discovery of 15 sets of remains in Lonquén. "The country was almost at war with Argentina.

Cohesion of the internal front was fundamental. People had to be convinced to go to war and support their Armed Forces. If more Lonquéns appeared, the internal front would be damaged." The serpent's egg.

After '73, the Tejas Verdes Engineer Regiment, under the charge of Colonel Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, was transformed into a political prisoner camp and was the place where the nascent DINA used torture techniques for the first time.

In 2003, after the San Miguel Court of Appeals declared itself incompetent to investigate a lawsuit for torture at that facility, the case passed to Judge Alejandro Solís. That is when the progress began.

Inspector Alejandro Vignolo, in charge of the investigation, located those who performed their military service at that location during 1973. Thirty years later, they provided valuable information, as their job was to act as "drivers" in the detentions of supporters of the UP Government.

Through their testimonies, it was learned, for example, the origin of the mythical "doves," the white Chevrolet C-10 pickup trucks used by the DINA in hundreds of detentions. They originally belonged to Pesquera Arauco and were used to transport fish and shellfish, but they were confiscated and transformed into the symbol of the DINA.

It was also possible to determine with exactitude the identity of the group of torturers and those in charge of eliminating the detainees. In addition to the victims' testimony, a DINA agent was persuaded to provide terrifying data that is currently part of the summary: "[In the basement] there were disused refrigerators, which were used as dungeons before and after the torture sessions.

There were four or five grills, several electric shock machines, blindfolds, sticks, rubber batons, etc.," declared a sub-officer (Ret.) in May 2005. He also shed light on the whereabouts of the Uruguayan citizen Nelsa Gadea Galán, who was disappeared until...

In 2004, LND published the report "Buried at Sea," where a machinist of the tugboat "Kiwi" denounced that the Tejas Verdes military personnel threw people into the sea. The thread this time arrived because a detainee in the prisoner camp recorded a conversation he had with the machinist and handed it over to the Investigative Police.

The man acknowledged this work before the justice system, but he did not know the people. However, the investigation continued to advance until in 2005, Gregorio Romero finished closing the circle: "DINA personnel proceeded to lower a rustic wooden box measuring 1.80 meters long and 60 cm wide, tied with wire, which presumably contained a dead political prisoner inside.

We embarked on the tugboat 'Kiwi,' where after sailing for half an hour, the agents threw the box into the water." Currently, in this case, Manuel Contreras, Mario Jara, Lieutenant Colonel Claudio Kossiel Horning, the Army doctor Colonel Vittorio Orvieto Teplisky, along with sub-officers David Miranda Monardes and Patricio Carranza Saavedra are indicted for torture and aggravated kidnapping.

From the Investigative Police, the San Antonio officer Nelson Valdés Cornejo is indicted. Army Colonel Jorge Núñez Magallanes is indicted only for torture. Capture of Schäfer. A year earlier, in 2004, they had a decisive participation in the arrest of Paul Schäfer.

After the German consulate in Argentina detected that some colonists wanted to settle there, the Chilean police gathered the testimony of a lawyer close to Villa Baviera: the leader was going to be operated on and required a treatment that is provided in few medical centers.

The geographical location where the colonists intended to buy land had already been established; the Argentine police found the hospital, and a doctor acknowledged having operated on a man with Schäfer's features.

Shortly after, trans-Andean forces intercepted telephone conversations of his adopted daughter, Rebeca, requesting the doctor to change a medication. Thus, his exact whereabouts were determined. Two weeks before Schäfer was arrested, the Chilean police and Government knew his whereabouts.

Upon being arrested (3-30-2005) in Tortuguita, 40 kilometers from Buenos Aires, he stated that he did not speak Spanish. When the DQ personnel, who had been following his steps for years, arrived, Schäfer looked at them from his wheelchair, like someone seeing a ghost that haunts him, and in fluent Spanish said: "I only ask you, please, do not touch my daughter Rebeca," recalls a detective who was present.

Later, the leader provided important data about Colonia Dignidad, currently under analysis, which could open new leads. On January 29, 2005, after an arduous investigation, they arrived at the home of the former DINA director, General Manuel Contreras, to arrest him for the kidnapping of MIR member Miguel Ángel Sandoval.

