Miguel Krassnoff, Marcelo Moren Brito, and Raúl Iturriaga Neumann are among those implicated.

The minister for extraordinary causes regarding human rights violations at the Santiago Court of Appeals, Hernán Crisosto, sentenced 77 agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) this Monday for their responsibility in the kidnapping of Héctor Garay Hermosilla in 1974.

Garay Hermosilla, a member of the Revolutionary Student Front (FER), was 19 years old when he was detained near his home on July 8, 1974. Days later, his name appeared in the national press on a false list of 119 people killed due to alleged internal disputes within the MIR, in what was termed "Operation Colombo." According to the judge's findings, "the publications that declared the victim Garay Hermosilla dead had their origin in disinformation maneuvers carried out by DINA agents abroad."

According to the reconstruction of events carried out by the visiting minister, the DINA agents who captured Garay "forced him into the back of a gray Chevrolet C-10 pickup truck and took him to the home of a friend of the victim, who was also forced into the aforementioned truck, to be driven to an unknown destination."

"Subsequently, it was established through testimonies that Héctor Marcial Garay Hermosilla passed through the clandestine detention center known as 'Londres 38,' which was guarded by armed guards and to which only DINA agents had access," the ruling continues, establishing that to date, there is no further information regarding Garay's whereabouts.

The convicted In the resolution, the presiding minister sentenced the following to 13 years in prison as authors of the crime perpetrated in 1974: César Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Marcelo Luis Moren Brito, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann.

Meanwhile, the following former agents must serve 10 years in prison, also as authors: Gerardo Ernesto Urrich González, Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García, Ricardo Víctor Lawrence Mires, Ciro Ernesto Torré Sáez, Sergio Hernán Castillo González, Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos, José Nelson Fuentealba Saldías, Basclay Humberto Zapata Reyes, José Enrique Fuentes Torres, José Mario Friz Esparza, Julio José Hoyos Zegarra, Nelson Alberto Paz Bustamante, Claudio Orlando Orellana de la Pinta, Enrique Tránsito Gutiérrez Rubilar, Gustavo Galvarino Caruman Soto, Hiro Álvarez Vega, José Alfonso Ojeda Obando, Olegario Enrique González Moreno, Orlando Jesús Torrejón Gatica, Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera, Alfredo Orlando Moya Tejeda, Carlos Alfonso Sáez Sanhueza, Fernando Enrique Guerra Guajardo, Hernán Patricio Valenzuela Salas, Hugo Rubén Delgado Carrasco, Juan Alfredo Villanueva Alvear, Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Lautaro Eugenio Díaz Espinoza, Leónidas Emiliano Méndez Moreno, Pedro Ariel Araneda Araneda, Rafael de Jesús Riveros Frost, Víctor Manuel Molina Astete, Máximo Ramón Aliaga Soto, Manuel Rivas Díaz, Juan Ángel Urbina Cáceres, Risiere del Prado Altez España, Raúl Juan Rodríguez Ponte, Hermon Helec Alfaro Mundaca, and Hugo del Tránsito Hernández Valle.

As accomplices to the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Garay Hermosilla, the presiding minister sentenced the following to 4 years in prison: Luis Eduardo Mora Cerda, José Jaime Mora Diocares, Camilo Torres Negrier, Carlos Justo Bermúdez Méndez, Claudio Enrique Pacheco Fernández, Fernando Adrián Roa Montaña, Gerardo Meza Acuña, Héctor Raúl Valdebenito Araya, Jaime Humberto Paris Ramos, Jorge Laureano Sagardia Monje, José Dorohi Hormazábal Rodríguez, José Manuel Sarmiento Sotelo, José Stalin Muñoz Leal, Juvenal Alfonso Piña Garrido, Luis René Torres Méndez, Manuel Antonio Montre Méndez, Moisés Paulino Campos Figueroa, Nelson Aquiles Ortiz Vignolo, Nelson Eduardo Iturriaga Cortés, Pedro Segundo Bitterlich Jaramillo, Reinaldo Alfonso Concha Orellana, Sergio Hernán Castro Andrade, Víctor Manuel de la Cruz San Martín Jiménez, Gustavo Humberto Apablaza Meneses, Héctor Carlos Díaz Cabezas, Jorge Antonio Lepileo Barrios, Óscar Belarmino la Flor Flores, Rufino Espinoza Espinoza, Héctor Manuel Lira Aravena, Víctor Manuel Álvarez Droguett, Sergio Iván Díaz Lara, Juan Miguel Troncoso Soto, and Roberto Hernán Rodríguez Manquel.

Meanwhile, Rodolfo Valentino Cocha Rodríguez and Armando Segundo Cofre Correa were acquitted due to a lack of participation in the events.

Source: t13.cl, August 31, 2015

Among the accused, all retired, are eight Army colonels and 23 non-commissioned officers, 40 Carabineros officers and non-commissioned officers, two former FACH agents, one former Navy agent, and seven former Investigative Police agents.

The biggest blow to the repression of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship was dealt yesterday by Minister Víctor Montiglio, who prosecuted 98 former agents from different branches of the Armed Forces, Carabineros, and the Investigative Police for 42 victims of Operation Colombo.

This is the largest resolution issued among the nearly 400 human rights violation cases currently being investigated in the country. It even surpassed the 67 former agents prosecuted by the same Judge Montiglio in 2007 for the crimes of the Lautaro Brigade and its Delfín Group at the Simón Bolívar barracks.

Among those accused for Colombo are eight retired Army colonels, six of whom had not been prosecuted in any case before. Also declared defendants were 23 retired Army non-commissioned officers, of whom at least 50 percent appear for the first time in these types of cases.

Among these non-commissioned officers is Juvenal Piña, alias "El Elefante," a former agent of the Lautaro Brigade, who was the one who suffocated the communist leader in hiding (1976), Víctor Díaz, with a plastic bag over his head before injecting him with cyanide.

In addition, the magistrate prosecuted 40 former Carabineros officers and non-commissioned officers, including Ricardo Lawrence, Heriberto Acevedo, Claudio Pacheco, and José Mora, all former members of the same Brigade. Among those prosecuted are also former agents who belonged to the Investigative Police. The only civilian (Army) is Juan Suárez.

From the total list, at least thirteen are already serving sentences for other cases (see list).

As of the closing of this edition, the accused were still being detained to be interned in various locations, such as the Peñalolén Military Police Battalion.

Among the 42 victims for whom the minister issued his resolution are María Angélica Andreolli, Miguel Acuña Castillo, Juan Carlos Perelmann Ide, Juan Chacón Olivares, Jorge Müller Silva, Luis Guendelmann Wisniak, Mario Calderón Tapia, and Carmen Bueno Cifuentes.

Operation Colombo and the media

The list of the 119 was published in the magazine Lea (Buenos Aires) and the newspaper O Dia (Brazil) in 1975; these reports were also false. Both publications were created by DINA agents.

Operation Colombo was part of Operation Condor and consisted of a setup by the dictatorship to make the population believe that 119 detainees who were forcibly disappeared had clandestinely left for Argentina and died there in clashes with police and Army forces during the phase prior to the 1976 military coup in Argentina.

Some of those names appeared as militants "assassinated" in Buenos Aires and its surroundings, with signs on their bodies stating they had been executed by their own comrades as a settling of scores due to internal disputes. However, this also turned out to be a setup.

The list of the 119 was published in the magazine Lea (Buenos Aires) and the newspaper O Dia (Brazil) in 1975; these reports were also false. Both publications were created by DINA agents abroad and had only one edition.

In Chile, the pro-dictatorship press, such as the newspapers El Mercurio, La Tercera, Las Ultimas Noticias, and La Segunda, reproduced the intelligence services' setup. The headline of the evening paper remains in memory: "Exterminated like rats: 59 Chilean MIR members fall in military operation in Argentina." They were part of the list of the 119 disappeared of Colombo.

The former fugitive Raúl Iturriaga, who was one of those in charge of the DINA's foreign department, was the one who first shed light on this operation in Buenos Aires.

According to the former civilian agent Enrique Arancibia Clavel, convicted in Buenos Aires for the crime of General Carlos Prats and his wife, it was Iturriaga who met with him at the beginning of 1975 to ask him to prepare what was necessary because "we have to make some dead people from Operation Colombo appear."

It was about preparing the appearance of the supposed bodies of Jaime Robotham and Luis Guendelmann as part of the setup.

