In 1974, non-commissioned officer and commando Carlos Labarca Sanhueza killed his comrade José González Ulloa. Both were instructors at the DINA’s National Intelligence School. However, in 1990, the Army included González in the count of its "martyrs" who died in "clashes," deceiving the Rettig Report. In reality, it was nothing more than a crime among the elite of Pinochet’s guard.

Labarca shattered his head with a gunshot. To this day, it is unknown whether what happened that morning on September 20, 1974, was a drunken brawl between DINA commandos, or if Labarca killed González on the orders of 'Mamo' Contreras or 'Don Rodrigo'—the alias of Pedro Espinoza.

Both victim and perpetrator were elite non-commissioned officers and instructors at the National Intelligence School that the DINA maintained in the Cajón del Maipo. Since November 1973, both had been members of Pinochet’s "security advance guard," alongside men like Armando Fernández Larios.

Once the crime was committed, 'Mamo' spoke with Pinochet, and they decided to send Labarca to Argentina. He was "summarily processed," as Espinoza told Judge Alejandro Solís a couple of months ago. Labarca’s "summary proceeding" was strange.

On October 30, 1974, Carlos Hernán Labarca Sanhueza arrived in Buenos Aires, earning 480 dollars a month. A member of the most highly trained, loyal, and unconditional sub-officer corps regarding the dictatorship's crimes, Labarca was as ruthless as they come.

The "summary proceeding" was a cover to help set up the DINA office inside the Chilean embassy in that city. The cover for 'Alberto Zúñiga González'—his alias—was to appear as a "bodyguard" for the military attaché in Buenos Aires, Colonel Joaquín Ramírez Pineda.

This is the same man who, while commander of the Tacna regiment, ordered, by superior command, the crimes against the detainees at the Palacio de La Moneda on the day of the military coup.

Weeks later, "Don Vicente"—the alias of Colonel Víctor Barría Barría—arrived in Buenos Aires; he was Labarca’s superior for that mission in Argentina.

The Army attributed the crime to its "victims of extremism," and presented it as such to the Rettig Report in 1990. The Commission believed it without investigating further. That is why José Nelso (sic) González Ulloa appears in that report as a victim of those who "acted for political motives." "He died on September 20, 1974, in a clash with unknown armed groups inside the Cajón del Maipo" who "presumably acted for political motives," the Rettig Report stated.

It added that it "formed the conviction that the victim's death was a violation of human rights."

The Family The family of 'Necho,' as they called him, was shocked in San Fernando when we informed them of what we had discovered. It was a difficult conversation with his sister, Josefina. She did not believe it at first. "But the Army brought us the body and told us that extremists had killed him," she said, sobbing. "No sir, that is not true; how can you come and tell us this 30 years later, when we still carry the pain of 'Necho's' death?

May God keep him in His holy kingdom."

Little by little, she opened up to ask for the name of the killer, because that is how Pedro Espinoza described it to Judge Solís: "it was a murder." We gave it to her. "This destroys everything for us, sir, but perhaps 'Nechito' would have also ended up in jail today," the sister said.

But the six siblings are afraid that if the truth becomes known, "the Army will take away the pension we receive for him. That is why we are not going to do anything. We are going to live with this immense pain."

"All of this calls into question the cases presented to the Rettig Report by the Army. Here, they tried to make people believe there was a clash, when this person was executed by his own comrades," maintains Hernán Quezada, the lawyer for the Prats-Cuthbert family, for whom "this case must be investigated."

According to the death certificate, the death occurred at 07:30 on Friday, September 20, 1974. The cause, very brief, was "subcranial hemorrhage." The burial place listed is the "General Cemetery." But 'Necho' is buried on Los Boldos Street in the San Fernando Cemetery.

Everything was done in secrecy. The documentation of the Rettig Report notes that the press has no record of his death, despite him being a "martyr of extremism." The death certificate, like the details of the death, was written by doctor Werner Zanghelini Martínez. The place of death listed is "Santiago, Carrera 214." That was one of the MAPU offices that the Army had seized.

The Rettig Report did not receive the autopsy protocol when it requested it from the Legal Medical Service at the time. There was no autopsy.

The service responded to LND that "that person has no record of admission or autopsy." Zanghelini was one of them, a DINA agent who at the time worked at the Santa Lucía clinic of that intelligence service. He was a member of the Health Brigade and today works as a cardiologist at 1983 Galvarino Gallardo Street, in Providencia. He was "exposed" there some time ago by the Comisión Funa.

A Big Dog One day before September 11, 1973, Labarca graduated as a "commando" at the Paratrooper School, with Lieutenant Emilio Timmermann Undurraga as his direct superior. Now a retired general, Timmermann will likely be one of the next to be prosecuted in the investigation into the crime against the former DINA chemist Eugenio Berríos.

