On January 29, 1974, six people who had been detained in November 1973 in Iquique and transferred to the Pisagua prison camp were forcibly disappeared:

-Orlando Tomás CABELLO CABELLO, 44 years old, retail merchant, no political affiliation. Detained at his home by carabineros from Iquique, placed at the disposal of the Telecommunications Regiment, and subsequently transferred to Pisagua.

-Nicolás CHANEZ CHANEZ, 43 years old, transport entrepreneur, no political affiliation. He was detained and sent to the Investigaciones barracks in Iquique, and from there transferred to Pisagua.

-Juan MAMANI GARCIA, 27 years old, transporter, no political affiliation, was detained by carabineros, taken to the Iquique Telecommunications Regiment, and from there transferred to Pisagua.

-Luis Aníbal MANRIQUEZ WILDEN, 44 years old, retail merchant, no political affiliation.

-Hugo Tomás MARTINEZ GUILLEN, 36 years old, retail merchant, no political affiliation, detained by carabineros on November 2, 1973, taken to the Telecommunications Regiment, and subsequently transferred to Pisagua.

-Juan ROJAS OSEGA, 38 years old, no known political affiliation, detained by Carabineros personnel on November 1, 1973, transferred to the Telecommunications Regiment, and from there to Pisagua.

The common factor among them all was their alleged participation in drug trafficking and the smuggling of goods, charges that were profusely imputed to them through the press. None of these charges were judicially established once the aforementioned arrests were carried out.

The official information provided through a military communiqué from the Army's VI Division was that these individuals had been released on January 29, 1974. Furthermore, some of the families were officially notified of the alleged release of their relatives through a letter from the Chilean Army.

Thus, the spouse of one of the disappeared received letter No. 3550 380, dated July 19, 1974, issued by the Command of the Army's VI Division, in which it states that Nicolás Chanez was detained and transferred to Pisagua "for the purpose of investigating and determining responsibilities in an alleged violation of the Arms Control Law." "Once it was investigated and his innocence was proven, as far as the Arms Law is concerned, he was released on the date indicated above.

If he has not arrived home by this date, you should look for the answer elsewhere or ask yourself, your conscience as a wife who knows the activities your husband was involved in."

The bodies of all of them were found in 1990 in the Pisagua mass grave, placed in sacks, with their hands tied and their eyes blindfolded.

This Commission is fully convinced that Orlando Cabello, Nicolás Chanez, Juan Mamani, Luis Manríquez, Hugo Martínez, and Juan Rojas were not released but were executed without prior trial and their bodies were made to disappear by State agents.

On November 2, 1973, around 5:00 PM, Luis Aníbal Manríquez Wilden was returning home accompanied by his friend José Carvallo. Suddenly, three Carabineros in civilian clothes surrounded them, handcuffed them, and forced them into the victim's own vehicle, a red Dodge Dart.

Carabinero Lieutenant José Antonio Muñoz and Corporals Blas Daniel Barraza Quinteros and René Egidio Valdivia Castro drove both detainees to the 1st Carabineros Precinct of Iquique. Before leaving, Luis Aníbal Manríquez managed to shout to his wife, "They are taking us as detainees, I don't know why... call a lawyer." Sonia Margarita Ulloa Rodríguez, the victim's spouse, followed the group and saw him at the 1st Precinct in the guardroom, where they handed her his watch, his wedding ring, and a gold chain.

The victim managed to tell her that he was being accused of keeping a weapon in the car's glove compartment.

At the precinct, Luis Aníbal Manríquez remained held incommunicado until November 5, 1973, the date on which he was transferred to the Iquique Telecommunications Regiment. (Some witnesses indicated that he may have been taken to the Army Logistics Battalion, which was located next to the Telecommunications unit).

While at the Regiment, the victim wrote some letters to his family and obtained authorization to tend to the gardens. In this way, his wife and daughters could see him from a distance. It was then that they learned that Luis Aníbal Manríquez was being accused of drug trafficking.

