Luis Medina, ID No. 5.712.484 from Ñuñoa, managed an ultra-secret operational team formed by Manuel Contreras. Member of the Sociedad Pedro Diet Lobos, a commercial front for the DINA to cover up activities both in Chile and abroad.

He was one of the few men of Contreras who remained with Odlanier MENA when the latter took charge of the CNI. In June 1986, with the rank of Major, he was a substitute zone chief under a State of Emergency in the III Region.

Source: Revista Analisis No 282

The Second Chamber of the highest court unanimously sentenced the former officer to 200 days in prison for the application of torture. As this is a case in which Human Rights were violated, it is not subject to a statute of limitations, and it should also be noted that a cassation appeal was accepted, and the State was ordered to pay compensation of $50 million to the victim.

The Supreme Court sentenced the retired Army officer, Luis Alberto Medina Aldea, for torture against Guillermo Torrealba Pastén in September 1973, at the then-Military Prosecutor's Office of Rancagua. In the Second Chamber of the highest court, the former officer was unanimously sentenced to 200 days in prison for the application of torture.

According to reports by Bíobío, this is in line with the investigation by the visiting judge, Mario Carroza Espinosa, where it was established that Torrealba Pasten was detained on September 15, 1973, by carabineros while he was at his home; he was then admitted to the Public Jail, from where he was taken out on two occasions to be interrogated.

During those interrogations, he was tortured by Lieutenant Medina at the location where the Military Prosecutor's Office of Rancagua operated at that time. According to the investigation, the soldier delivered repeated blows with his fists, kicks, and a metal bar.

In addition, Medina threatened Torrealba with death, telling him that he would take him to a room to perform electric shocks on him. As this is a case in which Human Rights were violated, it is not subject to a statute of limitations, and it should also be noted that a cassation appeal was accepted, and the State was ordered to pay compensation of $50 million to the victim.

Source: El Desconcierto, September 30, 2019

Supreme Court sentences retired Army officer for the application of torture at the Military Prosecutor's Office of Rancagua

The Supreme Court sentenced a retired Army officer for the application of torture against Guillermo Torrealba Pastén, which occurred in September 1973, at the then-Military Prosecutor's Office of Rancagua.

In a unanimous ruling (Case File 8.318-2018), the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed of ministers Hugo Dolmestch, Carlos Künsemüller, Lamberto Cisternas, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, and Jorge Dahm—sentenced Luis Alberto Medina Aldea to 200 days in prison for the application of torture.

The investigation by visiting judge Mario Carroza Espinosa established that: 1st. That Guillermo Humberto Torrealba Pasten was detained on September 15, 1973, by personnel of the Carabineros de Chile from the Rosario Precinct and the 4th Police Station of Rengo, at his private residence, located at Calle Prieto No. 15, in the town of Rosario.

Once detained, Torrealba was transferred in the first instance to the Rosario Precinct, then to the 4th Police Station of Rengo, and finally admitted to the Public Jail of the city of Rancagua, incommunicado, a place from which he was taken out on two occasions to be subjected to interrogations, occasions on which he was tortured by Lieutenant Medina at the city's Military Prosecutor's Office, who dealt him constant blows to different parts of his body with fists and kicks, also using a metal bar for that purpose, along with threatening him with death and with being taken to a room to apply electric shocks. 2nd. That for such a crime, Luis Alberto Medina Aldea was sentenced, in the same challenged judgment, as the perpetrator of the crime of application of torture, contemplated in number 1 of article 150 of the Penal Code, also classified as a crime against humanity, which occurred in the months of September and October 1973, in the city of Rancagua, which was issued by the Extraordinary Visiting Minister of the Court of Appeals of Santiago, Mr. Mario Carroza Espinosa,” the ruling states. In the civil aspect, the cassation appeal was accepted, and the State was ordered to pay compensation of $50,000,000 (fifty million pesos) to the victim, establishing that it is a crime against humanity that is imprescriptible from a civil and criminal point of view. “Thus, in the present case, the domestic law norms provided for in the Civil Code regarding the statute of limitations for common civil actions for damages, upon which the lower court judges based their decision, are not applicable, as they are in contradiction with the rules of International Human Rights Law that protect the right of victims and family members to receive the corresponding reparation, an international normative statute that has been recognized by Chile and which, notwithstanding the date of its consecration and internal recognition, corresponds to norms of jus cogens, imperative international law that protects essential values shared by the international community, which should have been recognized by the trial judges when resolving the filed lawsuit,” the sentence affirms in this regard.

