It is undoubtedly a step forward to identify and punish the torturers who operated under the protection of the military dictatorship. Hopefully, this will also be the beginning of a process of identification and bringing to justice all those who seized military institutions—in this case, the Air Force—to commit one of the most reprehensible acts: treason, murder, and torture against innocent people in the name of freedom and military duty.

May this not be another frustrated attempt. There are high expectations for justice, that these issues related to torturers and human rights violations will no longer be negotiable for political ends or to maintain impunity.

No one asked us Chileans if we agreed with the 1978 Amnesty Law that protects hundreds of military and civilian authors or accomplices of what happened in Chile; it was imposed upon us.

It is time for these issues to leave the barracks and the halls of Congress, turning them into a great national debate to which we have a right. In Chile, the curtailed democracy we live in does not allow us to participate in decisions; therefore, it is time for the citizen's opinion to be heard on the broad spectrum of human rights.

We have always maintained that it must be the high military commands, the senior and junior officers, the permanent staff involved, political leaders, and businessmen who colluded to conspire against a legitimate and democratic government who must answer for their acts before the justice system.

Today, a pending truth has been corroborated: that former Colonels Edgard Ceballos and Ramón Cáceres tortured General Bachelet and are guilty of his death, and that they did the same to a hundred of their former brothers-in-arms who opposed the coup d'état and the transformation of the FACH into an institution at the service of ambitious politicians and businessmen, both national and foreign.

The justice system knows that there were other torturers at the War Academy: the now-General Gabrielli, the then-Squadron Commander Pilot Jaime Lavín Fariña, the Flight Captain Pilots Álvaro Gutiérrez, Víctor Mettig, León Duffey, Florencio Dublé, Juan Carlos Sandoval, and Lieutenant Dumont.

The non-commissioned officers, Aviation Sergeant Hugo Lizana, and Aviation Corporal Gabriel Cortes, among others. It also knows that in December 1973, the director of the Air War Academy was General Fernando Matthei, of the best-known detention and torture center of the era.

And that this general was at the head of the military facility during the period in which General Alberto Bachelet and we, former members of the FACH, were tortured in that place.

I do not know if there is any greater cowardice than hiding behind a military uniform, power, due obedience, and amnesty laws to justify or commit violations and cruel torture inflicted upon handcuffed people, or clandestine murders.

To do this, the perpetrators have justified themselves by claiming they were waging a war against communism and Marxism, which has been proven false; the confrontations were nothing more than a few pockets of brave and heroic resistance against the firepower of the Armed Forces against a defenseless people.

As a reward for the "battles" that all these brave soldiers fought in the torture chambers, with handcuffed, mistreated, and disarmed enemies, they pinned hundreds of medals to their chests and decorated each other, some blessed by the church, feeding the false ego of duty fulfilled.

It is good to remind these gentlemen that the fulfillment of military duty and honor, military values, and patriotism are concepts that are materialized and proven in real life, in the practice of military work.

That the military is worth as much as its values and the way they live them, the example of which is found in the figure of General Alberto Bachelet, and the non-commissioned officers Enrique Reyes and Ivan Figueroa, among others.

That is why we proudly reclaim what we did. It was these torturers who accused us of treason to the country and of failing in our military duties because we propagated the freedom to think as part of military professionalism, the freedom of conscience to exercise command and obey on the basis of conscious discipline, identifying ourselves with respect for those who, dreaming of their freedom, responsibly and peacefully chose Salvador Allende as President.

We believe it is time for the Armed Forces to look at their history, the good and the bad of their actions, because they need to redeem themselves based on their combative potential, which is their relationship with the Chilean people. Rescuing that necessary identity involves recognizing the period in which the Armed Forces were instruments of state terrorism exercised by a military dictatorship.

A noble action that would allow, once and for all, for many families to know the whereabouts of their forcibly disappeared loved ones, which would facilitate the reconstruction of the identity between Chileans and their army.

As we have stated before, the history of Chile cannot be cut in two, between the current reality and that of that era, because both periods correspond to a process and are the basis of a coherent explanation of why we are still a divided country.

That is why we recognize the importance of what the justice system has done in identifying and judging former Colonels Ceballos and Cáceres, because it does not follow the path of oblivion, which, as has been shown, helps no one; on the contrary, it is a historical mistake that does great harm to the country.