Contreras's tantrum, including drawing his pistol, was broadcast live by TVN. A detective recalls: "In the car, we were on edge. It had been a limit situation, and not a word was spoken. But the gentleman changed his switch, relaxed, and began to enjoy the landscape through the window. Perhaps he did not imagine what awaited him."

Source: lanacion.cl, October 1, 2006

Date: "She was found naked, blindfolded, and gagged on the grill, to which they were subjecting her to torture. One of the acts consisted of inserting a carrot of regular size into her vagina while they asked her various questions."

As co-perpetrators of the kidnapping and disappearance of Communist militant Miguel Heredia

Judge Solís sentences six officers (Ret.) for Tejas Verdes In the first-instance resolution, retired military personnel who are little known in the repression appear, apart from the "repeated" former head of the DINA, Manuel Contreras.

In the sentence, the journalist Roberto Araya is mentioned as a "spectator" of torture. One of the episodes of the repression least known publicly, that of the Tejas Verdes concentration camp in the Fifth Region, in which military personnel who make their "social debut" continue to appear, begins to enter its final stage under the charge of Judge Alejandro Solís.

Yesterday, the magistrate issued a new conviction against six Army and Investigative Police officers (Ret.) for the kidnapping and disappearance in December 1973 from that place of the Communist militant Miguel Heredia Vásquez.

The 15 years of prison for the former head of the DINA, Manuel Contreras, as the perpetrator of the kidnapping and disappearance of Heredia, appear, however, irrelevant for someone like Contreras, who already has two life sentences for the double crime of General Carlos Prats and his wife Sofía Cuthbert, plus another number of years from other sentences that exceed 100 years, which undoubtedly indicates that "Mamo" would never know freedom again and will die in prison.

The others sentenced are Lieutenant Colonels (Ret.) David Miranda Monardes, former military prosecutor at Tejas Verdes, Raúl Quintana Salazar, and Colonels Claudio Kossiel Hornig, better known among his peers as "the German who stutters on his R's," and Vittorio Orvieto Tiplitzky, who was the military doctor of that camp and whose duty it was to verify the state of health of the prisoners to give the approval as to whether or not they could continue to be subjected to torture.

All of them were sentenced to five years and one day in prison, also as co-perpetrators of the kidnapping and disappearance of Heredia. The novelty of this resolution is that in it, the former conscript and former prisoner Arturo Farías Vargas denounces that the torture applied to him at Tejas Verdes was in the presence of Contreras, Kossiel, and others; he also recognized the journalist and former DINA agent Roberto Araya as a "spectator," who was recently expelled from the Journalists' Association for his participation, along with his colleagues Claudio Sánchez, Julio López Blanco, and others, in the staging of the case called Rinconada de Maipú, for which lawyer Hugo Gutiérrez requested the indictment of all these press professionals. Araya was Contreras's right-hand man in San Antonio when "Mamo," still holding the rank of lieutenant colonel, assumed the command-in-chief of the state of emergency zone in the province of San Antonio, just after the military coup occurred. Foreign citizens also disappeared from the Tejas Verdes prisoner camp, including two Uruguayans. The well-known "law of flight" was also applied there, by which the murder of prisoners was justified, for example, that of a group of port union leaders. In the sentence, Judge Solís establishes in detail the trajectory of the former prisoners inside the camp, as well as the places where they were tortured. Colonel (Ret.) Claudio Kossiel emerges from the events of Tejas Verdes as an "illustrious unknown," but he is recognized by former detainees as one of the cruelest officers at that facility. Civil Conviction In his ruling, Judge Alejandro Solís also ordered the convicted to pay the sum of 50 million pesos to the relatives of Miguel Heredia for moral and psychological damages. In this way, Judge Solís accepted the civil lawsuit filed by Heredia's relatives within the framework of the criminal investigation. The amount of money stipulated by the magistrate must be paid by the convicted "jointly and severally," meaning the amount must be paid by all those sentenced together.

Source: La Nación, August 5, 2008

Manuel Contreras receives a new 15-year sentence

Visiting Judge Alejandro Solís Muñoz, in charge of the process known as Tejas Verdes, issued separate sentences against the DINA leadership, including the head of the disappeared organization, Manuel Contreras.

