Political Affiliation: Member of the Communist Youth. Student Council leader Date of Detention: September 18, 1973

Luis Angel Ariel Cornejo Fernández, single, university student, student leader, and communist militant, was detained on September 18, 1973, at approximately 17:00 hours, by a patrol composed of Carabineros and military personnel at the residence located at Calle Saavedra N°170 in Los Angeles, where he was a boarder.

Along with him, other individuals were detained, including the homeowner. He was taken to the police station and subsequently to the Los Angeles Regiment; from that moment on, the fate of the victim remains unknown, and he is currently classified as forcibly disappeared.

His relatives visited detention centers in the area to request information; his mother interviewed the Commander of the Los Angeles Mountain Infantry Regiment and Captain Marshall of the same Regiment, both of whom denied that Luis Cornejo was being held in that unit.

His parents also wrote to various national authorities to inform them of their situation and to ask for information regarding their son's whereabouts, without obtaining any positive results.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

In response to inquiries made, Luis Cornejo's mother received a letter, dated June 25, 1974, and signed by Colonel Jorge Espinoza Ulloa, National Executive Secretary of the Secretariat for Detainees (SENDET), informing her that the affected individual was detained on September 18, 1973, by personnel from the N°3 Reinforced Mountain Infantry Regiment of Los Angeles and was released the same day due to a lack of evidence.

He added that, "subsequently, he has been sought by military edicts without being located."

For its part, the International Red Cross informed the family that Luis Ariel had only been released on January 1, 1974.

There is no record of any filings before the Courts of Justice.

Source: (Corporation Report)

The Supreme Court sentenced former Army officer Walter Klug Rivera to 3 years and one day of imprisonment for his responsibility as an accomplice in the aggravated kidnapping of university student Luis Ángel Ariel Cornejo Fernández, committed in the city of Los Angeles starting on September 18, 1973.

In the ruling (case file 82.310-2021), the Second Chamber of the high court—composed of ministers Haroldo Brito, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Jorge Dahm, Leopoldo Llanos, and lawyer (i) Diego Munita—rejected a cassation appeal against the sentence issued by the Court of Appeals of Concepción in September 2021, which convicted the former officer.

In the first instance, judge Carlos Aldana had decreed the acquittal of the criminal.

Luis Ángel Ariel Cornejo Fernández, 23 years old, was a communist militant and a Topography student at the Universidad de Concepción, Los Angeles campus. He was detained, along with other people, at Calle Saavedra 170 in that city, around 16:30 hours on September 18, 1973, by a patrol composed of military personnel and Carabineros.

The detainees were taken first to the Los Angeles Carabineros Station and then to the N°3 Reinforced Regiment of the same city, where he was held in cells conditioned for that purpose in the facilities designated for the Regiment's horses.

In the aforementioned regiment, the political prisoner camp was under the command of officer Walter Klug Rivera. There, Cornejo Fernández was placed at the disposal of the Military Intelligence Service of that military unit, where he was subjected to interrogations and torture.

In the first days of October 1973, he was taken from the cell where he was being held with another detainee (a survivor) and taken to the stables; in that place, a civilian operating as a SIM agent ordered that Cornejo Fernández be taken to the sector known as "the riding ring" (el picadero), and from that moment on, all traces of the detainee were lost.

In the ruling, the high court dismissed the lack of participation of the convicted Klug Rivera in the crime, given that the political prisoners were under his control at the Los Angeles regiment; furthermore, it dismissed the violation of res judicata by convicting other military personnel as perpetrators of the crime.

Indeed, for the forced disappearance of Luis Cornejo Fernández, former Army officer Patricio Gustavo Martínez Moena was sentenced to 20 years in prison in July 2019 as a direct perpetrator of the crime, and the civilian Juan Patricio Abarzúa Cáceres was sentenced to 5 years in prison. Klug Rivera had fled the country and had been declared a fugitive by the court.

In this regard, the Second Chamber states: "That, for its part, the ruling issued on December 27, 2016, convicted Patricio Gustavo Martínez Moena and Juan Patricio Abarzúa Cáceres as perpetrators of the same crime, so that, although it is the same illicit act, it does not refer to the same active subjects nor the same type of participation," the ruling says.

