General (Ret.) Jorge Zincke reported that Mery interrogated in Linares but did not transport people. The former deputy commander-in-chief of the Army, Lieutenant General (Ret.) Jorge Zincke, who is being prosecuted for the disappearance of prisoners from the Linares Artillery School, confirmed yesterday that the director general of Investigations, Nelson Mery, operated as an interrogator of detainees at that regiment. “That is correct, he interrogated,” Zincke said briefly after being subjected to a new interrogation by the visiting judge Alejandro Solís, who on June 6 declared him a defendant for the kidnapping and disappearance of José Campos Morales and Alejandro Mella Flores. Zincke also stated that Mery had nothing to do with the transport of people. At the time of the military coup of September 1973, Zincke was the head of the Department of Research and Development at the Linares Artillery School. Yesterday, lawyer Jorge Mario Saavedra, sponsor of the defamation lawsuit filed by Mery against former detainee Odette Alegría, who accused him of sexual abuse, declared to Radio Agricultura that Mery “never interrogated, he only interviewed the detainees, because he was just a bird of passage at the Artillery School.” The director of Investigations, Nelson Mery, was also questioned at the time by Judge Solís in the case of the disappeared from Linares. Given the revelations that Mery was an active man in that regiment during the first months of the military regime, the government asked him to take a vacation. In the case, Judge Solís also prosecuted Generals (Ret.) Carlos Morales Retamal and Humberto Julio Reyes. He also indicted Colonels (Ret.) Juan Morales Salgado, Félix Cabezas Salazar, and Claudio Lecaros Carrasco, as well as Sub-officer (Ret.) Antonio Aguilar Barrientos and Investigations official (Ret.) Héctor Torres Guajardo. The other seven forcibly disappeared persons from Linares are: Rubén Bravo Bravo, Anselmo Cancino Aravena, Hernán Contreras Cabrera, María Isabel Beltrán Sánchez, Waldo Villalobos Moraga, Guillermo del Canto Ramírez, and Luis Tapia Concha. According to the leader of the Association of Relatives of Forcibly Disappeared Detainees of Linares, Zolidia Leiva, Mery personally arrested Tapia Concha, who was her husband.

Source: La Nación, July 17, 2003

While the former dictator, declared “persona non grata” by students and the “Fuera Pinochet” Coordinator, enjoys his apartment in an exclusive Iquique condominium and goes out for rides in an armored Mercedes Benz that the army places at his disposal, his close collaborators parade from the courts to military... facilities, where they begin to serve preventive detention for their crimes from thirty years ago.

Although everything is relative in this country where the opposition and the Concertación compete to find the best “solution” to the “human rights problem,” the latest judicial rulings provide a respite for relatives of forcibly disappeared detainees who have been clamoring for justice for decades.

On June 9 and 10, special judge Alejandro Solís prosecuted thirteen people in two different cases. One involves the former DINA high command: once again Manuel Contreras, followed by former Brigadier Miguel Krasnoff, Colonel Marcelo Moren Brito, Sub-officer Basclay Zapata, and the torturer Osvaldo Romo.

All five are on trial for the disappearance of Fernando Silva Camus, a 60-year-old decorator detained by DINA agents on November 27, 1974, one day after the detention of his son Claudio Silva Peralta, a 23-year-old MIR militant.

Both were taken to the Villa Grimaldi torture center, where they were last seen. Their names appeared in 1975 on the list of 119 people published by the DINA as supposedly deceased in Argentina. The testimony of former political prisoner Sonia Bascuñán is very clear: “On November 28 or 29, I was transferred from Villa Grimaldi.

I was placed in the back of a pickup truck, along with María Antonieta Castro and several men. At the end, closer to the exit, was the father of ‘Condoro’ (Claudio Silva’s nickname). One of the agents driving us said that we had to stop on the road, ‘to dump the old man.’ Indeed, the truck stopped on the road and they made one person get out, whom I could not distinguish.

The rest of the detainees arrived at another place that, I later learned, was the Cuatro Alamos Camp. There I realized that the elderly detainee had not arrived with the rest.”

LINARES PROSECUTIONS

The same judge, Alejandro Solís, prosecuted former deputy commander-in-chief of the army, Jorge Zincke Quiroz, on June 10, along with Generals Carlos Morales and Humberto Julio, former undersecretary of Foreign Affairs, and Colonels Félix Cabezas and Juan Morales.

The list is completed by Claudio Lecaros, Antonio Aguilar Barrientos, and Héctor Torres Guajardo. They are accused of participating as perpetrators in the kidnapping and disappearance of six prisoners in Linares and three others in Constitución, between September 1973 and October 1974.

Added to that crime are charges of illegal exhumation, obstruction of justice, and illicit association. All those prosecuted held positions at the Linares Artillery School, where, according to witness accounts, the trail of dozens of political prisoners was lost.

Among them, Rubén Bravo, a 55-year-old farmer and socialist; Waldo Villalobos Moraga, 48, with no political affiliation; and MIR militants María Isabel Beltrán Sánchez, a 21-year-old student; Alejandro Mella Flores, a 19-year-old student; Anselmo Cancino Aravena, a 25-year-old agricultural worker; and Hernán Contreras Cabrera, 21, a CORA official.

On December 27, 2001, Codepu filed a complaint, which Judge Solís is investigating, regarding these six people. During the process, a former conscript testified that around 80 political prisoners were buried at the Artillery School.

For that reason, on April 16 of this year, the visiting judge directed an inspection of the shooting range in search of remains. The excavations yielded no results, although signs were found that the ground had been disturbed.

This case had unexpected repercussions for the director general of Investigations, Nelson Mery. The day after the prosecutions were announced, the president of the Association of Former Political Prisoners of Linares, Teobaldo Peña, asserted that the head of the civil police is involved in the disappearance of people in that city, where he allegedly served from September 11, 1973, until February or March 1974.

According to Peña, Nelson Mery was part of the groups in charge of detaining and torturing people. The same allegation was made on April 16 by Viviana Díaz, secretary of the Association of Relatives of Forcibly Disappeared Detainees.

Colonel Juan Hernán Morales Salgado, when he was a captain in charge of the governorship of Constitución after the military coup, is the main person prosecuted for the detention and disappearance of Arturo Enrique Riveros Blanco, a militant of the Christian Left and governor of Constitución; of Jorge Yáñez Olave, a 28-year-old journalist; and of Jaime Bernardo Torres Salazar, a 21-year-old worker.

The latter two were members of the MIR regional committee. Morales Salgado made a career within the military institution. He was head of Manuel Contreras’s security team when he was director of the DINA, and he is involved in the assassination of the former commander-in-chief of the army, Carlos Prats, and his wife Sofía Cuthbert.

One of the letters rogatory sent by Argentine judge María Servini de Cubría was addressed to him. These are part of the “merits” that allowed him to retire from the army with the rank of colonel.

MORALES AND THE CORVOS

“According to the data we have been able to collect, Juan Morales (former colonel currently being prosecuted) participated directly in the death of my husband,” says Juana María Soto, wife of Jorge Bernabé Yáñez Olave and member of the Association of Relatives of Forcibly Disappeared Detainees of Linares.

Step by step, she has been reconstructing a history that, despite the years that have passed, still shakes her. She and their son, Cristián—then 6 years old—last saw Jorge a few days before the “11th.” “He seemed worried, because he saw the worst coming,” Juana recalls.

Due to his political work, he had gone to live in Constitución, where he shared a boarding room with Jaime Torres. Both participated on the day of the military coup in a protest march by Celulosa Arauco workers along with Governor Arturo Riveros Blanco.

The following day, the city was occupied by soldiers from the Linares Artillery School, under the command of Captain Juan Hernán Morales Salgado, who assumed the role of governor and military commander of the plaza.

Among his trusted men were Lieutenant Leonardo Marchant Rocha and Second Lieutenants Marcelo Salas Coccolo and Alejandro Herrera López, who do not appear as defendants in the case. On September 14, they arrested Arturo Riveros and union leaders José and Jorge Saavedra.

Two days later, Jorge Yáñez and Jaime Torres were recognized on a rural road while heading to Chanco, and they were also arrested. They were taken to the Investigations barracks in Cauquenes, but on the 17th, the new governor of Constitución claimed them and sent a patrol to get them.

There are witnesses who saw them enter the Governor’s office covered in blood. Others shared the torture and horror with them. Gustavo Salazar, a dental technician and socialist militant, was confronted with Jorge on September 14 or 15.

He was held up by two uniformed men because he could not stand, his face was swollen and deformed by the beatings, and he could barely speak. He was the last to see him alive. In their search, Juana and Jorge’s father, José Yáñez—a former carabineer who has since passed away—went to the house of then-Captain Juan Morales on September 21. “I begged him for my son to tell us where Jorge was,” she recalls. “He answered very casually not to worry, because he had set him free on the 19th and that surely I would be the first to see him.

Since he also had a small son, I asked him to swear on his son that he was telling me the truth. And he did.” Another detainee declared that the person directing the interrogations was Captain Morales and that he heard him comment to detectives that José and Jorge Saavedra and Jorge Yáñez were dead.

At the end of September, Morales Salgado himself acknowledged at a social reception having ordered the execution of five people, whose bodies “were left lying in an area of the beach called Potrerillos.” He mentioned Jorge Yáñez, Jaime Torres, and Arturo Riveros.

In the Report of the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, where Jorge and Jaime appear as forcibly disappeared, Colonel Juan Hernán Morales Salgado (on active duty at the time), members of the “N” section, class of 1973, of the Linares Artillery School, and unidentified personnel of the Constitución Carabineer Station are blamed.

In August 1974, case file 40150 “for alleged misfortune” was opened in the Linares Court of Letters. The judge closed the summary and dismissed the case “because the crime was not proven.” The Talca Court of Appeals ordered it reopened.

New closure and temporary dismissal determined by the judge. And this time it was approved by the Court. In 1995, Juana Soto filed a criminal complaint for the crimes of illegal detention, kidnapping, torture, and human rights violations.

And in December 2001, she signed another complaint, this time against Pinochet. According to the information she and the lawyers have gathered, “they killed the five of them in the worst way, they used corvos (knives) and opened their bellies... Afterward, there are two versions: one, that they put the bodies in a hole and set them on fire. And the other... that they threw them into the sea.”

Source: Punto Final, edition 546

The Chilean justice system has agreed to the request of Judge María Servini de Cubría and will send the records regarding the career of retired Colonel Juan Hernán Morales Salgado, who served as head of security for the former director of the DINA, General (Ret.) Manuel Contreras.

The second criminal chamber of the Supreme Court of Chile authorized a letter rogatory from Argentine judge María Servini de Cubría to send all the records regarding the service record of retired Colonel Juan Hernán Morales Salgado, within the framework of the investigation into the Prats case, judicial sources confirmed today.

The Argentine magistrate requested in that letter rogatory to be informed of all entries and exits from Chile, and the destinations of Morales between mid-1973 and 1975, the period in which the double assassination of the former head of the Chilean Army, Carlos Prats, and his wife Sofía Cuthbert was committed in Buenos Aires (on September 30, 1974).

Servini also requested to be informed if the retired colonel was part of a DINA “Special Operations Group.” The judge also requested procedural information on Morales in Chile, specifically if he was or is linked, indicted, prosecuted, or convicted in any human rights violation case.

The judge of the First Criminal Court of Santiago, Joaquín Billard, will be in charge of requesting from the Army the records on the career of Morales Salgado, who served as head of security for the former director of the DINA, General (Ret.) Manuel Contreras.

For this same case, Judge Servini de Cubría is requesting the extradition to Argentina of Pinochet and six DINA agents: Contreras, former Brigadiers Pedro Espinoza and José Zara, retired General Raúl Iturriaga Neumann, and civilian agents Mariana Callejas and Jorge Iturriaga Neumann.

However, so far, the Chilean justice system has refused such a request. At the beginning of next week, the Supreme Court must resolve another pending letter rogatory, sent by the Argentine magistrate, in which she requests to take an investigative statement from Pinochet and Callejas.

The Prats-Cuthbert couple died on September 30, 1974, due to a bomb that exploded under their car as they entered the building where the couple lived in exile, in the Palermo neighborhood of Buenos Aires.

Source: Emol.com, July 26, 2001

Leal accused the UDI of protecting human rights violators in Linares

The parliamentarian accused the opposition of using Odette Alegría’s complaint against Nelson Mery “to cover up” the actions committed during the military regime. The deputy of the Party for Democracy (PPD) Antonio Leal accused the Independent Democratic Union (UDI) of mounting a cover-up maneuver to protect those responsible for human rights violations that occurred during the military regime in the Linares area.

According to the parliamentarian, the party is using Odette Alegría’s complaint against the director of Investigations, Nelson Mery, as a smokescreen to cover up the actions committed by military personnel in Linares, including those of the former deputy commander-in-chief of the Army, General Jorge Zincke, and retired General Humberto Julio.

The deputy, accompanied by Anselmo Cancino, a relative of one of the victims in the area, challenged the UDI senator for the Seventh Region, Hernán Larraín, to speak out on the responsibility of former members of the Army in the crimes committed during the military regime. “I want to ask Senator Hernán Larraín, first of all, who in recent days has accused the Government of a double standard regarding the Mery case, to make some statement in relation to the underlying facts, which are the disappearances of people and the responsibility of Generals Zincke and Julio, whom the right is trying to protect through the smokescreen they are creating around the Mery case,” Leal said. “If Mery is guilty and the justice system convicts him, he has to pay for any crime he has committed and naturally stop being the director of Investigations,” he added. On July 11, Judge Alejandro Solís indicted eight high-ranking retired officers, including the former deputy commander of the institution, General (Ret.) Jorge Zincke Quiroz, and two other Generals (Ret.), as perpetrators of the kidnapping and disappearance of eight people from Linares and the surrounding areas. The victims were all detained by personnel from the Linares Artillery School between September and December 1973 and have been missing ever since. In addition to Zincke, General (Ret.) Carlos Morales Retamal, director of that regiment and intendant since January 1974, and Humberto Julio Reyes, the latter a former undersecretary of Foreign Affairs, are also indicted. The rest of those prosecuted are Colonels (Ret.) Félix Cabezas Salazar, sub-director of that school until November 1973; Juan Morales Salgado, governor of Constitución since September 12, 1973; and Claudio Lecaros Carrasco, commander of the Artillery Group and military intelligence officer of this Linares regiment. The list is closed by Sub-officer Major (Ret.) Antonio Aguilar Barrientos and former civil police officer Héctor Torres Guajardo, who at the time of the events held positions in Linares. In this process, the director of Investigations, Nelson Mery, who also held police functions in Linares in 1973, was questioned.

Source: Emol.com, July 19, 2003

Five soldiers and two detectives prosecuted for kidnappings in Linares

Visiting judge Alejandro Solís prosecuted five retired members of the Army and two former detectives as perpetrators of the qualified kidnapping of three MIR militants and a union leader, who were last seen alive at the Linares Artillery School between September 12, 1973, and January 2, 1974.

The ruling becomes an expansion of the resolution he issued on July 6, 2003, when he indicted six former uniformed officers for other cases of forcibly disappeared detainees contained in the same episode.

The magistrate decided to indict Colonel (Ret.) Gabriel del Río Espinoza, who was the commander of the aforementioned facility and—at the same time—regional intendant at the time, Colonel (Ret.) Claudio Abdón Lecaros Carrasco, former Investigations commissioner Héctor Torres Guajardo, Sub-officer Major (Ret.) Antonio Aguilar Barrientos, and former Investigations commissioner Nelson Volta Rosas, in the capacity of perpetrators of the crime of qualified kidnapping of Guillermo del Canto Ramírez, a MIR leader.

According to the investigation substantiated by Solís, at 00:30 hours on January 2, 1974, Del Canto was detained while he was with his spouse Marianela Méndez Soto at the home of his cousin Félix Ignacio Valenzuela Ferrer, located at Calle Santa Clara No. 560 in the commune of La Cisterna.

In effect, several officials who claimed to belong to the Regiment of the city of Linares entered the place and detained del Canto Ramírez and his cousin, because they were an “accessory after the fact”—as the captors stated.

Both detainees were taken in a truck to the Military School of Santiago, where they were interrogated. The following morning, Valenzuela Ferrer was released, while Guillermo del Canto was transferred to the Linares Artillery Regiment, where he remained detained for a few days, being interrogated and tortured, to subsequently, on an undetermined date, be taken to the Tejas Verdes prisoner camp in San Antonio, where his trail has been lost to this day.

Three other victims On the other hand, Judge Solís prosecuted General (Ret.) Carlos Edmundo Morales Retamal, then director of the Linares Artillery School, in his capacity as perpetrator of the crime of qualified kidnapping against university student and former MIR militant María Isabel Beltrán Sánchez, committed starting September 18, 1973.

Former Investigations commissioner Héctor Armando Torres Guajardo and Sub-officer Major (Ret.) Antonio Aguilar Barrientos were prosecuted as perpetrators of the crime of qualified kidnapping against former MIR militant Héctor Hernán Contreras Cabrera, committed starting December 8, 1973.

Finally, the judge indicted Colonel (Ret.) Juan Hernán Morales Salgado, in his capacity as perpetrator of the crime of qualified kidnapping against José Alfonso Saavedra Betancourt, a former union leader of the Celco company, perpetrated starting September 12, 1973.

