D.O.B.: 20 05 50, 23 years of age at the time of his detention Address: Paniahue, Santa Cruz, Sixth Region Marital Status: Married Occupation: Agricultural worker Political Affiliation: Member of the Presidential Guard, militant of the Socialist Party Date of Detention: September 11, 1973

Manuel Ramón Castro Zamorano, married, 1 daughter, a militant of the Socialist Party, was detained on September 11, 1973, upon leaving the La Moneda Palace, which was being bombed. He was taken to the Tacna Regiment, where he remained until September 13, the date on which he was driven away in a military truck to an unknown destination; he remains forcibly disappeared to this day.

Manuel Castro was a member of the Presidential Guard, better known by the acronym GAP, for "Group of Personal Friends," alluding to an expression used by the President of the Republic himself. He had joined this Guard in 1972, and in these security duties, he was known by the pseudonym Víctor González.

In September 1973, he had spent a few days with his family, and on the 9th, he reported for his guard shift. On September 11, he was on duty at the Tomás Moro presidential residence, and at 6:00 a.m., he joined the presidential entourage that headed to La Moneda, remaining there until his detention.

On September 11, the La Moneda Presidential Palace, the seat of government, was seized by Army infantry and tank units led by General Javier Palacios, who were later joined by Carabineros forces. At 11:00 a.m., the bombing by the Chilean Air Force began, which destroyed a large part of La Moneda.

The members of the Presidential Guard and other individuals remained in the Palace until they received the order from President Salvador Allende to leave, which was done through a door on Calle Morandé 80 of the La Moneda Palace.

There, they were held at gunpoint and beaten by the military and were ordered to lie on the ground with their hands behind their necks, remaining under constant threat, including being crushed by a tank that moved toward that location.

Two members of the Presidential Guard, Antonio Aguirre Vásquez and Osvaldo Ramos Rivera, were taken prisoner inside La Moneda and were sent to the Public Assistance Post because they were wounded. A few days later, these two individuals were removed from said medical center by military personnel, remaining since then in the status of forcibly disappeared.

Other members of the GAP who were coming from the presidential residences of El Cañaveral and Tomás Moro did not manage to enter La Moneda and were detained in its vicinity by Carabineros. They were, among others, Gonzalo Jorquera Leyton, Williams Osvaldo Ramírez Barría, Carlos Cruz Zavala, and Domingo Blanco Tarrés, who were part of a group of approximately 13 people, some of whom were victims of political executions while others remain in the status of forcibly disappeared.

The people detained at La Moneda remained on Calle Morandé until 6:00 p.m. At that hour, these prisoners were taken in two military vehicles to the Tacna Regiment, located about 12 blocks from the La Moneda Palace and under the command of Colonel Joaquín Ramírez Pineda.

Survivors of these events have provided information that allows for the reconstruction of the facts: the prisoners remained in the aforementioned Regiment until September 13. While they were detained, they were forced to crawl on their knees, lie down with their arms behind their necks, or stand with their arms raised.

For nearly 48 hours, they had to remain in painful positions on rough ground or gravel, being trampled by soldiers who ran over them and beat them with the butts of their weapons or inflicted wounds with their bayonets, under the constant surveillance of guards armed with machine guns, who threatened them and asked the officers to execute them immediately.

Subsequently, they remained in a sector known as the "boxes" or former stables; from there, the prisoners were taken to an office located on the second floor of the Regiment, where they were subjected to political imprisonment and torture and interrogated by personnel of the Military Intelligence Service (SIM).

Afterward, they were returned in poor physical condition to rejoin the other prisoners and continue in the painful positions assigned to them. Each changing of the guard began with a beating of the prisoners with rifle butts.

There were 49 such prisoners. Of these, it was ordered that the 17 Investigaciones (detective police) officials who made up the presidential protection team be released the following day, and some other prisoners were separated.

Finally, a group of people remained as prisoners, 21 of whom have been identified: ten advisors to the President of the Republic or government officials, ten members of the Presidential Guard, and one worker.

The President's advisors were Jaime Barrios Meza, commercial engineer, presidential advisor, and General Manager of the Central Bank of Chile; Sergio Contreras, public relations officer for the Intendancy and journalist; Daniel Escobar Cruz, Chief of Cabinet for the Undersecretary of the Interior; Enrique Huerta Corvalán, Palace Intendant; Claudio Jimeno Grendi, sociologist, presidential advisor; Georges Klein Pipper, doctor, presidential advisor; Eduardo Paredes Barrientos, doctor, presidential advisor, and former Director of Investigaciones; Enrique París Roa, psychiatrist, presidential advisor, and member of the Superior Council of the University of Chile; Héctor Ricardo Pincheira Núñez, medical student, presidential advisor; and Arsenio Poupin Oissel, lawyer, Undersecretary General of Government and presidential advisor. The members of the Presidential Guard who have been identified are the following: Manuel Ramón Castro Zamorano, José Freire Medina, Daniel Gutiérrez Ayala, Oscar Lagos Ríos, Juan Montiglio Murúa, Julio Hernán Moreno Pulgar, Luis Rodríguez Riquelme, Jaime Sotelo Ojeda, Julio Tapia Martínez, Oscar Valladares Caroca, Juan Vargas Contreras, and Héctor Daniel Urrutia Molina. In addition, there was the worker Oscar Luis Avilés Jofré, who had come to La Moneda in support of the Government, given the circumstances.

