Cardiologists, psychiatrists, dentists, traumatologists, pediatricians, psychologists, gynecologists, and otolaryngologists applied the knowledge they acquired to save lives toward the implementation of torture and executions against hundreds of political prisoners.

Most of them are still working in public hospitals, private clinics, and health institutions of the Armed Forces. The Hippocratic Oath states in some of its parts: "I swear by Apollo the Physician and Asclepius and Hygeia and Panacea and all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfill this oath according to my ability and judgment.

I will hold him who has taught me this art as equal to my parents and live my life in partnership with him, and if he is in need of money, give him a share of mine, and will regard his offspring as equal to my brothers in male lineage, and will teach them this art, if they desire to learn it, without fee or covenant.

I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice. I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect.

Similarly, I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art. If I fulfill this oath and do not violate it, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and art, being honored with fame among all men for all time to come; if I transgress it and swear falsely, may the opposite of all this be my lot." Evidently, those who placed their knowledge at the service of torture and death violated this oath and all norms regarding the defense of human rights.

The worst part is that, with the protection of the Armed Forces or the extreme negligence of public hospital directors appointed by the Concertación, they remain in their positions, treating people who have not the slightest idea that "their doctor" has such a sinister past.

This is what happened when public protests known as funas began, with hundreds of patients who started calling the doctors to confront them and cancel their visits upon learning of the facts. Among other cases, this occurred with Alejandro Forero at the INDISA Clinic, Sergio Muñoz at the Barros Luco Hospital, and Roberto Lailhacar at his office on Calle Obispo Salas in the commune of Providencia.

From the first days

The collaboration of doctors who had sided with the coup plotters occurred from the very first days of the Pinochet dictatorship. The case of José María Fuentealba, a health official for the Army, is one of them.

On October 27, 1973, Néstor Hernán Castillo Sepúlveda, 23, Regional Secretary of the Communist Youth; José Rosendo Pérez Ríos, 24, employee and militant of the MAPU; and Juan Vera Oyarzún, 53, worker, Regional Secretary of the Communist Party, union leader, and former councilman of Punta Arenas, were handed over by the Argentine Gendarmerie to Chilean military personnel in the border town of Río Mayo.

On September 20, a group of four people, including Juan Vera, had crossed the border to request political asylum in Argentina. Two days later, they were handed over to the Argentine Gendarmerie by the owner of a local ranch, taken to Aldea Veleiros, and subsequently to Río Mayo.

In this town, they remained under the custody of the 38th Squadron of the Gendarmerie. On the other hand, on September 28, José Rosendo Pérez and Néstor Castillo, who had also arrived from Chile days earlier, were arrested at a boarding house in Río Mayo.

Along with Juan Vera, they were tasked with performing work at the Río Mayo Municipality while they remained detained. That lasted until October 27, when they were handed over to a military command composed of Army Captain Joaquín Molina, a Carabineros officer named Salinas, Sub-officer Evaldo Reidlich Hains, and Dr.

José María Fuentealba Suazo, who were traveling in an ambulance from the Coyhaique Regional Hospital. According to the newspaper La Epoca on November 2, 1988, the military "informed them that their families were waiting for them at the border.

Once in Chilean territory, the military patrol forced the group to board a pickup truck and began the return trip toward the Las Bandurrias prison camp. Hours later, the vehicle arrived at the military facility.

Only the uniformed men and the doctor were inside. The three detainees have never appeared to this day." The justice system brought charges against Dr. Fuentealba Suazo and retired Sub-officer Evaldo Reidlich, while investigations continue to identify the other member of the patrol, and inspections are being carried out at the Coyhaique Forest Reserve of the El Claro Cemetery, the place where the three Chilean citizens were allegedly executed and forcibly disappeared.

Joaquín Molina Fuenzalida, the captain who commanded the group, was murdered by Manuel Contreras Valdebenito, son of the head of the DINA. As in this case, the cardiologist from Punta Arenas, Guillermo Aranda, and Alejandro Babaich Schmith, Director of the "Cirujano Guzmán" Hospital in that city, also appear from the very beginning, recognized by many who were tortured in that locality.

Another is Darwin Arraigada Loyola, at that time a leader of the Medical Association of Chile, who was subsequently appointed by the Military Junta as Director General of Health and who is accused, among other things, of turning in numerous leftist doctors, more than 30 of whom were murdered, and participating in the plan to administer drugs in food to murder political prisoners.

The doctor Raúl Díaz Doll, an official of the General Directorate of the National Health Service, was a member of the military commission that investigated the political affiliation of doctors. He organized the snitching within the service and participated personally in the interrogations of detained and tortured doctors.

In Iquique, the pediatrician Werner Gálvez, a Colonel in the Medical Corps, administered intravenous injections of sodium pentothal, alternating with biological serum, during interrogations of prisoners of war.

Meanwhile, in Valdivia, the traumatologist Fernando Jara de la Maza participated directly in the application of torture to detainees. In the province of Concepción, a Carabineros doctor named Minoletti advised the torturers of Fuerte Borgoño and issued certificates for "natural death" to cover up the crimes.

Meanwhile, in Tejas Verdes, the cradle of the DINA, Dr. Vittorio Orvieto Teplizky performed collaborative functions in the torture committed at the Prisoner Camp Number Two of that military facility; he would later join the Health Brigade of said illicit association, appearing as director of the clandestine Santa Lucía clinic.

In the vicinity of Santiago, the radiologist Bernardo Pulto, together with the military prosecutor of Melipilla, personally took part in the torture sessions of prisoners.

