A Chilean special judge sentenced 9 former Army officers for the illegal exhumation of 26 forcibly disappeared persons who were executed by firing squad in the city of Calama, in northern Chile, in October 1973 during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, in one of the episodes of the Caravan of Death.

Separately, Minister Miguel Vázquez sentenced 14 members of the Comando Conjunto for five kidnappings. Retired military personnel Carlos Minoletti, Julio Salazar, and Luis Aracena were sentenced to 5 years and one day in prison, while Manuel Aguirre, Sergio López, Hugo Carrasco, Wilson Pacheco, and Pedro Gutiérrez received 3 years of imprisonment, and Héctor Iturra 541 days, the latter with the benefit of a conditional remission of the sentence, which allows him to serve it in freedom. "The victims were first deprived of their lives by execution, only to be buried later, with all information regarding the location where the remains had been deposited being concealed; these were subsequently unearthed, without respecting legal, sanitary, and regulatory standards regarding exhumations, in order to make them disappear immediately thereafter," the sentence states. Judge Leopoldo Llanos also determined that the Chilean State must pay a total indemnity of 20 billion Chilean pesos (about 32 thousand dollars) to the victims' families. This sentence is part of one of the episodes of the so-called "Caravan of Death," a delegation that traveled through Chile after the 1973 coup d'état, murdering nearly a hundred political prisoners. The group was under the command of General Sergio Arellano Stark, invested as "delegate of the commander-in-chief," that is, of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), and in each city it passed through, its members took out groups of political prisoners and murdered them in unpopulated areas. In 1978, following the discovery of about fifteen corpses of prisoners murdered near Santiago, Pinochet ordered Operation "Retiro de Televisores" (Removal of Televisions), which consisted of the clandestine exhumation of hundreds of corpses that were placed in sacks tied to pieces of rail and thrown into the sea. Judge Leopoldo Llanos sentenced six high-ranking members of the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA), Pinochet's secret police, for the aggravated kidnapping (disappearance) of three leaders of the Chilean Communist Party (PC). Retired General Manuel Contreras, former head of the DINA, Brigadier Pedro Espinoza, and former colonels Carlos López, Rolf Wenderoth, Ricardo Lawrence, and Juan Morales were sentenced to 15 years and one day in prison as perpetrators of the three crimes. Contreras has accumulated sentences of more than 500 years in prison after being sentenced in dozens of trials for human rights violations. José Corvalán, Jorge Salgado, and Pedro Silva, leaders of the PC, were arrested on August 9, 1976, and then transferred to the clandestine detention center "Villa Grimaldi," after which nothing more was heard of them. In civil matters, Judge Llanos ordered the payment of a total indemnity of 700 billion Chilean pesos (nearly one million dollars) to the victims' families. During the Pinochet dictatorship, according to official reports, some 3,200 Chileans died at the hands of State agents, of whom 1,192 are still listed as forcibly disappeared, and some 33,000 were tortured and imprisoned for political reasons.

MINISTER MIGUEL VÁZQUEZ ISSUES SENTENCE AGAINST 14 AGENTS OF THE "COMANDO CONJUNTO" FOR ILLICIT ASSOCIATION AND KIDNAPPING The minister on extraordinary assignment for human rights violation cases of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Miguel Vázquez Plaza, issued a sentence against 14 former agents of the so-called "Comando Conjunto," for their responsibility in the crimes of illicit association and the kidnappings of Víctor Vega Riquelme, Isabel Stange Espínola, Jaime Estay Reyno, Amanda Velasco Pedersen, and María Eugenia Calvo Vega, crimes perpetrated between 1975 and 1976.

In the resolution, Minister Vázquez sentenced: -Enrique Ruiz Bunger to 7 years in prison for the aggravated kidnapping of Vega Riquelme; four sentences of 100 days in prison for the simple kidnappings of Stange Espínola, Estay Reyno, Velasco Pedersen, and Calvo Vega, and 5 years and one day for illicit association; -Juan Saavedra Loyola must serve 7 years in prison for the aggravated kidnapping of Vega Riquelme, and four sentences of 100 days in prison for the simple kidnappings of Stange Espínola, Estay Reyno, Velasco Pedersen, and Calvo Vega; -César Palma Ramírez must serve 6 years in prison for the aggravated kidnapping of Víctor Vega Riquelme, and two sentences of 100 days in prison for the simple kidnappings of Estay Reyno and Stange Espínola. -Sergio Díaz López, Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, and Raúl Rojas Nieto were sentenced to 7 years in prison for their responsibility in the aggravated kidnapping of Víctor Vega Riquelme; -Otto Trujillo Miranda was sentenced to 300 days in prison for the simple kidnapping of María Eugenia Calvo Vega; -Raúl González Fernández must serve 60 days in prison for his responsibility as an accomplice to the simple kidnapping of Amanda Velasco Pedersen, and 541 days in prison for illicit association. In both cases, the benefit of conditional remission of the sentence was granted, and -Pedro Caamaño Medina, Andrés Potín Lailhacar, Robinson Suazo Jaque, Eduardo Cartagena Maldonado, Juan Chávez Sandoval, and Alejandro Sáez Mardones were sentenced to 541 days in prison – with the benefit of conditional remission – for their responsibility in the crime of illicit association. Likewise, the magistrate acquitted agents Guillermo Urra Carrasco and Pedro Zambrano Uribe.