The magistrate granted provisional release to all those prosecuted, and only in the case of Morales Salgado, who is being charged for the first time in this case, was the benefit granted with consultation to the Court of Appeals.

The First Chamber of the appellate court confirmed this Tuesday the release of the former soldier, with the favorable votes of judges Juan Cristóbal Mera and Amanda Valdovinos, as well as the participating lawyer Benito Mauriz.

Mery’s companions In the prosecution, which consists of more than 60 pages, Judge Solís recorded the various allusions that exist in these cases regarding the participation of the former director of Investigations in the detention of these opponents of the military regime.

In fact, several witnesses point to him as part of the group of agents who detained María Isabel Beltrán. Likewise, one of the detectives who served at the Artillery School, Armando Torres Guajardo, maintained that in that unit “there was a Security Department, in charge of Captain Lecaros, and it had other officials, such as Nelson Mery, under the command of Jorge Zincke.

He participated in the interrogations, and regarding María Isabel Beltrán, a MIR militant arrested in Santiago, he witnessed about 3 interrogations led by Captain Lecaros, who, to intimidate her, beat her on the back with a rubber ‘churro’ (baton).” Meanwhile, one of the survivors of the Linares Artillery School, Osvaldo Efraín Salazar Saavedra, who was detained on December 19, 1973, by a platoon of soldiers and detectives who took him to the Military School and then transferred him to the Linares Artillery School, states that Nelson Mery participated in that group.

For his part, the former director of the civil police, who left his post due to his alleged link to human rights violations, declared in the prosecution that “on September 12, 1973, being a detective, he was designated as a liaison officer at the Linares Artillery School and on one occasion they called him from the ‘Intelligence Office’ and Aguilar asked him if he knew Patricia Contreras, whom he knew because he was a friend of her sister, Elena.” “He answered yes and they ordered him to go to Santiago because she was allegedly involved in the hiding of weapons in Panimávida.

They arrived at a house on Calle Cienfuegos, in a military jeep, in charge of Captain Humberto Julio; Sergeant Aguilar and Detective Volta also went; they detained her and took her to the Military School; the next day, on the way back, he got out of the jeep and looked into the truck in which she was traveling and also found María Isabel Beltrán, who was detained by the military personnel,” he added. “He always considered that María Isabel Beltrán was a military intelligence target, as stated in writing by Colonel Morales Retamal, who points out that she belonged to a MIR cell, maintained extremist activities in Parral, and was involved in the infiltration of people into the Armed Forces, the main charge for which she was detained,” Mery assured the tribunal.

Source: El Mostrador.cl, April 19, 2006

Calle Conferencia: Soldiers confess to crime of PC leader Víctor Díaz

Visiting judge Víctor Montiglio prosecuted seven former uniformed officers for the kidnapping and homicide of the father of AFDD leader Viviana Díaz. Seven former uniformed officers were prosecuted this Friday for their responsibility in the kidnapping of former communist leader Víctor Díaz Osorio, father of the leader of the Association of Relatives of Forcibly Disappeared Detainees (AFDD) Viviana Díaz.

The decision was adopted by the visiting judge of the Calle Conferencia case, Víctor Montiglio, after the defendants confessed their participation in the kidnapping and subsequent homicide of the member of the Communist Party (PC) leadership.

The resolution affects Colonel Juan Morales Salgado, officer Guillermo Ferrán Martínez, Lieutenant Gladys Calderón, and Sub-officer Eliana Magna Astudillo, all retired from the Army. Also indicted by the magistrate were former Carabineer Lieutenant Ricardo Lawrence and retired marines Sergio Escobar and Bernardo Daza Navarro.

All the defendants will remain in prison in different military units, which they had entered earlier this week by order of Judge Montiglio. Within the framework of this investigation, Lawrence had acknowledged that Díaz was visited by the late former dictator Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, while the former remained held in a detention center known as “the stone house” in Cajón del Maipo.

The Calle Conferencia case refers to the operation in which the repressive organs of the military regime dismantled the leadership of the PC, which was operating in clandestinity. In the action carried out in the first days of May 1976, engineer Jorge Muñoz—then husband of the late communist leader Gladys Marín—Mario Zamorano, Uldarico Donaire, Jaime Donato, and Díaz were detained, and they have remained disappeared ever since.

Source: El Mostrador, January 26, 2007

Judge reopens summary: Solís prosecutes colonel (Ret.) for Prats crime

Juan Morales Salgado was indicted after the magistrate received a document from Brigadier (Ret.) Pedro Espinoza, which incriminates him for having spied on the former military chief. Visiting judge Alejandro Solís—who is investigating the death of General (Ret.) Carlos Prats and his wife, Sofía Cuthbert—prosecuted retired Army Colonel Juan Morales Salgado yesterday for his participation as a member of the illicit association responsible for the double homicide that occurred in Buenos Aires in 1974.

Morales was a captain and third in the DINA hierarchy at the time of the crime. He is also being prosecuted and detained for the Calle Conferencia case. Solís reopened the summary last Monday to include a new voluntary statement from Brigadier (Ret.) Pedro Espinoza, who gave him a “confidential” document (see box) sent by Juan Morales to Manuel Contreras.

In the writing, the defendant details to the head of the DINA relevant information about Prats’s movements in Argentina. With his decision, Solís temporarily paralyzed the process he is following against eight former agents involved in the crime, among them the now-fugitive General (Ret.) Raúl Iturriaga.

The case was close to entering the plenary stage. “The active participation of high-ranking Army officers in the surveillance of General Carlos Prats in the phase prior to the assassination has been demonstrated,” stated plaintiff Hernán Quezada, who, along with his peer Pamela Pereira, celebrated the resolution and valued the collaboration of Brigadier (Ret.) Pedro Espinoza, who allegedly declared to Solís that he obtained the document from the DINE archives in 2004.

Lawyer Jorge Balmaceda, Espinoza’s defense attorney, said he was unaware of both the new statement and the document. The incriminating document The text that Espinoza delivered to Judge Solís is dated June 26, 1974.

In it, Captain Juan Morales details the address of Prats’s work, his salary, the license plates of his vehicles, and the location of his home. “This official document has been in the Army offices until 2004.

We feel that the Army owes us an explanation, because we have requested collaboration on numerous occasions, and this was hidden,” claimed Angélica Prats, daughter of the assassinated military officer. In this regard, the Army recalled that it became a party to the Prats case through the Ministry of Defense and assured that “under no circumstances” is it willing to hide relevant documentation.

Source: El Mercurio, June 23, 2007

For illicit association, homicide, and kidnapping: Doctors and former soldiers prosecuted for crime of DINA agent Manuel Leyton

Judge Madrid indicted thirteen people, among them physicians Horacio Taricco, Pedro Valdivia, Osvaldo Leyton, Vittorio Orvietto, and nurse Eliana Bolumburu, revealing the dark activities of health professionals at the service of the dictatorship.

The ruling, which El Mostrador.cl accessed exclusively, accredited that Leyton’s death was associated with sarin gas. The not insignificant number of 35 prosecutions against 13 people—among whom four doctors and a nurse stand out—was issued by Judge Alejandro Madrid Crohare, in the process he is substantiating for the homicide and kidnapping of former DINA agent Manuel Jesús Leyton, who died in March 1977 due to the application of torture and sarin gas at the repressive organization’s London clinic.

This is the first time that a magistrate has managed to identify the organization of the facility that the dissolved National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) used to apply torments and poisons to opponents of the dictatorship, as well as who made up the medical and auxiliary staff who helped carry out these practices.

El Mostrador.cl accessed a full copy of the prosecution issued by Madrid, through a high-level judicial source. The indictments issued by Madrid are divided into the crimes of illicit association and qualified homicide and affect 13 people who had different participations in the investigated events.

For illicit association, in the capacity of co-perpetrators, the following doctors were prosecuted: Hernán Horacio Taricco Lavín, Pedro Samuel Valdivia Soto, Osvaldo Eugenio Leyton Bahamondes, Vittorio Orvietto Tiplitzky, and the head nurse of the London clinic, Eliana Carlota Bolumburu Tabeada.

The latter is a cousin of Ana María Borumburu, who worked at the Catholic University, near doctors Hermal Rosemberg and Sergio González Bombardiere, who performed the unauthorized autopsy on former President Eduardo Frei.

Under the same charges, the judge prosecuted former soldiers Ricardo Víctor Lawrence Mires, Vianel Valdivieso Cervantes, Hernán Luís Sovino Maturana (head of security at the clinic), Sub-officer Major (Ret.) Santiago Alfredo Matteo Galleguillos; Colonel (Ret.) Juan Morales Salgado (recently prosecuted in the Prats case); Army Commander (Ret.) and member of the DINA’s Lautaro brigade Federico Humberto Chaigneau Sepúlveda (prosecuted in the Conferencia case); Army Lieutenant Gladys de las Mercedes Calderón Carreño (also indicted in Conferencia), known in the DINA for her cruelty, as she was the one who injected cyanide into detainees; and civilian employee Lorenzo Omar Toro Olivares. According to the magistrate’s resolution, the co-perpetrators of the qualified homicide, that is, those who participated directly in Leyton’s death, were doctor Taricco Lavín and former uniformed officers Lawrence Mires, Vianel Valdivieso Cervantes, and Morales Salgado. Their accomplices, meanwhile, were Sovino Maturana and Toro Olivares. The concealers of the homicide, according to the prosecution, are doctors Leyton Bahamondes, Valdivia Soto, nurse Bolumburu Taboada, and former uniformed officers Matteo Galleguillos, Chaigneau Sepúlveda, and Lieutenant Calderón Carreño. Finally, as co-perpetrators of kidnapping, the following were prosecuted: doctors Taricco Lavín, Leyton Bahamondes, nurse Bolumburu Taboada, and former soldiers Lawrence Mires, Vianel Valdivieso, Sovino Maturana, Morales Salgado, and Toro Olivares. Lying papers Madrid did not spare details in his investigation and also indicted in the capacity of co-perpetrators of falsification of a public document doctor Leyton Bahamondes and nurse Bolumburu Taboada. The latter were the ones who prepared the documentation so that Leyton’s death would appear associated with a heart attack caused by an illness, and not by the effects of the application of sarin gas. In fact, in the resolution issued by Madrid, it is accredited that the directors of the Legal Medical Service (SML) at the time were pressured to change the clinical history and the causes of death. These prosecutions are in addition to those issued on Monday by the same judge against the former Army auditor general Fernando Torres Silva and his right-hand man, Colonel (Ret.) of justice Enrique Ibarra Chamorro, within the framework of the investigation into the kidnapping and homicide of former DINA agent Eugenio Berríos. The story that Madrid accredited The death of Corporal Leyton Robles is what could be called a mafia vendetta for those who betray the code of silence. And for former DINA director Manuel Contreras, the word betrayal was simply an unpronounceable term. The story accredited by the judge is that Leyton Robles, along with other agents, were looking for spare parts to repair a small Renault car that the DINA worked with. However, the funds the repressive organization had were already meager and, therefore, the vehicle could not be fixed. The corporal decided to solve the issue himself and stole a car similar to the Frenchman Marcel Duhalde’s. The European citizen reported the fact to the Carabineers, whose officers detained Leyton Robles and agent Heriberto Acevedo and took them to a police station. Between tugs-of-war between the DINA and the uniformed police, it reached the point where the unit was surrounded by personnel from the organization headed by Manuel Contreras. However, Leyton had already revealed in the interrogation that the vehicle in question belonged to a forcibly disappeared detainee and that they were thrown into the sea, as a way of making the police see that their detention was almost a matter of national security. The corporal was finally released. But the DINA detained him again at the Simón Bolívar facility. Days later he died of a mysterious heart attack, when he was only 24 years old. After Leyton’s death, the DINA’s iron circle was present at the scene: Vianel Valdivieso and then-Major Morales Salgado. They took the body. A little more than 20 years have passed since then.

Source: El Mostrador, July 24, 2007

Assassination of Corporal Leyton: Medical personnel prosecuted for crime with sarin gas

This involves personnel from the London clinic, which was linked to the DINA. This case has been connected to the death of former President Eduardo Frei Montalva.

Four doctors, one nurse, six former military personnel, and one former civilian employee of the Army were prosecuted and detained for their varying degrees of participation in the homicide of Corporal Manuel Leyton, who was administered sarin gas at a private clinic linked to the DINA.

Leyton, a former agent of that intelligence agency, was murdered in 1977 after being caught by the Carabineros stealing two Renault cars, one of which belonged to a forcibly disappeared person, according to the resolution.

His superiors, it adds, took him to the London clinic, where he was held captive and later "died, with the well-founded presumption that his death occurred as a consequence of the application of the so-called 'sarin gas'."

Dr. Hernán Héctor Taricco, retired Carabineros Lieutenant Colonel Ricardo Lawrence, and former Army officers Juan Morales Salgado and Vianel Valdivieso were indicted as co-authors of the aggravated homicide of Leyton.

Hernán Sovino, a former Army lieutenant, and Lorenzo Toro, a civilian employee of the institution, were prosecuted as accomplices. The nurse Eliana Bolumburu; doctors Osvaldo Leyton and Pedro Valdivia Soto; former officers Federico Chaigneau and Gladys Calderón; and former non-commissioned officer Santiago Matteo were prosecuted as accessories to the homicide.

Doctors Taricco and Leyton, the nurse Bolumburu, the former uniformed personnel Lawrence, Valdivieso, Morales Salgado, and Hernán Sovino, as well as the civilian employee Lorenzo Toro, were also indicted for the kidnapping of Corporal Leyton.

Madrid also subjected the nurse Bolumburu and Dr. Leyton to prosecution for the falsification of a public document, as they allegedly provided the Legal Medical Service with an autopsy protocol and chemical-toxicological reports that were not authentic, as well as the victim's medical history and nursing chart.

Those documents appear to have been prepared at the London clinic and are signed by professionals linked to the DINA.

All of the aforementioned professionals and former uniformed personnel, along with Dr. Vittorio Orvietto, were also prosecuted for the crime of illicit association.

The crime against Corporal Leyton has been linked to the death of former President Eduardo Frei Montalva, due to suspicions held by his family that he was murdered with a toxic agent in 1982.

The Frei family's lawyer, Álvaro Varela, warned that doctors Valdivia and Orvietto were working at the Clínica Santa María when the former President was hospitalized.

However, Madrid declined to comment on whether there are links between the two cases. Regarding the use of sarin gas, which was confirmed for the first time, he specified that it was manufactured at Michael Townley's house.

Frei Case

The Minister Secretary General of the Presidency, José Antonio Viera-Gallo, commented that with this ruling, it is possible to think that the circumstances of the former President Frei's death will be clarified. "It is satisfying that Judge Alejandro Madrid has indicted doctors and nurses who had direct involvement in human rights violations during the military period, and who are directly linked to the death of former President Eduardo Frei Montalva.

In this way," he said, "one of the most abominable crimes that occurred during the military dictatorship could be clarified."

Source: El Mercurio, July 25, 2007

Manuel Contreras sentenced to life imprisonment for Prats crime

Thirty-four years after the double homicide was committed, Minister Alejandro Solís handed down sentences against the DINA leadership for their responsibility in the death of the former Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Carlos Prats, and his wife, Sofía Cuthbert.

In the first-instance ruling, the judge established a life sentence for Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda for both crimes, as well as a twenty-year prison sentence for illicit association.

For retired Brigadier Pedro Espinoza, the sentence is twenty years in prison for each murder and another twenty years for his role in this illicit association.

In the case of agent Raúl Iturriaga Neumann, the ruling is fifteen years in prison for each homicide and 541 days for illicit association. The penalty is slightly lower for José Zara, Juan Morales Salgado, and Christoph Willike, where the sentence reaches ten years in prison for each crime and 541 days for the illicit association.

In the case of Jorge Iturriaga Neumann, five years and one day for each homicide, and Mariana Callejas—in her role as a material author of the crime—received a sentence of ten years for each homicide.

Finally, retired non-commissioned officer Reginaldo Valdés will face two sentences of 541 days for his role in the two murders.

Prats-Cuthbert daughters highlight ruling

Angélica and Cecilia Prats Cuthbert arrived pleased at the Palace of Justice to learn about the ruling by Minister Alejandro Solís against those who participated in the double homicide of their parents, Carlos Prats and Sofía Cuthbert, which occurred in 1974 in Argentina.

"What one hoped for most was justice for what our parents lived through and the possibility of making a contribution to the country with this truth, a contribution to the Army so that it can write its true history," affirmed Angélica Prats.

Meanwhile, Cecilia stated that "the country already knows the truth; we are at peace after all these years. The Army also has clarity regarding the participants: there are seven military personnel who were on active duty who participated in the death of the Commander-in-Chief; state agents who participated are also determined, so the country has that clarity, and we have it too."

Angélica Prats valued the work carried out by the minister in charge of the case, Alejandro Solís, also pointing out that one cannot forget the progress made by the Argentine justice system, which is also processing this case.

For the Prats family lawyer, Pamela Pereira, Judge Solís's investigation makes it evident that the crime was "an act of terrorism of the greatest magnitude on foreign territory" and that "DINA agents and officers of the Chilean Army" participated in it.

