The first indictment for the crime against the Spanish priest Joan Alsina was issued by the special judge Jorge Zepeda Arancibia, who charged retired Army Major Donato López Almarza as the perpetrator of homicide and ordered his arrest.

The priest was detained on September 19, 1973, and executed at the Bulnes Bridge over the Mapocho River, with his body thrown into the waters. Eight days later, his corpse appeared downstream.

Retired Major López commanded a detachment of the Yungay Regiment of San Felipe that traveled to Santiago to reinforce the military actions of the military coup. Alsina was detained by members of that regiment at the San Juan de Dios Hospital, where he worked, and they transported him to the Internado Nacional Barros Arana (INBA) in Quinta Normal.

The Yungay personnel had their camp at that boarding school, and an undetermined number of detainees were held there during those days.

According to the indictment, the priest, born in Girona, Catalonia, who was 31 years old at the time of his death, was beaten and then taken from the boarding school on the same night of his detention to be executed.

The case files record the statement of the soldier who shot him: “Upon arriving at the Bulnes Bridge, my captain (López) braked. I got out, as I did with each of the people I executed, and I took Juan out of the van and went to blindfold him.

But Juan said to me, ‘Please, do not put the blindfold on me; kill me facing forward, because I want to see you so I can grant you forgiveness.’ It was very fast. I remember he raised his gaze to the sky, made a gesture with his hands, placed them over his heart, moved his lips as if he were praying, and said, ‘Father, forgive them.’ I fired the burst and he fell immediately.

I wanted to shoot him with the pistol, but I did it with the submachine gun so it would be faster. The impact was so strong that it turned his body and he practically fell into the Mapocho on his own; I only had to give him a little push.

Others sometimes fell to the floor of the bridge and we had to lift them up and throw them into the river. It was ten o’clock at night, and I will never forget this execution.”

Although the Alsina case involves an executed victim and not a forcibly disappeared person—where the thesis of a permanent crime applies until the victim or their body is found, and therefore judges do not apply amnesty because the crime is still being committed—Judge Zepeda did not apply amnesty, nor did he consider the crime to have expired due to the passage of time.

Source: La Nación, August 18, 2004

The lawyer and deputy (PS), Juan Bustos, announced that he would appeal the ruling of the Valparaíso Court of Appeals regarding the case of Jaime Aldoney, whose body was thrown into the sea in 1973, after the visiting judge Julio Miranda sentenced four retired Navy officers to four years of supervised release, gave suspended sentences to two others involved, and acquitted two more individuals.

Bustos described the sentences as insufficient: "They should be major prison sentences, as this is a very serious crime."

Among those sentenced are Sergio Iván Mendoza Rojas, Patricio Maximiliano Villalobos Lobos, Pedro Pablo Arancibia Solar, and Jaime Urdangarín Romero, as well as retired Rear Admiral Ernesto Hubert von Appen and Petty Officer Manuel Bush López, who received sentences ranging from 72 days to four years in prison, which they will be able to serve under a suspended sentence.

Jaime Aldoney was a journalism student, a civil engineer, a councilman for Limache, and an overseer for the Compañía de Cervecerías Unidas (CCU) when he was detained by the Carabineros in 1973.

According to testimonies from the time, he was taken from the Limache police station by Navy personnel to the El Belloto naval air base—which was under Huber’s command—where he was tortured and his trail was lost.

Partial statute of limitations in the Alsina case

The Second Chamber of the Supreme Court confirmed the conviction against Donato López Almarza for the homicide of the Spanish priest Joan Alsina Hurtos, which occurred on September 16, 1973, at the Bulnes Bridge in Santiago.

In a split decision, magistrates Alberto Chaigneau, Rubén Ballesteros, Hugo Dolmestch, and the acting lawyers Fernando Castro and Domingo Hernández sentenced López Almarza to three years and one day, granting the convict the benefit of supervised release.

The sentence applies the "partial statute of limitations" (media prescripción), provided for in Article 103 of the Penal Code, to reduce the second-instance conviction that had sentenced López Almarza to five years and one day in prison, without any type of benefits.

Magistrate Ballesteros was in favor of applying the statute of limitations in favor of the convict.

Source: La Nación, November 29, 2007

According to a statistical report from the Human Rights Department of the Ministry of the Interior, as of September 30, 2009, there were 333 criminal cases open in the courts for human rights violations during the dictatorship, involving 1,101 victims, with 768 agents under indictment, of whom 276 were convicted, 53 of them with final sentences and serving prison terms.

The maximum number of cases was reached in 2004, with 430, involving 1,260 victims. The reduction in the number of cases to the 330 currently active is explained by trials that have reached their conclusion, whether through a conviction or through a temporary or definitive dismissal without guilty parties.

If one considers that the total number of victims qualified by the Rettig Report and the Reparation Corporation reaches 3,186, it follows that there has been some type of judicial proceeding for 39.5% of the victims.

The number of 276 convictions out of a universe of 768 indicted agents implies 35.9%; the 171 agents with convictions issued since January 1, 2000, represent 22.2%, and the 53 agents serving prison sentences represent 6.9% of the agents and 1.6% of the victims.

These numbers may vary, as there are 46 cases under appeal against dismissal or acquittal rulings, and they could potentially increase as a result of the reopening of the Rettig and Valech commissions announced by the Government.

Institutions and ranks

The analysis of the institution of affiliation and the rank of the indicted and convicted agents allows for the configuration of profiles and characteristics of what the repression was during the dictatorship.

In numerical terms, the branch that contributes the most to the list is the Army, with 341 indicted or convicted, followed by the Carabineros, with 245; the Navy, with 54; the Air Force, with 51; and the Investigations police, with 18, while 53 of those indicted are civilians.

By rank, in the Army there are 53 generals or brigadiers (15.5%); 52 colonels (15.2%); 19 lieutenant colonels (5.5%); 23 majors (6.7%); 22 officers with the rank of captain to second lieutenant (6.4%); 128 non-commissioned officers (37.5%); 2 conscripts (0.5%); and 35 civilian employees of the DINA and/or the CNI (10.6%).

Belonging to the Carabineros are 6 generals (2.4%), 17 colonels (6.9%), 10 lieutenant colonels (4%), 12 majors (4.8%), 10 captains (4%), 11 officers (4.4%), 178 officers (72.6%), and one civilian employee from Dicomcar.

For the Navy, there are 6 vice admirals or rear admirals (11.1%); 8 ship captains (14.8%); 6 frigate captains (11.1%); 7 lieutenants and second lieutenants (12.9%); 25 non-commissioned officers (46.2%); and 2 civilian employees (3.7%).

In the Air Force, there are 2 generals (3.9%); 9 colonels (17.6%); 4 group or squadron commanders (7.8%); 3 captains (5.8%); 1 lieutenant (1.9%); 20 non-commissioned officers (39.2%); and 12 civilian employees (23.5%), most of them from the Comando Conjunto.

From the Investigations police, there are 2 commissioners (11.1%); 2 prefects (11.1%); 3 sub-commissioners (16.6%); 3 sub-prefects (16.6%); and 7 inspectors (38.8%).

Of the 53 civilians, 16 belong to Colonia Dignidad (30.1%).

From a gender perspective, the statistics show that the repression of the dictatorship had a marked sexist character, as of the 768 indicted or convicted agents, only 23 are women (2.9%), of whom 8 are from the Army (34.7%), 5 from the Navy (21.7%), 4 from the Air Force (17.3%), 3 from the Carabineros (13%), and 3 from Colonia Dignidad (13%).

Multiple indictments and convictions

As of September 30, 2009, the statistics of the Human Rights Department of the Ministry of the Interior show 3,078 indictments, a figure determined by those agents who have more than one indictment and/or conviction.

114 agents appear with two cases and/or convictions. The number of cases or convictions does not always represent the severity of the agent's participation. For example, former Army Colonel Sergio Arredondo González appears in this category.

But in the case of the Caravan of Death, he is indicted as the perpetrator of 55 kidnappings with qualified homicide: 14 in Antofagasta, 13 in Calama, 13 in Copiapó, and 15 in La Serena, and as a co-perpetrator of 20 qualified homicides: 13 in Calama, 3 in Copiapó, and 4 in Cauquenes.

For his participation in the executions at the Quillota Cavalry School, he is sentenced in the second instance to 10 years and one day in prison as the perpetrator of 9 kidnappings with serious injury.

45 agents appear with three cases and/or convictions. In this category, the previous caveat also applies, in the sense that the number of cases or convictions does not always represent the agent's commitment to human rights violations.

This is the case of Carlos Herrera Jiménez, who, in addition to having served a sentence as the perpetrator of the qualified homicide of Mario Fernández López, is currently serving two life sentences as the perpetrator of the qualified homicide of Tucapel Jiménez Alfaro and Juan Alegría Mundaca.

Fourteen agents appear with four cases or convictions. In this group, Luis Arturo Sanhueza Ross stands out, sentenced with finality as the perpetrator of a qualified homicide in Operation Albania; indicted as a co-perpetrator of 5 qualified kidnappings in the case of the five disappeared persons of September 1987; sentenced with finality as a co-perpetrator of qualified homicide in the case of Jécar Neghme; and sentenced with finality as the perpetrator of qualified homicide in the execution of Fernando Vergara.

Also, Heriberto Adel Carmen Acevedo Acevedo, indicted as a co-perpetrator of 9 qualified kidnappings and as a co-perpetrator of a qualified homicide in the Calle Conferencia case; indicted as a co-perpetrator of 6 qualified kidnappings in Operation Colombo; indicted as a co-perpetrator of 6 qualified kidnappings in the disappearance of 13 members of the clandestine leadership of the PC; and indicted as a co-perpetrator of 3 qualified kidnappings in Operation Condor.

Ten agents have accumulated five cases or convictions. Among them, Paul Schafer Schneider, indicted as the perpetrator of 1 qualified kidnapping in the disappearance of Alvaro Vallejos Villagrá; accused as the perpetrator of the qualified kidnapping of Juan Maino Canales, Antonio Elizondo Ormaechea, and Elizabeth Rekas; indicted as the perpetrator of illicit association in Colonia Dignidad; accused as the perpetrator of the qualified kidnapping of Pedro Merino Molina; and sentenced in the second instance as the perpetrator of the qualified homicide of Miguel Becerra.

Also, Manuel Andrés Cárevic Cubillos, indicted as a co-perpetrator of 46 qualified kidnappings in Operation Colombo; indicted as the perpetrator of the qualified kidnapping of Rodolfo González; indicted as the perpetrator of the qualified kidnapping of Nilda and Mario Peña; sentenced with finality as the perpetrator of the qualified kidnapping of Félix de la Jara; and sentenced in the first instance as the perpetrator of the qualified kidnappings of Luis González Mella, Luis Mahuida Esquivel, and Patricio Soto Cerna.

Six agents have six cases and/or convictions. Emblematic cases in this category are the Comando Conjunto agents Daniel Luis Guimpert Corvalán, acquitted in the second instance as the perpetrator of the kidnapping of Humberto Fuentes; indicted as the perpetrator of 3 qualified kidnappings of Ignacio González and others; convicted as the perpetrator of the homicide of Carlos Contreras Maluje; indicted for the qualified kidnapping of Juan Gianelli and others; acquitted in the first instance for the murder of two members of the Comando Conjunto; and indicted for the kidnappings of José Weibel and Carlos Sánchez Cornejo. And Otto Trujillo Miranda, accused as the perpetrator of the kidnapping of Víctor Vega; sentenced with finality as the perpetrator of the qualified kidnapping of Héctor Urrutia, resulting in homicide; indicted as the perpetrator of qualified kidnapping and as an accomplice to two qualified kidnappings in the disappearance of Ignacio González and others; indicted as an accomplice to two kidnappings in the disappearance of Juan Gianelli and others; sentenced in the second instance as an accomplice to the qualified kidnapping of Humberto Fuentes; and indicted as the perpetrator of two qualified kidnappings and as the perpetrator of illicit association in the disappearance of Alonso Gahona Chávez and Miguel Angel Rodríguez Gallardo.

Nine agents face seven cases or convictions. The most well-known is Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, sentenced in the second instance as the perpetrator of 2 qualified homicides and as the perpetrator of illicit association in the murder of General Carlos Prats and his wife; sentenced with finality as a co-perpetrator of the qualified kidnappings of Carlos Carrasco and Fernando Olea; sentenced in the first instance as the perpetrator of the qualified kidnappings of González Mella, Mahuida Esquivel, and Soto Cerna; sentenced with finality as the perpetrator of the qualified kidnapping of Félix de la Jara; indicted as the perpetrator of the qualified kidnappings of Nilda and Mario Peña; sentenced with finality as the perpetrator of the qualified kidnapping of José San Martín; and indicted as a co-perpetrator of 36 qualified kidnappings in Operation Colombo.

Ten agents total eight cases and convictions. These are the Army non-commissioned officers Pedro Segundo Bitterlich Jaramillo, Orlando Jesús Torrejón Gatica, Carlos Eusebio López Inostroza, and Eduardo Antonio Reyes Lagos; the also Army non-commissioned officer, nurse, and DINA agent Gladys de las Mercedes Calderón Carreño, the woman with the highest number of indictments; the Carabineros non-commissioned officers José Mario Friz Esparza and Orlando Guillermo Inostroza Lagos; the doctor and medical colonel Vittorio Orvieto Teplitzki; the Investigations sub-prefect Eugenio Jesús Fieldhouse Chávez; and the Air Force colonel Juan Francisco Saavedra Loyola.

Appearing with nine cases or convictions are Army General Sergio Arellano Stark; Army Colonel Juan Hernán Morales Salgado; Army Lieutenant Colonel David Adolfo Miranda Monardes; Carabineros non-commissioned officer Claudio Enrique Pacheco Fernández; and the civilian agent of the Comando Conjunto, Cesar Luis Palma Ramírez.