It adds: "That, as can be seen, from the sentence that motivates the res judicata argued in this case, it is not possible to conclude the double identity required by such an institution, since while agreeing that the facts are the same, the defendants are different, just as they are attributed different responsibilities, so the accused had not been tried."

"That, consequently, as the double identity required by criminal proceedings for res judicata to exist is not configured, the first cause argued in the cassation appeal filed will be dismissed," the ruling asserts.

Since July 2021, the former uniformed officer Walter Klug Rivera has been serving his sentence at the Punta Peuco Prison, as he was sentenced in October 2014 to 10 years in prison for crimes committed against workers at the El Toro and El Abanico hydroelectric plants.

However, prior to being notified of this sentence and taking advantage of the fact that he enjoyed the benefit of provisional release, the criminal former colonel fled Chile. In the course of 2015, he was prosecuted for the Cornejo Fernández case, but by then the individual was no longer to be found.

In June 2019, he was captured in Italy and extradited to Chile. In February 2020, he was placed at the disposal of Judge Carlos Aldana of the Concepción Court, who once again granted him provisional release.

The criminal fled the country again, this time to Argentina. In the neighboring country, he was captured in June 2021 and brought back before the Concepción court, and then admitted to Punta Peuco.

Source: resumen.cl, April 19, 2023

Date: 04-19-2023

Luis Cornejo Fernández Episode: Concepción Court issues effective prison sentence for aggravated kidnapping against Walther Klug Rivera.

The Concepción Court accepted the appeals filed by the plaintiffs against the resolution that acquitted Walther Klug Rivera of his responsibility in the aggravated kidnapping of Luis Cornejo Fernández, an illicit act perpetrated in September 1973 in the commune of Los Angeles.

In the resolution, the appellate court sentenced Klug Rivera to three years and one day of effective imprisonment as an accomplice to the consummated crime of aggravated kidnapping of Luis Ángel Cornejo Fernández, committed starting on September 18, 1973.

It also applied the accessory penalties of absolute perpetual disqualification for political rights and absolute disqualification for public offices and positions during the time of the sentence, in addition to the costs of the case.

"Consequently, if the sentence under review states in its thirteenth motive that Walther Klug Rivera was the head of the detention camp, was in charge of their custody, and his functions were assimilated to those of a prison warden, it is logical to conclude that he facilitated the illegitimate detention and subsequent disappearance of which Cornejo Fernández was a victim, both through prior and simultaneous acts, since it is an established fact of the process that the victim was held in the detention camp of the N°3 Reinforced Regiment and it was from that place that he disappeared without a known whereabouts, while he was under the control of the Military Intelligence Service," the ruling details.

The resolution adds that the alleged contradictions or lack of corroboration of the statements of some of the prosecution witnesses—which the lower court addresses in its fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth motives to undermine the accusation and justify the acquittal of Klug Rivera, and which are highlighted by his Defense in their response—are irrelevant.

The mere fact of whether or not he personally interrogated the detainees, whether or not he personally took them to interrogations, whether or not he beat the detainees, or whether or not he was located in the tent sector where the detainees passed before and after the interrogations, does not invalidate the attribution made in the indictment that Klug Rivera was an accomplice to those who ordered the detentions and torture inside the N°3 Reinforced Regiment of Los Angeles, ensuring the deprivation of liberty of the victim for the duration of that period.

During the investigation stage of the case, Judge Carlos Aldana managed to establish that around 16:30 hours on September 18, 1973, a patrol composed of military personnel and Carabineros detained Luis Ángel Ariel Cornejo Fernández, a communist militant, along with other people, at Calle Saavedra 170, Los Angeles, without any competent legal, administrative, or judicial order.

He was taken to the Los Angeles Carabineros Station, under the charge of commissioner Aroldo Guillermo Solari Sanhueza, and then to the Reinforced Regiment of the same city, where he remained detained and held in rooms conditioned for that purpose in the facilities intended for the Regiment's horses, at the disposal of the Military Intelligence Service of that military unit, where he was interrogated under illegitimate duress, without being subjected to any trial.

