Visiting judge Haroldo Brito established yesterday, for the first time, the crime of qualified kidnapping (also known as permanent kidnapping) in the ongoing trial against former CNI agents for the disappearance of five members of the Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez (FPMR) in 1987.

For this crime, he indicted former agents Víctor Ruiz Montoya, Luis Arturo Sanhueza Ros, and Luis Santibáñez Aguilera. In the resolution issued by Brito, it is stipulated that it can be proven that following the kidnapping of Army commander Carlos Carreño Barrera, which occurred in this city (Santiago) on September 1, 1987, CNI officials decided to kidnap Manuel Sepúlveda Sánchez, Gonzalo Fuenzalida Navarrete, Julio Muñoz Otárola, Julián Peña Maltés, and Alejandro Pinochet Arenas.

For the same events, the magistrate, who took over the investigation from his colleague Hugo Dolmestch—now a Supreme Court justice—indicted as co-perpetrators of the kidnapping the former director of the CNI, General (R) Hugo Salas Wenzel, and his two collaborators, Álvaro Corvalán and Krantz Bauer.

They are followed for the same crime by Manuel Morales, César Acuña, and René Valdovinos. Meanwhile, as accessories to the crimes are Army officers (R) Gonzalo Asenjo Zegers and Rodrigo Pérez. The selection of the FPMR members took place between September 8 and 9 with the aim of exchanging them for the kidnapped commander, which is why the detainees were immediately transferred to the Cuartel Borgoño of the intelligence service.

Helicopter According to the resolution, upon the release of the military officer, five bodies were removed by CNI officials from the security facility to be thrown into the sea from an Army helicopter.

The same evidence also confirms that the participation of the military helicopter and its pilots was arranged by the individuals in command of the investigation operations into the kidnapping of Carlos Carreño, the resolution states.

These conclusions were reached because on July 20, Judge Dolmestch, together with Army personnel, recreated the disposal of the FPMR members at the port of San Antonio. During the proceeding, it was determined with certainty that the bodies were thrown in sacks with pieces of rail tied to their feet, so that they would not float to the surface.

An article published by La Nación last July revealed that Augusto Pinochet’s former pilot, nicknamed “El Chino Campos,” declared to the magistrate how in September 1987, his boss, Colonel Mario Navarrete, ordered him to use one of the institutional helicopters to travel to the Peldehue area to pick up some packages, which contained the bodies. “El Chino Campos” recounted that for said operation, he traveled with his co-pilot, an officer who recently retired and who until a few months ago was the head of a military attaché office in Europe.

Furthermore, the head of the Special Affairs and Human Rights Brigade, Rafael Castillo, and his colleague Mario Zelada, traveled across the old continent looking for a key witness for this trial. Stages Judge Dolmestch established that the operation was divided into three stages.

The first was the detention of the FPMR members to pressure the FPMR and recover the kidnapped military officer. Once detained, they were interrogated by the CNI. After this, the order came that the military regime would not negotiate with terrorists, and therefore the five FPMR members were murdered.

After the execution, Francisco “Gurka” Zúñiga was designated to coordinate with the Army to obtain the necessary elements to carry out the disposal of the bodies off the coast of San Antonio.

Source: La Nación, September 22, 2006

Judge Mario Carroza issues indictment in cases of five forcibly disappeared persons in 1987

Visiting judge Mario Carroza Espinosa issued an indictment in the investigation into the qualified kidnappings of five people linked to the Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez (FPMR), who were detained in September 1987 in different parts of the country.

The magistrate determined to file charges against 35 people linked to the Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI) for the kidnappings of Julián Peña Maltés, Alejandro Pinochet Arenas, Manuel Sepúlveda Sánchez, Gonzalo Fuenzalida Navarrete, and Julio Muñoz Otárola.

