already identified in the case files, is sentenced to a penalty of THREE YEARS AND ONE DAY OF PRESIDIO MENOR IN ITS MAXIMUM DEGREE as an accomplice to the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Vitalio Orlando Mutarello Soza, which occurred on September 12 or 15, 1973, in the town of Pedro de Valdivia, and to the accessory penalties of absolute perpetual disqualification for political rights and absolute disqualification for public offices and positions for the duration of the sentence.

Both are also jointly and severally sentenced to pay the court costs.

Source: Judiciary, January 25, 2017

Supreme Court convicts retired Carabineros non-commissioned officer for the aggravated kidnapping of a union leader from a nitrate office

The highest court rejected the appeal in cassation filed against the sentence that convicted retired Carabineros non-commissioned officer Arturo Óscar Contreras Tamayo to a penalty of 3 years and one day of imprisonment, with the benefit of intensive supervised release, as an accomplice to the crime of aggravated kidnapping of union leader Vitalio Orlando Mutarello Soza.

The Supreme Court rejected the appeal in cassation filed against the sentence that convicted retired Carabineros non-commissioned officer Arturo Óscar Contreras Tamayo to a penalty of 3 years and one day of imprisonment, with the benefit of intensive supervised release, as an accomplice to the crime of aggravated kidnapping of union leader Vitalio Orlando Mutarello Soza.

This illicit act was committed starting in September 1973, at the Pedro de Valdivia nitrate office, in the commune of María Elena, province of Tocopilla, currently the Antofagasta Region. In a unanimous ruling (case roll 23.156-2019), the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed of ministers Haroldo Brito, Jorge Dahm, Leopoldo Llanos, María Teresa Letelier, and lawyer (i) Ricardo Abuauad—ruled out any error of law in the challenged sentence, issued by the Santiago Court of Appeals, which confirmed the resolution convicting Contreras Tamayo as an accomplice to the crime, by ruling out that he had direct participation in the events. “Regarding the first ground for cassation on the merits asserted by the appellant, and as this Court has already held in a sentence issued in case Roll No. 34.392-2016, of March 21, 2019, it is necessary to point out that, as no violation of the rules governing evidence has been established, the facts established by the lower court judges remain unalterable—in the present case, those relating to the degree of participation attributed to the defendant Contreras Tamayo—from which it is inferred that the complainant's allegations must be analyzed in light of such factual hypotheses, since it is not permissible for this Supreme Court, on the occasion of studying the proposed ground for nullity, to attempt a new assessment of such evidence and establish facts different from those determined by the lower court,” the ruling maintains. “In this sense, and having determined as a fact of the case that the accused Contreras Tamayo did not have direct participation in the events, but rather cooperated in their execution through prior or simultaneous acts, the conclusion reached in the ruling under review—regarding his degree of participation—is correct, thereby ruling out the existence of the error of law denounced by the complainant in his first section of the appeal in cassation,” it adds. In the appealed sentence, the Santiago Court of Appeals held as proven the following facts, established in the first instance by the visiting minister Mario Carroza: “ 1st.- That in September 1973, after the military coup, in the Province of Tocopilla, the Carabineros Prefecture decided to establish a Military Prosecutor's Office in the area under the command of the Carabineros Subprefect and to grant it the support of Carabineros Intelligence officials to carry out its work, with these becoming the repressive apparatus for left-wing militants or sympathizers in this case. In the fulfillment of their duties, they began operations aimed at carrying out raids and detaining people to lock them in the police unit's cells and interrogate them under torture, who were then mostly transferred to the city of Antofagasta or subjected to War Councils, where some were sentenced to death and others executed without prior trial; 2nd.- That this modus operandi was recurrent throughout the Province of Tocopilla and those units that were under the control of the Prefecture and the jurisdiction of the Military Prosecutor's Office, one of them being the María Elena Police Station, which in turn had under its command the Sub-station of the Pedro de Valdivia Camp, the latter under the command of Captain Gerardo Maluje Abraham and as second-in-command Lieutenant Osvaldo Aniceto Muñoz Sanhueza, in addition to other non-commissioned officers who were in charge of the Carabineros of the Sub-station, such as Sergeant 1st Class Arturo Contreras Tamayo, who replicated in their jurisdiction the same repressive techniques of the Prefecture, since they raided, detained, locked up, and interrogated under torture people politically linked to the previous Government, and in this case, several of them corresponded to people who provided services to the Pedro de Valdivia Nitrate Office of the Soquimich Company; 3rd.- That, coupled with the above, the Head of the unit had an active participation in this political repression, since he was in charge of making calls through the media for union leaders of the Company to surrender voluntarily and provide statements to them. Faced with this request and in the belief that those State agents who directed the police unit at the time were upright and trustworthy in their investiture as authorities of the area, since they had the duty to ensure the safety of the entire population, Vitalio Orlando Mutarello Soza decided to present himself voluntarily on September 12 or 15, 1973, while being President of the Workers' Union of the Nitrate Office; 4th.- That regarding this voluntary surrender of Vitalio Mutarello to the police authorities of the Carabineros Sub-station, as well as his reception and detention in the guardroom of the police unit, there were numerous witnesses and he was recognized by the authorities themselves, but contrary to the assumptions that led him to present himself, those who had the duty of his custody and to guarantee his fundamental rights did not do so, because from that day on, there is no further news of his whereabouts, nor could his death be established ”. In the civil aspect, the sentence that ordered the state treasury to pay a total compensation of $130,000,000 (one hundred and thirty million pesos) for moral damages to the victim's relatives was confirmed.

Source: pjud.cl, October 15, 2021

Two former Carabineros convicted for the 1973 kidnapping of a nitrate industry leader in the Antofagasta Region

Gerardo René Maluje Abraham and Arturo Óscar Contreras Tamayo received between 5 and 3 years of imprisonment for the kidnapping of Vitalio Orlando Mutarello Soza in the town of Pedro de Valdivia. Gerardo René Maluje Abraham and Arturo Óscar Contreras Tamayo were sentenced to penalties of 5 years and one day and 3 years and one day, respectively, by the ruling issued by the extraordinary visiting minister of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Mario Carroza.

As reported today by the newspaper La Estrella de Antofagasta, the conviction of these two retired members of the Carabineros is due to the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Vitalicio Orlando Mutarello Soza in 1973, specifically in the town of Pedro de Valdivia in the Antofagasta Region.

According to the investigation, Minister Carroza managed to establish "that after September 11, 1973, the authorities began a radio campaign for leaders of left-wing parties to present themselves voluntarily at the Pedro de Valdivia sub-station.

In those calls, the name of Vitalicio Mutarello, a union leader of the nitrate plant and a socialist militant, appeared. He went to the police unit on September 12, where he remained detained for a period of 2 or 3 days, and from which his trail is completely lost." Subsequently, according to the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, which recounts the connection of two detainees by the Carabineros of Pedro de Valdivia "with the victim Vitalio Mutarello Soza, who allegedly died as a result of the torture to which he was subjected at the Pedro de Valdivia Sub-station, and his body was allegedly left in the pampa approximately on September 12, 1973."

Source: soychile.cl, January 30, 2017