Around 2:00 p.m. on September 13, 1973, these prisoners, with their hands and feet tied, were thrown into a military truck, one on top of the other, and driven out of the Regiment to an unknown destination.

However, one of those who managed to survive and has contributed to reconstructing these events is Juan Bautista Osses Beltrán, who was taken prisoner to the Tacna Regiment but was incorporated into another group of prisoners, which allowed him to survive after being imprisoned at the Estadio Chile and the Estadio Nacional.

Osses notes in his extensive statement that a group of 13 members of the Presidential Guard accompanied Allende to La Moneda and were detained inside. Subsequently, along with the other prisoners, he was taken to the Tacna Regiment, where they were informed that they would be executed by firing squad at 12:00 midnight, later that the execution would be at 3:00 a.m., and later still, it was indicated at 6:00 a.m.

Osses has acknowledged that among those detained at the Tacna Regiment were Héctor Daniel Urrutia, Daniel Gutiérrez, Enrique Huerta, Oscar Lagos Ríos, Juan Montiglio, Julio Moreno, Eduardo Paredes, Enrique París, Georges Klein, Héctor Pincheira, Arsenio Poupin, Luis Rodríguez Riquelme, and Oscar Valladares.

The witness was removed from the Tacna Regiment in the early hours of September 13, 1973, and taken along with other detainees to the Estadio Chile.

Beatriz Celsa Parrau Tejos, who was detained at the Tacna Regiment, has been able to provide some important background information. She was at INDUMETAL, a company taken over by workers, where she was attending to a wounded person in her capacity as a nurse.

At 6:00 p.m. on September 11, this company was occupied by Carabineros, and everyone there was detained and taken to a police station and, on the same day, transferred to the Tacna Regiment. There, she learned that those who had been captured at La Moneda were being held, and despite being separated from that group, she had the opportunity to see them when they went to the bathroom or when they were taken for interrogations.

There, she saw several doctors she knew from her professional activities and government leaders. She also observed numerous groups of other prisoners entering or leaving. On September 13, at noon, through the cracks of the shed where some 90 women were locked up, Celsa Parrau was able to see a truck leave the Regiment carrying bundles that looked like human bodies.

When they were taken out of the aforementioned shed at 2:30 p.m., she observed that the La Moneda prisoners were no longer there. For his part, the Chief of Investigaciones at La Moneda, detective Juan Seoane, remained among the La Moneda detainees until after noon on September 13, at which time he was able to witness how the prisoners were taken away in the military truck.

According to the testimonies of the survivors, they heard from the military personnel who participated in the operation that they had been taken to the Peldehue military camps, located in Colina, where they were allegedly executed by firing squad and buried.

A soldier from the Tacna Regiment, who was able to witness part of the events, recounted that the prisoners were tied with wire and thrown into an Army Pegaso truck, which was part of a convoy that left the barracks at approximately 2:00 p.m., while all conscripts were ordered to remain in their quarters and not walk through the courtyards.

In the afternoon, the contingent that had been part of the convoy returned, and word spread among the military that the prisoners had been taken to the property that the Tacna Regiment has in the Peldehue military camps in Colina.

There, they were allegedly killed in front of a hole or pit, about five to six meters in diameter and several meters deep, which existed a short distance from the dwelling used by the property's guard personnel.

The prisoners were placed in groups of four at the edge of the pit and shot. Once executed and thrown to the bottom of the pit, grenades were allegedly thrown inside, and thus the executions continued four by four.

The aforementioned soldier declares that he had to go to the mentioned property at the end of September 1973 and found the cited pit covered. There, it was confirmed to him that the executed had been buried in that place and that there were 26 or 27 of them.

However, this slaughter of prisoners, who had surrendered and were unarmed and bound, has never been officially acknowledged, nor have the bodies been returned, and the aforementioned persons, including Manuel Ramón Castro Zamorano, have remained disappeared since September 13, 1973.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

The family of Manuel Castro Zamorano did not take judicial action regarding his disappearance, given that it was a peasant family living in a town far from administrative centers.

Source: Corporation report

The Second Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals sentenced seven members of the Army as co-perpetrators of the crimes of homicide and aggravated kidnapping of 23 victims, all direct collaborators of President Salvador Allende.

The Santiago Court of Appeals issued a sentence against seven Army personnel who participated as co-perpetrators in the homicide and kidnapping of 23 collaborators of President Salvador Allende who were detained on September 11, 1973, from the La Moneda Palace following the military coup and transferred to the Tacna Regiment and the "Fuerte Arteaga" in Peldehue, where they were executed by firing squad and blown up with grenades.

Among the victims were political advisors, members of President Allende's security detail (GAP), doctors, economists, and officials of the Chilean Investigative Police, among others.

The Chamber, which was composed of ministers María Soledad Melo, Gloria Maria Solis, and Inelie Durán, confirmed the ruling made in May 2018 by investigating judge Miguel Vázquez Plaza and sentenced the then-Army soldier Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo to twenty years of major imprisonment in its maximum degree as a co-perpetrator of the aggravated homicide of 15 of the 23 victims.