The magistrate is investigating the aggravated kidnapping of Félix Marmaduke Vargas Fernández, which occurred starting in January 1974 at the San Antonio military facility. For the crime, he set a sentence of fifteen years against Contreras Sepúlveda, and five years and one day in prison for Nelson Valdés Cornejo, Raúl Quintana Salazar, David Miranda Monardes, Klaudio Kosiel Horning, and the doctor Vittorio Orvietto Tiplitzky.

All the defendants, with the exception of Orvietto, must pay an indemnity of fifty million pesos each to Bernardo Vargas Fernández as compensation for damages. In the series of crimes being investigated regarding the investigative file called "Tejas Verdes," this is the fourth conviction by Judge Solís against the same group of people, with the previous ones corresponding to the victims Rebeca Espinoza Sepúlveda, Miguel Heredia Velásquez, and José Orellana Meza and José Pérez Hermosilla, respectively.

Source: La Nación, March 4, 2009

Manuel Contreras sentenced to "joint payment" to torture victims

Visiting Judge Alejandro Solís handed down a first-instance sentence against former General Manuel Contreras—five years and one day in prison, without parole—in addition to the "joint payment" of compensation to 20 victims of the crime of torture.

The affected individuals suffered illegitimate coercion at the Tejas Verdes detention center, in the commune of San Antonio, following the 1973 military coup. Meanwhile, in the civil aspect, it was determined that the convicted individuals Manuel Contreras, Vittorio Orvieto, Raúl Quintana, Nelson Valdés, and Klaudio Kosiel must jointly pay the sum of 10 million pesos to each of the 20 victims.

Meanwhile, the convicted individuals David Miranda and Jorge Núñez must jointly pay the sum of 10 million pesos to the six victims for whom they were convicted. The sentenced individuals and their sentences are: Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, five years and one day.

Without parole for torture of 20 victims. Nelson Valdés Cornejo, five years of imprisonment, with the benefit of supervised release, for torture of 20 victims. Raúl Quintana Salazar, five years of imprisonment, with the benefit of supervised release, for torture of 20 victims.

Klaudio Kosiel Horning, five years of imprisonment, with the benefit of supervised release, for torture of 20 victims. Vittorio Orvieto Tiplitzky, five years of imprisonment, with the benefit of supervised release, for torture of 20 victims.

David Miranda Monardes, three years of imprisonment, with the benefit of supervised release, for torture of six victims. Jorge Núñez Magallanes, three years of imprisonment, with the benefit of supervised release, for torture of six victims.

The victims of coercion at Tejas Verdes were: Nelly Andrade Alcaíno, Segundo Cerda Troncoso, Iván Contreras Puente, Juan Chacón González, Margarita Durán Fajardo, Arturo Farúas Vargas, Patricio Mac-Lean Labbe, María Nuñez Malhue, Mario Orellana Silva, Guillermo Ormazábal Silva, Luis Ovando Donoso, Luis Quilodrán Alcayata, Ramón Quilodrán Alcayata, Juan Ramón Ramírez Cortez, Juan Pablo Rodríguez Rodríguez, María Rojas Silva, Ernesto Salamanca Sepúlveda, Luisa Stagno Valenzuela, Luis Valenzuela González, and Anatolio Zárate Oyarzún.

Source: Cooperativa, August 9, 2010

Testimony of Anatolio Zárate Oyarzún (Excerpt)

Declaration of Anatolio Zárate Oyarzún, who states on page 1759: "...I was detained on September 11, 1973, from my home in San Antonio, ...I was taken to the Tejas Verdes School of Military Engineers where I remained detained from September 20, 1973, until October 30, 1973...

Upon arriving at the Regiment, they kept me with my forehead pressed against a wall, my hands behind my back, tied, and my legs spread, from approximately 10:00 in the morning until 19:30 hours. After standing in the Regiment, they took me to the 'prisoners' camp,' a place where I remained for 15 days in the open, sleeping outdoors, without even a blanket.

The camp was located below the Maipo River, which connects Tejas Verdes with Santo Domingo... although I did not see them, I know they were torturers because Captain Klaudio Kosiel would go to walk around the detainees' camp..."