Source: La Nación, June 30, 2008

First step in justice for the Prats-Cuthbert crime

When, near one o'clock in the morning on Monday, September 30, 1974, General Carlos Prats pulled his car over with his wife, Sofía Cuthbert, to enter the garage on Calle Malabía, in the Palermo neighborhood of Buenos Aires, a few seconds could have saved their lives.

It was the brief interval in which DINA agent Mariana Callejas failed to activate the electronic detonator when her husband, the "gringo" Michael Townley, at her side inside a vehicle, gave her the order to kill.

Townley was more skilled and took the device from her, triggering the explosion that shook the dark street. The general and his wife never knew about those seconds of destiny.

Thirty-four years later, yesterday, the sword of justice finally fell upon the intellectual and material authors: six high-ranking officers and one non-commissioned officer of the Army, all retired, in addition to two civilians.

Two life sentences and prison terms ranging from 20 years to 541 days for all of them, dictated in the first-instance sentence by the judge overseeing the case, Alejandro Solís.

At 10 in the morning, the general's daughters, Cecilia and Angélica, arrived at Minister Solís's office, accompanied by lawyer Pamela Pereira. The other daughter, Sofía, is the current ambassador in Athens. The other plaintiff lawyer, Hernán Quezada, has been in New York for two years.

Half an hour later, upon leaving the simple office on the terrace of the Palace of Justice, the bright eyes of the three women showed the emotion experienced with the judge.

"Now the country knows the truth," said Angélica. Cecilia recalled the early days in Buenos Aires when Judge María Servini was initiating the first inquiries that concluded with a single convicted person, the civilian agent Enrique Arancibia Clavel.

Later, in 2002, the double crime began to be investigated for the first time in Chile.

Lawyer Pereira also had reasons to be moved, as she remembered her father, who was murdered alongside the peasants of Paine.

"This act of justice for General Prats, his wife, and his family symbolizes the justice that other relatives have not yet had in Chile, as is the case with my father," she noted.

But as the daughters of the murdered couple recalled, the dictator Augusto Pinochet was missing from the proceedings. He was the main intellectual author, even though, first with his feigned dementia with which he deceived the court judges, as some ministers privately acknowledge, and later due to a procedural technicality, he was saved twice from being stripped of his immunity for this double crime.

From New York, lawyer Quezada stated that "Minister Solís's sentence should become study material in the institutional schools of the Armed Forces, because it constitutes a historical document to establish the truth about the most atrocious crimes committed during the Pinochet dictatorship."

That Sunday, September 29, 1974, strangely, General Prats seemed cheerful and even laughed at times. At the Stevenin-Muratorio country house on the outskirts of Buenos Aires (BA), he attended a barbecue alongside the former Chilean consul, Eduardo Ormeño.

They talked about painting and other topics that he handled as a cultured soldier, just like his wife. They played bridge, and the couple proposed forming a group to meet every Wednesday to play. They would start the following week.

Around four in the afternoon, the Prats-Cuthberts asked Ormeño to take them back to Malabía to change clothes because they were going to the cinema with Allende's former ambassador in Buenos Aires, Ramón Huidobro, and his wife. "Bread and Chocolate" was the movie.

Afterward, they went to have dinner at Huidobro's house. There, Prats, during the after-dinner conversation, became sad again and said a phrase that marked that night forever: "How will this be, Ramón, where will it come from, but I am armed, so it won't be that easy for them." In the previous days, he had received death threats.

The previous Friday, hidden in the Malabía garage, Townley installed the charge with two C4 cartridges and three detonators under the general's Fiat 125.

"Uncle Kenny," as Mariana Callejas's children called the gringo, had crossed paths with General Prats in a park days earlier while following him. He thought about shooting him right there but desisted because "there were too many people," as he later said in the United States to Judge Servini.

Meanwhile, "Yiyo" Raúl Iturriaga, then head of the DINA's foreign department, was watching, snooping, and gathering more data on the couple's movements, which he added to those collected by Major Juan Morales (who would later be the head of the fearsome Lautaro Brigade), sent by Contreras to BA as the first advance spy.

At 00:40 on the morning of the 30th, Townley and Callejas were waiting a hundred meters away inside their car in the gloom of Calle Malabía, whose lights were duly turned off in coordination with Argentine intelligence.

Prats and his wife did not manage to suspect anything. Much less that they were minutes away from knowing the fatal answer to the comment the general had made that night during the after-dinner conversation to his friend Ramón Huidobro: how will it be!

34 years later

They were traveling through the Palermo neighborhood in Buenos Aires on the morning of September 30 when a bomb installed by members of the DINA was detonated. Retired General Carlos Prats and his wife, Sofía Cuthbert, had been murdered.

Yesterday, 34 years later, magistrate Alejandro Solís finally handed down sentences against the former DINA agents accused of illicit association and double homicide.

For Manuel Contreras, the former operational head of the intelligence group, he ordered life imprisonment for each of the deaths. The sentence also includes penalties for eight other people.

Informed of the ruling in depth, the general's two daughters could not contain their emotion. For both, the sentences are just and provide truth to the country and the Army.

However, for them, Augusto Pinochet should also have been convicted, as "he was also part of this group of people who attacked my father," said Cecilia Prats.

Once the ruling was made public, the Government valued the investigation, a step in the work of "making truth and justice," as stated by the Minister of Justice, Carlos Maldonado. Socialist and PPD parliamentarians also expressed satisfaction with the ruling and hope that other cases being investigated will also have this impact.

But not everything has been said in this case yet. As it is a first-instance sentence, those involved can appeal. We will have to wait.

Convicted

• Retired General Juan Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda: Two life imprisonment sentences for the aggravated homicides of Carlos Prats González and Sofía Cuthbert Charleoni. Twenty more as head in the crime of illicit association in real concurrence with the double crime of aggravated homicide.
• Retired Brigadier Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo: Two 20-year sentences for the homicides of Carlos Prats González and Sofía Cuthbert Charleoni and 20 years as head in the crime of illicit association.
• Retired General Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann: Two 15-year sentences for the aggravated homicides and 541 days as a member of illicit association in real concurrence with the double crime of aggravated homicide.
• Retired Brigadier José Octavio Zara Holger: Two sentences of 10 years and one day for the double homicide and 541 days for illicit association in real concurrence with the double crime of aggravated homicide.
• Retired Colonel Christoph Georg Paul Willeke Floel: Two sentences of 10 years and one day for the double homicide and 541 days as a member in the crime of illicit association.
• Retired Colonel Juan Hernán Morales Salgado: Two sentences of 10 years and one day for the double homicide and 541 days for illicit association.
• Mariana Inés Callejas Honores: Two sentences of 10 years and one day for the aggravated double homicide.
• Jorge Enrique Iturriaga Neumann: Two sentences of 5 years and one day as an accomplice to aggravated homicide.
• Retired non-commissioned officer Reginaldo de la Cruz Valdés Alarcón: Two sentences of 541 days as an accomplice to aggravated homicide.

Source: La Nación, July 1, 2008

Harsh sentences confirmed for Carlos Prats crime

The Ninth Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals confirmed in all its terms the sentences handed down in the first instance by Minister Alejandro Solís on June 30, 2008, against nine former DINA agents, including their chief Manuel Contreras, for the double homicide of General Carlos Prats and his wife Sofía Cuthbert.

The double crime was committed in Buenos Aires in the early hours of September 30, 1974, through the installation of a bomb in the car of the former Commander-in-Chief of the Army.

The general's daughter, Angélica Prats, said at the Palace of Justice that "we are moved as a family because the Court has confirmed all the sentences applied by Minister Solís."

However, she warned that "now we hope that the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court does not reduce the sentences." With this, she alluded to the fact that, for about three years, this court has been benefiting all former agents with considerable sentence reductions, which allows them to be granted the benefit of serving them under the five-year-and-one-day threshold in the "supervised release" regime.

Among human rights organizations, there is the question of whether this time the ministers of the Criminal Chamber "will dare" to also benefit the murderers of the general and his wife.

Of the nine sentenced, only Manuel Contreras, the former second-in-command of the DINA, Pedro Espinoza, and the former foreign chief of this criminal illicit association, retired General Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, are in prison serving other sentences.

The others punished judicially are retired Brigadier José Zara Holger, retired Colonels Christoph Willikie Flöel and José Morales Salgado, retired non-commissioned officer Reginaldo Valdés Alarcón, and former civilian agents Mariana Callejas Honores (ex-wife of Michael Townley, who detonated the bomb alongside Callejas) and Jorge Iturriaga Neumann.

The resolution was adopted unanimously by the Ninth Chamber, composed of ministers Jorge Dahm and Mario Rojas, and magistrate Dobra Lusic.

Source: La Nación, January 29, 2009

Cruel repressors among the more than 150 former agents prosecuted

Cruel repressors are among the more than 150 former DINA agents, all retired, who were prosecuted last Tuesday by Minister Víctor Montiglio in the Operation Colombo, Condor, and Calle Conferencia 1587 cases.

Among them is Army officer Gladys Calderón Carreño, who injected cyanide to kill detainees at the barracks on Avenida Simón Bolívar, in the La Reina commune, where the Lautaro Brigade operated.

Also appearing is Marine Infantry non-commissioned officer Sergio Escalona Acuña, who used pliers to extract gold teeth from the bodies of prisoners who were already dead.

He performed this operation before the corpses were bagged to be thrown into the sea.

In the same way, other prosecuted individuals are Carabineros non-commissioned officers Jorge Pichunmán Curiqueo and Claudio Pacheco Fernández, who were in charge at that clandestine barracks of disfiguring the faces of the detainees and burning their fingerprints using a blowtorch.

Among the 150 former agents indicted for the Colombo and Conferencia cases, there is a total of 21 officers. (See list).

To this must be added the nearly 50 prosecuted for victims of Operation Condor, which could increase the total number of those indicted to over 165, given that the majority of these nearly 50 names are repeated in the resolutions issued for Colombo and Conferencia.

The majority of those prosecuted belong to the Army, but there are also members of the Air Force, Navy, Police, Investigations, and Gendarmerie.

Today, Friday, the marathon operation must conclude so that all those prosecuted are arrested and admitted to the various places of preventive detention, according to the institution to which they belong.

In the case of the Army, all must remain detained at the Military Police Battalion on Avenida José Arrieta, in the Peñalolén commune.

List of retired officers

1.- César Manríquez Bravo (Army Colonel) 2.- Ciro Torré Sáez (Carabineros Colonel) 3.- Fernando Lauriani Maturana (Army Brigadier) 4.- Gerardo Godoy García (Carabineros Lieutenant Colonel) 5.- Gerardo Urrich González (Army Colonel) 6.- Jaime Paris Ramos (Army Colonel) 7.- José Fuentes Torres (Army Colonel) 8.- Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda (Army General) 9.- Manuel Carevic Cubillos (Army Colonel) 10.- Marcelo Moren Brito (Army Colonel) 11.- Miguel Krassnoff (Army Brigadier) 12.- Orlando Manzo Durán (Gendarmerie Colonel) 13.- Pedro Espinoza Bravo (Army Brigadier) 14.- Raúl Iturriaga Neumann (Army General) 15.- Ricardo Lawrence Mires (Carabineros Colonel) 16.- Sergio Castillo González (Army Colonel) 17.- Víctor Molina Astete (Army Colonel) 18.- Víctor San Martín Jiménez (Army Colonel) 19.- Gladys Calderón Carreño (Army Captain) 20.- Federico Chaigneau Sepúlveda (Army Lieutenant Colonel) 21.- Juan Morales Salgado (Army Colonel)

Source: La Nación, September 4, 2009

Manuel Contreras added a new conviction for human rights violations

He was sentenced to three years in prison for the aggravated kidnapping of Ariel Santibáñez Estay in 1974, a case for which two other former DINA agents were also convicted.

Former DINA chief Manuel Contreras received a new three-year prison sentence today, this time for the aggravated kidnapping of Ariel Santibáñez Estay, which began on November 13, 1974.

The decision was adopted in a split ruling by the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court, which granted him the benefit of a conditional remission of the sentence.

In the same case, processed by investigating judge Juan Eduardo Fuentes Belmar, retired Army Colonel Marcelo Moren Brito and retired Carabineros Colonel Ricardo Lawrence Mires were also sentenced to 3 years in prison. Both were also granted conditional remission of their sentences.

The Fourth Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals also issued a ruling on a human rights case, in the investigation of the so-called "Linares Episode," which was instructed by judge Alejandro Solís and refers to nine cases of aggravated kidnapping committed in that city in the Seventh Region.

In this case, Juan Morales Salgado was sentenced to 15 years in prison; Gabriel del Río Espinoza, Claudio Lecaros Carrasco, Félix Cabezas Salazar, and Antonio Aguilar Barrientos were each sentenced to 5 years and one day in prison, all without benefits.

Humberto Julio Reyes was sentenced to 3 years and one day in prison, but was granted supervised release.

The convicted individuals are held responsible for the aggravated kidnappings of Arturo Enrique Riveros Blanco, Jaime Bernardo Torres Salazar, Jorge Bernabé Yáñez Olave, José Saavedra Betancourt, José Gabriel Campos Morales, María Isabel Beltrán Sánchez, Anselmo Cancino Aravena, Héctor Hernán Contreras Cabrera, and Alejandro Robinson Mella Flores, which occurred between September and December 1973.

Source: Emol.com, December 15, 2009

Prats Case: Drastic reduction of sentences for perpetrators of the crime and formation of an illicit association

The Second Chamber of the Supreme Court released the final ruling this Thursday regarding the sentences handed down against those responsible for the homicides of the former Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Carlos Prats, and his wife, Sofía Cuthbert, perpetrated in September 1974 in the Palermo neighborhood of Buenos Aires.

The president of the criminal chamber, Rubén Ballesteros, announced the following sentences. For the illicit association formed in 1974, retired General Manuel Contreras and retired Brigadier Pedro Espinoza were sentenced to three years and one day, without benefits.

For their part, Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, Cristoph Willike Floel, José Zara, and Juan Morales Salgado were sentenced to 100 days in jail for this same offense.

For the crime of aggravated homicide, retired Generals Manuel Contreras and Pedro Espinoza were sentenced to 17 years of major imprisonment, without alternative measures.

Meanwhile, Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, Willike Floel, José Zara, and Juan Morales Salgado were sentenced to 15 years and one day without benefits.

As accomplices, Mariana Callejas and Jorge Iturriaga Neumann were sentenced to five years in prison with benefits.

On January 29 of last year, the Santiago Court of Appeals ratified the sentence issued on June 30, 2008, by the trial judge, Alejandro Solís. The magistrate sentenced General Manuel Contreras to double life imprisonment and, additionally, he was sentenced to another 20 years in prison as the head of the illicit association organized by the dissolved DINA to commit the double crime.

The same sentences were received by former Brigadier Pedro Espinoza Bravo; while retired General Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, in charge of the organization's foreign operations, received two 15-year prison sentences for the murders and 541 days for illicit association.

Former Brigadier José Zara was sentenced to two ten-year prison terms for the homicides and 541 days for the illicit association, as were former Colonels Cristoph Willike Floel and Juan Morales Salgado.

Mariana Callejas was sentenced to two ten-year terms. She was the wife of former American agent Michael Townley, who currently resides in the United States under the witness protection program and was responsible for installing and detonating the bomb placed under General Prats' car.

Source: El Mostrador.cl, July 8, 2010

Army Commander-in-Chief, Juan Miguel Fuente-Alba: The Army repudiates all participants in this cowardly murder

Minister of Justice Felipe Bulnes also commented on the ruling, asserting that the Government "deeply rejects" the double crime.

Through a statement and press declarations by its Commander-in-Chief, Juan Miguel Fuente-Alba, the Army energetically rejected the crime and valued the sentence.

"The Army repudiates all participants in this cowardly murder, especially the military personnel who carried it out, even more so because their criminal act had a former Commander-in-Chief and his wife as victims. With their extreme cruelty, they also tragically violated the principles that constitute the moral heritage of the institution," the statement notes.

It adds that "this crime brings mourning to the Army and all its members" and that the "elevated services" provided to Chile by hundreds of thousands of soldiers should not "suffer detriment due to the infamy of those who did not adhere to the traditional institutional code of honor and conduct, which they demonstrated they despised through their actions."

Upon leaving the Congressional commission investigating events following the earthquake, Army Commander-in-Chief Juan Miguel Fuente-Alba asserted that "what the Judiciary has reported to us is of extreme gravity.

The act is absolutely inadmissible and unjustifiable, of unparalleled cruelty and cowardice. A former Army Commander-in-Chief and his wife were cruelly murdered; therefore, this is an act that the Army rejects and repudiates with all the necessary energy."

"I believe a chapter has been closed in a need that the Army itself had to know the truth regarding these events. That has happened today (...) This moment and the statement the Army made public at the time allow us to close this regrettable chapter of our history.

We hope that with this, the family and the daughters will find in this opportunity the reconciliation that is appropriate and corresponds with the Army, the same Army that their father commanded, which he dreamed of since he was a lieutenant, to which he gave so much, and which today must make itself present in the face of this regrettable ruling," he added.

Government rejects crime

Minister of Justice Felipe Bulnes also referred to the sentence issued yesterday by the Supreme Court, noting that "the definitive judicial truth regarding this terrible crime has been established."