Source: diarioelpulso.cl, September 30, 2019

Supreme Court sentences retired Army officer for illegitimate coercion of detainees in 1973

In a unanimous ruling, the Second Chamber of the highest court ruled out an error of law in the sentence that sentenced the then-lieutenant Luis Alberto Medina Aldea to a penalty of 5 years in prison, as the perpetrator of the crimes.

The Supreme Court rejected the cassation appeal on the merits filed by the defense against the sentence that convicted the retired Army officer for his responsibility in the application of illegitimate coercion against Arturo Mariano Droguett Madrid, Luis Alfonso Pérez Moreno, Francisco Ramón Abarca Moreno, Juan Carlos Pérez Muñoz, Marcos Erik Pezoa Salfate, Manuel Jesús Lara Bustamante, Alfonso Araya Salinas, Alfredo Antonio Martínez Córdova, Adolfo Ernesto Lara Bustamante, Orlando Martín Moraga Fuentealba, Joel Antonio Quintana García, David Eleuterio Quintana García, María Luisa Gutiérrez Catalán, and Rosa Victoria Bustamante Valdebenito, detained in the facilities of the then-Intendancy and in the Rancagua jail. Illicit acts committed between September and December 1973. In a unanimous ruling (case file 44.836-2021), the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed of ministers Haroldo Brito, Jorge Dahm, Leopoldo Llanos, María Teresa Letelier, and Eliana Quezada—ruled out an error of law in the challenged sentence, issued by the Court of Appeals of Santiago, which sentenced the then-lieutenant Luis Alberto Medina Aldea to a penalty of 5 years in prison, as the perpetrator of the crimes. “That, without prejudice to the above, in relation to the infringement of articles 15, 16, and 17 of the Penal Code, it argues that there is no evidence for him to be considered a perpetrator under article 15 number 1 of the Penal Code, since, although the victims were indeed detained, the facts described and held as proven are exclusively attributable to Army Captain Mr. Joaquín Molina,” the ruling states. The resolution adds that: “It indicates that, as secretary, he had no control over the act, much less military command over a captain, and even less, effective training in intelligence matters, and likewise, that there is no evidence that he collaborated with prior or simultaneous acts in the same.” For the Criminal Chamber: “(…) as established by the first-instance judge in his 8th consideration, ‘During the time they remained deprived of liberty in the different detention centers, they were transferred on various occasions to the regional Intendancy where the Military Prosecutor's Office also operated, to be interviewed as indicated by the accused Medina in his investigations; he also maintained having prepared the lists with the names of the detainees who were required for said instance, which differs in terms of the terminology used from that referred to by the victims themselves, who stated in their testimonies that they had been taken out of the penitentiary facilities to be interrogated about weapons, names of other people, activities, etc., and whose answers, if not satisfactory to their interrogators, entailed a series of psychological and physical aggressions, or attacks against their sexual integrity, whether with kicks and punches in different parts of the body, blows with an element referred to by the victims as a ‘tonto de goma’ (rubber truncheon), application of electricity to the hands, genitals, and other sensitive parts of the body, and in addition to the above, in the case of women, sexual attacks, as their clothing was torn and they were touched on their breasts, legs, and their bodies were rubbed against theirs, damage that is reflected in the reports sent by the Legal Medical Service in their respective Istanbul protocols. The participation of Medina in the illicit acts is proven by the very statements of the plaintiffs, who for the most part have recognized him in confrontation proceedings by his physical features, and those who have not had the certainty of whether it is him, have been categorical in stating that they are sure that a lieutenant with the surname Medina tortured them at the prosecutor's office, and just as the accused himself pointed out in his investigations ‘( ... ) being the only Lieutenant Medina at that time’, to which we have added the hearsay testimonies of Gendarmerie personnel, other detainees, or witnesses who have declared in the course of the investigation, whose testimonies are duly identified in this ruling, which account for the participation of the accused Medina Aldea in interrogations and even of them having seen some of the victims arrive in poor condition after their interrogations, as also pointed out by Patricio Rodolfo Javier Núñez Oliveira, a doctor, who attended to the detainees of the Rancagua jail in the infirmary, and who attests to the conditions in which they arrived at those facilities’.” “The above is ratified by the second-instance judges when referring to the participation of the sentenced person in the tenth motive, in which they account for the evidentiary means to establish his participation, and, ruling out any error in the person, he is recognized by his victims, in such a way that with the referred evidence, there is no error of law in qualifying Medina's participation as a direct perpetrator, in accordance with article 15 No. 1 of the Penal Code. For this reason, the appeal cannot prosper either,” it highlights. Likewise, the ruling records: “That regarding the second infringement of law asserted by the defense, based on the fact that the judges did not qualify the conduct of the sentenced person as this Court has resolved, the determination of the concurrence or not of the modifying circumstances of criminal responsibility and qualification, if applicable, constitutes a private