Labarca’s curriculum is not minor: military mountain instructor, he held the paratrooper course, the special warfare course, the assault course, the guide course, and the explosives and munitions course.

He was also an instructor at the DINA’s National Intelligence School and had passed the commando course. As such, he was a teacher to officers who held him in high regard for his capabilities. In other words, he was not someone you wanted to cross paths with on the street while looking at him the wrong way.

On the day of the military coup, Labarca was assigned with a unit from the Paratrooper School as a "strategic reserve for the Commander-in-Chief of the Army." A few days later, under the command of Colonel Alejandro Medina, he joined a detachment of paratrooper commandos that traveled to Neltume, in the mountains of the X Region, on a "guerrilla operation," as he himself defines it.

DINA instructor Cristián Labbé Galilea, now a retired colonel and mayor of Providencia, also traveled in that detachment. On September 18, 1973, Labarca participated in that area in the detention of the legendary 'Commander Pepe,' who was executed on October 3 of that year in Valdivia by the Caravan of Death.

In Labarca’s words, they were in the area for about 25 days. Therefore, on October 10 of that year, the detachment was still there. For this reason, Judge Alejandro Solís is investigating Medina Lois, Labbé, and everyone who was part of that group as suspects for the murders of 15 peasants from the Panguipulle Timber Complex in the town of Liquiñe.

Their bodies were thrown into the Toltén River that same night, disappearing forever.

Labarca was part of Pinochet’s "security advance guard" starting in November 1973, along with his comrades Jorge Vial, Carlos Pinolevi Rocha, Reginaldo Valdés Alarcón, and 'González,' according to Labarca himself.

Such was the importance that the DINA assigned to this select group of non-commissioned officers that it rented them an apartment in the San Borja redevelopment, across from the Unctad building, which was renamed Diego Portales after the coup.

Having arrived in Buenos Aires to serve the "punishment of the summary proceeding," Labarca rubbed shoulders with the cream of the crop of officers and non-commissioned officers—agents of the DINA’s Foreign Department—who were preparing the attacks on Bernardo Leighton and Orlando Letelier, and laying the foundations for Operation Colombo, part of Operation Condor.

Through this, they intended to make people believe that 119 MIR militants who remained imprisoned in Chile or who had already been murdered had fled to Argentina and were executed by their own exiled comrades for being "traitors." One month before Labarca’s arrival in Buenos Aires, the DINA murdered General Carlos Prats and his wife.

In 1974, Buenos Aires was a hotbed of agents operating abroad. It was Labarca who, in 1975, sent to Chile to 'Yiyo' Raúl Iturriaga Neumann—head of the Foreign Department in Santiago under the alias 'Luis Gutiérrez'—the envelope with the 119 identity cards of the Chileans who would be presented as the victims of their own comrades in Operation Colombo.

On April 10, 1976, Labarca returned to Santiago, assigned to the DINA’s Foreign Department. Such was his reputation that the Mulchén Brigade, responsible for the crime of Carmelo Soria among other murders, wanted to bring him into its ranks. But "Luis Gutiérrez" would not let him go.

When the DINA was dissolved, Labarca moved to the CNI. "There, all the key positions were held by Army commandos," he told the Fifth Department, and continued to praise himself. "The access I had, no one who wasn't a commando had," he stated to his interrogators, commenting on his friendships with 'Yiyo' Iturriaga and recounting that the man of the "sharpened daggers"—who also directed the DINA’s foreign work and commanded the Paratrooper School—José Zara Holger, "was fond of the drink."

How many bullets Labarca used to kill González is unknown, but Pedro Espinoza remembered the details and dates of the crime very well when facing Judge Solís.

Labarca is one of many elite commando non-commissioned officers who have managed to fly under the radar until now. He has never been prosecuted. But this time, the sword could fall upon him.

Source: La Nación, February 1, 2004

Minister Jorge Zepeda has filed an accusation in the case regarding the kidnapping of former Cobrechuqui official David Silberman, a case that is now approaching the sentencing stage and in which the charges against the four defendants remain in place.

The magistrate deemed that former DINA director Manuel Contreras and Brigadier (ret.) Marcelo Moren Brito are responsible as perpetrators of Silberman’s kidnapping, while he maintained the classification of accomplices in the same crime for Marcos Derpich Miranda and Carlos Labarca Sanhueza.

On October 4, 1974, DINA members removed Silberman from the Penitentiary where he was being held after being subjected to a War Council in Calama. According to witnesses, the supervisor of what is now Codelco was seen at DINA barracks such as José Domingo Cañas and Cuatro Álamos.

The parties may now accept or reject the accusation, and once the minister gathers all the evidence, the final phase will begin, which includes the issuance of the first-instance sentences.

