Octavio Julio Boettiger Vera, a father of one daughter, a graduate of the School of Political and Administrative Sciences at the Universidad de Chile, and a militant of the Partido Socialista, was detained around 9:00 PM on January 17, 1976, at the intersection of Providencia and Antonio Varas, by agents of the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA).

The agents brought with them Jaime Solari Saavedra (who was being held at Villa Grimaldi, a secret DINA detention and torture center) to identify Octavio Boettiger. According to the testimony provided by Jaime Solari, he had been at Villa Grimaldi since January 16 of that same year.

That day, he was notified that on January 17 he would have to go to identify a person in front of the Hostería de Providencia, which is what effectively occurred.

Upon the arrest of the victim, the agents showed the witness his identity card and then took him back to Villa Grimaldi. At this facility, they took him to the interrogation room where he was asked to speak with the detainee.

Jaime Solari did not see him, as he was blindfolded. That same January 17, the guards at Villa Grimaldi removed Iván Parvex from the room—a type of barracks where he was being held along with 15 other detainees.

It was around 11:00 PM when they took him to the interrogation room, where he was asked if he knew Octavio Boettiger. Parvex answered affirmatively, as both had been student leaders in 1970, and he was immediately returned to the room. He did not manage to see him, as he was also blindfolded; however, upon hearing the detainee's voice, he was able to recognize Octavio Boettiger.

In this regard, several witnesses coincide in pointing out that Jaime Solari and Iván Parvex were indeed taken out of the room. The former told them that he had to go identify someone in Providencia and, subsequently, told them that they had detained Octavio Boettiger.

Another detainee, Carlos Raúl González, learned that the victim had been detained and saw when Parvex was taken out to be interrogated in relation to Boettiger.

For his part, Oscar Patricio Orellana declared that in mid-January 1976, a group of leaders and militants of the Partido Socialista were detained, which caused a great deal of movement in Villa Grimaldi (the witness was being held at that facility).

One night, Boettiger was taken to the sector known as "La Torre" to be interrogated by a special team in charge of the socialists. Among this DINA team was "El Pajarito," who acted as the leader—a thin subject with a trimmed mustache, dark hair, wearing a suit; and a burly, mustachioed young agent with wavy hair who claimed to be an Army commando and was called "Bigote." On some occasions, this group would enter "La Torre" and even converse with those held there.

They would wake them up and tell them they were going to kill them, then laugh, offer them cigarettes, and talk about everything from soccer to other topics, all while playing with their weapons in a threatening manner.

It was this team that spent the entire night interrogating and torturing Octavio Boettiger, applying electric shocks and beatings. Around 6:00 AM, they left, leaving the victim tied to the "parrilla" (a metal bed frame to which the naked victim was tied to be subjected to electricity on different parts of the body).

When Boettiger began to moan, Oscar Patricio Orellana and Alejandro Avalos (forcibly disappeared) approached him. He told them he was Octavio Boettiger, a member of the Central Committee of the Partido Socialista, and that he had been detained on a public street.

He asked them to notify his family and noted that his chest hurt a lot and that he was having trouble breathing. They helped him urinate and refused to give him water, as that was fatal after the "parrilla."

Moments later (the witness adds), the interrogators returned with a doctor, who examined Boettiger and, apparently, gave him a sedative or something similar. Despite the victim's condition, the interrogations continued until approximately 2:00 PM.

At that time, the agents called the doctor again, as the detainee was neither breathing nor moaning. The doctor, after examining Octavio Boettiger, reprimanded the agents, saying they had not done the job well, telling them that "he had slipped away from them." An exchange of opinions followed, and then silence.

Shortly after, the guards took Alejandro Avalos, Santiago Ferrús, and José Ramón Ascencio (all three forcibly disappeared), as well as Oscar Patricio Orellana, out of "La Torre." They took them toward the bathroom area where they kept them for a long time and gave them cigarettes.