Source: Case file No. 2.182-98 “Tejas Verdes”, August 9, 2010

Who is the DINA agent sentenced to 20 years in Punta Peuco who sued a journalist "for libel" for publishing his crimes

Cambio 21/ By Alfredo Peña.- On August 16 at 10:00 in the morning, journalist Javier Ignacio Rebolledo Escobar must appear before the Eighth Guarantee Court of Santiago due to the lawsuit filed against him for alleged crimes of serious libel with publicity.

And the lawsuit—in an unprecedented manner—has the support of a military officer who is sentenced to 20 years in prison and who is currently imprisoned in Punta Peuco since 2014. This follows the daughter of Lieutenant Colonel (ret.) Raúl Quintana Salazar, Carolina Paz Quintana, filing the action against him for considering that the book in which he appears, “Camaleón- Doble vida de un Agente Comunista” (Chameleon - Double Life of a Communist Agent), attacks the honor of the person who is currently serving a sentence in Punta Peuco for crimes against humanity.

But who is the military officer Raúl Pablo Quintana Salazar? It is clear he is a retired Lieutenant Colonel of the Army and that he was part of Pinochet's political police, the DINA, from its inception.

Quintana is incarcerated in the Punta Peuco prison serving ten years and one day of imprisonment as the perpetrator of the crime of aggravated kidnapping of five forcibly disappeared persons. To this, he adds a five-year sentence for the application of torture against detainees at the Tejas Verdes prisoner camp, the place where the DINA was created and a group of torturers, including Quintana Salazar, experimented on them.

Likewise, he is sentenced in the final instance to five years of imprisonment as the perpetrator of the aggravated kidnapping of two Uruguayan citizens. And he is prosecuted in another case of crimes against humanity for illicit association, kidnapping, application of torture, and aggravated kidnapping.

The DINA was born in the Tejas Verdes regiment in San Antonio where the then-Colonel Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda was the head of that unit and Raúl Quintana—the plaintiff against journalist Javier Rebolledo—was part of his select team of torturers.

Photo: Tejas Verdes at the beginning of the dictatorship According to the site to preserve and learn about the criminals who participated in the dictatorship and who committed hundreds of serious crimes, Memoria Viva: Raúl Quintana participated in several crimes and acts of torture.

Against men and women. According to Memoria Viva, Quintana participated in the torture and murders carried out at the “Tejas Verdes” concentration camp. This repressive center was located in the Province of San Antonio, and was part of the Army's repression infrastructure and was one of the most paradigmatic torture centers, directly related to the formation and operations center of the DINA since 1973.

In this torture facility, agents from different intelligence services were also trained in methods of torture and repression. Among the “professors” was the former Mayor of Providencia, Cristián Labbé.

According to the Rettig Report, “Tejas Verdes” corresponded to: Prisoner Camp No. 2 of the “Tejas Verdes” School of Military Engineers: Said detention facility, which reached more than 100 prisoners at certain times, functioned as such from September 11, 1973, with testimonies of its systematic use for such purposes until mid-1974.

Political prisoners who were detained in Tejas Verdes point out that, immediately after the coup d'état, they were transferred to San Antonio and Melipilla and then to Tejas Verdes, where they were cruelly tortured and subsequently murdered in the same place or in other parts of the region.

Among the criminals of said torture camp were: General (ret.) Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, General (ret.) Eugenio Armando Videla Valdebenito, Colonel (ret.) of Health Vittorio Orvieto Teplinzki, Colonel (ret.) Jorge Núñez Magallanes, Colonel (ret.) Klaudio Erich Kossiel Horning, Lieutenant Colonel (ret.) Raúl Pablo Quintana Salazar, Lieutenant Colonel (ret.) Daniel Adolfo Miranda Monarde, Major (ret.) Mario Alejandro Jara Seguel, Sergeant Major (ret.) Patricio Laureano Carranca Saavedra, Prefect (ret.) of Investigations Nelson Patricio Valdés Cornejo, and the civilian DINA agent Carlos Roberto Araya Silva. The latter has a life linked to Manuel Contreras, after the coup d'état. Victims executed or forcibly disappeared by the criminals of Tejas Verdes:

Executed

Armando Jiménez Machuca Samuel Núñez González Guillermo Álvarez Cañas Héctor Rojo Alfaro Raúl Enrique Bacciarini Zorrilla Fidel Alfonso Bravo Álvarez Jorge Antonio Cornejo Carvajal Patricio del Carmen Rojas González

Forcibly disappeared

Rebeca Espinoza Sepúlveda José Pérez Hermosilla José Orellana Meza The case of Rebeca Espinoza and the announcer who reached high positions at TVN One of the cases in which the military officer Quintana was involved is that of Rebeca Espinoza.