List of the prosecuted

Army (all retired)

Víctor Molina Astete (colonel); Sergio Castillo González (col); Eduardo Guerra Guajardo (col); Víctor San Martín Jiménez (col); José Fuentes Torres (col); Manuel Carevic Cubillos (col); Jaime Paris Ramos (col); César Manríquez Bravo (col); Raúl Toro Montes (non-commissioned officer); Eduardo Reyes Lagos (NCO); Orlando Torrejón Gatica (NCO); Osvaldo Tapia Alvarez (NCO; committed suicide); Juvenal Piña Garrido (NCO; "El Elefante"); Juan Suárez Delgado (civilian); Nelson Paz Bustamante (NCO); José Aravena Ruiz (NCO); Luis Torres Méndez (NCO); Raúl Soto Pérez (NCO); Jorge Andrade Gómez (NCO); Juan Escobar Valenzuela (NCO); Rolando Concha Rodríguez (NCO); Gustavo Apablaza Meneses (NCO); Hiro Alvarez Vega (NCO); Víctor Alvarez Droguett (NCO); Jorge Venegas Silva (NCO); Carlos Rinaldi Suazo (NCO); Carlos Letelier Verdugo (NCO); Reinaldo Concha Orellana (NCO); Máximo Aliaga Soto (NCO); Hugo Clavería Leiva (NCO); Samuel Fuenzalida Devia (NCO);

Investigative Police

Juan Urbina Cáceres; Hugo Hernández; Manuel Rivas Díaz; Herman Alfaro; Eugenio Fieldhouse; Osvaldo Castillo;

Carabineros (officers and non-commissioned officers, all retired):

Gerardo Godoy García; Ciro Torres Sáez; Alejandro Molina Cisternas; Camilo Torres Negrier; Héctor Lira Aravena; José Fritz Esparza; Claudio Pacheco Fernández; Jorge Sagardia Monge; Sergio Castro Andrade; Luis Villarroel Gutiérrez; Armando Cofré Gómez; Fernando Roa Montaña; Gerardo Meza Acuña; Enrique Gutiérrez Rubilar; Luis Mora Cerda; José Muñoz Leal; Juan Duarte Gallegos; Carlos Miranda Meza; Rufino Jaime Astorga; Luis Urrutia Acuña; Luis Zúñiga Ovalle; Pedro Alfaro Hernández; Orlando Inostroza Lagos; Rosa Ramos Hernández; Gustavo Caruvan Soto; Héctor Valdebenito Araya; Manuel Avendaño González; José Mora Diocares; Guido Jara Brevis; Nelson Ortiz Vignolo; Ruderlindo Urrutia Jorquera; Héctor Flores Vergara; Jerónimo Neira Méndez; Manuel Montré Méndez; Heriberto del Carmen Acevedo; Claudio Orerllana de la Pinta; Nelson Iturriaga Cortés; Luis Gutiérrez Uribe; José Ojeda Obando;

Air Force

Delia Gajardo Cortés; Hernán Avalos Muñoz;

Navy

Teresa Navarro Osorio;

Prosecuted individuals already serving sentences:

Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda; Pedro Espinoza Bravo; Raúl Iturriaga Neumann; Marcelo Moren Brito; Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko; Ricardo Lawrence Mires; Basclay Zapata Reyes; Conrado Pacheco; Francisco Ferrer Lima; Gerardo Urrich; Orlando Manzo Durán; Rizier Altez España; Fernando Lauriani Maturana

Source: lanacion.cl, May 27, 2008

He was detained in July 1974 in the Macul commune. Numerous witnesses saw him at the torture and extermination center of Londres 38. He is one of the victims of "Operation Colombo." The Justice system sentenced 78 former DINA agents for this crime against humanity.

The minister of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Hernán Crisosto, issued a first-instance sentence for the kidnapping and disappearance of Miguel Angel Acuña Castillo.

The magistrate established that the young man, a militant of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), was detained near his home located at Pasaje Talca No. 2033 in the Macul commune by State agents belonging to the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), among them Osvaldo Romo Mena, alias "El Guatón Romo."

His sister, Rosa Acuña Castillo, declared that her father tried to climb into the back of the covered pickup truck at the moment they were taking him away, but he was struck in the mouth by one of the subjects, falling to the ground.

A week after the kidnapping, Romo went to their home again and told them that his brother was in good condition along with Héctor Garay Hermosilla, who was also disappeared. Both were members of the Revolutionary Student Front (FER) at the Liceo 7 in Ñuñoa.

Judge Crisosto determined that the DINA agents "took him to the clandestine detention center known as 'Yucatán' or 'Londres 38'."

Acuña Castillo belonged to the secondary student structure of the MIR's Military Political Group 3 (GPM3), an organization that grouped militants from the eastern part of the capital and was led by Agustín Reyes González, whose trail was lost forever in Londres 38.

There, he "remained without contact with the outside world, blindfolded and tied up, being continuously subjected to interrogations under torture by DINA agents," and the last time he was seen alive "occurred on an undetermined day in the month of July or August 1974, and he remains disappeared to this day," the first-instance ruling states.

Laughing in Londres 38 with Héctor Garay Hermosilla

In the "Yucatán" barracks, he was seen by Erika Hennings, who was detained on July 30, 1974. "I can say he was very young, I think they called him 'El Pampa'," she asserted in the proceedings. She heard that they took roll call twice a day for the detainees.

On July 31, 1974, she heard the name Miguel Angel Acuña Castillo, who answered "present." Later, she did not hear him called again. "They took them out of Londres 38 just like other detainees, among whom she remembers María Inés Alvarado," a 21-year-old forcibly disappeared person.

Hugo Chacaltana Silva, detained on May 4, 1974, a former student of the Liceo Manuel de Salas and member of the Revolutionary Student Front (FER), also saw him in Londres 38. He recounted that in the early hours of July 8 to 9, 1974, Miguel Angel Acuña arrived along with Héctor Garay Hermosilla, whom they called "Titín"; he was able to see them through a gap that formed between his nose and cheekbones under the blindfold.

Chacaltana noted that he met Castillo in 1971, when both were secondary students. Both coincided in meetings that were held at the time between members of the FER, the judicial ruling notes. He remembers "Miguel Ángel as a young man of great leadership capacity and great physical resistance."

He stopped seeing him on September 11, 1973. He met him again in Londres 38. He arrived along with Héctor Garay to the same room where he remained lying on the floor. "At that moment, I did not address Miguel Ángel," on the contrary, he acted as if he were unaware of his presence. "The next day, when the mattresses on which we detainees lay were removed and replaced by chairs, I sat down and, to one side, I observed that they were still sitting.

It struck me that both were talking and laughing, which made me think they were unaware of the magnitude of what awaited them. Miguel Ángel approached me in Londres 38, saying, 'I know you'."

His mother found out at the hair salon that her son was in Londres 38

León Gómez, detained on July 15, 1974, and taken to Londres 38, saw Miguel Angel along with Héctor Garay, whom he knew. Someone commented to him that among the detainees was "Pampino," which he corroborated upon hearing him "with his typical jokes that he made to the guards, as if giving the impression that what was happening in the place was of no importance.

Even Titín and Pampino would drive the guards crazy. They were very irreverent."

David Cuevas Sharon, detained on May 4, 1974, also testified to having seen him. "Despite showing signs of mistreatment, 'El Pampino' appeared to have great presence of mind; he was very physically strong." He shared space with him for at least five days.

When Cuevas was released, Acuña Castillo remained a prisoner. His maternal grandmother had a hair salon in Ñuñoa, and one of her clients was Miguel Angel's mother. In a conversation, "she found out about the problem she had with a disappeared son.

Given this, my grandmother made her go to the hair salon, where she met Pampino's mother and told her what she knew about him, specifically the place where he had been imprisoned with him."

Regarding the torments applied to the detainees in Londres 38, including Miguel Angel, Minister Crisosto incorporated statements from Osvaldo Romo, who stated that among other tortures, the detainees were subjected to "the dry submarine, which was covering the detainees' breathing with a plastic bag placed over their heads; their eyes would look like 'fried eggs,' and blood would come out of their noses and eardrums.

After the interrogations and duress, the detainees would be left exhausted."

Another former agent, Samuel Fuenzalida Devia, specified in this regard that "the general treatment of the prisoners was to keep them blindfolded, they were not allowed to wash, there were no beds for them to sleep on, the food was scarce, and they were subjected to intense interrogations in which electricity was applied to them, especially on the genitals and breasts.

Another form of torture consisted of keeping the detainees sitting in chairs, tied by their feet and hands, while current was applied to them with magnets, although common electric current was also applied, which burned those people, a procedure in which many people died."

Eugenio Fieldhouse Chávez maintains that as an official of the Investigative Police, in mid-June 1974, he was assigned to that repressive agency and indicated that the same DINA agents who intervened in the detention and interrogation of the detainees, once the information sought was obtained, were in charge of making them disappear, following an order from the DINA leadership.

Miguel Ángel Acuña Castillo's name appeared among the 119 Chileans of Operation Colombo, on a list disseminated in the national press, after it appeared in publications that were published only once in Brazil and Argentina, "in which it was reported that Miguel Ángel Acuña Castillo had died in Argentina, along with 58 other people belonging to the MIR, due to internal disputes."

The sentences "The publications that declared the victim Acuña Castillo dead had their origin in disinformation maneuvers carried out by DINA agents abroad," determined Judge Crisosto, who sentenced 78 former DINA agents for his disappearance.

The magistrate issued a sentence of 13 years of major imprisonment in its medium degree to Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, César Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Espinoza, Marcelo Luis Moren Brito, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and Raúl Iturriaga Neumann.