The facts According to the background information gathered during the investigation stage, Minister Vázquez Plaza was able to verify the following sequence of events: "a) That a group of officers from the Chilean Air Force, the Carabineros de Chile, the Navy, the Army, and civilians related to members of the Air Force joined together in the last quarter of 1975 and part of the first quarter of 1976, forming a group outside the frameworks of institutionality and legality, which developed strategies and actions that allowed them to detect, detain, and in some cases, eliminate or make disappear militants of the Communist Youth, for which purpose they carried out surveillance based on data obtained in that activity and acted outside of all administrative and judicial procedures. b) That in that context, in the early hours of December 22, 1975, inside the home located at Calle Estados Unidos No. 9214, stop 19 of Villa Kodak, La Florida commune, two members of the Communist Party of Chile were arrested, one of whom was named Miguel Estay Reyno; subsequent to his arrest, he began to provide collaboration to fulfill the goals proposed by the aforementioned "Comando Conjunto" group, and said subject made contact with Eliana Graciela Espínola Bradley to locate Isabel del Rosario Stange Espínola and, through her, Víctor Humberto Vega Riquelme, whom he knew from his militancy in the same party, who was sought by the aforementioned group, and thus, a meeting point was agreed upon at the intersection of Avenida Libertador Bernardo O’Higgins and General Velásquez, a place where the aforementioned Isabel del Rosario Stange Espínola and Víctor Humberto Vega Riquelme arrived on January 3, 1976, at 9:30 PM, together with Jaime Eduardo Estay Reyno, with the two men remaining half a block away from the meeting point while Isabel del Rosario Stange Espínola spoke with the subject who arranged the meeting, who was accompanied by operational members of the group, at which moment they were apprehended, by force, by several of the agents and introduced into the interior of several vehicles, one of which corresponded to a white Fiat 600, without any judicial or administrative order authorizing their detention. c) That, immediately thereafter, the three detainees were taken to the premises of a facility that turned out to be, in the end, the Base of the Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment of the Chilean Air Force, located in Colina, inside which a clandestine detention center operated, called "La Prevención," which was also known as "Remo Cero," a place where they were interrogated and tortured with the application of electric current to their bodies and other torments. d) That Vega Riquelme remained locked up and detained in the indicated facility until it was closed at the end of January 1976, at which time he was handed over to Army personnel belonging to the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE), which until that time participated in the group, with the whereabouts of Víctor Vega Riquelme being unknown since that date, as well as the fate of his physical and mental health and personal integrity, despite the searches carried out, both through judicial and administrative channels, remaining in the status of forcibly disappeared to this date. e) That the other two detainees, that is, Stange Espínola and Estay Reyno, were also transferred to the facility called "La Prevención" or "Remo Cero" referred to in letter c) above, and interrogated under the application of torture; subsequently, the woman Isabel del Rosario Stange Espínola and the man Jaime Eduardo Estay Reyno were released on January 29, 1976, without any charges being filed against them." In civil matters, the ruling rejected the claim for compensation for moral damages, filed by lawyer Nelson Caucoto Pereira, on behalf of the plaintiff Julia Soto Riquelme, cousin of Víctor Vega Riquelme.

SANTIAGO COURT OF APPEALS RATIFIES SENTENCES FOR AGGRAVATED KIDNAPPING OF "OPERATION COLOMBO" VICTIM

The Santiago Court of Appeals ratified the sentence issued against seven agents of the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA) for their responsibility in the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Stalin Aguilera Peñaloza, a crime perpetrated starting on July 23, 1974.

Aguilera Peñaloza is one of the victims of the so-called "Operation Colombo." In a unanimous ruling (case roll 2233-2014), the Third Chamber of the appellate court—composed of ministers Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Gloria Solís, and the lawyer (i) Claudia Chaimovich—confirmed the resolution adopted by the minister on assignment Hernán Crisosto.

The appealed sentence sentenced: Manuel Guillermo Contreras Sepúlveda, César Manríquez Bravo, Marcelo Manuel Moren Brito, and Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko to 13-year prison terms. Meanwhile, former agents Orlando Manzo Durán, Demóstenes Cárdenas Saavedra, and Alejandro Astudillo Adonis must serve 10 years and one day in prison.

Likewise, the appellate court confirmed that the State of Chile must pay each of the victim's seven children an indemnity for moral damages of $50,000,000 (fifty million pesos) and $100,000,000 (one hundred million pesos) to the spouse.

MINISTER JAIME ARANCIBIA ISSUES INDICTMENT AGAINST PERPETRATOR OF KIDNAPPING AND TORTURE OF THE NÚÑEZ RODRÍGUEZ SIBLINGS

The minister on extraordinary assignment for human rights violation cases of the Valparaíso Court of Appeals, Jaime Arancibia Pinto, issued an indictment against Aníbal Ramón Schaffhauser Camposano, as the perpetrator of the crimes of kidnapping and torture of the siblings Claudio Núñez Rodríguez and Sonia Núñez Rodríguez, events that occurred in 1973 in the La Calera commune.

According to the background information recorded in the case, it was established that "on October 16, 1973, in the early hours of the morning, the home located at Calle Los Álamos No. 1206 A, Población Cemento Melón in the La Calera commune, was violently raided by a group of soldiers belonging to the No. 2 Aconcagua Regiment of Quillota, who were under the command of a Lieutenant." In said operation, the father of the victims (who were minors at the time of the events) was arrested; the children, in addition to being beaten and insulted, were locked in their own home together with their mother under military custody, unable to go out into the street. The investigation carried out by Minister Arancibia also established that "on occasions, the victims and their siblings were taken along with their mother to the Carabineros station to be interrogated; on more than one occasion they witnessed torture and insults to which she was subjected, where they dealt her blows with weapons and other objects, all with the purpose of obtaining information about the location of explosive devices." Furthermore, the resolution specifies that although the Núñez Rodríguez siblings were minors at the time of the events, "they were victims of kidnapping and torture, given that they were deprived of their liberty by not being allowed to leave their home to lead a normal life, as well as the psychological damage caused to them by the events they had to live through and witness, that is, having been in a Carabineros station together with their mother seeing how they mistreated her physically and psychologically, in addition to receiving insults and blows, all of which left the sequelae that the corresponding reports indicate."