The elite of terror

From here on, the dubious elite of human rights violators emerges. Appearing with ten cases or convictions are Army Major Alvaro Julio Corbalán Castilla and Air Force General Freddy Enrique Ruiz Bunger.

Army Colonel and DINA agent Carlos José López Tapia and Army Lieutenant Colonel and DINA agent Ricardo Víctor Lawrence Mires face eight cases and three convictions.

Army Colonel and DINA agent Rolf Gonzalo Wenderoth Pozo boasts seven convictions and four cases.

Eight cases and four convictions is the record of Fernando Eduardo Lauriani Maturana, Army Colonel and DINA agent.

Army Lieutenant Colonel and DINA agent Francisco Maximiliano Ferrer Lima accumulates eight convictions and four cases.

Gendarmerie Major and DINA agent Orlando José Manzo Durán has two convictions and 12 cases.

Twelve convictions and eight cases hang over Army non-commissioned officer and DINA agent Basclay Humberto Zapata Reyes.

Ten convictions and 16 cases is the balance for Army Brigadier and DINA agent Pedro Espinoza Bravo.

Army Colonel and DINA agent Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, surpassed only by Marcelo Moren Brito and Manuel Contreras, has the impressive mark of 23 convictions and 17 cases.

Moren Brito, Army Colonel and DINA agent, adds up to 25 convictions and 20 cases.

The record of Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, the czar of repression in Chile, of 37 convictions and 29 cases, is of world-class level both for his rank and the number of cases he faces, as well as for the fact that he has remained in prison since 1994.

Also a world record must be that of Special Judge Víctor Montiglio, with the 2,215 indictments he has issued against 134 agents for 55 kidnappings with disappearance in the so-called Operation Colombo.

The same judge has issued 86 indictments in the kidnapping and disappearance of the first clandestine leadership of the PC, known as Calle Conferencia, and 54 indictments in the case of the disappearance of the second clandestine leadership of the PC, known as "The Thirteen," and 54 indictments in the so-called Operation Condor.

Also standing out for their massiveness are the 141 indictments issued against 21 agents by Special Judge Alejandro Solís for 77 victims of Villa Grimaldi, among whom are disappeared persons, executed persons, and surviving torture victims; the 64 indictments issued by judges Juan Guzmán and Víctor Montiglio in the so-called Caravan of Death; and the 35 indictments issued by Judge Mario Carroza against the agents involved in the five disappearances of FPMR members in September 1987.

Exemplary sentences

From the point of view of the forcefulness and exemplary nature of the sanction, the life sentences issued by Judge Milton Juica against Miguel Estay Reino, José Florentino Fuentes Castro, Guillermo González Betancourt, Alejandro Sáez Mardones, and Claudio Salazar Fuentes for the "degollados" (throat-slitting) case stand out; the life sentences against Armando Cabrera Aguilar, Alvaro Corbalán Castilla, and Carlos Herrera Jiménez, issued by Judge Sergio Muñoz for the homicide of Juan Alegría Mundaca; the life sentence issued by Judge Mario Carroza against Hugo Salas Wenzel for the homicides of the so-called Operation Albania; the two sentences of 20 years each for Manuel Contreras and Pedro Espinoza, issued by Judge Alejandro Solís for the murder of the Prats couple; and the 20-year prison sentence imposed by Judge Mario Carroza on Alvaro Corbalán for his participation in various homicides of Operation Albania.

Mitigating factors and benefits

On the contrary, the three years and one day, reduced by the Supreme Court, for 7 agents for the kidnapping and disappearance of Carlos Contreras Maluje stand out for their leniency; the same sentence, with supervised release, against Donato Alejandro López Almarza for the murder of the priest Joan Alsina; and the three years with the benefit of conditional remission of the sentence against 7 agents for the murder of Jécar Neghme.

In general terms, since 2008, the Penal Chamber of the Supreme Court has been applying the mitigating factor of the "partial statute of limitations," for which reason no agent has been sentenced since then to terms longer than five years and one day, which in many cases determines the conditional remission of the sentence.

Thus, as of September 30, 2009, only 53 agents were serving prison sentences. That is what the numbers say.

If one considers the high number of cases and that progress in terms of investigation and sanction in cases of human rights violations began to be recorded after 2002, it cannot be maintained that impunity persists in Chile.

But if one considers the reduced amount of the sentences, especially those confirmed during 2008 and 2009 as a consequence of mitigating factors and benefits being granted by the Penal Chamber of the Supreme Court, and the high proportion of victims who have not had an investigation or sanction, that wound inflicted on the national soul is still far from closing.

Source: elsiglo.cl, November 6, 2009

On Wednesday, September 19, 1973, soldiers belonging to a battalion of the Yungay Regiment of San Felipe raided the San Juan de Dios Hospital in Santiago, Chile, taking several people into custody, among them a worker-priest named Joan Alsina Hurtos.

Transferred to the Internado Nacional Barros Arana, which was being used at that time as a detention center by the dictatorship, Alsina was severely beaten and tortured by his captors. At 9:00 PM that same day, he was taken to the Bulnes Bridge over the Mapocho River in Santiago and executed by a military patrol under the orders of Colonel Donato López Almarza.

"Please do not put the blindfold on me; kill me facing forward because I want to see you so I can grant you forgiveness."

Nelson Bañados, an 18-year-old recruit performing mandatory military service, was the one who fired seven shots at close range at the priest Alsina, as he himself would declare on various occasions before taking his own life due to the guilt he carried throughout his life from that tragic moment.

Facing his executioner, the priest Alsina asked the recruit Bañados not to blindfold him, so he could bless him and grant him forgiveness, according to the recruit's own confession to the Catalan priest Miguel Llodrá, a member of the religious community to which Joan Alsina belonged in the commune of San Bernardo, in the Metropolitan Region, who had taken on the task of searching for his detained brother.

Subsequently, when the trials began, the recruit Bañados would repeat the same testimony before the courts: "Upon arriving at the Bulnes Bridge, my captain braked, and I, as I did with each of the people I executed, got out, took Juan out of the van, and went to blindfold him, but Juan said to me: 'Please do not put the blindfold on me; kill me facing forward because I want to see you so I can grant you forgiveness.' It was very fast.

I remember he raised his gaze to the sky, made a gesture with his hands, placed them over his heart, and moved his lips as if he were praying and said: 'Father, forgive them...' I fired the burst and he fell immediately.

I wanted to shoot him with the pistol but I did it with the submachine gun so it would be faster. The impact was so strong that it turned his body and he practically fell into the Mapocho on his own; I only had to give him a little push.

Others, sometimes, fell to the floor of the bridge and we had to lift them up and throw them into the river. It was ten o’clock at night, and I will never forget this execution."

Days later, on September 27, Alsina’s corpse was found downstream in the Mapocho River and transferred to the Legal Medical Service. The authorities of the military regime claimed that he was a "terrorist" who had died in a confrontation with a patrol of soldiers. On September 28, his body was buried in the parish cemetery of San Bernardo.

Bañados always ratified his version of the events in the trial for the murder of Joan Alsina, until, overwhelmed by remorse, he committed suicide.

Who was the priest Joan

Joan Alsina Hurtos was born in Castelló d’Empúries, province of Girona, Catalonia, on April 28, 1942. He was the son of a very Catholic family, which, in addition to Joan, had two other children, Miquel and Maria.

At age 4, he entered the Carmelitas School; three years later, he moved to the National School. At age 11, Joan asked his parents to enter the seminary of Girona, which he subsequently attended, being ordained a priest on September 12, 1965.

Assigned for a time to the town of Malgrat de Mar, Joan decided to move to the Hispanic American Seminary in Madrid to go on missions, which was his desire. His first destination was Chile, where he arrived thinking of spending 10 years evangelizing among worker sectors.

Joan arrived in Chile on January 30, 1967, and settled in San Bernardo, south of Santiago, to live in a community of Catalan priests. He exercised his ministry at the San Ignacio Parish in San Bernardo and worked at the San Juan de Dios Hospital in Santiago at the time of the coup d'état of September 11, 1973, where he was also a union leader.

Joan had made deep friendships in Chile; he had become a worker-priest, like several others who formed the "Christians for Socialism" movement in those years in support of the struggles and social transformations that were occurring in Chile. It is in this context of the world of work that he became politically linked to comrades from the MIR.

From the hospital, Joan and his colleagues were able to see the bombing of La Moneda on September 11, 1973, and later receive the wounded who arrived from various places.

On September 16, a military patrol arrived at the San Juan de Dios Hospital in Santiago, raiding its facilities and detaining 7 workers. Joan was free that day, and upon his return to the hospital, his colleagues advised him to take refuge in an embassy.

Joan made the decision not only to remain in Chile but also to continue working at the hospital, helping those most in need during especially difficult times.

On the night of September 18, sensing his detention, Joan wrote a document known as "The Testament of Juan Alsina," in which he recorded the reasons for his surrender. Among others, we choose one of the phrases he wrote in his own handwriting: "If the grain of wheat does not die, it does not bear fruit, but if it dies, it bears much fruit." A phrase that more than 10 years later would be taken up by Luisa Toledo, a resident of Villa Francia in Santiago, very close to the Catholic base communities, when two of her children, Rafael and Eduardo Vergara Toledo, were murdered on March 29, 1984.

Joan was one of the priests murdered by the military dictatorship in Chile, like the English worker-priest Miguel Woodward, who was detained and tortured to death on the training ship Esmeralda; the Salesian priest Gerardo Poblete, murdered in a dungeon of a police station in Iquique in 1974; the Valencian Antonio Llidó Mengual, a worker-priest from Quillota, disappeared from the clandestine detention and torture center of José Domingo Cañas in Santiago in 1974; and the French priest André Jarlan, murdered by a police shot in the La Victoria neighborhood in Santiago while the national day of protests against the dictatorship was being repressed in 1984.

Source: resumen.cl, September 19, 2023

Places of memory are there, some perhaps invisible despite plaques, monuments, and acts of remembrance. Sometimes the eyes do not see, and truths are lost in good intentions.

“I remember I fired seven bullets at his chest… but as if by a natural instinct… to avoid seeing his gaze.” (pp. 76, Nelson Bañados)

Fifty years after the Civil-Military Coup, Felipe Olivares and Claudio Vilches, two young political scientists, begin an investigative journey into the heart of one of the many despicable acts perpetrated in the early days of the dictatorship: the execution of the Catalan priest Joan Alsina at the Puente Bulnes in Santiago.

“Mátame de frente” (“Kill me facing forward”) provides an account of the search for information regarding this emblematic case, which begins with concrete data that frame it. One of them, the thread to pull, is that the Instituto Nacional Barros Arana (INBA) served as a cantonment area for the Regimiento N°3 Yungay of San Felipe from September 11, 1973, until October 4 of that year.

It was a place of detention, political imprisonment and torture, and the forcibly disappeared. Joan Alsina remained there after being detained with other people at the Hospital San Juan de Dios until the night of his execution on September 19, 1973. Many witnesses agree on this truthful fact, among them a military chaplain.

The story of Joan Alsina is interwoven with that of others who suffered, died, and disappeared at the hands of the soldiers of the Regimiento Yungay of San Felipe during the fateful time they were stationed at the INBA and subsequently at the Quinta Normal.

For example, the story of Lucio Bagus, an employee of the Hospital San Juan de Dios, who remains forcibly disappeared to this day. And that of Carlos Fariña, a thirteen-year-old boy detained at his home who was finally found in a mass grave at Américo Vespucio and San Pablo.

Thus, throughout the book, the reader can understand the plot of the web of death that has been hidden or rendered invisible. Its points connect, overlap, and merge, showing us an image of terror that is not literary fiction or political invention.

It happened. Cruelty, perversity, and the subsequent impunity were ferocious beasts that moved at will in the dictatorial night, from the very first moment of that September 11.

The thread of the story told also gathers the hanging or lost points of the accomplices (passive or active), of the informants. Of those who, for personal reasons, turned in colleagues or neighbors. Of those who remained silent.

Of those who looked the other way when these events were occurring. Of those who contributed to the concealment of the truth. Perhaps out of legitimate fear, perhaps because they truly did not care. The “they must have done something” remains pulsing in the darkness that surrounds us today.

The perpetrators are also here, with their full names and even their photos, verifiable public documents. And the official records of the judicial investigations in which, when the Justice system inquired about one of these responsible parties, there was coincidentally a spelling or typing error in the name, so that the response was that the person did not belong to the Chilean Army.

This was one of the many maneuvers that guaranteed the impunity of the State’s assassins.

Joan Alsina was executed at the Puente Bulnes by conscript Nelson Bañados and Captain Mario Caraves, who gave the order and was there to verify that his subordinate’s hand carried out the action for him.

Out of cowardice or the need to provide himself with accomplices who could not speak later. The words that give the book its title were spoken by Joan Alsina at the moment Nelson Bañados was preparing to execute him. It remained as a lapidary phrase that nevertheless did not move the perpetrators and has remained an emblem for these fifty years.

The story of Joan Alsina, as well as the phrase, leads us to the matter of forgiveness. For him, as for his parents, forgiveness was crucial. His father, before dying, wrote two letters in which he extended the forgiveness that Joan Alsina gave to his assassins at the Puente Bulnes.

One letter was for conscript Nelson Bañados, who accepted it, and the other for Captain Mario Caraves, who rejected it, indignant.

The narrative at times takes on the tone of a chronicle and at other moments reaches an atmosphere of enveloping intimacy, not without astonishment, when it seems that nothing can astonish us anymore. The authors, although they attempt to maintain the distance imposed by the structure of the investigation, cannot avoid shuddering and approach the stories of witnesses and family members emotionally, which they interweave, supported by documents, photos, and easily verifiable data.

This leads the book to be read as an investigation in its own right, but at the same time as a compendium of multiple voices that unfold like a warp that goes far beyond the cases in question: the fabric reaches the entire country when the points are joined with the thread woven from these stories.