These are Jaime Antonio Barrios Meza, economist and general manager of the Central Bank; Egidio Enrique Paris Roa, former secretary general of the University of Chile; Georges Klein Pipper, doctor and advisor to the General Secretariat of Government; Claudio Raúl Jimeno Grendi and Héctor Ricardo Pincheira Núñez, also presidential advisors; and Luis Avilés Jofré, Manuel Ramón Castro Zamorano, Oscar Reinaldo Lagos Ríos, Julio Hernán Moreno Pulgar, Luis Fernando Rodríguez Riquelme, Jaime Gilson Sotelo Ojeda, Luis Fernando Tapia Martínez, Héctor Daniel Urrutia Molina, Juan Alejandro Vargas Contreras, and Juan José Montiglio Murúa, all members of the GAP.

The ruling sentenced Teobaldo Segundo Mendoza Vicencio, Eliseo Antonio Cornejo Escobedo, Bernardo Eusebio Soto Segura, and Jorge Ismael Gamboa Álvarez to seven years of major imprisonment in its minimum degree as co-perpetrators of the aggravated homicide of the same people.

Meanwhile, Servando Elías Maureira Roa and Jorge Iván Herrera López, currently deceased, were sentenced to nine years of major imprisonment for the same crime.

Maureira Roa and Herrera López were also sentenced as perpetrators to minor imprisonment in its maximum degree as co-perpetrators of the crimes of aggravated kidnapping of eight of the 23 victims. These are Juan Eduardo Paredes Barrientos, former chief of the Investigative Police; Arsenio Poupin Oissel, former secretary general of Government; Sergio Contreras; Enrique Huerta Corvalán, former Palace Intendant; Daniel Escobar Cruz, chief of cabinet for the Undersecretary of the Interior; and former GAP members José Freire Medina, Daniel Gutiérrez Ayala, and Oscar Enrique Valladares Caroca.

"Bittersweet," is how plaintiff lawyer Nelson Caucoto described the sentence handed down in this case. "Sweet because 48 years later, a trial of historical significance is coming to an end. These are the events that occurred in the La Moneda Palace, that is, in the heart of the political and republican institutionality of Chile, which was razed by blood and fire by the coup-plotting military."

The lawyer added that "there are 23 victims, collaborators of President Allende who were accompanying him until the very last moment on that crucial day. Taken to the Tacna Regiment, tortured, and finally executed by firing squad in Peldehue by their captors.

Of those 23 victims, whose remains were removed five years later, 15 were successfully identified, which led to the legal classification of aggravated homicide. The remaining eight led to aggravated kidnappings."

The bitter side of the judicial decision lies, in Caucoto's opinion, "because it is in these last eight crimes where we disagree with the penalty and determined participation, both in the first and second instance. We trust that the Most Excellent Supreme Court can rectify this part of the sentence so that we may have full justice."

According to the investigation substantiated by judge Miguel Vázquez, it was established that the victims were inside La Moneda on September 11, 1973, and that they left through the Morandé N°80 door, were detained, and transferred to the Tacna Regiment, where they remained until September 13 of the same year, the date on which they were taken from the premises with their hands and feet tied with wire in a Pegaso truck.

They were then transferred to the "Fuerte Arteaga" military facility in Peldehue, a locality where the victims were executed by firing squad and blown up with grenades.

Five years after having been executed, their bodies were exhumed and disappeared again. However, bone splinters and other skeletal remains were left at the site, with which 15 of the 23 victims were identified.

The remaining eight were not found, and the whereabouts of Sergio Contreras, Daniel Escobar Cruz, José Freire Medina, Daniel Gutiérrez Ayala, Enrique Huerta Corvalán, Juan Eduardo Paredes Barrientos, Arsenio Poupin Oissel, and Oscar Enrique Valladares Caroca remain unknown to this day.

Source: radio.uchile.cl 4/11/2021 Date: 04-11-2021

11 advisors to Salvador Allende murdered in Peldehue identified: The other traces of La Moneda

The confirmation of identities was made by the Human Rights Unit of the Legal Medical Service with the support of an Austrian genetic laboratory. They suffered a double death: the bullets of the machine gun and the exhumation to disappear into the sea.

On September 11, 1973, in La Moneda and its surroundings, nearly 40 people were arrested, most of them advisors and GAP members of Allende.

The remains of 11 forcibly disappeared persons arrested on the day of the military coup at the La Moneda Palace were definitively identified by the Legal Medical Service with the collaboration of the genetics laboratory in Innsbruck, Austria.

The information was delivered yesterday to the relatives by the director of the SML, Dr. Patricio Bustos, who had previously delivered the reports to Judge Juan Fuentes Belmar, who is investigating the case of the disappeared from La Moneda.

The identities correspond to Enrique Paris Roa, 40 years old at the time of his detention; Héctor Pincheira Núñez (28); Óscar Lagos Ríos (21); Julio Moreno Pulgar (24); Julio Tapia Martínez (24); Héctor Urrutia Molina (22); Juan Vargas Contreras (23); Óscar Avilés Jofré (28); Jaime Sotelo Ojeda (33); Manuel Castro Zamorano (23); and Luis Rodríguez Riquelme.

Of this list, Paris and Pincheira were advisors to President Salvador Allende, and the rest were members of the President's personal security (GAP). The identities of Lagos, Moreno, Tapia, and Vargas appeared as "thrown into the sea" in the report on the final destination of 200 forcibly disappeared persons that the Army delivered in January 2001, following the human rights dialogue table held in 2000.