Source: La Nación, October 20, 2004

Supreme Court issues final sentence in David Silberman kidnapping case

The Supreme Court issued a final sentence in the investigation into the aggravated kidnapping of David Silberman Gurovich, which occurred starting on October 4, 1974, in Santiago.

In a split decision, the ministers of the Second Criminal Chamber ratified the ruling in its penal aspect, which had established the following sanctions: Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda: 7 years of effective prison; Marcelo Moren Brito: 7 years of effective prison; Carlos Labarca Sanhueza: acquitted for lack of participation; and Marcos Derpich Miranda: acquitted for lack of participation.

In the civil aspect, the magistrates accepted the appeal filed by the State Defense Council and accepted the exception of absolute incompetence of the court, determining the elimination of the payment of a total indemnity of $1,040,000,000 to the victim's widow, three children, and two siblings.

The Case David Silberman Gurovich was a married civil engineer and General Manager of Cobre Chuqui until September 11, 1973. A member of the Communist Party, he voluntarily presented himself on September 15, 1973, to the Military Commander of Calama, remaining detained and subjected to proceedings by a Wartime Military Tribunal.

On September 28 of that year, the War Council issued a sentence condemning him to 10 years in prison for crimes contemplated in the State Security Law and 3 years for the Arms Control Law, having to serve his sentence in Santiago, as he had been requested from there by decree. Around October 2, he was imprisoned in the Penitentiary of this city.

On October 4 of the same year, he was taken out of the Penitentiary and brought to the Air Force War Academy, remaining in that facility until October 20, the day he was returned to the Santiago Penitentiary.

Silberman remained in this place until October 4, 1973. On this date, he was removed from the prison facility by DINA agents who forged Army documents in order to deceive the Gendarmerie and secure the delivery of the detainee. Once outside the facility, David Silberman was taken to the house that the security agency maintained on José Domingo Cañas.

From there, on October 5, he was taken to 4 Álamos, to then be taken again on the 6th or 7th of that month to José Domingo Cañas, in whose facilities he remained until the middle of the same month, when he was transferred to 4 Álamos, from where he disappeared at the end of October or the first days of November.

In April 1975, the body of a man destroyed by an explosion appeared in a basement in Buenos Aires with a sign that read "discharged by the MIR." It was said that it was David Silberman; however, it was proven that it was not Silberman, but rather the first steps of a disinformation campaign that would mark the beginning of the so-called "Operation Colombo." The body of the communist militant remains disappeared.

Source: El Mostrador, April 20, 2009

The mysteries surrounding the final hours of José Tohá at the Military Hospital

The autopsy performed on the remains of Allende’s former minister confirmed that he could have been murdered. The version disseminated by the dictatorship in 1974 indicated that the politician committed suicide.

The result of the autopsy of the remains of José Tohá, the former minister of President Salvador Allende, revealed on Friday of last week, scientifically confirmed what the judicial investigation presumed: that the politician did not commit suicide—as the dictatorship said in 1974—but could have been strangled.

With the expert report carried out by experts from the Legal Medical Service (SML) known, the categorical statement made to the Efe Agency in 2009 by the former forensic doctor of the Homicide Brigade of the Investigative Police, Alfonso Chelén, stands out: "José Tohá was strangled."

The criminalist, who in March 1974 provided services to the Investigative Police, was the first to enter room 303 of the Santiago Military Hospital on March 15, 1974. There, he found the corpse of the former Minister of the Interior and Defense of the Allende Government, hanging inside a closet, but with his feet strangely resting on the floor and his legs bent.

Tohá was 1.90 meters tall. The belt that tied his neck to an iron bar crossing the top of the closet had a knot that Dr. Chelén easily untied and which would not have supported the weight of a hanging body.

All the investigations that the criminalist carried out that day in the room, as well as the photographs taken of the body and the crime scene, disappeared quickly.

General Ernesto Baeza, who in 1974 directed the Homicide Brigade of the Investigative Police, tried to get Alfonso Chelén to sign a report that he had not written. The document supported the exact opposite thesis to the one he had established: that José Tohá’s death was due to suicide by hanging. His refusal cost Chelén his expulsion from the institution.

The truth arrives slowly

The file on Tohá’s death that was opened at the time by military prosecutor Rolando Melo Silva disappeared mysteriously soon after. In the current process being instructed by Judge Jorge Zepeda, Melo Silva declared that he did not remember "anything of what I did then, because I have memory lapses."

He added that he closed the investigation "very soon," "in agreement" with the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte.

