Case File No. 63.257 3: Qualified kidnapping case of Ricardo Rioseco Montoya and Luis Cotal Alvarez

Eighth: That while providing an investigative statement on page 723, the accused Joaquín León Rivera González stated that in March 1973 he was assigned to the Húsares de Angol Regiment as an Army Major and Second-in-Command, with the Regiment Commander being Mr.

Alejandro Morel Donoso, who, starting on September 11 of that year, was appointed to a political position in the province, thereby assuming the role of Commander of said Regiment and head of the forces.

He adds that on one occasion, while he was having dinner at his home, which was located inside the regiment, he heard small arms fire, to which he immediately put on his cap, went out in his shirt sleeves carrying his 22 mm Famae pistol, and headed to guard post two, where the shots were coming from.

He then left the regiment with a group of conscripts, crossed the street, and entered a warehouse inside of which there was a pile of bricks and two civilians standing, who were being held at gunpoint by two or three conscripts.

Immediately, he drew his pistol from his waistband, aimed at one of them, and pulled the trigger, but the bullet did not fire because the weapon jammed. Then the conscripts who were at the scene and those who had come with him—whom he estimates totaled around ten—fired, as a result of which the civilians fell to the ground, dying on the spot.

He immediately headed back to the regiment, meeting Lieutenant Germán Ojeda Benet on the street, who accompanied him inside the military compound. Five minutes later, the Regiment Commander, Alejandro Morel Donoso, arrived, who gathered all the officers and told them that the procedure he had adopted was the correct one.

Source: Judiciary, October 15, 2004

Dictatorship crime recreated in Los Angeles

At the beginning of 1979, Operation "Retiro de Televisores" (Television Set Removal) began in the Andean foothills between the Biobío and Araucanía regions, ordered by the dictator Augusto Pinochet via a cryptogram sent to the barracks.

It was the beginning of 1979 when the non-commissioned officer of the Intelligence Section of the Húsares de Angol regiment, Juan Carlos Balboa Ortega, received the A-1 category cryptogram that indicated "maximum urgency." He deciphered it quickly and ran to notify his commander, Colonel Alejandro Morel Donoso.

The order from the dictator Augusto Pinochet was clear: exhume the bodies existing in the jurisdiction and make them disappear. Just in November 1978, the bodies of 15 murdered peasants from Lonquén, south of Santiago, had been discovered, and the alarm sounded at the Army's commander-in-chief headquarters.

They feared that other clandestine burials would begin to appear. Morel made inquiries and realized that what existed "of interest" for Pinochet's order in the area of his regiment did not fall within his jurisdiction by only a few kilometers.

The 18 peasants murdered days after the military coup at the El Morro and Los Maitenes estates and in the vicinity of the Pemehue hot springs, on the border of the Biobío and Araucanía regions in the Andean foothills, belonged to the geographical area of the No. 17 Los Ángeles Mountain Infantry Regiment.

Its personnel, together with the Mulchén Carabineros and local civilian landowners, had killed the peasants. Morel called the commander of the Los Ángeles regiment, Jaime García Zamorano, and explained the cryptogram.

Everything was transferred to that unit. In the morning, García gathered the barracks' Intelligence Section in his office. Lieutenant Julio Reyes Garrido, the chief, and non-commissioned officers José Puga Pascua, Mario Contreras Brito, Luis Palacios Torres, José Iturriaga Valenzuela, Jaime Müller Avilés, Julio Fuentes Chavarriga, and Juan Cares Molina.

The exhumation of the bodies was decided. The next day, Lieutenant Reyes and the intelligence non-commissioned officers left in two vehicles for the Andean foothills. From Concepción, Intelligence non-commissioned officer Eduardo Paredes Bustamante joined them.

He was an expert in burning bodies until they turned to ash, a skill he learned in a course in Germany during the 1970s. Balboa joined the team. His father lived in the area and, as a retired Carabinero, had exact information on the three burial sites.

They only found 12 bodies, which they removed with shovels and pickaxes. They put them in potato sacks. They loaded the bundles into a pickup truck and left for the Los Ángeles regiment.

IN HELL

There, the spectacle was terrifying, as recalled in the trial for these crimes by several of those named, who also provide precise details of what is being reconstituted between yesterday and today under the order of the minister investigating the case from the Court of Valdivia, Carlos Aldana, with the presence of the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared.

Participants in the recreation of the exhumation and incineration of the bodies at the barracks include members of the Human Rights Brigade of the PDI of Santiago. It was some of their specialized personnel, such as Abel Lizama, Sandro Gaete, Claudio Pérez, José Soto, Rodrigo Neira, and Alfonso Miranda, who first unraveled the so-called Operation Retiro de Televisores in 2004, the name the Army gave to the exhumation and elimination of bodies across the south, center, and north of the country.