"Despite the passage of time, technological limitations, and the obstacles placed by the perpetrators of these acts, we have managed, with the multidisciplinary team of the Human Rights Unit of our service, to advance in the process of identifying victims of the dictatorship with a very rigorous methodology in the area of archaeology and anthropology, as well as foreign laboratories accredited for DNA extraction, obtaining positive results," said Dr.

Patricio Bustos.

On September 11, 1973, in La Moneda and its surroundings, nearly 40 people were arrested, most of them advisors and GAP members of Allende. The detainees were taken to the Tacna Regiment, and two days later, about 20 of them were taken out in two trucks, driven to the Peldehue training camp north of Santiago, and killed by machine-gun fire.

The commander of the Tacna at the time was Colonel Joaquín Ramírez Pineda.

Those who received the detainees in Peldehue to supervise that they were indeed eliminated were Major Pedro Espinoza Bravo, who later joined the Caravan of Death and the DINA, and Lieutenant Julio Vandorsee Cerda.

The then-sub-lieutenant of the Tacna, Jorge Iván Herrera López, operated the machine gun, killing them one by one, as he told La Nación Domingo in December 2002. The bodies were thrown into a dry well about 10 meters deep, which they then dynamited to cover the corpses.

THE EXHUMATION

Near Christmas 1978, a detachment of the Tacna, now commanded by Colonel Hernán Canales Varas, located the well and exhumed the bodies to put them in sacks and throw them into the sea aboard a Puma helicopter of the Army Aviation Command, then in charge of Colonel Fernando Darrigrandi Márquez.

The exhumation was part of the so-called "Operation Television Set Removal" (Operación Retiro de Televisores), which was carried out throughout the country to exhume the bodies of murdered prisoners buried in clandestine graves and throw them into the sea or incinerate them, as happened in some southern regiments.

The order was issued by the dictator Augusto Pinochet through a cryptogram from the Army General Command sent to all regiments in the country at the end of 1978.

In the summer of 2001, Judge Amanda Valdovinos inspected the site in Peldehue and found the well from which the bodies were exhumed. From there, nearly 500 bone fragments were extracted that remained from the exhumation carried out with a backhoe.

The information had been provided under anonymity at the aforementioned dialogue table; however, it did not correspond to the site where the remains were finally found.

For the exhumation, nine officers and non-commissioned officers (R) were sentenced to only 270 days in prison each, with supervised release.

The process for the crimes of the disappeared from La Moneda remains open, and among those prosecuted are Pedro Espinoza himself, Ramírez Pineda, Jorge Iván Herrera, General (R) Herman Brady, who was the commander of the Santiago Military Garrison, and a group of retired non-commissioned officers who participated in the transfer of the prisoners to Peldehue and who later also formed part of the team that exhumed the bodies.

Some of them are Eliseo Cornejo, Bernardo Soto, Teobaldo Mendoza, and Juan Riquelme Silva.

Source: La Nación 26 de Enero 2010 Date: 26-01-2010

Court approves extradition expansion for General (r) Joaquín Ramírez Pineda

The commander of the Tacna Regiment in 1973 is being prosecuted in Chile for aggravated kidnappings in the so-called La Moneda Palace case.

The Supreme Court expanded the extradition request to Argentina for Luis Joaquín Ramírez Pineda, commander of the Tacna Regiment in 1973, who is currently detained in Buenos Aires.

Ramírez Pineda is being prosecuted in our country by Judge Juan Eduardo Fuentes Belmar in the investigation into aggravated kidnappings in the so-called La Moneda Palace case.

In a unanimous ruling, the ministers of the Second Chamber, Nibaldo Segura, Rubén Ballesteros, Jaime Rodríguez, Hugo Dolmestch, and Carlos Künsemüller, accepted the request made by Judge Fuentes Belmar in the case of 9 victims who have been disappeared since September 11, 1973.

These are Jaime Gilson Sotelo Ojeda, Sergio Contreras, Héctor Ricardo Pincheira Núñez, José Freire Medina, Juan Eduardo Paredes Barrientos, Egidio Enrique Paris Roa, Manuel Ramón Castro Zamorano, Daniel Antonio Gutiérrez Ayala, and Fernando Rodríguez Riquelme.

In 2003, the Supreme Court decided to send an extradition request for the person prosecuted for the kidnapping cases of Jaime Antonio Barrios Meza, Daniel Francisco Escobar Cruz, Enrique Lelio Huerta Corvalán, Claudio Raúl Jimeno Grendi, Jorge Klein Pipper, Óscar Reinaldo Lagos Ríos, Juan José Montiglio Murúa, Julio Hernán Moreno Pulgar, Arsenio Poupin Oissel, Julio Fernando Tapia Martínez, Óscar Enrique Valladares Caroca, and Juan Alejandro Vargas Contreras, which also occurred starting in 1973 at the La Moneda Palace.

The background information for the expansion of the extradition request has already been sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs so that it may forward it to Argentina for processing in that country.

Source: El Mercurio 20 de Marzo 2009 Date: 20-03-2009

“Consequently, the legal error incurred by the challenged judgment occurred by estimating that, regarding Espinoza Bravo, only the intent to kill was proven; regarding Cornejo Escobedo, he did not have control over the act concerning the confinement of the victims and the transfer of the detainees, as it was within his duties; and regarding Gamboa Álvarez, for not having intervened in the custody of the persons deprived of liberty at the Regimiento Tacna.”