On December 18, 1973, at 8:00 AM, Sonia Margarita Ulloa and her daughters Mónica and Silvia Manríquez saw the victim and other individuals being loaded onto an Army truck that would take them toward Pisagua. A jeep also accompanied the truck, carrying Lieutenant José Antonio Muñoz and Corporals Blas Barraza and René Valdivia, the captors of Luis Aníbal Manríquez Wilden.

From Pisagua, the victim wrote various letters and telegrams to his wife, telling her that he would likely be subjected to an internal War Council and that the accusation was related to drug and arms trafficking. According to the victim himself, Commander Ramón Larraín had assured him that once the Council was held, he would be sent to prison to be processed by the Ordinary Justice system.

However, none of this occurred. Communications were interrupted approximately in mid-January 1974, and on January 31 of the same year, the Iquique newspaper "La Estrella" published information stating that Manríquez Wilden had been released by order of the Commander-in-Chief of the State of Siege Zone, Brigadier General Carlos Forestier.

Upon arriving at Pisagua, Luis Aníbal Manríquez Wilden was forced off the truck with kicks and rifle-butt blows, accompanied by threats and insults, and was ultimately locked in one of the prison's incommunicado cells alongside the prisoners whom the rest of the detainees called "the coke-heads" (los coqueros).

During the month he remained in Pisagua, the victim was severely punished. On one occasion, he had to perform push-ups and "frog jumps" in the prison courtyard while Army Lieutenant Conrado García fired shots over his head, shouting at him to dodge the bullets.

As a witness related to the Visiting Judge, Hernán Sánchez Marré, there was a group of people in Pisagua characterized by the torments they inflicted on the victims. Among these people was the team of Prosecutor Mario Sergio Acuña Riquelme, composed of Army Sergeant Roberto Fuentes ("el Guatón Fuentes"), Army Corporal Juan Aguirre, and Lieutenants Conrado García, Abarzúa, Herrera, Irigoyen, and Pedro Collado.

To them were added Carabinero Lieutenant José Antonio Muñoz and Corporals Blas Barraza and René Egidio Valdivia. According to witnesses, the entire team was in charge of detaining, interrogating, torturing, and even executing.

Following this information, Visiting Judge Hernán Sánchez ordered the Carabinero captors of Luis Aníbal Manríquez to be summoned to the Tribunal. On June 13, 1990, Blas Daniel Barraza Quinteros stated that starting on September 11, 1973, he participated in detentions while dressed in civilian clothes, along with Corporal René Valdivia and Corporal Froilán Moncada, all under the orders of Lieutenant José Antonio Muñoz Muñoz.

He admitted to having detained Manríquez but denied having transferred him to Pisagua. He further declared that he had cooperated in interrogations carried out at that prison. For his part, René Egidio Valdivia Castro said that he had indeed acted in detentions under the orders of Lieutenant Muñoz, recalling the capture of Manríquez, on whom they did not find any narcotics.

From the statements of former Pisagua prisoners, it was easily deduced that Luis Aníbal Manríquez and the rest of "the coke-heads" remained in that camp until mid-January 1974. On that date, a witness, who was with the victim performing cleaning tasks at Playa Esperanza, witnessed military personnel arriving to tell the victim to pack his things because he was being released.

He never saw him again, until three weeks later when rumors began that he had been killed.

Other witnesses saw, around the same time, a military truck pass by in the back of which were the accused drug traffickers, blindfolded and with a red circle on their chests. The truck, accompanied by a jeep carrying military personnel, moved away from the prison about two or three kilometers in the direction of the Cemetery. It returned about an hour later, without the detainees.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

While the victim was still being held incommunicado at the 1st Carabineros Precinct, a Writ of Amparo (Recurso de Amparo) was filed for him and other persons at the Court of Appeals of Iquique on November 5, 1973, case file No. 109.868. The filing stated that Luis Aníbal Manríquez had not been placed at the disposal of a competent Tribunal and that his detention had occurred without any order.

As had happened on other occasions, the Court requested information from the Tarapacá Carabineros Prefecture, upon which the 1st Iquique Precinct depends. The response arrived on November 5, signed by Major Enzo Meniconi Lorca.