The Health Brigade

The DINA had its own team for the care of service personnel, collaborating prisoners, and the application of torment to those it considered its "enemies." Along with the aforementioned Vittorio Orvieto Teplizky, the following served in these functions: Werner Zanghellini, Hernán Taricco, Nader Nasser, Osvaldo Eugenio Leyton Bahamondez, Rodrigo Vélez, Samuel Valdivia Soto, Luis Hernán Santibáñez Santelices, Eduardo Contreras Balcarce, the gynecologist Juan Pablo Figueroa Yáñez, the otolaryngologist Eugenio Fantuzzi Alliende, the psychiatrist Roberto Lailhacar Chávez, the dentist Sergio Roberto Muñoz Bonta, and the nurse María Eliana Bolumburú Taboada. Another doctor, of whom only the surname is known, is the psychologist Bassaure. Without being part of the structure, the doctor Gregorio Burgos of the Los Angeles Regiment collaborated with DINA agents, looking for ways to torture without the detainee losing consciousness. Many of them seem to no longer practice in their respective areas, although they remain close, such as the nurse María Eliana Bolumburú, who works in a chemical laboratory on Calle Ejército. Others remain active and assume prominent roles in their profession, such as Roberto Emilio Lailhacar Chávez, who in the late 90s and until 2001 held the position of president of the Chilean Society of Sexology and Sexual Education, whose headquarters operated out of his private office at Obispo Salas 290 in the commune of Providencia. The lawyer Víctor Manuel Avilés Mejías, a member of the DINA's Legal Department, joined this organization as a "natural person." For his part, the dental surgeon Sergio Muñoz Bonta, who worked in the clandestine Santa Lucía and London clinics, treated, among other people, Marcia Merino, the "flaca Alejandra," and was a "founding partner" of the front company Pedro Diet Lobos, through which the DINA laundered money from the State, from arms and drug trafficking, and legalized the theft of houses, cars, and property of those prisoners who were forcibly disappeared. Here he was a "colleague," for example, of Francisco Ferrer Lima, Emilio Sajuria Alvear, Ricardo Lawrence Mires, Fernando Gómez Segovia, Augusto Pinochet Hiriart, and Pedro Espinoza Bravo. Luis Hernán Santibáñez Santelices appears implicated in the disappearance of Juan Elías Cortés Alruiz, a communist militant kidnapped in April 1976, a case for which he was even called to testify by Judge Servando Jordán in 1980, along with Germán Barriga Muñoz, Emilio Troncoso Vivillos, Heriberto Acevedo, Vianel Valdivieso, and Julio Leyton Robles, brother of Manuel Leyton, who died under strange circumstances at the London clinic. Dr. Santibáñez acknowledged on July 17, 1980, that he had been part of the DINA in the capacity of a doctor. He reported that the London Clinic existed on Calle Almirante Barroso, which was under the charge of Dr. Taricco. When he was shown a photo of Cortés, he said that the face seemed familiar and that he might have seen that person at the San Juan de Dios Hospital. In the same proceeding, he was questioned about the case of Gabriel Castillo Tapia, who has been disappeared since August 5, 1976. In the death of Manuel Leyton Robles, another doctor appears implicated: Osvaldo Leyton Bahamondes, who signed a death certificate stating that the DINA agent had died due to an epileptic seizure and cardiac arrhythmia. The death allegedly occurred at Almirante Barroso No. 76, where the London Clinic operated. The truth is that Manuel Leyton was murdered by his "colleagues" after his role as a DINA member was discovered following his participation in a job commissioned by Germán Barriga: the theft of a Renault 4. For his part, Sergio Marcelo Virgilio Bocaz, after finishing his work at the DINA, based at the Santa Lucía Clinic, continued working in the CNI Logistics Command, and at the end of the dictatorship, he was seen appearing in various types of advertising, such as one for Nescafé, another for Tritón cookies, and for financial institutions. He still works at the Félix Bulnes Hospital. Dr. Eugenio Fantuzzi has his private practice and is Head of the Otolaryngology Service at the Dávila Clinic. The gynecologist Juan Pablo Figueroa sees patients from Monday to Friday at the Arauco Clinic, and Hernán Taricco Lavín continues to work for the Army at the Maipú Military Medical Center (see box). Werner Zanghellini Martínez, who injected the detainee Jorge Fuentes Alarcón with the rabies virus, quickly abandoned his office, located at Galvarino Gallardo 1983, when he was confronted by dozens of people a couple of years ago. It is known that he continues to see patients in an office on Avenida Providencia that belongs to a relative, although his name does not appear on the plaque attached to the door.

The CNI and the Joint Command

Although the presence of other doctors is known in the Joint Command, composed basically of members of the Air Force, the one who has been prosecuted as a permanent part of this illicit association is the cardiologist Alejandro Jorge Forero Alvarez, a squadron commander in the FACH and an official at the institutional hospital.

Named in most of the cases involving the Joint Command, it is known that in 1976 he served as a second soldier at the El Bosque Air Base and at the Colina Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment, used as a clandestine detention center by the FACH.

In this place, he allegedly participated by supervising torture and drugging prisoners who were taken out to be forcibly disappeared. Forero participated in Patria y Libertad during the government of the Unidad Popular, where he met Roberto Fuentes Morrison, alias "el Wally." Already during the dictatorship, he was prosecuted by Judge Carlos Cerda, but that process was closed and amnestied by a judge appointed specifically for that purpose.

For the crimes of illicit association and illegal detention of Víctor Vega Riquelme, he was prosecuted along with 20 other members of the Joint Command. In the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE), Jorge León Alessandrini appears, a dentist and civilian agent implicated in the murder of union leader Tucapel Jiménez, where he allegedly acted by providing the murder weapon.

The CNI also had its own medical team, especially in the clandestine torture centers located in Santiago, such as the Cuartel Borgoña, and others in the regions. Cases that have reached notoriety have exposed some of them, for example, those implicated in the death by torture of the teacher Federico Alvarez Santibáñez in August 1979.

The young MIR militant was handed over by the Carabineros to the CNI, where he was subjected to terrible duress while being "monitored" by health professionals to prevent his death. Among these appear Luis Losada Fuenzalida, Manfred Jurgensen Caesar, and Camilo Azar Saba, all sanctioned by the Medical Association on March 31, 1986.

Losada Fuenzalida signed a report in which he indicated that the teacher was in good physical condition only one hour before the death of Alvarez Santibáñez. Camilo Azar is a traumatologist and orthopedist, so he knew perfectly well the most sensitive areas of the body that could cause the greatest pain with the least danger of death.

However, in this case, they did not serve: Federico Alvarez died due to multiple contusions, hemoptysis, and pulmonary insufficiency. Another case is that of the transport worker from La Serena, Mario Fernández López, kidnapped by the CNI in October 1984.

After the death by torture of Fernández, the doctors Víctor Carcuro Correa and Guido Mario Félix Díaz Paci, participants in the application of torment to the detainee, were sanctioned by the Medical Association.

Guido Díaz Paci, a well-known Army doctor, lied to the doctors on duty at the La Serena Hospital, claiming that the detainee came from a Carabineros station and not from the CNI, and requesting that the doctors hide the detainee's condition.

Once Mario Fernández had died, Díaz Paci tried to get the physician who had performed emergency surgery on the victim to falsify the diagnosis of his death, hiding the true reasons for the passing. Already in 1974, when he participated in the exhumation of the body of María Avalos, murdered along with her husband Bernardo Lejdermann in December 1973 by a patrol from the Arica Regiment of La Serena, he lied when issuing a death certificate, claiming that the woman had blown herself up with dynamite.

Like many of these "doctors of death," Díaz Paci continues to work in La Serena.

Workplace H. Darwin Arraigada Loyola, General Medicine. Sees patients at Santa María 217, office 34, commune of Independencia. Phone 7372626. Dr. Eugenio Fantuzzi Alliende, Otolaryngologist. Head Doctor of the Otolaryngology Service at the Dávila Clinic, located at Avenida Recoleta 464, Santiago.

Private Practice at Luis Thayer Ojeda Norte 073, office 606, Providencia. Phone 233 7524. Fax 234 1740. Dr. Juan Pablo Figueroa Yáñez, Gynecologist and Obstetrician. Sees patients from Monday to Friday at the Arauco Clinic, located at Parque Arauco.

Avenida Kennedy 5413-B. Phone 2990299. Werner Zanghellini Martínez, Cardiologist. Last known address: Galvarino Gallardo 1983, Providencia. Now sees patients without advertising at a relative's office in the same commune.