"We as a Government, in the first place, deeply reject this horrible crime that affected former Commander-in-Chief Carlos Prats and his wife. And, in the second place, we express our solidarity with the daughters of the Prats-Cuthbert marriage and accompany them in their pain. We are also aware that they have pursued justice for more than 30 years and finally today they have obtained it," he said.

Two convicted individuals will serve jail time for the first time. They have been detained for other human rights cases, but have never served an effective prison sentence. Retired Brigadier José Zara Holger and retired Colonel Juan Morales Salgado are the only two of the nine sentenced by the Supreme Court who, currently being at liberty, must serve their first sentence behind bars.

The prison they will enter, as confirmed by the Gendarmerie and informed to the Army, will be Punta Peuco. Those convicted in the case who are already detained for other processes linked to human rights—retired General Manuel Contreras, retired Brigadier Pedro Espinoza, and retired Colonel Christoph Willike—are being held at the Cordillera Prison.

In statements to Canal 13, retired Brigadier José Zara stated that "we will have to accept what the future demands of us and each one must just carry their own cross. One must always face justice; I have never refused anything."

Now the parties have three days to present a motion for reconsideration if they wish for any part of the ruling to be clarified. Once that occurs, the file will go down to the Santiago Court of Appeals, which will send it to the investigating judge of the case, Alejandro Solís, so that he may order the execution of the sentence.

It is expected that the arrest warrant for the convicted individuals will be sent on Tuesday or Wednesday; everything will depend on when the file leaves the Supreme Court.

Family valued sentence and defense attorney expected acquittal CECILIA PRATS, youngest daughter of the victims: "After all these years, we feel that it has been fulfilled that they have their sentences as corresponds and that they serve them. That matters to us, that they be indicated as the guilty ones and that the people who were involved in the event be clearly identified."

PAMELA PEREIRA, lawyer for the Prats family:

"The determining factor is that a chapter of Chile's history has been closed and those responsible for a treacherous crime have been convicted. This horrendous crime was condemned by the Chilean State with effective prison sentences."

HERNÁN QUEZADA, lawyer for the Prats family:

"The application of the 'media prescripción' (partial statute of limitations) is, in my judgment, a legal error because the Supreme Court did not consider the investigation carried out in Argentina for 28 years, forgetting that the process in Chile began as a result of the extradition requested by the Argentine justice system."

JORGE BALMACEDA, lawyer for the Iturriaga brothers and Espinoza:

"In reality, we expected a more benign sentence, especially for my clients. We expected the Court to declare the extinction of responsibility due to the statute of limitations of the criminal action."

ISABEL ALLENDE, PS Senator

"Beyond being a treacherous crime, the most dramatic thing is that it was done by their own peers. There were very high-ranking military officials involved here, and it is a lesson that the Army has incorporated and must incorporate for life. Justice has finally been served."

Source: El Mercurio, July 9, 2010

Juan Morales, former head of the Lautaro Brigade-DINA: Is Pedro Espinoza a traitor?

They call him on the phone and the whinny of a horse rings on his mobile. Retired Colonel Juan Morales Salgado knows a lot about horses and lives surrounded by them, teaching horse riding, which he practiced during his years in the Army.

But he could not jump the fence of justice, and on Thursday he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the double murder of General Carlos Prats and his wife Sofía Cuthbert, which occurred in Buenos Aires in 1974.

Until after the conclusion of the investigation carried out by judge Alejandro Solís, Morales had "remained clear." But the former second-in-command of the DINA, Pedro Espinoza Bravo, another of those convicted, had something to say.

At the beginning of 2007, Espinoza told judge Solís that not everyone who should have been among those prosecuted for the double homicide of Prats and his wife was included. Then, he took a document out of a folder and handed it to him.

It was the report addressed to the head of the DINA, Manuel Contreras, signed by Morales Salgado in June 1974 when he was a captain. In it, clues were provided about General Prats' daily activities in Buenos Aires, obtained as a result of surveillance. The judge reopened the investigation and prosecuted Morales.

The man who was head of the DINA's Lautaro Brigade maintains that because of this, "Espinoza is a traitor," and states that today, in the trials for human rights violations, among the former DINA agents, everyone wants to save their own skin and, for that reason, "there are many" who are being disloyal.

He asserts that he never killed with his own hands nor ordered anyone to be killed, but admits that agents of his brigade tortured and killed at the Simón Bolívar Barracks, allied with the members of the fearsome Delfín Group commanded by Army Captain Germán Barriga and Carabineros Lieutenant Ricardo Lawrence, whom he blames directly for these crimes.

"It was a mistake to make the bodies of the detainees disappear," he expresses. It is the first time he has spoken, and this is the exclusive interview that Colonel (R) Morales held with LND.

-With what feeling are you going to serve your sentence? -I am leaving with a feeling of total innocence. I have nothing to do with this case. It hurts me that they have involved me in this. -Is an innocent person sentenced to 15 years in jail for two crimes? -Judge Solís had closed the investigation, but he reopened it when Pedro Espinoza handed him the document for which they convicted me. -That document that you signed and addressed to Manuel Contreras giving him information about General Prats' steps in Buenos Aires? -But I did not carry out the surveillance of General Prats in Buenos Aires, I only limited myself to transcribing that document. -You only went to Buenos Aires to transcribe a document of surveillance work that someone else did? -That was it. -Who commissioned you to go to Buenos Aires to follow Prats and write a report? -The head of the DINA in June 1974. But I only transcribed that document. -Why did Manuel Contreras tell you to go to Buenos Aires? -My General Contreras told me that my General Pinochet was concerned about General Prats' security and wanted to protect him in Buenos Aires. -You were deceived then, because what Pinochet wanted was to know what General Prats' steps were to have him assassinated. That was established in the judicial investigation. -I don't know if it was for that. General Contreras himself ratified, in a confrontation we had in 2007, that my General Pinochet was concerned about General Prats' security, and that surveillance had to be done to provide him with security. -But that is a big lie... -That was what my General Contreras told me. -And if you did not carry out the surveillance of General Prats, the reason for which they convicted you, who did it then? -I don't remember. -But if you did not carry out the surveillance, why did you sign that document? -Because someone gave me that information and I transcribed what that person told me. -I insist, you did not go to Buenos Aires sent by the head of the DINA just to transcribe a document, that is absurd. -I repeat, I did not carry out the surveillance of General Prats. -Who gave you the surveillance information to transcribe, as you claim? -I don't know who it was, I don't know his name. -Do you prefer to keep that name silent? -That is so. -Is it none of those convicted? -No. -Was it a soldier, a civilian, or a soldier dressed as a civilian? -I always saw civilians in Buenos Aires. -You declared to judge Solís that that person was Enrique Arancibia Clavel, a DINA agent in Buenos Aires and the only one convicted for this double crime by Argentine judge María Servini. -That is so, and I said it so they would leave me alone.

DINA Archives -Do you believe that, by handing this document to the judge at the last moment, Pedro Espinoza wanted to take revenge on you for something? -Revenge for what? I have no idea. -Did someone betray you? -If I have to name a traitor, Pedro Espinoza is a traitor. -But if Espinoza's act does not seem like a personal revenge against you, then who would he have betrayed? -With that act, Espinoza wanted to involve the entire Army, because he said that he obtained that document from the files of the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE), and that document was never in the DINE.

Espinoza is lying. -Where did he obtain it then? -I think from his own archive. -Is it true then that there is a saved archive of the DINA? -I think Espinoza keeps DINA documents; proof of this is that he handed over the one we are talking about. -The DINA operated with official letters, signatures, stamps, everything formally.

Do DINA archives exist? -I don't know what happened to those documents, but there must be archives; they operated with documentation. -If Pinochet were alive, would he have had to be convicted for this crime? -Yes, he was the direct head of everything.

The DINA always depended directly on him. -Do you believe that Pinochet always knew that the agents sent to Buenos Aires weeks before the attack were going to kill General Prats? -That is a very strong question... I don't know, I won't risk saying it.

Source: La Nación, July 11, 2010

Five military personnel involved in human rights violations will serve their sentences in freedom

The Supreme Court acquitted a retired military officer and allowed five others to serve sentences of between three and five years in prison under supervised release as authors of the disappearance of nine opponents during the military dictatorship, judicial sources reported this Thursday.

With this final ruling, the high court has issued a total of one hundred convictions and another twelve acquittals in cases of human rights violations during the regime of Augusto Pinochet since 2005.

In this case, the Supreme Court reduced the sentences decreed by judge Alejandro Solís in a 2008 ruling, in which he set fifteen years and one day in prison for five of the defendants, and ten years and one day in prison for the sixth former military officer prosecuted.

With this final ruling, retired General Juan Morales Salgado and former Colonel Claudio Lecaros Carrasco were sentenced to five years in prison with the benefit of supervised release for the disappearance of five of the young opponents.

Retired non-commissioned officer Antonio Aguilar Barrientos was sentenced to the same penalty for four aggravated kidnappings, and retired Colonel Félix Cabezas Salazar for three disappearances.

Meanwhile, for one aggravated kidnapping, the Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs during the military regime, retired General Humberto Julio Reyes, received 3 years in prison with the benefit of conditional remission, similar to supervised release.

On the other hand, retired General Gabriel del Río Espinoza was acquitted of his responsibility as the author of five disappearances.

The victims of the so-called "Linares" process are Arturo Riveros Blanco, Jaime Torres Salazar, Jorge Yañez Olave, José Saavedra Betancourt, Gabriel Campos Morales, María Isabel Beltrán Sánchez, Anselmo Cansino Aravena, Héctor Contreras Cabrera, and Alejandro Mella Flores.

The majority of the victims, between 19 and 26 years old, lived in the towns of Linares and Constitución, and were militants of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR).

The young people were detained by the police days after the military coup of September 11, 1973, and were subsequently transferred to the Linares Artillery School and the General Bari Shooting Range, from where their location was lost.

Regarding the reduction of sentences and the application of benefits, the president of the Association of Relatives of the Disappeared, Lorena Pizarro, considered today that these measures reflect a Judiciary that "benefits criminals and leaves victims in the most absolute helplessness."

Pizarro explained that a majority group of judges "believe in this reconciliatory vision that is ultimately impunity, with which they try to leave victims and victimizers happy," while others even prefer to apply the statute of limitations in these crimes.

On the other hand, the director of the National Institute of Human Rights, Lorena Fríes, defended that "in Chile, justice is slow, but it arrives."

"Judges in Chile have a clear mandate of when they can acquit and when they can convict," and also of when they can grant certain benefits, she indicated.

According to the head of the Institute, "the acquittals often have to do with the lack of information, which does not allow for the accreditation of the criminal responsibility of the Armed Forces officials who participated."

Source: El Mostrador, April 28, 2011

Juan Morales, former head of the Lautaro Brigade-DINA: “Pedro Espinoza is a traitor”

They call him on the phone, and his mobile rings with the sound of a horse whinnying. Colonel (Ret.) Juan Morales Salgado knows a great deal about horses and lives surrounded by them, giving riding lessons, a skill he practiced during his years in the Army.

But he could not jump the hurdle of justice, and on Thursday he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the double murder of General Carlos Prats and his wife, Sofía Cuthbert, which took place in Buenos Aires in 1974.

Until after the conclusion of the investigation conducted by Judge Alejandro Solís, Morales had "stayed in the clear." But the former second-in-command of the DINA, Pedro Espinoza Bravo, another of those convicted, had something to say.

At the beginning of 2007, Espinoza told Judge Solís that not everyone who should have been among those prosecuted for the double homicide of Prats and his wife was included. He then took a document out of a folder and handed it to him.

It was the report addressed to the head of the DINA, Manuel Contreras, signed by Morales Salgado in June 1974 when he was a captain. In it, clues were provided regarding General Prats' daily activities in Buenos Aires, obtained through surveillance. The judge reopened the investigation and prosecuted Morales.

The man who was head of the DINA's Lautaro Brigade maintains that this is why "Espinoza is a traitor," and he asserts that today, in the trials for human rights violations, among the former DINA agents, everyone wants to save their own skin, and because of this, "there are many" who are being disloyal.

He claims that he never killed with his own hands nor ordered anyone to be murdered, but he admits that agents from his brigade tortured and killed at the Simón Bolívar Barracks, in alliance with members of the fearsome Delfín Group commanded by Army Captain Germán Barriga and Carabineros Lieutenant Ricardo Lawrence, whom he blames directly for these crimes.

"It was a mistake to make the bodies of the detainees disappear," he states. It is the first time he has spoken, and this is the exclusive interview that Colonel (Ret.) Morales held with LND.

-With what feeling are you going to serve your sentence? -I am leaving with a feeling of total innocence. I have nothing to do with this case. It hurts me that they have involved me in this. -Is an innocent man being sentenced to 15 years in prison for two crimes? -Judge Solís had closed the investigation, but he reopened it when Pedro Espinoza handed him the document for which I was convicted. -That document that you signed and addressed to Manuel Contreras, giving him information about General Prats' movements in Buenos Aires? -But I did not conduct the surveillance of General Prats in Buenos Aires; I only limited myself to transcribing that document. -You only went to Buenos Aires to transcribe a document from surveillance work done by someone else? -That is how it was. -Who tasked you with going to Buenos Aires to follow Prats and write a report? -The head of the DINA in June 1974. But I only transcribed that document. -Why did Manuel Contreras tell you to go to Buenos Aires? -My General Contreras told me that my General Pinochet was concerned about General Prats' safety and wanted to protect him in Buenos Aires. -You were deceived then, because what Pinochet wanted was to know General Prats' movements in order to have him assassinated. That was established in the judicial investigation. -I don't know if it was for that. General Contreras himself ratified, in a confrontation we had in 2007, that my General Pinochet was concerned about General Prats' safety, and that surveillance had to be done to provide him with security. -But that is a big lie… -That was what my General Contreras told me. -And if you did not conduct the surveillance of General Prats, the reason for which you were convicted, who did it then? -I don't remember. -But if you did not conduct the surveillance, why did you sign that document? -Because someone gave me that information and I transcribed what that person told me. -I insist, you did not go to Buenos Aires sent by the head of the DINA just to transcribe a document; that is absurd. -I repeat, I did not conduct the surveillance of General Prats. -Who gave you the surveillance information for you to transcribe, as you claim? -I don't know who it was; I don't know his name. -Do you prefer to keep that name silent? -That is correct. -Is it none of those convicted? -No. -Was it a soldier, a civilian, or a soldier dressed as a civilian? -I always saw civilians in Buenos Aires. -You declared to Judge Solís that that person was Enrique Arancibia Clavel, a DINA agent in Buenos Aires and the only one convicted for this double crime by the Argentine judge María Servini. -That is correct, and I said it so they would leave me alone.

DINA Archives -Do you think that, by handing this document to the judge at the last moment, Pedro Espinoza wanted to take revenge on you for something? -Revenge for what? I have no idea. -Did someone betray you? -If I have to name a traitor, Pedro Espinoza is a traitor. -But if Espinoza's act does not seem like a personal revenge against you, then who would he have betrayed? -With that act, Espinoza wanted to involve the entire Army, because he said that he obtained that document from the archives of the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE), and that document was never in the DINE.

Espinoza is lying. -Where did he obtain it then? -I think from his own archive. -Is it true then that there is a saved DINA archive? -I believe that Espinoza keeps DINA documents; proof of this is that he handed over the one we are talking about. -The DINA operated with official letters, signatures, stamps, everything formally.

Do DINA archives exist? -I don't know what happened to those documents, but there must be archives; it operated with documentation. -If Pinochet were alive, would he have had to be convicted for this crime? -Yes, he was the direct head of everything.

The DINA always depended directly on him. -Do you think Pinochet always knew that the agents sent to Buenos Aires weeks before the attack were going to kill General Prats? -That is a very strong question… I don't know, I won't risk saying it. //LND

The Lautaro Brigade, whose top leader was Juan Morales Salgado, was created in April 1974 to provide security to the head of the DINA, Manuel Contreras, his family, and military and civilian authorities.

In August 1975, it was established at the barracks at Avenida Simón Bolívar 8800, in La Reina. At the beginning of 1976, the Delfín Group, created to exterminate the clandestine leadership of the Communist Party, was installed in that barracks. Its head was Army Captain Germán Barriga Muñoz and the second-in-command was Carabineros Lieutenant Ricardo Lawrence Mires.

As Morales Salgado relates, both brigades came into conflict, but eventually his group ended up collaborating with Delfín in the torture and disappearance of opponents of the dictatorship. Today, Ricardo Lawrence is serving a sentence in Punta Peuco, while Germán Barriga committed suicide in January 2005.

-You were the head of the DINA's Lautaro Brigade. Are you repentant? Do you feel you have to ask for forgiveness? -I don't feel I have to ask anyone for forgiveness because I didn't eliminate anyone. I don't regret anything either.

Has anyone asked me for forgiveness for the people of my Army who were killed? I don't have to ask for forgiveness for anything. I regret the things that happened; I didn't kill anyone. -The people in your brigade tortured and murdered prisoners at the Simón Bolívar Barracks, just as it is proven in the proceedings. -Unfortunately, that was the case, but it wasn't everyone.

Those who did it are the ones who have to ask for forgiveness. They acted behind my back. I did not give the orders at the Simón Bolívar Barracks regarding the prisoners; that was done by Germán Barriga and Ricardo Lawrence, who were the heads of the Delfín group that came to insert itself into that barracks where the Lautaro brigade operated.