Places of memory are there, some perhaps invisible despite plaques, monuments, and acts of remembrance. Sometimes the eyes do not see, and truths are lost in good intentions. Books like “Mátame de frente,” based on rigorous investigative work committed to the truth, open the doors to revisit geographical and symbolic spaces, to look while seeing the history of our country, and to bravely walk the paths of the tears of those who gave their lives in our national territory, which still bleeds.

Source: elmostrador.cl, January 3, 2024

The ruling of the Third Criminal Court regarding the case of Father Juan Alsina Hurtós, a diocesan priest of Spanish nationality murdered in Santiago on September 19, 1973, was made public. In the ruling, issued by Judge Dobra Lusic, it is indicated that Father Alsina, at the time of the coup d’état, was working as head of the Personnel Department of the Hospital San Juan de Dios, the place where he was detained on September 19 by military personnel and transferred to the Internado Nacional Barros Arana, then occupied by personnel of the Regimiento Nº3 "Yungay" of San Felipe.

The ruling specifies that on that same day, Alsina was taken from the detention site and brought to the Puente Bulnes, on the Mapocho River, at about 11:00 PM. There he was machine-gunned. His execution, according to the judicial ruling, constitutes qualified homicide, that is, perpetrated with premeditation and treachery, since the culprits acted with knowledge of the victim’s defenselessness and the decision to murder required a period of prior planning.

Point 7 of the ruling establishes that "as responsible in the capacity of authors of this crime appear Mario Caraves S. and Nelson Bañados P., at the date the former, an Army captain subject to the command of his superior Donato López Almarza, and the latter, a conscript soldier of the Regimiento de Infantería Yungay, with Mario Caraves having arranged without order or authority the removal and execution of the victim, participating in both; and Nelson Bañados, the material executor, with both involved parties acting in excess of their public functions and in contravention of institutional legal norms." In its final part, the ruling expresses that the criminal responsibility of Mario Caraves is extinguished due to his death. Regarding Nelson Bañados, his responsibility is also extinguished by the provision of Decree Law Nº 2191 of 1978, known as the Amnesty Law. by Miguel Jorda

Source: February 25, 1993

Court grants freedom to (r) military officer under prosecution

The Seventh Chamber of the Court of Appeals resolved, by two votes to one, to grant provisional release to Major (r) Donato López Almarza, who is being prosecuted for the qualified homicide of the Spanish priest Joan Alsina Hurtos.

The court thus confirmed the provision of Minister Jorge Zepeda, who in his resolution granted freedom to the retired military officer subject to consultation with the appellate court. The Chamber was composed of ministers Cornelio Villarroel, Eduardo Fuentes, and the participating lawyer Óscar Herrera.

The latter was in favor of denying the benefit to López, considering that due to the manner in which the crime was committed, the (r) military officer constitutes a danger to society. The 31-year-old religious, who belonged to the Salesian Congregation, was detained on September 11, 1973, at the Hospital San Juan de Dios and transferred to the Internado Nacional Barros Arana, where he remained detained until September 19.

That day he was taken by military personnel to the Puente Bulnes, where he was riddled with bullets. His remains were found days later at the Legal Medical Institute. However, López Almarza will not be able to be released immediately, because he remains in preventive detention for another human rights case also being investigated by Minister Zepeda.

This concerns the homicide of the minor Carlos Patricio Fariña Oyarce, which occurred in La Pincoya in September 1973. Zepeda has until tomorrow to resolve the procedural situation of López Almarza in this case.

Source: El Mercurio, August 19, 2004

Army Major prosecuted for the homicide of three minors after the 1973 military coup.

This same officer is involved in the case investigating the crime of Father Joan Alsina.

Minister Jorge Zepeda determined that López bears responsibility for the deaths of Patricio Fariña, Víctor Araya, and Víctor Vidal, who resided in the La Pincoya neighborhood. According to the information gathered so far, the young men were detained by military patrols and transferred to the Regimiento Yungay of San Felipe, where they were later executed.

The former Army officer was notified this noon at the Peñalolén Military Police Battalion of the new charges against him.

Source: La Nación, August 20, 2004

Author of the crime against Father Joan Alsina convicted

Major (R) of the Army Donato López Almarza was sentenced to five years in prison by Judge Jorge Zepeda as the sole author of the homicide of the Spanish priest Joan Alsina Hurtos. Other members of the patrol that detained and executed him on the Puente Bulnes of the Mapocho River, including conscript Nelson Bañados, who shot him, are deceased.

The priest was detained on September 19, 1973, at the Hospital San Juan de Dios where he worked, by soldiers of the Regimiento Yungay of San Felipe, V Region. The soldier who killed him by superior order declared before committing suicide that “upon arriving at the Puente Bulnes, my captain (López) braked.

I got out as I did with each of those I executed and took Joan out of the van and went to blindfold him. But he said to me, ‘please, do not put the blindfold on me, kill me facing forward because I want to see you to give you forgiveness.’ It was very fast.

I remember he raised his gaze to the sky, made a gesture with his hands, placed them over his heart, and moved his lips as if he were praying and said, ‘Father, forgive them.’ I fired the burst and he fell immediately.

I wanted to shoot him with the pistol, but I did it with the submachine gun so it would be faster. The impact was so strong that it turned his body and he practically fell into the Mapocho on his own; I just had to give him a little push. Others sometimes fell to the floor of the bridge and had to be lifted and thrown into the river. It was ten at night and I will never forget this execution.”

Source: La Nación, October 19, 2005

Army Major (R) convicted for the death of Spanish religious Joan Alsina

Minister Jorge Zepeda sentenced former uniformed officer Donato López Almarza to five years in prison as the material author of the crime against the Catalan priest. The magistrate also acquitted, due to their being deceased, two other former military officers, one of whom revealed during the process that Joan Alsina forgave him shortly before he executed him.

Major (r) of the Army Donato Alejandro López Almarza was sentenced to five years and one day in prison, without benefits, for the material authorship of the homicide of the Spanish priest Joan Alsina Hurtos.

In his resolution, the presiding minister Jorge Zepeda Arancibia denied the request for compensation filed by the Catholic clergyman’s family, considering it was presented past the legal deadline. The magistrate also ordered the definitive dismissal of the case against officer Mario Caravés and former conscript soldier Nelson Bañados, due to the fact that both are already deceased.

The religious, who exercised his ministry at the San Ignacio Parish in San Bernardo and worked as head of personnel at the Hospital San Juan de Dios, was apprehended and executed on September 19, 1973.

The priest is one of the victims of the Catholic Church during the military regime, among whom are also Gerardo Poblete, Wilfredo Alarcón, Miguel Woodward, Antonio Llidó, and André Jarlan. Alsina was detained in the basements of the healthcare center by personnel from the Regimiento Yungay of San Felipe and was then taken to the Internado Nacional Barros Arana (INBA).

After being killed at the Puente Bulnes, the 31-year-old priest was thrown into the waters of the Mapocho River. Eight days later his body was found at the Legal Medical Institute. He was buried the following day in the San Bernardo Parish Cemetery, and his death certificate records "multiple gunshot wounds" and "parchment-like lesions on the face." Religious forgave his victimizer In 1990, the first lawsuit for the death of Joan Alsina was filed in Chile, but it was dismissed due to the statute of limitations and the Amnesty Law.

During that process, the conscript soldier confessed that he and Caravés murdered Alsina. Furthermore, he revealed that the priest, before being executed, forgave him and blessed him. "I remember he raised his gaze to the sky, made a gesture with his hands, placed them over his heart, and moved his lips as if he were praying and said: '...Father, forgive them...'.

I fired the burst and he fell immediately (...) It was ten at night, and I will never forget this execution," Bañados stated in a recording made by the Spanish priest Miguel Jordá. The former soldier, who would later commit suicide, became the first Chilean military officer to ask for forgiveness for the crimes of the dictatorship. "I regret it.

May they forgive me, I was just following orders," Bañados said in an interview granted to Catalan television in March 1998.

Source: elmostrador.cl, December 18, 2005

Five years in prison for one of those responsible in 1973 for the assassination of the Spanish priest Joan Alsina

Retired Chilean Army officer Donato López was sentenced yesterday to five years in prison for murdering the Catalan priest Joan Alsina on September 19, 1973, eight days after the coup d’état that overthrew the government of Salvador Allende.

The sentence was handed down by Judge Jorge Zepeda, who investigated the crime against Alsina, who died at 31 after being detained and tortured by a military patrol. The convicted military officer is one of the three Army officers who participated in the operation, and the only one who is alive, as the other two died before the trial ended.

The magistrate’s investigation determined that the author of the seven shots that ended the life of the Spanish priest was recruit Nelson Bañados, who years later committed suicide, tormented by having committed this crime.

At the time of his detention and assassination, Joan Alsina was a priest of a parish in the far south of the capital and at the same time worked at the Hospital San Juan de Dios, in a working-class neighborhood to the northeast of Santiago.

A slanderous and anonymous accusation that labeled him a "dangerous communist" led to his detention and summary execution in chilling circumstances that were confirmed during the process. "Do not blindfold me" After his detention, Joan Alsina was beaten, tortured, and left unconscious.

Later, he was transferred to the Internado Nacional Barros Arana and later taken to the Puente Bulnes, which crosses the Mapocho River in the northwestern area of the Chilean capital, where he was executed with seven shots.

His body appeared on September 27, 1973. Both the magistrate’s investigations and the testimony of other military personnel record that Alsina asked Bañados, at the moment of the execution, not to blindfold him so he could bless him and grant him forgiveness.

On this basis, a campaign was opened at the time to vindicate the name of the priest Joan Alsina and for him to be declared a martyr of the Church. Joan Alsina was born in the city of Girona and arrived in Chile in 1967, where he intended to stay for at least 10 years, engaging in pastoral work with the poor sectors of the city.

Source: abc.es, October 19, 2005

Prosecution against former Yungay commander confirmed

The Eighth Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals upheld the indictment issued against Major (ret.) Donato López Almarza as the perpetrator of the aggravated kidnapping of Socialist militant Lucio Bagús Valenzuela, which occurred in the days following the 1973 military coup.

The capital's appellate court, composed of magistrates Juan González, Dobra Lusic, and presiding attorney Ángel Cruchaga, thus confirmed the ruling of the visiting judge Joaquín Billard, who determined that the Army officer was in command of the Yungay Regiment unit from the city of San Felipe.

This unit was stationed at the time in Quinta Normal, in the city of Santiago, and was responsible for the arrest of the victim at the San Juan de Dios Hospital.

The case file records that on September 17, 1973, military personnel arrived at the medical center and detained Juan Francisco González Morán, Manuel Briceño Briceño, Manuel Jesús Ibáñez García, Jorge Cáceres Gatica, Pablo Ramón Aranda Schmied, and José Lucio Bagús Valenzuela—all employees of the facility—in the presence of staff who were present at the time.

It was noted that the first four individuals mentioned appeared dead at the Legal Medical Service and the General Cemetery, all having died from gunshot wounds, while Pablo Ramón Aranda Schmied and José Lucio Bagús Valenzuela became cases of the forcibly disappeared.

According to statements by López Almarza himself, these operations were carried out in response to a request from the director of the San Juan de Dios Hospital, Carlos Salomón Rex, a requirement under which it was ordered to evict those employees who were hindering the work of that establishment.

Meanwhile, according to the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation and witness statements, José Bagús Valenzuela was taken to a vacant lot located near the 7,000 block of Calle San Pablo in Santiago. Since that occasion, his whereabouts remain unknown, and he was presumably executed by State agents.

López Almarza is currently under prosecution by visiting judge Jorge Zepeda as the perpetrator of the homicide of three minors following the 1973 military coup: Patricio Fariña, Víctor Araya, and Víctor Vidal, who resided in the La Pincoya neighborhood.

He is also listed as responsible for the crime against the priest Joan Alsina, who was executed by firing squad at the Bulnes Bridge and subsequently thrown into the waters of the Mapocho River.

Source: Tvn.cl, August 23, 2006

Conviction confirmed for crime against Spanish priest

The Santiago Court of Appeals confirmed today the five-year and one-day prison sentence for a former Army colonel for the murder of the Spanish Catholic priest Joan Alsina Hurtos, perpetrated days after the 1973 military coup, judicial sources reported.

The appellate court's sentence confirmed the first-instance ruling in the case issued by judge Jorge Zepeda, who is in charge of the case against the retired colonel Donato López Almarza, whom he charged with aggravated homicide.

On the date of the coup d'état led by Augusto Pinochet on September 11, 1973, Alsina was an employee of the San Juan de Dios Hospital in Santiago, Chile, where he was detained days later by a military patrol.

On September 19, after being subjected to torture, he was taken to the Bulnes Bridge over the Mapocho River, where, by order of López Almarza, an 18-year-old recruit, Nelson Bañados, shot him seven times at close range.

Days later, Alsina's body was found downstream, and military authorities claimed he was a "terrorist" who had died in a confrontation with a patrol.

At the moment of his death, the priest asked the recruit Bañados not to blindfold him so that he could bless him and grant him forgiveness, according to the recruit's own confession to Father Miguel Llodrá, who personally investigated the story of Father Alsina.

Bañados later ratified this version during the trial for the murder and, some time later, overwhelmed by remorse, committed suicide.

Colonel Mario Caravés also died; as a captain, he commanded the patrol that detained the priest, tortured him, and later took him to the bridge.

The Court of Appeals, in its ruling today, considered the case "a crime against humanity," to which international law standards must be applied.

Source: Tvn.cl, March 30, 2007

Carlos Fariña Case: Judge Zepeda sentences retired military officers for the murders of children in 1973

Commander (ret.) Donato López Almarza and officer (ret.) Enrique Sandoval Arancibia were sentenced to 14 years in prison and five years of supervised release, respectively, for the kidnapping and homicide of three minors from the La Pincoya neighborhood.