Sergio Marcelo Virgilio Bocaz, General Medicine. Still working at the Félix Bulnes Hospital, located at Leoncio Fernández 2655, Quinta Normal, Santiago. Hernán Horacio Taricco Lavín, Pediatrician. Sees patients Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, from 12:00 to 14:30, at the Maipú Military Medical Center, located at Avenida Ramón Freire No. 6097, Villa Militar Oeste, Paradero 3 1/2 de Pajaritos, Estación Central Commune.

Phones: 450 8564, 450 8565, 450 8566. Fax: 4508563. Manfred Jurgensen Caesar, General Medicine. Works at the Military Hospital of Santiago. Alejandro Forero Alvarez, Cardiologist. Works at the INDISA Clinic, Avenida Santa María 1810, phone 2254555.

Private Practice Apoquindo 6275, office 116. Guido Díaz Paci, Pediatrician. Sees patients at the 21st "Arica" Infantry Regiment of the Second Army Division based in La Serena, under the command of Brigadier General José Gabriel Gaete Paredes.

Camilo Azar Saba, Traumatologist. Since August 1, 2003, sees patients at Integramedica Alto Las Condes, located at Avenida Kennedy 9001, 7th floor, Mall Alto Las Condes. Phones: 6366666, 6796500, 6796566, and 6796567.

Assistant: Fabiola Banda, phone 6796576. Sergio Roberto Muñoz Bonta, Dentist. Sees patients at the Barros Luco-Trudeau Hospital and at the "San Lucas" dental office at José Domingo Santa María 1338. Phones 7377674 and 7379978. Roberto Lailhacar Chávez, Psychiatrist. Continues to see patients at Obispo Salas 290, Office 168. Phone 2239405. by Julio Oliva García

Source: elsiglo.cl, February 13, 2004

Cardiologists, psychiatrists, dentists, traumatologists, pediatricians, gynecologists, and otolaryngologists applied the knowledge they acquired to save lives toward the administration of torture and executions against hundreds of political prisoners.

Most of them are still working in public hospitals, private clinics, and health institutions of the Armed Forces. The Hippocratic Oath states in part: "I swear by Apollo the Physician and by Asclepius and by Hygeia and Panacea and by all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfill this oath according to my power and discernment.

I will hold him who taught me this art as equal to my parents; he will share in my livelihood and if he wishes, he will share in my goods. I will consider his offspring as my brothers, teaching them this art without charging them anything, if they wish to learn it.

I will carry out that regimen which, according to my power and discernment, will be for the benefit of the sick and will keep them from harm and terror. I will not give a deadly drug to anyone even if it is requested of me, nor will I give counsel to this end.

In the same way, I will not give any woman destructive suppositories; I will keep my life and my art free from guilt. Now, if I fulfill this oath and do not break it, may the fruits of life and art be mine, may I be honored by all men always, and may the opposite happen to me if I break it and am a perjurer." Clearly, those who placed their knowledge at the service of torture and death violated this oath and all norms regarding the defense of human rights.

The worst part is that, under the protection of the Armed Forces or with the extreme negligence of public hospital directors appointed by the Concertación, they remain in their positions, treating people who have not the slightest idea that "their doctor" has such a sinister past.

This is what happened when the public protests known as funas began, with hundreds of patients who started calling the doctors to confront them and cancel their visits upon learning of these facts. Among other cases, this occurred with Alejandro Forero at the Clínica INDISA, Sergio Muñoz at the Hospital Barros Luco, and Roberto Lailhacar at his office on Calle Obispo Salas in the commune of Providencia.

From the first days

The collaboration of doctors who had sided with the coup plotters began in the very first days of the Pinochet dictatorship. The case of José María Fuentealba, a health official for the Army, is one of them.

On October 27, 1973, Néstor Hernán Castillo Sepúlveda, 23, Regional Secretary of the Communist Youth; José Rosendo Pérez Ríos, 24, an employee and militant of the MAPU; and Juan Vera Oyarzún, 53, a worker, Regional Secretary of the Communist Party, union leader, and former councilman of Punta Arenas, were handed over by the Argentine Gendarmerie to Chilean military personnel in the border town of Río Mayo.

On September 20, a group of four people, including Juan Vera, had crossed the border to seek political asylum in Argentina. Two days later, they were handed over to the Argentine Gendarmerie by the owner of a local ranch, taken to Aldea Veleiros, and subsequently to Río Mayo.

In this town, they remained under the custody of the 38th Squadron of the Gendarmerie. Furthermore, on September 28, José Rosendo Pérez and Néstor Castillo were arrested at a boarding house in Río Mayo, having also arrived from Chile days earlier.

Together with Juan Vera, they were tasked with performing labor at the Municipality of Río Mayo while they remained detained. This lasted until October 27, when they were handed over to a military commando composed of Army Captain Joaquín Molina, a Carabineros officer named Salinas, Sub-officer Evaldo Reidlich Hains, and Dr.

José María Fuentealba Suazo, who were traveling in an ambulance from the Coyhaique Regional Hospital. According to the newspaper La Epoca on November 2, 1988, the military "informed them that their families were waiting for them at the border.

Once in Chilean territory, the military patrol forced the group to board a truck and began the return trip to the Las Bandurrias prison camp. Hours later, the vehicle arrived at the military facility. Only the uniformed men and the doctor were inside.

The three detainees have never appeared to this day." The justice system indicted Dr. Fuentealba Suazo and retired Sub-officer Evaldo Reidlich, while proceedings continue to identify the other member of the patrol and inspections are carried out at the Coyhaique Forest Reserve of the El Claro Cemetery, the place where the three Chilean citizens were allegedly executed and forcibly disappeared.

Joaquín Molina Fuenzalida, the captain who commanded the group, was murdered by Manuel Contreras Valdebenito, son of the head of the DINA. As in this case, the cardiologist from Punta Arenas, Guillermo Aranda, and Alejandro Babaich Schmith, Director of the "Cirujano Guzmán" Hospital in that city, also appear from the very beginning, recognized by many torture survivors from that locality.

Another is Darwin Arraigada Loyola, at that time a leader of the Medical Association of Chile, who was subsequently appointed by the Military Junta as Director General of Health and who is accused, among other things, of turning in numerous leftist doctors—more than 30 of whom were murdered—and participating in the plan to administer drugs in food to murder political prisoners.

The doctor Raúl Díaz Doll, an official of the General Directorate of the National Health Service, was part of the military commission that investigated the political affiliation of doctors. He organized the spying within the service and participated personally in the interrogations of detained and tortured doctors.

In Iquique, the pediatrician Werner Gálvez, a Colonel of the Medical Corps, administered intravenous injections of sodium pentothal, alternating with biological serum, during interrogations of prisoners of war.

Meanwhile, in Valdivia, the traumatologist Fernando Jara de la Maza participated directly in the application of torture to detainees. In the province of Concepción, a Carabineros doctor named Minoletti advised the torturers of Fuerte Borgoño and issued "natural death" certificates to cover up the crimes.

Meanwhile, in Tejas Verdes, the cradle of the DINA, Dr. Vittorio Orvieto Teplizky performed collaborative functions in the tortures committed at the Prisoner Camp Number Two of that military facility; he would later join the Health Brigade of said illicit association, appearing as director of the clandestine Santa Lucía clinic.