My brigade was in charge of providing security to my General Contreras, his family, and other military authorities. -Why, in addition to torturing and killing them, were the bodies of the prisoners made to disappear by throwing them into the sea? -I cannot give an answer; my unit was not operational.

The operational units always received direct orders from their chiefs, and the top chief was my General Contreras. -Who ordered the detainees to be killed and their bodies thrown into the sea? Because someone gave those orders. -Logically, someone gave them.

If they died, their bodies should have been handed over to their families. Making them disappear was a mistake. -Was it Contreras who gave those orders on his own initiative? Was it Pinochet who gave them to Contreras? -Those are loaded questions… I don't know, I cannot say, but someone gave the orders.

In the Army, it is very difficult for someone to act on their own. -At the Simón Bolívar barracks, the faces of the already dead prisoners were disfigured by burning them with blowtorches, and their fingerprints were erased in the same way.

Why such cruelty, if they were going to be thrown into the sea tied to pieces of rail later? -I never found sense in that, why? Unless a special order had been given for it. But it was Barriga and Lawrence's people who were in charge at Simón Bolívar regarding the fate of the prisoners. -Are we talking about the Delfín group? -Yes, they would enter Simón Bolívar with the detainees and go straight through; they never informed me.

Barriga and Lawrence had direct contact with the head of the DINA. They would enter and leave with detainees. I had no relationship with them. -But you were the head of the Lautaro brigade, which was the one in charge of the Simón Bolívar barracks. -I was the head of that barracks, but that Delfín group came to install itself there without me asking for it.

They put them in there for me. They came from Villa Grimaldi, where they had had problems with the command of that barracks. My General Contreras ordered me to receive them. But I assume that at Simón Bolívar I had responsibility for the command.

Indirectly, I am answering today, and that is why I am prosecuted for some cases that happened there. -Let's talk about the clandestine head of the Communist Party, Víctor Díaz. Who ordered him to be killed at Simón Bolívar? -I was told, by the Investigative Police, that my people had declared that I ordered Víctor Díaz to be killed, because Germán Barriga had transmitted that order to me, which came from the head of the DINA.

And I have a principle: when my subordinates say that I gave the order for something, I do not argue it. But that is not so; I did not give that order. -Who gave it? -After Investigations interrogated me, a non-commissioned officer appeared who declared that Barriga ordered him to kill Víctor Díaz.

And there he recounts that he knelt before him, asked him for forgiveness for what he was going to do, and suffocated him with a plastic bag. -Are we talking about Juvenal Piña, "El Elefante"? -Yes. -But, even if your subordinates declared it that way, why did you acknowledge that you gave the order to kill him if you didn't do it and knew that you were involving yourself in a serious crime? -Because those from the Investigative Police insisted that my subordinates had stated it that way, and in the end, I acknowledged it so they would leave me alone, without realizing the significance that would later have. -You declared in the process that you ordered Army Lieutenant Gladys Calderón to inject pentothal into Víctor Díaz to kill him. Did you give that order? -No, I never gave it. It was the same thing; I accepted it so they would leave me alone. -How can it be explained that the dramatic events that occurred at the Simón Bolívar barracks were not known for more than 30 years, and the same regarding the existence of the Lautaro brigade and the Delfín group? -Because everyone, just like me, distanced ourselves from the problem forever and because no one ever asked us before what had happened. -A vow of silence ordered by Pinochet, by Contreras, or by both? -There was no such vow; at least I didn't have one, nor did anyone demand it of me. -However, there are several who acknowledge that such a vow existed. -In my case and that of my brigade, that did not exist. I don't know if that happened in other groups or brigades. -At the Simón Bolívar barracks, were there special people dedicated to putting the bodies in sacks and tying the piece of rail to them, preparing them to be thrown into the sea from helicopters? -No. They did it themselves, Barriga and Lawrence's people. -You say that your Lautaro brigade was not operational, but some people from your brigade did collaborate with the Delfín group. -I regret that that happened, because with that they involved the brigade as a body. Most of my people who were involved in that were Carabineros. They have a different loyalty to the Army. The Carabineros in my brigade followed Lawrence, of the Delfín group, who was a Carabineros officer, when they should have followed me. Lawrence managed them. -With the trials, were the loyalties and trusts between those who were DINA agents broken? -Today everyone looks out for their own interest. Let them save themselves, but honestly, and don't go involving others like Pedro Espinoza does. -Are there other former DINA agents who are also being disloyal in the processes? -There are many disloyal ones. -Who? -I'd rather not say.

Pedro Espinoza Bravo

The Brigadier (Ret.) is 78 years old and is currently incarcerated at the Cordillera Prison in Peñalolén, serving other sentences. In 1995, he was sentenced to six years in prison for the assassination of former Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier, a sentence he served at the Punta Peuco prison.

He was one of the fundamental men of the DINA along with Manuel Contreras. In September 1973, he was part of the Caravan of Death squadron that murdered more than 100 prisoners. In addition, he was a main "coordinator" in the repressive operations, which is why he is judicially involved in at least 50 cases.

Source: lanacion.cl, July 1, 2010

Santiago Court increases sentence for former DINA agents for their responsibility in qualified kidnappings and homicides of Operation Condor victims

The Eleventh Chamber of the appellate court modified the sentence of the first-instance minister and convicted a total of 22 former DINA agents for their responsibility in the crimes of qualified kidnapping and qualified homicide committed in Chile and abroad.

The Santiago Court of Appeals increased the sentences that 22 former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate must serve for the qualified kidnappings of Jorge Fuentes Alarcón, Julio Valladares Caroca, Juan Hernández Zazpe, Manuel Tamayo Martínez, Luis Muñoz Velásquez, Alexei Jaccard Siegler, Héctor Velásquez Mardones, and the qualified homicides of Ricardo Ramírez Herrera, Jacobo Stoulman Bartnik, Matilde Pessa Mois, Hernán Soto González, and Ruiter Correa Arce, illicit acts perpetrated within the framework of the so-called "Operation Condor," a cooperation agreement between the repressive groups of Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Uruguay in the 1970s.

In the ruling (case file 4.545-2019), the Eleventh Chamber of the appellate court—composed of ministers Jessica González, Loreto Gutiérrez, and Jaime Balmaceda—modified the convictions of the first-instance court and increased the criminal sanctions for the former agents involved in the crimes committed both in Chile and abroad.

1) Agents Cristoph Willike Floel and Raúl Iturriaga Neumann must serve a sentence of 20 years in prison as perpetrators of the qualified kidnappings of Jorge Fuentes Alarcón, Julio Valladares Caroca, Juan Hernández Zazpe, Manuel Tamayo Martínez, Luis Muñoz Velásquez, Alexei Jaccard Siegler, and Héctor Velásquez Mardones, and a sentence of 20 years as perpetrators of the qualified homicides of Ricardo Ramírez Herrera, Jacobo Stoulman Bartnik, Matilde Pessa Mois, Hernán Soto González, and Ruiter Correa Arce.

2) Agent Juan Morales Salgado was sentenced to a term of 20 years in prison for the qualified kidnappings of Alexei Jaccard Siegler and Héctor Velásquez Mardones, and a term of 20 years in prison for the qualified homicides of Ricardo Ramírez Herrera, Jacobo Stoulman Bartnik, and Matilde Pessa Mois.

3) Meanwhile, agent Pedro Espinoza Bravo must serve a sentence of 20 years in prison for the qualified kidnappings of Julio Valladares Caroca, Manuel Tamayo Martínez, Alexei Jaccard Siegler, and Héctor Velásquez Mardones; and a sentence of 20 years in prison for the qualified homicides of Ricardo Ramírez Herrera, Jacobo Stoulman Bartnik, Matilde Pessa Mois, Hernán Soto González, and Ruiter Correa Arce.

4) Jorge Escobar Fuentes, Federico Chaigneau Sepúlveda, and Miguel Riveros Valderrama will serve a sentence of 18 years in prison for the kidnappings of Alexei Jaccard Siegler and Héctor Velásquez Mardones; and a sentence of 18 years in prison for the qualified homicides of Ricardo Ramírez Herrera, Jacobo Stoulman Bartnik, Matilde Pessa Mois, Hernán Soto González, and Ruiter Correa Arce.

5) Agent Gladys Calderón Carreño was sanctioned with a sentence of 10 years and one day in prison for the qualified kidnappings of Alexei Jaccard Siegler and Héctor Velásquez Mardones; and 15 years and one day in prison for the qualified homicides of Ricardo Ramírez Herrera, Jacobo Stoulman Bartnik, Matilde Pessa Mois, Hernán Soto González, and Ruiter Correa Arce.

6) Agents Jaime Ojeda Obando and Eduardo Oyarce Riquelme will serve a sentence of 5 years and one day in prison for the qualified kidnappings of Alexei Jaccard Siegler and Héctor Velásquez Mardones; and a sentence of 10 years and one day in prison for the qualified homicides of Ricardo Ramírez Herrera, Jacobo Stoulman Bartnik, and Matilde Pessa Mois.

7) Miguel Krasnoff Martchenko and Gerardo Godoy García will serve 15 years and one day in prison for the qualified kidnapping of Jorge Fuentes Alarcón.

8) Agent Hermon Alfaro Mundaca was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the qualified kidnapping of Jorge Fuentes Alarcón. Sentenced to the same penalty and for the same crime were José Fuentes Torres, Jorge Andrade Gómez, José Aravena Ruiz, Luis Torres Méndez, María Gabriela Órdenes Montecinos, Osvaldo Pulgar Gallardo, and Rodolfo Concha Rodríguez, who had been acquitted in the first-instance ruling.

9) Finally, Jerónimo Neira Méndez and Manuel Rivas Díaz must serve a sentence of 3 years and one day in prison for the qualified kidnapping of Jorge Fuentes Alarcón.

The Court shared the first-instance criterion regarding the participation of those convicted in the case, as real and proven evidence exists regarding their participation in the events, either as inducing perpetrators or direct perpetrators of the crimes attributed to each one.

"Regarding the convictions and, specifically, in relation to those accused whose participation was classified as co-perpetration, the Court agrees with the conclusion reached by the first-instance judge, in that with the information gathered during the investigation it is possible to construct various judicial presumptions which, by meeting the requirements of being based on real and proven facts, being multiple, serious, precise, direct, and concordant, are sufficient to maintain with conviction that the accused Cristoph Georg Willeke Floel, Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, Juan Hernán Morales Salgado, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Jorge Marcelo Escobar Fuentes, Federico Humberto Chaigneau Sepúlveda, Miguel René Riveros Valderrama, Gladys de las Mercedes Calderón Carreño, Carlos José Leonardo López Tapia, José Alfonso Ojeda Obando, Eduardo Alejandro Oyarce Riquelme, Héctor Raúl Valdebenito Araya, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García, Ciro Ernesto Torré Sáez, and Orlando José Manzo Durán had intervention in the capacity of co-perpetrators, in the terms of Nos. 1, 2, and 3 of Article 15 of the Penal Code, as specified in each case, of the repeated crimes of qualified kidnapping of Jorge Isaac Fuentes Alarcón, Juan Humberto Hernández Zazpe, Manuel Jesús Tamayo Martínez, Luis Gonzalo Muñoz Velásquez, Julio del Tránsito Valladares Caroca, Alexei Vladimir Jaccard Siegler, and Héctor Heraldo Velásquez Mardones, and of qualified homicide of Ricardo Ignacio Ramírez Herrera, Jacobo Stoulman Bortnik, Matilde Pessa Mois, Hernán Soto Gálvez, and Ruiter Correa Arce," the ruling states.

It adds: "Indeed, in the case of those who were part of the Exterior Department of the National Intelligence Directorate—Willeke Floel, Iturriaga Neumann, and Espinoza Bravo—in the Twenty-Eighth, Twenty-Ninth, Thirty-First, Thirty-Second, Thirty-Fourth, and Thirty-Fifth foundations, all the evidentiary background on which the charges are based is exposed one by one, and it is correctly concluded that the form of perpetration that applies to each of them is that of No. 1 of Article 15 of the Penal Code for the first of those named, having taken part in the execution of the events in an immediate and direct manner, and of No. 2 in relation to the remaining two, as it was demonstrated that they forced or directly induced others to execute them.

The same occurs in the case of the agents of the National Intelligence Directorate who were part of the so-called Lautaro Brigade that operated at the barracks located at Calle Simón Bolívar No. 8.630 in the commune of La Reina, in relation to the qualified kidnappings of the victims Jaccard Siegler and Velásquez Mardones and the qualified homicides of the victims Ramírez Herrera, Stoulman Bortnik, and Pessa Mois, that is, the convicted Valdebenito Araya, Morales Salgado, Oyarce Riquelme, and Ojeda Obando; and the sentenced Calderón Carreño, Riveros Valderrama, Chaigneau Sepúlveda, and Escobar Fuentes in these same illicit acts and also in the qualified homicides of the victims Soto Gálvez and Correa Arce.

The Thirty-Seventh, Thirty-Ninth, Forty-Fourth, and Fifty-Fourth foundations, regarding the first four, and the Forty-Second, Forty-Seventh, Fiftieth, and Fifty-Second motives, in relation to the remaining four, provide a detailed account of the background according to which it is possible to deduce with certainty that at the time of the events these accused were part, as operational agents, of the brigade of the National Intelligence Directorate that materialized the kidnapping of Communist Party militants, among whose members were the people just named, in such a way that although some of them do not remember the specific name of these people, it is indisputable to conclude, just as the a quo does, that they took part in their illegitimate deprivation of liberty, in some cases, and in their homicide, in others, whether in an immediate and direct manner, or by forcing or directly inducing others to execute these acts, in the form provided for by the cited Nos. 1 and 2 of the cited Article 15 and that, therefore, they are punishable co-perpetrators of these illicit acts.

In turn, the accused Godoy García and Krassnoff Martchenko, agents of the National Intelligence Directorate assigned to the so-called Terranova Barracks or Villa Grimaldi and convicted for the qualified kidnapping of the victim Jorge Isaac Fuentes Alarcón, are also perpetrators in the terms of No. 1 of the same Article 15, as heads of operational groups—Tucán and Halcón respectively—in charge of the dismantling of the Revolutionary Left Movement through the kidnapping and homicide of its members, one of whom was the aforementioned Fuentes Alarcón, who, as stated, was illegitimately deprived of liberty in the town of Enramada in the Republic of Paraguay and transferred first to Cuatro Álamos and then to Villa Grimaldi, the latter place where, according to numerous pieces of evidence outlined in the first-instance ruling, he was interrogated and subjected to torture to obtain information about the organization in which he was a militant, activities in which the heads of the operational groups mentioned above evidently had to participate, who also, as abundant evidence indicates, directed these interrogations. In these capacities as direct interrogators or indirect custodians of a person who, after being kidnapped, was kept deprived of liberty in Villa Grimaldi, it cannot but be concluded that, as in the previous cases, although they do not remember the specific name of the victim Jorge Isaac Fuentes Alarcón, the accused Godoy García and Krassnoff Martchenko took part in his kidnapping in an immediate and direct manner in the form provided for by No. 1 of Article 15 of the Penal Code.

It should be specified that according to this rule, in what is of interest, those who take part in the execution of the act in an immediate and direct manner are considered perpetrators; and the truth is that in the case of the crime of kidnapping, the execution of the typical conduct is not exhausted with the act of—to put it one way—the material or physical "apprehension" of the kidnapped person, but continues to be executed, and therefore the crime is in the course of consummation, as long as the illegitimate confinement or illegitimate deprivation of liberty lasts.

Consequently, those who perform acts that allow this state to be perpetuated are strictly executing the conduct described by the type, independent of the prior agreement that may or may not have mediated with other participants.

In other words, their acts are not of simple facilitation of means for the execution or of mere presence without taking direct part in it (in which case the determination of the eventual prior agreement would be relevant to qualify the intervention of perpetration or complicity, according to what is provided by Articles 15 No. 3 and 16 of the Penal Code), but are executive acts proper to perpetration.

For the same reason, the one who forces or induces another to execute any of these acts is evidently a mediate perpetrator in the terms of No. 2 of Article 15 and his conduct, therefore, is also punishable.

Under such conditions, it is agreed with the first-instance judge when he concludes that those who were accused as executing co-perpetrators of the crime of qualified kidnapping or as mediate co-perpetrators of the same effectively hold such capacity, since the conduct displayed by each of them, as was proven, satisfies the requirements of the type of Article 141 of the Penal Code, in relation to the first part of No. 1 of Article 15 of the same legal body and of No. 2 of that precept."

Civil reparations

In the civil aspect, the amounts of the indemnifications for some of the victims' relatives were modified, and two new reparatory measures requested by the spouse of Alexei Jaccard Siegler were also accepted, which are: to order the Treasury to allocate the sum of $15,000,000 so that, through the Ministry of Education, books on the subject of Human Rights are acquired, which must be delivered equitably to all public schools in the commune of Chiguayante, and that a plaque be installed in a visible place in the libraries of each of them informing of the fact that such books exist and that they were delivered in memory of Alexei Jaccard Siegler, a victim of human rights violations during the military dictatorship.

In addition, the Treasury of Chile must deliver $75,000,000 to the University of Concepción so that it institutes the "Alexei Jaccard Siegler" award, which will be granted annually to a regular student of that university who develops research on the subject of Human Rights, in the context of their studies at the University of Concepción, and which will amount to the equivalent in pesos of 100 Unidades de Fomento, with the University itself having to regulate the demands, requirements, and conditions of the work.