The magistrate determined to hold the following responsible as co-perpetrators of the 5 kidnappings: Iván Quiroz Ruiz, Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, Luis Arturo Sanhueza Ross, Raúl Durán Martínez, Manuel Ramírez Montoya, Hugo Salas Wenzel, Luis Santibáñez Aguilera, Kranz Bauer Donoso, Víctor Ruiz Godoy, Juan Jorquera Abarzúa, Hernán Vásquez Villegas, César Acuña Luengo, Sergio Mateluna Pino, José Fuentes Pastenes, René Valdovinos Morales, Juan Carlos Orellana Morales, Roberto Rodríguez Manquel, Manuel Morales Acevedo, Gonzalo Maas del Valle, Alejandro Astudillo Adonis, Julio Cerda Carrasco, José Salas Fuentes, Heraldo Velozo Gallegos, Marco Antonio Bustos Carrasco, Hugo Prado Contreras, Marco Antonio Pincheira Ubilla, Jorge Ahumada Molina, Patricio Gonzalez Cortez. He indicted only as authors of the qualified kidnapping of Julián Peña Maltés: José Miguel Morales Morales; Ema Ceballos Nuñez. He indicted as accessories to the five kidnappings: Rodrigo Pérez Martínez; Aquiles Navarrete Izarnotegui; Fernando Rojas Tapia; Víctor Campos Valladares; Hugo Barria Rogers.

The magistrate determined that

a) That on the occasion of the kidnapping of Army Colonel Carlos Carreño Barrera, which occurred in this city on September 1, 1987, officials of the Central Nacional de Informaciones participated in an operation in which, between the 9th and 10th of the same month, they received instructions to detain, without a judicial warrant, five members of the Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez chosen from institutional files, to eventually exchange them for said officer; b) That these people were held and kept hidden under custody at the Cuartel Borgoño of the aforementioned entity; c) During the period they remained at the Cuartel Borgoño, operational teams commanded by officers and personnel of the Army Intelligence Battalion were commissioned to participate in the investigation aimed at clarifying the kidnapping of Colonel Carreño and established official coordination with the Central Nacional de Informaciones, allowing some of their agents to frequent and remain for several days in areas adjacent to the cells, with full knowledge that said persons were being held illicitly; d) Before the release of Colonel Carlos Carreño Barrera in Brazil, these security agencies decided on the elimination of the detainees and organized an operation to remove the five bodies from the facility where they were being held and then transport them in a helicopter of the Army Aviation Command from Fuerte Peldehue to the coast of Quintay, to finally throw their bodies into the sea tied to railroad ties; e) That from the above, it can only be concluded, due to the scale of the aforementioned operation, which had different stages—such as their detention, their subsequent confinement at the Cuartel Borgoño, the interrogation to which they were subjected in the interval before their death, and subsequently the transport of their bodies to the coast of Quintay in order to throw them into the sea—that such actions involved not only agents who made up the Central Nacional de Informaciones at that date, but also members of the Army Intelligence Battalion and the Army Aviation Command of Chile, operations that the military chain of command of the aforementioned organizations could not have been unaware of or failed to control, since it is an institution with hierarchical power, in which there is a vertical and direct line of command. f) That for the same reason, it is entirely reasonable to think, based on information gathered in the case, that these bodies belong to the kidnapped persons, who, having been thrown into the sea, were not located and identified. Starting today, the parties to the process—that is, the plaintiffs, the State Defense Council (CDE), and the Human Rights Program of the Ministry of the Interior—have a 20-day period to join the indictment or file a private accusation and eventually file civil actions. Once that procedure is completed, the accused will be notified of the charges and the actions taken by the plaintiffs, and once that matter is concluded, the case will move to the plenary stage, prior to the first-instance sentence.

Source: Poderjudicial.cl, October 7, 2010

Supreme Court sentences three CNI agents to 10 years in prison for the murder of a communist militant

Manuel Morales Acevedo, Pedro Guzmán Olivares, and René Valdovinos Morales will go to prison for the qualified homicide perpetrated in 1986. The victim was executed in the vicinity of the Cuartel Borgoño in downtown Santiago.