Likewise, he sentenced the following to 10 years of major imprisonment in its minimum degree: Gerardo Ernesto Urrich González, Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García, Ricardo Víctor Lawrence Mires, Ciro Ernesto Torré Sáez, Sergio Hernán Castillo González, Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos, José Nelson Fuentealba Saldías, Basclay Humberto Zapata Reyes, José Enrique Fuentes Torres, José Mario Friz Esparza, Julio José Hoyos Zegarra, Nelson Alberto Paz Bustamante, Claudio Orlando Orellana de la Pinta, Enrique Tránsito Gutiérrez Rubilar, Gustavo Galvarino Caruman Soto, Hiro Álvarez Vega, José Alfonso Ojeda Obando, Luis Salvador Villarroel Gutiérrez, Olegario Enrique González Moreno, Orlando Jesús Torrejón Gatica, Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera, Alfredo Orlando Moya Tejeda, Carlos Alfonso Sáez Sanhueza, Fernando Enrique Guerra Guajardo, Hernán Patricio Valenzuela Salas, Hugo Rubén Delgado Carrasco, Juan Alfredo Villanueva Alvear, Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Lautaro Eugenio Díaz Espinoza, Leónides Emiliano Méndez Moreno, Pedro Ariel Araneda Araneda, Rafael De Jesús Riveros Frost, Víctor Manuel Molina Astete, Manuel Rivas Díaz, Hugo del Tránsito Hernández Valle, Juan Ángel Urbina Cáceres, Risiere del Prado Altez España, Hermon Helec Alfaro Mundaca, and Raúl Juan Rodríguez Ponte.

As accomplices to the kidnapping and disappearance of the 19-year-old, he sentenced the following to 4 years of minor imprisonment in its maximum degree: Luis Eduardo Mora Cerda, José Jaime Mora Diocares, Camilo Torres Negrier, Carlos Justo Bermúdez Méndez, Claudio Enrique Pacheco Fernández, Fernando Adrián Roa Montaña, Gerardo Meza Acuña, Héctor Raúl Valdebenito Araya, Jaime Humberto Paris Ramos, Jorge Laureano Sagardia Monje, José Dorohi Hormazabal Rodríguez, José Manuel Sarmiento Sotelo, José Stalin Muñoz Leal, Juvenal Alfonso Piña Garrido, Luis René Torres Méndez, Manuel Antonio Montre Méndez, Máximo Ramón Aliaga Soto, Moisés Paulino Campos Figueroa, Nelson Aquiles Ortiz Vignolo, Nelson Eduardo Iturriaga Cortes, Pedro Segundo Bitterlich Jaramillo, Reinaldo Alfonso Concha Orellana, Sergio Hernán Castro Andrade, Víctor Manuel de la Cruz San Martin Jiménez, Gustavo Humberto Apablaza Meneses, Héctor Carlos Díaz Cabezas, Jorge Antonio Lepileo Barrios, Oscar Belarmino La Flor Flores, Rufino Espinoza Espinoza, Roberto Hernán Rodríguez Manquel, Víctor Manuel Álvarez Droguett, Héctor Manuel Lira Aravena, and Sergio Iván Díaz Lara.

Regarding Víctor Manuel De la Cruz San Martín Jiménez, due to having fallen into dementia, the fulfillment of the sentence is suspended, and he must, in due course, be handed over under custody bail to a family member.

Source: Villa Grimaldi.cl, February 3, 2015

The minister for extraordinary causes regarding human rights violations at the Santiago Court of Appeals, Miguel Vázquez Plaza, issued a first-instance sentence in the investigation into the kidnapping and aggravated homicide of the teacher Marta Lidia Ugarte Román, whose body appeared on La Ballena beach, in the Los Molles sector, on September 12, 1976.

In the resolution (case file 2182-1998), Minister Vázquez issued sentences against the following 28 State agents for their responsibility in the crimes perpetrated between August and September 1976. Most of the convicted were agents and leaders of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), and the others were members of the Army aviation command, the agency responsible for the execution of the so-called "death flights."

Carlos José Leonardo López Tapia, former Army colonel, head of the Villa Grimaldi torture center at the time of the events, sentenced to 12 years in prison, in addition to the legal accessory penalties of absolute perpetual disqualification for public offices and political rights, and absolute disqualification for professional titles for the duration of the sentence; and the payment of court costs, as an author of the crime of aggravated homicide.

Ricardo Víctor Lawrence Mires, former Carabineros lieutenant colonel, head of the Eagle Group of the DINA's Caupolicán Brigade (currently a fugitive from justice), sentenced to 12 years in prison, in addition to the legal accessory penalties of absolute perpetual disqualification for public offices and political rights, and absolute disqualification for professional titles for the duration of the sentence; and the payment of court costs, as an author of the crime of aggravated homicide.

He must also serve 4 years in prison as an author of the crime of simple kidnapping.

Carlos Oscar Gregorio Evaristo Mardones Díaz, former Army colonel, head of the aviation command that carried out "death flights": 8 years in prison, in addition to the legal accessory penalties of absolute perpetual disqualification for public offices and political rights, and absolute disqualification for professional titles for the duration of the sentence; and the payment of court costs, as an accomplice to the crime of aggravated homicide.

Antonio Palomo Contreras, former Army brigadier, and Luis Felipe Polanco Gallardo, former Army major, members of the aviation command, both sentenced to 5 years in prison, in addition to the legal accessory penalties of absolute perpetual disqualification for public offices and political rights, and absolute disqualification for professional titles for the duration of the sentence; and the payment of court costs, as accessories after the fact to the crime of aggravated homicide.

Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, former Army brigadier, imprisoned in Punta Peuco for countless other convictions for crimes against humanity, sentenced to 4 years in prison, in addition to the legal accessory penalties of absolute perpetual disqualification for political rights and absolute disqualification for public offices for the duration of the sentence; and the payment of court costs, as an author of the crime of simple kidnapping.

Heriberto del Carmen Acevedo and Claudio Enrique Pacheco Fernández, former Carabineros non-commissioned officers, both sentenced to 10 years and one day in prison, in addition to the legal accessory penalties of absolute perpetual disqualification for public offices and political rights, and absolute disqualification for professional titles for the duration of the sentence; and the payment of court costs, as co-authors of the crime of aggravated homicide.

In addition, they must serve 2 years in prison as authors of the crime of simple kidnapping.

Emilio Hernán Troncoso Vivallos, former Carabineros non-commissioned officer, sentenced to 5 years and one day in prison, in addition to the legal accessory penalties of absolute perpetual disqualification for public offices and political rights, and absolute disqualification for professional titles for the duration of the sentence; and the payment of court costs, as a co-author of the crime of aggravated homicide.

In addition, one year in prison as an author of the crime of simple kidnapping.

For their part, the agents Eugenio Jesús Fieldhouse Chávez, Pedro Mora Villanueva, José Alfonso Ojeda Obando, Juvenal Alfonso Piña Garrido, Víctor Manuel Álvarez Droguett, José Mario Friz Esparza, Pedro Segundo Bitterlich Jaramillo, Orlando del Tránsito Altamirano Sanhueza, Eduardo Patricio Cabezas Mardones, Jorge Iván Díaz Radulovich, Guillermo Eduardo Díaz Ramírez, Orlando Jesús Torrejón Gatica, Carlos Enrique Miranda Mesa, and Carlos Eusebio López Inostroza were sentenced to one year in prison, in addition to the legal accessory penalties of suspension from public office for the duration of the sentence; and the payment of court costs, as co-authors of the crime of simple kidnapping.

In addition, the agents José Javier Soto Torres, Jerónimo del Carmen Neira Méndez, Roberto Hernán Rodríguez Manquel, Leónidas Emiliano Méndez Moreno, and José Domingo Seco Alarcón were sentenced to 61 days in prison, in addition to the legal accessory penalties of suspension from public office for the duration of the sentence; and the payment of court costs, as accomplices to the crime of simple kidnapping.

Meanwhile, the agents Jorge Segundo Madariaga Acevedo, José Nelson Fuentealba Saldías, Hugo Hernán Clavería Leiva, Raúl Alberto Soto Pérez, and Juan Carlos Escobar Valenzuela were acquitted due to a lack of participation in the events.