The Supreme Court increased the sentences to be served by retired Army officers for their responsibility in the repeated and consummated crimes of kidnapping and qualified homicide of advisors and collaborators of the President of the Republic, Salvador Allende Gossens, who were detained at the Palacio de La Moneda on September 11, 1973, and subsequently executed and illegally buried inside the Fuerte Arteaga in Peldehue.

In a unanimous criminal ruling (case file 5.005-2022), the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed of ministers Haroldo Brito, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Jorge Dahm, Leopoldo Llanos, and minister María Teresa Letelier—established an error in the challenged judgment, issued by the Santiago Court of Appeals, in the part that acquitted Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Eliseo Antonio Cornejo Escobedo, and Jorge Ismael Gamboa Álvarez, convicting them instead as perpetrators of the crimes for having had control over the acts.

“That it must also be kept in mind that in relation to authorship, there is control over the act: a. In the conduct of the immediate perpetrator who carries out and controls the act objectively and subjectively by their own hand (control of the action); b.

In the control of the will as happens in cases of mediate authorship; c. In cases of functional control as occurs in the case of co-authorship,” the ruling states.

The resolution adds that: “The immediate or direct perpetrator is the one who carries out directly, materially, or by their own hand, in whole or in part, the conduct described in the penal type, with the punishable act being objectively and subjectively imputable to them.

The immediate perpetrator is the master of the act, because they retain the power to decide autonomously on the prosecution of the criminal event until its consummation.”

“Thus, in every intentional crime of commission like the one investigated in these proceedings, one must consider as an immediate or direct perpetrator the person who materially performs all the requirements contained in the description of the penal type, as well as the person who materially executes the order of another, if all the requirements of the typical act concur in said execution,” it adds.

“For its part,” it continues, “the mediate perpetrator is the one who executes their own act through another whose conduct they instrumentalize. It is the one who, controlling the act and possessing the other special characteristics of authorship, makes use of another person called an instrument to execute the typical conduct.

In mediate authorship, control of the act presupposes that the global event is presented as the work of the directive will of the person behind it and that this person controls the conduct of the executor through their influence over them.”

“Thus, one of the cases of mediate authorship through control of the will consists of the use of an organized apparatus of power, in which the subject behind it disposes of a perfectly ordered machinery, of a state, paramilitary, or mafia nature, with whose help they can commit a multiplicity of crimes through the intermediary, who performs the conduct fully conscious, without coercion or error.

In these cases, the ‘instrument’ that enables the person behind the scenes to execute the orders of the mediate perpetrator is the apparatus as such, which is composed of a plurality of persons who are integrated into pre-established structures, who cooperate in various functions related to the organization, and whose framework ensures the person behind the scenes control over the result.

The one who acts individually does not play a decisive role for the acting of the organization because they can dispose of many executors willing to do what is asked of them, so that the mediate perpetrator can, through the apparatus at their disposal, produce the result with greater security than even in the assumption of control through coercion and error, which are recognized almost unanimously as cases of mediate authorship (Roxin, ‘The control of organization as an independent form of mediate authorship,’ in Revista de Estudios de la Justicia, No. 7, 2006, pp. 14-15),” the resolution cites.

“Following the aforementioned author, the decisive factor to substantiate the control of the will in such cases resides in the fungibility of the executor. Indeed, the aforementioned jurist refers to the fact that there is a manifestation of mediate control of the act, which is, control of the will by virtue of organized machineries or structures of power, thus alluding to the assumptions that in the postwar period have increasingly occupied jurisprudence and which are characterized by the fact that the subject behind the scenes has at their disposal a personal machinery (almost always state-organized) with whose help they can commit crimes (Roxin, Claus, Authorship and control of the act in Criminal Law. Seventh edition, Editorial Marcial Pons, Madrid, 2000, p. 270),” the ruling affirms.

“In this sense, authorized national doctrine has pointed out that a mediate perpetrator is the one who, to execute the typical act, makes use of another whose will they control through the organized apparatus of power, and who is the one who performs it materially,” it highlights.

“In our positive law, mediate authorship is recognized in Article 15 No. 2 of the Penal Code, which ‘According to the scope of Article 15 and the thought of the drafting Commission, a mediate perpetrator is the subject who manages to have another person carry out a criminal action by having directly influenced them.

In our legislation, in mediate authorship, the intermediary acts intentionally, and not as a simple instrument; they have knowledge that they are committing a forced or induced crime and, therefore, although they are a mediator between the one who forces or induces and the result, they are much more than a means of execution, and for that reason, they are also a perpetrator, but an immediate one.

No. 2 of Article 15 legislatively enshrines what the doctrine calls ‘the perpetrator behind the perpetrator,’ with the following characteristics: a) Two actions coexist, that of the mediate perpetrator, constituted by the use of instigation (in the case under examination, by the control of the will by virtue of organized power structures), and that of the immediate perpetrator, who materially performs the act, and b) Both the mediate and immediate perpetrators act intentionally in the same direction, so that the latter is not an instrument of the former, because they know what they are doing and the significance of their acting, which comes to be the effect or complementary consequence of the action of the inducer (mediate perpetrator). These are two complementary actions, the concurrence of which is required for the existence of the crime; without the behavior of the mediate perpetrator, no crime would be incurred’ (Garrido Montt, Mario. Stages of the Execution of the crime, authorship and participation. Editorial Jurídica de Chile, 1984),” the ruling details.