In a split decision, the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court sentenced the three former CNI agents and acquitted two others. The Supreme Court sentenced three former agents of the Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI) this Friday to 10 years and one day in prison as authors of the qualified homicide of a Communist Party militant that occurred in 1986 in Santiago, during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

According to the ruling (see document), the convicted, Manuel Ángel Morales Acevedo, Pedro Javier Guzmán Olivares, and René Armando Valdovinos Morales, were the authors of the murder of Marcelino Carol Marchandon Valenzuela, and it considered it to be "a crime against humanity." Marchandon, according to the investigation of the case, was detained between December 5 and 6, 1986, by CNI agents "after having been turned in, according to the records in the process, by a former Communist Party militant, a friend of the victim, who was a CNI informant." He was transferred to the Cuartel Borgoño, in the center of the capital, where he was "executed in the vicinity of said place by members of said intelligence apparatus." The Justice system detailed that the members of the CNI tried to stage a supposed attempt by Marchandon to assault the barracks prior to his death, "a scenario that they tried to validate with the statements of the participants," added the Supreme Court. The autopsy report of the deceased states that the cause of death was craniofacial trauma from a bullet and that he had 10 bullet impacts and as many from pellets. Split decision and two acquittals The sentence was resolved in a split decision in the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court after accepting an appeal filed against the ruling of the Santiago Court of Appeals, according to which it was appropriate to apply a partial statute of limitations, which was dismissed by the highest court. The sentence also acquitted two other former agents of the dictatorship, Héctor Osvaldo Obal Labrín and Carlos Adrián Kramm Soto, as their participation in the events was not proven. During the Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990), according to official figures, some 3,200 Chileans died at the hands of State agents, of whom 1,192 are still listed as forcibly disappeared, while another 33,000 were tortured and imprisoned for political reasons.

Source: cooperativa.cl, December 7, 2018

Santiago Court sentences former DINA and CNI agents for homicides in 1975 and 1986.

The cases were investigated by visiting judges Leopoldo Llanos Sagristá and Mario Carroza Espinoza, respectively. The Santiago Court of Appeals issued sentences in two cases of human rights violations, processes investigated by visiting judges Leopoldo Llanos Sagristá and Mario Carroza Espinoza, respectively.

First ruling In the first ruling, former members of the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA), Raúl Iturriaga Neumann and Gerardo Urrich González, were sentenced to 15 years and one day in prison as authors of the crime of homicide of the journalism student from the University of Concepción, José Hernán Carrasco Vásquez, a crime perpetrated in December 1975 in the Metropolitan Region.

During the investigation stage, Judge Leopoldo Llanos managed to establish the following facts: José Hernán Carrasco Vásquez, 27 years old and a former journalism student at the University of Concepción, was a leader of the MIR and was detained by DINA agents at the end of 1974, being transferred to Villa Grimaldi, where he was interrogated and tortured.

While in that situation, in February 1975, he participated together with three other leaders in a televised public statement and a press conference where they called on their fellow members to end the armed struggle.

He then remained detained for some months at Villa Grimaldi and Cuatro Álamos, separated from the rest of the prisoners, until he regained his freedom in September 1975. While in that situation, he was detained by DINA agents, among whom were members of the Purén Brigade, on November 20, 1975, and transferred to Villa Grimaldi, guarded by personnel of said Brigade, where he was tortured.

In the following days, he was executed and his body was abandoned in a place called "Chada," in the vicinity of Buin. His date of death was determined, according to his death certificate, as December 1, 1975.

His body was identified by his relatives on December 10 at the Legal Medical Institute. It showed signs of having been tortured before being killed. Second ruling In the second ruling, CNI agents Manuel Ángel Morales Acevedo, Pedro Javier Guzmán Olivares, and René Armando Valdovinos Morales were sentenced to 5 years and one day in prison as authors of the crime of homicide of Marcelino Carol Marchandón Valenzuela, a crime perpetrated on December 8, 1986, in the Metropolitan Region.