Afterward, they returned them to "La Torre." At the entrance, there were tire tracks from a vehicle, and something was burning in the fire pit that always remained in that place. Upon being brought back into the facility, the "parrilla" was empty and Octavio Boettiger had disappeared.

Despite the countless efforts made by his relatives, it has never been possible to learn new information regarding the fate of Octavio Boettiger Vera, who in January 1976, while detained at the DINA facility of Villa Grimaldi, was heard by former fellow prisoners to have "passed away during torture."

Judicial and/or Administrative Actions

On January 24, 1976, his mother, Mrs. Marta Vera, filed a writ of amparo for her son in the Santiago Court of Appeals, which was registered under No. 86-76. When consulted, the authorities denied the detention of the victim.

The Minister of the Interior and Division General, Raúl Benavides Escobar, reported that Octavio Boettiger was not being held by order of that Ministry (February 2, 1976). Based solely on this information, the Court rejected the amparo on February 6, 1976, remitting the documents to the 1st Criminal Court of San Miguel, where they were accumulated into the case for the victim's alleged disappearance, which was already being processed under file No. 43,300-1.

This case had been initiated on January 26, 1976. During the processing of this case, numerous inquiries were made to the authorities; all of them denied the detention of Octavio Boettiger or reported lacking information regarding the victim.

Thus, Lieutenant Colonel Gastón Aguayo Bonnebaight, Acting Executive Secretary of the National Executive Secretariat of Detainees (SENDET), officially informed the Court that they "had no records on the victim" (February 1976).

The Division General and Minister of the Interior, Raúl Benavides, insisted that Boettiger was not being held by orders of his Ministry (February 1976). In view of the situation, the Court was requested to summon Jaime Solari Saavedra to testify, as he had been an eyewitness to the victim's detention.

However, on March 18, 1976, the Judge denied the request. Only in August of that same year did Solari go to the Courts for the first and only time to provide his testimony (at that time, the witness was still being held in Puchuncaví), ratifying the reported facts. Other declarants who were detained in Villa Grimaldi at the time of Octavio Boettiger's detention and imprisonment did the same.

On October 7, 1976, the summary was closed and the case was temporarily dismissed, a ruling that was confirmed by the Court of Appeals on November 23 of the same year. This occurred despite the report from the Prosecutor, who pointed out, after analyzing the process, that "once again, Justice finds itself facing a problem highlighted so many times: it is not in a position to provide an adequate response to the requirements and tribulations of a mother of a disappeared person." Said report added that it is possible that "in the event that the detention was real, security personnel, going beyond their obligations, or not fulfilling them, or simply falling into a censurable excess, may have carried out the detention without having duly communicated it, and the worst may have happened to the detainee."

On March 24, 1976, the mother filed a new amparo for her son in the Santiago Court of Appeals, which was registered under No. 241-76. In the filing, Marta Vera denounced that she was constantly going to the Tres Alamos Detention Camp in order to locate the victim.

While at the gate of that facility on March 23, 1976, she stated she saw a white Chevrolet pickup truck in which her son was riding, but she could not approach because there was a metal barrier. With only the report—without further investigation into the matter—from Minister of the Interior Benavides (who on one occasion denied the victim's detention and, on the next, added that he had not been detained by the DINA (April 1976)), the appeal was rejected on April 29, 1976.

On August 1, 1978, the victim's family, along with relatives of 70 forcibly disappeared persons, went to the 10th Criminal Court of Santiago, where a complaint was filed for the crime of kidnapping against General Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, Marcelo Moren Brito, and Rolf Gonzalo Wenderoth Pozo, an Army Colonel and Lieutenant Colonel, respectively.

The Judge declared himself incompetent and remitted the records to the Military Justice system, which assigned the case to the 2nd Military Prosecutor's Office of Santiago, which registered it under No. 553-78.