The facts In the investigation stage, Minister Mario Carroza established: -That as a result of the events that occurred in the country on September 11, 1973, the Military Government formally instituted on November 25, 1975, in a meeting held in the city of Santiago, Chile, a plan for the coordination of actions and mutual support between the leaders of the intelligence services of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Chile, intended to destabilize opponents of the regimes assumed by the Armed Forces and Order; -That this link generated in a state and immediate manner a reality that had already been forged in concrete actions between the alluded countries, that is, surveillance, detentions, interrogations under torture, transfer between countries, disappearance, or execution of people contrary to the de facto instituted governments; -The previous scenario would have allowed cases such as those indicated below to be consummated: -That on May 17, 1975, Jorge Isaac Fuentes Alarcón, a militant of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), was detained in the Republic of Paraguay, in the town of Enramada, and then transferred to the city of Asunción, where he remained deprived of liberty until September 23, 1975, when his transfer to Chile by air in a clandestine manner was defined by DINA agents, who, once in the country, took him to the secret enclosures of confinement and torture that this organization maintained, that is, Cuatro Álamos and Villa Grimaldi. In the latter place is where Fuentes remained a prisoner and deprived of liberty for the longest time, received cruel treatment from his captors, was interrogated under torture, and was kept in inhumane conditions, until probably January 17, 1976, when other prisoners saw him for the last time, his whereabouts remaining unknown to this day; -That, in turn, on July 2, 1976, in the city of La Paz, Republic of Bolivia, the Chilean citizen Julio del Tránsito Valladares Caroca, a militant of the Socialist Party, was detained by the Directorate of Political Order, the security agency of that country at that time. In the alluded condition, he remained detained until November 13, 1976, the date on which he was handed over to DINA agents in the border town of Charaña, who transferred him to our country and took him to the "Cuatro Álamos" Prisoner Camp, which was located on Calle Canadá at the height of 3,000 of Vicuña Mackenna, remaining under the custody of its agents, a place in which, according to witnesses, he remained locked up and incommunicado, and where he was seen alive for the last time at the end of November 1976; -That on the other hand, on April 3, 1976, in the city of Mendoza, Argentine Republic, three Chilean citizens were detained: Juan Humberto Hernández Zazpe, Manuel Jesús Tamayo Martínez, and Luis Gonzalo Muñoz Velásquez, socialist militants, who were transferred in a clandestine manner by land to Chile and placed at the disposal of the agents of the National Intelligence Directorate, who took them to the Villa Grimaldi Barracks, located at Avenida José Arrieta No. 8.200 in Santiago, as has already been said, a political prisoner camp that belonged to the cited intelligence organization; in that place they were locked up, interrogated, and tortured, and they were seen alive for the last time at the end of April 1976, their whereabouts remaining unknown to date; -That finally, in an episode that occurred in 1977, militants of the Communist Party, whose external organic leadership had decided on the need to channel external financial aid to the Party in Chile, asked one of them to travel from Switzerland—Alexei Vladimir Jaccard Siegler—to Chile, after a stopover in Buenos Aires, to meet with another militant who was to travel from Russia—Ricardo Ignacio Ramírez Herrera—and for both of them to also contact the militant who resided in that city—Héctor Heraldo Velásquez Mardones. This meeting could not take place because the three were detained by the Argentine Federal Police on May 16, 1977, without legal basis, and deprived of liberty to be handed over to the agents of the National Intelligence Directorate, who transferred them to Santiago de Chile, where they were locked up in the Simón Bolívar Barracks, located on the street of the same name, No. 8.630, were interrogated under torture, and on an undetermined date disappeared. The search continues to this day as it has not been possible to find the victims Jaccard and Velásquez, who do not have proven exits or entries, nor are their deaths recorded, but part of the remains of their companion in misfortune, Ricardo Ignacio Ramírez Herrera, has been found in Chile, in the sector called "Cuesta Barriga," as well as those belonging to the couple formed by Jacobo Stoulman Bortnik and Matilde Pessa Mois, who traveled to Buenos Aires to finalize the dispatch of the money to our country, but were detained beforehand—on May 29, 1977—at Ezeiza Airport, at the moment they were getting off the plane that brought them from Chile, all trace of them being lost from that moment on, until the alluded certain evidence of both having been buried in the already cited place; -In this operation, Communist Party militants who were in Chile and served as liaisons in this operation also participated, but when the ruse was discovered they were executed: Hernán Soto Gálvez on an undetermined date, between June 7 and November 10, 1977, and Ruiter Enrique Correa Arce, on May 28 of that same year, and -The analysis of the background information outlined in the preceding paragraphs makes evident the pointed cooperation and coordination of the intelligence services, in concrete cases, where the intelligence agents of our country, in these cases, colluding with those of Argentina, Paraguay, and Bolivia, not only concerted the detention of the victims but also created the conditions to lock them up and transfer them to our country, with the sinister purpose of confining them in clandestine enclosures to interrogate them, torture them, and then proceed with extreme cruelty to eliminate them.

Source: pjud.cl, July 25, 2022

Santiago Court confirms ruling that convicted 30 DINA agents for the qualified kidnapping of a pregnant young woman

The appellate court confirmed the sentence convicting 30 agents of the defunct National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their responsibility in the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Reinalda del Carmen Pereira Plaza.

A 29-year-old woman who was five months pregnant, she was detained on December 15, 1976, in the current commune of Macul and taken to the clandestine detention center located at Calle Simón Bolívar Nº 8800, in the commune of La Reina, from where her trail was lost.

The Santiago Court of Appeals confirmed the sentence convicting 30 agents of the defunct National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their responsibility in the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Reinalda del Carmen Pereira Plaza.

A 29-year-old woman who was five months pregnant, she was detained on December 15, 1976, in the current commune of Macul and taken to the clandestine detention center located at Calle Simón Bolívar Nº 8800, in the commune of La Reina, from where her trail was lost.

In the ruling (case file 3.023-2019), the Sixth Chamber of the appellate court—composed of justices María Rosa Kittsteiner, María Paula Merino, and Paula Rodríguez—ratified the sentence that condemned Pedro Espinoza Bravo, Juan Morales Salgado, and Ricardo Lawrence Mires to 10 years in prison as perpetrators of the crime.

Meanwhile, in the capacity of co-perpetrators, Gladys Calderón Carreño, Juvenal Piña Garrido, Héctor Valdebenito Araya, Sergio Escalona Acuña, Jorge Manríquez Manterola, María Angélica Guerrero Soto, Orfa Saavedra Vásquez, Elisa Magna Astudillo, Heriberto del Carmen Acevedo, Claudio Pacheco Fernández, Emilio Troncoso Vivallos, Teresa Navarro Navarro, José Manuel Sarmiento Sotelo, Gustavo Guerrero Aguilera, and Jorge Arriagada Mora must serve 7 years in prison.

In the case of José Alfonso Ojeda Obando, José Miguel Meza Serrano, Jorge Iván Díaz Radulovich, Jorge Segundo Pichunmán Curiqueo, Sergio Hernán Castro Andrade, Carlos Enrique Miranda Mesa, Víctor Manuel Álvarez Droguett, Orlando del Tránsito Altamirano Sanhueza, Guillermo Eduardo Díaz Ramírez, Bertha Yolanda del Carmen Jiménez Escobar, Carlos Eusebio López Inostroza, and Joyce Ana Ahumada Despouy, they must serve 4-year sentences as accomplices.

The appellate court adopted the findings that allowed the visiting judge Miguel Vázquez Plaza to establish the responsibility and participation of the then-state agents convicted in the kidnapping and disappearance of the medical technologist.

“That, in this course of action, the reasoning in the reviewed sentence is shared for the purpose of establishing the participation of the convicted parties, insofar as the evidentiary background outlined in the appealed sentence, in the grounds fourteen against Espinoza Bravo, seventeen against Morales Salgado, twenty against Lawrence Mires, twenty-nine against Calderón Carreño, thirty-two against Piña Garrido, forty-one against Valdebenito Araya, forty-four against Escalona Acuña, forty-seven against Manríquez Manterola, sixty-five against Saavedra Vásquez, sixty-eight against Magna Astudillo, seventy-one against Oyarce Riquelme, seventy-four against Acevedo, seventy-seven against Pacheco Fernández, eighty against Troncoso Vivallos, eighty-six against Navarro Navarro, ninety-five against Sarmiento Sotelo, one hundred and seven against Guerrero Aguilera, and one hundred and twenty-two against Arriagada Mora, constitute a set of judicial presumptions which, given their multiplicity, gravity, precision, and concordance, and for meeting the legal requirements provided in Article 488 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, allow for the accreditation of the participation attributed to them as co-perpetrators, in the terms provided in Article 15 No. 1 of the Penal Code, in accordance with the reasoning in grounds fifteen, eighteen, twenty-one, thirty, thirty-three, forty-two, forty-five, forty-eight, sixty-six, sixty-nine against Magna Astudillo, seventy-two, seventy-five, seventy-seven, eighty-one, eighty-seven, ninety-five, one hundred and seven, and one hundred and twenty-three respectively, and which is complemented by the reasoning in foundations one hundred and seventy-three, one hundred and seventy-eight, one hundred and eighty-two, one hundred and eighty-six, one hundred and eighty-nine, one hundred and ninety-five, one hundred and ninety-seven, two hundred and three, two hundred and six, and two hundred and ten,” it is detailed.

The resolution adds: “At this point, it should be specified that the participation as a co-perpetrator attributed to Juan Morales Salgado fits fully into the provisions of Article 15 No. 1 of the Penal Code, since he acted under the direct orders of Manuel Contreras and was in charge of the Simón Bolívar barracks at the time of the events, corresponding to him in said capacity to coordinate the operational work of the brigades acting under his command, especially in relation to the dismantling of the Communist Party, assigning personnel under his charge for this purpose, directing investigation efforts and receiving the corresponding reports, ordering the entry and detention of the detainees in the unit, as well as the interrogations and torture to which they were subjected and, where applicable, their death and disappearance, establishing that he was present during the interrogation and torture of the victim in these proceedings, which determines that he intervened in an immediate and direct manner in the events, so that his conduct implies a functional contribution to the global result, maintaining, together with the other perpetrators, the co-dominion of the act.”

“For its part, the attribution of responsibility as a co-perpetrator, in the terms provided in Article 15 No. 1 of the Penal Code, which is imputed to the defendant María Angélica Guerrero Soto, is established by virtue of her confession in accordance with the provisions of Article 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which is corroborated by the merit of the background information indicated in foundation fifty-seven of the appealed sentence, to which is added the reasoning in motivation one hundred and ninety-three,” the ruling adds.

“That, in the same sense,” it continues, “it adheres to what is indicated in the sentence under study, insofar as the indications pointed out in the grounds thirty-five against Ojeda Obando, fifty against Meza Serrano, fifty-three against Lagos Yáñez, fifty-nine against Díaz Radulovich, sixty-two against Pichunmán Curiqueo, eighty-three against Castro Andrade, ninety-eight against Miranda Mesa, one hundred and one against Álvarez Droguett, one hundred and four against Altamirano Sanhueza, one hundred and thirteen against Díaz Ramírez, one hundred and twenty-five against Jiménez Escobar, one hundred and thirty-four against López Inostroza, and one hundred and forty-three against Ahumada Despouy, gather the necessary force to configure judicial presumptions, which, given their multiplicity, gravity, precision, and concordance, allow for the accreditation of the participation attributed to them as accomplices, in accordance with the provisions of Article 16 of the Penal Code, according to the reasoning in the foundations thirty-six, fifty-one, fifty-four, sixty, sixty-three, eighty-four, ninety-nine, one hundred and two, one hundred and five, one hundred and fourteen, one hundred and twenty-six, one hundred and thirty-five, and one hundred and forty-four, respectively, to which are added the reasonings one hundred and seventy-one, one hundred and seventy-nine, one hundred and eighty-seven, one hundred and ninety-eight, two hundred, two hundred and four, and two hundred and eight of the ruling.”

For the appellate court, in this instance: “(…) as noted, it has been sufficiently demonstrated that all the accused were part of an organized structure under subordination and dependency, in which those who exercised management duties and operational personnel coexisted, dedicated to both investigation and the detention, custody, interrogation, torture, and, where applicable, death and disappearance of the detainees, in which one observes, on the one hand, the division of roles typical of co-perpetration, since all of them made a functional contribution to the execution of the crime, each of them having the co-dominion of the act and, on the other, a facilitation of the means with which the crime is committed, thus cooperating in the act of another, by prior or simultaneous acts, which is what characterizes complicity.”

“In that understanding, contrary to what the defenses state in court in support of their appeals, it is convenient to specify that the convicted parties are not punished merely for belonging to the institution, but for the conduct displayed by each one in relation to the events that concern the victim of these proceedings, Ms.

Reinalda Pereira Plaza, which also leads to ruling out the intervention of those accused with respect to whom, despite having been established that they were part of the same institution and performed functions in the property located at Simón Bolívar N° 8.800 in La Reina, their punishable participation in any of the forms provided for by law has not been proven.” It concludes.

Detention and disappearance

In the appealed ruling, visiting judge Miguel Vázquez Plaza established the following facts:

“ a) That, the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) , on an unspecified date, but during the first semester of 1976, occupied and enabled a property at Calle Simón Bolívar Nº 8800, in the commune of La Reina, consisting of a country house, which was conditioned for its purpose of confinement.

It had a single access gate, a guard booth to its right where the door guard was kept, a house at the back, a small soccer field, parking lots, and on the left side of the property a kind of gym where there was a canteen, kitchen, and changing rooms and bathrooms, which were conditioned to be used as dungeons, a property in which the Lautaro brigade operated under the command of Major Juan Morales Salgado and which was used as a secret and clandestine place of confinement; people were taken to said facility as detainees to be interrogated under the use of various physical coercion techniques, especially regarding those who had or had had political militancy adhering to the Communist Party. b) That likewise, in the second semester of 1976, the DINA groups under the command of officers Germán Barriga and Ricardo Lawrence moved to said facility, together with their operational agents, who were fundamentally concerned with investigating, locating, raiding, pursuing, repressing, and dismantling the members of the Communist Party, especially its leadership, for which provisional facilities were enabled for their installation; consisting of offices, a gym, and changing rooms that were confinement dungeons, where interrogations and torture were carried out, using coercion with various methods. c) That, Reinalda del Carmen Pereira Plaza , pregnant with her first child, 5 months into her pregnancy, a medical technologist and communist militant, who worked sheltering people and as a liaison between Eliana Ahumada and Fernando Navarro, although also related to the communist militant Fernando Ortiz, was detained at 29 years of age, at approximately 8:30 PM, while waiting for public transport, by security agents on December 15, 1976, at the corner of Calle Exequiel Fernández and Rodrigo de Araya, in the commune of Ñuñoa, currently the commune of Macul. The agents who detained her were traveling in two Peugeot brand cars; one of them with license plate HLN-55, from which a subject got out and grabbed her violently; upon her screaming for help, a second subject got out with whom she was forcibly subdued and put inside the vehicle. The detention was carried out in the presence of witnesses who were in the various surrounding commercial establishments, who report that once the victim was subdued and the detention carried out, the car headed along Rodrigo de Araya in a northerly direction. d) That, Reinalda del Carmen Pereira Plaza was taken to the secret detention center Simón Bolívar , where she was seen together with other prisoners who, in turn, had been detained by the same brigades under the same operational policy between December 13 and 15, 1976; that is, Héctor Véliz Ramírez, Fernando Navarro Allendes, Lincoyán Yalu Berríos Cataldo, Juan Fernando Ortiz Letelier, and Horacio Cepeda Marincovich. In this place, Reinalda was severely beaten, tortured, illegitimately coerced, and then made to disappear, with no news of her whereabouts to this date. e) That, the Chilean government of the time, given the search efforts made by her relatives, reported that the affected person had registered an exit ‘on foot’ through the Chile-Argentina border crossing Los Libertadores, on December 21, 1976, an official version that was judicially established as false, as stated in the case file viewed, case Rol 2-77, in which it was verified that the route sheet that recorded said circumstances had been forged. f) That, the victim in these proceedings was detained on the public thoroughfare just like other thirteen people in similar circumstances ; eleven belonging to the Communist Party and two to the MIR, and where the information provided by the Military Government was similar and erroneous, demonstrating a large-scale operation that obeyed a policy of investigation, persecution, and dismantling of the Communist Party and not an isolated event. g) That, all the people mentioned above, including the victim, were detained to be interrogated and tortured by reason of their political militancy and in order to obtain information about their party activities and the identification of other members of the Communist Party in the underground; coercion that did not cease until the required information was obtained or until the victims became unconscious ”.

Source: pjud.cl, March 4, 2022

These are the 17 DINA agents benefited by the Santiago Court of Appeals in the case of the disappearance of 17 communist leaders

Among those implicated in the crime is the former Army Brigadier, Pedro Espinoza, deputy director of Augusto Pinochet's repression agency in the 70s. The list includes agents linked to the Lautaro Brigade, one of the most feared of the era.

Indignation was caused in some people by the ruling of the Santiago Court of Appeals that acquitted and reduced the sentence of 17 former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) of the dictatorship, which operated between 1973 and 1977.