“Finally,” it continues, “co-authors will be those who execute the act jointly and by mutual agreement (express or tacit), dividing the realization of the plan, in such terms that they have co-control of the act, over whose consummation they decide jointly, because each of the contributions considered separately is functional to the execution of the act in its entirety.

In co-authorship, there is functional control, because the authors distribute the realization of the act, they ‘divide the labor,’ so that none of them has total realization of it, but rather they commit it among all of them.

In the words of Bacigalupo, the essential element of co-authorship is the co-control of the act. This element has been characterized by Roxin as a functional control of the perpetrator in the sense that each of the co-authors has in their hands control of the act through the part that corresponds to them in the division of labor (Bacigalupo, Enrique.

Criminal Law, General Part. 2nd, renewed and expanded edition, Hammurabi, Buenos Aires, p. 501).”

For the Supreme Court: “(…) under the conditions previously described, it should be taken into consideration that the subject who supervised the detentions of the victims in the military facilities, ordered that their executions be carried out in the shortest time, for which they had to be transferred to the establishment where they were to be carried out, and witnessed the executions, is responsible for the illicit acts as a perpetrator, as well as the individuals who guarded the victims while they were in the first military facility, then transferred those detainees to the place of their execution, keeping them tied up and then proceeding to shoot them, causing their death, to then bury them, with the skeletal remains of the victims not being able to be identified, for having been removed from that place subsequently, so they made a functionally significant contribution to the act (functional control), in accordance with the normative hypotheses of authorship provided for in the national legal system, in Article 15 of the Penal Code, which provides: ‘The following are considered authors: 1° Those who take part in the execution of the act, whether in an immediate and direct manner, or by preventing or trying to prevent it from being avoided. 2° Those who directly force or induce another to execute it. 3° Those who, having concerted for its execution, facilitate the means with which the act is carried out or witness it without taking immediate part in it.’”

“That, consequently, the legal error incurred by the challenged judgment occurred by estimating that, regarding Espinoza Bravo, only the intent to kill was proven; regarding Cornejo Escobedo, he did not have control over the act regarding the confinement of the victims and the transfer of the detainees, as it was within his duties; and regarding Gamboa Álvarez, for not having intervened in the custody of the persons deprived of liberty at the Regimiento Tacna (ninth, seventeenth, and twenty-first considerations),” the resolution maintains.

Likewise, the ruling states that: “Everything reflected evidences the errors of law incurred by the judgment under examination, as it restricts the criminal participation of authors in the crimes under examination, solely to those who detained and confined the victims Sergio Contreras, Daniel Francisco Escobar Cruz, José Freire Medina, Daniel Antonio Gutiérrez Ayala, Enrique Lelio Huerta Corvalán, Juan Antonio Eduardo Paredes Barrientos, Arsenio Poupin Oissel, and Óscar Enrique Valladares Caroca, exonerating from criminal responsibility the Army officials who, in the case of Espinoza Bravo, supervised their detention and ordered that their executions be carried out quickly, as well as witnessed them, and regarding Cornejo Escobedo and Gamboa Álvarez, transferred the detainees tied up from the Regimiento Tacna to the military facility of Peldehue, proceeding to shoot the aforementioned victims, all of them consequently retaining control of the act, being able to stop both the transfer and the execution of the offended parties at any moment, so they are responsible in accordance with the normative hypothesis of authorship provided for in Article 15 No. 1 of the Penal Code. The error has had an influence on the dispositive part of the ruling, as it meant acquitting the accused as authors of qualified kidnapping regarding the eight persons mentioned.”

“That, for the reasons developed, the ground for nullity in substance will be accepted, based on numeral 4° of Article 546 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, filed by the Human Rights Program, insofar as the appealed judgment acquitted Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Eliseo Antonio Cornejo Escobedo, and Jorge Ismael Gamboa Álvarez, since the trial judges, when qualifying the conduct displayed by these accused regarding the victims Sergio Contreras, Daniel Francisco Escobar Cruz, José Freire Medina, Daniel Antonio Gutiérrez Ayala, Enrique Lelio Huerta Corvalán, Juan Antonio Eduardo Paredes Barrientos, Arsenio Poupin Oissel, and Óscar Enrique Valladares Caroca, qualified as lawful acts that the penal law considers to be crimes, infringing in this way Articles 15 and 141 of the Penal Code,” the cassation ruling concludes.

Sentences Therefore, in the replacement judgment, it is resolved:

“I.- That the aforementioned judgment is revoked insofar as it acquitted Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Eliseo Antonio Cornejo Escobedo, and Jorge Ismael Gamboa Álvarez of the charges formulated as authors of the repeated crimes of qualified kidnapping of Sergio Contreras, Daniel Francisco Escobar Cruz, José Freire Medina, Daniel Antonio Gutiérrez Ayala, Enrique Lelio Huerta Corvalán, Juan Antonio Eduardo Paredes Barrientos, Arsenio Poupin Oissel, and Óscar Enrique Valladares Caroca, and instead it is decided that they are convicted to the following sanctions:

1.- Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, to a sentence of twenty years of major imprisonment in its maximum degree, legal accessories of absolute perpetual disqualification for public offices and positions and political rights, and absolute disqualification for titular professions for the duration of the sentence, plus the payment of the costs of the case, for his participation as an author in the repeated crimes of qualified kidnapping of Sergio Contreras, Daniel Francisco Escobar Cruz, José Freire Medina, Daniel Antonio Gutiérrez Ayala, Enrique Lelio Huerta Corvalán, Juan Antonio Eduardo Paredes Barrientos, Arsenio Poupin Oissel, and Óscar Enrique Valladares Caroca, committed from September 11, 1973, all in the city of Santiago, corporal punishment of effective fulfillment, as the requirements demanded by Law No. 18.216 for the granting of substitute sentences are not met in his regard.