Tohá’s clinical record disappeared from the Military Hospital, along with the military justice file. In charge of the executive sub-direction of that hospital in 1974 was Army Major and doctor Patricio Silva Garín, who had been Undersecretary of Health for President Eduardo Frei Montalva and is currently being prosecuted as a co-perpetrator of the assassination by poisoning of the former DC President, who died in 1982 while admitted to the Santa María Clinic.

Ultimately, and as the former minister’s widow, Moy de Tohá, and his daughter, PPD president Carolina Tohá, have repeatedly maintained, "the truth is slowly arriving."

The main suspects

The report on the investigations carried out on Tohá’s remains, exhumed from the General Cemetery of Santiago, maintains that the bones of the neck do not present the signs that a hanging necessarily causes, so "there could have been intervention by third parties" in his death.

With this evidence, there is a well-founded presumption in the process that Tohá’s body was "placed" inside the closet when he was already dead. In any case, the result of a second expert report from the University of Chile is still pending.

Now the judge must establish who had a hand in the death caused to José Tohá.

Those who appear as the main suspects in the investigation so far are General Raúl Iturriaga Neumann, Colonel Marcelo Moren Brito, Brigadier Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and non-commissioned officer Carlos Labarca Sanhueza. All of them belonged to the DINA, and the first three are currently serving sentences for other crimes against humanity.

According to what a high-ranking retired official of the Investigative Police told Efe, one of the four mentioned allegedly confessed that Tohá’s death was decided at a meeting in which Iturriaga and Brigadier Pedro Espinoza—the second man in the DINA, behind Manuel Contreras—participated.

According to this official, Iturriaga, Moren or Krassnoff, and Labarca Sanhueza participated directly in the crime.

Source: Cooperativa.cl, May 16, 2011

The CIA trained the DINA at the “Volpone” house

This background information emerged from a statement provided by Pedro Espinoza during the proceedings in which the leaders of the DINA and Colonia Dignidad were sentenced to four years in prison for illicit association.