Specifically, the body composed of justices Juan Cristóbal Mera Muñoz, Mireya López Miranda, and the acting lawyer Cristián Lepín Molina, acquitted seven DINA agents for the case of the disappearance of 16 people and the murder of a 17th, events that occurred in 1976, who were last seen at the Villa Grimaldi detention center.

The victims are the following militants and leaders of the Communist Party: Luis Emilio Recabarren González, Manuel Guillermo Recabarren González, Nalvia Mena Alvarado, Manuel Segundo Recabarren Rojas, Clara Canteros Torres, Alejandro Rodríguez Urzúa, Daniel Palma Robledo, Carlos Enrique Godoy Lagarrigue, Iván Sergio Insunza Bascuñán, José Eduardo Santander Miranda, Mario Jesús Juica Vega, Víctor Hugo Morales Mazuela, Carlos Mario Vizcarra Cofré, Miguel Nazal Quiroz, Juan Aurelio Villarroel Zárate, Julio Roberto Vega Vega, and Eduardo Canteros Prado (the only one not disappeared).

In view of this controversy, INTERFERENCIA investigated the criminal curriculum of these state agents who at the time were part of the machine of torture, disappearance, and homicide, which systematically violated human rights fundamentally in the 70s. Most of those benefited are involved in other cases of similar characteristics, so they will continue in prison.

The acquitted

1. Pedro Espinoza Bravo. Former Army Brigadier and former deputy director of the DINA. He was convicted for the murder of former Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier, the former Commander-in-Chief of the Army, General Carlos Prats, and the Spanish diplomat Carmelo Soria.

He was part of the Caravan of Death and a material author of the murders of American journalists Charles Horman Lazar and Frank Randall Teruggi Bombatch. He also received convictions in France for "kidnapping accompanied by torture and acts of barbarism," in the cases of French citizens Jorge Klein, Etienne Pesle, Alfonso Chanfreau, and Jean Yves Claudet.

The Santiago Court of Appeals acquitted Espinoza exclusively of the crimes committed at the detention and torture center, Villa Grimaldi. “There is no evidence that he led any brigade that operated in Villa Grimaldi, much less the Delfín group, during the year 1976, which is what matters for these purposes,” the ruling reads.

Specifically, he is exempted from responsibility in the kidnapping and disappearance of 17 victims, carried out through the so-called Delfín group in 1976.

2. Rolf Wenderoth Pozo. Former Army Colonel and deputy director of Internal Intelligence of the DINA. He was part of the Mulchén Brigade, known for the use of sarin gas in several murders and for being responsible for the murder of Carmelo Soria.

Wenderoth was the liaison agent for Luz Arce, a member of the GAP of President Salvador Allende, who was turned under torture to become a DINA agent, and was part of the teams in charge of the Villa Grimaldi and Belgrano detention and torture centers.

3. Hermón Alfaro Mundaca. Former PDI commissioner, DINA agent. He was part of Villa Grimaldi since 1975 and was prosecuted along with 97 other agents for the disappearance of 41 people, in the context of the Operation Colombo Case and the Case of the 119, an information poisoning operation of the dictatorship in collusion with El Mercurio and La Tercera, to hide disappearances.

This case corresponds to the famous headline of La Segunda on July 24: "Exterminated like rats."

4. Pedro Bitterlich Jaramillo. Former Army non-commissioned officer, DINA agent. He was part of the Lautaro Brigade, which—among other criminal missions—was in charge of the Death Flights, through which the DINA disposed of the bodies of its victims using Army Puma helicopters.

This operation corresponds to the case of Marta Lidia Ugarte Román, a victim of a death flight, but whose body was returned by the sea, a case for which Bitterlich was convicted as one of the authors of aggravated kidnapping, along with Pedro Espinoza and several other agents.

He was also implicated in the cases known as Operation Colombo, Calle Conferencia I and II (aimed at the extermination of the Communist Party leadership), and Operation Condor (in which the repressive agencies of several Southern Cone dictatorships colluded to commit and cover up crimes beyond their borders).

5. Claudio Pacheco Fernández. Former Carabineros non-commissioned officer, DINA agent. He was also part of the Lautaro Brigade. He was implicated in Operation Colombo.

6. Orlando Torrejón Gatica. Former Army non-commissioned officer, DINA and CNI agent. He was part of the Lautaro Brigade and became part of the Green and Blue Brigades of the CNI, the repressive organization that succeeded the DINA. He was prosecuted in the Calle Conferencia II case.

7. Orlando Altamirano Sanhueza. Former Navy non-commissioned officer, DINA agent. He was also part of the Lautaro Brigade.

8. Carlos López Inostroza. DINA agent. Implicated in the Calle Conferencia I cases and that of Marta Ugarte.

Those who received sentence reductions

9. Ricardo Lawrence Mires. Former Carabineros lieutenant colonel, DINA agent. According to Memoria Viva, he is one of the main and cruelest torturers of the agency, having been the one who coerced Luz Arce before her conversion.

He was assigned to the torture centers Londres 38, José Domingo Cañas, and Villa Grimaldi. Lawrence is known lately for having been a fugitive and being one of the most wanted by the PDI for the homicide of Alfonso Chanfreau, having turned himself in to the OS-9 of the Carabineros on January 10.

10. Jorge Andrade Gómez. Former Army lieutenant colonel, DINA and CNI agent. He was part of the School of the Americas, an entity created by the United States to teach techniques of repression and torture that would be used in the dictatorships of the 70s in Latin America.

He was a lieutenant to Miguel Krassnoff after his time at Villa Grimaldi and was implicated in the Calle Conferencia and Condor operations, and in numerous kidnappings. In the CNI, he was part of Operation Alfa Carbón I, in which the CNI killed seven MIR militants, and he was convicted for the murder of Paulina Alejandra Aguirre Tobar, 20 years old, of the MIR in 1985.

11. Juan Morales Salgado. Former Army Colonel and director of the DINA's Lautaro Brigade. Also known for his participation in the homicide of Prats and his wife, Sofía Cuthbert, in 1974 in the city of Buenos Aires.

For this crime, he was sentenced to 15 years and 1 day of major imprisonment in its maximum degree, as well as for illicit association. This retired officer of the Armed Forces only entered prison in 2010.

Likewise, another conviction weighs on him for the kidnapping of five young people in an episode known as the Linares Case, for which Morales Salgado received a sentence reduction from the Supreme Court in 2011.

12. Gladys Calderón Carreño. Former Army lieutenant, nurse, and agent of the DINA's Lautaro Brigade. She was convicted in 2018 by visiting judge Mario Carroza for her actions in the events involving Operation Condor, for her authorship in the aggravated homicides of Ricardo Ignacio Ramírez Herrera, Jacobo Stoulman Bortnik, Matilde Pessa Mois, Hernán Soto Gálvez, and Ruiter Enrique Correa Arce.

Also, according to El Mostrador, she participated in the Calle Conferencia operation and the detention of Víctor Díaz López, of the Communist Party.

13. Ciro Torré Sáez. Former Carabineros captain and administrative chief of the DINA. According to the Memoria Viva site, Judge Llanos sentenced him in 2017 to 15 years and 1 day of imprisonment in its maximum degree, as an author of the aggravated kidnapping of Luis Emilio Recabarren González, Carlos Enrique Godoy Lagarrigue, and Iván Sergio Insunza Bascuñán.

Previously, Torré had been convicted by the Supreme Court for the aggravated homicide of Lumi Videla Moya, a member of the MIR, who was kidnapped along with her husband by the DINA in 1974, dying in the José Domingo Cañas detention center. The highest court handed him a sentence of 5 years and 1 day in 2009.

14. Orlando Escalona Acuña. Former Navy non-commissioned officer and member of the DINA's Lautaro Brigade. He was previously convicted as a co-perpetrator of the kidnapping and aggravated homicide in 1976 of Víctor Díaz López, a Communist Party militant who reached a leadership position in the Central Workers' Union of Chile (CUT) in 1973.

In addition, the Supreme Court issued a sentence against him for the kidnapping of former communist deputy Bernardo Araya Zulueta and his wife María Olga Flores Araya in 1976.

15. Juvenal Piña Garrido. Army non-commissioned officer and member of the DINA's Lautaro Brigade. He had the same sentence reduction as Sergio Orlando Escalona Acuña, both involved in the kidnapping of Daniel Palma Robledo.

Piña is also serving a sentence for the aggravated kidnapping of Alfredo Rojas Castañeda, Michelle Marguerite Peña Herreros, Ricardo Ernesto Lagos Salinas, Mireya Herminia Rodríguez Díaz, and Exequiel Ponce Vicencio.

16. Jorge Díaz Radulovich. Air Force non-commissioned officer and member of the DINA's Lautaro Brigade. The Supreme Court convicted him for the kidnapping of former deputy Bernardo Araya Zulueta and his wife María Olga Flores Araya in 1976 to 5 years and 1 day of imprisonment, as a co-perpetrator of the crime.

According to Memoria Viva, Díaz was mentioned in the book La Danza de los Cuervos as a member of the Avengers of Martyrs Command.

17. Gustavo Guerrero Aguilera. Carabineros non-commissioned officer and member of the Lautaro Brigade. He was implicated in the Calle Conferencia operation. He originally received a ten-year sentence for the kidnapping of Daniel Palma Robledo, but his sentence was reduced to three years and one day of minor imprisonment in its maximum degree.

Source: interferencia.cl, April 13, 2020

Supreme Court revokes ruling and convicts 14 former DINA agents for the crime of 17 communist militants in 1976

The Supreme Court sentenced 14 agents of the dissolved National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their responsibility in the crimes of aggravated kidnapping of Luis Emilio Recabarren González, Manuel Guillermo Recabarren González, Nalvia Rosa Mena Alvarado, Manuel Segundo Recabarren Rojas, Clara Elena Canteros Torres, Alejandro Rodríguez Urzúa, Daniel Palma Robledo, Carlos Enrique Godoy Lagarrigue, Iván Sergio Insunza Bascuñán, José Eduardo Santander Miranda, Mario Jesús Juica Vega, Víctor Hugo Morales Mazuela, Carlos Mario Vizcarra Cofré, Miguel Nazal Quiroz, Juan Aurelio Villarroel Zárate, and Julio Roberto Vega Vega; and the aggravated homicide of Eduardo Canteros Prado. The crimes were committed between April and August 1976, in the province of Santiago.

In a unanimous ruling (case file 71.900-2020), the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed of justices Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Jorge Dahm, María Cristina Gajardo, María Soledad Melo, and Eliana Quezada—revoked the sentence issued by the Eighth Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals in April 2020, which had applied the "half-prescription" (partial statute of limitations) to the accused.

In a replacement sentence, the Supreme Court sentenced former DINA leaders and former Army officers Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo and Jorge Claudio Andrade Gómez to 15 years and one day in prison as authors of 16 counts of aggravated kidnapping, and 10 years and one day as authors of one count of aggravated homicide.

Meanwhile, Rolf Arnold Wenderoth Pozo was sentenced to two terms of 10 years and one day in prison as the author of three aggravated kidnappings and one aggravated homicide; Juan Hernán Morales Salgado and Gladys de las Mercedes Calderón Carreño were sentenced to 10 years and one day in prison as authors of six aggravated kidnappings.

In the case of former agents Sergio Orlando Escalona Acuña, Juvenal Alfonso Piña Garrido, Jorge Iván Díaz Radulovich, and Gustavo Enrique Guerrero Aguilera, a sentence of 5 years and one day in prison was applied as authors of a single case of aggravated kidnapping.

Likewise, former agents Orlando Jesús Torrejón Gatica, Claudio Enrique Pacheco Fernández, Orlando del Tránsito Altamirano Sanhueza, and Carlos Eugenio López Inostroza must serve 7 years as accomplices to the 16 aggravated kidnappings and 5 years and one day in prison as accomplices to the aggravated homicide.

Finally, Hermon Helec Alfaro Mundaca must serve 7 years as an accomplice to 15 aggravated kidnappings and 5 years and one day in prison as an accomplice to the aggravated homicide.

The criminals Carlos José Leonardo López Tapia and Ricardo Víctor Lawrence Mires, who had been sentenced in the first-instance ruling issued by Judge Leopoldo Llanos in July 2017 to 20-year prison terms, passed away during the proceedings. Also deceased are those convicted in the first instance: Ciro Ernesto Torré Sáez, Orlando José Manzo Durán, and Pedro Segundo Bitterlich Jaramillo.

In dismissing the "half-prescription," the Supreme Court establishes that: "(...) it is necessary to take into consideration that the matter under discussion must also be analyzed in accordance with international Human Rights regulations contained primarily in the Geneva Conventions, which prevent prescription, whether total or gradual, regarding crimes committed in cases of non-international armed conflicts."

The resolution adds: "The same conclusion is reached considering both the norms of the Inter-American Convention on the Forced Disappearance of Persons and those of the Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, since, in accordance with those regulations, gradual prescription has the same nature as total prescription."

"From another perspective, legal doctrine on this matter has expressed that its foundations are found in the same considerations of social stability and legal certainty that gave rise to Article 93 of the Penal Code, but that it is intended to produce its effects in those cases where the realization of the ends provided for prescription does not occur naturally but only after a gradual process; that is, when the time necessary to prescribe is about to be fulfilled, which would justify the mitigation of the sentence," it adds.

"However—it continues—it is evident that this conclusion applies to cases that do not present the characteristics of crimes against humanity, as these are imprescriptible. Consequently, for such mitigation to be appropriate, it is necessary that it be a crime in the process of prescribing, which does not happen in this instance, so the passage of time produces no effect, because social reproach does not diminish over time, which only occurs in cases of common crimes."

The Facts

In the first-instance ruling, the special judge Leopoldo Llanos Sagristá established that, within the framework of the systematic repression of opponents of the military regime, between the months of April and August 1976, the arrests of a series of people occurred, all of whom were members of the Communist Party.

On April 29, 1976, in the area of Santa Rosa and Sebastopol streets in the San Miguel commune, brothers Manuel Guillermo, 22, and Luis Emilio Recabarren González, 29, were arrested by DINA agents, along with Nalvia Rosa Mena Alvarado, 20, and her two-year-old son. The minor was abandoned near his home during the night.

The following day, April 30, at 7:00 AM, Manuel Segundo Recabarren Rojas, 50, was arrested shortly after leaving his home in the same area as he was preparing to board a public bus.

All the detainees were taken to the clandestine detention and torture center 'Villa Grimaldi'; Manuel Guillermo Recabarren González and Manuel Segundo Recabarren Rojas were also seen at the 'Simón Bolívar' facility, and Luis Emilio Recabarren González at 'Cuatro Álamos'. From these facilities, the DINA forcibly disappeared them.

On July 23, 1976, around 8:00 PM, at the intersection of Rojas Magallanes and Panamá streets in the La Florida commune, the young Clara Elena Canteros Torres, 21, was arrested by DINA agents. She was subdued as she stepped off public transport.

She was taken to 'Villa Grimaldi' where she was seen by witnesses, and on August 20, 1976, she was removed from that facility along with fellow detainees Mario Juica Vega and Óscar Ramos. Since then, they have been forcibly disappeared.

At 9:40 PM, Eduardo Canteros Prado, 48, Clara Elena's uncle and a civil engineer, was arrested on the public thoroughfare by DINA agents in front of his home located on Panamá street, in the La Florida commune. He was taken to 'Villa Grimaldi'. In 1990, his remains were found at the Las Tórtolas estate in Colina, a facility that belonged to the Army until 1980.

On July 27, 1976, around 5:15 PM, Alejandro Rodríguez Urzúa, 49, was arrested by DINA agents from his office located at Mallinkrodt 70, Barrio Bellavista. They took him to the 'Villa Grimaldi' facility.

On August 4, 1976, Daniel Palma Robledo, 61, a businessman, was arrested in the morning on Avenida Matta, between San Diego and Arturo Prat streets; after picking up his mail, he bought a newspaper and, as he was leaving, he was arrested and taken to an unknown destination, but he was seen at the 'Simón Bolívar' extermination barracks.

On that same August 4, at 3:00 PM, the physician Carlos Enrique Godoy Lagarrigue, 39, was arrested. He was seized during his commute between the San Bernardo Parochial Hospital and his private practice, located at the corner of Barros Arana and Arturo Prat streets. He was taken to 'Villa Grimaldi' and, subsequently, to 'Cuatro Álamos', from where he was forcibly disappeared.

During the night of August 4, the surgeon Iván Sergio Insunza Bascuñán, 43, was arrested by DINA agents while driving his vehicle. He was taken to 'Villa Grimaldi' and then to 'Cuatro Álamos'.

On August 6, 1976, shortly after leaving his home, around 9:30 AM, student leader and member of the Central Única de Trabajadores, José Eduardo Santander Miranda, 29, was arrested by DINA agents; surviving witnesses saw him at the 'Villa Grimaldi' facility.

On August 9, Víctor Hugo Morales Mazuela, 45, a carpenter and construction worker, union leader, and organization head for a regional branch of the Communist Party, was arrested in the morning in the vicinity of the 'Villa México' housing project in the Maipú commune and was taken to 'Villa Grimaldi'. Subsequently, he was seen at the 'Simón Bolívar' barracks.