Especially to young Chileans, who, without having lived through this difficult and very hard stage, are direct or indirect victims of it, for which they remain condemned to live in a divided country.

It is also very important because, by having justice, it allows us Chileans to enter the future while reading our own past. And that will indeed allow society as a whole to pass judgment on the facts and decide the path to follow on this delicate issue.

But there is still more to do, and we must advance in this effort. Judicial rulings like this in no way alter the functioning of the Armed Forces; on the contrary, they open a necessary path to establish institutional recognition of past events and responsibilities in each of the cases investigated.

The younger generations of military personnel have the right to know the history of their country, that Army officers not only tortured their brothers-in-arms but also murdered the General and Commander-in-Chief of the Army, René Schneider, to prevent Allende from assuming the government in 1970.

They must know that officers and non-commissioned officers of the Armed Forces murdered General Carlos Prats and Ministers of the Popular Unity government, José Tohá and Orlando Letelier. That the Commander of the Chilean Air Force, Gustavo Leigh, ordered the bombing of La Moneda and the presidential house with the objective of murdering Salvador Allende, and that they are responsible for the fact that more than four thousand Chileans were murdered and that many of them remain forcibly disappeared.

For quite some time, we have stated that we were witnesses to the outcome of a history we tried to denounce and a military offensive we tried to oppose. Therefore, we can attest that the Chilean Air Force, led by Leigh and company, was part of a war plan and assumed the responsibility of bombing La Moneda, so that later on the ground, the Army, with Infantry forces, would finish the task of liquidating every vestige of "enemy" resistance.

We have denounced that the Hawker Hunter planes carried out a tactical bombing mission when they attacked the Government Palace, the most important symbol of democracy in Chile, assuming that "enemy troops" and the command post of the Allende government were entrenched there, with the mission of annihilating them.

We have also stated that to execute this mission, they had to have a prior and studied plan, in addition to practicing it, which demonstrates not only the conspiracy but that the action was planned with the explicit mission of murdering Salvador Allende and all those who were resisting in the presidential palace.

If anyone has doubts about this, let them review the journalistic reports of the time: the planes unloaded rockets on the Presidential Palace, one entered through a window into the presidential hall and another impacted the ceiling of a hallway on the second floor; in total, they made eight low-altitude passes, unloading 18 rockets in 20 minutes.

Today, the justice system knows that the practice runs for the bombing of La Moneda were carried out at Cerro Moreno and that the then-Lieutenant Ernesto Amador González Yarra, Lieutenant Fernando Rojas Vender, Captain Eitel Von Mühlenbrock, and Lieutenant Gustavo Leigh Yates—son of the FACH Commander-in-Chief and member of the military junta—participated.

However, those of this group of officers who are still alive have testified to the justice system and have refused to acknowledge their participation, alleging a secret of honor.

These statements are an offense and an insult to our intelligence. These gentlemen forget that we are living witnesses to their outrages and that we know they acted in a premeditated and conscious manner, making use of all their firepower against enemies created by them to justify their actions.

The officers and non-commissioned officers who participated in all the operations before, during, and after the military coup were part of the insane declaration of war that the Armed Forces made against the supporters of the Popular Unity government—enemies who, as we have said, were not captured in combat, but were ordinary Chilean citizens taken from their homes and brought to different military barracks, handcuffed with hoods on their heads, only to be cruelly tortured and mistreated.

These officers, who were junior at the time, feel proud of what they did, a sentiment shared by General Matthei, former Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Air Force, who feels honored, as he declared some time ago, "to have participated in the military government, as a minister and as a member of the Government Junta."

It is time, then, for the justice system to help Chile unmask so much lying and hypocrisy; there are many witnesses and background information that allow for progress in this aspect, which is so important and decisive for national coexistence.

The Armed Forces of today must assume the moral obligation before the nation and recognize, without half-measures, the acts against human dignity committed by members of our institutions during the military dictatorship.

During that period, the Air Force was part of and involved in State terrorism and set up torture centers in its military units and under its jurisdiction. The most important was the Air War Academy, a situation shared and accepted by the high institutional commands and, through them, passed down to the entire chain of command of the institution.