task of the jurisdictional body whose decision is specified in the ruling, so that the refusal to recognize the mitigating circumstance does not constitute an infringement of law that has a substantial influence on the dispositive part of the ruling, so that said cause cannot prosper.” “That—it continues—, addressing the examination of the third error of law denounced due to the non-application of the reduction provided for in article 103 of the Penal Code, this will be dismissed; this Court shares what was reasoned by the ruling under examination, and it must only be reiterated that, given that both the partial statute of limitations and the cause for extinction of criminal responsibility due to the statute of limitations are based on the passage of time as a justifying element for their application; then, the impropriety of the total statute of limitations necessarily reaches the partial one, since one and the other institution are based on the same element, which is rejected by the international criminal order in the case of a crime against humanity, such as the one in the present case, so that none of such institutes is acceptable, as has been maintained by this Court repeatedly (SCS Case File No. 17.887-2015, of January 21, 2015; 24.290-2016 of August 8, 2016; 44.074-2016 of October 24, 2016; 9.345-2017, of March 21, 2018; 8.154-2016 of March 26, 2018; and, 825-2018 of June 25, 2018).” Compensation In the civil sphere, the highest court accepted the cassation appeal in form and, in a replacement sentence, set at $40,000,000 the amount of compensation that the State and the convicted person must pay jointly for moral damages to the appellant, as it was not justified why a lower figure was stipulated for him than that granted to the other appellant victims. “That the factual considerations require establishing with accuracy the factual elements that serve to support the requests made by the litigants, oriented toward the decision of the controversial matter, based on the means of justification provided to the process. Now, for the proper establishment of the facts, it is imperative that the court carry out a study and analysis of the evidence provided, expressing with clarity and precision the reasons that lead to considering them proven, an establishment that is equally necessary for the ruling of the cassation court, since it must accept them even if they deserve a different legal qualification, unless an infringement of the laws regulating the evidence is claimed and proven, which allows it to establish different facts,” the ruling states. The resolution recalls that: “This Court has highlighted, on various occasions, the importance of recording the considerations of fact and law as indispensable requirements of judicial sentences, which tend toward the legality of the ruling, while enabling the parties to know the reasons for the decision, leaving them in a position to file the appeals they deem appropriate.” “Thus, by legal imperative, every final sentence must begin its considerations with the analysis of the evidence provided and the subsequent establishment of the facts that are considered proven, to then reason about the applicable law and, consequently, about the appropriateness of the actions and defenses raised,” it details. “In this sense—it delves—, it should be taken into consideration that said grounds for invalidation have—according to constant jurisprudence—an essentially objective character and, to pronounce on their appropriateness, an external examination of the ruling is sufficient in order to verify whether or not the requirements demanded by the law concur, without it being appropriate to decide on the value or legality of the statements that arise from them, to weigh their intrinsic merit or the value of conviction that should be attributed to them.” “That, in the present case, it is evident that the challenged sentence suffers from the denounced shortcomings, since from a study of it, there appears—in the terms delimited in the previous reflection—a null and therefore insufficient exposition of the reasoning that serves as its support, in all its extremes, so the mandate of the legislator has not been obeyed,” the ruling asserts. “Indeed, the appealed sentence, after exposing the allegations contained in the appeals filed by the parties and citing jurisprudence that establishes the appropriateness of compensation for damages in this type of case, in the twentieth consideration expresses: ‘In conclusion, once the sequelae suffered by the actors were proven, regarding the pain, anguish, and negative consequences that they produced, considering the parameters developed above, in addition to the gravity of the illicit acts, their consequences, and the circumstances in which they occurred, it is reasonable to consider that in the present case, the damage has been prolonged over time, which has materialized in unhealed wounds, causing permanent psychological effects, which have been explicitly detailed in the appealed sentence, applying the principles of reasonableness and proportionality’; after which it confirms the appealed sentence, without analyzing the detail of the background information that led them to maintain, regarding the appellant, lower compensation than that of the rest, which, given the nature of the challenge formulated, constitutes the omission of the reasoning of judgment denounced by the appeal. One must not forget that the compensation for the damage produced by the crime, as well as the action to make it effective, are of maximum importance when administering justice, compromising the public interest and aspects of material justice, which allow progress in the termination of the conflict,” the ruling explains. “The need for an analysis in this sense emanates from the nature of the compensation action exercised and from what was stated by the litigants, given that, for an adequate resolution of the matter, it was imperative to analyze the damages that the detention, torture, and illegitimate coercion caused to Adolfo Ernesto Lara Bustamante. The controversy raised dealt precisely with the damages that the agents of the State of Chile, with their actions, caused to the appellant,” it concludes. Rubber truncheon In the first-instance ruling, the visiting judge Mario Carroza established the following facts: “1.