Without any proceedings being carried out for four years, on November 20, 1989, Army Lieutenant Colonel Enrique Ibarra Chamorro, Military Prosecutor General, requested the application of the Amnesty Decree Law (D.L. 2.191) for this case, because the process had the exclusive purpose of investigating alleged crimes that occurred during the period between September 11, 1973, and March 10, 1978, and because, during the 10 years of processing, it had not been possible to "determine the responsibility of any person." On November 30, 1989, the request was accepted by the 2nd Military Court, which dismissed the case totally and definitively (which was still in the summary stage) because "the criminal responsibility of the persons allegedly accused of the reported facts was extinguished." The complaining parties appealed said resolution to the Court Martial, which confirmed the ruling in January 1992. A Complaint Appeal was then filed before the Supreme Court of Justice, which, as of December 1992, had not yet issued its resolution.

(For complete details of the complaint against Manuel Contreras, see the case of Eduardo Alarcón Jara.)

Source: Corporation report

With the intention of remembering five new forcibly disappeared students, the Faculty of Economics and Business of the Universidad de Chile (FEN) re-inaugurated the monument created in 2003 in memory and tribute to the Engineering and Public Administration students who were murdered and executed during the dictatorship.

The students added to the memorial are Ricardo Lagos Salinas, Sergio Montecinos Alfaro, Álvaro Vallejos Villagrán, Octavio Boettiger, and José Flores Garrido. Those already part of this space are Juan José Bomcompte Andreu, Walter Scheneuer Xubero, Winston Cabello Bravo, Ignacio Valenzuela Pohorecky, Pedro Ríos Castillo, Frank Teruggi Bombatch, Gerardo Silva Saldívar, Enrique Ropert Contreras, María Isabel Joui Petersen, Martín Elgueta Pinto, Sergio Cienfuegos Cavieres, Víctor Zerega Ponce, Nelson Gallardo Aguero, Sócrates Ponce Pacheco, Sergio Reyes Navarrete, Dignaldo Araneda Pizzini, and Juan Blanco Castillo.

Along with the presence of the Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Business (FEN), José de Gregorio, the ceremony was attended by the Vice-Rector of Extension and Communications, Faride Zerán; the president of the Universidad de Chile Economics Memorial Corporation, Cecilia Pallamar; the president of the Commercial Engineering Student Center (CEIC), Ray Anderson; and relatives of the victims of the dictatorship.

Vice-Rector Faride Zerán referred to the second presentation of posthumous and symbolic degrees to forcibly disappeared and politically executed students that took place this past September 11 in the Main Hall of the Central House, stating that "the search for information and the recreation of the history of all those we lost has been an important exercise of memory that has shaken the Universidad de Chile and contributes to partially settling the debt of our University and our country with justice."

Source: pagina19.cl 10/26/2018

Date: 10-26-2018

A symbolic recognition will be directed at former students murdered during the military regime.

Through exempt decree number 0030766 of the Universidad de Chile, authorized by the Comptroller General of the Republic on September 4 of this year, said university was enabled, for the first time in its history, to award posthumous and symbolic degrees to students who were political executions victims and those who became forcibly disappeared during the military regime.

The official ceremony, which will be led by Rector Ennio Vivaldi, will take place next Monday the 11th, in the Domeyko courtyard of the central house, starting at 12:30 PM. For Vivaldi, "this initiative has two very profound meanings.

On one hand, it is a gesture of reparation for the victims themselves and for their relatives, who also affectively associate their loved ones with this great institution that is the U. de Chile. On the other hand, the U. de Chile feels it is fulfilling its moral duty by not granting the dictatorship the terrible objective of, in addition to having cut their lives short, erasing their achievements as students and future professionals for Chile."

The list includes 104 former students of the university who were murdered by State agents between 1973 and 1989.

Among the most remembered cases is that of history student Jécar Nehgme, who also appears as the last victim of the Augusto Pinochet regime. This former leader of the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) appeared dead on September 4, 1989, on General Bulnes Street, a few days before the elections that would mark the return to democracy.