This is a subject that should awaken the interest of academics and jurists in the heat of these types of post-dictatorship trials, linked to the extermination programs carried out by people like the two recently prosecuted.

The profuse amount of documentation and testimonies that were made public in the reports of the Rettig and Valech Commissions, in addition to everything compiled by the UN itself and Amnesty International, show the world a complex state bureaucracy placed almost exclusively at the service of crime and torture—that is, state terrorism.

Having been part of the structure of the Armed Forces, we affirm that this evidence also demonstrates the degree of responsibility of its executors. If we start from those who carried out the murders with their own hands, in the Air War Academy for example, and ascend through the chain of command of the organizational structure of the Army and the dictatorship, until reaching Pinochet himself, as we move away from the executors, not only does the responsibility for the acts increase, but also the control over the decision of what came to be called the war against Marxism.

Conversely, as one descends the chain of command, the control over the concrete configuration of the murders increases, until reaching those who were in charge of guarding the victims or taking them to the military torture and death facilities.

Finally, the complex issues linked to this subject manifest themselves above all with respect to state criminality, given that the very structure of the State, with its enormous economic and human resources and its chains of officials forming a gigantic bureaucracy, turns out to be the organization that adapted and placed itself at the head of all this.

It is also necessary to note that, being a criminal organization of this magnitude, the realization of the crime in no way depends solely on the individual executors. They occupy a subordinate position in the apparatus of power, are interchangeable, and cannot prevent the man behind them, the "author from the shadows," from achieving the result, since it is he who at all times retains the decision regarding the consummation of the planned crimes.

That is why in our country there are a few unspoken truths and a few sympathizers and officials of the dictatorship who try to wash their image, either by claiming they voted "NO" in 1989 or by distancing themselves from what they themselves fostered.

It is still pending to prosecute those who held power in Chile from 1973 and headed a scheme of state terrorism against those they considered enemies of the regime, to condemn them as mediate authors in relation to the homicides, kidnappings, torture, and robberies that were proven in each case.

In the case of Chile, the members of the Military Junta first, and the military government as a whole, always maintained control over the executors and must answer as mediate authors of the crimes committed.

It is also true that they built an apparatus of power parallel to the formal one, based on the military structure, and ordered, through the chain of command of both the military and state security forces, to act in illegality by making use of that clandestine apparatus; not only that, they guaranteed the cadres that they would not interfere in their actions, and most importantly, they assured them of the impunity of their actions by all means at their disposal.

From the Center for Studies of Exonerated Air Force Personnel 1973, we will continue to contribute to ensuring that truth meets justice. We have the moral stature to do so; we were loyal to our oath and to our people.

Dr. Enrique Villanueva M. Vice President, Center for Studies Exonerated Air Force Personnel 1973

Source: radio.uchile.cl, July 19, 2012

Two colonels identified as those who led the torture that caused the death of General Alberto Bachelet, father of the former president

Edgard Ceballos Jones and Ramón Cáceres Jorquera are pointed out by witnesses as the torturers of the former president's father, who, after suffering violent physical and psychological duress at the FACH War Academy, was returned to prison where he died of a heart attack.

Later, both were part of the Comando Conjunto, a group of military criminals who forcibly disappeared more than thirty Chileans.

The investigation in which Judge Mario Carroza made public the conclusions reached by the Legal Medical Service (SML) within the framework of the investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of General Alberto Bachelet has generated a great stir.

Thus, the judge detailed that the expert report establishes that the officer died as a result of the torture he was subjected to while he remained imprisoned at the Air War Academy during the military coup.

Let us recall that Bachelet died inside the public prison after suffering a cardiorespiratory arrest in March 1974, in the context of a "trial for treason to the country" executed by members of the Armed Forces and intelligence agencies of the dictatorship.

For this reason, two retired colonels of the Air Force are in the sights of the visiting minister: Edgard Ceballos Jones and Ramón Cáceres Jorquera, who appear in the testimonies of several detainees who were with Bachelet until the day of his death. Both led the torture that subsequently caused a heart attack in the father of former President Bachelet.

After the torture of their own brothers-in-arms, the human rights violators joined the Comando Conjunto.

The so-called Comando Conjunto (CC) was an intelligence group that operated approximately between the end of 1975 and the end of 1976, and whose main objective was the repression of the Communist Party and the Communist Youth. During this period, according to the Rettig Report, it was responsible for the disappearance of nearly 30 people. Other sources speak of more than 70.