It stated that the detainee had been placed at the disposal of the VI Military Court, with report No. 15 dated November 3, for "manufacturing narcotics and complicity in arms trafficking; the detainees were sent to the Telecommunications Regiment."

The following day, November 6, 1973, "bearing in mind that the detention appears to have been carried out by an authority with the power to do so," the Court rejected the amparo.

However, faced with new information, a new writ of amparo was filed on November 20, 1973, before the same Tribunal, which was assigned case file No. 111.024. The filing stated that the victim had been placed at the disposal of the VI Military Court when Carabineros charged him with the crime of drug trafficking, but that the court had declared itself incompetent, returning the detainees to the Carabineros on November 17, 1973.

The Court of Appeals of Iquique then requested the Tarapacá Carabineros Prefecture to report on that situation. On November 21, Colonel Rubén Romero Gormaz informed the Tribunal that Luis Aníbal Manríquez Wilden and other detainees implicated in drug trafficking and complicity in arms smuggling had indeed been placed at the disposal of the VI Military Court on November 3, 1973.

He added that these prisoners were never returned to the Carabineros because "by order of the Military Judge, Chief of the State of Siege Zone, Brigadier General Carlos Forestier Haensgen, transmitted verbally by the Army Auditor, Major Enrique Cid Coubles, the case will continue to be under the cognizance of the Military Justice system." In short, the Carabineros only received the relevant documentation, which they again delivered to the VI Court on November 20, 1973.

The records never reached the Ordinary Justice system, and Luis Aníbal Manríquez was taken to Pisagua.

On November 22, 1973, the Court of Appeals of Iquique rejected this second amparo in favor of the victim because "the detention appears to have been carried out by an authority with the power to do so." The following day, the resolution was appealed, highlighting the irregularities that had been committed in the detention and imprisonment of Manríquez Wilden, especially those related to the VI Military Court's own declaration of incompetence and the verbal order that Major Enrique Cid transmitted to the Carabineros.

Despite the evident abnormalities, on December 3, 1973, the Supreme Court confirmed the resolution of the Iquique Tribunal. Before two months had passed since this rejection, the newspaper "La Estrella" published that, by order of General Forestier, the victim had been released.

Given the circumstances that, despite the public announcement of Luis Aníbal Manríquez Wilden's release, he did not return home, his wife, Sonia Margarita Ulloa, began a desperate search. She wrote letters inquiring about the fate of her husband and appeared directly before the authorities of the time.

At the IV Army Division, Major Enrique Cid merely showed her a document signed by the victim at the moment of his release.

For his part, Lieutenant Colonel Ramón Larraín Larraín, Commander of the Pisagua Detention Camp, responded in writing to one of the victim's daughters, insisting that the victim had been released by order of General Forestier and that if he did not return home, it was because "he could have gone abroad or to another place to avoid being detained again." In the same vein, Captain Pedro Collado Martí, Head of Public Relations of the IV Army Division (and named by more than one witness as an interrogator in Pisagua), wrote to Manríquez Wilden's spouse in February 1974: "your husband was released on January 15, 1974, being transported the same day from Pisagua, and was dropped off at the Alto Hospicio ascent at his own request."

Sonia Margarita Ulloa filed a complaint for the alleged disappearance of her husband with the Second Criminal Court of Iquique, which was assigned case file No. 32.971 on March 5 of that same year, 1974.

During the processing of this case, lawyer Hugo Onetto Urzúa testified before the Tribunal. He stated that around January 21, 1974, upon going to the IV Army Division, Major Enrique Cid showed him several release decrees signed by Brigadier General Carlos Forestier Haensgen.

Among those decrees was that of the victim and those of Hugo Martínez Guillén, Juan Mamani García, Tomás Orlando Cabello, and Juan Rojas Osega (all found in the Pisagua mass grave). Each of the victims had signed their release at the bottom of the document.