Thus, it is confirmed that CIA officers spent several months training their Chilean counterparts after the coup d'état. The man who was the second-in-command of the defunct National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), Pedro Espinoza, asserted that after the coup d'état, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) trained Chilean agents, an operation carried out in an emblematic location: the Intelligence School that the DINA set up in “Casa de Piedra,” which was the mansion in the Andean foothills owned by the legendary Darío Saint-Marie, better known as “Volpone,” a personal friend of Salvador Allende and owner of the newspaper El Clarín. Before Espinoza's statements, which are included in the four-year prison sentence for illicit association handed down yesterday by special judge Jorge Zepeda against the top leaders of the DINA and Colonia Dignidad, there were only some remarks by Manuel Contreras to this effect. In an interview with journalist Nancy Guzmán, Contreras stated that between July and August 1974, eight CIA officers had trained his people, without providing further details. However, new and unusual details are now known, such as the fact that the place the DINA chose for these purposes was imbued with great symbolism for the Chilean left, as illustrated in a report by Jorge Escalante on the matter: “Since before the 1973 military coup, Darío Saint-Marie Soruco, ‘Volpone,’ was a good friend of Salvador Allende. Saint-Marie was the owner of the Consorcio Publicitario y Periodístico S.A. and the Empresa Periodística El Clarín. Clarín was the newspaper that sold the most copies per day in the history of Chilean journalism. Over 300,000. Acidic. Piercing. Irreverent. Snake-tongued. Inclined toward crime, police stories, scandalous romances, of a popular nature. With Allende's victory in 1970, it turned into a political newspaper that supported the Unidad Popular government.” Pinochet's order In his statements before Zepeda, Espinoza (convicted, among other crimes, for the homicide of former Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier) recounted that in May 1974, he was serving as head of security for the Military Junta when Pinochet called him and “ordered him to go to Colonel Manuel Contreras, who informed him that he needed his help to organize an intelligence school, and also pointed out that they had a house available in the Cajón del Maipo sector, above San José.” It was “Casa de Piedra,” a place that, as exposed in a Ciperchile report published in 2007, was not only used for training purposes but also as one of the secret torture centers at the DINA's disposal—a site that was also always under the watch of security agencies, to the point that former Army corporal Carlos Labarca Sanhueza told Judge Zepeda that the house was raided the day after the coup, an operation in which he participated. The judicial document explains that at the end of 1974, Labarca arrived at “Casa de Piedra” for the second time, by then already converted into the Intelligence School, under the command of Lieutenant Armando Fernández Larios and then-Major Pedro Espinoza Bravo. Labarca did not hold back much before the judge. He confided that “colonists from the so-called Colonia Dignidad had a prominent role in the implementation of the aforementioned school; they installed a transmission antenna and high-frequency radio equipment, very advanced for the time, as they communicated directly and without problems to Parral and other cities. This equipment was operated from Santiago by Fernández Larios and Pedro Espinoza, who communicated in code daily with the colonists. When the colonists came to Santiago, they would go to ‘Casa de Piedra’ and test the equipment and communicate to Parral or to the house they had near the Estadio Nacional,” alluding to the large house the Germans owned in Ñuñoa. Labarca said he had seen Paul Schäfer and other Germans there, and also confessed to having participated in an intelligence course offered to the DINA by them, which was held in Parral. Regarding this, he told the court that “he does not remember well the date when, from the Casa de Piedra group, some six to seven people visited Colonia Dignidad, in groups of two or three, for a period of approximately one week, accompanied by Fernández Larios. In that place, he participated in a course on explosives notions taught by the same fat colonist named ‘Mauk’ (Gerhard Mücke), along with other younger colonists. They showed them films, photos, and documents related to the Second World War, where one could see the destruction of tanks, bridges, etc., as well as the actions of the German intelligence services” (Mücke is one of those convicted by Zepeda, along with Kurt Schnellenkamp, Karl Van Den Berg, Gerd Seewald, Espinoza, Manuel Contreras, and Fernando Gómez Segovia, head of the DINA in Parral). What Labarca did not forget, however, is the impression the place made on him. The ruling states that the soldier “was very surprised, as were his companions, by the level of advancement of Colonia Dignidad at that time. They had technology that they did not know, powerful communication equipment, intercoms in all the rooms, camera and video equipment, the doors were fully automated and opened and closed by themselves. He had the impression that they were constantly watched, as they were always in the rooms that had been assigned to them.” Espinoza's version However, Pedro Espinoza relativized all of the above. The former leader of the secret police specified that he only arrived at the “Casa de Piedra” Intelligence School around July 1974, where—according to him—he only spent a year, also asserting that the colony had nothing to do with it, contrary to what was stated by Labarca. Espinoza argued before Minister Zepeda that his knowledge of the colony began in 1968, when he served in the Linares Artillery Regiment, asserting that in 1975, while he was at the sanctuary of San Sebastián (in Yumbel), his father felt ill, so he chose to take him to the “Villa Baviera” hospital, an occasion on which he learned that Lieutenant Fernando Laureani, of the DINA's “Vampiro” Group, was there, who told him “that he had arrived there with a detainee he had transported from Concepción.” But of course, Espinoza was on break, so “as he was on vacation, he did not inquire further into that matter.” The colony's friends In any case, Espinoza knew enough about the colony to be more than a simple visitor. He told Judge Zepeda that “Mr. Guzmán (Jaime), the former Minister of Justice, Mrs. Mónica Madariaga, accompanied by her undersecretary, attended” that facility, and that “he also attended on one occasion a reception held at the house the colonists had on Campos de Deportes street, where Mrs. Lucía Hiriart de Pinochet, one of her daughters, Colonel Contreras, Mrs. Mónica Madariaga, and other personalities attended.” But regarding the Germans' intelligence activities, nothing, Espinoza assured the judge. In relation to Labarca's statements, he explained that Schäfer's acolytes had only gone once to the “Volpone” house to repair the radio equipment, “since they had quite a bit of knowledge in that regard,” although he added a piece of information that contradicts his previous statements that the Germans had nothing to do with the repression, by saying that “he became aware that on a certain occasion, approximately August 1974, the Germans had detained a person on the street, along with Armando Fernández Larios, according to the latter's own account, and they transported the detainee to the colony. That was the only activity he knew of between Fernández Larios and the Germans.” Despite this, Espinoza insisted repeatedly in his statement “that he did not have contact with Germans, nor were people of that or any other nationality kept there teaching courses to the students of the School,” but he falls into a second contradiction there, for immediately afterward he affirmed before the visiting minister that “in the months of July or August 1974, there was CIA personnel who gave instruction courses at the San José de Maipo Intelligence School.” Foreign intelligence Thus, it is confirmed that after the coup d'état, the CIA continued to provide direct cooperation to the DINA in a facility where, in one way or another, Colonia Dignidad was present, which is consistent with previous information regarding intelligence operations in which American, German, and Chilean agents coincided. This happened, for example, in the case of Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, Americans detained and murdered in Chile after the coup. The latter, as proven by FBI documents, began to be monitored in Chile in 1972 after, from Germany, the address where he lived in Santiago was provided to US intelligence, in the midst of a joint operation between the FBI and the CIA called “Chaos,” which was intended to monitor “leftist” Americans in a list of 20 countries, including Chile. After Horman's disappearance, meanwhile, and already in the midst of the dictatorship, there is evidence (in one of the Colonia Dignidad intelligence files) that US officers, it is not specified from which agency, visited that enclave together with an officer of the Chilean Navy, implicated in the Horman case. In addition to the CIA, there is information regarding training that the Israeli Mossad allegedly provided to DINA non-commissioned officers, which is recounted in the book “Mossad,” written by the former agent of that organization, Víctor Ostrovsky.