After a long judicial process, which was resolved in 2008, it was established that the authors of the murder were the metropolitan chief of the CNI, Brigadier (ret.) Enrique Levy Araneda; Colonel (ret.) Pedro Guzmán Olivares; and Captain (ret.) Luis Sanhueza Ross.

Social organizations valued the gesture. The president of the Association of Political Executions Victims (Afep), Alicia Lira, pointed out that "it is a great gesture, which we recognize enormously. With this, Rector Vivaldi fulfills a pending task that the Universidad de Chile had, since similar gestures had already been fulfilled by other universities such as the U. de Santiago and the Austral de Valdivia.

But it is an enormous signal for democracy and for a true 'never again' to be fulfilled in Chile."

Source: latercera.com 9/08/2017

Date: 09-08-2017

The ruling was agreed upon with the dissenting vote of lawyer Héctor Mery, who was in favor of acquitting the convicted Pedro Espinoza Bravo and accepting the figure of partial prescription for the other sentenced individuals.

The Santiago Court of Appeals ratified the first-instance sentence in the investigation into the qualified kidnappings of José Ascencio Subiabre, Mario Quezada Solís, Santiago Ferruz López, and Octavio Boettiger Vera, crimes perpetrated between December 1975 and January 1976 in various parts of the Metropolitan Region.

Victims who were last seen at the clandestine detention center of Villa Grimaldi.

In a split decision, the Third Chamber of the appellate court ratified the resolution of the visiting Minister Leopoldo Llanos, who sentenced the former members of the DINA—Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, Marcelo Moren Brito, Pedro Espinoza Bravo, Rolf Wenderoth Pozo, Ricardo Lawrence Mires, and Carlos López Tapia—to 15 years and one day in prison, without benefits.

He acquitted former agent Gerardo Godoy García of the charges.

The ruling was agreed upon with the dissenting vote of lawyer Héctor Mery, who was in favor of acquitting the convicted Pedro Espinoza Bravo and accepting the figure of partial prescription for the other sentenced individuals.

Source: diarioconstitucional.cl 11/05/2014

Date: 11-05-2014

The visiting minister of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Leopoldo Llanos, issued a sentence in the investigation into the qualified kidnappings of José Ascencio Subiabre, Mario Quezada Solís, Santiago Ferruz López, and Octavio Boettiger Vera, which occurred between December 1975 and January 1976 in various places in the Metropolitan Region and who were held at the clandestine detention center of Villa Grimaldi.

In the case, the magistrate sentenced the following former members of the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA) to 15 years and one day in prison, without benefits: Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, Marcelo Moren Brito, Pedro Espinoza Bravo, Rolf Wenderoth Pozo, Ricardo Lawrence Mires, and Carlos López Tapia. In addition, he acquitted former agent Gerardo Godoy García of the charges.

According to the case records, Minister Llanos established the following facts:

"a) Between mid-1974 and the end of 1976, the clandestine detention center of the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA) known as 'Cuartel Terranova' or 'Villa Grimaldi' operated, located at Avenida José Arrieta No. 8200 in the commune of Peñalolén in the Metropolitan Region, where a group of agents, with the knowledge of the President of the Government Junta and, subsequently, of the President of the Republic and the Director of the organization, and holding various levels of hierarchy in the command, ordered some and executed others' captures of people, leaders, militants, or those affiliated with political parties or movements of the left, whom they illegally locked up in the place, breaking them under physical torture of various kinds, and psychological torture, with the object of forcing them to provide information about other people of the political left in order to apprehend them.