Visiting judge Jorge Zepeda Arancibia concluded the investigation on Wednesday into the murders of children Carlos Fariña Oyarce (14), Víctor Vidal Tejeda (16), and the young man Héctor Araya Garrido (20), who were murdered by Army agents in a sector of the La Pincoya neighborhood in what became one of the most symbolic crimes committed after the military coup.

The magistrate sentenced retired commander Donato López Almarza to 14 years of effective imprisonment for the crimes of aggravated kidnapping and the homicides of the three minors at the time of the events, and five years to retired officer Enrique Sandoval Arancibia, who was granted the benefit of supervised release.

Sandoval Arancibia currently serves as the head of security for the Providencia municipality, and on several occasions, relatives of the murdered minors have requested his removal from the public position.

The sentence of more than 60 pages issued by judge Zepeda also orders the State to pay a total sum of $120 million to the relatives of the murdered minors, divided into $24 million for each of the five plaintiffs in the process.

The judicial sentence provides a clear account of the repression in the first days of the dictatorship and how state agents, without apparent motive, deployed a policy to "instill fear" in the general population and the residents in particular.

Zepeda establishes that a battalion of the No. 3 Yungay Regiment of San Felipe was transferred to the northeastern sector of Santiago, specifically to deploy repression in working-class sectors such as the La Pincoya neighborhood and others, where they carried out various raids in search of opponents.

"In one of those operations, on October 13, 1973, they arrived at the home of the minor Carlos Fariña Oyarce, located at Los Músicos 6074, and took the 14-year-old minor from his sickbed. The reason for such a demand was that days earlier, the minor Carlos Patricio, while handling a firearm, accidentally fired a projectile, wounding the child Ramón Zúñiga Díaz, 6 years old.

For this act, he was admitted, by order of the First Juvenile Court of Santiago, to the Children's Home, where Carlos Patricio desperately asked to see his mother; she, Mrs. Josefina, found him in that boarding school crying and feverish, suffering from the attacks of other interned minors," the resolution states.

"The military, aware of the aforementioned incident, ultimately removed the minor Carlos Patricio Fariña Oyarce from his mother's side while he was in his sickbed; immediately transporting him, along with other detainees gathered in the 'Las Siete Canchas' sector of the La Pincoya neighborhood, to the base barracks of the No. 3 Yungay Regiment, inside the Quinta Normal, using for this, among other means of transport, a minibus driven by a private individual; subsequently, several of the detained persons—the perpetrators seeking minimal danger and the physical and moral concealment of the night—as well as the minor Carlos Patricio Fariña Oyarce, were executed without any protection or mercy," it adds.

On the same day, from a house on Calle Los Pomelos, the minor Víctor Vidal Tejeda was taken and Héctor Araya Garrido was detained; they met the same fate as Carlos Fariña after being executed in the "Las Canchas" sector.

Carlos Fariña's body was only found on June 30, 2000, while an expansion of Avenida Américo Vespucio was being carried out upon reaching San Pablo. He was identified by the Legal Medical Service days later and handed over to his siblings, as the child's mother died without knowing his whereabouts.

Meanwhile, the remains of Araya Garrido were found in a grave in Patio 29 of the General Cemetery and later cremated by his relatives, while the destination of Vidal Tejeda's remains is unknown.

Judge Zepeda classifies these crimes as crimes against humanity, therefore he does not apply the 1978 Amnesty Law and rejects applying the statute of limitations, following the criteria of the Supreme Court that International Human Rights Treaties prevail over Chilean legislation due to the legal principle of jus cogens.

"That, without a doubt, it is also possible to establish that the acts described above, due to their seriousness, constitute a flagrant attack on human dignity, given the special and extreme cruelty used against the minor victims—two of them children and one a young man—and their environment—especially against the mothers of the three, who remained, as long as they could, with their detained children, guarantors and faithful to their duty of protection and care—considering also that these were generalized and systematic actions to instill terror in the civilian population, tolerated and promoted by the command of the subordinates who executed them, as demonstrated by the high number of victims killed, as well as the minors," he states.

Source: El Mostrador, June 28, 2007

Appellate court maintained sentences for the crimes of Carlos Fariña Oyarce and Víctor Vidal Tejera

The Santiago Court of Appeals ratified the conviction in the investigation into the homicides of Carlos Fariña Oyarce, Víctor Vidal Tejera (both minors at the time of the events), and Héctor Araya Garrido, which occurred starting October 13, 1973, in Santiago.

For the magistrates, the first-instance ruling issued by judge Jorge Zepeda fully conforms to the facts, although they made an exception in the case of one of the defendants.

Ministers Cornelio Villarroel, Mario Carroza, and presiding attorney Roberto González indicated that Donato López Almarza must serve a sentence of 10 years and one day in prison, without benefits; while Erasmo Sandoval Arancibia was sentenced to 5 years in prison with the benefit of supervised release for a period of 6 years.

Judge Zepeda had previously sanctioned that López Almarza should serve a 7-year sentence for the crimes of aggravated kidnapping of the three victims and another 7 years for the aggravated homicides.

The magistrates opted to reject the lawsuit against the State that had been accepted in the first instance and set at 24 million pesos for each of the 5 plaintiffs in the process as payment for moral damages.

Minister Villarroel, in any case, provided a dissenting vote, as he was in favor of applying the statute of limitations to the criminal action due to the time elapsed.

Source: La Nación, October 16, 2008

For the kidnapping and disappearance of a Socialist militant

Donato López Almarza is also sentenced to the same penalty for his participation in the homicide of the thirteen-year-old child Carlos Fariña Oyarce, which occurred on October 13, 1973.

Army Colonel (ret.) Donato López Almarza was sentenced to ten years and one day in prison for the kidnapping and disappearance in September 1973 of the Socialist militant Lucio Bagus Valenzuela.

The first-instance sentence was issued by the Santiago Court of Appeals judge, Joaquín Billard.

The victim was a worker at the San Juan de Dios Hospital and was kidnapped by troops from the Yungay Regiment of San Felipe, Fifth Region, who, under the command of López Almarza at the time, were installed in the Quinta Normal sector in Santiago to reinforce repression after the military coup.

The same officer (ret.) is also sentenced to another 10 years and one day for the homicide of the thirteen-year-old child Carlos Fariña Oyarce, which occurred on October 13, 1973.

The sentence for Lucio Bagus must still be reviewed by the Santiago Court of Appeals and the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court, while the one issued in the first instance by the judge of the same Court, Jorge Zepeda, has already been confirmed by the capital's appellate court, with only the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court remaining to rule on it.

Colonel (ret.) López Almarza is on provisional release and will not begin serving his sentence until both sentences are reviewed by the aforementioned Criminal Chamber, which could modify the penalties.

In the first weeks after the coup d'état, dozens of people died in the streets of Santiago, riddled with bullets. In some of these cases, no trials have been initiated to date, nor have the relatives filed legal actions.

Several of these bodies arrived at the Santiago morgue unidentified and were later sent to the crematorium of the General Cemetery by means of a simple military order.

Carlos Fariña, whose body appeared years later during real estate excavations, became the youngest victim of the dictatorship.

Compensation The Santiago Court of Appeals increased to $50 million the compensation for moral damages to the family of the MIR militant Álvaro Barrios Duque, who was a victim of aggravated kidnapping by repressive agencies starting August 14, 1974.

In addition, the sentences of 5 years and one day for Manuel Contreras, 3 years for Miguel Krassnoff and Marcelo Moren, and 800 days for Basclay Zapata and Nelson Bustamante were confirmed.

Likewise, in the Antofagasta Court, 6 years of effective imprisonment were confirmed for Rómulo Galleguillos for the aggravated homicide of the Socialist activist Juan Matulic, committed by carabineros from the Calama police station on October 16, 1973.

Source: La Nación, December 17, 2008

Human Rights: Supreme Court issues final sentence for crimes against youths after the 1973 coup

In a split decision, the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court issued a final sentence in the investigation into the kidnapping and aggravated homicide of minors Carlos Fariña Oyarce (13) and Víctor Vidal Tejeda (16), as well as the crime against Héctor Araya Garrido (18), which occurred in October 1973 in the Metropolitan Region.

The highest court sentenced Major (ret.) Donato López Almarza to a penalty of six years in prison without benefits.

Meanwhile, officer (ret.) Erasmo Sandoval Arancibia received five years in prison, but was granted the benefit of supervised release.

The majority vote was from minister Jaime Rodríguez and presiding attorneys Jorge Medina and Guillermo Ruiz, while the minority vote was from judges Nibaldo Segura and Rubén Ballesteros, who were in favor of accepting the statute of limitations for the criminal action.

In the first instance, visiting judge Jorge Zepeda Arancibia had determined two sentences of seven years in prison for López Almarza; and one of five years, with the benefit of supervised release, for Sandoval Arancibia.

In 2008, however, the Santiago Court of Appeals had imposed a single penalty of 10 years and one day in prison for the retired major and maintained the conviction for Sandoval Arancibia.

Fariña Oyarce was detained at his home in the La Pincoya neighborhood by a military patrol from the Yungay Regiment and disappeared. His remains were found with 12 bullet impacts in 2000, in a vacant lot in Américo Vespucio, Pudahuel commune, when excavations were being carried out for the construction of an industrial park.

The other two victims were arrested in the same operation in La Pincoya in October 1973 and were subsequently executed by Army troops.

Source: Noticias123.cl, August 19, 2010

Retired military officer is convicted for the crime against a PS militant in 1973

Almost 38 years after the death of Socialist militant Lucio Bagus Valenzuela, the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court issued a final sentence, applying a penalty of 3 years and one day in prison, subject to the benefit of supervised release, to Donato López Almarza, who was in charge of the Yungay Regiment of San Felipe on September 17, 1973.

The retired officer detained Bagus that day, as well as Juan Francisco González Morán, Manuel Briceño Briceño, Manuel Jesús Ibáñez García, Jorge Cáceres Gatica, Pablo Ramón Aranda Schmied, and the following day, the Spanish priest Joan Alsina.

Bagus worked at the San Juan de Dios Hospital, where he was arrested after the military coup and taken to the Internado Nacional Barros Arana, his body subsequently being found at the Legal Medical Institute.

The highest court determined that all those detained on September 17, 1973, appeared dead at the SML morgue and, in the case of Alsina, at the Bulnes Bridge, on one of the banks of the Mapocho River.

The sentence determined by ministers Jaime Rodríguez, Rubén Ballesteros, Hugo Dolmestch, Carlos Künsemüller, and presiding attorney Benito Mauriz imposes a sanction that does not have to be served with effective imprisonment, as the benefit of supervised release was granted.

Additionally, the State must pay 70 million pesos to the victim's relatives as compensation for the moral damages suffered regarding the aggravated kidnapping of Lucio Bagus Valenzuela.

Source: La Nación, May 2, 2011

Human Rights: Retired military officers prosecuted for attack on the former Technical University

Minister Carroza indicted Donato Alejandro López Almarza and Marcelo Luis Manuel Moren Brito for the homicides of Hugo Araya González and Marta Vallejo Buschmann, who lost their lives in the brutal siege of what is now the University of Santiago de Chile.

On September 11, 1973, in the early hours of the Military Coup, troops from the Battalion of the No. 3 Yungay Regiment of San Felipe and the Arica Regiment of La Serena besieged the former State Technical University, the current University of Santiago de Chile. The following day, they proceeded to attack the front of the building with firearms and artillery and assaulted the university.

41 years later, the extraordinary visiting minister of the Santiago Court of Appeals for human rights violation cases, Mario Carroza, prosecuted Donato Alejandro López Almarza and Marcelo Luis Manuel Moren Brito.

The magistrate charged them with responsibility for the aggravated homicide of Hugo Araya González (pictured) and Marta Vallejo Buschmann, two university employees who were surrounded inside along with 600 other people, including students, professors, administrators, and workers, including the popular singer-songwriter Víctor Jara.

THE FACTS

According to the resolution, on September 11, in the afternoon, Major Donato López Almarza, commander of the Battalion of the No. 3 Yungay Regiment of San Felipe, with part of his troops, established himself at the former State Technical University with the objective of carrying out its eviction.

However, as the curfew hour was approaching, he made the decision to execute it the following day, "withdrawing his men and surrounding the university campus, with the peremptory order to prevent the escape of the people who were inside the premises and to shoot them if necessary to prevent it."

The following day, in the morning, the Army major and future member of the DINA leadership, Marcelo Moren Brito, commander of the Battalion of the Arica Regiment of La Serena, arrived at the scene "to provide support and coverage with the personnel of his unit that was in Santiago."

At noon, both commanders "gave the order to fire at the front of the university, which resulted in two people who were inside being wounded by bullets, Hugo Araya González and Marta Vallejo Buschmann, who died at the scene as a result of their injuries."

The resolution adds that both were taken to the facilities of the Legal Medical Service, "with the autopsy report recording that Hugo Araya González died as a result of a thoraco-abdominal gunshot wound with an exit wound, and Marta Vallejo Buschmann from a gunshot wound that, in its thoracic and cervical trajectory, caused perforation of the esophagus, trachea, left pulmonary apex, and destruction of the dorsal vertebral body and spinal cord."

Source: La Nación, January 16, 2015

Justice increased to 17 years the sentence of a retired Army officer

The Court of Appeals increased the sentence of Donato Alejandro López Almarza by 9 years for the homicide of UTE officials in 1973

The Santiago Court of Appeals increased the sentence to be served by Donato Alejandro López Almarza as the perpetrator of the qualified homicide of Hugo Araya González and Marta Ana de Monserrat Vallejo Buschmann, crimes perpetrated in September 1973 at the former Universidad Técnica del Estado (UTE) in Santiago.

In a unanimous ruling, the Fourth Chamber of the appellate court increased the custodial sentence to be served by the retired Army officer from 8 to 17 years.