MINISTER MARIANELA CIFUENTES PROSECUTES FORMER CARABINEROS FOR THE HOMICIDE OF FERNANDO VIELMA LUENGO

The minister on assignment for human rights violation cases of the San Miguel Court of Appeals, Marianela Cifuentes Alarcón, issued an indictment in the investigation she is conducting for the homicide of Fernando Vielma Luengo, perpetrated on September 4, 1986, in the La Cisterna commune.

In the resolution, Minister Cifuentes prosecuted the retired members of the Carabineros: Juan Tapia Pacheco, as the perpetrator of the homicide; and Carlos Ruiz Medrano, Víctor Geraldino González, Luis Zapata Torres, and Jorge Escobar Cantillana, as accessories to the crime.

According to the background information gathered during the investigation stage, the minister on assignment has managed to verify the following facts: a) That on September 4, 1986, around 9:00 PM, within the framework of a day of popular demonstrations on the occasion of commemorating another year since the election of Salvador Allende Gossens as President of the Republic, Eduardo Germán Vielma Luengo left his home, located at Calle Cerro Negro No. 8991 in the La Cisterna commune, accompanied by Leonel Patricio Constanzo Sepúlveda and the minor Néstor Antonio Medina Johns, to buy cigarettes at a store located in the vicinity. b) That, moments later, in circumstances where Vielma Luengo was walking together with the mentioned persons along Calle Cerro Negro, upon reaching Avenida Ossa, he was intercepted by Carabineros officers, who were part of a "picket" from the 10th Precinct of La Cisterna that was moving in an institution bus, specifically by Lieutenant Carlos Raúl Ruiz Medrano, who was in charge, and the Carabineros Juan Avenido Tapia Pacheco, Víctor Manuel Geraldino González, Luis Fabián Zapata Torres, and Jorge Aníbal Escobar Cantillana. c) That, immediately thereafter, Eduardo Vielma Luengo walked along Avenida Ossa in a westerly direction, at which point Juan Tapia Pacheco fired at him, from behind, with the projectile penetrating the thoracic cavity, piercing the right lung, causing a hemothorax and acute anemia, which caused his death. d) That, instead of reporting the circumstances of the commission of the mentioned crime, the referred police officers carried out a series of maneuvers to hide them, both from the rest of the members of the "picket" and from the police and judicial authorities.

Source: Red Digital, October 22, 2015

Two former military personnel prosecuted for illegal exhumation of forcibly disappeared persons

Judge Rosa María Pinto prosecuted two former Army and Air Force Intelligence non-commissioned officers today in Calama as alleged perpetrators of the crime of illegal exhumation of 26 opponents executed by the "Caravan of Death" in 1973.

The resolution affected Manuel Aguirre Cortés, a former Army Intelligence non-commissioned officer, and former Air Force Intelligence non-commissioned officer Sergio López Maldonado, according to judicial sources.

The 26 prisoners were executed by order of General Sergio Arellano Stark on October 19, 1973, in an operation of the "Caravan of Death," a military delegation that executed more than 70 political prisoners in different cities of the country, according to the judicial file.

In the case of Calama, 1,564 kilometers north of Santiago, the 26 victims were taken from prison and executed in the Topáter sector, on the outskirts of the city, where they were buried clandestinely. According to testimonies contained in the proceedings, at the end of 1975 or the beginning of 1976, the bodies were exhumed by order of the Army command-in-chief, which issued a coded order via a cryptogram.

Aguirre Cortés, together with other military personnel, according to the file, unearthed the corpses and transported them to the Calama airport where a FACH C-47 plane awaited them, onto which they loaded the bodies that were subsequently thrown into the sea wrapped in sacks and tied to rails.

Sergio Maldonado, who was an Air Force mechanic, also participated in the operation. In his statements to the court, Aguirre Cortés accused retired General Miguel Trincado Araneda, who retired last year when he was commander of the Second Army Division based in Santiago, of having directed the exhumation of the remains of the Calama victims.

Consulted by EFE, Magistrate Rosa María Pinto confirmed the prosecutions of the two non-commissioned officers but said that Trincado is not among those prosecuted. The exhumation of the remains of those forcibly disappeared during the regime of the late dictator Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) was known as "Operation Retiro de Televisores." According to judicial sources and human rights activists, the operation, which was repeated in different parts of the country, was ordered by Pinochet to cover up the crimes of his regime, which left more than 3,000 dead and 1,279 forcibly disappeared.

Source: Terra.cl, March 27, 2007

Judge in Calama disappearance cases questioned

Due to link with military officer

The plaintiff lawyers in the trial regarding the throwing into the sea of 26 bodies of political executions in Calama are studying whether to recuse the minister of the Antofagasta Court of Appeals, Rosa María Pinto, due to her romantic ties with a former Army officer, as reported by the capital newspaper La Nación.

In 1973, the magistrate was an official at the Calama Court and was married to the military officer Álvaro Morales, who was serving in that city when Sergio Arellano Stark's delegation carried out the executions.

The judge confirmed to La Nación that she was Morales's wife and that he was an Army officer. Prosecutions Last Tuesday, the minister on assignment for the case prosecuted the (R) Intelligence non-commissioned officer of the Calama regiment Manuel Aguirre Cortés and the former Air Force mechanic Sergio López Maldonado as alleged perpetrators of the crime of illegal exhumation.

But she did not indict the former commander of the Second Army Division, General (R) Miguel Trincado Araneda, who was identified as the officer in charge of directing the unearthing and transfer of the bodies to a FACH plane at the city's airport at the end of 1975.