- On September 11, 1973, a state of siege was decreed throughout the territory of the Republic of Chile, and a state of emergency in the provinces and departments of the country, and Colonel of the Army Cristián Ackerknecht San Martín was designated as chief and intendant of the then-province of O'Higgins, who, to fulfill said functions, ceased to provide services directly in the Regiment of the city and organized an information office in the facilities of the old Intendancy of Rancagua, located in the main square of that city. Likewise, and by direct instruction of the aforementioned colonel, the Military Prosecutor's Office was constituted inside said property under the charge of Army Captain Bruno Enriotti Zuleta (deceased), before which numerous War Councils were held. 2.- Once the intelligence service was established in the city of Rancagua, it had a collaborative team that was made up of two Investigation officials with the surnames Acevedo and Fagalde (both deceased) and also, by the then-Army Lieutenant Luis Alberto Medina Aldea, who was dedicated to the identification and interrogation of people detained for political reasons; for this, he was temporarily relieved of his duties in the Mountain Infantry Regiment No. 22 Lautaro, so that he would exclusively fulfill functions in the Military Prosecutor's Office and eventually act as secretary of the military court. 3.- Among the activities and operations carried out by the intelligence service starting in the month of September 1973 in the then-province of O'Higgins, Marcos Erik Pezoa Salfate, Alfonso Araya Salinas, Orlando Martín Moraga Fuentealba, Adolfo Lara Bustamante, Manuel Jesús Lara Bustamante, María Luisa Gutiérrez Catalán, Joel Antonio Quintana García, David Eleuterio Quintana García, and Alfredo Antonio Martínez Córdova, all militants of the Communist Party or Socialist Party, with the exception of María Gutiérrez Catalán, who was an official of the Local Police Court of Machalí, were deprived of their personal liberty and then interrogated in the facilities of the old Intendancy. Once detained by different police and military units of the region, they were transferred and admitted to the Public Jail of Rancagua, and in the case of María Gutiérrez Catalán, to the Women's Jail, ‘El Buen Pastor’, of the same city. From those places, they were taken on different dates and times by Investigation or Army officials to the facilities where the Military Prosecutor's Office was installed. 4.- In the facilities of the Military Prosecutor's Office, the detainees were interrogated by the team designated for those functions, being subjected to sessions of torture; they were beaten with fists, feet, and a ‘tonto de goma’—a metal rod covered with rubber—on different parts of their bodies, they were subjected to electric shocks on their genitals, hands, arms, legs, and face, and they were also threatened with death. María Gutiérrez Catalán, together with the scourges described, was sexually violated. 5.- The detainees Manuel Lara Bustamante, Adolfo Lara Bustamante, Alfredo Antonio Martínez Córdova, Joel Antonio Quintana García, and David Eleuterio Quintana García were sentenced in a War Council, and the rest were released on different dates, between the months of October 1973 and January 1976, without having been subjected to any process. 6.- The intelligence service continued its operation, and in the middle of the month of December 1973, by order of the Military Prosecutor's Office of Rancagua, an operation was carried out in the Esperanza neighborhood sector of that city, coordinated by the Army and the Investigative Police, in which Arturo Mariano Droguett Madrid, Luis Alfonso Pérez Moreno, Francisco Ramón Abarca Moreno, Juan Carlos Pérez Muñoz, and Rosa Victoria Bustamante Valdebenito were detained, whose ages fluctuated between 14 and 18 years old. 7.- The detainees were first held at the Investigations Barracks, then transferred to the former prison and former Women's Jail ‘El Buen Pastor’, respectively, and subsequently taken on repeated occasions to the Military Prosecutor's Office of the city of Rancagua. In the first facility, they were subjected to interrogations by officials of the institution, who dealt them kicks and punches, and also beat them with a ‘tonto de goma’—a metal rod covered with rubber. 8.- In circumstances where they were in the facilities of the Military Prosecutor's Office, located inside the Intendancy of the city at that time, they were again subjected to sessions of torture and illegitimate coercion, interrogated while blindfolded, received constant threats of execution, were dealt punches and kicks in different parts of their bodies, received electric shocks on their hands, arms, feet, and testicles in the case of the men, and application of electric shocks on the nipples and indecent abuse in the case of the only woman in this group of detainees, who suffered touching on her breasts, her clothes were torn, and they rubbed their naked bodies on top of her on a desk. 9.- This group of young people who were detained in the former Rancagua Prison and in the Women's Jail ‘El Buen Pastor’ were released on December 31, 1973, without having been subjected to a process by any court.”

Source: Judiciary, December 6, 2023