In the vicinity of Santiago, the radiologist Bernardo Pulto, together with the military prosecutor of Melipilla, personally took part in the torture sessions of the prisoners.

The Health Brigade

The DINA had its own team for the care of service personnel, collaborating prisoners, and the application of torment to those it considered its "enemies." Along with the aforementioned Vittorio Orvieto Teplizky, the following served in these roles: Werner Zanghellini, Hernán Taricco, Nader Nasser, Osvaldo Eugenio Leyton Bahamondez, Rodrigo Vélez, Samuel Valdivia Soto, Luis Hernán Santibáñez Santelices, Eduardo Contreras Balcarce, the gynecologist Juan Pablo Figueroa Yáñez, the otolaryngologist Eugenio Fantuzzi Alliende, the psychiatrist Roberto Lailhacar Chávez, the dentist Sergio Roberto Muñoz Bonta, and the nurse María Eliana Bolumburú Taboada. Another doctor, of whom only the surname is known, is the psychiatrist Bassaure. Without being part of the structure, the doctor Gregorio Burgos of the Los Angeles Regiment collaborated with DINA agents, looking for ways to torture without the detainee losing consciousness. Many of them appear to no longer practice in their respective areas, although they remain close, such as the nurse María Eliana Bolumburú, who works in a chemical laboratory on Calle Ejército. Others remain active and assume prominent roles in their profession, such as Roberto Emilio Lailhacar Chávez, who in the late 90s and until 2001 held the position of president of the Chilean Society of Sexology and Sexual Education, whose headquarters operated in his private office at Obispo Salas 290 in the commune of Providencia. This organization included, as a "natural person," the lawyer Víctor Manuel Avilés Mejías, a member of the DINA Legal Department. For his part, the dental surgeon Sergio Muñoz Bonta, who worked in the clandestine Santa Lucía and London clinics, treated, among other people, Marcia Merino, the "flaca Alejandra," and was a "founding partner" of the front company Pedro Diet Lobos, through which the DINA laundered money from the State, arms and drug trafficking, and legalized the theft of houses, cars, and assets of those prisoners who were forcibly disappeared. Here he was a "colleague," for example, of Francisco Ferrer Lima, Emilio Sajuria Alvear, Ricardo Lawrence Mires, Fernando Gómez Segovia, Augusto Pinochet Hiriart, and Pedro Espinoza Bravo. Luis Hernán Santibáñez Santelices appears implicated in the disappearance of Juan Elías Cortés Alruiz, a communist militant kidnapped in April 1976, a case for which he was even called to testify by Minister Servando Jordán in 1980, along with Germán Barriga Muñoz (a retired colonel who committed suicide), Emilio Troncoso Vivillos, Heriberto Acevedo, Vianel Valdivieso, and Julio Leyton Robles, brother of Manuel Leyton, who died under strange circumstances at the London clinic. Dr. Santibáñez acknowledged on July 17, 1980, that he had been part of the DINA in his capacity as a doctor. He reported that the London Clinic existed on Calle Almirante Barroso, under the charge of Dr. Taricco. When shown a photo of Cortés, he said that it seemed like a familiar face and that he might have seen that person at the Hospital San Juan de Dios. In the same proceeding, he was questioned about the case of Gabriel Castillo Tapia, who has been missing since August 5, 1976. Another doctor, Osvaldo Leyton Bahamondes, is implicated in the death of Manuel Leyton Robles; he signed a death certificate stating that the DINA agent had died due to an epileptic seizure and cardiac arrhythmia. The death allegedly occurred at Almirante Barroso Nº 76, where the London Clinic operated. The truth is that Manuel Leyton was murdered by his "colleagues" after his role as a DINA member was discovered following his participation in a job commissioned by Germán Barriga: the theft of a Renault 4. For his part, Sergio Marcelo Virgilio Bocaz, after finishing his work at the DINA, based at the Santa Lucía Clinic, continued working at the CNI Logistics Command, and at the end of the dictatorship, he was seen appearing in various types of advertisements, such as one for Nescafé, another for Tritón cookies, and for financial institutions. He still works at the Hospital Félix Bulnes. Dr. Eugenio Fantuzzi has his private practice and is Head of the Otolaryngology Service at the Clínica Dávila. The gynecologist Juan Pablo Figueroa sees patients from Monday to Friday at the Clínica Arauco, and Hernán Taricco Lavín continues to work for the Army at the Maipú Military Medical Center. Werner Zanghellini Martínez, who injected the detainee Jorge Fuentes Alarcón with the rabies virus, quickly abandoned his office, located at Galvarino Gallardo 1983, when he was funado (publicly confronted) by dozens of people a couple of years ago. It is known that he continues to see patients at an office on Avenida Providencia that belongs to a relative, although his name does not appear on the plaque attached to the door.

The CNI and the Joint Command

Although the presence of other doctors is known within the Joint Command, composed basically of members of the Air Force, the one who has been prosecuted as a permanent part of this illicit association is the cardiologist Alejandro Jorge Forero Alvarez, a squadron commander of the FACH and an official at the institutional hospital.

Named in most of the cases involving the Joint Command, it is known that in 1976 he served as a second lieutenant at the El Bosque Air Base and at the Colina Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment, used as a clandestine detention center by the FACH.

In this place, he allegedly participated by supervising the tortures and drugging the prisoners who were taken out to be forcibly disappeared. Forero participated in Patria y Libertad during the government of the Unidad Popular, where he met Roberto Fuentes Morrison, alias "el Wally." Already during the dictatorship, he was prosecuted by Minister Carlos Cerda, but that process was closed and amnestied by a judge appointed specifically for that purpose.

For the crimes of illicit association and illegal detention of Víctor Vega Riquelme, he was prosecuted along with 20 other members of the Joint Command. In the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE), Jorge León Alessandrini appears, a dentist and civilian agent, implicated in the murder of union leader Tucapel Jiménez, where he allegedly acted by providing the murder weapon.

The CNI also had its own medical team, especially in the clandestine torture centers located in Santiago, such as the Cuartel Borgoña, and others in the regions. Cases that have reached notoriety exposed some of them, for example, those implicated in the death by torture of the teacher Federico Alvarez Santibáñez in August 1979.

The young MIR militant was handed over by Carabineros to the CNI, where he was subjected to terrible duress while being "monitored" by health professionals to prevent his death. Among these appear Luis Losada Fuenzalida, Manfred Jurgensen Caesar, and Camilo Azar Saba, all sanctioned by the Medical Association on March 31, 1986.

Losada Fuenzalida signed a report indicating that the teacher was in good physical condition only an hour before the death of Alvarez Santibáñez. Dr. Camilo Azar Saba (currently has a website and a blog: http://camiloazar.blogspot.com/ and http://www.camiloazar.com/) is a traumatologist and orthopedist, so he knew perfectly well the most sensitive areas of the body, which could cause the greatest pain with the least danger of death.

However, in this case, it did not work: Federico Alvarez died due to multiple contusions, hemoptysis, and pulmonary insufficiency. Another case is that of the transporter from La Serena, Mario Fernández López, kidnapped by the CNI in October 1984.

After the death by torture of Fernández, doctors Víctor Carcuro Correa and Guido Mario Félix Díaz Paci, participants in the application of torment to the detainee, were sanctioned by the Medical Association.