On that same August 9, Mario Jesús Juica Vega, 34, a merchant, was arrested around noon in the vicinity of Plaza Egaña, in the Ñuñoa commune, and taken to 'Villa Grimaldi', a place where he was seen by numerous witnesses. On August 20, he was removed from that facility along with two other detainees, and since then, the DINA has kept them forcibly disappeared.

On August 11, 1976, at 9:00 AM, while leaving his home located on Chiloé street, between Santa Rosa and Gran Avenida, in the San Miguel commune, the merchant Miguel Nazal Quiroz, 44, was arrested by DINA agents. He was taken to 'Villa Grimaldi'.

During the night of that same August 11, Carlos Mario Vizcarra Cofré, 31, a body shop worker, was arrested at his home in Quinta Normal by agents who took him to 'Villa Grimaldi', a facility where witnesses saw him until August 25 of that same year. Subsequently, he was seen at the 'Simón Bolívar' facility.

On August 13, Juan Aurelio Villarroel Zárate, 55, a union leader and photoengraver, was arrested around noon by DINA agents near the Estación Mapocho while traveling from his home in Conchalí. He was taken to 'Villa Grimaldi'.

On August 16, 1976, at 11:30 AM, the worker Julio Roberto Vega Vega was arrested by DINA agents on Avenida Presidente Balmaceda, between Cueto and Libertad, in the Santiago commune. Several witnesses saw him detained in both 'Villa Grimaldi' and the 'Simón Bolívar' barracks.

by Darío Núñez

Source: resumen.cl, July 30, 2023

Former DINA agents sentenced to 10 years in prison for aggravated kidnapping of a salesman

Rodolfo Núñez Benavides was classified as a forcibly disappeared person.

The sentence was issued against Lieutenant Colonel Pedro Espinoza Bravo, Major Juan Morales Salgado, and First Corporal Juvenal Piña Garrido, all of the Army, who were responsible for the disappearance of Rodolfo Núñez Benavides on May 18, 1976.

This Monday, the San Miguel Court of Appeals sentenced three former agents of the dissolved National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their responsibility in the consummated crime of aggravated kidnapping of dairy products salesman Rodolfo Marcial Núñez Benavides, an illicit act perpetrated starting May 18, 1976.

The sentence was issued by the special visiting judge for human rights violation cases of the aforementioned court, Marianela Cifuentes, who resolved to impose a ten-year prison sentence on the accused Pedro Espinoza Bravo, an Army lieutenant colonel at the time of the events; Juan Morales Salgado, an Army major; and Juvenal Piña Garrido, a first corporal of the same institution, as authors of the crime.

The ruling establishes accessory legal penalties of absolute perpetual disqualification for public offices and political rights, and absolute disqualification for professional titles for the duration of the sentences, plus the payment of court costs.

In the civil aspect, the sentence accepted the filed lawsuit and ordered the State Treasury to pay a total compensation of 160 million pesos for moral damages to the victim's relatives.

Facts

In the resolution, Judge Cifuentes established the facts that occurred 47 years ago, when the DINA was headed by Colonel Juan Manuel Guillermo Contreras Sepúlveda—currently deceased—and seconded by the director of operations of said organization, Lieutenant Colonel Pedro Espinoza Bravo, who had under his command all regional brigades, from Arica to Punta Arenas, among them, the Metropolitan Intelligence Brigade (BIM).

From said brigade depended the Lautaro Brigade, in charge of Army Major Juan Hernán Morales Salgado, a unit that occupied the 'Simón Bolívar' barracks in the La Reina commune. Likewise, an elite group called 'Delfín' operated, in charge of Army Captain Germán Barriga Muñoz and Carabineros Lieutenant Ricardo Lawrence Mires—both deceased—which “was created with the purpose of pursuing and exterminating the leadership of the Communist Party (PC) that worked in the clandestine detention center called 'Villa Grimaldi' and, later, in the 'Simón Bolívar' barracks,” the ruling states.

In that context, on May 18, 1976, around 3:00 PM, on Avenida Departamental upon reaching Avenida Ochagavía, DINA agents illegally arrested the victim, who was a member of the PC and was traveling with his son Rodolfo Francisco Núñez Moya in a vehicle, and moments later they raided his home in the La Cisterna commune.

In this sense, the captors kept Núñez Benavides locked up in the 'Villa Grimaldi' clandestine detention center, located in Peñalolén, being subsequently transferred to the 'Simón Bolívar' clandestine detention center, which was in charge of Army Major Juan Hernán Morales Salgado, where the 'Delfín' group operated.

This would be the last news known of the kidnapped person, who “was taken by Army 1st Corporal Juvenal Alfonso Piña Garrido, an agent of the aforementioned 'Delfín' group, to a dependency of the mentioned detention center that was used to torture detainees, with his whereabouts unknown since then,” the sentence concludes.

Source: latercera.cl, November 20, 2023

Five former CNI officers sentenced for the kidnapping and disappearance of photographer Hernán Santos Pérez

The special visiting judge for human rights violation cases of the San Miguel Court of Appeals, Marianela Cifuentes Alarcón, has sentenced five retired Army officers for the aggravated kidnapping of photographer Hernán Santos Pérez Álvarez, which occurred on October 19, 1977, in Pudahuel.

The convicted individuals, recognized as criminals against humanity, are Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Rolf Gonzalo Wenderoth Pozo, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and Juan Hernán Morales Salgado, who must serve 10 years of effective imprisonment. Enrique Erasmo Sandoval Arancibia was sentenced to 540 days as a cover-up agent.

The kidnapping of Hernán Santos Pérez Álvarez was part of a series of illegal detentions and torture perpetrated by security agents at the 'Villa Grimaldi' clandestine detention center. According to the resolution, "on Saturday, October 15, 1977, José Miguel Tobar Quezada, a member of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), was arrested and subjected to illegitimate coercion." The torture inflicted led to the identification and subsequent arrest of Jenny del Carmen Barra Rosales, also a member of the MIR, who was kidnapped on October 17, 1977.

Jenny Barra suffered the same torture as Tobar Quezada at 'Villa Grimaldi'. Subsequently, Hernán Santos Pérez Álvarez was arrested.

The three victims, all collaborators of the newspaper 'El Rebelde', were later transferred to the 'Simón Bolívar' detention center. "Ultimately, Jenny del Carmen Barra Rosales and Hernán Santos Pérez Álvarez died, on an undetermined date, in a violent manner, as a consequence of traumatic events caused by third parties, after which their bodies were thrown into a sinkhole at the 'Los Bronces' mine in Cuesta Barriga, a place where in 2001 only some small skeletonized fragments were found, since in the month of January 1979, by decision of the authority of the time, agents of the National Information Center (CNI) carried out an operation at that site with the purpose of extracting the remains of the executed prisoners, which were removed and moved to an undetermined location," the ruling indicates.

The bodies of Barra Rosales and Pérez Álvarez were thrown into a sinkhole at the 'Los Bronces' mine, and in 2001 only small skeletonized fragments were found. In January 1979, agents of the National Information Center carried out an operation to extract and move the remains to an unknown location.

Source: elciudadano.cl, June 4, 2024

Former DINA-CNI agents sentenced for the aggravated kidnapping of a young MIR member in 1977

The special visiting judge for human rights violation cases of the San Miguel Court of Appeals, Marianela Cifuentes Alarcón, sentenced four former agents of the dissolved DINA-CNI for their responsibility in the consummated crime of aggravated kidnapping of Jenny del Carmen Barra Rosales, perpetrated starting October 17, 1977, in Santiago.

The young woman, 23 years old, a nursing student at the Catholic University and a member of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), was kidnapped, tortured, murdered, and forcibly disappeared. The repressive agents threw her body into a sinkhole at the 'Los Bronces' mine, in Cuesta Barriga, a place where part of her remains were found in 2001.

In the month of January 1979, by decision of the tyrant Pinochet, CNI agents carried out an operation in Cuesta Barriga with the purpose of extracting the remains of the executed prisoners thrown at that site, with the goal of eliminating all evidence of their crimes, which were removed and moved to an undetermined location, but remains were left scattered that allowed for the subsequent identification of victims once the site was revealed.

In the ruling (case file 6-2002), the visiting judge sentenced former Army officers and repressive leaders Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Rolf Gonzalo Wenderoth Pozo, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and Juan Hernán Morales Salgado to 10 years in prison as authors of the crime. Meanwhile, Enrique Erasmo Sandoval Arancibia was sentenced to 541 days in prison as a cover-up agent.

In the resolution, Judge Cifuentes established that on Monday, October 17, 1977, in the afternoon, Jenny del Carmen Barra Rosales was at a friend's house on José Joaquín Pérez street in the San Bernardo commune and, upon leaving in the direction of her home in the same commune, she was arrested by security agents, who took her to the 'Villa Grimaldi' clandestine detention center, the same facility where José Tobar Quezada remained detained.

Previously, on Saturday, October 15, 1977, in the morning, José Miguel Tobar Quezada, also a member of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), was arrested on the public thoroughfare by security agents who took him to 'Villa Grimaldi' and subjected him to interrogations and torture in order to obtain information about other MIR members, managing to obtain the identification of Jenny del Carmen Barra Rosales, whose political name was 'Hilda'.

Immediately, the agents moved to the vicinity of Jenny Barra's home, located on Industrias street in the San Bernardo commune, interviewing a neighbor, whom they asked regarding the young woman's activities, then consummating her arrest.

At 'Villa Grimaldi', Jenny Barra Rosales suffered the same torments as the rest of the detainees; in fact, Tobar Quezada heard her voice and her crying during the moments she was being interrogated and, broken by torture, she allegedly provided the information that allowed for the arrest of Hernán Santos Pérez Álvarez, a photographer and MIR member, carried out on October 19 of that year in the Pudahuel commune, who was also forcibly disappeared.

The three detained members, José Miguel Tobar Quezada, Jenny del Carmen Barra Rosales, and Hernán Santos Pérez Álvarez, collaborated closely with the production of the publication called 'El Rebelde'. Subsequently, José Miguel Tobar Quezada and Jenny del Carmen Barra Rosales were transferred to the clandestine detention center called 'Simón Bolívar', a place where they remained locked up for an undetermined time.

The described events had their beginning of execution in the month of October 1977, a time when the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) had been declared dissolved and was continuing to operate as the National Information Center (CNI), an intelligence agency that continued to carry out repressive actions against members of political parties opposed to the military regime, especially the Communist Party and the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), and which, for such purposes, received the personnel and assets of the dissolved DINA, in particular the clandestine detention centers called 'Villa Grimaldi' and 'Simón Bolívar', the agents in charge of their operation, and their hierarchical superiors.

Due to the above, during the period of the events, the 'Villa Grimaldi' clandestine detention center was in charge of the then-Army Captain Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, who also exercised command of the operational teams in charge of pursuing and exterminating members of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), and, on the other hand, the 'Simón Bolívar' clandestine detention center was under the command of the then-Army Major Juan Hernán Morales Salgado, who additionally held the leadership of the Lautaro Brigade.

Likewise, Army General Juan Manuel Guillermo Contreras Sepúlveda—currently deceased—Army Colonel Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, and Army Lieutenant Colonel Rolf Gonzalo Wenderoth Pozo served as director, director of operations, and deputy director of internal intelligence of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), respectively, and, after the dissolution of said organization, they continued to carry out their functions in the National Information Center (CNI) during the period in which these criminal events began to unfold.

by Daría Núñez

Source: resumen.cl, April 27, 2024

Judge Marianela Cifuentes sentences State agents to 10 years in prison for the aggravated kidnapping of a nursing student

In the ruling (case file 6-2002), the visiting judge sentenced former security agents and Army officers Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Rolf Gonzalo Wenderoth Pozo, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and Juan Hernán Morales Salgado to 10 years in prison as authors of the crime. Meanwhile, Enrique Erasmo Sandoval Arancibia was sentenced to 541 days in prison as a cover-up agent.

The special visiting judge for human rights violation cases of the San Miguel Court of Appeals, Marianela Cifuentes Alarcón, sentenced four State agents for their responsibility in the consummated crime of aggravated kidnapping of nursing student Jenny del Carmen Barra Rosales, an illicit act perpetrated starting October 17, 1977.

In the ruling (case file 6-2002), the visiting judge sentenced former security agents and Army officers Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Rolf Gonzalo Wenderoth Pozo, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and Juan Hernán Morales Salgado to 10 years in prison as authors of the crime. Meanwhile, Enrique Erasmo Sandoval Arancibia was sentenced to 541 days in prison as a cover-up agent.

Accredited Facts

In the resolution, Judge Cifuentes established the following facts:

"1st That on Saturday, October 15, 1977, in the morning, José Miguel Tobar Quezada, a member of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), was arrested by security agents traveling in a Peugeot 404 model automobile, who deprived him of his sight by placing adhesive tape over his eyelids, thereby preventing him from observing the location of the place to which he was taken, the clandestine detention center called 'Villa Grimaldi'."

"2nd That, after arriving at said facility, the security agents subjected José Miguel Tobar Quezada to interrogations and illegitimate coercion in order to obtain information about other members of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), managing to obtain the identification of Jenny del Carmen Barra Rosales, a nursing student at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, a member of the MIR, whose political name was 'Hilda'."

"3rd That, immediately, the security agents traveled in a Peugeot automobile to the vicinity of Jenny del Carmen Barra Rosales's home, located at 1675 Industrias Street in the San Bernardo commune, interviewing her neighbor Jaime Vera Maulén, whom they asked regarding her activities."

"4th That on October 17, 1977, in the afternoon, Jenny del Carmen Barra Rosales was at the house of her friend Patricia Reveco Bastías, located at 1073 José Joaquín Pérez Street in the San Bernardo commune and, upon leaving in the direction of her home in the same commune, she was illegally arrested by security agents, who, immediately thereafter, took her to the same facility where Tobar Quezada had remained deprived of liberty since October 15, 1977, that is, the 'Villa Grimaldi' clandestine detention center."

"5th That, while deprived of liberty at 'Villa Grimaldi', Jenny Barra Rosales suffered the same suffering as the rest of the detainees; in fact, Tobar Quezada heard her voice and her crying during the moments she was being interrogated, and it was she who, broken by torture, provided the information that allowed for the arrest of Hernán Santos Pérez Álvarez, a photographer and MIR member, carried out on October 19 of that year in the Pudahuel commune, and the woman whom witnesses saw in the vicinity of the scene of the events in a gray Peugeot 404 model automobile, license plate CH 800 of Renca—granted by said municipality to the DINA—guarded by security agents."

"6th That José Miguel Tobar Quezada, Jenny del Carmen Barra Rosales, and Hernán Santos Pérez Álvarez, arrested consecutively between October 15 and 19, 1977, were members of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) and collaborated closely with the production of the publication called 'El Rebelde'."

"7th That, subsequently, José Miguel Tobar Quezada and Jenny del Carmen Barra Rosales were transferred to the clandestine detention center called 'Simón Bolívar', a place where they remained illegally locked up."

"8th That, ultimately, Jenny del Carmen Barra Rosales died, on an undetermined date, in a violent manner, as a consequence of traumatic events caused by third parties, after which her body was thrown into a sinkhole at the 'Los Bronces' mine in Cuesta Barriga, a place where in 2001 only some small skeletonized fragments were found, since in the month of January 1979, by decision of the authority of the time, agents of the National Information Center carried out an operation at that site with the purpose of extracting the remains of the executed prisoners, which were removed and moved to an undetermined location."

"9th That, as has been said, the events had their beginning of execution in the month of October 1977, a time when the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) had been dissolved and the National Information Center (CNI) was operating, an intelligence agency that continued to carry out repressive actions against members of political parties opposed to the government, especially the Communist Party and the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), and which, for such purposes, received the personnel and assets of the dissolved DINA, in particular the clandestine detention centers called 'Villa Grimaldi' and 'Simón Bolívar', the agents in charge of their operation, and their hierarchical superiors."

"10th That, due to the above, in the period that concerns us, the 'Villa Grimaldi' clandestine detention center was in charge of Army Captain Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, who also exercised command of the operational teams in charge of pursuing and exterminating members of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), and, on the other hand, the 'Simón Bolívar' clandestine detention center was under the command of Army Major Juan Hernán Morales Salgado, who additionally held the leadership of the Lautaro Brigade."

"11th That, likewise, Army General Juan Manuel Guillermo Contreras Sepúlveda—currently deceased—Army Colonel Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, and Army Lieutenant Colonel Rolf Gonzalo Wenderoth Pozo served as director, director of operations, and deputy director of internal intelligence of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), respectively, and, after the dissolution of said organization, they continued to carry out their functions in the National Information Center (CNI) in the period in which the events that concern us began to unfold."

Source: pjud.cl, April 25, 2024

Criminal imprisoned in Punta Peuco dies

At the Military Hospital, Army Colonel (ret.) Juan Morales Salgado died, a DINA agent convicted of multiple homicides and kidnappings, including the homicides of General Carlos Prats and Sofía Cuthbert, Carmelo Soria, Operation Condor, and the aggravated kidnappings of José Gabriel Campos Morales, Arturo Enrique Riveros Blanco, José Alfonso Saavedra Betancourt, Jaime Bernardo Torres Salazar, and Jorge Bernabé Yáñez Olave, in September 1973, between Linares and Cauquenes, among others.

Source: piensaprensa.cl, October 9, 2025