During the investigation stage, Minister Vázquez managed to prove the following facts:

1.- That Marta Lidia Ugarte Román was a militant of the Communist Party of Chile and a member of the Central Committee of that group, working in the Party's organization during 1976. 2.- That, as a consequence of the military coup of September 11, 1973, she went into hiding because she was sought by intelligence services, living with Elvira Solari Ahumada at the address Callejón Lo Ovalle No. 908 in the La Cisterna commune, where she had been residing since the aforementioned month of September 1973 for security reasons, given her political militancy. 3.- That, on August 9, 1976, Marta Ugarte Román left the Callejón Lo Ovalle address around 3:00 PM, heading to the office of Dr. Iván Insunza, located on Vicuña Mackenna, to be treated for an infection in her leg resulting from a dog bite, meeting on the way Héctor Acela, now deceased, with whom she walked along Avenida Vicuña Mackenna in the direction of Avenida Matta; he warned her that something strange was visible in the sector and it seemed to be under surveillance, but she insisted on continuing her path, not knowing that Dr. Iván Insunza had already been detained previously by intelligence services. 4.- That, agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), belonging to the Purén Brigade, whose immediate objective was the tracking, location, and detention of Communist Party militants, proceeded to her detention without any order at Dr. Insunza's office, who had been detained previously for his communist affiliation, an office that was being watched by security agencies; she was then taken to the clandestine detention center of said agency, known as Villa Grimaldi or Terranova, where she was kept deprived of liberty, interrogated, and subjected to physical duress, being recognized and identified by other detainees who were in the same place at that time. 5.- That, the political authorities of the time, belonging to the Ministry of the Interior and the DINA itself, officially denied the detention of Marta Ugarte Román and knowing her whereabouts. 6.- That, while deprived of liberty, she was taken out to the street by agents in order to identify other militants and supporters of the Communist Party, being seen in one of those operations at a residence on Calle Constitución, in the Santiago commune, a place where party meetings were held. 7.- That, approximately on September 9, 1976, Marta Ugarte Román was taken along with other detainees from the Villa Grimaldi facility to the town of Peldehue by DINA operational agents, where she was killed, her body covered with a sack and tied with wire around her neck; she was then loaded onto an Army Aviation Command Puma helicopter, whose crew consisted of a pilot, co-pilot, a mechanic crew member, and a DINA operational agent, an aircraft that took off for the coast, heading out to sea, to then throw her body into the high seas from a height. 8.- That, on September 12, 1976, on La Ballena beach, in the town of Los Molles, the body of Marta Lidia Ugarte Román was found lifeless by Marcel Dupré David, presenting only a piece of cloth and a piece of wire tied around her neck, which was severed and with clear signs of having received physical duress; in addition, she presented signs of needle marks on her arms. The body was taken to the La Ligua hospital and then to the Legal Medical Service of Santiago for the corresponding autopsies. The first report, dated September 14, 1976, concluded a violent death under homicidal circumstances, where the direct cause of death was polytrauma and luxofracture of the spine on September 9, 1976; the second expert report, of October 22, 1976, concluded that the cause of death was thoraco-abdomino-pelvic trauma, the expansion of which on February 22, 2010, determined that the final event that led to her death was asphyxiation by strangulation with wire. 9.- That, the Army Aviation Command had its operations center at the Tobalaba airfield, among others, for the flight of Puma helicopters, of greater flight and transport capacity, for which movement authorizations from the highest Army authorities were required, as it had to assign at least the pilots, co-pilots, and mechanics who were to form the flight crew in advance. These ships were used institutionally and regularly, in conjunction with the DINA, for several years to eliminate the bodies of people detained in the various detention centers of said agency, who were taken directly to the Tobalaba airfield or taken to the Peldehue Regiment, to then take flight to the high seas, where they were thrown into the ocean.

Source: resumen.cl, July 1, 2016

"It was sufficiently proven that State agents acted with the precise objective of detaining the victim, without a prior order and exclusively for political reasons, the act being executed on the occasion of a policy of repression and disappearance of a person for their thinking, with the state authority refusing to provide any information about the detention and the destination of that person, which is an attack against the human person," the judicial decision argues.

This Monday, the decision of the Supreme Court was made official, an entity that confirmed the conviction of 18 former agents of the dictatorship for the kidnapping and murder in 1976 of the teacher and PC militant Marta Ugarte Román, after the rejection of the appeals for cassation presented against the previous ruling, reports the Judiciary.

In the sentence, the Second Chamber of the highest court ruled out any error of law in the decision that convicted Ricardo Lawrence Mires, Heriberto del Carmen Acevedo, and Claudio Pacheco Fernández to 15 years in prison as authors of aggravated homicide and to 10 years in prison as authors of aggravated kidnapping.

Regarding Pedro Espinoza Bravo, José Ojeda Obando, Juvenal Piña Garrido, Víctor Manuel Álvarez Droguett, Orlando Altamirano Sanhueza, Guillermo Díaz Ramírez, Jorge Díaz Radulovich, Orlando Torrejón Gatica, Carlos Miranda Mesa, and Carlos López Inostroza, they received a sentence of 10 years in prison as authors of aggravated kidnapping.

For his part, Carlos Mardones Díaz was sentenced to eight years in prison as an accomplice, while Luis Polanco Gallardo was sentenced to five years in prison as an accessory after the fact to aggravated homicide.

Leónidas Méndez Romero and José Seco Alarcón must serve a sentence of five years in prison as accomplices to aggravated kidnapping, and Emilio Troncoso Vivallos was sentenced to four years in prison as an accomplice to aggravated kidnapping.

Details of the ruling

The sentence ended up ruling out any error of law in the decision that established that Marta Ugarte Román was detained and murdered for political reasons, specifically for her militancy in the Communist Party.

"It is the detention of a person and subsequent homicide, whose motivations were of a political order, for the sole circumstance of belonging to a political conglomerate that had been decided to be fought drastically, by State agents in an organization—the National Intelligence Directorate—that had an entire structure, specifically, for the persecution, location, and detention of Communist Party members and, in their case, making them disappear, as they were treated as enemies of the country," the court's decision argues.

And it subsequently adds that "it was sufficiently proven that State agents acted with the precise objective of detaining the victim, without a prior order and exclusively for political reasons, the act being executed on the occasion of a policy of repression and disappearance of a person for their thinking, with the state authority refusing to provide any information about the detention and the destination of that person, which is an attack against the human person."

At the same time, the national justice system established that the partial statute of limitations does not apply to reduce the sentence as it is a crime against humanity.

The case Regarding the case, the site Memoria Viva details that on August 9, 1976, DINA agents detained Marta Ugarte. According to the account of witnesses, the teacher was detained in Villa Grimaldi, where she subsequently died as a consequence of the torture she received.

After the crime, those responsible threw her into the sea, where she was found semi-naked and inside a sack tied to her neck with a wire, on September 9 of that year on La Ballena beach, in Los Molles.

The autopsy report confirms that while alive, Ugarte suffered a luxofracture of the spine, thoracic-abdominal trauma with multiple rib fractures, rupture and bursting of the liver and spleen, dislocation of both shoulders and hip, and a double fracture in the right forearm. Her date of death corresponds to September 9 of that year.

Source: eldesconcierto.cl, November 29, 2021

The Eleventh Chamber of the Court of Appeals modified the trial court's sentence and convicted a total of 22 former DINA agents for their responsibility in the crimes of aggravated kidnapping and aggravated homicide committed in Chile and abroad.

The Santiago Court of Appeals increased the sentences to be served by 22 former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for the aggravated kidnappings of Jorge Fuentes Alarcón, Julio Valladares Caroca, Juan Hernández Zazpe, Manuel Tamayo Martínez, Luis Muñoz Velásquez, Alexei Jaccard Siegler, and Héctor Velásquez Mardones, and the aggravated homicides of Ricardo Ramírez Herrera, Jacobo Stoulman Bartnik, Matilde Pessa Mois, Hernán Soto González, and Ruiter Correa Arce.

These crimes were perpetrated within the framework of the so-called "Operation Condor," a cooperation agreement between the repressive groups of Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Uruguay in the 1970s.

In the ruling (case file 4.545-2019), the Eleventh Chamber of the Court of Appeals—composed of justices Jessica González, Loreto Gutiérrez, and Jaime Balmaceda—modified the trial court's convictions and increased the criminal penalties for the former agents involved in the crimes committed both in Chile and abroad.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Court shared the first-instance criterion regarding the participation of those convicted in the case, as there were real and proven records regarding their participation in the events, whether as inducing authors or direct authors of the crimes attributed to each of them.

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

It adds: "Indeed, in the case of those who were part of the Foreign Department of the National Intelligence Directorate—Willeke Floel, Iturriaga Neumann, and Espinoza Bravo—in the 28th, 29th, 31st, 32nd, 34th, and 35th findings, all the evidentiary background on which the charges are based is set forth one by one, and it is correctly concluded that the form of authorship applicable to each of them is that of No. 1 of Article 15 of the Penal Code for the first named, having taken part in the execution of the acts in an immediate and direct manner, and of No. 2 in relation to the remaining two, as it was demonstrated that they forced or directly induced others to execute them."

The same applies in the case of the National Intelligence Directorate agents who were part of the so-called Lautaro Brigade, which operated in the barracks located at Calle Simón Bolívar No. 8630 in the commune of La Reina, in relation to the aggravated kidnappings of victims Jaccard Siegler and Velásquez Mardones and the aggravated homicides of victims Ramírez Herrera, Stoulman Bortnik, and Pessa Mois, that is, the convicted Valdebenito Araya, Morales Salgado, Oyarce Riquelme, and Ojeda Obando; and the sentenced Calderón Carreño, Riveros Valderrama, Chaigneau Sepúlveda, and Escobar Fuentes in these same illicit acts and also in the aggravated homicides of victims Soto Gálvez and Correa Arce.