Guido Díaz Paci, a well-known Army doctor, lied to the doctors on duty at the Hospital de La Serena, claiming that the detainee came from a Carabineros station and not from the CNI, and asking the doctors to hide the detainee's condition.

Once Mario Fernández had died, Díaz Paci tried to get the physician who had operated on the victim in an emergency to falsify the diagnosis of his death, hiding the true reasons for the passing. Back in 1974, when he participated in the exhumation of the body of María Avalos, murdered along with her husband Bernardo Lejdermann in December 1973 by a patrol from the Arica Regiment of La Serena, he lied when issuing a death certificate, claiming that the woman had blown herself up with dynamite.

Like many of these "doctors of death," Díaz Paci continues to work in La Serena.

Workplace H. Darwin Arraigada Loyola, General Medicine. Sees patients at Santa María 217, office 34, commune of Independencia. Phone 7372626. Dr. Eugenio Fantuzzi Alliende, Otolaryngologist. Chief Physician of the Otolaryngology Service of the Clínica Dávila, located at Avenida Recoleta 464, Santiago.

Private Office at Luis Thayer Ojeda Norte 073, office 606, Providencia. Phone 233 7524. Fax 234 1740. Dr. Juan Pablo Figueroa Yáñez, Gynecologist and Obstetrician. Sees patients from Monday to Friday at the Clínica Arauco, located at Parque Arauco.

Avenida Kennedy 5413-B. Phone 2990299. Werner Zanghellini Martínez, Cardiologist. Last known address: Galvarino Gallardo 1983, Providencia. Now sees patients without advertising at a relative's office in the same commune.

Sergio Marcelo Virgilio Bocaz, General Medicine. Still works at the Hospital Félix Bulnes, located at Leoncio Fernández 2655, Quinta Normal, Santiago. Hernán Horacio Taricco Lavín, Pediatrician. Sees patients Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, from 12:00 to 14:30, at the Maipú Military Medical Center, located at Avenida Ramón Freire Nº6097, Villa Militar Oeste, Paradero 3 1/2 de Pajaritos, Comuna Estación Central.

Phones: 450 8564, 450 8565, 450 8566. Fax: 4508563. Manfred Jurgensen Caesar, General Medicine. Works at the Military Hospital of Santiago. Alejandro Forero Alvarez, Cardiologist. Works at the Clínica INDISA, Avenida Santa María 1810, phone 2254555.

Private Office Apoquindo 6275, office 116. Guido Díaz Paci, Pediatrician. Sees patients at the 21st Infantry Regiment "Arica" of the Second Army Division based in La Serena, under the command of Brigadier General José Gabriel Gaete Paredes.

Camilo Azar Saba, Traumatologist. email: camiloazar@vtr.net. Phones: (56-2) 679 65 00. Sergio Roberto Muñoz Bonta, Dentist. Sees patients at the Hospital Barros Luco-Trudeau and at the dental medical office "San Lucas" at José Domingo Santa María 1338. Phones 7377674 and 7379978. Roberto Lailhacar Chávez, Psychiatrist. Continues to see patients at Obispo Salas 290, Office 168. Phone 2239405.

Source: vientodelsur.ch, July 17, 2009

Dictatorship Papers: the 26 doctors and five nurses who served in the DINA clinics

The personnel who worked in the clinics created by the DINA—Santa Lucía, London, and El Golf—appear in a judicial branch that remains archived. Only five doctors have been convicted in proceedings for crimes committed by the repressive agency.

According to the investigation by Judge Alejandro Solís, some doctors monitored detainees while they were being tortured. CIPER accessed judicial documents containing testimonies from clinic workers regarding the role of these professionals.

In that review, we counted at least 31 individuals (26 doctors and five nurses) who worked in the clinics. Not all participated in torture, but none deny having placed themselves at the service of the DINA. Seven continue to practice, and three are awaiting rulings from the Supreme Court.

On June 1, 2007, a retired Carabineros officer and former agent of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), the repressive agency of the early years of the dictatorship, appeared before a judge. He was questioned regarding the murder of Corporal Manuel Leyton Robles, which occurred in 1977, whom the DINA eliminated at the London Clinic.

Leyton was in possession of a car reported stolen—it had belonged to a forcibly disappeared person—and for that reason, he was arrested by Carabineros. At the police station, he explained what he did for a living and mentioned the illegal detentions carried out by the dictatorship's agents.

He was released. However, for the DINA leadership, he had spoken more than was advisable. They took him for a medical check-up at the London Clinic—one of the three healthcare facilities created by the DINA—where, despite his good physical condition, he suffered a fatal cardiorespiratory arrest.

The interrogation of the former agent, whose identity CIPER keeps confidential, led to a detailed description of the three DINA clinics: Santa Lucía, London, and El Golf. By now, the justice system has established that the security agency recruited a group of doctors who assisted the DINA with the monitoring, resuscitation, and, in some cases, even the homicide of detainees.

The former agent declared that when there was a detainee in a barracks who could no longer provide information, the doctors fulfilled a role: “A DINA doctor was called, who would go and attend to the detainee.

I don’t remember who they were, but they were from the clinic (Santa Lucía). These doctors were there for that; it was their function and what that healthcare center was created for,” he stated.

Journalistic efforts to reveal the functioning of what the press called the DINA’s “sanitary brigade” have been numerous. Chilevisión did so in 2014, when it confronted six doctors who are on the payroll of the professionals who provided these services and revealed their workplaces: among them, ophthalmologist Vittorio Orvieto Tiplitzky, otolaryngologist Eugenio Fantuzzi Alliende, and the late Manfred Jürgensen Caesar.

Years earlier, journalist Mónica González, founder of CIPER, had already published the existence of these healthcare centers in reports that contained a list of doctors from the London Clinic. And for his book “El despertar de los Cuervos” (The Awakening of the Ravens), journalist Javier Rebolledo accessed the statements made by the health personnel of these clinics during the investigation by Minister Alejandro Solís, a file that is currently archived.

CIPER was able to review those and other testimonies that shaped this article and confirmed that at least seven doctors continue to practice in the private sector. For this report, all seven were contacted in order to incorporate their versions, but only one doctor agreed to have her testimony published.

DOCTORS INVESTIGATED BY JUDGE SOLÍS

The list of 31 professionals compiled by CIPER only includes those who were part of the clinics investigated by Judge Alejandro Solís. Of them, only five have been convicted in human rights cases. That list includes the late Manfred Jürgensen, brother of former constitutional convention member Harry Jürgensen (RN), who was sentenced to eight years of major imprisonment as an accomplice to the qualified homicide of the teacher and MIR militant, Federico Álvarez Santibáñez.

Three others are awaiting a ruling from the Supreme Court.

The statements to which CIPER had access, containing accusations and accounts of torture, were mostly provided by former clinic workers. Some of those files were integrated into “Papeles de la Dictadura” (Dictatorship Papers), an online platform with more than 4,000 documents developed by CIPER with the collaboration of the CIP-UDP (see the “Papeles de la Dictadura” platform here).

In those records, sensitive data of the victims and the clinic workers who filed the complaints were redacted.