"That, in the considerations preceding this, this Tribunal has addressed the observations of the judicial prosecutor's report, particularly the one in which he expresses his disagreement with the ruling regarding the granting of partial prescription to the sentenced party.

For these reasons and those provided for, furthermore, in articles 414, 509, 514, 527, and 529 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the appealed sentence of November 12, 2015, written on page 1638 and following, is confirmed, with the declaration that the custodial sentence imposed upon the sentenced party Donato Alejandro López Almarza as the perpetrator of the qualified homicide of Hugo Araya González and Marta Ana de Monserrat Vallejo Buschmann is increased to seventeen years of major imprisonment in its maximum degree," the ruling states.

Source: adn.cl, March 10, 2016

Supreme Court reduces sentence for military officer convicted of the crime against a resident of Chillancito, murdered by soldiers in 1974

In a resolution issued on Tuesday, in case file 13149-2016, the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed of ministers Milton Juica, Hugo Dolmestch, Carlos Künsemüller, Haroldo Brito, and Lamberto Cisternas—sentenced Army non-commissioned officer Manuel Antonio Latorre Chacón to 3 years and one day of imprisonment as the perpetrator of the homicide of Vasco Ormeño Gajardo, a crime perpetrated on February 28, 1974, in the Chillancito sector of Concepción.

The first-instance ruling, issued by minister Carlos Aldana in May 2015 and ratified by the Court of Concepción in August of last year, had sentenced Latorre Chacón to five years and one day. However, in a split decision, the members of the Second Chamber decided to reduce the sentence in favor of the former uniformed officer who, at the time of the crime, commanded a patrol of soldiers.

Ministers Juica and Brito were in favor of maintaining the first-instance resolution.

During the investigation stage, minister Carlos Aldana Fuentes managed to determine that Vasco Ormeño Gajardo was executed by Army personnel, who took him from his home located at Calle Santa María No. 50, in the Chillancito sector of Concepción.

They then transported him toward Penco and executed him in the area of the Landa estate, next to the highway. His body was "found" by Carabineros and taken to the Concepción morgue, from where his remains were recovered by family members for burial.

Other rulings by the highest court

In another sentence by the Supreme Court (case file 179-2016), the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed this time by ministers Milton Juica, Carlos Künsemüller, Haroldo Brito, Lamberto Cisternas, and Jorge Dahm—sentenced former Army major Donato Alejandro López Almarza to 10 years and one day of imprisonment as the perpetrator of the qualified homicide of Ramón Zúñiga Sánchez, a crime perpetrated on October 19, 1973.

During the investigation stage, minister Mario Carroza managed to determine that Ramón Zúñiga Sánchez was executed by military personnel commanded by López Almarza, who participated in raids on the La Pincoya neighborhood of Conchalí.

In the first instance, minister Carroza sentenced the former uniformed officer in September 2015 to seven years of imprisonment; this sentence was increased to ten years and one day by the Court of Appeals last November.

The resolution of the Second Chamber of the highest court was adopted in a split decision, as ministers Künsemüller and Cisternas were in favor of reducing the sentence and applying partial prescription.

Homicide of a resident

In a second ruling (case file 23568-2015), the Second Chamber—composed of the same ministers—ratified the acquittal of retired members of the Carabineros, as it could not be definitively determined who fired the shots against Luis Romero Rosales, who was murdered by police officers in October 1973 in Conchalí, Santiago.

The case was investigated by minister Mario Carroza, who decided to acquit the accused former Carabineros Cecilio del Carmen Acevedo Arias, Juan Antonio Peña Tobar, and Ruperto Antonio Sepúlveda Soto, as he could not determine who had fired the lethal shots.

False confrontation

In a third resolution (case file 20657-2015), the Second Penal Chamber—composed of ministers Milton Juica, Carlos Künsemüller, Haroldo Brito, Lamberto Cisternas, and Jorge Dahm—convicted three members of the Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI) as responsible for the homicide of Leandro Arratia Reyes, a crime perpetrated on January 18, 1981, in the commune of Santiago.

The Penal Chamber sentenced officers Roberto Urbano Schmied Zanzi, former Army brigadier and head of the CNI's Metropolitan Division at the time of the events; Álvaro Julio Federico Corbalán Castilla, former Army lieutenant colonel and operational chief of the criminal organization; and agent José Abel Aravena Ruiz, former Carabineros non-commissioned officer, to 10 years and one day of imprisonment as perpetrators of the homicide.

The resolution of the Penal Chamber was adopted in a split decision, as, as always, ministers Künsemüller and Cisternas were in favor of reducing the sentences and applying partial prescription.

During the investigation stage, minister Mario Carroza determined that Leandro Arratia Reyes, 35 years old, a photographer and communist militant, was murdered on January 18, 1981, by members of the CNI in a false confrontation that occurred in front of number 651 of Calle Ricardo Santa Cruz, in the commune of Santiago.

Source: resumen.cl, June 26, 2016

Homicides at Universidad Técnica del Estado: Justice adds 17 years to convicted Army officer

The Santiago Court of Appeals increased the sentence against retired Army officer Donato Alejandro López Almarza as the perpetrator of the qualified homicide of Hugo Araya González and Marta Ana de Monserrat Vallejo Buschmann, crimes perpetrated in September 1973 at the former Universidad Técnica del Estado (UTE), now Usach.

In a unanimous ruling, the Fourth Chamber of the appellate court increased the custodial sentence to be served by the retired Army officer from 8 to 17 years. Furthermore, regarding the civil aspect, the conviction ordering the State to pay 100 million pesos in compensation for moral damages to Alejandra Vallejo Buschmann, sister of one of the victims, was confirmed.

On September 11, 1973, a battalion of the Yungay Regiment No. 3 of San Felipe, under the command of Major Donato López Almarza, arrived at the former Universidad Técnica del Estado to carry out the eviction of the approximately 600 people who were inside, including students, professors, directors, and administrative staff.

Upon there being no voluntary abandonment of the premises, López Almarza spoke with the university leaders, agreeing that they could remain there until the following day and leave the place before 12:00 AM.

However, López gave an order: to prevent the escape of the people who were inside the university campus, whom snipers were to shoot if necessary. Thus, Hugo Araya González was shot while crossing one of the courtyards of the premises, leaving him seriously wounded with injuries that subsequently caused his death.

Marta Vallejo Buschmann was also struck by one of those shots, dying on the side of the university gymnasium as a result of a cervicothoracic bullet wound.

Source: elciudadano.cl, March 11, 2016

2 former Army officers convicted for the kidnapping and homicide of 9 residents in Renca in 1973

The minister visiting for Human Rights cases of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Mario Carroza, convicted two former Army officers for their responsibility in the homicides and qualified kidnapping of nine residents of the Nueva Matucana neighborhood, Santiago, in the commune of Renca.

The magistrate sentenced former Army major Donato Alejandro López Almarza to 15 years and one day of imprisonment for his responsibility as the perpetrator of the consummated qualified homicides of seven victims: Álvaro Acuña Torres, Miguel Moreno Caviedes, Guillermo Arriagada Saldías, Sergio Aguilar Núñez, Carlos León Morales, José Machuca Espinoza, and Domingo Gutiérrez Aravena; the frustrated qualified homicide of Osvaldo Cancino Muñoz; and the qualified kidnapping of José Alfredo Vidal Molina, which occurred on September 23, 1973, in the city of Santiago.

Likewise, he sentenced former officer Jorge Armando Turres Mery to 5 years and one day of imprisonment for his participation as an accomplice in the same crimes.

The magistrate's investigation determined that:

1.- That after September 11, 1973, the Armed Forces and Order forces carried out constant raids in neighborhoods in the northern sector of the city of Santiago, without judicial or administrative orders, and the procedure consisted of removing all males from their homes and taking them to a nearby site, where they were ordered to form lines so that Carabineros or Investigaciones could proceed to examine their personal records, and in the case of any objections, their detention was resolved and they were taken to a detention center, but on occasions, they were executed without prior trial; 2.- That in this order of things, on September 23, 1973, in the early morning hours, personnel from the Carabineros and the Yungay Regiment of San Felipe, Andina and Mortero companies, directed on that occasion by Captains Mario Caraves Silva and Jorge Turres Mery, based in the city of Santiago, and under the superior command of Major Donato López Almarza, carried out an operation in the Nueva Matucana neighborhood of the Renca commune; 3.- That as a result of the operation, the agents detained several residents and transported them in dump trucks to the facilities of the Internado Nacional Barros Arana (INBA), where personnel from the Yungay Regiment had been stationed since September 11, 1973; 4.- That in said place, the residents Miguel Moreno Caviedes, Guillermo Arriagada Saldías, Álvaro Acuña Torres, Sergio Aguilar Núñez, Carlos León Morales, José Machuca Espinoza, Domingo Gutiérrez Aravena, José Alfredo Vidal Molina, and Osvaldo Cancino Muñoz were kept locked up without rights or judicial order, and in the night hours, they were removed from the place in a dump truck and taken by military personnel to the vicinity of the Bulnes Bridge, and on that occasion directed by Captain Mario Caraves Silva (currently deceased), Commander of the Andina Company, who was accompanied as an observer by the Captain of the Mortero Company, Jorge Turres Mery. Once at the place, currently located on the banks of the Mapocho River, they were ordered to get down and stand in a line to be executed; immediately after, the soldiers proceeded to shoot them by orders of their superiors, causing Miguel Moreno Caviedes, Guillermo Arriagada Saldías, Álvaro Acuña Torres, Sergio Aguilar Núñez, Carlos León Morales, José Machuca Espinoza, and Domingo Gutiérrez Aravena significant injuries that finally caused their death, as inferred from the autopsy reports, and also the disappearance of the body of José Alfredo Vidal Molina, a resident of whom there was never any news again and whose whereabouts remain unknown to this day; 5.- That the case of Osvaldo Cancino Muñoz had a different outcome; upon receiving the shots, he fell into the Mapocho River and remained alive, later managing to reach his home in the Nueva Matucana neighborhood by his own means and recounting everything that happened.

Source: resumen.cl, August 24, 2017

Minister Mario Carroza convicts retired Army officers for kidnappings and homicides at the Barrancas House of Culture

The minister on extraordinary assignment for human rights violation cases of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Mario Carroza Espinosa, convicted four retired Army members for their responsibility in 14 cases of qualified kidnappings and homicides committed between September and October 1973 in Barrancas, the current commune of Pudahuel.

The Minister sentenced Donato Alejandro López Almarza to an effective sentence of 10 years and one day of imprisonment as the indirect perpetrator of the consummated crimes of qualified homicide of: Raúl Eliseo Moscoso Quiroz, Víctor Manuel Barrales González, Sergio Osvaldo de la Barra de la Barra, Mario Gabriel Salas Riquelme, and José Eusebio Villavicencio Medel; and of the frustrated crime of qualified homicide of Luis Sergio Gutiérrez Rivas.

Gerardo Ernesto Urrich González must serve the same sentence as the indirect perpetrator of the qualified homicides of: Rafael Antonio Madrid Gálvez, Exequiel Segundo Contreras Carrasco, Carlos Leonardo Ibarra Echeverría, Alberto Toribio Soto Valdés, José Elías Quezada Núñez, and Rosalindo del Carmen Retamal; of the frustrated crime of qualified homicide of: Gastón Alberto González Rojas; and of the qualified kidnapping followed by homicide of: Daniel Hernández Orrego.

Meanwhile, Juan Ramón Gerardo Fernández Berardi was sentenced to 5 years of imprisonment—a sentence that is suspended, leaving him subject to a probation regime subject to a program of activities—as an accomplice to the qualified homicides of: Rafael Antonio Madrid Gálvez, Exequiel Segundo Contreras Carrasco, Carlos Leonardo Ibarra Echeverría, Alberto Toribio Soto Valdés, José Elías Quezada Núñez, and Rosalindo del Carmen Retamal; of the frustrated crimes of qualified homicide of: Gastón Alberto González Rojas; and of qualified kidnapping followed by homicide of Daniel Hernández Orrego.

In the case of Carlos Rodolfo Silva Pérez, Minister Carroza imposed 541 days of imprisonment, with the benefit of conditional remission of the sentence for the same period, as an accomplice to the frustrated crimes of qualified homicide of Raúl Eliseo Moscoso Quiroz, Víctor Manuel Barrales González, Sergio Osvaldo de la Barra de la Barra, Mario Gabriel Salas Riquelme, and José Eusebio Villavicencio Medel; and of frustrated crimes of qualified homicide of Luis Sergio Gutiérrez Rivas.

During the investigation stage, Minister Carroza established that starting on September 11, 1973, a battalion of the Mountain Infantry Regiment No. 3 "Yungay" of San Felipe was stationed in the commune of Quinta Normal and at the House of Culture of the commune of Barrancas, places where different raids were carried out on population sectors of camps and neighborhoods of Quinta Normal and Barrancas (current Pudahuel), who were executed by firing squad at the House of Culture or sectors near the Lo Prado tunnel, with their remains left at the Legal Medical Service or on public roads.

Regarding the civil aspect, the ruling accepted the claims for moral damages, ordering the treasury to pay a total sum of $470,000,000 to the victims' family members.

Source: diarioconstitucional.cl, May 20, 2018

Judge accuses military personnel for student's crime

The investigating judge Jorge Zepeda, who is investigating various human rights processes, issued an indictment against two retired military officers identified as responsible for the crime of the teenager Carlos Fariña Oyarce, which occurred in October 1973.

The resolution fell upon retired Major Donato López Almarza, commander of the Yungay Regiment No. 3 at the time of the events, who was accused as the perpetrator of the crimes of kidnapping and qualified homicide of the minors Carlos Fariña and Víctor Vidal Tejeda, and of the young man Héctor Araya Garrido.

The judge also accused retired officer of the same regiment Enrique Sandoval Arancibia as the perpetrator of the same crimes, but only in the case of the minor Fariña.