At midnight, they arrived at the barracks. The large brick oven was prepared. The bodies were thrown in there. The smell was unbearable. This is recalled by non-commissioned officers (R) Palacios and Cares, who threw the corpses into the burning oven. "They were falling with their skulls, bones, and the rubber boots that the men of the countryside use," recalled non-commissioned officer Palacios in his statements during the trial.

Source: La Nación, June 11, 2009

13 former Army members sentenced for the crime of two students in October 1973

The minister on extraordinary assignment for human rights violation cases for the jurisdictions of Temuco, Valdivia, Puerto Montt, and Coyhaique, Álvaro Mesa Latorre, sentenced 13 former military personnel belonging to the Húsares de Angol regiment at the time of the events for their responsibility in the crimes of qualified homicide, classified as crimes against humanity, of university student Ricardo Gustavo Rioseco Montoya and secondary school student, a minor, Luis Raúl Cotal Álvarez, perpetrated in the commune of Angol on October 4, 1973.

In the ruling (case file 63.534), the visiting minister sentenced the then-Lieutenant Germán Eduardo Ojeda Bennett (retired as a brigadier) to 19 years in prison as the perpetrator of the crimes; as well as the then-sub-lieutenants Alessandro Ernesto Cartoni Pruzzo (retired as a general), Carlos Patricio Bunster Medina, Alejo César Tisi Gómez, Jorge Alberto Lagos Robles, Manuel Arturo Montero Souper (retired as colonels), Eduardo Humberto Carrasco Hauenstein (retired as a major), and former non-commissioned officer José Omar Correa Martínez.

Meanwhile, the then-conscript soldier Luis Alejandro Toledo Osses must serve 15 years and one day in prison, also as a perpetrator of the crimes. Meanwhile, the then-sub-lieutenant Gabriel Enrique Fuentes Campusano and the conscript soldier José Liborio Lavín Leiva must serve 13 years in prison as accomplices; and First Corporal Mario Hernán Tapia Sepúlveda and the then-lieutenant Carlos Alberto Campusano Osorio must serve 5 years of effective prison time for their responsibility as cover-ups.

Executions In the judicial investigation, Minister Mesa Latorre establishes that the young men were detained separately at night by military patrols. Ricardo Gustavo Rioseco Montoya, a 22-year-old university student and sympathizer of the Communist Youth, was detained inside his father's home, and Luis Raúl Cotal Álvarez, a 14-year-old secondary school student with no political affiliation, was detained on Calle Artesanos while heading home from his grandmother's house located on that same street.

The detained youths were taken by the uniformed men to a warehouse facility located in front of the regiment. After raiding the warehouse, under the pretext that shots had been fired from there at the military unit, they lined both detained youths up against a wall.

For the purpose of the setup, a large contingent moved to the site, including a Reaction Unit composed of about 30 conscript soldiers in charge of captains Armando Juan Emilio Staeding Schaffer and Enrique Gómez Ibáñez (both deceased), as well as officers Germán Eduardo Ojeda Bennett, Jorge Alberto Lagos Robles, Alejo César Tisi Gómez, Carlos Patricio Bunster Medina, Alessandro Cartoni Pruzzo, and Major Joaquín León Rivera González, vice-commander of the aforementioned regiment.

At the scene, without any further procedure, Major Joaquín León Rivera González gave the order to fire on the youths, who at that moment had been stood up against a brick wall. The order was obeyed by the troops present, executing the youths at the moment one of them shouted "cowards" at them.

Among the executioners were the aforementioned officers, conscript soldier Luis Alejandro Toledo Osses, and corporals José Omar Correa Martínez and Pedro Segundo Bitterlich Jaramillo (deceased). After the crime was committed, they ordered the conscript soldiers, among them José Liborio Lavín Leiva, to place the bodies in sacks inside a military vehicle, and they transported the corpses to the La Arcadia bridge, throwing them into the channel of the Malleco River.

The next day, the father of Ricardo Gustavo Rioseco Montoya, who was being held in the commune's jail, was officially informed by the then-commander of the Regiment, Alejandro Claudio Morel Donoso (deceased), that his son had been executed by firing squad the night before.

This information was provided to him in the presence of other officers, including sub-lieutenant Manuel Montero Souper, who had allegedly witnessed what happened to the youths. Days later, the Húsares de Angol Regiment was notified that the bodies of the youths had been seen in the river, so personnel from that unit proceeded to remove them from the river, transporting them inside the regiment.

By order of their superiors, three members of the unit, including First Corporal Mario Hernán Tapia Sepúlveda, who worked as a tractor driver, drove the corpses on a vehicle to an area of the regiment, where they were buried, with there being no certainty to this day of the exact location of that illegal burial. by Darío Núñez

Source: resumen.cl, October 25, 2023