During the investigation stage, Judge Mario Carroza managed to establish that Marchandón Valenzuela was detained between December 5 and 6, 1986, after being denounced by an informant within the Communist Party, in the vicinity of the intersection of Salomón Sack and Santa María avenues, and executed in the vicinity of the CNI’s Cuartel Borgoño.

Source: pjud.cl, February 20, 2018

20 former CNI agents sentenced for crimes on Calle Fuente Ovejuna in 1983

The extraordinary visiting judge for human rights violation cases of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Mario Carroza Espinoza, issued a sentence against 20 former agents of the Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI) for their responsibility in the qualified homicides of former militants and leaders of the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) Lucía Orfilia Vergara Valenzuela, Arturo Vilavella Araujo, and Sergio Peña Díaz, crimes perpetrated on September 7, 1983, on Calle Fuenteovejuna in the commune of Las Condes.

The event was an episode of a fake confrontation with which the CNI and the dictatorship tried to hide crimes and murders, with the active complicity of the corporate press. In the ruling (case file 539-2011), Judge Carroza sentenced former Army Brigadier Roberto Urbano Schmied Zanzi, former head of the CNI Metropolitan Division, to 15 years and one day in prison as the author of the qualified homicides.

Meanwhile, former Army officers Aquiles Mauricio González Cortés, alias "Caracha," former head of the Blue Brigade at the time of the crimes; Álvaro Julio Federico Corbalán Castilla, former head of the CNI’s anti-subversive division; Norman Antonio Jeldes Aguilar, alias "Gorilón," former member of the Special Brigade; and former Army civilian employee Manuel Mariano Ventura Laureada Núñez, alias "Piolín," also an agent of the Special Brigade, were sentenced to 10 years and one day as authors of the crimes.

In the case, former Army officer and second-in-command to Schmied Zanzi in the Metropolitan Division, Sergio María Canals Baldwin, and former agents Juan José Pastene Osses, Patricio Leonidas González Cortez, Luis René Torres Méndez, Manuel Ángel Morales Acevedo, Luis Hernán Gálvez Navarro, Sergio Daniel Valenzuela Morales, Juan Modesto Olivares Carrizo, Raúl Hernán Escobar Díaz, Eduardo Martín Chávez Baeza, Luis Eduardo Burgos Cofré, Raúl Horacio González Fernández, Orlando Jesús Torrejón Gatica, Rafael de Jesús Riveros Frost, and Juan Alejandro Jorquera Abarzúa were sentenced to 3 years and one day in prison, with the benefit of intensive supervised release, as accomplices. Meanwhile, former Special Brigade agent Egon Antonio Barra Barra, alias "Siete Fachas," was acquitted of participation in this episode (the group he participated in was simultaneously committing other crimes on Calle Janequeo). Blue Brigade During the investigation stage of the case, Judge Mario Carroza managed to establish that, after the assassination of the Metropolitan Region Intendant Carol Urzúa Ibañez, committed on August 30, 1983, the director of the Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI), Humberto Gordon Rubio (deceased), ordered the Metropolitan Anti-Subversive Division, under the command of Roberto Schmied Zanzi, to form a new group: the Blue Brigade, to investigate the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR). In this context, on the morning of September 7, 1983, the detention of MIR members who were in the property at Fuenteovejuna 1330, which had been previously located, was ordered. A considerable number of agents under the command of Álvaro Corbalán Castilla (commander of the Metropolitan Anti-Subversive Brigade) and Aquiles González Cortés (head of the Blue Brigade) were sent to the location in the afternoon. "In the initial actions, the agents installed a firing base in front of the property, consisting of a Rheinmetal machine gun, 7.62 mm caliber, mounted on the roof of a jeep, which on that occasion was driven by Manuel Ventura Laureada Núñez, and the weapon operated by at least two people, one who fired, Norman Antonio Jeldes Aguilar, and the other in charge of passing the ammunition belt, with a firing capacity of 10 per short burst and a full firing capacity of 500 per minute, with tracer bullets," the ruling states.