When the operation was carried out, Trincado was a lieutenant and head of Section II of Intelligence of the Calama regiment, for which reason he could have had some type of contact with the minister's late husband.

Despite the testimonies against him, the retired officer was not prosecuted. This caused annoyance for human rights lawyer Eduardo Contreras, because he believes there was sufficient merit for the retired general to face justice as an accused party. "It seems unheard of to me that after so much time of investigation, the tribunal decided to prosecute the witnesses and not the culprits.

This warrants studying the situation and adopting measures to correct this procedure. Among these culprits is Miguel Trincado Araneda," said the lawyer. According to testimonies contained in the proceedings, at the end of 1975, the bodies were thrown into the sea from a FACH C-47 plane; they were wrapped in sacks and tied to rails so that they would sink into the ocean.

The file establishes that López Maldonado was in charge of throwing the victims of the Caravan of Death. Aguirre Cortés accused before the judge that Trincado was the person in charge of directing the unearthing of the remains of the Calama victims. This event is within the known Operation Retiro de Televisores.

Source: Mercuriocalama.cl, April 1, 2007

Evidence of death flights found in Chile

A repressor confessed the exact place where victims of the Chilean dictatorship were thrown into the sea, and evidence of the actions of the so-called "Caravan of Death," which traveled the country in Pinochet's time, was found there.

Before dying, one of the military personnel who participated in various human rights violations—in the times of Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship—confessed what many others have wanted to keep reserved: the exact place where some rails used to make the bodies of victims thrown into the sea disappear were submerged, thereby preventing them from floating to the surface.

A few days ago, the pieces of metal were found near the coast of Caldera, a small port in northern Chile (870 kilometers from Santiago) and later brought to the surface. The information was revealed yesterday to EFE by judicial sources.

According to the testimony collected, which coincides with similar confessions in different judicial cases, the pieces of railroad track were used to sink the corpses that the repressors threw into the sea in bags tied with wire.

The identity of the military officer is kept secret, and the rails, according to the sources, are in the Criminalistics Laboratory of the Investigative Police (PDI) in Santiago, where they will be analyzed to determine if they still have any elements attached to them.

For now, the search continues in the area of the discovery with the idea of finding other types of similar remains. The diligence is part of the trial called Caravan of Death, in charge of special judge Patricia González, and refers to a military delegation that at the end of 1973 traveled through Chile, leaving in its wake nearly a hundred political prisoners executed in different cities.

As it transpired, the discovery is kept secret, which has displeased human rights organizations and lawyers, who consider it important, especially on the eve of the 40th anniversary of Pinochet's coup d'état.

In that context, experts consulted by the agency said that it is impossible to even attempt to approximate the identity of those who were thrown into the sea tied to those rails, unless the deceased military officer confessed names.

As things stand, two cases could have some link. The first refers to 26 corpses unearthed in 1976 in the Atacama Desert, corresponding to prisoners murdered in October 1973 by the Caravan of Death in the city of Calama.

Those corpses were thrown into the sea from an Air Force plane, as admitted judicially by the mechanic of that institution, Sergio López Maldonado, who threw the bodies but did not indicate in what part of the northern coast.

The second episode relates to three extrajudicial executions that occurred in October 1973 in the city of Copiapó, 75 kilometers southeast of Caldera, also at the hands of the Caravan of Death. The victims were the general manager of the Compañía de Cobre Salvador, Ricardo García Posadas, and the union leaders of that company Maguindo Castillo Andrade and Benito Tapia Tapia, whose bodies were buried in the Copiapó cemetery but quickly disappeared from the site.

The Caldera discovery is the second finding of rails used to throw prisoners' bodies into the sea since 1973. The first occurred in September 2004 off Quintero, 44 kilometers north of Valparaíso. That time, four metal pieces were found by PDI detectives, under the supervision of special judge Juan Guzmán Tapia.

The pieces later became part of a memorial museum at the former Villa Grimaldi prison camp in Santiago. Some of them still had buttons attached. According to judicial statements by non-commissioned officers and mechanics of the Army Aviation Command, between October 1973 and August 1977, at least 500 bodies were thrown into the sea from helicopters.

Several deponents agree that there were at least 40 flights, with between eight and fifteen bodies transported on each one. Until now, the only body that emerged from the bottom of the ocean was that of Marta Ugarte, a communist teacher, whose corpse appeared on a beach in the Coquimbo region on September 12, 1976.

According to the case file, one of the wires that joined the rail to her body was used by DINA agent Emilio Troncoso Vivallos to strangle her, because after the lethal injection administered to her before putting her on the helicopter, she was still alive. Thus, once in the water, the rail came loose and her corpse emerged.

Source: Pagina12, August 1, 2013

Rails used to throw bodies of disappeared persons into the sea found

Several rail segments used to throw the bodies of political prisoners into the sea and make them disappear during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet were found on the coast of Caldera, in the north of our country, the EFE agency reported this week.

The pieces of metal, found about 870 kilometers north of Santiago, were brought to the surface from the seabed a few days ago. Their discovery was made possible because a military officer who participated in these actions confessed before he died, indicated journalist Jorge Escalante, author of the report.

Until now, the identity of the military officer remains confidential, and the rails—"fewer than five," according to sources—are at the Criminalistics Laboratory of the Investigative Police (PDI) in Santiago, where they will be analyzed to determine if any elements remain attached to them. The search continues in the area of the discovery, due to the possibility that there are more similar pieces.

The investigation was carried out within the framework of the trial for the episodes of the so-called Caravan of Death, led by special judge Patricia González, referring to a military delegation that traveled through Chile in late 1973 and left in its wake nearly a hundred political prisoners executed in various cities.