The 37th, 39th, 44th, and 54th findings, regarding the first four, and the 42nd, 47th, 50th, and 52nd findings, in relation to the remaining four, provide a detailed account of the background information according to which it is possible to conclude with certainty that at the time of the events these defendants were part, as operational agents, of the National Intelligence Directorate brigade that carried out the kidnapping of Communist Party militants, among whose members were the people just named, such that, although some of them do not remember their specific names, it is indisputable to conclude, as the a quo does, that they took part in their illegitimate deprivation of liberty, in some cases, and their homicide, in others, whether in an immediate and direct manner, or by forcing or directly inducing others to execute these acts, in the manner provided for in the aforementioned Nos. 1 and 2 of the cited Article 15 and that, therefore, they are punishable co-authors of these illicit acts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Civil reparations

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

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

The facts

During the investigation stage, Justice Mario Carroza established:

• That as a result of the events that occurred in the country on September 11, 1973, the Military Government formally instituted on November 25, 1975, in a meeting held in the city of Santiago, Chile, a plan for the coordination of actions and mutual support between the leaders of the intelligence services of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Chile, intended to destabilize opponents of the regimes assumed by the Armed Forces and Order;

• That this link generated, in a state-based and immediate manner, a reality that had already been forged in concrete actions between the aforementioned countries, that is, surveillance, detentions, interrogations under torture, transfer between countries, and the disappearance or execution of people opposed to the de facto instituted governments;

• The aforementioned scenario would have allowed cases such as those indicated below to be consummated:

• That on May 17, 1975, Jorge Isaac Fuentes Alarcón, a militant of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), was detained in the Republic of Paraguay, in the town of Enramada, and then transferred to the city of Asunción, where he remained deprived of liberty until September 23, 1975, when his clandestine transfer to Chile by air by DINA agents was decided. Once in the country, they took him to the secret detention and torture centers maintained by this organization, that is, Cuatro Álamos and Villa Grimaldi. It is in the latter place where Fuentes remained a prisoner and deprived of liberty for the longest time, received cruel treatment from his captors, was interrogated under torture, and was kept in inhumane conditions until probably January 17, 1976, when other prisoners saw him for the last time, with his whereabouts remaining unknown to this day.

• That, in turn, on July 2, 1976, in the city of La Paz, Republic of Bolivia, the Chilean citizen Julio del Tránsito Valladares Caroca, a militant of the Socialist Party, was detained by the Directorate of Political Order, the security agency of that country at that time. In the aforementioned condition, he remained detained until November 13, 1976, the date on which he was handed over to DINA agents in the border town of Charaña, who transferred him to our country and took him to the "Cuatro Álamos" Prisoner Camp, which was located on Calle Canadá near the 3,000 block of Vicuña Mackenna, remaining under the custody of its agents, a place where, according to witnesses, he remained locked up and incommunicado, and where he was seen alive for the last time at the end of November 1976;

• That on the other hand, on April 3, 1976, in the city of Mendoza, Republic of Argentina, three Chilean citizens were detained: Juan Humberto Hernández Zazpe, Manuel Jesús Tamayo Martínez, and Luis Gonzalo Muñoz Velásquez, socialist militants, who were transferred clandestinely by land to Chile and placed at the disposal of the agents of the National Intelligence Directorate, who took them to the Villa Grimaldi Barracks, located at Avenida José Arrieta No. 8200 in Santiago, as has already been said, a political prisoner camp that belonged to the aforementioned intelligence organization. In that place, they were locked up, interrogated, and tortured, and they were seen alive for the last time at the end of April 1976, with their whereabouts remaining unknown to date;

• That finally, in an episode that occurred in 1977, militants of the Communist Party, whose external organic leadership had decided on the need to channel external financial aid to the Party in Chile, asked one of them to travel from Switzerland—Alexei Vladimir Jaccard Siegler—to Chile, with a prior stop in Buenos Aires, to meet with another militant who was to travel from Russia—Ricardo Ignacio Ramírez Herrera—and for both to also contact the militant who resided in that city—Héctor Heraldo Velásquez Mardones. This meeting could not take place because all three were detained by the Argentine Federal Police on May 16, 1977, without legal basis, and deprived of liberty to be handed over to the agents of the National Intelligence Directorate, who transferred them to Santiago de Chile, where they were locked up in the Simón Bolívar Barracks, located on the street of the same name, No. 8630, were interrogated under torture, and on an indeterminate date disappeared. The search continues to this day as it has not been possible to find the victims Jaccard and Velásquez, who have no recorded exits or entries, nor are their deaths confirmed, but part of the remains of their companion in misfortune, Ricardo Ignacio Ramírez Herrera, has been found in Chile, in the sector known as "Cuesta Barriga," as well as those belonging to the couple formed by Jacobo Stoulman Bortnik and Matilde Pessa Mois, who traveled to Buenos Aires to finalize the dispatch of the money to our country, but were detained beforehand—on May 29, 1977—at Ezeiza Airport, at the moment they were getting off the plane that brought them from Chile, with all trace of them being lost from that moment on, until the aforementioned certain evidence of both having been buried in the aforementioned place;

• In this operation, Communist Party militants who were in Chile and served as liaisons in this operation also participated, but when the ruse was discovered, they were executed: Hernán Soto Gálvez on an indeterminate date, between June 7 and November 10, 1977, and Ruiter Enrique Correa Arce, on May 28 of that same year, and

• The analysis of the background information outlined in the preceding paragraphs makes evident the aforementioned cooperation and coordination of the intelligence services, in concrete cases, where the intelligence agents of our country, in these cases, colluding with those of Argentina, Paraguay, and Bolivia, not only concerted the detention of the victims but also created the conditions to lock them up and transfer them to our country, with the sinister purpose of confining them in clandestine centers to interrogate them, torture them, and then proceed with extreme cruelty to eliminate them.

Source: pjud.cl, July 25, 2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“With that understanding, contrary to what the defenses point out in court in support of their appeals, it is convenient to specify that the convicted are not punished merely for belonging to the institution, but for the conduct displayed by each one in relation to the events concerning the victim of these records, Ms.

Reinalda Pereira Plaza, which also leads to discarding the intervention of those accused with respect to whom, despite having been established that they were part of the same institution and performed functions at the property located at Simón Bolívar No. 8800 in La Reina, their punishable participation in any of the forms provided by law has not been proven,” it concludes.

Detention and disappearance

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

• a) That the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), on an unspecified date, but during the first semester of 1976, occupied and enabled a property at Calle Simón Bolívar Nº 8800, in the commune of La Reina, consisting of a country house, which was conditioned for its purpose of confinement. It had a single access gate, a guard booth to its right where door duty was performed, a house in the back, a small soccer field, parking lots, and on the left side of the property a kind of gymnasium where there was a mess hall, kitchen, and some locker rooms and bathrooms, which were conditioned to be used as dungeons, a property in which the Lautaro brigade, under the charge of Major Juan Morales Salgado, operated and which was occupied as a secret and clandestine place of confinement; people were brought to said facility as detainees to be interrogated under the use of various physical coercion techniques, especially regarding those who had or had had political militancy adhering to the Communist Party.
• b) That likewise, in the second semester of 1976, the DINA groups under the charge of officers Germán Barriga and Ricardo Lawrence moved to said facility, together with their operational agents, who were fundamentally concerned with investigating, locating, raiding, pursuing, repressing, and dismantling members of the Communist Party, especially its leadership, for which provisional facilities were enabled for their installation; consisting of offices, a gymnasium, and locker rooms that were confinement dungeons, where interrogations and torture were carried out, using coercion with various methods.
• c) That Reinalda del Carmen Pereira Plaza, pregnant with her first child, 5 months into her pregnancy, a medical technologist and communist militant, who worked sheltering people and as a liaison between Eliana Ahumada and Fernando Navarro, although also related to the communist militant Fernando Ortiz, was detained at 29 years of age, at approximately 8:30 PM, while waiting for public transport, by security agents on December 15, 1976, at the corner of Calle Exequiel Fernández and Rodrigo de Araya, in the commune of Ñuñoa, currently the commune of Macul. The agents who detained her were traveling in two Peugeot brand cars; one of them with license plate HLN-55, from which a subject got out and grabbed her violently; upon her screaming for help, a second subject got out, with whom she was forcibly subdued and placed inside the vehicle. The detention was carried out in the presence of witnesses who were in the various surrounding commercial establishments, who report that once the victim was subdued and the detention carried out, the car headed along Rodrigo de Araya in a northerly direction.
• d) That Reinalda del Carmen Pereira Plaza was taken to the secret detention center Simón Bolívar, where she was seen together with other prisoners who, in turn, had been detained by the same brigades under the same operational policy between December 13 and 15, 1976; that is, Héctor Véliz Ramírez, Fernando Navarro Allendes, Lincoyán Yalu Berríos Cataldo, Juan Fernando Ortiz Letelier, and Horacio Cepeda Marincovich. In this place, Reinalda was severely beaten, tortured, illegitimately coerced, and then made to disappear, with no news of her whereabouts to this date.
• e) That the Chilean government of the time, given the search efforts carried out by her relatives, reported that the affected person had registered an exit "on foot" through the Chile-Argentina border crossing Los Libertadores on December 21, 1976, an official version that was judicially established as false, as stated in the processed case file, Roll 2-77, in which it was verified that the route sheet that recorded said circumstances had been falsified.
• f) That the victim in these records was detained on public roads just like thirteen other people in similar circumstances; eleven belonging to the Communist Party and two to the MIR, and where the information provided by the Military Government was similar and erroneous, demonstrating a large-scale operation that obeyed a policy of investigation, persecution, and dismantling of the Communist Party and not an isolated event.
• g) That all the aforementioned people, including the victim, were detained to be interrogated and tortured by reason of their political militancy, and in order to obtain information about their party activities and the identification of other members of the Communist Party in the underground; coercion that did not cease until the required information was obtained or until the victims lost consciousness.

