This September 23, the day we remember 24 years since the explosive-related homicide of Jaime Orellana and Nelson Lagos in Chillán, crime scene reconstructions were carried out for the crimes committed by military personnel of the Armed Forces on duty with the CNI, who, with exclusive dedication, proceeded to plan and execute homicides, some of them mass killings like that of August 23, 1984.

With a large police deployment involving numerous PDI officers—some strangely hooded as in the dictatorship—and GOPE personnel, the scene reconstruction was carried out under the direction of Judge Carlos Aldana, who, accompanied by his legal secretary David Bravo and the lawyer from the Human Rights Department of the Ministry of the Interior, Mrs.

Magdalena Garcés, participated in order to clarify the criminal acts in which the leaders of the southern zone of the MIR were executed on August 23, 1984.

In every place where the proceedings were carried out—Hualpén, Concepción, and San Pedro—in addition to their relatives and friends, the Association of Political Executions of the MIR of Concepción and social organizations of Hualpén were present.

A large crowd from the sector gathered, as well as the press from various media outlets, who from a distance—cordoned off by the officers—were attentive to the movements describing the events that occurred during those homicides.

Let us remember that on this date, seven comrades, members of the southern leadership of the MIR, were executed in the operation known as Alfa Carbón 1 by the security services of that time, whose objective was to eliminate the members of that MIR leadership.

During that simultaneous operation, Nelson Herrera and Mario Lagos were murdered in Concepción, Luciano Aedo Arias in Hualpén, Mario Mújica in Los Ángeles, and Juan José Boncompte, Rogelio Tapia, and Raúl Barrientos in Valdivia.

The perpetrators, members of the CNI, were commanded by Marcos Derpisch Miranda, an Army Lieutenant Colonel in charge of the operation, and seconded by Hugo José Hechenleitner, an Army Lieutenant Colonel, both of whom appeared today at the scene of the events along with five other members of the former CNI to reconstruct the events at the corner of Calle Grecia and Nápoles in the current commune of Hualpén, where Luciano Aedo Arias was murdered.

Some of the names of the death squad that participated in Operation Alfa Carbón 1 in Concepción:

1. Marcos Derpisch Miranda: Army Lieutenant Colonel in charge of the operation. Today he continues to work at the DINE (Army Intelligence Directorate). 2. Hugo José Hechenleitner: Lieutenant Colonel; his alias was Antonio Martínez López. 3.

Claudio Rodrigo Rosas Fernandez: Army Lieutenant Colonel. 4. Víctor Manuel Muñoz Orellana: Army Sub-Officer; his alias was Jaime Ricardo Marinovic Palma, and he was the one who shot Luciano Aedo. 5. Álvaro Corbalán Castilla (Army Major).

Today imprisoned at the Punta Peuco resort. 6. Francisco Zúñiga Acevedo: Army Officer. Now deceased; he left without paying for his crimes. 7. Jorge Mandiola Arredondo: Army Major. 8. Carlos Palma: Army Sub-Officer. 9.

Leandro Montenegro (Army Sub-Officer), alias Farias. 10. Jorge Vargas: Civilian. 11. Miguel Gajardo: Civilian. 12. Andres Caris: Carabineros Sub-Officer. 13. Egon Barra: Carabineros Corporal. 14. Rosa Humilde Ramos: Army Sub-Officer. The most feared among her peers. They call her "La Mala" (The Bad One). 15. Teresa Osorio: Navy Sub-Officer.

These are those who acted in the massacre of Concepción and Hualpén, accompanied by another large contingent of CNI, Army, and Carabineros personnel, and informants.

In the case of Los Ángeles, where they murdered Mario Mujica, the following participated in the large contingent of evildoers:

1. Bruno Antonio Soto Aravena 2. José Artemio Zapata Zapata.

It is currently believed that one of them—it has not been possible to establish which one—is living in Los Ángeles and the other in Concepción. They were detained for a brief time and were imprisoned, but of course, they were released shortly after and today enjoy full freedom.

After concluding in Hualpén, the delegation moved to the Vega Monumental sector, where Nelson Herrera and Mario Lagos were executed after having surrendered and descended with their hands raised from the taxi-bus in which they were traveling.

This event is a clear example of how the rights of the detainee were violated; unarmed and without the capacity for armed response, they were riddled with bullets in the presence of passersby and passengers on the bus in which they were traveling, which constitutes a double homicide.

After the reconstruction in Hualpén and Concepción was finished, the Judge and his work team moved to the Población el Recodo on the road to Santa Juana, where the CNI proceeded to raid the home of Nelson Herrera's family, during which his wife, Patricia Zalaquet, was detained.

Today, Judge Aldana has obtained, in the presence of the accused, the details and characteristics of these crimes, which were presented at the time to public opinion as "clashes" between terrorists and CNI officials, even though these evildoers had traveled expressly from Santiago to commit the illicit acts.

It should be noted, as Judge Aldana himself pointed out to the press, that this judicial case had been archived in the Military Prosecutor's Office, from where it was recovered, apparently by the Government's Human Rights Department, to transfer it to the hands of the Civil Justice system, which will now have the task of prosecuting and passing sentence, although the Judge himself indicated that he does not rule out further proceedings.

The Relatives of Political Executions of the MIR in Concepción expect a lot from the Judge; so far, all his conclusions in other cases implicate only the material executors, the last link in the chain of command, the one who pulled the trigger, leaving the intellectual authors and the commanders who gave the orders to murder unpunished.

That is why we hope that this chain of command reaches the High Commands of the institutions that had intelligence apparatuses with exclusive dedication to committing crimes, and those are even higher up than Álvaro Corbalán Castilla himself (who excused himself from attending, although he participated in the events), because this bandit did not act on his own.

Today it transpired that the Judge may have indicted the second-in-command of the CNI, whom he allegedly sent as a detainee to the Chacabuco Regiment; at the time of writing this note, it was only a rumor.

Orders to murder in a highly hierarchical and centralized armed institution could only come from the Intelligence General Staff with the due approval and authorization of the de facto government of the coup-plotting military.

It is striking that the former leaders of the MIR from that time are once again not present to support the relatives, nor are they participating in the lawsuits for truth and justice, nor are they undertaking initiatives against impunity; it is possible that they are out hunting for votes instead of hunting criminals.

Source: Wednesday, September 30, 2009    liberacion.cl