EXECUTED

According to the process, Carlos Fariña, 14 years old, was detained from his home in the "La Pincoya" neighborhood on October 13, 1973, by a military patrol from the Yungay regiment.

The minor was arrested because, days earlier, he had accidentally wounded a 6-year-old child while handling a weapon.

Like other detainees in the sector, Fariña was taken to the Yungay regiment, where he was executed.

The minor's mother, Josefina Oyarce, spent years visiting various institutions trying to find her son's whereabouts, not knowing he had been executed.

The remains of Carlos Fariña were found in June 2000—when his mother had already passed away—in a vacant lot on Américo Vespucio, where an industrial park was being built. He had multiple bullet wounds, four of them in the head.

In the same operation, Víctor Vidal Tejeda, 16 years old, and Héctor Araya Garrido, 20 years old, were apprehended and also executed.

ACCUSED

Retired Major Donato Pérez, former commander of the Yungay regiment in Santiago, was prosecuted for the crime of the three young men in August 2004.

The former officer also faces a five-year prison sentence without benefits as the material perpetrator of the crime against the Spanish priest Joan Alsina, which occurred in September 1973.

Retired officer Enrique Sandoval, meanwhile, was charged on December 21 for the crime against Fariña, after which he was detained for a few days. At that date, he was working as an official for the Providencia Municipality.

"The case of Carlos Fariña is perhaps the symbol of what happened in those times, in which children were also affected by the repression," said the plaintiff lawyer Nelson Caucoto, who expressed satisfaction with the investigation carried out.

"It seems like progress to us because the sentence is already approaching, which is perhaps what we all aspire to, that these cases conclude well, that the facts are clarified, and that the authors are reproached for their responsibility and the corresponding sanctions are applied," the professional added.

Source: mercurioantofagasta.cl, May 29, 2006

Sunday marked another year since the murder of Father Joan Alsina Hurtos

Joan Alsina Hurtos (Spain, April 28, 1942 – † Santiago, Chile, September 19, 1973).

Spanish Catholic priest, murdered in Chile after the coup d'état of September 11, 1973. Son of José Alsina and Genoveva Hurtos, a Christian family that lived in a "masía" (farmhouse) in the town of Castelló d'Empúries.

He arrived in Chile on January 30, 1967, with the purpose of working for 10 years in this country, in his charisma, which was the evangelization of the working world, for which he felt a special predilection.

Alsina was exercising his ministry at the San Ignacio Parish in San Bernardo and as Head of Personnel at the Hospital San Juan de Dios at the time of the coup d'état of September 11, 1973. At that same facility, he was detained by military personnel belonging to a battalion of the Yungay Regiment of San Felipe on the 19th of the same month and taken as a prisoner to the Internado Nacional Barros Arana.

That same day, a military patrol took him to the Bulnes bridge sector, where he was riddled with bullets.

The 18-year-old soldier who murdered him, Nelson Bañados, later recounted the execution with these words: "We left the Barros Arana in a jeep. My captain was driving and I was in the back with Juan. Juan was handcuffed and very thoughtful.

He didn't say a word to me during the trip nor did he give me any trouble guarding him. He just went along quietly. He knew we were going to kill him because we had told him at the Barros Arana. Upon arriving at the Bulnes bridge, my captain braked, and I, as I did with each one of those I executed, got out, took Juan out of the van, and went to blindfold his eyes, but Juan said to me: 'Please don't put the blindfold on me, kill me from the front because I want to see you to give you my forgiveness.' It was very fast.

I remember he raised his gaze to the sky, made a gesture with his hands, placed them over his heart, and moved his lips as if he were praying and said: 'Father, forgive them...' I fired the burst and he fell immediately.

I wanted to shoot him with the pistol but I did it with the machine gun so it would be faster. The impact was so strong that it turned his body and he practically fell into the Mapocho by himself; I just had to give him a little push.

Others, sometimes, would fall to the floor of the bridge and we had to lift them up and throw them into the river. It was ten at night and I will never ever forget this execution."

On September 27, his body was found at the Legal Medical Service; he was buried the following day in the San Bernardo Parish Cemetery. His autopsy indicates the cause of his death as "multiple bullet wounds" and "parchment-like lesions on the face."

The soldier Nelson Bañados confessed his crime to the priest Miguel Llodrá, who personally investigated the story of Father Alsina. Bañados ratified his version in the trial for the murder and, some time later, overwhelmed by remorse, committed suicide.

On March 30, 2007, the Santiago Court of Appeals confirmed the sentence of five years and one day in prison for the former Army colonel, Donato López Almarza, who gave the order to murder Joan Alsina.

In his memory, a clinic in San Bernardo bears the name Father Joan Alsina.

Source: radio1demayo.blogspot.com, September 27, 2011

Murderer of priest Joan Alsina must spend five years in jail

Judge Jorge Zepeda sentenced, in the first instance, retired Army officer Donato López Almarza for the crime against the Catalan priest, who was executed by firing squad at the Bulnes bridge.

Retired Army major Donato López Almarza was sentenced to five years in jail as the material perpetrator of the murder of the Spanish priest Joan Alsina Hurtos, who was executed by firing squad on September 19, 1973, at the Bulnes bridge in Santiago.

In his resolution, the judge of the case, Jorge Zepeda, dismissed a request from the plaintiffs to allocate compensation for the relatives of the Catalan religious figure, as it was presented out of time.

Alsina Hurtos was working at the Hospital San Juan de Dios at the time of the coup d'état of September 11, 1973, the same facility where he was detained by military personnel on the 19th of the same month, after which he was taken to the facilities of the Internado Nacional Barros Arana (INBA).

That same day, a military patrol took the priest to the Bulnes bridge sector, where he was riddled with bullets. Currently, a plaque and a mural at the site remember Alsina.

The case had been originally investigated by the now-retired judge Juan Guzmán, who transferred it to Zepeda after the judiciary considered that he had an overload of files regarding human rights violations.

For the magistrate, it was established that, in addition to being beaten until unconscious, Alsina received seven high-caliber impacts from a conscript whom he asked to see face-to-face to give him Catholic forgiveness.

According to the Rettig Report, "on September 15, 17, and 19, 1973, three military operations were carried out inside the Hospital San Juan de Dios. Military personnel belonging to a Battalion of the Yungay Regiment of San Felipe [were involved]."

"The commission acquired, according to the merit of the testimonies and background information received, the conviction that the execution of the priest Juan Alsina Hurtos constitutes a violation of his rights, with State agents being responsible for it," the text states.

Source: werkenrojo.cl, September 24, 2017

Exactly 45 years ago, the first priest was executed by the Army and thrown into the Mapocho River. Missionary Juan Alsina: “Don't put the blindfold on me, kill me from the front because I want to see you to give you my forgiveness”

Exactly 45 years ago, the first priest was executed by the Army and thrown into the Mapocho River. Missionary Juan Alsina: “Don't put the blindfold on me, kill me from the front because I want to see you to give you my forgiveness.”

He was born in Castelló d’Empúries, Girona, Spain, on April 28, 1942. His parents were José Alsina and Genoveva Hurtos, a Christian family that lived in a Catalan "masia" in the town of Castelló d’Empúries.

Juan Alsina (photo) arrived in Chile on January 30, 1967, with the purpose of working for 10 years in this country, in his charisma, which was the evangelization of the working world, for which he felt a special predilection.

A few days after the coup, a military picket from the Army entered the Hospital asking for Juan.

In San Bernardo, he said that they were looking for him and said that despite everything, he would return to his work because "duty calls me and I will fulfill it."

On the night of the 18th, sensing his detention, he drafted a document known as "The Testament of Juan Alsina," in which he leaves a record of the reasons for his surrender.

Among others, we choose three phrases that he wrote in his own hand: "If the grain of wheat does not die, it does not bear fruit, but if it dies, it bears much fruit." "We are led like lambs to the slaughter." "Christ accompanies us always wherever we are." The striking thing about his death is that he surrendered voluntarily and that he asked the soldier to kill him from the front to be able to give him his forgiveness.

On September 19, he went to his work at the Hospital San Juan de Dios, and indeed he was detained and beaten there on September 19, 1973. On the night of the same day, he was murdered at the Bulnes Bridge by Army personnel, on the day of their Glories. The soldier who detained him later recounted his execution with these words:

“Upon arriving at the Bulnes bridge, my captain (Donato López) braked, I, as I did with each one of those I executed, got out, took Juan out of the van, and went to blindfold his eyes, but Juan said to me: 'Please don't put the blindfold on me, kill me from the front because I want to see you to give you my forgiveness.'

It was very fast. I remember he raised his gaze to the sky, made a gesture with his hands, placed them over his heart, and moved his lips as if he were praying and said: 'Father, forgive them...' I fired the burst and he fell immediately.

I wanted to shoot him with the pistol but I did it with the machine gun so it would be faster. The impact was so strong that it turned his body and he practically fell into the Mapocho by himself; I just had to give him a little push.

Others, sometimes, would fall to the floor of the bridge and we had to lift them up and throw them into the river. It was 10 at night and I will never ever forget this execution.”

Barely a year later, his father, José Alsina, wrote a truly impressive letter forgiving the author or authors of Juan's death, which says in its core:

“Juan, it has been approximately nine months since I received news from you. I don't know if you have forgotten to write to us. Today, on the vigil of your saint's day, your father writes to you from below. 32 years ago, on an April 28, in the middle of torrential rains, you appeared in the masia of Castelló d’Empúries.

At 4 years old, you entered the Carmelitas School, which remembers you so much. Three years later, that is, at seven years old, you went to the National School where you had so many successes and so many friends...

At 11, you asked me to enter the Girona seminary. When you were 18, you asked me to enter the Hispanic American Seminary of Madrid to go on missions. You always told me that you had your work in distant lands and that Miquel and Maria, your siblings, remained with your parents.

On September 12, 1965, you were ordained a priest and were assigned to Malgrat, where you also left many friends. And in January 1968, you went to Chile as a missionary. We spent four years without seeing you, and I remember very well that evening in January when you arrived and spent two months of vacation at home.

Then you returned to Chile, telling us that you would spend two or three more years there and that you would return afterward... I remember well that you said that you had many friends in Chile—I believe it!—and that they loved you truly.

And they have shown this because they wanted you to stay with them forever! I would like to know who that friend is and have his address... not to take revenge on him, but to forgive him and send him my pardon so that he does not live with remorse, because from a very young age I was taught to forgive and I still have not forgotten it.

And you, Juan, from above, where you rest, forgive them too, as Jesus Christ forgave his disciples and all of humanity. Goodbye, José. June 23, 1974.”

One detained and prosecuted for the crime

The investigating judge Jorge Zepeda Arancibia prosecuted retired Army major Donato López Almarza as the perpetrator of homicide and ordered his arrest. The priest was detained on September 19, 1973, and executed at the Bulnes Bridge, over the Mapocho, and his body thrown into the waters. Eight days later, his corpse appeared downstream.

Retired Major López commanded a detachment of the Yungay Regiment of San Felipe that traveled to Santiago to reinforce the military actions of the military coup. Alsina was detained by personnel of that regiment at the Hospital San Juan de Dios, where he worked, who transferred him to the Internado Nacional Barros Arana (INBA) in Quinta Normal.

In that high school, the Yungay personnel had their camp, and an undetermined number of detainees were kept there during those days.

According to the prosecution, the priest, born in Girona, Catalonia, who was 31 years old at the time of his death, was beaten and then taken from the boarding school the same night of his detention to be executed.

Although in Alsina's case it is an executed person and not a forcibly disappeared kidnapped person, where the thesis of the permanent crime operates until the victim or their body appears, and therefore the judges are not applying amnesty because the crime continues to be committed, Judge Zepeda did not apply amnesty nor did he consider the crime prescribed by the passage of time.

By Catalina Paz Rodríguez

Source: cambio21.cl, September 19, 2018

The Minister sentenced Donato Alejandro López Almarza and Gerardo Ernesto Urrich González to effective prison terms of 10 years and one day, as indirect perpetrators of the consummated crimes of qualified homicide.

The Minister for extraordinary cases of human rights violations of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Mario Carroza Espinosa, sentenced four retired members of the Army for their responsibility in 14 cases of kidnapping and qualified homicide, committed between September and October 1973, in Barrancas, current commune of Pudahuel.

The Minister sentenced Donato Alejandro López Almarza to an effective prison term of 10 years and one day, as an indirect perpetrator of the consummated crimes of qualified homicide of: Raúl Eliseo Moscoso Quiroz, Víctor Manuel Barrales González, Sergio Osvaldo de la Barra de la Barra, Mario Gabriel Salas Riquelme, and José Eusebio Villavicencio Medel; and of the frustrated crime of qualified homicide of Luis Sergio Gutiérrez Rivas.

Gerardo Ernesto Urrich González must serve an equal sentence, in his capacity as an indirect perpetrator of the qualified homicides of: Rafael Antonio Madrid Gálvez, Exequiel Segundo Contreras Carrasco, Carlos Leonardo Ibarra Echeverría, Alberto Toribio Soto Valdés, José Elías Quezada Núñez, and Rosalindo del Carmen Retamal; of the frustrated crime of qualified homicide of: Gastón Alberto González Rojas, and of the qualified kidnapping followed by homicide of: Daniel Hernández Orrego.

Meanwhile, Juan Ramón Gerardo Fernández Berardi was sentenced to 5 years in prison—a sentence that is suspended, leaving him subject to a probationary regime with adherence to a program of activities—as an accomplice to the qualified homicides of: Rafael Antonio Madrid Gálvez, Exequiel Segundo Contreras Carrasco, Carlos Leonardo Ibarra Echeverría, Alberto Toribio Soto Valdés, José Elías Quezada Núñez, and Rosalindo del Carmen Retamal; of the frustrated crimes of qualified homicide of: Gastón Alberto González Rojas, and of the qualified kidnapping followed by homicide of Daniel Hernández Orrego.