The delegation was headed by General Sergio Arellano Stark, who acted as "delegate officer" for General Pinochet.

The discovery was kept secret, which has displeased human rights organizations and lawyers, who consider it important as the 40th anniversary of the coup d'état approaches.

In this context, experts consulted said that, unless the deceased military officer confessed names, it is "impossible" to even attempt to approximate the identity of those who were thrown into the sea tied to those rails.

They recalled two episodes that occurred in late 1973 that could be linked to the discovery. The first refers to 26 bodies unearthed in 1976 in the Atacama Desert, corresponding to prisoners murdered in October 1973 during the passage of the so-called Caravan of Death in the city of Calama.

Those bodies were thrown into the sea from an Air Force plane, as admitted in court by the institution's mechanic, Sergio López Maldonado, who threw the bodies. But López did not say in what part of the northern coast the bodies were dumped.

The second episode relates to three extrajudicial executions that occurred in October 1973 in the city of Copiapó, 75 kilometers southeast of Caldera, also at the hands of the Caravan of Death. The victims were the general manager of the Compañía de Cobre Salvador, Ricardo García Posadas, and the union leaders of that company, Maguindo Castillo Andrade and Benito Tapia Tapia, whose bodies were buried in the Copiapó cemetery but quickly disappeared from the site.

Source: EFE, January 11, 2014

Rails used to throw bodies into the sea during the dictatorship discovered

They were found on the coast of Caldera following the confession of a military officer.

This is the second discovery of this type, following the one made in September 2004 in Quintero. Several rails used to throw the bodies of political prisoners into the sea and make them disappear during the Pinochet dictatorship were discovered on the coast of Caldera, judicial sources revealed to the EFE agency.

The pieces of metal were brought to the surface from the seabed a few days ago, and their discovery was possible thanks to the fact that a military officer who participated in those actions confessed their location before he died.

Until now, the identity of the military officer remains confidential, and the rails—which are "fewer than five," according to sources—are at the PDI Criminalistics Laboratory in Santiago, where they will be analyzed to determine if any elements remain attached to them.

The search continues in the area of the discovery due to the possibility that there are more similar pieces. These proceedings are part of the investigation into the "Caravan of Death" case—a military delegation that traveled through various cities in late 1973 and left in its wake nearly a hundred political executions—led by special judge Patricia González.

Suspicions Until now, the discovery has been kept secret, which has displeased human rights organizations and lawyers. Experts consulted by EFE said that unless the deceased military officer confessed names, it is "impossible" to even attempt to approximate the identity of those who were thrown into the sea tied to those rails.

They recalled, in any case, two episodes that occurred in late 1973 that could be linked to the discovery. The first refers to 26 bodies unearthed in 1976 in the Atacama Desert, corresponding to prisoners murdered in October 1973 by the Caravan of Death in the city of Calama.

Those bodies were thrown into the sea from an Air Force plane, as admitted in court by the institution's mechanic, Sergio López Maldonado, who threw the bodies. López did not say, however, in what part of the northern coast the bodies were thrown.

Calama is 698 kilometers north-northeast of Caldera. The second episode relates to three extrajudicial executions that occurred in October 1973 in the city of Copiapó, 75 kilometers southeast of Caldera, also at the hands of the Caravan of Death.

The victims were the general manager of the Compañía de Cobre Salvador, Ricardo García Posadas, and the union leaders of that company, Maguindo Castillo Andrade and Benito Tapia Tapia, whose bodies were buried in the Copiapó cemetery but quickly disappeared from the site.

The criminal machine The Caldera discovery is the second finding of rails used to throw prisoners' bodies into the sea since 1973. The first occurred in September 2004 off the coast of Quintero, 44 kilometers north of Valparaíso.

At that time, four metal pieces were found by PDI detectives under the supervision of Judge Juan Guzmán Tapia. The pieces later became part of a memorial museum at the former Villa Grimaldi prison camp in Santiago.

Some of them still had buttons attached. According to judicial statements by non-commissioned officers and mechanics of the Army Aviation Command, between October 1973 and August 1977, at least 500 bodies were thrown into the sea from helicopters.

Several witnesses agree that there were at least 40 flights, with between eight and 15 bodies transported in each one. The bodies were placed in sacks, sewn with wire, and then a piece of rail was tied to each one.

Until now, the only body that emerged from the bottom of the ocean was that of Marta Ugarte, a communist teacher, whose body appeared on a beach in the Coquimbo region on September 12, 1976. According to the case file, one of the wires that joined the rail to her body was used by DINA agent Emilio Troncoso Vivallos to strangle her, because after the lethal injection she was administered before being loaded onto the helicopter, she was still alive.

Thus, once in the water, the rail came loose and her body emerged.

Source: Cooperativa.cl, July 31, 2013

Discovery of rails where detainees were thrown into the sea: Deputy Carmona pledged not to end the search

This is the second time a discovery of this type has been made; the previous one was in 2004 in Quintero, and, just like that time, human rights lawyer Eduardo Contreras estimated it would be very difficult to determine the identity of any of the victims.

The discovery of railway rails used to sink the bodies of dictatorship victims at the bottom of the sea in the Atacama Region, which was revealed this Wednesday, caused a deep impact in the human rights community.

This is the second time a discovery of this type has been made; the previous one was in 2004 in Quintero, and, just like that time, human rights lawyer Eduardo Contreras estimated it would be very difficult to determine the identity of any of the victims.

He indicated that "the possibilities are very remote. In the previous case in Quintero, identification was not possible. One must understand that the remains that will likely be found now are more likely materials from the clothing they were wearing." "As far as I know, there are no pieces of bone or tissue materials that would allow for the identification of the bodies.