Hugo Onetto told the Tribunal that he expressed his surprise to Major Cid, since, for reasons of his profession and having attended Pisagua on the occasion of the War Councils held there, he knew very well that when a prisoner was released, he was transported in Camp vehicles to Iquique.

In this city, and only after the usual checks, the detainee was set free. Under those circumstances, he found it difficult to believe that the victim, at his own request, had been dropped off at the intersection of the Pisagua road and the Pan-American highway.

In an official letter sent to the Second Court, Major Enrique Cid Coubles confirmed what lawyer Hugo Onetto had declared, noting that Luis Manríquez Wilden "was released under weekly control of the Carabineros by Decree signed by the Chief of the State of Siege Zone, Brigadier General Carlos Forestier, dated January 16, 1974."

Immediately after receiving the letter from Major Cid Coubles, the Judge of the Second Court of Iquique closed the summary proceedings "as the investigation was exhausted" and dismissed the case for "the crime not being proven" (April 2, 1974).

The Judge's resolution was confirmed on April 16, 1974, by the Court of Appeals of Iquique, with the dissenting vote of Minister Bravo, who was in favor of returning the case to the summary stage. To justify his dissenting vote, the Minister argued for the need to summon Army Major Enrique Cid Coubles to testify so he could report the details of the victim's release; to determine who transported the detainee from Pisagua to the Pan-American highway; to summon the latter to the Tribunal; and to carry out all the proceedings that would arise from there.

Not a single one of those indications would ever be carried out.

On May 31, 1990, a complaint for Illegal Burial was filed with the Criminal Court of Pozo Almonte. It stated that in the town of Pisagua, in a place near the Cemetery but outside of it, approximately 11 bodies had been buried, outside of the current legality.

Judge Nelson Muñoz Morales accepted the complaint, assigning it case file No. 3805, and began excavations on June 1, 1990. These resulted in the discovery of 20 bodies buried in the mass grave, among them that of Luis Aníbal Manríquez Wilden, all of which would be recognized by their respective relatives, except for the last corpse recovered, which was missing the complete skull, and therefore has not been identified to date (1991).

On June 6, 1990, the Supreme Court appointed Hernán Sánchez Marré as Visiting Judge to continue overseeing the process. The Minister, in the course of his investigation and through countless testimonies provided both by former Pisagua prisoners and by people who even integrated the firing squads, was able to judicially configure what happened in Pisagua.

On June 15, 1990, the family of Luis Aníbal Manríquez Wilden presented a criminal complaint before the Visiting Judge for the Illegal Burial of the victim against those who might be found guilty. But, two weeks later, on June 31, 1990, Major General Luis Patricio Serre Ochsenius, judge of the VI Military Court of Arica, requested that the Minister decline his jurisdiction to continue overseeing the process because there was military personnel apparently involved in the events.

On August 8 of the same year, Hernán Sánchez Marré did not grant the request, elevating the records to the Supreme Court to resolve the jurisdictional dispute. On November 15, 1990, this Tribunal ruled in favor of the Military Justice system, leaving the case in the hands of the Iquique Prosecutor's Office, which assigned it case file No. 321-90.

The lawyers for the plaintiffs then requested a series of proceedings that were pending, without any of them being granted. Rather, the course the inquiries were taking was abruptly broken upon the process reaching the Military Justice system.

This situation was crowned by the request made by the former Pisagua prosecutor, Mario Sergio Acuña Riquelme, to the Iquique Prosecutor's Office on February 5, 1991. That day, Mario Acuña, who was testifying as a witness in the Military Tribunal, requested that it apply Decree Law 2.191 of April 1978, which granted amnesty for all crimes, with the exception of a few, that had been committed from September 11, 1973, to April 1978.

Military Prosecutor Juan Romo Aravena then ordered—on that same February 5, 1991—the closure of the summary proceedings, dismissing the case totally and definitively on February 26 through the application of D.L. 2.191 (Amnesty). This resolution was confirmed by the Martial Court.

Currently (December 1992), the records are at the Supreme Court awaiting a ruling on an appeal filed by the victims' lawyers.

Source: (Corporation Report)