In the case of Carlos Rodolfo Silva Pérez, Minister Carroza imposed a 541-day prison sentence, with the benefit of conditional remission of the sentence for the same period, in his capacity as an accomplice to the frustrated crimes of qualified homicide of Raúl Eliseo Moscoso Quiroz, Víctor Manuel Barrales González, Sergio Osvaldo de la Barra de la Barra, Mario Gabriel Salas Riquelme, and José Eusebio Villavicencio Medel; and of the frustrated crimes of qualified homicide of Luis Sergio Gutiérrez Rivas.

During the investigation stage, Minister Carroza established that starting on September 11, 1973, a battalion of the No. 3 "Yungay" Mountain Infantry Regiment of San Felipe settled in the commune of Quinta Normal and in the Casa de la Cultura of the commune of Barrancas, places where various raids were carried out on residential sectors of camps and neighborhoods in Quinta Normal and Barrancas (current Pudahuel), whose victims were executed by firing squad in the Casa de la Cultura or areas near the Lo Prado tunnel, their remains left at the Legal Medical Service or on public roads.

In the civil aspect, the ruling accepted the claims for moral damages, ordering the state treasury to pay a total sum of $470,000,000 to the victims' families.

Source: diarioconstitucional.cl, May 20, 2018

The martyrdom of Father Joan Alsina on a Day of the Glories of the Army

Joan Alsina was a 31-year-old Catalan priest when he was executed by an Army patrol on the Bulnes Bridge in Santiago. It was the night of September 19, 1973. That same day, he had been detained at the San Juan de Dios Hospital, where he worked in personnel administration, consistent with his vocation as a "worker priest," embedded in the world of the workers.

Later, the 18-year-old soldier who murdered him, Nelson Bañados Pinto, recounted: "I got out, took Joan out of the van, and went to blindfold him, but he said to me: 'Please don't put the blindfold on me, kill me facing forward because I want to see you to give you my forgiveness.' It was very fast.

I remember he raised his gaze to the sky, made a gesture with his hands, placed them over his heart, and moved his lips as if he were praying and said: 'Father, forgive them'… I fired the burst and he fell right away (…) I did it with the submachine gun so it would be faster.

The impact was so strong that it turned his body and he practically fell into the Mapocho by himself. I just had to give him a little push."

"I will never, ever forget this execution," he added.

He had arrived in Chile on Tuesday, January 30, 1968, as a missionary shortly after his priestly ordination in Gerona, his region of origin in Spain. He studied at the Seminary that the Hispanic-American Priestly Cooperation Work (OCSHA) had to prepare priests who would come to America to carry out pastoral tasks.

It was his dream. He told those close to him: "I feel that God is calling me to go on missions and I want to prepare myself well." His trip to Chile was a work commitment in the country for ten years.

He initially settled in San Bernardo, where other Catalan priests who had arrived as missionaries in the country lived, such as Miguel Jordá, who after Joan's murder chose to dedicate a significant part of his own life to the restitution of the memory and the martyrial gesture of his friend and companion Alsina.

Later, Alsina began his pastoral service at the San Antonio Parish. With the spirit of the Second Vatican Council and the CELAM conference in Medellín, he was a firm believer in the option for the poor and for the radical transformation of society.

Like other Christians, he had been called by the testimony of the revolutionary priest Camilo Torres, who fell in combat with the Colombian guerrillas in 1966; he was impacted by the occupation of the Santiago Cathedral and the creation of the Young Church Movement that same year, 1968; he became familiar with the reflections that were prefiguring Liberation Theology within the Christian world.

Certainly, he also knew the social and political conflicts that were shaking Chilean society and that, within three years, would trigger the conquest of the government by the Left.

Alsina made the decision to share the life of the workers, combining his priestly tasks with his status as an employee of the port hospital and later the Claudio Vicuña Hospital in San Antonio, performing the role of personnel manager, in contact with the staff, and also assisting the sick.

He committed himself to the organization and mobilizations of workers and students. And he became a popular figure in the city. Father Miguel Jordá recalled: "During all this time he lived the social and political process of the country very intensely with his eyes set on the liberation of the people. He got around on a motorcycle and was seen in soda fountains, in factories, at the port"...

In 1972, he came into conflict with the Vicar of the Coastal Rural Zone, René Vío, who indicated that he could not be a hospital worker and a priest at the same time. Alsina chose to request a change of city.

In 1972, he moved to Santiago, where he was welcomed into the Southern Zone Vicariate, in charge of Monsignor Paulo Laurin. He managed to get hired at the San Juan de Dios Hospital, a job for which he trained in a course for workers at the National Health Service.

He settled to live in the same southern area of Santiago, in the José María Caro neighborhood, with Monsignor Alfonso Baeza, later Vicar of Worker Pastoral Care and one of the main collaborators of Cardinal Raúl Silva Henríquez in the defense of human rights.

Together with his duties as Head of Personnel at the San Juan de Dios Hospital, Joan assumed the role of advisor to the Catholic Worker Action Movement (MOAC) and the Young Catholic Workers (JOC), while simultaneously collaborating at the San Bernardo Parish. These were the times of the Popular Unity and President Salvador Allende. They were also the times of the Christians for Socialism Movement.

He was detained at the San Juan de Dios Hospital. Despite the warnings from his fellow priests about the risks he was running and their recommendations that he seek asylum, the young priest maintained: "There are moments in life when one must risk everything, and if they need me, I am there." His last writings, particularly the one he drafted the night before his detention, show his decision to assume the costs that his way of apprehending the Christian project entailed.

After praying, he wrote, in Catalan, a text that is a farewell and a clarification of his ideas. In the final part, he includes a quote from the Gospel: "Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed," John 12:24.

And he writes that "a burnt mountain is terrible, but it is to be hoped that from the damp, black, and sticky ash, life will sprout again." A few lines later, he writes a list of ideas, emotions, and farewell messages. "We go from here to there, like sheep led to the slaughter" and "into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit," are the biblical references that accompanied him in the drafting of the final paragraphs of that message.

"If from the ashes we assume life anew, it is something that is born again in us. Goodbye. Jesus accompanies us always wherever we live." These were the last words written by Alsina, who, the following morning, was detained at the Hospital, confined in the facilities of the Internado Nacional Barros Arana, brutally tortured, transported at night with his hands handcuffed toward a bridge over the Mapocho River, where he was riddled with bullets.

Major Donato López Almarza, the top commander of the No. 3 "Yungay" Mountain Infantry Regiment of San Felipe, gave the order to murder him. The soldier Nelson Bañados executed it, as part of a patrol under the command of Lieutenant Mario Caraves Silva.

More than three decades later, the courts sentenced López. Caraves died in February 1991 before receiving any judicial sanction. Bañados made the decision to commit suicide.

By Víctor Osorio.

Source: cronicadigital.cl, September 19, 2019

Santiago Court confirms conviction of retired military officer for kidnappings and homicides in Renca neighborhood

The Santiago Court of Appeals issued a second-instance sentence for the crimes of qualified kidnapping and qualified homicide of nine residents of the Nueva Matucana neighborhood. These illicit acts were perpetrated on September 23, 1973, in the commune of Renca.

In a unanimous ruling (case roll 1.691-2017), the Fourth Chamber of the appellate court—composed of ministers Gloria Solís, Paola Robinovich, and acting lawyer Gonzalo Ruz—confirmed the challenged sentence, issued by the investigating minister Mario Carroza for the qualified and consummated homicides of Álvaro Acuña Torres, Miguel Moreno Caviedes, Guillermo Arriagada Saldías, Sergio Aguilar Núñez, Carlos León Morales, José Machuca Espinoza, and Domingo Gutiérrez Aravena; the frustrated crime of qualified homicide of Osvaldo Cancino Muñoz, and the qualified kidnapping of José Alfredo Vidal Molina.

The Fourth Chamber ratified the sentence that condemned retired Army officer Donato López Almarza to 15 years and one day in prison, in his capacity as the perpetrator of the crimes; and ordered the definitive dismissal of the convicted Jorge Turres Mery, due to mental incapacity.

"That according to the outlined background, the convicted Turres Mery is currently in a condition of mental incapacity, as he suffers from Alzheimer's dementia, with no possibility of recovery and with a poor prognosis, regarding a progressive psycho-organic deterioration of his cognitive functions and behavioral alteration.

At present, the accused is incapacitated from understanding the unlawful nature of his actions and self-determining himself in accordance with the law," the ruling states.

The resolution adds: "That notwithstanding the above, the non-imputability referred to by the cause for dismissal provided for in article 408 No. 4 of the Code of Criminal Procedure invoked by his defense, is not configured in this case, as it is related to the exemption from criminal responsibility contemplated in article 10 No. 1 of the Penal Code, which refers to the deprivation or alteration of mental faculties at the time of committing the crime, a matter that has not been proven in the records, that is, that at the date of the occurrence of the events being judged, the convicted person was deprived of reason."

"That, however—it continues—in the opinion of this Court, the situation of the convicted Turres Mery falls under the hypothesis regulated in article 684 and following of the Code of Criminal Procedure, referring to the defendant who, after committing the crime, falls into mental incapacity, as it is a supervening deprivation of reason that has been proven through psychiatric reports ordered in the process, in which a diagnosis is recorded in relation to the accused, whether his illness is incurable, and the treatment modalities to which he is subject."

"In that way, dealing with a situation that occurred subsequently, the cause for definitive dismissal provided for in article 408 No. 6 of the same Code is verified with respect to him, which consists of when an event occurs that, in accordance with the law, puts an end to said responsibility," it adds.

"Said provision finds coherent application with the cited article 684 of the branch code, which contemplates among the judge's powers the issuance of a dismissal for the defendant who falls into mental incapacity during the process, considering the nature of the illness, which as has already been pointed out, is incurable.

In the same logic, article 686 of said code provides that, if it is resolved that the procedure against an incurable mental patient should not continue, a definitive dismissal will be issued in his favor, placing him at the disposal of the health authority if his freedom constitutes a danger, and otherwise his freedom will be ordered," the resolution affirms.

"That consequently and in accordance with what has already been reasoned, the main request of the defense will be granted, in order to decree the definitive dismissal of the accused Jorge Turres Mery by virtue of the cause provided for in article 408 No. 6 of the Code of Criminal Procedure; for which reason a pronouncement regarding the subsidiary requests will be omitted, as it is unnecessary," it concludes.

Source: eluniversal.cl, January 28, 2020

Santiago Court sentences five retired Army members for homicides linked to the Barrancas Casa de la Cultura.

The appellate court sentenced Jorge Reyes Morel, Pedro Lovera Betancourt, Donato López Almarza, and Juan Fernández Berardi to a prison term of 15 years and one day for their responsibility as perpetrators of homicides.

The Santiago Court of Appeals sentenced five retired Army members for their responsibility in the homicides of Raúl Moscoso Quiroz, Víctor Barrales González, Sergio de la Barra de la Barra, Mario Salinas Riquelme, José Villavicencio Medel, Luis Gutiérrez Rivas, Rafael Madrid Gálvez, Gastón González Rojas, Exequiel Contreras Carrasco, Carlos Ibarra Echeverría, Alberto Soto Valdés, José Quezada Núñez, Rosalindo del Carmen Retamal, and Daniel Hernández Orrego, committed between September and October 1973, in Barrancas, current commune of Pudahuel.

In the sentence, the Fifth Chamber of the appellate court—composed of ministers Alejandro Rivera, Mireya López, and Paulina Gallardo—sentenced Jorge Reyes Morel, Pedro Lovera Betancourt, Donato López Almarza, and Juan Fernández Berardi to a prison term of 15 years and one day for their responsibility as perpetrators of homicides.

Meanwhile, Carlos Silva Pérez was sentenced to 541 days in prison, with the benefit of supervised release, for his responsibility as an accomplice to the homicides.

The ruling modified the sentence of investigating minister Mario Carroza, who had acquitted Jorge Reyes Morel and Pedro Lovera Betancourt, and convicted them for illicit acts committed on September 30, 1973.

"That being the case, there are sufficient incriminating elements to consider that these three accused participated as perpetrators in the illicit acts that occurred on September 30, 1973, since both Turres and Reyes describe an execution episode that is totally consistent with the one investigated here, without it being possible to confuse it with the one at Bulnes Bridge, since they are different places, different participants, and different victims.

And regarding the accused Lovera, it should be considered that he is identified as a person who, together with Caraves (now deceased), participated in all the executions that he carried out, that he was also part of the Andean Company, and was identified from the beginning by Reyes as a participant in these events," the ruling says in this regard.

It adds that the circumstance that the accused Turres was not part of the Andean Company but of the Mortar Company is not sufficient exculpation, since the description of the event he provides coincides with the one investigated here, without the version he gives—to the effect that he was in a truck and did not get out of the vehicle due to his knee problem and that he only assumed an execution had taken place—finding any corroboration in the case.

Moreover, Silva's statements show that people who came in two trucks, which he assumes were from Quinta Normal, participated in the execution.

Furthermore, it is considered that the retraction that the accused Reyes made after many statements cannot be heard under the terms of article 483 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, because the conditions or requirements that the rule provides for doing so are not met, and because it is difficult to believe that he invented everything he said when his statements are consistent with the circumstances described regarding these executions by the accused Silva.

Likewise, the criminal responsibility of González Berardi was modified from accomplice to perpetrator, for which the first-instance sentence was increased from 5 years in prison to 15 years and one day in prison.

"That regarding the participation of Fernández described in considerations 21 and 23 of the appealed sentence, it does not correspond to the status of accomplice but of perpetrator under the terms of article 15 No. 1 of the Penal Code, because, at the very least, he took part in the execution of the events by preventing or attempting to prevent them from being avoided, this by being the second in charge of the Casa de la Cultura, after Captain Urrich, so he had full control over the illicit acts that were being executed," the appellate court's sentence asserts.