According to the judicial investigation, at least 13 doctors graduated from the Universidad de Chile. This is not strange. At that time, FACH Colonel Dámaso González Espinosa, who led the dental area of the Santa Lucía Clinic, served as a professor at that university and was in charge of recruiting part of the staff. This was pointed out to CIPER by some of the doctors contacted.

The statements mention three people in charge of these establishments: FACH cardiologist Werner Zanghellini Martínez, pediatrician Hernán Horacio Taricco Lavín, and nurse Eliana Carlota Bolumburú Toboada.

Last March, the Supreme Court sentenced Werner Zanghellini to a prison term for the first time. The other two are being prosecuted and have a sentence ratified by the Santiago Court of Appeals in the investigation into the homicide of Corporal Leyton, a case that must be reviewed by the Supreme Court.

A retired Carabineros sergeant testified that it was at the Santa Lucía Clinic where he saw the most agents with prisoners: “Indeed, I saw people arrive at that facility who apparently had just been detained by agents; they were treated, but immediately transferred by the same agents who had brought them.” A nurse who worked at the site declared that “the doctors from the Santa Lucía Clinic were frequently requested at Villa Grimaldi to examine detainees, and they were always accompanied by a nurse.” The villa was a secret DINA barracks where detainees were tortured and murdered. “In my case, I remember having spoken with the detainees whom the doctor was examining, encouraging them to cooperate with the information requested of them,” the same statement continues.

The healthcare centers were supposedly created to attend to civilian agents and their families, who did not have coverage in the Armed Forces hospitals. Indeed, medical and dental care was also provided there.

A statement from dentist Pablo César Oyanguren Plaza asserted that at the London Clinic, “even President Pinochet was treated on some occasion.” Other accounts say that Manuel Contreras did so as well.

The statement of a retired Army non-commissioned officer who was a nurse at the Santa Lucía Clinic is chilling: “It was known that at Villa Grimaldi, cars were driven over the bodies of the detainees and that sometimes they went too far and they arrived at Santa Lucía (clinic) dying.

When there was no remedy, they had to be put to death with pentothal. I don’t know what happened to the detainees to whom pentothal was administered, but it was rumored that there was another brigade that took charge of them to throw them into the sea.”

MISS ELIANA

“There was a code at the Santa Lucía Clinic, which was a warning: ‘the package is coming.’ It meant that a detainee was coming, and one understood that one should not get involved. They would take them into a room and then administer something, and later the patient would come out deceased.

I heard from conversations among these doctors and Miss Eliana that they administered eight milligrams of pentothal, which caused an arrhythmia followed by a cardiorespiratory arrest, resulting in death at the clinic. And around midnight, they would take them out ‘camouflaged,’ covered with a blanket.”

The previous paragraph is part of the extrajudicial statement of a former DINA employee, dated June 29, 2005. His testimony is one of the most detailed within Minister Solís’s investigation. The person he calls “Miss Eliana” is the nurse Eliana Carlota Bolumburú Taboada.

At the Santa Lucía Clinic, she held the position of head of nurses, even over those with military rank. Upon reviewing the statements from the judicial process, it is clear that she played a fundamental role in that facility, even though her name does not resonate with the same impact as that of other professionals who provided service to the repressive apparatuses.

In 2015, Eliana Bolumburú was sentenced, in the first instance, to three years and one day, in addition to professional disqualification, as an accessory to the homicide of Corporal Manuel Leyton. But the court decided to grant her the benefit of intensive supervised release for the same period.

That sentence was ratified in 2020 by the Santiago Court of Appeals and is currently awaiting a ruling from the Supreme Court.

The statements of other former clinic workers assert that Bolumburú was aware of the treatment the DINA gave to detainees. There are testimonies that point to her as being knowledgeable and cooperative regarding the interrogations and the use of pentothal, an anesthetic known as “the truth serum,” because, when administered in low doses, it causes patients to enter a state of drowsiness in which they can continue answering questions.

The application of pentothal has not been proven by the justice system, and the former nurse is only being prosecuted in the investigation into the homicide of Corporal Leyton.

In a police statement from June 2005, a nurse recalled the moment he encountered Bolumburú when she was arriving in an ambulance from the London Clinic with a patient on a stretcher. “The one I recognized immediately was Army Corporal Manuel Leyton Robles,” the nurse asserted.

He also added that, upon returning to the clinic at night, he found a woman at the entrance crying: “And I asked her what was wrong, and she stated that her husband had died of a heart attack, and I found out that it was Corporal Manuel Leyton.”

More than one former official of the Santa Lucía Clinic pointed to Bolumburú as one of the people who controlled the medical staff. The statements also say that she did the same, for a short period, at the London Clinic. “Due to her position, she was aware of everything that happened there,” noted a former Army nurse.

Another former worker recounted that on one occasion he accompanied Bolumburú to Villa Grimaldi and that she “connected directly and knew the bosses. I was able to see the interrogation rooms through this nurse who had direct access to these facilities.”

In 2005, a retired Army non-commissioned officer declared before the PDI in Valdivia that there were doctors from Santa Lucía involved “secretly in the deaths of detainees.” He provided three names: Dr. Werner Zanghellini, anesthesiologist Osvaldo Leyton, and nurse Bolumburú Taboada.

Two years later, the non-commissioned officer met with Bolumburú in a confrontation. The nurse was categorical: “I was in charge of buying and supplying the medications that were for the treatment of the personnel.

I never knew about the pentothal (…). Regarding the fact that there were doctors involved in deaths at the clinic, it is a slander; I don’t know what could have motivated him to tell such a lie,” she emphasized.

The first time Eliana Bolumburú testified, according to the records of this file, was on June 17, 2003, at the Interpol National Central Bureau. At that time, she maintained that there were no irregular situations at the DINA clinics. In 2005, she declared: “Detainees were never treated. Furthermore, I must ensure that I did not know of other DINA detention centers.”

In 2006, her version changed. This time she confessed to having known about detainees at the Santa Lucía Clinic. According to her new account, Marcelo Moren, a former DINA agent who died in 2015 while serving a sentence of more than 300 years, arrived at the healthcare facility once.

On that occasion, Bolumburú recounted, Moren appeared together with agent Osvaldo Pincetti. They were asking for a detainee: “I knew there was a person who was in a bed on the second floor; I presume it was a political detainee, but I did not know this person’s name, although I saw that they had burned wrists,” the nurse said.

Eliana Bolumburú worked at the Santa Lucía Clinic and then at the London Clinic. She retired in mid-1977, the period in which she married the officer and DINA agent, Hugo “Cacho” Acevedo Godoy, one of the men closest to the head of the repressive agency, Manuel Contreras.

Eliana Bolumburú was contacted by CIPER last Monday, August 28, but she did not respond to the messages. Through her lawyer, Hernán Aladín, she initially indicated that she could address our inquiries on Thursday, August 31.

But that same day, her lawyer explained that, for health reasons, she would not be able to answer our questions until after September 20. CIPER had already delayed the publication of this article given the possibility of meeting with her, but it was not possible to agree on an interview before the closing of this article.