The resolution adds that

"already having the firing base in position, the officer in command ordered it to be aimed and fired against the property for about a minute, that is, about 500 shots; then they stopped their action and, using loudspeakers, ordered the occupants of the property to surrender." "One of them," it continues, "Sergio Peña Díaz, decided to surrender and came out with his hands on the back of his neck, but at the moment he was walking toward the agents, they shot him and his wounds caused his death, which incited the reaction of the only woman in the group, who confronted them with a weapon; given this reaction, Álvaro Corbalán again gave the order to fire the firing base in the direction of the property, which caused not only the death of Lucía Orfilia Vergara Valenzuela from gunshot wounds, but also the burning of the house and the incineration of the third member of the movement, Arturo Vilavella Araujo." On the same day, September 7, 1983, the CNI carried out a simultaneous operation on Calle Janequeo, in Quinta Normal, where two other MIR militants were executed. This episode, however, is being substantiated in a separate case and by another visiting judge.

Source: resumen.cl, January 18, 2018

Former CNI agents sentenced for fake confrontation

The events occurred in the commune of Quinta Normal on September 7, 1983. The visiting judge sentenced Roberto Schmied Zanzi, Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, and Aquiles González Cortés to 20 years in prison.

For their responsibility in the homicides of Alejandro Salgado Troquián and Hugo Ratier Noguera, the extraordinary visiting judge for human rights violation cases of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Miguel Vázquez Plaza, sentenced 23 former agents of the Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI).

The events occurred in the commune of Quinta Normal on September 7, 1983, and were presented at the time as a confrontation, which turned out to be fake. Judge Vázquez sentenced Roberto Schmied Zanzi, Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, and Aquiles González Cortés to 20 years in prison.

Meanwhile, former agents José Aravena Ruiz, José Salas Fuentes, Luis Arturo Sanhueza Ross, Egon Barra Barra, Jorge Vargas Bories, Norman Jeldes Aguilar, Fernando Rojas Tapia, Manuel Morales Acevedo, Sergio Canals Baldwin, and José Vidal Veloso must spend 15 years and one day in prison as authors of the crimes.

Sentenced as accomplices to 10 years and one day in prison were Raúl Méndez Santos, Rodolfo Olguín González, Ema Ceballos Núñez, Miguel Gajardo Quijada, Rosa Ramos Hernández, Francisco Orellana Seguel, Juan Carlos Vergara Gutiérrez, Raúl Escobar Díaz, Rafael Ortega Gutiérrez, and Luis Gálvez Navarro.

During the investigation of the case, Judge Vázquez managed to establish that Hugo Ratier Noguera and Alejandro Salgado Troquián died from bullet impacts received in the back, after agents of the CNI, the Chilean Investigative Police, and other repressive agencies began firing without any provocation and with great firepower against the property located at Calle Janequeo 5707.

Source: eldinamo.cl, July 22, 2019

Supreme Court confirms convictions of 22 CNI agents for crimes in a staged confrontation in Quinta Normal in September 1983

The Supreme Court has confirmed the convictions of 22 agents of the Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI) for their responsibility in the political executions of Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) militants Hugo Ratier Noguera and Alejandro Salgado Troquián.

The crimes were perpetrated on September 7, 1983, in a staged confrontation on Calle Janequeo in the commune of Quinta Normal, in Santiago.

In a unanimous ruling, the Second Chamber of the high court (case file 10.047-2022)—composed of ministers Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Leopoldo Llanos Sagristá, Jean Pierre Matus, and acting attorneys Gonzalo Ruz L. and Leonor Etcheberry C.—ruled out any error of law in the sentence and rejected the cassation appeals filed by nearly all of the convicted individuals against the ruling of the Santiago Court of Appeals, issued in November 2021, which had in turn confirmed, with some modifications, the first-instance ruling issued in July 2019 by minister Miguel Vásquez Plaza.