The Court also issued a partial and definitive dismissal of the convicted Héctor Turres Mery upon considering that he fell into mental incapacity, as accredited by medical reports from the Legal Medical Service (SML).

It adds that according to the indicated medical reports, it is possible to conclude that the convicted Turres Mery has fallen into mental incapacity, so as there is no final sentence, it is appropriate to order his definitive dismissal in accordance with what is provided in articles 686 and 408 No. 6 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, with his release under custody and treatment bail, as it does not appear in the reports that in his current state he poses a degree of danger to himself or third parties.

In the civil aspect, the State Treasury was ordered to pay a total compensation of $1,210,000,000 to the victims' families.

The Facts

The investigation by minister Mario Carroza established that:

1) That as a result of the events that took place in the country on September 11, 1973, the Military Government ordered control of the city of Santiago to be taken, and to carry it out, it distributed its military units in the jurisdiction with specific missions to perform;

2) That being the case, a Battalion of the No. 3 Yungay Mountain Infantry Regiment traveled on September 11, 1973, from the city of San Felipe and settled in the commune of Quinta Normal, under the command of Major Donato López Almarza, who was supported by Captains Jorge Armando Turres Mery, Jorge Alberto Reyes Morel, and Mario Caraves Silva, currently deceased, who in turn was the Officer who was in command of the Andean Company, the same one that received instructions to be quartered in the Casa de la Cultura of the commune of Barrancas, where it remained for the entire month of September and was relieved on October 1, 1973, by the First Company of the Army Non-Commissioned Officers School, which was in charge of Captain Gerardo Ernesto Urrich González (now deceased), followed by his subordinate Lieutenant Juan Ramón Gerardo Fernández Berardi, with whom he fulfilled the purpose of controlling the western sector of the capital, in the case at hand, the old commune of Barrancas, today Pudahuel;

3) That the contingent of the Andean Company of the No. 3 Yungay Mountain Infantry Regiment of San Felipe, headed by the deceased Captain Mario Caraves, was stationed in the facilities of the so-called Casa de la Cultura, located at the 8,000 block of San Pablo Street, starting from September 21, 1973, until the end of that month, being relieved starting October 1 by the Army Non-Commissioned Officers School;

4) That both Army units, of which no coordination between them could be proven, during their stay in the place, executed military operations against the civilian population of the Commune, consisting of raids, deprivation of liberty, interrogations, torture, and summary executions, as in the cases indicated below:

A.- Raid on the Santiago Pino Camp, carried out on September 30, 1973, in the early morning hours, through which six community leaders were detained: Raúl Eliseo Moscoso Quiroz, Víctor Manuel Barrales González, Sergio Osvaldo de la Barra de la Barra, Mario Gabriel Salas Riquelme, José Eusebio Villavicencio Medel, and Luis Sergio Gutiérrez Rivas.

They were taken to the Casa de la Cultura, interrogated under torture, and their families were informed by the military that they would be sent to the National Stadium, but the following day in the morning hours, they were summarily executed by firing squad, as reported by the newspapers and as their families managed to find out, under the heading "Executed for firing against uniformed personnel."

The lifeless bodies of the victims were found at the Legal Medical Service on October 1, 1973, at 01:00 hours, with the exception of the one corresponding to the leader Luis Sergio Gutiérrez Rivas, which, despite being among the bodies of his companions, was still alive, for which reason he was urgently transferred to the José Joaquín Aguirre Hospital Post, where he underwent surgery on October 2, 1973, and received visits from his partner, thus overcoming his critical state, but before he could be discharged, he was removed from the healthcare establishment by military personnel under the pretext of taking him to the Military Hospital; however, from that moment on, his trail was lost, and over time, in 1991, his family managed to find his remains in Patio 29.

The bodies of the other victims of the execution were removed from the Legal Medical Institute by their families and record a common date of death of September 30, 1973, while the aforementioned Luis Sergio Gutiérrez Rivas records a date of death of October 13 of that year;

B.- On October 3, 1973, Rafael Antonio Madrid Gálvez and Gastón Alberto González Rojas were detained and deprived of their liberty while they were at the home of some relatives of the former, located in the commune of Quinta Normal, by military personnel, who took them to the Casa de la Cultura of the commune of Barrancas.

In this place, they were interrogated and later taken in a truck to the vicinity of the Lo Prado Tunnel, where the military patrol proceeded to execute them without any trial, Rafael Antonio dying immediately as a result of bullet wounds, but Gastón Alberto González survived, managing to deceive them, and the military did not notice this situation, so they left both of them on the side of the road.

Gastón Alberto González Rojas was subsequently found by Carabineros personnel, who picked him up and took him to Emergency Post No. 3, where he was treated and sent to the Traumatology Hospital, and finally hospitalized at the San Borja Hospital, managing to survive his injuries;

C.- On October 4, 1973, the Socialist Party militant and member of the Group of Personal Friends of President Allende (GAP), Exequiel Segundo Contreras Carrasco, was detained by military personnel when he was at the property located in Villa Los Maitenes in the commune of Barrancas.

The uniformed officers took him to the Casa de la Cultura, but the following day he was found by third parties lifeless on the Pudahuel highway with San Pablo street in the commune of Barrancas; they took him to a relative's house, and from there his family transported him to the Legal Medical Service;

D.- On October 5, 1973, military personnel detained the Pedagogy student at the University of Chile, Carlos Leonardo Ibarra Echeverría, a student leader and Socialist Party militant, at the property located at Avenida Victoria No. 1127 in the Manuel Larraín neighborhood of the commune of Barrancas, and just as was done with the other victims, he was taken by these State agents to the Casa de la Cultura of the same commune.

Subsequently, his family found him on October 11 at the Medical Service, establishing that the cause of his death was craniocerebral trauma due to firearm discharge;

E.- On October 7, 1973, Alberto Toribio Soto Valdés, a participant in union activities and with links to the Revolutionary Left Movement, was detained by military personnel from his home in the Manuel Larraín neighborhood and taken to the Casa de la Cultura, where he disappeared, until his family was notified in November of that year that his remains were at the Legal Medical Service.

They went to see him, and he had been buried in Patio 29 of the General Cemetery, with his autopsy establishing as the cause of death a cervico-cranial bullet wound;

F.- On October 8, 1973, José Elías Quezada Núñez, a member of the JAP in the Manuel Larraín neighborhood and a Socialist Party militant, was detained and taken to the Casa de la Cultura, as was Rosalindo del Carmen Retamal, who was detained on that same date in the San Pablo neighborhood of the commune of Barrancas; both disappeared and their remains were found on Route 70 by Carabineros officials, who sent their bodies to the Legal Medical Service, where it was established as the cause of death for Quezada a craniocerebral bullet wound and for Rosalindo Retamal, a thoraco-abdominal bullet wound;

G.- Finally, on October 15, 1973, at midnight, military personnel went to the property located in Villa Manuel Rodríguez in search of Daniel Hernández Orrego, and upon not finding him, they summoned him to the Casa de la Cultura.

When he did so, he was deprived of his liberty and locked in the facility, remaining in the status of a forcibly disappeared person until 1993, when his remains were identified in the exhumations of Patio 29, establishing as the cause of death facio-cranial and cervical and dorsal spinal trauma due to bullets; however, subsequently, by Ordinary Official Letter No. 0640 of January 12, 2016, from Dr.

Patricio Bustos Streeter, National Director of the Legal Medical Service, on page 5186, he reports in relation to the identification process of Mr. José Daniel Hernández Orrego, noting that in 1991 a total of 126 bodies of victims of human rights violations were exhumed from Patio 29 of the General Cemetery of Santiago, with 96 of them being identified by anthropological means between 1992 and 2002.

From this process, Mr. Hernández Orrego was identified with Protocol No. 3014-91. Subsequently, in 2004 and 2005, based on the requirements made by Minister Sergio Muñoz in order to review the identification process, the Service was instructed to carry out mitochondrial DNA studies, and a sample of Mr.

Hernández Orrego's bones was taken under protocol 47-05 UE, a piece that showed the same polymorphism pattern as Mr. Fernández Orrego's relatives, it not being possible to exclude a genetic relationship from the maternal line, and therefore the result of the analyses was inconclusive.

In 2007, a new sampling process was carried out, this time to carry out nuclear DNA analysis, a technique that not only allows defining compatibility or exclusion relationships between a person and a certain family group, but also establishing positive identifications properly speaking.

Based on this, the remains previously identified as Mr. Hernández Orrego were exhumed from the Memorial for the Forcibly Disappeared of the General Cemetery on July 3, 2013, and two bone segments were extracted, corresponding to the right humerus and tibia, in a diligence coded with the field number RM-UEIF-T-47-13 and protocol MDH-3014-91-13.

It is indicated that this procedure is accounted for in the Exhumation and Sampling Act report, Field RM-UEIF-T-47-13, Protocol MDH-3014-91-13 of October 1, 2013. In accordance with this, it is reported that to date, it has not been possible to positively identify Mr.

Hernández Orrego, so he continues in the status of a forcibly disappeared person. It is also reported that the remains associated with protocols 3014-91 and 47-05 UE previously identified as Mr. Hernández Orrego have not been able to be identified with any other victim of human rights violations.

Source: pjud.cl, December 16, 2020

Supreme Court confirms conviction of former Army military personnel for homicides of 14 leaders in the Barrancas Casa de la Cultura case

The Second Chamber of the Supreme Court, in a divided ruling, issued a final sentence in the episode called "Barrancas Casa de la Cultura," and convicted retired members of the Army for their participation in the homicides of fourteen political and community leaders, events committed between September and October 1973, in the then-commune of Barrancas, current commune of Pudahuel.

The Chamber presided over by minister Leopoldo Llanos and composed of substitute ministers Eliana Quezada, María Carolina Catepillán, and Juan Cristóbal Mera, and the integrating lawyer Eduardo Gandulfo, by majority, decided to reject the appeals presented by the defense of the accused and confirmed what was resolved by the Santiago Court of Appeals in December 2020, sentencing former military personnel Jorge Reyes Morel and Pedro Lovera Betancourt, both to 15 years and 1 day, as perpetrators of the qualified and consummated homicides of Raúl Eliseo Moscoso Quiroz, Víctor Manuel Barrales González, Sergio Osvaldo de la Barra, Mario Gabriel Salas Riquelme, and José Eusebio Villavicencio Medel; in addition to the frustrated qualified homicide of Luis Sergio Gutiérrez Rivas.

Regarding Donato López Almarza, who had also been sentenced in the second-instance ruling to 15 years and 1 day for the same crimes perpetrated against the same victims, on this occasion, the highest court omitted a pronouncement on the cassations presented against said conviction, due to López Almarza being in a state of mental incapacity.

Likewise, former military officer Juan Ramón Gerardo Fernández Berardi was sentenced to 15 years and 1 day in prison, as the perpetrator of the qualified homicide of Rafael Antonio Madrid Gálvez, Exequiel Segundo Contreras Carrasco, Carlos Leonardo Ibarra Echeverría, Alberto Toribio Soto Valdés, José Elías Quezada Núñez, and Rosalino del Carmen Retamal, and of the crimes of qualified homicide in the frustrated degree against Mr.

Gastón Alberto González Rojas, and of qualified kidnapping followed by homicide in the case of Mr. Daniel Hernández Orrego.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court omitted a pronouncement on the convictions against Carlos Rodolfo Silva Pérez and Jorge Turres Mery, since both are deceased.

For lawyer Francisco Ugás, head of the legal department of the Caucoto Abogados firm and plaintiff representing the families of 7 of the 14 victims, "It is valuable and noteworthy that our Supreme Court has rejected, by majority, the appeals filed by the defenses of the perpetrators in the present case, validating the second-instance decision pronounced by the Santiago Court of Appeals."

In that sense, Ugás pointed out that "the definitive and effective convictions of the former agents Lovera, Reyes, and Fernández, all of the Chilean Army, are an expression of the firm fulfillment of the duty of punishment or sanction that the State must fulfill for the crimes against humanity that were committed in our country almost 52 years ago, as is the case here.

This, in the context of what the United Nations has conceptualized as the fight against impunity. Unfortunately, I cannot ignore that some agents died during the substantiation of the case (Urrich, Silva, and Turres, for example), which, in some way, leaves us with a certain bitterness and a feeling of justice that was not full."

The lawyer also highlighted the arguments put forward by the highest court: "I would like to highlight the foundation, the arguments of what was ultimately resolved by the Supreme Court to dismiss the appeals of the convicts' defenses, which were poorly presented, suffering from legal vices that made it impossible for them to prosper.

Finally, the victims' families have had a response from our Justice system, in the face of these horrendous and bloody crimes perpetrated by State agents to their detriment."

According to the investigation led by minister Mario Carroza, it was confirmed that, starting on September 11, 1973, a battalion of the No. 3 "Yungay" Mountain Infantry Regiment of San Felipe, under the command of Major Donato López Almarza, installed itself in the commune of Quinta Normal and in Barrancas (current commune of Pudahuel) where various raids were carried out on camps and neighborhoods.

Said battalion remained for the entire month of September and was then relieved on October 1, 1973, by the First Company of the Army Non-Commissioned Officers School, which was in charge of Captain Gerardo Ernesto Urrich González (now deceased), followed by his subordinate Lieutenant Juan Ramón Gerardo Fernández Berardi, who also carried out raids.

In said procedures, the victims were detained, who were then subjected to torture and, subsequently, executed by firing squad at the Barrancas Casa de la Cultura or in sectors near the Lo Prado tunnel.

Some of the victims' bodies were abandoned at the then-Legal Medical Institute and on public roads. While the trail of others was lost and their remains were only found years later, in Patio 29 of the General Cemetery.

By Daniela Caucoto

Source: resumen.cl, April 24, 2025