In the first days of October 1973, inside the Regiment, he was taken from the tent where he was with detainee Osvaldo Gustavo Rojas Ortiz and taken to the sector called "the riding ring" (el picadero), where a civilian attached to the aforementioned Intelligence Service, who transported the detainees to the place, ordered that Rojas Ortiz be taken to the Stables sector, while Cornejo Fernández was taken into the riding ring, and from then on, all traces of him were lost, with no news of his whereabouts or fate.

For this crime, through a sentence dated December 27, 2016, JUAN PATRICIO ABARZÚA CÁCERES and PATRICIO GUSTAVO MARTÍNEZ MOENA were convicted as co-perpetrators of the crime of aggravated kidnapping to the detriment of Luis Ángel Ariel Cornejo Fernández, committed starting on September 18, 1973, in Los Angeles, each to the penalty of five years and one day of major imprisonment in its minimum degree, plus the accessory penalties of absolute perpetual disqualification for public offices and positions and political rights, and absolute disqualification for professional titles for the duration of the sentence, and the costs of the case.

Source: diarioconstitucional.cl, September 7, 2021

Date: 09-07-2021

Concepción Court confirms ruling for aggravated kidnapping of university student in 1973.

The appellate court confirmed the sentence that convicted retired Army General Patricio Martínez Moena and merchant Juan Patricio Abarzúa Cáceres to 5 years and one day of imprisonment as co-perpetrators of the crime.

In a split decision, the Concepción Court of Appeals confirmed the sentence that convicted the retired Army general and the civilian for their responsibility in the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Luis Ángel Ariel Cornejo Fernández, an illicit act perpetrated in Los Angeles in September 1973.

Thus, the appellate court confirmed the sentence that convicted retired Army General Patricio Martínez Moena and merchant Juan Patricio Abarzúa Cáceres to effective sentences of 5 years and one day of imprisonment as co-perpetrators of the crime.

Furthermore, the method of serving the sentence imposed on the former military officer by visiting judge Carlos Aldana was ratified, who, in accordance with the provisions of Article 164 of the Organic Code of Courts, ordered the unification of the sanction to the 20 years of imprisonment he is serving for his responsibility in the so-called "Endesa Episode" for 14 aggravated kidnappings and 7 aggravated homicides.

In the civil aspect, the appellate court rejected the claim for compensation for moral damages filed by the victim's relatives.

During the investigation stage, Judge Aldana managed to establish that around 16:30 hours on September 18, 1973, a patrol composed of military personnel and Carabineros detained several people at Calle Saavedra 170, Los Angeles, among whom was Luis Ángel Ariel Cornejo Fernández, a communist militant, without having any competent legal, administrative, or judicial order.

The victim was taken to the Los Angeles Police Station and, subsequently, to the Reinforced Regiment of that city, remaining at the disposal of the military intelligence unit and subjected to illegitimate duress.

In the first days of October 1973, inside the regiment, Cornejo Fernández was taken from the tent where he was with detainee Osvaldo Gustavo Rojas Ortiz and taken to the sector called the Picadero, a place intended for the interrogation under torture of political detainees, where a civilian attached to the aforementioned intelligence service transported the detainees Rojas and Cornejo, assigning the former to the stables sector (or naves) while Cornejo Fernández entered the Picadero, and from then on, all traces of him were lost, with no news of his whereabouts or certain fate to this day.

The decision, in the civil aspect, was adopted with the dissenting vote of Minister Matilde Esquerré, who states that in the scenario in which the crime was proven, with the intervention of State agents protected by a cloak of impunity forged with state resources, it brings with it not only the impossibility of declaring the statute of limitations on the criminal action arising from them but also the unfeasibility of proclaiming the extinction—due to the passage of time—of the potential exercise of civil indemnity actions derived from the crimes that have been proven.

Source: diarioconstitucional.cl; March 21, 2018

Date: 03-21-2018

Reconstitution of the scene for the kidnapping of a young student who disappeared in '73 held at the Los Angeles Regiment

The minister of the Concepción Court of Appeals, Carlos Aldana, leads the reconstitution of the scene for the death of Luis Ángel Cornejo Fernández, who is listed as a forcibly disappeared person, in a case being investigated in Los Angeles.

Judge Aldana arrived at the military unit around 10:30 hours to lead the reconstitution for the case, which resulted in the death of the former topography student at the Los Angeles campus of the Universidad de Concepción, a member of the Communist Youth and leader of the Student Council.