2.- Eliseo Antonio Cornejo Escobedo and Jorge Ismael Gamboa Álvarez to a sentence of fifteen years and one day of major imprisonment in its maximum degree, legal accessories of absolute perpetual disqualification for public offices and positions and political rights, and absolute disqualification for titular professions for the duration of the sentence, plus the payment of the costs of the case, for their participation as authors in the repeated crimes of qualified kidnapping of Sergio Contreras, Daniel Francisco Escobar Cruz, José Freire Medina, Daniel Antonio Gutiérrez Ayala, Enrique Lelio Huerta Corvalán, Juan Antonio Eduardo Paredes Barrientos, Arsenio Poupin Oissel, and Óscar Enrique Valladares Caroca, committed from September 11, 1973, all in the city of Santiago, corporal punishment of effective fulfillment, as the requirements demanded by Law No. 18.216 for the granting of substitute sentences are not met in their regard.

II.- That the cited pronouncement is confirmed in all other appealed matters, with the following declarations:

1.- That Servando Elías Maureira Roa is sanctioned to the corporal punishment of fifteen years and one day of major imprisonment in its maximum degree, plus the accessories of absolute perpetual disqualification for public offices and positions and political rights and that of absolute disqualification for titular professions for the duration of the sentence, plus the payment of the costs, as an author of the aforementioned qualified kidnapping crimes, corporal punishment of effective fulfillment, as the requirements demanded by Law No. 18.216 for the granting of substitute sentences are not met in his regard.

2.- That Servando Elías Maureira Roa, Eliseo Antonio Cornejo Escobedo, and Jorge Ismael Gamboa Álvarez are sanctioned to the corporal punishment of fifteen years and one day of major imprisonment in its maximum degree, plus the accessories of absolute perpetual disqualification for public offices and positions and political rights and that of absolute disqualification for titular professions for the duration of the sentence, plus the payment of the costs, as authors of the crimes of qualified homicide of Óscar Luis Avilés Jofré, Jaime Antonio Barrios Meza, Manuel Ramón Castro Zamorano, Claudio Raúl Jimeno Grendi, Georges Klein Pipper, Óscar Reinaldo Lagos Ríos, Julio Hernán Moreno Pulgar, Egidio Enrique Paris Roa, Héctor Ricardo Pincheira Núñez, Luis Fernando Rodríguez Riquelme, Jaime Gilson Sotelo Ojeda, Julio Fernando Tapia Martínez, Héctor Daniel Urrutia Molina, Juan Alejandro Vargas Contreras, and Juan José Montiglio Murúa, corporal punishment of effective fulfillment, as the requirements demanded by Law No. 18.216 for the granting of substitute sentences are not met in their regard.

In its civil section

III.- The referred award is revoked insofar as it rejects the civil lawsuit filed by Mr. Rubén Alejandro Contreras Isla, and instead it is declared that it is accepted, regulating the compensation for moral damages to which he is entitled in the sum of $150,000,000 (one hundred and fifty million pesos).

IV.- That the aforementioned judgment is revoked insofar as it accepted the lawsuit for compensation for damages for moral harm filed by Ms. Schlomit Montiglio Cepeda, and instead it is declared that it is rejected.

V.- That the ruling is revoked in the part that establishes that the payment of readjustments is due from the month prior to the date of issuance of the first-instance judgment and the month prior to its payment, accruing current interest for readjustable operations, for the same period, and instead it is declared that the sums ordered to be paid will be readjusted according to the variation experienced by the Consumer Price Index between the date of the executory nature of this ruling and the effective payment of the indemnities, accruing interest for non-readjustable operations from the time the debtor is in default.

VI.- That the appealed ruling is confirmed in all other matters.”

Decision agreed upon with the dissenting vote of Minister Llanos, who was in favor of confirming the first-instance judgment, also in the part that accepted the lawsuit for compensation for damages for moral harm, filed by Schlomit Montiglio Cepeda, “in the form that the challenged judgment does.”