DOCTOR TARICCO

A surgeon with a specialty in pediatrics. His residence in Lo Barnechea, a property that according to the Internal Revenue Service has a fiscal appraisal of more than $672 million, is listed under the name Inversiones Santo Domingo.

That company—established in 2013 and composed of the doctor and his family—also owns the car that was parked at his home when CIPER tried to contact him, a 2022 Mercedes Benz.

In 2014, the Canal 13 program “En su propia Trampa” confronted him for offering a fake laser treatment at his private practice, “Red Médica Tabancura,” which promised to cure psychiatric disorders, as well as addictions such as smoking and alcoholism.

Like Bolumburú, in 2015 Taricco Lavín was convicted in the first instance in the Corporal Leyton case. The court sentenced him to three years and one day as an accessory to the homicide, but granted him conditional remission.

In 2020, the Court of Appeals reduced that sentence to 541 days, without ruling on professional disqualification. The doctor filed an appeal for cassation: he alleges that he did not participate in the events. He is awaiting the ruling of the Supreme Court.

Taricco Lavín signed the report where it was asserted that the cause of Leyton’s death was asphyxia due to aspiration of vomit, with a cardiorespiratory arrest. But, in a police statement, former DINA agent Michael Townley recounted that he received the order “to provide (sarin) gas to eliminate Corporal Leyton and that the material author who applied the sarin was an Army lieutenant.”

In June 2003, Taricco denied his participation in the false report: “I never held the position of director of the London Clinic. Regarding the report that I have just read, which bears my signature, it is a technical report, which for a specific situation and because I was a health officer, I was asked to put the signature footer as director, a position I did not hold.”

Another doctor at the clinic, Luis Hernán Santibáñez Santelices, one of those who examined the Army non-commissioned officer, declared that he saw Taricco Lavín “preparing a report for the Legal Medical Service, for a patient who had died, not knowing more details, since I did not ask nor were I told what had happened to the patient I had attended to previously.”

Furthermore, in the judicial file, there are several statements that point to Taricco as one of the heads of the London Clinic. In 2003, nurse Bolumburú asserted that “Dr. Taricco replaced Dr. Zanghellini when he was absent from his position as general director.”

Through his lawyer, Leonardo Battaglia, Dr. Hernán Taricco declined to answer CIPER’s questions.

DOCTOR LEYTON

On June 27, 2003, Osvaldo Leyton declared that it was due to an offer that he arrived at the Santa Lucía Clinic in 1974. He mentioned that, upon arriving at the address he had been given, he found out “that it was a DINA barracks and not the Air Force. In this place, they asked me if I was willing to work for them, which I accepted due to economic needs.”

In July 2005, the anesthesiologist testified at the Interpol offices. There, he asserted that he did have knowledge that on occasions DINA agents arrived with detainees: “Indeed, I had to go on several occasions to detention centers like Villa Grimaldi and Cuatro Álamos.” Leyton was pointed out in the statement of an Army nurse as part of the doctors involved in episodes that ended in the death of detainees.

However, Leyton Bahamondes has no convictions, although in 2007 he was prosecuted for the death of Corporal Manuel Leyton.

For this investigation, the anesthesiologist was contacted by CIPER at his private practice in Providencia, but he declined to respond.

Leyton Bahamondes also testified before the police on November 17, 2006. On that occasion, he was questioned about Corporal Leyton’s medical record. It was in his handwriting. “I have no explanation for why my handwriting appears in the part that refers to the care provided during the day; speculating a little, it may be that if I did it, it was due to an order that necessarily must have come from the medical leadership, which at that period corresponded, apparently, to Dr.

Taricco or to a superior military authority.”

SANTIAGO ALFREDO MATTEO GALLEGUILLOS

He worked as an Army nurse at the Santa Lucía Clinic, and several of those who testified remember him for a single detail: the lie detector. On November 10, 2005, a nurse declared: “Both Osvaldo Leyton and Zanghellini were cardiologists, and the latter used a so-called PC1 or PC2, which was a lie detector, which operated advised by the nurse Santiago Matteo, who handled this equipment and which was kept in a small office at the London.”

Santiago Matteo Galleguillos was also prosecuted in the investigation into the murder of Corporal Leyton for allegedly covering up the homicide. But his participation could not be proven, and he was acquitted by the Santiago Court of Appeals in 2020.

In 2010, Matteo Galleguillos gave an extrajudicial statement. On that occasion, he said that he had traveled to Miami together with Dr. Zanghellini in 1975 for a course on the use of the lie detector or polygraph.

But, he added that he had never used that machine. An Army nurse said that in the same clinic there was a team that interrogated detainees with a lie detector that was handled—as he recounted—by the most senior nurses, Matteo Galleguillos and Lorenzo Toro Olivares.

VISITS TO DETENTION CENTERS

Among the doctors who have been convicted for crimes related to the DINA is the former director of the Santa Lucía Clinic, cardiologist Werner Zanghellini, sentenced to 10 years and one day in an investigation into the qualified kidnapping of two people, within the framework of Operation Colombo.

Also ophthalmologist Vittorio Orvieto, sentenced in several cases related to the Tejas Verdes prisoner camp. The same happened with Manfred Jürgensen, who died after being captured in Argentina.

Jürgensen was a fugitive from justice after being sentenced by the Supreme Court, in January of this year, to eight years in prison as an accomplice to the qualified homicide of the teacher and MIR militant, Federico Álvarez Santibáñez.

Along with him, rheumatologist Luis Alberto Losada was sentenced, as an accessory, to two years in prison, with the benefit of conditional remission. Both assisted Álvarez Santibáñez at the Cuartel Borgoño, near the Mapocho Station.

Nurse Orlando Jesús Torrejón Gatica is convicted in multiple cases associated with victims of Operation Colombo and in the trial for the murder of teacher Marta Ugarte Román.

Orlando Torrejón Gatica appears described in the statements of other former workers of the DINA clinics. A nurse declared that “the term ‘package’ refers to the detainees who were dead; generally, it was said ‘the package has left,’ and those who constantly spoke with that term were Torrejón or Muñoz.” A retired Carabineros sergeant who worked as a nurse pointed out that “the care for the detainees was carried out by specific personnel for them; for example, I remember Orlando Torrejón.”

Added to those names, but only convicted in the first instance as an accessory in the Corporal Leyton case, is surgeon Pedro Valdivia Soto. Like Bolumburú and Taricco, Valdivia is awaiting the Supreme Court’s ruling.

In the files, there are also statements that accuse other doctors of having gone to detention centers. In 2005, a former worker at these clinics claimed to have accompanied doctors Sergio Virgilio Bocaz, Enrique Silva Peralta, Christian Emhart Araya, Eugenio Fantuzzi Alliende, and Luis Cárcamo Díaz. “I must point out that several of these were recently graduated doctors,” he asserted.

Of that list, Luis Felipe Cárcamo Díaz, an otolaryngologist, is the only one who continues to practice: he does so at his private practice in Temuco. Through a person who works there, Cárcamo declined to answer inquiries for this article.

Among the doctors who continue to practice is also Luis Santibáñez Santelices, who currently attends at Integramédica. Santibáñez testified in the Leyton case and, besides detailing that he attended to the deceased non-commissioned officer, he pointed out: “I started working in the summer of 1977, at the request of Dr.