It has the merit and value of proving that what has been stated in the trials is entirely true. I wish it were otherwise, but I do not believe that the full identification of the victims is possible through this path alone," he declared.

Meanwhile, the president of the Association of Relatives of Forcibly Disappeared, Lorena Pizarro, prefers to act with caution so as not to subject the relatives of the victims in the area to the torture of the search again, as the dictatorship moved prisoners from one area to another.

For Pizarro, it would be an act of cowardice to have provided partial information, without names of the disappeared or those responsible. "This is a reflection of that painful 'dripping' that we, the relatives of the forcibly disappeared, face, where the truth is delivered in halves, where the truth is never total, and where we continue waiting to know the names of those responsible and the fate of our relatives," she declared.

Regarding the confession of Air Force mechanic Sergio López Maldonado, Pizarro indicated that "the statement of this subject reveals the truth once again. The information is held by the Armed Forces." "If the President of the Republic remains silent in the face of this information, today it is revealed that he is also complicit in this pact of silence," the association's president accused.

For his part, the Communist deputy for Copiapó, Lautaro Carmona, pledged not to end the search until information on the whereabouts of the victims is obtained. "I am going to carry out all the proceedings, all the mobilizations, until I clarify with absolute certainty the relationship these rails have with the method they used to exterminate many of our own.

Many of them were even thrown into the sea alive," he indicated. He stated that "there are new technologies; anthropologists and archaeologists are capable of detecting human remains from hundreds of years ago. So that is a part that one must never renounce," reported Radio Cooperativa.

Source: Cambio21, August 1, 2013

Arrest of Generals (Ret.) Miguel Trincado and Julio Salazar decreed in Calama case

The indictments in this human rights violation case were issued yesterday by the presiding minister of the Antofagasta Court of Appeals, Rosa María Pinto. The magistrate also indicted Colonel (Ret.) Luis Aracena and three non-commissioned officers (Ret.).

All are accused as authors of the exhumation and throwing into the sea, in late 1975 or early 1976, of the 26 bodies of prisoners murdered by the Caravan of Death in October 1973.

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Miguel Trincado commanded the operation to exhume and throw the bodies into the sea when he held the position of head of the Intelligence Section of the Calama regiment. Generals (Ret.) Miguel Trincado Araneda and Julio Salazar Lantery, along with Colonel (Ret.) Luis Aracena Romo and three non-commissioned officers (Ret.), were indicted as authors of the exhumation and disappearance between late 1975 and early 1976 of the 26 bodies of prisoners murdered in October 1973 by the Caravan of Death in Calama.

The indictment was resolved yesterday by the presiding minister of the Antofagasta Court of Appeals, Rosa María Pinto, who also ordered the arrests of the accused. The magistrate is investigating the case regarding the exhumations and throwing of these bodies into the sea aboard a Chilean Air Force (FACH) plane.

The former commander of the Santiago garrison and military judge of the Metropolitan Region until 2006, now-retired General Miguel Trincado, commanded the operation to exhume and throw the bodies into the sea when he held the position of head of the Intelligence Section of the Calama regiment.

The operation was supervised on the ground in a sector of the Atacama Desert by the then-head of the Intelligence Department of the Army's 1st Division in Antofagasta, current General (Ret.) Julio Salazar Lantery.

Colonel (Ret.) Aracena Romo was the second-in-command of the Calama regiment in 1975 and was also present at the exhumation. The commander of the Calama regiment at that time was Colonel Eduardo Ibáñez Tillería, who died with the rank of general.

The other three indicted are non-commissioned officers (Ret.) Héctor Iturra Orrego, Wilson Pacheco Obreque, and Emilio Pardo Pardo. These were subordinates of Trincado in the Calama Intelligence Section and also participated in the exhumation of the remains.

Already indicted by Minister Pinto were the then-intelligence non-commissioned officers of the Calama regiment, now retired, Manuel Aguirre Cortés and Juan Carlos González Reyes. Both also took part in the exhumation.

Confessed mechanic Aguirre was the first to legally implicate Trincado in 2005, accusing him of commanding the operation and even driving the truck in which the bagged bodies were transported to the Calama airfield, where a FACH C-47 plane was waiting, aboard which they were thrown into the sea. "I was the co-pilot in the truck next to Trincado," Aguirre said in the proceedings.

When Aguirre accused Trincado, La Nación published the information on May 3, 2005, but the Army, under the leadership of General Juan Emilio Cheyre, denied both Trincado's participation and the event itself. "The Army categorically rejects these accusations for being unjust, unnecessarily damaging the institution's image, and compromising the honor of the cited officer (Trincado)," the statement said.

The other person already indicted by Magistrate Pinto is FACH non-commissioned officer (Ret.) Sergio López Maldonado. He confessed in the proceedings that he was the mechanic who traveled on the C-47 and declared that "when about two hours of flight had passed, the pilot gave me a signal.

Then I opened the hatch and threw the bundles into the ocean." This is the first time that Salazar Lantery and Aracena Romo have been charged with human rights violations. Trincado had been indicted this year on the initiative of the Antofagasta Court of Appeals.

But that court committed a procedural error by indicting him for the crimes of the 26 prisoners committed by the Caravan of Death on October 19, 1973, in Calama, facts that are being investigated in Santiago by Minister Víctor Montiglio and for which neither that court nor Magistrate Pinto has jurisdiction.

First episode: "Operation Television Set Removal" The Calama exhumation case is the first episode of what Army intelligence called "Operation Television Set Removal," which was carried out en masse throughout the country starting in December 1978.

That was the date when the bodies of fifteen peasants murdered by Carabineros, who had hidden their corpses, were found in the ovens of a mine in Lonquén, south of Santiago. "Operation Television Set Removal" consisted of the exhumation of all the bodies of prisoners who had been buried in clandestine graves throughout the north, south, and central zones of Chile.