According to human rights reports, Luis Cornejo Fernández was detained on September 18, 1973, at approximately 17:00 hours, by a patrol composed of Carabineros and military personnel, at a residence located on Calle Saavedra—in Los Angeles—where he was a boarder.

Along with him, other people were detained, including the homeowner. Luis Cornejo was taken to the Police Station and subsequently to the Los Angeles Regiment; from that moment on, what happened to the victim is unknown, and he is currently classified as a forcibly disappeared person.

After the reconstitution of the scene, Judge Aldana was to move to the Courts, on Calle Valdivia at the intersection with Avenida Ricardo Vicuña, where human rights cases are underway.

This proceeding could be one of the last in the case, in which a retired Army general and a former member of Patria y Libertad are already prosecuted as perpetrators of the crime of aggravated kidnapping.

The victim of the repression

Luis Angel Ariel Cornejo Fernández, single, university student, student leader, communist militant, was detained on September 18, 1973, at approximately 17:00 hours, by a patrol composed of Carabineros and military personnel, at the residence located at Calle Saavedra N°170 in Los Angeles where he was a boarder; along with him, other people were detained, including the homeowner.

He was taken to the Police Station and subsequently to the Los Angeles Regiment; from that moment on, what happened to the victim is unknown, and he is currently classified as a forcibly disappeared person.

His relatives visited detention centers in the area to request information; his mother interviewed the Commander of the Los Angeles Mountain Infantry Regiment and Captain Marshall of the same Regiment, who denied the detention of Luis Cornejo in that unit.

His parents also wrote to various national authorities to inform them of the situation affecting them and to ask for information regarding their son's fate without obtaining positive results in this regard.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

In response to inquiries made, Luis Cornejo's mother received a letter, dated June 25, 1974, and signed by Colonel Jorge Espinoza Ulloa, National Executive Secretary of the Secretariat for Detainees (SENDET), informing her that the affected individual was detained on September 18, 1973, by personnel of the N°3 Reinforced Mountain Infantry Regiment of Los Angeles and was released the same day due to lack of evidence.

He adds that, "subsequently, he has been sought by military edicts without being located."

For its part, the International Red Cross informed the family that Luis Ariel had only been released on January 1, 1974.

Source: angelino.cl, April 13, 2013

Date: 04-13-2013

Concepción Court convicts former Army officer Walter Klug Rivera for the crime of a student in 1973

In a ruling reported this Tuesday, the Concepción Court of Appeals revoked the first-instance sentence that acquitted former Army officer Walter Klug Rivera and, instead, resolved to convict him as an accomplice to the crime of aggravated kidnapping of the Topography student at the Universidad de Concepción, Los Angeles campus, Luis Ángel Ariel Cornejo Fernández, who has been a forcibly disappeared person in this city since September 18, 1973.

In a unanimous ruling (case file 1392-2020), the First Chamber of the Concepción Court—composed of ministers Carola Rivas Vargas, Nicole D'Alencon Castrillón, and Margarita Sanhueza Núñez—revoked the resolution of November 27, 2020, issued by the visiting judge for human rights violations cases of the Courts of Appeals of Concepción and Chillán, Carlos Aldana Fuentes, who had ruled for the acquittal of the individual.

In the resolution, the appellate court sentenced Klug Rivera to the penalty of three years and one day of effective imprisonment as an accomplice to the consummated crime of aggravated kidnapping of Luis Cornejo Fernández.

It also applied the accessory penalties of absolute perpetual disqualification for political rights and absolute disqualification for public offices and positions during the time of the sentence, in addition to the costs of the case.

For the forced disappearance of Luis Cornejo Fernández, former Army officer Patricio Gustavo Martínez Moena was sentenced to 20 years in prison in July 2019 as a direct perpetrator of the crime, and the civilian Juan Patricio Abarzúa Cáceres was sentenced to 5 years in prison. Klug Rivera had fled the country and had been declared a fugitive by the court.

In the case of Martínez Moena, the penalty imposed was unified with the 20-year sentence he had received in October 2014 for his participation as a perpetrator of the 21 crimes committed in the Endesa case.

For this same crime, at the end of July of this year, the extradited Walter Klug was admitted to serve his sentence at the Punta Peuco prison, after being transferred from a Concepción facility where he was serving preventive detention for the Cornejo Fernández case.

