The Supreme Court confirmed the sentences against five agents of the dissolved Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI) for the crime of qualified homicide of Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria – MIR militants Juan Ramón Olivares Pérez and Rubén Eduardo Orta Jopia, crimes committed on November 7, 1980, in the vicinity of the Puente Vivaceta, in Santiago.

In a unanimous ruling (case file 31.866-2018), the Second Chamber of the Court—composed of ministers Haroldo Brito, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Leopoldo Llanos, Juan Manuel Muñoz Pardo, and acting attorney Pía Tavolari—rejected the appeal for cassation filed by the convicted individuals, confirming the first-instance sentence issued by minister Miguel Vásquez Plaza in May 2016, which sentenced the former Army brigadier and, at the time of the events, head of the CNI Metropolitan Division, Roberto Urbano Schmied Zanzi, to 18 years of effective imprisonment as the perpetrator of the crimes.

Meanwhile, as co-perpetrators, former agents Egon Antonio Barra Barra, alias "El Siete Fachas"; Teresa Osorio Navarro, alias "La Chica Marisol"; José Javier Soto Torres, alias "El Cabrón"; and Carlos Iván Labarca Brezzo, alias "El Pata de Canario," must serve 15 years and one day of imprisonment.

The victims

Juan Ramón Olivares Pérez, 37 years old, was a former electromechanical worker at the Empresa Nacional de Frigoríficos (Enafri), president of the company's Sindicato Único Nacional, president of the Cordón Industrial Estación Central, leader of the Frente de Trabajadores Revolucionarios, provincial leader representing his union in the CUT, and a member of the central committee of the MIR.

He had 6 children, four from his first marriage and two from a second relationship. He had been detained by the repressive apparatus of the FACh in 1975, remaining as a prisoner in the facilities of the AGA, Villa Grimaldi, Tres Álamos, and the Penitenciaría de Santiago.

After a little over a year of proceedings, the two life sentences he had received from the pseudo-military tribunals were commuted to exile or expulsion from the country. At the beginning of 1977, he left Chile. He returned clandestinely in March 1980 to join the Resistance efforts against the dictatorship.

Rubén Eduardo Orta Jopia, 34 years old, was an electrical technician and a militant of the PS until after the 1973 coup d'état. While in Cuba in 1976, he decided to join the MIR, and shortly thereafter, he adopted the policy of return, entering Chile clandestinely in 1979.

The murders

According to what was verified during the investigation phase by minister Vásquez, both militants had been previously detected and identified and were subject to surveillance and tracking by agents of the CNI Metropolitan Division, which had its base of operations at the Cuartel Borgoño in the capital.

In this context, on November 6, 1980, the repressive agents followed Ramón Olivares and Rubén Orta separately throughout the day, proceeding to arrest them individually in the course of that day.

Subsequently, that same night, but in the early hours of November 7, the agents transported the detainees to Avenida Santa María at the Puente Vivaceta, which is in the vicinity of the aforementioned Cuartel Borgoño.

At that location, they proceeded to execute them with firearm gunshots. They then placed them inside a Citroën vehicle brought for that purpose to simulate a confrontation. They presented the event to the public with the fallacy that those murdered intended to attack the nearby Cuartel Borgoño.

The murders of Olivares Pérez and Orta Jopia were carried out with cruelty and known premeditation, as established by the judicial investigation, "since the death was the product of prior planning to take their lives, which implied tracking initiated in advance, being captured at different times and circumstances, but in very close proximity to their deaths, for which they mounted a simulated confrontation, which demonstrates that there was a purpose taken with a cold and calm spirit to kill them, while both victims were defenseless," the ruling states, among other considerations.

Source: resumen.cl, July 8, 2021