Source: pjud.cl, March 4, 2022

Supreme Court sends 59 former DINA agents to prison for Operation Colombo

Operation Colombo was a major intelligence operation and a communication setup by the DINA, which attempted to make 119 people kidnapped in Chile appear as having been killed abroad.

The Second Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court revoked the sentence that had acquitted more than 60 former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) and convicted them as responsible for the disappearance of 16 leftist militants, mostly from the MIR, in the process known as Operation Colombo, which in this case was perpetrated between June 17, 1974, and January 6, 1975, during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

The ruling was issued by justices Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Jorge Dahm, Leopoldo Llanos, María Teresa Letelier, and Diego Simpertigue, who revoked the sentence issued by the Court of Appeals and sentenced former DINA chiefs and officers César Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Miguel Krassnoff, and Raúl Iturriaga Neumann to the penalty of 15 years and one day of major imprisonment in its maximum degree as perpetrators of the crimes of aggravated kidnapping of the victims.

Similarly, the court sentenced 53 former agents to the effective penalty of 10 years and one day of major imprisonment in its medium degree, as perpetrators of the same crime, who had previously been acquitted by the capital's appellate court, despite having been convicted in the first instance as accomplices and perpetrators.

Furthermore, this time all must enter prison, with some of them already in prison for other crimes against humanity.

These are former DINA agents Fernando Eduardo Lauriani Maturana, Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García, Manuel Andrés Carevic, Rosa Humilde Ramos Hernández, Nelson Alberto Paz Bustamante, Jose Abel Aravena Ruiz, Claudio Enrique Pacheco Fernández, Nelson Aquiles Ortiz Vignolo, Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera, José Alfonso Ojeda Obando, Manuel Heriberto Avendaño Gonzalez, Raúl Juan Rodríguez Ponte, Alejandro Francisco Astudillo Adonis, Daniel Alberto Galaz Orellana, Francisco Maximiliano Ferrer Lima, Leoncio Enrique Velásquez Guala, José Enrique Fuentes Torres, Julio José Hoyos Zegarra, Pedro René Alfaro Fernández, Orlando Jesús Torrejón Gatica, José Manuel Sarmiento Sotelo, Luis René Torres Méndez, Rodolfo Valentino Concha Rodríguez, Enrique Tránsito Gutiérrez Rubilar, Hugo Del Tránsito Hernández Valle, Manuel Rivas Diaz, Daniel Valentín Cancino Varas, Juan Evangelista Duarte Gallegos, Víctor Manuel Molina Astete, Fernando Enrique Guerra Guajardo, Leónidas Emiliano Méndez Moreno, Jorge Antonio Lepileo Barrios, Lautaro Eugenio Díaz Espinoza, Pedro Ariel Aravena Aravena, Carlos Alfonso Sáez Sanhueza, Juan Carlos Villanueva Alvear, Alfredo Orlando Moya Tejeda, Rafael De Jesús Riveros Frost, Silvio Antonio Concha González, Luis Fernando Espinace Contreras, Hernán Patricio Valenzuela Salas, Palmira Isabel Almuna Guzmán, Sylvia Teresa Oyarce Pinto, Osvaldo Pulgar Gallardo, José Avelino Yévenes Vergara, Olegario Enrique González Moreno, Werner Zanghellini, Hector Flores Vergara.

Jaime Alfonso Fernández Garrido received a sentence of 5 years and one day of major imprisonment in its minimum degree as a perpetrator of the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Ida Vera Almarza. Meanwhile, Samuel Fuenzalida Devia was sentenced to 541 days and one day for the same crime, but will not serve time in prison.

This is an extensive process that had its first first-instance sentence in 2017 at the hands of judge Hernán Crisosto Greisse. In the course of the investigation, some agents have died, such as Basclay Zapata, Ciro Torré, Manzo Duran, Ricardo Lawrence, among others.

For Nelson Caucoto, the plaintiff lawyer representing 13 of the 16 victims, this is “a transcendent ruling in Chilean judicial history, since the Supreme Court has restored the sense of justice for crimes of this nature, which had literally been left in an unacceptable situation of impunity.

The highest court has once again rejected the partial statute of limitations and the appeals of the defense of the convicted, and has accepted the appeals of the plaintiffs,” he noted.

Caucoto adds that “it is a modern ruling based on international law and domestic legislation. It is undoubted that justice operates in this case as a healing for so many relatives of victims who still survive, and it is a pity that others did not live to see this end.”

Operation Colombo was a major intelligence operation and a communication setup by the DINA, which attempted to make 119 people kidnapped in Chile by the DINA appear as having been killed abroad, having allegedly perished after fighting among themselves.

This process investigated the fate of 16 of those 119 victims. These are Francisco Aedo Carrasco, Jorge Elías Andrónicos Antequera, Juan Carlos Andrónicos Antequera, Jaime Buzio Lorca, Mario Calderón Tapia, Cecilia Castro Salvadores, Rodolfo Espejo Gómez, Agustín Fioraso Chau, Gregorio Gaete Farías, Mauricio Jorquera Encina, Isidro Pizarro Meniconi, Marcos Quiñones Lembach, Sergio Reyes Navarrete, Ida Vera Almarza, Juan Carlos Rodríguez Araya, and Jilberto Urbina Pizarro.

Source: radio.uchile.cl, March 3, 2023

Operation Colombo: Supreme Court convicts 25 DINA agents for the crime against a MIR detective in 1974

The Supreme Court confirmed the sentence convicting 25 former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their responsibility in the aggravated kidnapping of photographer Teobaldo Antonio Tello Garrido, who has been forcibly disappeared since August 22, 1974, and was one of the 119 victims included in the lists of the international disinformation maneuver known as "Operation Colombo."

Teobaldo Tello, 25 years old, married, was a detective with the Investigative Police, a photographer, and a militant of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR). He was detained and kidnapped on the afternoon of August 22 on a public street while preparing to hold a clandestine meeting in downtown Santiago.

His detention was part of a repressive raid on MIR members linked to the Investigative Police and the Identification Cabinet.

In the ruling (case file 36.979-2020), the Second Chamber of the high court—composed of ministers Haroldo Brito, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Leopoldo Llanos, and acting attorneys Eduardo Morales and Gonzalo Ruz—rejected the cassation appeals filed by the convicted individuals and dismissed any error in the challenged sentence.

The high court's ruling sentenced former Army officers and DINA leaders César Raúl Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann to 13 years in prison for their responsibility as authors of the crime.

Meanwhile, also sentenced as authors of the crime to 10 years in prison were former officers Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García and Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos, and former agents Nelson Alberto Paz Bustamante, Julio José Hoyos Zegarra, Silvio Antonio Concha González, José Alfonso Ojeda Obando, Teresa del Carmen Osorio Navarro, Claudio Enrique Pacheco Fernández, José Abel Aravena Ruiz, Rosa Humilde Ramos Hernández, Pedro René Alfaro Fernández, Luis René Torres Méndez, Rodolfo Valentino Concha Rodríguez, Jerónimo del Carmen Neira Méndez, Palmira Isabel Almuna Guzmán, Leonidas Emiliano Méndez Moreno, Hermon Helec Alfaro Mundaca, Luis Rigoberto Videla Inzulza, and Jorge Segundo Madariaga Acevedo; the latter three were Investigative Police officers commissioned to the DINA.

Former agent Samuel Enrique Fuenzalida Devia must serve a sentence of 541 days in prison, with the benefit of conditional remission, as an author of the crime.

Finally, former agent Víctor Manuel Álvarez Droguett was sentenced to 4 years in prison, with the benefit of supervised release, as an accomplice to the crime.

The sentence dismissed any infringement regarding the facts established by the lower courts, as these were crimes against humanity.

"Regarding the cause contained in Article 546 No. 2 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, given the nature of the proven events, which remain unalterable for this Court since the cause allowing for their modification was dismissed, there is no doubt that they were committed as crimes against humanity, since the illicit act investigated occurred in a context of grave, massive, and systematic human rights violations, verified by State agents.