Source: El Mostrador, April 24, 2014

Comisión FUNA fan page taken down after disseminating action against former dictatorship agent

This Saturday, the legendary Comisión FUNA—an organization that works to publicly denounce those who enjoy impunity after having participated in the atrocities of the civic-military dictatorship—carried out its first action of the year.

This time it was the turn of Army non-commissioned officer Carlos Hernán Labarca Sanhueza, identified as a former agent of the repressive apparatuses of the DINA and CNI regime, and who is accused of having been part of the Caravan of Death and participating in the massacre of 15 peasants from the Panguipulli logging complex, among other crimes.

A large number of members of the Commission arrived at his home in Peñalolén, who with loudspeakers and a musical group took it upon themselves to inform the neighbors of the sector that this former agent of the feared repressive apparatuses of the Augusto Pinochet regime was among them.

As usually happens, the funa (public protest) was subsequently disseminated through social networks, mainly on the fan page that the Commission has for that purpose. However, the information and images were only available until this Sunday, as during this day the account was taken down from the popular social network.

Upon entering the name that the group maintained on Facebook—Comisión FUNA 2019—it simply no longer yields any results.

Source: politika.cl, January 28, 2019

Book: Operacion Condor: el vuelo de la muerte (Excerpt)

Since the end of '73, a large contingent of DINA agents and collaborators operated in Buenos Aires, having their center of operations in the Chilean embassy, the offices of the then-national airline, Lan Chile, and the Banco del Estado, or the cafes of the Argentine capital.

They maintained relations with the SIDE, the Triple A, or the Federal Police. Carlos Hernán Labarca Sanhueza, one of the men of the Chilean security agency, later recounted that he arrived in that city in 1974 to serve as an agent within the Chilean embassy and that he worked under the direct supervision of Colonel Víctor Barría Barría, alias Vicente, who for all intents and purposes was the head of the DINA in Argentina, although his true position was that of civil attaché in the Chilean representation. "Official list," said a communication between the agents in November 1974, "will be in charge of official contacts with the embassy and Intelligence services. Particularly the exchange of officials in that sense, since a member of the SIDE is currently working at the Argentine embassy in contact with us." Paladino and Contreras were duly represented in both diplomatic missions. Labarca, within the work he performed upon his arrival, was in charge of periodically taking an envelope and a certain amount of money, between 150 and 200 dollars, to the home of Enrique Lautaro Arancibia Clavel, clandestine information chief of the DINA in Buenos Aires, who also called himself Luis Felipe Arismendi or Luis Felipe Alemparte Díaz. The latter even received instructions not to meet in public with Colonel Barría. "Your relations with him," stated memo number 3 from Santiago, "must be totally covert. You must not burn yourself. You must continue working in the same way you have done until now..."

Source: Book: Operacion Condor: el vuelo de la muerte. LOM Ediciones, 1999

Judge summoned retired non-commissioned officer who accused General Aldunate

Judge Alejandro Madrid accepted the request of the family of the murdered Spanish diplomat Carmelo Soria to interrogate a former agent of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) who, in the last decade, linked General Eduardo Aldunate to the crime.

Aldunate currently serves as the second-in-command of the United Nations (UN) mission in Haiti. In a 1993 judicial statement, retired Army non-commissioned officer Carlos Labarca Sanhueza indicated that Aldunate was part of the so-called “Mulchén Brigade” of the DINA, the unit responsible—according to the Soria family—for the death of the foreign citizen in July 1976.

In addition, Madrid will request from the Ministry of Defense the service record of Aldunate, where the Government has acknowledged that his time, between March and October 1978, in the National Intelligence Center (CNI) is recorded—the repressive organization that replaced the DINA.

Defense stated, however, that the general only took a course in that unit. The plaintiff lawyer, Alfonso Insunza, anticipated that after Labarca, he will ask for the officer himself to testify, because the CNI was “a criminal organization, that is what the Rettig Report said, and therefore a member of a criminal organization cannot be on a peace mission at the United Nations.”

Source: cooperativa.cl, October 18, 2005

General Aldunate allegedly integrated the Mulchén Brigade.

Former DINA agent and member of the elite Army commandos who guarded former dictator Augusto Pinochet, retired non-commissioned officer Carlos Labarca Sanhueza, declared in 1993 that the Chilean general and current second-in-command of the United Nations Multinational Force in Haiti, Eduardo Aldunate Hermann, was a member of the DINA's Mulchén Brigade.