Machine-gunned in Peldehue

In the first-instance ruling, the presiding judge Miguel Vázquez Plaza established the following facts:

“a.- That, on September 11, 1973, the Armed Forces and Order carried out a previously planned coup d'état, through which the Government of the time was overthrown, accompanied by a handful of political advisors, GAP, and officials of the Investigations Service, for reasons of a political, economic, and social order that are not the case to analyze in this judicial venue, for which they seized power and, to concretize the uprising, the Government Palace where the former President of the Republic Salvador Allende Gossens was located was surrounded by military forces and after warnings that the occupants of La Moneda should abandon said site; upon not doing so, the seat of government was bombed by means of Hawker Hunter planes, without any persons resulting dead from that act. Then, the occupants of La Moneda left, with their hands up, being taken by the military forces to the outside.

b.- That, on the occasion of the events that occurred on September 11, 1973, military troops that entered the Palacio de La Moneda proceeded to the detention of a group of around 50 persons, composed of direct political advisors, members of the security device of President Allende (GAP), doctors, and officials of the Investigations Police of Chile, who surrendered to the military forces occupying the Palacio de La Moneda, some of whom were released and others were detained and transferred, for the most part, to the Regimiento Tacna of the Army of Chile, being entered in such capacity into said Regiment, without any formal charge, except that they performed various functions in the recently overthrown government. The following day, the officials of the Investigations Police who worked inside La Moneda were released.

c.- That, on September 13, 1973, the detainees Sergio Contreras, Daniel Francisco Escobar Cruz, José Freire Medina, Daniel Antonio Gutiérrez Ayala, Enrique Lelio Huerta Corvalán, Juan José Montiglio Murúa, Juan Eduardo Paredes Barrientos, Arsenio Poupin Oissel, Óscar Enrique Valladares Caroca, Óscar Luis Avilés Jofré, Jaime Antonio Barrios Meza, Manuel Ramón Castro Zamorano, Claudio Raúl Jimeno Grendi, Georges Klein Pipper, Óscar Reinaldo Lagos Ríos, Julio Hernán Moreno Pulgar, Egidio Enrique Paris Roa, Héctor Ricardo Pincheira Núñez, Luis Fernando Rodríguez Riquelme, Jaime Gilson Sotelo Ojeda, Julio Fernando Tapia Martínez, Héctor Daniel Urrutia Molina, and Juan Alejandro Vargas Contreras, who still remained in the Regimiento Tacna and who came from the group of prisoners captured from the Palacio de La Moneda, were tied by their feet and hands with wires, then loaded onto a military truck, guarded by officers and military personnel, and immediately transferred to a predetermined place, located on the property destined for the Regimiento Tacna that was in the military facility of Peldehue, adjacent to the San Martín highway, Colina sector, which was carried out by virtue of an order that emanated directly from the commander of the Regimiento Tacna, who in turn requested or received said instructions from a military officer of higher rank, who at that moment served as commander of the Military Garrison of Santiago, commander of the Second Army Division, and military judge of Santiago.

d.- That, upon arriving at said place in Peldehue, the referred detainees were taken down from the military truck and, according to the background information gathered in the investigation, the installation of a machine gun was ordered, by means of which they fired upon said prisoners, who were tied by their hands and feet with wires, who were placed at the edge of a well or empty pit previously excavated on said property, and who, upon receiving the bullet impacts, fell inside said pit.

Once the executions concluded, the military personnel threw grenades into the pit, which exploded at the site, subsequently covering them with earth and burying in this way the bodies of such prisoners; actions that were controlled and verified by an officer of the Army Intelligence Directorate who witnessed the executions from a distance close to the site of the events.

e.- That, once the execution actions of the detainees and subsequent burial of their bodies in the aforementioned pit were concluded, the group of military personnel who had participated in the operation, composed of officers and military personnel of lower rank, returned in the same vehicles used for the initial transfer to the Regimiento Tacna, reporting such facts to the commander of the unit, who in turn had to communicate them to the superior hierarchical officer, commander of the Military Garrison of Santiago.

f.- That, on the occasion of having discovered in other cases bodies buried clandestinely, the order was given by the Army high command that the remains be removed from the place where they had been executed, transferring them to an unknown destination (apparently thrown into the sea or in the high mountain range); however, having carried out excavations at the place where the execution occurred, remains were found that were positively identified regarding: Óscar Luis Avilés Jofré, Jaime Antonio Barrios Meza, Manuel Ramón Castro Zamorano, Claudio Raúl Jimeno Grendi, Jorge Klein Pipper, Óscar Reinaldo Lagos Ríos, Julio Hernán Moreno Pulgar, Egidio Enrique Paris Roa, Héctor Ricardo Pincheira Núñez, Luis Fernando Rodríguez Riquelme, Jaime Gilson Sotelo Ojeda, Julio Fernando Tapia Martínez, Héctor Daniel Urrutia Molina, Juan Alejandro Vargas Contreras, and Juan José Montiglio Murúa; as reported by the integrated expert reports sent by the Legal Medical Service, from page 7960 and following, 8762 and following, 9666 and following, 9701 and following, and 12383 and following, by forensic medical examinations carried out on the bone evidence recovered from the ‘Fuerte Arteaga’ military facility located in the town of Peldehue in the commune of Colina, and of the human remains associated with Protocol No. 1561-01 of the Legal Medical Service linked to this case, in which it is also stated that the most probable immediate medical cause of the death of these persons was produced by hemorrhagic shock as a consequence of injuries by firearm, being for that reason the forensic etiology of the death of a violent homicidal nature.

g.- That, the rest of the persons who were detained in La Moneda on September 11, 1973, and taken out of the Regimiento Tacna, namely: Sergio Contreras, Daniel Francisco Escobar Cruz, José Freire Medina, Daniel Antonio Gutiérrez Ayala, Enrique Lelio Huerta Corvalán, Juan Eduardo Paredes Barrientos, Arsenio Poupin Oissel, and Óscar Enrique Valladares Caroca, were not identified in the skeletal remains found there, their whereabouts being unknown since that date.”

Source: pjud.cl 12/16/2023