The victim in this case constituted an instrument within a general policy of exclusion, harassment, persecution, or extermination of a group of numerous people who, in the period immediately following September 11, 1973, were labeled as ideologically belonging to the deposed political regime or who, for any circumstance, were considered suspicious of opposing or hindering the realization of the social and political construction envisioned by those holding power, guaranteeing impunity for the executors of said program through non-interference in their methods, both by concealing the reality when faced with requests for relevant reports from ordinary courts of justice, and by using state power to persuade local and foreign public opinion that the complaints filed to that effect were false and responded to a campaign aimed at discrediting the authoritarian military regime."

It adds: "Crimes against humanity are those injustices that not only contravene the legal interests commonly guaranteed by criminal laws but at the same time imply a denial of the moral personality of man, such that for the configuration of this illicit act, there is an intimate connection between common crimes and an added value that stems from the disregard and contempt for human dignity, because the main characteristic of this figure is the cruel manner in which various criminal acts are perpetrated, which clearly and manifestly contradict the most basic concept of humanity; also highlighting the presence of cruelty toward a special class of individuals, thus combining an eminent intentional element, as a specific inner tendency of the agent's will.

Ultimately, they constitute an outrage to human dignity and represent a grave and manifest violation of the rights and freedoms proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, reaffirmed and developed in other relevant international instruments."

In the judicial investigation and the first-instance ruling, presiding judge Hernán Crisosto Greisse established that the kidnapped Teobaldo Tello was taken by his captors to the clandestine detention center known as "Ollagüe," located at Calle José Domingo Cañas No. 1367, in the commune of Ñuñoa, and was subsequently moved to the clandestine detention centers of "Villa Grimaldi," located at Lo Arrieta No. 8200, in the commune of La Reina, and "Cuatro Álamos," located at Calle Canadá No. 3000, in Santiago, facilities controlled by the DINA.

During his stay at the José Domingo Cañas, Villa Grimaldi, and Cuatro Álamos barracks, he remained without contact with the outside world, blindfolded and bound, being continuously subjected to interrogations under torture by DINA agents for the purpose of obtaining information regarding MIR members to proceed with the detention of members of that organization.

In these facilities, Tello Garrido was seen by other surviving detainees with his arms and legs broken as a result of the torture. The last time he was seen alive was on an undetermined day in September 1974.

The name of Teobaldo Antonio Tello Garrido appeared on a list of 119 people, published in the national press after appearing on a list published in the Argentine magazine "LEA" on July 15, 1975, which claimed he had died in Argentina, along with 59 other people belonging to the MIR, due to internal strife among those members.

The aforementioned publications were the result of disinformation maneuvers carried out by the DINA, in what has become known as "Operation Colombo."

by Darío Núñez

Source: resumen.cl, September 22, 2023

Operation Colombo: Supreme Court issues convictions against 32 DINA agents in cases of two victims

The Supreme Court issued replacement sentences convicting 32 former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their responsibility in the aggravated kidnapping of two victims of the so-called Operation Colombo.

In separate cases and rulings, the high court issued resolutions regarding the cases of Ismael Darío Chávez Lobos, detained on July 26, 1974, and Jorge Alejandro Olivares Graindorge, detained on July 27, 1974, both in the commune of Quinta Normal, in Santiago.

In the first case, regarding Ismael Chávez Lobos, in a unanimous ruling (case file 79.461-2020), the Second Chamber of the high court—composed of ministers Jorge Dahm, Leopoldo Llanos, minister María Teresa Letelier, and acting attorneys Pía Tavolari and Gonzalo Ruz—established an error of law in the sentence issued by the Santiago Court of Appeals in June 2020, which had acquitted the agents who performed operational duties and served as guards at the Londres 38 facility of responsibility for the proven facts.

For this reason, in the replacement sentence, it classifies them as guilty and convicts them for the crime, while increasing the sentences of the other convicted individuals.

At the same time, it accepted the cassation appeals filed by the plaintiffs and, issuing a replacement sentence, convicted former DINA leaders and former Army officers César Raúl Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann to 10 years and one day in prison, in their capacity as authors of the crime.

Meanwhile, also sentenced as authors of the crime to 10 years in prison were former Carabineros officer Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García, former Army officer Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos, and former agent José Enrique Fuentes Torres.

Meanwhile, former agents Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Pedro Ariel Araneda Araneda, Víctor Manuel Molina Astete, Manuel de la Cruz Rivas Díaz, Raúl Juan Rodríguez Ponte, Hermon Helec Alfaro Mundaca, Hugo del Tránsito Hernández Valle, Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera, Julio José Hoyos Zegarra, Nelson Alberto Paz Bustamante, Enrique Tránsito Gutiérrez Rubilar, Hiro Álvarez Vega, José Alfonso Ojeda Obando, Olegario Enrique González Moreno, Orlando Jesús Torrejón Gatica, Alfredo Orlando Moya Tejeda, Fernando Enrique Guerra Guajardo, Hernán Patricio Valenzuela Salas, Juan Alfredo Villanueva Alvear, Lautaro Eugenio Díaz Espinoza, Leónidas Emiliano Méndez Moreno, Rafael de Jesús Riveros Frost, Carlos Alfonso Sáez Sanhueza, Máximo Ramón Aliaga Soto, and José Avelino Yévenes Vergara must serve 5 years and one day in prison as authors of the crime.

In the second case, regarding Jorge Olivares Graindorge, in a unanimous ruling (case file 122.171.2020), the Second Chamber, composed of the same ministers as the previous case, established an error of law in the sentence issued by the Santiago Court of Appeals in July 2020, by mistakenly acquitting agents who performed operational and guard duties at the Londres 38 facility.

For this reason, in the replacement sentence, it classifies and convicts them as guilty of the crime.

Likewise, it increases the sentences of the other convicted individuals and sentenced former DINA leaders and former Army officers César Raúl Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann to 10 years and one day in prison, in their capacity as authors of the crime.

Meanwhile, also sentenced as authors of the crime to 10 years in prison were former officers Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García and Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos, and former agent José Enrique Fuentes Torres.

Similarly, for this crime, former agents Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Pedro Ariel Araneda Araneda, Víctor Manuel Molina Astete, Manuel de la Cruz Rivas Díaz, Raúl Juan Rodríguez Ponte, Hermon Helec Alfaro Mundaca, Hugo del Tránsito Hernández Valle, Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera, Julio José Hoyos Zegarra, Nelson Alberto Paz Bustamante, Enrique Tránsito Gutiérrez Rubilar, Hiro Álvarez Vega, José Alfonso Ojeda Obando, Olegario Enrique González Moreno, Orlando Jesús Torrejón Gatica, Alfredo Orlando Moya Tejeda, Fernando Enrique Guerra Guajardo, Hernán Patricio Valenzuela Salas, Juan Alfredo Villanueva Alvear, Lautaro Eugenio Díaz Espinoza, Leónidas Emiliano Méndez Moreno, Rafael de Jesús Riveros Frost, Carlos Alfonso Sáez Sanhueza, Máximo Ramón Aliaga Soto, and Osvaldo Enrique Pulgar Gallardo must serve 5 years and one day in prison as authors of the crime.

In both cases, twelve other agents convicted in the first instance died during the course of the proceedings, including former officers Gerardo Urrich González, Ricardo Lawrence Mires, Ciro Torré Sáez, and Sergio Castillo González, and agents Basclay Zapata Reyes, Risiere del Altez España, Juan Ángel Urbina Cáceres, José Nelson Fuentealba Saldías, Hugo Rubén Delgado Carrasco, José Mario Friz Esparza, Claudio Orlando Orellana de la Pinta, and Gustavo Galvarino Carumán Soto, who were acquitted of these crimes.

The victims Ismael Darío Chávez Lobos, 22 years old, was a Social Sciences student at the University of Chile and a militant of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR). He was detained on the night of July 26, 1974, at his home located at Calle Los Copihues No. 1977 in the commune of Quinta Normal, by agents belonging to the DINA, who transported him to the clandestine detention center "Londres 38," located at that address in the city of Santiago.

Jorge Alejandro Olivares Graindorge, 23 years old, a gardener by trade and also a MIR militant, was detained by DINA agents on a public street on the afternoon of July 27, 1974, near his home located at Pasaje Salta 2258, in the commune of Quinta Normal. He was also transported by the agents to the clandestine detention center "Londres 38."

From this place of detention and torture, the trail of both detainees is lost. Subsequently, in July 1975, they appeared mentioned in the lists of the international disinformation maneuver known as "Operation Colombo," carried out by the DINA, which included 119 forcibly disappeared persons.

by Darío Nuñez

Source: resumen.cl, December 4, 2023

Operation Colombo: Supreme Court convicts 30 former DINA agents for the aggravated kidnapping of a young MIR militant in 1975

The Supreme Court convicted agents of the dissolved National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their responsibility in the consummated crime of aggravated kidnapping of Francisco Eduardo Ugás Morales, a 22-year-old student at the Higher Institute of Commerce of Talca and a militant of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), who was kidnapped on February 7, 1975, in the commune of Estación Central, in Santiago.

The name of Rodrigo Ugás appeared, subsequently, on the list of 119 forcibly disappeared persons included in the disinformation maneuver implemented by the DINA and the dictatorship known as "Operation Colombo."