The bodies were thrown into the sea. The operation was ordered by the then-dictator Augusto Pinochet through cryptograms (messages encrypted in code) sent to the country's regiments with the order. One of the first to fix the date of the exhumation in Calama was Colonel (Ret.) Aracena Romo, who declared in court that the event happened "in the last days of 1975." For his part, Salazar Lantery acknowledged in the trial that "in late 1974 or 1975, there was an agreement to remove the bodies because we knew that the relatives were looking for them in the desert." Although Trincado continues to deny his participation, there are at least eight non-commissioned officers in the judicial investigation who accuse him of commanding the operation or directing the Intelligence Section of the Calama regiment at that time. The next step could be in the hands of Minister Montiglio, as the plaintiffs argue that it is not simply a case of the accused committing the crime of illegal exhumation by digging up the bodies and making them disappear, but that in their actions they would have incurred, at the very least, as accessories to kidnapping and homicide because they acted to erase the traces of the crimes committed by the Caravan of Death in 1973. Therefore, there is a possibility that, after these indictments, Minister Pinto will declare herself incompetent and send the case to Santiago to Judge Montiglio. The case that sparked the war in the Investigative Police The trial for the exhumations in Calama was the trigger for the open conflict within the Investigative Police. The person who sparked the dispute was General Miguel Trincado, when, while on active duty, he visited the director of the civil police, Arturo Herrera, to ask him to order a change to a police report that in July 2005 imputed responsibility to him for the operation for which he was indicted yesterday. Officers of that police force stated in the proceedings being investigated by Minister Pinto that Director Herrera tried to have the report altered, but met with opposition from the authors of the document and their direct superior, the recently retired prefect Rafael Castillo. From that moment on, a harsh dispute broke out between Castillo and Herrera, which led to various situations within the Special Affairs and Human Rights Brigade. In 2006, Castillo was being retired by Herrera, but the government vetoed that provision and reinstated Castillo to active duty. This year, however, the government did not continue to support him, and Director Herrera retired him.

Source: lanacion.cl, November 24, 2007

Judge with unexpected connections...

Plaintiff lawyers study filing a motion to recuse her

Judge investigating the throwing of bodies into the sea was married to an Army officer Magistrate Rosa María Pinto indicted two non-commissioned officers last Tuesday for the illegal exhumation in Calama of 26 victims of the Caravan of Death, but did not indict General (Ret.) Miguel Trincado, identified as the officer in charge of the operation.

The plaintiff lawyers in the trial regarding the throwing into the sea of 26 bodies of political prisoners in Calama are studying the recusal of the minister of the Antofagasta Court of Appeals, Rosa María Pinto, due to her romantic ties to a former Army officer.

In 1973, the magistrate was an official at the Calama Court and was married to the military officer Álvaro Morales, who was serving in that city when Sergio Arellano Stark's delegation carried out the executions.

The judge confirmed to La Nación that she was Morales's wife and that he was an Army officer. Indictments Last Tuesday, the visiting minister in the case indicted the former intelligence non-commissioned officer (Ret.) of the Calama regiment, Manuel Aguirre Cortés, and the former Air Force mechanic Sergio López Maldonado as alleged authors of the crime of illegal exhumation.

But she did not indict the former commander of the Army's Second Division, General (Ret.) Miguel Trincado Araneda, who was identified as the officer in charge of directing the exhumation and transfer of the bodies to a FACH plane at the city's airport in late 1975.

When the operation was carried out, Trincado was a lieutenant and head of the Section II Intelligence of the Calama regiment, for which reason he could have had some type of contact with the magistrate's deceased husband.

Despite the testimonies against him, the retired officer was not indicted. This generated annoyance in human rights lawyer Eduardo Contreras, because he believes that there were sufficient merits for the retired general to face justice as an indicted person. "It seems unheard of to me that after so much time of investigation, the tribunal decided to indict the witnesses and not the guilty parties.

This warrants studying the situation and adopting measures to correct this procedure. Among these guilty parties is Miguel Trincado Araneda," said the lawyer. According to testimonies in the case, in late 1975, the bodies were thrown into the sea from a FACH C-47 plane; they were wrapped in sacks and tied to rails so that they would sink in the ocean.

The file establishes that López Maldonado was in charge of throwing the victims of the Caravan of Death. Aguirre Cortés accused before the judge that Trincado was the person in charge of directing the exhumation of the remains of the Calama victims.

This fact is within the well-known Operation Television Set Removal. A problem named Trincado This process has not been free of controversy, because the director of the Investigative Police, Arturo Herrera, and the head of the Headquarters against Organized Crime, Prefect Inspector Rafael Castillo, clashed in a struggle over Trincado's alleged responsibility.

In 2005, the former military officer was commander-in-chief of the Army's II Division and military judge of Santiago. Furthermore, during Juan Emilio Cheyre's mandate, he was designated as the liaison with the Investigative Police to cooperate with the clarification of executions, torture, and disappearances of opponents during the military dictatorship.

Upon seeing himself involved in the events and seeing his judicial situation in danger, he asked Herrera to "soften" the report that the Human Rights Brigade was preparing and that implicated him. This would have originated a discussion between the two strongmen of the institution and divided the waters within the civil police for a time.

Source: lanacion.cl, March 30, 2007

Rails used to throw bodies into the sea during Pinochet's dictatorship discovered

The pieces of metal, found about 870 kilometers north of Santiago, were brought to the surface from the seabed a few days ago, and their discovery was possible thanks to the fact that a military officer who participated in those actions confessed before he died.