In its resolution, the Second Chamber confirms the sentences applied to former Army officers and CNI leaders Roberto Urbano Schmied Zanzi, Álvaro Julio Federico Corbalán Castilla, and Aquiles Mauricio González Cortés, who were sentenced to 17 years in prison as co-perpetrators of the crime.

The first of the convicted, Schmied Zanzi, served as head of the CNI’s Metropolitan Division; Corbalán Castilla was head of the Anti-Subversive Division, and Aquiles González acted as head of the Blue Brigade, which specialized in the repression of the MIR.

Meanwhile, former Army officers and CNI operatives Sergio María Canals Baldwin, Luis Arturo Sanhueza Ros, Fernando Rafael Mauricio Rojas Tapia, Norman Antonio Jeldes Aguilar, and former agents José Abel Aravena Ruiz, José Guillermo Salas Fuentes, Egon Antonio Barra Barra, Jorge Octavio Vargas Bories, and José Isaías Vidal Veloso must serve 15 years and one day in prison as perpetrators of the crimes.

For their part, former agents Rodolfo Enrique Olguín González, Ema Verónica Ceballos Núñez, Luis Hernán Gálvez Navarro, Rosa Humilde Ramos Hernández, Francisco Javier Orellana Seguel, Miguel Fernando Gajardo Quijada, Juan Carlos Vergara Gutiérrez, Raúl Boris Méndez Santos, Raúl Hernán Escobar Díaz, and Rafael Ricardo Ortega Gutiérrez were sentenced to 10 years and one day in prison as accomplices to the crimes.

Agent Manuel Ángel Morales Acevedo, who was also convicted in previous instances, passed away during the course of the proceedings.

Staged confrontation

On September 7, 1983, dozens of agents from the CNI, the SIFA, the Investigative Police, and other repressive bodies went to the residence located at Calle Janequeo N° 5707, in the commune of Quinta Normal, which had been under surveillance for several weeks.

They proceeded to surround and cordon off the area, and then, using a base of fire and other weaponry, fired without any provocation and with great firepower against the property. As a result, Hugo Ratier Noguera was killed by multiple gunshot wounds in the backyard of the home.

Simultaneously, as he was arriving in the neighborhood and at the same residence where he lived, militant Alejandro Salgado Troquián was gunned down by multiple gunshot wounds and executed on the public thoroughfare, specifically on Calle Janequeo in front of number 5946, two blocks from the house that was attacked.

Hugo Norberto Ratier Noguera, 39 years old, was an Argentine national, originally from Misiones, and had resided in Chile since 1970. He was a leader of the MIR and remained active in the underground. He was married and a father of three; shortly before these events, his wife and children had left the country for security reasons.

Alejandro Salgado Troquián, 30 years old, a veterinarian by profession and also a militant of the MIR, was married and a stepfather to his partner's children.

A minor, the adopted son of Salgado who resided in the home along with Salgado and Ratier, was a victim and witness to the events, but in the midst of the gunfire, he managed to flee to neighboring houses, thus saving his life and later denouncing the criminal attack.

This staged confrontation was carried out by the CNI on the same day and immediately following the execution of three other MIR militants on Calle Fuenteovejuna, in the commune of Las Condes, in a criminal act also orchestrated as a staged confrontation where Arturo Vilavella Araujo, Lucía Orfilia Vergara Valenzuela, and Sergio Peña Díaz were murdered.

The three had returned clandestinely to Chile to join the struggle against the dictatorship. Judicially, both events are processed as separate episodes, despite the fact that they were part of a single repressive operation.

The investigation into the repressive act demonstrated that the dictatorship's repressive apparatus carried out a surveillance and monitoring operation during the months prior against a group of MIR members who were operating in the underground in the resistance struggle against the tyrannical regime.

With the data obtained from this prior observation, the CNI orchestrated the extermination operation that resulted in the detention of a dozen people, the attack and murder of the three residents of the house on Calle Fuente Ovejuna, and subsequently the attack and murder of two other militants at the house on Calle Janequeo in the commune of Quinta Normal.

by Darío Núñez

Source: resumen.cl, January 27, 2024