b) That José Ramón Ascencio Subiabre (30 years old, artisan, militant of the Partido Comunista) was detained on December 29, 1975, at about 6:30 PM from his craft workshop located at Padre Las Casas No. 2151, Conchalí, transferred to Villa Grimaldi and locked in 'La Torre,' where he was seen by witnesses until approximately February 1976; 2) Mario Luís Quezada Solís (32 years old, single, nursing assistant, militant of the Partido Comunista) was detained on December 12, 1975, at 3:00 PM at the residence located at Elisa Reyes Street No. 554, La Granja, and transferred to Villa Grimaldi, where he was seen until February 1976; 3) Santiago Abraham Ferruz López (73 years old, married, 2 children, retired from the social security service, militant of the Partido Comunista) was detained on December 11, 1975, at 3:00 AM at his residence at Avda. Perú 1128 in Santiago, in the presence of his family, and transferred to Villa Grimaldi; 4) Octavio Julio Boettiger Vera (28 years old, one child, graduate of the School of Political and Administrative Sciences of the Universidad de Chile, militant of the Partido Socialista) was detained on January 17, 1976, at 9:00 PM at Providencia and Antonio Varas, in front of the Hostería de Providencia, and transferred to Villa Grimaldi.

The consequences of these detentions are that the aforementioned persons are in the status of disappeared, since, deprived of liberty, they have not made contact with their relatives, nor have they carried out administrative procedures before State agencies or private organizations, nor do they have records of entry or exit from the country, and their death has not been confirmed;

That the facts described in the preceding consideration constitute separate crimes of qualified kidnapping, which is contemplated in Article 141, paragraphs 1 and 3 of the Penal Code, due to the time the action was prolonged, that is, more than 90 days, and due to the consequences of the same, resulting in serious damage to the person or interests of the offended parties; a situation that occurs in the case files, since their whereabouts are still unknown, as it has been established in the case that these persons were held against their will, depriving them of their freedom of movement, starting from the aforementioned dates: José Ramón Ascencio Subiabre, from December 29, 1975; Mario Luís Quezada Solís, from December 12, 1975; Santiago Abraham Ferruz López, from December 11, 1975; and Octavio Julio Boettiger Vera, from January 17, 1976."

In the civil aspect, the ruling orders the State to pay a total compensation of $290,000,000 (two hundred and ninety million pesos) to the victims' relatives.

Source: cronicadigital.cl, April 24, 2014

Date: 04-24-2014

A Chilean judge prosecuted seven retired officers today for their responsibility in the qualified kidnapping (disappearance) of four opponents during the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship, judicial sources reported.

The resolution was issued by special judge Leopoldo Llanos, of the Santiago Court of Appeals, and those prosecuted are currently in prison, serving sentences in other cases for human rights violations.

It concerns General Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, former chief of the DINA (Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional), the dictatorship's secret police, who currently accumulates sentences of more than 270 years in prison for crimes committed by agents of the organization under his command.

The other prosecuted individuals, who held positions in the leadership of the DINA, are Brigadier Generals Pedro Espinoza and Marcelo Moren Brito, Colonels Rolf Wenderoth Pozo, Ricardo Lawrence Mires, and Carlos López Tapia, and former Carabineros officer Gerardo Godoy García.

The victims of the case were three members of the Partido Comunista—José Ramón Ascencio Subiabre, Mario Quezada Solís, and Santiago Ferruz López—in addition to Octavio Julio Boettiger Vera, a member of the Central Committee of the Partido Socialista.

All of them were detained between the last days of 1975 and the first of 1976 in different parts of Santiago by DINA agents, who took them to the detention and torture center known as Villa Grimaldi, where their trail was lost forever.

Santiago Ferruz was 73 years old and retired; Quezada was 32 and during the government of Salvador Allende was a secretary in the Antofagasta mayor's office; Ascencio, 30, was a neighborhood leader; and Boettiger was a graduate of the School of Political Sciences of the Universidad de Chile.

During the Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990) some 3,200 Chileans died at the hands of State agents, and of them, almost 1,200 remain registered as forcibly disappeared, according to official data.