Several rails used to throw the bodies of political prisoners into the sea and make them disappear during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet were found on the coast of Caldera, in northern Chile, judicial sources revealed to EFE today.

The pieces of metal, found about 870 kilometers north of Santiago, were brought to the surface from the seabed a few days ago, and their discovery was possible thanks to the fact that a military officer who participated in those actions confessed before he died.

Until now, the identity of the military officer remains confidential, and the rails—"fewer than five," according to sources—are at the Criminalistics Laboratory of the Investigative Police (PDI) in Santiago, where they will be analyzed to determine if any elements remain attached to them.

The search continues in the area of the discovery, due to the possibility that there are more similar pieces. The investigation was carried out within the framework of the trial for the episodes of the so-called Caravan of Death, led by special judge Patricia González, referring to a military delegation that traveled through Chile in late 1973 and left in its wake nearly a hundred political prisoners executed in various cities.

Until now, the discovery has been kept secret, which has displeased human rights organizations and lawyers, who consider it important as the 40th anniversary of Pinochet's coup approaches. In this context, experts asked by EFE said that, unless the deceased military officer confessed names, it is "impossible" to even attempt to approximate the identity of those who were thrown into the sea tied to those rails.

They recalled, in any case, two episodes that occurred in late 1973 that could be linked to the discovery. The first refers to 26 bodies unearthed in 1976 in the Atacama Desert, corresponding to prisoners murdered in October 1973 by the Caravan of Death in the city of Calama.

Those bodies were thrown into the sea from an Air Force plane, as admitted in court by the institution's mechanic, Sergio López Maldonado, who threw the bodies. But López did not say in what part of the northern coast the bodies were thrown.

Calama is 698 kilometers north-northeast of Caldera. The second episode relates to three extrajudicial executions that occurred in October 1973 in the city of Copiapó, 75 kilometers southeast of Caldera, also at the hands of the Caravan of Death.

The victims were the general manager of the Compañía de Cobre Salvador, Ricardo García Posadas, and the union leaders of that company, Maguindo Castillo Andrade and Benito Tapia Tapia, whose bodies were buried in the Copiapó cemetery but quickly disappeared from the site.

The Caldera discovery is the second finding of rails used to throw prisoners' bodies into the sea since 1973. The first occurred in September 2004 off the coast of Quintero, 44 kilometers north of Valparaíso.

At that time, four metal pieces were found by PDI detectives, under the supervision of special judge Juan Guzmán Tapia. The pieces later became part of a memorial museum at the former Villa Grimaldi prison camp in Santiago.

Some of them still had buttons attached. According to judicial statements by non-commissioned officers and mechanics of the Army Aviation Command, between October 1973 and August 1977, at least 500 bodies were thrown into the sea from helicopters.

Several witnesses agree that there were at least 40 flights, with between eight and fifteen bodies transported in each one. The bodies were placed in sacks, sewn with wire, and then a piece of rail was tied to each one.

Until now, the only body that emerged from the bottom of the ocean was that of Marta Ugarte, a communist teacher, whose body appeared on a beach in the Coquimbo region on September 12, 1976. According to the case file, one of the wires that joined the rail to her body was used by DINA agent Emilio Troncoso Vivallos to strangle her, because after the lethal injection she was administered before being loaded onto the helicopter, she was still alive.

Thus, once in the water, the rail came loose and her body emerged.

Source: elmostrador.cl, July 31, 2013

Judge indicts former military officers for illegal exhumation of the disappeared

The 26 prisoners were executed by order of General Sergio Arellano Stark on October 19, 1973, in an operation of the "Caravan of Death," a military delegation that executed more than 70 political prisoners in different cities of the country, according to the judicial file.

The victims were taken from prison and executed on the outskirts of the city, where they were buried clandestinely. Chilean judge Rosa María Pinto indicted in the city of Calama, in northern Chile, two former Army and Air Force intelligence non-commissioned officers as alleged authors of the crime of illegal exhumation of 26 opponents executed by the "Caravan of Death" in 1973.

The resolution affected Manuel Aguirre Cortés, a former Army intelligence non-commissioned officer, and former Air Force intelligence non-commissioned officer Sergio López Maldonado, according to judicial sources.

The 26 prisoners were executed by order of General Sergio Arellano Stark on October 19, 1973, in an operation of the "Caravan of Death," a military delegation that executed more than 70 political prisoners in different cities of the country, according to the judicial file.

In the Calama case, 1,564 kilometers north of Santiago, the 26 victims were taken from prison and executed in the Topáter sector, on the outskirts of the city, where they were buried clandestinely. The history According to testimonies in the case, in late 1975 or early 1976, the bodies were exhumed by order of the Army's commander-in-chief, who issued a coded order through a cryptogram.

Aguirre Cortés, along with other military personnel, according to the file, unearthed the bodies and transported them to the Calama airport, where a FACH C-47 plane was waiting for them, onto which they loaded the bodies that were subsequently thrown into the sea wrapped in sacks and tied to rails.

Sergio Maldonado, who was an Air Force mechanic, also participated in the operation. In his statements to the tribunal, Aguirre Cortés accused retired General Miguel Trincado Araneda, who retired last year when he was commander of the Army's Second Division, based in Santiago, of having directed the exhumation of the remains of the Calama victims.

Magistrate Rosa María Pinto confirmed the indictments of the two non-commissioned officers but said that Trincado is not among those indicted. The exhumation of the remains of those forcibly disappeared during the regime of the late dictator Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) was known as "Operation Television Set Removal." According to judicial sources and human rights activists, the operation, which was repeated in different parts of the country, was ordered by Pinochet to cover up the crimes of his regime, which left more than 3,000 dead and 1,279 forcibly disappeared.

Source: diariocritico.com, September 2, 2007