Werner Zanghellini, also an Air Force doctor. The reason was that they intended to implement an Intensive Care Unit there, since some attacks against the DINA and military authorities were presumed. I lasted a short time; almost at the end of March of that same year, I submitted my resignation, not reaching three months of practice at the London Clinic.

I remember that the director on that date was Horacio Taricco Lavín.”

Contacted by CIPER, Santibáñez refused to address inquiries about his participation in the London Clinic.

Camilo Azar Saba is one of the doctors who reviewed the injuries of the teacher and MIR militant, Federico Álvarez Santibáñez. He pointed this out before the justice system: “By order of General Mena, I had to recertify the injuries presented by two people who had been detained by Carabineros and then transferred to the CNI (…) One of these people subsequently died at the Posta Central, a teacher named Federico Álvarez Santibáñez.”

Dr. Jorge Manlio Fantini Valenzuela appears in a statement given by a former civilian employee of the DINA: “He was the one who had to be most attentive when operations and detentions were carried out. He liked to be involved.” In 1982, Fantini married nurse Isabel Margarita Jarpa Riveros, who provided services at the London Clinic.

THE GYNECOLOGISTS

One of the branches that guided the investigation into the DINA clinics was the alleged abortion due to the torture suffered by a detainee who had arrived at the Santa Lucía Clinic eight months pregnant.

A police report records the testimony of a prisoner who in 1975 was detained by the DINA. According to her account, she was held at Colonia Dignidad and Villa Grimaldi. The report maintains that “it was at Villa Grimaldi where she was able to see a detainee in poor physical condition due to the torture received, and who came from a clinic located near the Santa Lucía hill, where they had murdered her eight-month-old son, when he was in her womb.”

According to the statements reviewed by CIPER, on repeated occasions, doctors and nurses were questioned about the passage of a pregnant woman through the Santa Lucía Clinic. The Ministry of the Interior, a plaintiff in the case, requested Minister Solís to officially ask the Vicaría de la Solidaridad to remit the records of three women who had allegedly given birth while they were detained by the DINA.

On July 6, 2009, Solís granted the request.

Two gynecologists passed through the Santa Lucía Clinic: Juan Pablo Figueroa Yáñez and Eduardo Francisco Contreras Valcarce. It was the former who once declared that he remembered an occasion when he was asked to attend to a pregnant detainee: “I refused that request to perform the auscultation on the pregnant woman, and subsequently they requested it of me as a personal favor, and I agreed to examine her, finding no problems with her pregnancy.

I remember that while I was performing said exam, Mr. Marcelo Moren Brito was present.” Figueroa said he did not remember the name of that woman.

Eduardo Francisco Contreras Valcarce died in 2016. According to a statement by Dr. Eugenio Fantuzzi Alliende, Contreras Valcarce arrived at the clinic like other classmates from his graduating class, by offer of Zanghellini.

His name is often confused with that of his brother, Enrique Eduardo Contreras Valcarce, a surgeon. But while the former provided services in DINA clinics, the latter suffered the repression of the “Caravan of Death” and, according to the version of his relatives, was even a prisoner in a facility in the north.

OTHER DOCTORS MENTIONED

The investigation points to a series of doctors, dentists, and health personnel who were part of the Santa Lucía Clinic. According to the files, they were hired on a fee basis, mostly recently graduated from the university.

The accounts of witnesses coincide that on the first floor was the dental clinic and that on the third floor was the medical corps destined to keep alive detainees who had been tortured.

The dentists on the first floor assert that they never saw detained patients and that they did not know about abortions. The head of that department was dentist Dámaso Luis Augusto González, who still attends his practice in Providencia.

As other doctors from DINA clinics explained, it was he who recruited students from the Universidad de Chile—where he taught classes—to join the Santa Lucía Clinic. And, as stated in the file, on occasions he was left in charge of the clinic.

CIPER communicated with the doctor’s practice. His secretary indicated that he was out of Santiago and that she would give him our message. At the closing of this report, there was no response.

Sergio Muñoz Bonta is also pointed out as a dental surgeon who held a leadership position at the London Clinic. A nurse declared: “Dr. Sergio Muñoz Bonta, who was a dentist who came from the War Academy, was brought by Colonel (Manuel) Contreras to the London Clinic.” Muñoz Bonta died in 2005.

Dentists Carlos Rodolfo Ullrich Dunner and Milena Cecilia Zulic Lolic declared in 2010 that they worked at the Santa Lucía Clinic. Ullrich did so in the rest of the clinics set up by the DINA and until the return to democracy in 1989. Only blocks away, in Las Condes, both currently have their dental practices, and both denied before the justice system having seen or treated tortured patients.

Zulic—who was married to Ullrich—told CIPER that she has a clear conscience: “I never had and do not have anything to hide (…). I worked at the clinic. I was recently graduated and was looking for a job.

I was a very good student and was not from the left. I have never been a member of a party, but I feel like a free thinker, but I was not at all in agreement with what was happening at that moment (the Unidad Popular).

But, independent of the political thing, we were never told that it was to work for the DINA nor that there were going to be detainees and things, nothing. When they contacted me, they told me it was to attend to the children of officials.” She says they paid her well, that she was there for several months, and that, when she was already working at that place, she found out it was related to the DINA.

Asked by CIPER if she left that job due to ethical objections, after finding out that the DINA was behind the clinic, she responded: “No, because at that time I was a bird (naive) (…). I didn’t know anything about what was happening there.”

Mario Augusto Hernández Cáceres is another doctor mentioned in the file who denies having participated in events linked to human rights violations. He gave an extrajudicial statement in 2010. That same year, dentist Gonzalo Luarte Romo stated before the justice system that he had worked only for the London Clinic and that he also did not see or know anything. He died on July 10 of this year.

In the team of dentists, Pablo César Oyanguren Plaza also appeared, who was a professor at the Universidad Mayor until 2019. In the process, he said that it was Dámaso González who recruited him. He also declared that he was part of the CNI clinic, that they gave him an identity card with the name Cicerón Videla to vote in the 1988 Plebiscite, and a card that was used as a “line-breaker.”

The list of mentions also includes doctors of other specialties: psychiatrist Roberto Emilio Lailhacar Chávez. He declared in 2010 that he was only at the El Golf Clinic, but that he provided services to the DINA from before: “I entered the DINA as a civilian employee (…).

Probably during the year 1973.” Furthermore, he explained that he worked with Lucía Hiriart when Augusto Pinochet was still in power. He asserted that he never attended to wounded people nor participated in interrogations. Contacted by CIPER, he declined to refer to the detail of what he witnessed and did at the DINA clinic.

Cardiologist Sergio Pliscoff Marovich worked at the London and El Golf clinics. He declared in 2010 and pointed out that he never visited detained people: “I lack all types of information,” he said. He died in 2016.

(*) Valentina Valenzuela and Soledad López Figueroa collaborated on this report. () The background information presented in this article includes ongoing judicial proceedings, so the people mentioned should not be considered guilty until the justice system issues a final sentence.

Source: ciper.cl, September 1, 2023