Human rights lawyer Alfonso Insunza told La Nación that he will ask Minister Alejandro Madrid, the judge investigating the case of the murder of former DINA chemist Eugenio Berríos, to summon former agent Labarca to testify, so that he can clarify why he mentioned General Aldunate Hermann as a member of the Mulchén Brigade.

Minister Madrid is also investigating the strange death of former President Eduardo Frei Montalva and the assassination of the Chilean-Spanish diplomat Carmelo Soria. In an extensive procedural statement in the possession of La Nación, Labarca, a member of the DINA foreign department, said regarding the Mulchén Brigade: "I always had contact with the Mulchén Brigade and I knew the operations they did...

I know what I am saying because I was an instructor (commando) for some officers. (...) The other people who operate, I don't know their aliases, there is an Aldunate Hermann from the Mulchén, he was crazy, he worked with Pablo Belmar.

Eduardo Aldunate Hermann was a lieutenant." The Quetropillán group, which agent Michael Townley joined, depended on the Mulchén Brigade. The Mulchén had direct contact with the operations that were plotted in the house that the DINA bought for Townley in Lo Curro, where, among other activities, sarin gas was manufactured.

Among the crimes attributed to the Mulchén are that of the Chilean-Spanish diplomat Carmelo Soria (1976) and that of the Real Estate Registrar Renato León. Former agent Labarca Sanhueza took commando, paratrooper, special warfare, assault, guide, explosives, and ammunition courses, and was an instructor at the DINA's National Intelligence School.

According to his resume, General Aldunate took, among others, the commando course (1976), paratrooper (1977), and the basic and advanced intelligence courses (1979-1983).

Source: lanacion.cl, September 30, 2005

Manuel Contreras receives new sentence for kidnapping of David Silberman

Retired General and former head of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) Manuel Contreras was sentenced to 7 years of effective prison for the qualified kidnapping of David Silberman Gurovich, which occurred starting October 4, 1974, in Santiago.

In a split decision, the ministers of the Second Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court, Nibaldo Segura, Rubén Ballesteros, Jaime Rodríguez, Hugo Dolmestch, and Carlo Künsemüller, also ratified the ruling in the criminal aspect for Marcelo Moren Brito, also sentenced to 7 years of effective prison, while Carlos Labarca Sanhueza and Marcos Derpich Miranda were acquitted for lack of participation.

The decision was adopted with the contrary opinion of ministers Segura and Ballesteros, who were in favor of accepting the figure of criminal statute of limitations and acquitting all those sentenced. In the civil aspect, the magistrates accepted the appeal for annulment filed by the State Defense Council and accepted the exception of absolute incompetence of the court, determining to eliminate the payment of a total indemnity of $1,040,000,000 to the widow, three children, and two siblings of the victim.

In the first instance, Minister Jorge Zepeda Arancibia had established the payment of $250,000,000 to María Abarzúa Rojo, Yael Silberman Abarzúa, Daniel Silberman Abarzúa, and Claudio Silberman Abarzúa—widow and children of the victim—and $20,000,000 to Judith Silberman Gurovich and Mario Silberman Gurovich, siblings of the kidnapped man.

The decision was adopted with the dissenting vote of ministers Dolmestch and Künsemüller, who were in favor of ordering the payment of the aforementioned amounts.

Source: latercera.cl, April 20, 2009

Declaration of Ambassador of Panama as witness generates annoyance among plaintiff lawyers

The declaration of the Chilean ambassador to Panama, Alberto Labbé, for the “Operation Condor” case continues to generate controversy. Finally, Judge Raquel Lermanda interrogated Ambassador Labbé as a “witness” and not as an “accused,” which generated the annoyance of the plaintiff lawyers in the process.

For this reason, they warned that they will request that the investigation be repeated so that he testifies as an “accused,” because they stated that the statements he provided last Tuesday “were very inconsistent regarding the multiple background information that exists in the case.” Lawyer Boris Paredes expressed that many investigative steps could be derived from Labbé's statements.

For a new statement from Alberto Labbé, which the lawyers hope the judge will resolve, this time as an “accused,” the plaintiff side indicated that they will now present to the magistrate a list of “very specific” questions for her to put to the diplomat.

It transpired that Labbé allegedly declared that regarding the existence of the DINA, he had only “found out through the press” and that he claimed not to know the two former agents who remained in the embassy in Buenos Aires who name him in the process: Carlos Labarca Sanhueza and Luis Palma Moreno.

However, Labbé allegedly acknowledged that officers Víctor Barría Barría and Osvaldo Hernández Pedreros were at that embassy and had offices in it. Both were the DINA chiefs attached to that diplomatic mission and were part of the foreign department team of that repressive organization.

What the plaintiffs are investigating regarding Labbé is what role he played in his capacity as a diplomat during that period in the handling of the information that the DINA-Buenos Aires sent to the DINA-Santiago, regarding Chileans living in Argentina who later disappeared through Operations Condor and Colombo.