She was 40 years old, had five children, had no known political affiliation, and was a secretary at the Institute for Agricultural Development (INDAP) when she was detained in the vicinity of the Plaza de la Constitución along with José Miguel Rivas Rachitoff and José Leonardo Pérez Hermosilla, socialist militants, who had an itinerary similar to Espinoza's and are currently also forcibly disappeared... or dead.

In the case of the military doctor Vittorio Orvieto, after being prosecuted by Judge Solís, he returned from the United States in April 2005 to turn himself in. After examining them, Orvieto was the one who gave the approval for prisoners to continue being tortured.

On September 11, 1973, when the DINA began to be assembled a few days later, Manuel Contreras held the rank of Colonel and was the head of the state of siege zone of the province of San Antonio. Working closely with him was the announcer for a San Antonio radio station, Carlos Roberto Araya Silva, who became a DINA agent.

Later, Manuel Contreras was promoted to General and formally took charge of the DINA throughout the country. And he brought Roberto Araya Silva—as he was known—to Santiago, who arrived as head of security at TVN and then rose in rank due to his friendship with "Mamo" Contreras.

Roberto Araya began reading news on screen in 1975, especially those arriving from abroad. Very soon he was appointed Director of News, without having studied Journalism at any university. In 1975, he was part, along with journalists Julio López Blanco and Claudio Sánchez, of the so-called Rinconada de Maipú montage where five people, all relatives, were murdered.

For this, they were sanctioned by the Journalists' Association and later sued for their complicity in the DINA operation.

Source: cambio21.cl, July 26, 2018

Minister Marianela Cifuentes sentences military officers (ret.) to 10 years in prison for aggravated kidnapping of an SML official

The minister on special assignment for human rights violation cases of the San Miguel Court of Appeals, Marianela Cifuentes Alarcón, sentenced three retired Army personnel and a doctor who provided services to the military branch for their responsibility in the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Luis Alberto Sepúlveda Carvajal.

The illicit act was perpetrated starting September 26, 1973, at the Tejas Verdes School of Military Engineers, located in the commune of San Antonio. In the ruling (case file 28-2009 N), the visiting minister sentenced Raúl Pablo Quintana Salazar, a reserve second lieutenant at the time of the events, Ricardo Fortunato Judas Tadeo Soto Jerez, lieutenant, Ramón Luis Carriel Espinoza, first sergeant, and the then-Army doctor Vittorio Orvieto Tiplitzky to 10 years of effective imprisonment, as perpetrators of the crime.

In the resolution, Minister Cifuentes Alarcón established the following facts: "1° That, on September 26, 1973, Luis Alberto Sepúlveda Carvajal, an official of the San Antonio Legal Medical Service, was detained, without legal basis, by officers of the Chilean Investigative Police, who transferred him to the Tejas Verdes School of Military Engineers, being taken at night to the prisoner camp of said military unit, under the charge of Major David Adolfo Miranda Monardes, reserve second lieutenant Raúl Pablo Quintana Salazar, and 1st Sergeant Ramón Luis Carriel Espinoza, all of the Chilean Army, where he remained locked up until the 29th of the same month and year. 2° That on September 29, 1973, at 23:00 hours, Luis Alberto Sepúlveda Carvajal was detained, without legal basis, at his home, by military personnel, who took him again to the prisoner camp of the Tejas Verdes School of Military Engineers, a place where he remained deprived of liberty until October 13 of the same year, the date on which he was transferred to the San Antonio Prison. 3° That, on repeated occasions, Sepúlveda Carvajal was transferred from the aforementioned prisoner camp and from the San Antonio Prison to the basement of the officers' casino of the Tejas Verdes School of Military Engineers, a place where he was interrogated and subjected to illegitimate coercion, specifically the application of electricity and physical abuse, leaving as a consequence severe psychological damage secondary to the traumatic experience lived during his confinement. 4° That the Tejas Verdes School of Military Engineers at that time was under the command of Army Lieutenant Colonel Juan Manuel Guillermo Contreras Sepúlveda, Major David Adolfo Miranda Monardes, Major Jorge Rosendo Núñez Magallanes, and Major Mario Alejandro Jara Seguel, all deceased. 5° That, on the other hand, the interrogations under illegitimate coercion carried out in the basement of the officers' casino of the Tejas Verdes School of Military Engineers were in charge of Major Jorge Núñez Magallanes, Major Mario Jara Seguel, Captain Klaudio Erich Kosiel Hornig, Lieutenant Ricardo Fortunato Judas Tadeo Soto Jerez, 2nd Sergeant Ramón Acuña Acuña, doctor Vittorio Orvieto Tiplitzky, and Investigations Police inspector Nelson Valdés Cornejo."