Source: eleconomista.es 05/10/2013

Date: 05-10-2013

50 years after the Coup d'État in our country, the Faculty of Government of the Universidad de Chile commemorated its former students who were victims of the civil-military dictatorship, in an emotional ceremony held at the School of Government and Public Management, which was attended by Andrea Boettiger, daughter of Octavio Boettiger, who was detained and disappeared in 1976.

The tribute brought together the entire community linked to our Faculty around the memory of former students Juan José Boncompte Andreu, Jaime Humberto Caldes Contreras, José Edilio Flores Garrido, Luis Eduardo Charme Barros, and Octavio Julio Boettiger Vera.

"The 50 years invite us as a society, but also as a School of the Universidad de Chile, to reflect on the need to strengthen and defend democracy, which is so questioned today. The EGGP welcomes you, even more so when it comes to commemorating as a community such a transcendental date, the democratic breakdown of 1973 and the profound consequences left by the dictatorship, among them the very serious violations of human rights," said Lorena Oyarzún, Director of the Undergraduate School.

"When one thinks about these brutal facts that continue to move me, it seems to me that we must not forget that, independent of scientific knowledge of excellence, we are here for a public commitment which is to make a better society, and that implies never accepting that democracy be broken.

I call on you to commemorate and to have a day of reflection and also of sadness," said Mireya Dávila, Director of the Postgraduate School.

The activity was organized by our Undergraduate and Postgraduate schools, as well as the Memory and Human Rights Collective of the Faculty of Government, who, through student Natalia Tobar, expressed that "as students of the Faculty of Government, we have a commitment for and by our forcibly disappeared and executed classmates during the dictatorship, a commitment to their memory, to their stories, and to their legacies.

We cannot allow their names to pass into oblivion. The nature and exercise of our disciplines require that each one of us be firmly committed to democracy."

In the commemoration, Andrea Boettiger, together with Lorena Oyarzún, unveiled a commemorative plaque for the former students who were victims of the dictatorship, which will be placed at the entrance of the School of Government and Public Management. Andrea thanked them for the gesture and, ending the ceremony, delivered some heartfelt words.

"Returning to the academic home of Octavio Julio Boettiger Vera, my young father, who was detained, kidnapped, tortured, and made to disappear by civilian agents of the State of Chile in the year 1976, returning to his formative home where he found shelter and formed a sense of belonging with his peers, where he forged knowledge, ideas, dreams, projections, and affiliation, is not just a commemoration: it is recognition, restitution, and reparation," expressed Andrea, who also read a letter to her father: "With excessive strength and in a suprahuman act, you defended with your life the full right to life, to freedom, to freedom of expression, to social justice, and to a legitimate state of established rights. You are, in this present, an inspiration and a reference of struggle and consequence."

If you want to know about this commemoration, we invite you to review the broadcast of that day on our YouTube channel:

Source: gobierno.uchile.cl 09/07/2023

Today marks 42 years of uncertainty, of emptiness, of sadness, of injustice inherited from your disappearance... 42 years since you last held the hands and hugs of your parents, who passed away trying to understand what happened to you; of your siblings, who live your loss in different ways without resignation; of this entire family born in these years, whom the State violence caused you to never know... 42 years that tore from us the opportunity to live them with you present, to be with you fighting the injustices that continue to be committed in a country that we love but suffer for at the same time because of what it has become under the individualistic precepts that the dictatorship indoctrinated into our society. You and your classmates were so far removed from those concepts; at your 28 years, you understood solidarity, empathy, and companionship more than many in these times, but also the greatest cruelty that one human being can commit against another human being... we will continue to inherit the need to know what happened to you, Octavio, hoping that some January 17 we can live it with truth and justice.

In memory of my brother Octavio Boettiger Vera, disappeared on January 17, 1976. Monica Boettiger Vera, (written by his niece Marcela Plitt Boettiger)

Source: unidadmpt.wordpress.com, 2019/01/18