Source: radio.uchile.cl, July 8, 2010

The day Father Hasbún was a Pinochet official

They were old, routine papers, the kind you see when you reconstruct what happened thirty years ago. Suddenly, the surprise. There was his name registered, with the proof of what until now almost no one knows in Chile: Raúl Hasbún Zaror, Father Hasbún, was an official of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship.

And it was Pinochet himself who signed the decree that appointed him his representative. “Honorary Civil Attaché” was the position for which Pinochet appointed him on June 5, 1974, through Decree No. 358 of the General Administrative Directorate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

His destination: the Chilean embassy in Bonn, Germany. The appointment, laconic like everything bureaucratic, stated that the priest “will have the right to a Diplomatic Passport.” The decree followed the regular course, until the “registration” by the Comptroller General of the Republic on June 28, 1974, and also passed through the Treasury on July 1 of that same year.

The decree reads, verbatim: “Having seen Decree Laws No. 1 and 9 of 1973, Law 15.266, and the needs of the Service, Decree: 1.- Appoint Mr. RAUL HASBUN ZAROR, RUN (not listed), starting from May 10 and until September 10, 1974, as Honorary Civil Attaché at the Chilean Embassy in Bonn, Federal Republic of Germany, based in the city of Bonn. 2.- It is placed on record that Mr.

RAUL HASBUN ZAROR, Honorary Civil Attaché of Chile in Bonn, will have the right to a Diplomatic Passport. Register, take note, and communicate. For the Government Junta (the signature of Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, President of the Junta).”

HIS TIME IN GERMANY

What did Hasbún go to do as a Civil Attaché in Germany? The person who was then the Chilean ambassador to Germany, Raúl Irarrázaval Lecaros, has already passed away. But the then-First Secretary of the embassy in Bonn, Mario Lizana Steinfort, confirmed to The Clinic that “indeed it was Father Hasbún who arrived over there that year, the same one from the TV.” Regarding his tasks, he said, “look, the functions of Civil Attachés are very varied, they are not determined, according to what is necessary, and the Civil Attaché does not necessarily have to be behind a desk.

He went out a lot, to different cities, I never knew what he did, but I saw him there.” -Did he go to the consulates of the German cities? -we asked him. -Not necessarily, I was a consul and consuls almost never meet with civil attachés- he replied.

The military attaché in Bonn at the time was Colonel Carlos Derpsch. Hasbún's departure to fulfill his mission was registered with International Police at Pudahuel airport on June 7, 1974, with diplomatic passport No. 756.

His Identity Card is 3.128.596-8. His return was on August 19 of that year. Hasbún has always expressed his closeness to the dictatorship, but he never admitted to being an official of the regime.

THE OTHER CIVIL ATTACHÉS

The Pinochet regime had other “Honorary Civil Attachés.” But these were not necessarily civilians. Among them are the then-Army majors Pedro Espinoza Bravo and Marcelo Moren Brito, sent by Pinochet to the Chilean embassy in Brazil, and Colonel Víctor Hugo Barría Barría, installed in the Buenos Aires embassy.

In other words, the cream of the crop of the DINA. Through the positions of civil attachés, the DINA apparatus took over the foreign diplomatic service. Espinoza, former head of the Metropolitan Intelligence Brigade and Villa Grimaldi and former second-in-command of the DINA, was appointed through a decree equal to Hasbún's.

His was No. 172 of March 5, 1975. Espinoza was succeeded by “El Ronco” Moren Brito, feared in the clandestine detention centers for, among other methods, pulling out the teeth of detainees with pliers, as established in the trial for the disappeared from Villa Grimaldi being investigated by Judge Alejandro Solís.

Pinochet appointed Moren to that position on January 23, 1976, through decree No. 47. The dictator also appointed Colonel Víctor Barría Barría on March 5, 1975, through decree No. 171 of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Barría arrived in Buenos Aires to “set up a DINA agency in the embassy,” as acknowledged in a 1993 police statement by his driver, Army commando and agent Carlos Labarca Sanhueza. The Clinic has copies of all three decrees.

On December 20, Minister Solís interrogated him as an accused (“exhorted to tell the truth”), so that he would respond to the statements of former DINA agent Luz Arce. She stated in a procedural declaration on October 29, 2004, that Hasbún “went periodically, once or twice a month, to the DINA general headquarters and entered directly into the directorate's office.” That is, to see “Mamo” Contreras.

Which the priest, of course, denied. Grateful to the DINA and the CNI, Hasbún said in 1981, “they are professional institutions that society absolutely needs and they deserve our respect and gratitude.”

Source: theclinic.cl, September 11, 2013