Source: pdju.cl, August 9, 2023

Supreme Court sentences 5 former DINA agents for aggravated kidnapping and illegitimate coercion

The Second Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court issued a final sentence in the process that investigated the aggravated kidnapping and illegitimate coercion against Luz de las Nieves Ayress Moreno, detained on January 30, 1974, in the commune of San Joaquín.

Justices Leopoldo Llanos, María Teresa Letelier, Jean Pierre Matus, María Cristina Gajardo, and substitute justice Juan Manuel Muñoz resolved to sentence César Manríquez, Ciro Torré, Klaudio Kosiel, Raúl Pablo Quintana, and Vittorio Orvieto to a penalty of 10 years and 1 day, as co-perpetrators of the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Luz de las Nieves.

Likewise, all the former agents were sentenced to a penalty of 5 years, as co-perpetrators of the crime of illegitimate coercion perpetrated against the victim. The Court rejected the appeal for cassation on the merits filed by the defense of Vittorio Orvieto against the second-instance ruling pronounced by the San Miguel Court of Appeals.

Plaintiff lawyer Francisco Ugás Tapia, legal coordinator of the Caucoto Abogados firm, stated that "as representatives of Ms. Luz de las Nieves Ayress Moreno, we express our satisfaction with the final definitive sentence issued by the Supreme Court, in the case instructed to investigate and punish the crimes perpetrated against her, and to provide reparation for the damage caused to her by state agents." In the same way, Ugás said that "we positively value and highlight the work of the judiciary in this case, manifested in the great task of Minister Marianela Cifuentes Alarcón, of the San Miguel Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court." The lawyer explained that "all the crimes committed by the dictatorship were terrible, but in this case, I must allude to some particular aspects, which have to do with the brutal sexual attacks committed against the victim by those State agents, and which are accounted for in the facts that justice deemed justified. Making such criminal acts visible in the rulings; qualifying them legally as corresponds, recognizing the disvalue of the criminal conduct committed; and, setting proportional sanctions for such crimes, given their gravity, are relevant issues that we must recognize, and that should be applied in the judging of all cases of this nature, of the past and the present, which demand their analysis and resolution using a gender perspective," he emphasized. "It is very valuable and necessary that our justice system perseveres in its recognition and application of said perspective, for the sake of strengthening a culture of human rights in our country," concluded Ugás. "I am very happy" Luz de las Nieves Ayress, a surviving victim who currently lives in New York, USA, expressed being "very happy because the Supreme Court accepted the ruling in my favor, after more than 50 years that I and my family, companions, have been fighting." Despite this, she expresses that "that does not pay for all the damage that torturers and military officers did from Pinochet downwards and the civil-military dictatorship. Our lives and everything we have gone through are priceless, and there are many left along the way who have not yet received justice." Ayress wants the focus in the future to be "on the concept of political sexual violence," since, as she comments, "we women have fought hard for it to be included within the Penal Code, it is very important." Finally, she points out that the "struggle to recover our memory and truth opens the path to justice and let us leave a legacy to the new generations of this nefarious part of Chile's history so that they have the capacity to warn of the advances of denialism and distortions of our history." The facts According to the investigation led by visiting minister Marianela Cifuentes, the following facts could be established: "1° That, on January 30, 1974, Luz de las Nieves Ayress Moreno was detained, without legal basis, at her father Carlos Orlando Ayress Soto's factory in the commune of San Joaquín, by agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), an organization directed by Army Colonel Juan Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, currently deceased. 2° That, immediately after, Luz Ayress Moreno was transferred to "Londres 38", a clandestine DINA detention center, under the charge of Army Major Marcelo Luis Manuel Moren Brito, currently deceased, who, at the same time, depended on the Commander of the National Intelligence Brigade, Army Lieutenant Colonel César Manríquez Bravo. 3° That, in "Londres 38", Luz Ayress Moreno was interrogated and subjected to illegitimate coercion, that is, application of electricity, hanging, stripping, threats, and rape via vaginal and anal routes, by State agents, among them, Carabineros Lieutenant Ciro Ernesto Torré Sáez. 4° That, in the course of February 1974, Luz Ayress Moreno was taken, along with other detainees, among them her father Carlos Orlando Ayress Soto and her brother Carlos Orlando Ayress Moreno, to the Tejas Verdes School of Military Engineers, a DINA detention center located in the commune of San Antonio, where Klaudio Erich Kosiel Hornig, Raúl Pablo Quintana Salazar, and Vittorio Orvieto Tiplitzky performed duties, a place where she was kept locked up without legal basis and was subjected to brutal physical and psychological abuse, specifically she was inflicted with repeated beatings, deliberate bodily injuries, application of electricity, threats, mock executions, humiliations, and indignities, witnessing the torture applied to her father and brother, stripping, and sexual assaults (they forced her to perform and suffer sexual acts, among them, carnal access via vaginal, anal, and oral routes, sexual acts with an animal, introduction of rats via vaginal route and objects via vaginal and anal routes), causing her pregnancy, which did not reach term due to a spontaneous abortion. 5° That, subsequently, she was transferred to the Santiago Women's Prison and, from there, to the clandestine detention center "Tres Álamos", a place where she was interviewed by delegates of the International Committee of the Red Cross on November 20, 1974."