Walter Klug was sentenced to 10 years in prison in October 2014 for crimes committed against workers at the El Toro and El Abanico hydroelectric plants. Prior to being notified of this sentence and thanks to the fact that he enjoyed the benefit of provisional release, the criminal fled Chile.

Then, in the course of 2015, he was prosecuted for the Cornejo Fernández case, but by then the individual was no longer to be found. For both cases, an international arrest warrant was issued.

In June 2019, he was captured in Italy where he was on vacation. The Chilean Supreme Court immediately requested the individual's extradition but, due to an inexcusable procedural error, the request was filed first for the Cornejo Fernández case and he was only extradited for that cause in January 2020.

Subsequently, the extradition request for the Endesa case, where he had already been sentenced, was filed.

In February 2020, he was placed at the disposal of Judge Aldana, who, inexplicably, once again granted him provisional release. The criminal fled the country again, this time to Argentina. In the neighboring country, he was captured this past June and brought back before the Concepción court. Meanwhile, in the Cornejo case, Judge Aldana had decreed the acquittal of the former officer.

The ruling of the Concepción Court reverses this decision and convicts Klug. In the main considerations, the ruling states:

"Consequently, if the sentence under review states in its thirteenth motive that Walther Klug Rivera was the head of the detention camp, was in charge of their custody, and his functions were assimilated to those of a prison warden, it is logical to conclude that he facilitated the illegitimate detention and subsequent disappearance of which Cornejo Fernández was a victim, both through prior and simultaneous acts, since it is an established fact of the process that the victim was held in the detention camp of the N°3 Reinforced Regiment and it was from that place that he disappeared without a known whereabouts, while he was under the control of the Military Intelligence Service."

And it adds: "That, as things stand, the alleged contradictions or lack of corroboration of the statements of some of the prosecution witnesses—which the lower court addresses in its fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth motives to undermine the accusation and justify the acquittal of Klug Rivera, and which are highlighted by his Defense in their response—are irrelevant, since the mere fact of whether or not he personally interrogated the detainees, whether or not he personally took them to interrogations, whether or not he beat the detainees, or whether or not he was located in the tent sector where the detainees passed before and after the interrogations, does not invalidate the attribution made in the indictment that Klug Rivera was an accomplice to those who ordered the detentions and torture inside the N°3 Reinforced Regiment of Los Angeles, ensuring the deprivation of liberty of the victim for the duration of that period."

Source: resumen.cl, September 8, 2021

Former agent Walther Klug Rivera was extradited to Chile

The former agent of the dictatorship, retired Army Colonel Walther Klug Rivera—a fugitive from Chilean justice, residing in Germany since 2014—was detained on June 4, 2019, in the city of Parma, Italy. Klug arrived in Santiago this past Friday, February 7, 2020, extradited by the Italian justice system and brought to Chile by Interpol from the city of Bologna.

The extradition was requested by the Supreme Court on July 9, 2019, following the prosecution of Klug as an accomplice, issued by the visiting judge for Human Rights cases, Carlos Aldana Fuentes. The magistrate charged him with the aggravated kidnapping of Luis Cornejo Fernández, who has been missing since September 18, 1973.

On that same Friday, February 7, Klug Rivera was notified of his extradition at the Santiago Court of Appeals and transferred to the city of Concepción to be placed at the disposal of Judge Carlos Aldana.

Likewise, the former agent is convicted by a final sentence of the Supreme Court issued on October 23, 2014, to a penalty of 10 years and one day for his participation as an accomplice in 23 cases—seven of them executions and 14 disappearances—linked to workers of the El Toro and El Abanico hydroelectric plants, located in the city of Los Angeles, Biobío, investigated by visiting judge Jorge Zepeda Arancibia.

Regarding the extradition request for this case, it is still pending resolution by the Italian justice system.

The Human Rights Program Unit of the Undersecretariat for Human Rights is a plaintiff in the case for the aggravated kidnapping of Luis Ángel Ariel Cornejo Fernández and a supporting party in the case that followed for the workers of the hydroelectric plants, and this is how it participated in the arguments for both extraditions before the Supreme Court.

Source: pdh.minjusticia.gob.cl