After carrying out the torture of their brothers-in-arms, most of these members of the FACH became involved in crimes, violence, and the so-called "dirty work" of the dictatorship, operating independently of Pinochet's secret police, the DINA.

The CC was formed mainly by agents belonging to the Air Force Intelligence Directorate (DIFA) and later had significant participation from personnel of the Carabineros Intelligence Directorate (DICAR).

It also had, to a lesser extent, the participation of agents from the Naval Intelligence Service (SIN) and some personnel from the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE). In addition, members of the Chilean Investigative Police and civilians from Patria y Libertad collaborated in that Command.

Barracks of horror

Among the first torture centers, even before being called the Comando Conjunto, appears the Air War Academy (AGA), which operated from late 1973 to late 1974, formally in charge of the Aviation Prosecutor's Office, which in practice coordinated closely with the Air Force Intelligence Service (SIFA).

General Bachelet and many FACH officers were tortured in its basement. José Luis Baeza Cruces, a member of the PC Central Committee who is currently forcibly disappeared, was also there. General (R) Fernando Matthei, at the time Director of the AGA, and later Commander-in-Chief of the FACH and member of the Government Junta, has been summoned to testify in this case.

In January 1975, when the SIFA vacated the AGA, it moved the detainees to a house in Santiago, located in the Apoquindo sector, about two blocks from the Las Condes Municipality. This property was used as a secret detention center until March 1975 and was in charge of agents of the recently created DIFA.

After that date, the DIFA offices moved to Juan Antonio Ríos No. 6, while the detainees were distributed between the Colina Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment ("Remo Cero") and a hangar inside the Cerrillos airport.

Another clandestine torture center is the one known as "Nido 20," located at Santa Teresa 037, near the 20th stop of the Gran Avenida, in Santiago. As a result of the torture inside, Alonso Gahona Chávez, now a forcibly disappeared person, died.

Humberto Castro Hurtado was also beaten to death here. Today, the house houses the National Corporation of Laryngectomees (those operated on for laryngeal cancer).

The facility called "Nido 18" was used exclusively to practice torture. It is a premises located at Perú 9053, La Florida commune in Santiago, near the 18th stop of Vicuña Mackenna. In this center, according to witnesses, Arsenio Leal Pereira took his own life under the pressure of the torture to which he was being subjected.

In "Remo Cero," along with FACH agents, members of the Naval Intelligence Service and some Army agents operate. The staff of the Carabineros Intelligence Directorate was more numerous. Civilians from Patria y Libertad also act here.

Several detainees were allegedly taken from there by helicopter to be thrown into the sea, among them Humberto Fuentes Rodríguez and Luis Moraga Cruz. There are also witnesses who claim that Ricardo Weibel Navarrete, Ignacio González Espinoza, Miguel Rodríguez Gallardo, and Nicomedes Toro Bravo were taken from there to be murdered and buried on the military grounds of Peldehue.

Some detainees died in this facility as a result of torture, among them José Sagredo Pacheco.

A facility located at Dieciocho No. 229, which had been occupied by the newspaper El Clarín and passed into the hands of the Carabineros, was known as "La Firma." The Carabineros Intelligence Directorate was installed there, some of whose instructors were members not only of DICAR but also of the Comando Conjunto, where one of the chiefs was Edgar Ceballos Jones, the torturer of General Bachelet.

Witnesses who survived the torture of the Air War Academy remember as their captors and torturers, among others, General Orlando Gutiérrez Bravo, commanders Sergio Lizasoaín, Edgar Ceballos Jones, Ramón Cáceres Contreras, Jaime Lavín, Juan Bautista González, and Humberto Velásquez Estay; captains León Duffey, Juan Carlos Sandoval, Jaime Lemus, Florencio Dublé, Contreras; lieutenants Juan Carlos Sandoval, Luis Campos, Matig, and Pérez; Sergeant Hugo "chuncho" Lizana, Corporal Eduardo Cartagena, and 2nd Corporal Gabriel Cortés (who changed his name).

The torturers of the Air War Academy were almost all from the Aerophotogrammetry Specialty, both officers and non-commissioned officers.

Source: Cambio21, June 21, 2012