Source: resumen.cl, November 14, 2024

Supreme Court sentences military officers (ret.) for application of illegitimate coercion in Tejas Verdes

The Second Chamber rejected the appeals for cassation on the merits filed against the sentences that convicted Raúl Pablo Quintana Salazar, Ramón Luis Carriel Espinoza, Ricardo Fortunato Judas Tadeo Soto Jerez, and Vittorio Orvieto Tiplitzky, for their responsibility in three consummated crimes of illegitimate coercion.

Illicit acts committed between September 1973 and January 1974, in the facilities of the Tejas Verdes Army School of Military Engineers, San Antonio commune. The Supreme Court rejected the appeals for cassation on the merits filed against the sentences that convicted Raúl Pablo Quintana Salazar, Ramón Luis Carriel Espinoza, Ricardo Fortunato Judas Tadeo Soto Jerez, and Vittorio Orvieto Tiplitzky, for their responsibility in three consummated crimes of illegitimate coercion.

Illicit acts committed between September 1973 and January 1974, in the facilities of the Tejas Verdes Army School of Military Engineers, San Antonio commune. In split rulings (case files 51.761-2024, 5.963-2025, and 15.255-2025), the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed of Justice Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Justices María Cristina Gajardo, Eliana Quezada, substitute lawyer Leonor Etcheberry, and substitute lawyer Carlos Urquieta—confirmed the sentences that convicted Quintana Salazar, Carriel Espinoza, Soto Jerez, and Orvieto Tiplitzky to penalties of 5 years and 4 years of intensive supervised release, as perpetrators of the illegitimate coercion applied to Mario López Cisternas and Gustavo del Carmen Flores Quinteros; and 4 years of effective imprisonment, for the repeated illegitimate coercion of Hernán Becerra Madrid. In the case of Carriel Soto, the Criminal Chamber granted the fulfillment of the sentences under the regime of total house arrest with telematic control (electronic ankle monitor), due to his advanced age and precarious health. In the civil aspect, the Criminal Chamber maintained the sentence that ordered the treasury to pay compensation of $50,000,000 for moral damages to the recurring victim, Flores Quinteros. “That, for the purpose of dismissing the appeals under analysis, it should be noted that, strictly speaking, the first and seventh grounds of Article 546 of the Code of Criminal Procedure are argued in the same chapter and jointly. As can be observed, the infringement of No. 1 of the aforementioned rule necessarily assumes that the facts were correctly established and that they constitute a crime, to also support the ground provided in 546 No. 7, that is, having violated the laws regulating evidence, ignoring the facts established by the judge, who—on the contrary—accepts them when arguing the first reason for invalidation,” the rulings state. The resolutions add that: “In this regard, it should be noted that the legal condition of this type of appeal does not allow them to be formalized in incompatible grounds, since, based on them, the court of cassation would find itself in the impossibility of issuing a pronouncement without this entailing accepting or rejecting contradictory antecedents at the same time, nor could it accept one ground in preference to another, since to do so, it would have to disregard the form in which the appellant himself deduced it in his respective brief, which violates the doctrine sustained in the provisions that regulate the appeal for cassation.” “For these reasons, the appeals filed by the defenses of the accused will not prosper,” they highlight. Likewise, the rulings record: “That, for its part, the defense of Soto Jerez appeals for cassation on the merits, invoking only the seventh ground of Article 546 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, denouncing