In a unanimous ruling (case file 63-094-2020), the Second Chamber of the high court—composed of ministers Haroldo Brito, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Jorge Dahm, minister María Teresa Letelier, and acting attorney Pía Tavolari—accepted the cassation appeals filed by the plaintiffs and established an error of law in the challenged sentence, issued by the Santiago Court of Appeals in April 2020, annulling and replacing it.

In the replacement sentence, the Supreme Court confirmed the first-instance sentence issued by judge Hernán Crisosto Greisse in June 2015, which sentenced former Army officers and former DINA leaders Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann to 13 years in prison, in their capacity as authors of the crime.

Meanwhile, former officers Rolf Gonzalo Wenderoth Pozo, Francisco Maximiliano Ferrer Lima, Fernando Eduardo Lauriani Maturana, Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García, and Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos, and former agents Pedro René Alfaro Fernández, Claudio Enrique Pacheco Fernández, José Alfonso Ojeda Obando, Luis René Torres Méndez, Hugo del Tránsito Hernández Valle, Manuel Rivas Díaz, Jerónimo del Carmen Neira Méndez, Carlos Eusebio López Inostroza, Luis Rigoberto Videla Insunza, Palmira Isabel Almuna Guzmán, Rafael de Jesús Riveros Frost, Leónidas Emiliano Méndez Moreno, Pedro Mora Villanueva, Osvaldo Octavio Castillo Arellano, Víctor Manuel Molina Astete, Fernando Enrique Guerra Guajardo, Rosa Humilde Ramos Hernández, José Abel Aravena Ruiz, Rodolfo Valentino Concha Rodríguez, Silvio Antonio Concha González, and Roberto Hernán Rodríguez Manquel must serve 10 years and one day in prison as co-authors of the aggravated kidnapping.

In the case of agent Samuel Enrique Fuenzalida Devia, the resolution of presiding judge Hernán Crisosto was confirmed, sentencing him to 541 days in prison, with the benefit of conditional remission of the sentence. At least 11 other agents convicted in the first-instance ruling died during the course of the proceedings.

In the resolution, the Second Chamber states: "....it is clear that the lower court judges, at the time of resolving the controversy submitted to their knowledge and acquitting the accused Fernando Eduardo Lauriani Maturana, Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García, Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos, Pedro René Alfaro Fernández, Claudio Enrique Pacheco Fernández, José Alfonso Ojeda Obando, Luis René Torres Méndez, Hugo del Tránsito Hernández Valle, Manuel Rivas Díaz, Jerónimo del Carmen Neira Méndez, Carlos López Inostroza, Luis Rigoberto Videla Insunza, Palmira Isabel Almuna Guzmán, Rafael de Jesús Riveros Frost, Leonidas Emiliano Méndez Moreno, Pedro Mora Villanueva, Víctor Manuel Molina Astete, and Fernando Enrique Guerra Guajardo, have incurred in the errors of law denounced by the plaintiff, by estimating, in summary, as evidenced by the reasoning above, .... artificially reducing the responsibility attributed to each of them to their status as DINA agents, through an incomplete reproduction of the grounds put forward by the first-instance court…..", the ruling maintains.

"On the other hand -it continues-, as has already been outlined, in addition to said legal classification, the sentencers estimated.... that the facts were committed in a context of a systematic or generalized attack against the civilian population, which determined that the established illicit act was also considered a crime against humanity, for violating jus cogens norms of International Humanitarian Law, and therefore, subject to said international legal statute."

Villa Grimaldi In the first-instance sentence, the presiding judge of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Hernán Crisosto Greisse, established that on the afternoon of February 7, 1975, members of the DINA detained Rodrigo Eduardo Ugás Morales, a militant of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), on a public street in the Estación Central sector in Santiago, and transported him to the clandestine DINA detention center known as 'Cuartel Terranova' or 'Villa Grimaldi,' located at Lo Arrieta No. 8200, in the commune of La Reina, which was guarded by armed guards and to which only DINA agents had access.

During his stay at the Villa Grimaldi barracks, according to testimonies from survivors, the detainee Ugás Morales remained without contact with the outside world, blindfolded and bound, being continuously subjected to interrogations under torture by DINA agents operating in said barracks.

The last time Rodrigo Ugás Morales was seen by other detainees occurred on an undetermined day at the end of February 1975, and he has been disappeared since that date.

Source: resumen.cl, February 23, 2024

Operation Colombo: Supreme Court confirms convictions of 24 former DINA agents for the aggravated kidnapping of a UdeC leader in Santiago in 1974

The Supreme Court rejected the procedural and substantive cassation appeals filed by the defense against the sentence that convicted agents of the dissolved National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their responsibility in the crime of aggravated kidnapping of sociology student Ariel Martín Salinas Argomedo, committed starting on September 25, 1974, in Santiago.

The name of Ariel Salinas Argomedo appeared, subsequently, on the list of 119 forcibly disappeared persons included in the disinformation maneuver implemented by the DINA and the dictatorship known as "Operation Colombo."

In a unanimous ruling (case file 135.568-2020), the Second Chamber of the high court—composed of ministers Haroldo Brito, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Jorge Dahm, minister María Teresa Letelier, and acting attorney Pía Tavolari—accepted the procedural cassation appeal filed by the plaintiff, the Human Rights Program of the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, and consequently invalidated the challenged sentence, only in the part that acquitted the accused Manuel Heriberto Avendaño González and, in a replacement sentence, convicted him to 10 years in prison as an author of the crime.

The Supreme Court's ruling confirmed the sentences of former Army officers and former DINA leaders César Raúl Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, who must serve 13 years in prison for their responsibility as authors of the aggravated kidnapping.

Meanwhile, in addition to the aforementioned Manuel Heriberto Avendaño González, former officers Francisco Maximiliano Ferrer Lima, Fernando Eduardo Lauriani Maturana, Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos, Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García, and Palmira Isabel Almuna Guzmán, and former agents Hermón Helec Alfaro Mundaca, Julio José Hoyos Zegarra, Silvio Antonio Concha González, José Alfonso Ojeda Obando, Luis Rigoberto Videla Inzunza, Teresa del Carmen Osorio Navarro, Claudio Enrique Pacheco Fernández, José Abel Aravena Ruiz, Alejandro Francisco Astudillo Adonis, Rosa Humilde Ramos Hernández, Pedro René Alfaro Fernández, Raúl Juan Rodríguez Ponte, Pedro Ariel Araneda Araneda, and Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos must serve 10 years of imprisonment, all convicted in their capacity as authors of the crime.

12 other agents, also convicted in the first-instance ruling issued by judge Hernán Crisosto Greisse in October 2015, died during the course of the proceedings.

Regarding the case of the accused Manuel Avendaño González, the Criminal Chamber points out: "(...) under such conditions, the appeal proposed by the Human Rights Program of the relevant Ministry must be accepted, since from the mere reading of the objected sentence, grounds are evident that are completely contradictory, canceling each other out, making the decision that acquits the accused Avendaño González, which is declared in the operative part, devoid of all foundation, configuring the invalidation defect denounced.

"In effect, at the time of the events, these accused were part, as hierarchical superiors and operational agents, together with other defendants whose participation would be analyzed in the following considerations, of the groups belonging to the National Intelligence Directorate that materialized the kidnapping of members of the Revolutionary Left Movement, among whose members was Salinas Argomedo, in such a way that, despite not remembering his specific name, it is indisputable to conclude, just as the a quo does, that they took part in the illegitimate deprivation of his liberty immediately and directly in the manner provided by the recently cited norm and that, for the same reason, they are punishable co-authors of this illicit act."

Operation Colombo

Ariel Martín Salinas Argomedo was a former sociology student at the University of Concepción. The 26-year-old, married and father of a daughter, was a militant of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), was part of the MIR university leadership in Concepción, and, until the military coup, was president of the student center of the UdeC sociology program.

After the coup, he had to go into hiding to avoid being captured. He moved to Santiago to continue his militant activity and a year later was detained.

In the first-instance ruling, presiding judge Hernán Crisosto Greisse established that on the morning of September 25, 1974, Ariel Salinas was detained on a public street by agents belonging to the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), who transported him to the clandestine DINA detention center known as 'Ollagüe,' located at José Domingo Cañas No. 1367 in the commune of Ñuñoa.

He was subsequently moved to the clandestine detention centers known as 'Villa Grimaldi,' located at Lo Arrieta No. 8200, in La Reina, and 'Cuatro Álamos,' located at Calle Canadá No. 3000, in the commune of Santiago, facilities that were guarded by armed guards and to which only DINA agents had access.

According to the testimony of surviving prisoners, during his stay at the José Domingo Cañas, Villa Grimaldi, and Cuatro Álamos barracks, the detainee Ariel Salinas remained without contact with the outside world. In the first two places, he was blindfolded and bound, being continuously subjected to interrogations under torture by DINA agents operating in said barracks.

The last time Ariel Salinas Argomedo was seen alive by other detainees occurred on an undetermined day in November 1974, and he has been disappeared since that date.

by Darío Núñez

Source: resumen.cl, February 26, 2024