as violated articles 456 bis, 459, and 457 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, disputing the criminal participation that was established. It indicates that the sentence took as proven that its represented party was part of the group of interrogators, basing this solely on a merit annotation in his service record, dismissing the exculpatory antecedents that prove that the sentenced individual did not participate in the events, altering the norms that regulate evidence, carrying out a true collective objective imputation. For all these reasons, it requests that the appeal be accepted, invalidating the appealed sentence, issuing in the same act and without a new hearing, but separately, a replacement sentence by which its represented party is acquitted.” For the Criminal Chamber: “(…) to dismiss the appeal under study, it is enough to point out that, when requesting the acquittal of the convicted individual, the formalization brief of the appeal suffers from fundamental defects that impose its rejection. Indeed, as has been stated, only the ground of numeral seventh of Article 546 of the Code of Criminal Procedure is invoked, which refers to nothing more than the infringement of the laws regulating evidence, which alone is not enough to resolve, in the replacement sentence that would proceed to be issued, in case the appeal is accepted, the acquittal of the convicted individual, it being necessary for this to link said ground with another of those established in the indicated precept, since the mere mutation of the facts does not allow this court of cassation to make use of its invalidating powers by determining, ex officio, which of those other grounds—taxatively indicated in the procedural statute of the branch—that denote an erroneous application of the law corresponds to make concurrent, which is sufficient to dismiss the appeals.” “With all, it should be noted that the appellant questions the assessment executed by the judges, pointing out that it violates the laws regulating evidence and would not allow reaching the convicting conclusion arrived at. However, beyond this assertion, it does not denounce as violated any norm related to the assessment of evidence; moreover, the appellant only asserts the existence of an infringement, constructing the claim in assertions as general as those observed in the ruling and which, in reality, seek for this Court to perform an exercise forbidden for this venue, which is a new assessment of the evidentiary means which, moreover, were duly appraised by the instance judges,” the rulings conclude. Decision that granted the fulfillment of the sentences to Carriel Espinoza under the modality of house arrest, agreed upon with the dissenting votes of the member lawyers. In the first-instance sentences, the minister on special assignment for human rights violation cases of the San Miguel Court of Appeals, Marianela Cifuentes Alarcón, established that the victims, after being detained, were sent to the Army School of Military Engineers, located in the Tejas Verdes sector, San Antonio commune. Once in said military unit, they were subjected to interrogations under torture in the basement of the officers' casino. At the time of the events, September 1973 and February 1974, the Tejas Verdes School of Military Engineers was under the command of Army Lieutenant Colonel Juan Manuel Guillermo Contreras Sepúlveda, seconded by Majors David Adolfo Miranda Monardes, Jorge Rosendo Núñez Magallanes, and Mario Alejandro Jara Seguel (all deceased). Meanwhile, in charge of the interrogations were Majors Jorge Núñez Magallanes and Mario Jara Seguel, supported by Captain Klaudio Erich Kosiel Hornig, Lieutenant Ricardo Fortunato Judas Tadeo Soto Jerez, 2nd Sergeant Ramón Acuña Acuña, and doctor Vittorio Orvieto Tiplitzky, among others.

Source: pdju.cl, November 19, 2025