The minister on special assignment for human rights violation cases at the Santiago Court of Appeals, Mario Carroza, handed down a sentence against 20 former agents of the National Information Center (CNI) for their responsibility in the qualified homicides of Lucía Orfilia Vergara Valenzuela, Arturo Vilavella Araujo, and Sergio Peña Díaz, crimes perpetrated on September 7, 1983, on Calle Fuenteovejuna in the Las Condes commune.

In the ruling, Minister Carroza sentenced Roberto Urbano Schmied Zanzi to 15 years and one day in prison as the perpetrator of the qualified homicides. Meanwhile, Aquiles Mauricio González Cortés, Álvaro Julio Federico Corbalán Castilla, Norman Antonio Jeldes Aguilar, and Manuel Ventura Laureada Núñez must serve 10 years and one day as perpetrators of the crimes.

In the same case, former CNI members Sergio María Canals Baldwin, Juan José Pastene Osses, Patricio Leonidas González Cortez, Luis René Torres Méndez, Manuel Ángel Morales Acevedo, Luis Hernán Gálvez Navarro, Sergio Daniel Valenzuela Morales, Juan Modesto Olivares Carrizo, Raúl Hernán Escobar Díaz, Eduardo Martín Chávez Baeza, Luis Eduardo Burgos Cofré, Raúl Horacio González Fernández, Orlando Jesús Torrejón Gatica, Rafael de Jesús Riveros Frost, and Juan Alejandro Jorquera Abarzúa were sentenced to 3 years and one day in prison, with the benefit of intensive supervised release, in the capacity of accomplices. Former agent Egon Antonio Barra Barra was acquitted.

Blue Brigade

During the investigation phase of the case, Minister Mario Carroza established that, following the assassination of the Metropolitan Region Intendant Carol Urzúa Ibáñez, committed on August 30, 1983, the director of the National Information Center (CNI), Humberto Gordon Rubio (deceased), ordered the Metropolitan Anti-Subversive Division, under the command of Roberto Schmied Zanzi, to form a new group: the Blue Brigade, to investigate the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR).

In this context, on the morning of September 7, 1983, the arrest of MIR members located at the property at Fuenteovejuna 1330, which had been previously located, was ordered. A considerable number of agents under the command of Álvaro Corbalán Castilla (commander of the Metropolitan Anti-Subversive Brigade) and Aquiles González Cortés (head of the Blue Brigade) were sent to the location in the afternoon.

The resolution adds that: "once the firing base was in position, the officer in command ordered it to be aimed and fired at the property for about a minute, that is, about 500 shots; they then stopped their action and, using loudspeakers, ordered the occupants of the property to surrender."

"One of them," it continues, "Sergio Peña Díaz, decided to surrender and came out with his hands behind his neck, but as he was walking toward the agents, they shot him, and his wounds caused his death.

This incited the reaction of the only woman in the group, who confronted them with a weapon; faced with this reaction, Álvaro Corbalán again gave the order to fire the firing base in the direction of the property, which caused not only the death of Lucía Orfilia Vergara Valenzuela from gunshot wounds, but also the burning of the house and the incineration of the third member of the movement, Arturo Vilavella Araujo."

Regarding civil damages, the minister ordered the state to pay a total indemnity of $335,000,000 to the victims' families.

Source: elciudadano.cl, January 18, 2018

Chile sentences 20 former agents of the Pinochet dictatorship to prison

The sentences range between three and 15 years.

A judge in Chile sentenced 20 former agents of the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) this Monday for the murder of three guerrillas from the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), according to the Judiciary document.

According to Ad Prensa Chile, Roberto Urbano Schmied Zanzi was sentenced to 15 years and one day in prison as the perpetrator of the qualified homicides. Meanwhile, Aquiles Mauricio González Cortés, Álvaro Julio Federico Corbalán Castilla, Norman Antonio Jeldes Aguilar, and Manuel Ventura Laureada Núñez must serve ten years and one day as perpetrators of the crimes.

In the case, former members of the National Information Center (CNI) Sergio María Canals Baldwin, Juan José Pastene Osses, Patricio Leonidas González Cortez, Luis René Torres Méndez, Manuel Ángel Morales Acevedo, Luis Hernán Gálvez Navarro, Sergio Daniel Valenzuela Morales, Juan Modesto Olivares Carrizo, Raúl Hernán Escobar Díaz, Eduardo Martín Chávez Baeza, Luis Eduardo Burgos Cofré, Raúl Horacio González Fernández, Orlando Jesús Torrejón Gatica, Rafael de Jesús Riveros Frost, and Juan Alejandro Jorquera Abarzúa were sentenced to three years and one day in prison, with the benefit of intensive supervised release, in the capacity of accomplices. Former agent Egon Antonio Barra Barra was acquitted.

In summary, the AP agency reports, one man was sentenced to 15 years; four to ten years; and 15 to three years in prison.

Judge Mario Carroza, who is dedicated exclusively to reviewing human rights violation cases, established that after the assassination of a Regional Intendant in 1986, a special brigade was created to pursue MIR members.

Seven days after that, the arrest of three MIR militants was ordered at a residence in an affluent neighborhood of Santiago. That afternoon, two brigades ordered the installation of a firing base in front of the house, consisting of a powerful machine gun on the roof of a jeep with the capacity to fire 500 rounds per minute.

Carroza states in his resolution that an officer ordered them to fire for one minute against the property and then asked the occupants to surrender.

One of the MIR members came out with his hands behind his neck, and while he was walking toward the agents, they shot him, causing his death, to which the only woman of the trio confronted them with a weapon. Immediately after, officer Alvaro Corbalán ordered them to fire again. The new burst caused the woman's death and sparked a fire in the house, where the third opponent died burned.

This judicial resolution is a first-instance ruling, so the accused could appeal to the Court of Appeals and then to the Supreme Court.

Those found guilty in the final instance should enter a special prison for human rights violators, but since it is already full, they could be sent to a type of branch facility.

In Chile, the dictatorship left an official toll of some 40,000 victims, 3,095 of whom died—of which the bodies of just over a thousand have still not been found—plus those who were forcibly disappeared and tortured.

Source: diariodecuba.com, January 18, 2018

Authors of the massacre sentenced: Night falls on Fuenteovejuna

The minister on special assignment for human rights violation cases at the Santiago Court of Appeals, Mario Carroza, handed down a sentence against twenty former agents of the National Information Center (CNI) for their responsibility in the qualified homicides of Lucía Orfilia Vergara Valenzuela, Arturo Vilavella Araujo, and Sergio Peña Díaz, crimes perpetrated on September 7, 1983, on Calle Fuenteovejuna, Las Condes commune.

Judge Carroza's ruling of January 17 sentences Brigadier (ret.) Roberto Urbano Schmied Zanzi, head—at the time of the events—of the general staff of the CNI's Anti-Subversive Division, to 15 years and one day in prison.

Meanwhile, Colonel (ret.) Aquiles Mauricio González Cortés ("El Caracha"), head of the CNI's Blue Brigade; Major (ret.) Alvaro Julio Corbalán Castilla ("El Faraón"), head of the CNI's Anti-Subversive Brigade; Captain (ret.) Norman Antonio Jeldes Aguilar ("El Gorilón"); and the former civilian army employee Manuel Ventura Laureada Núñez ("Piolín") must serve ten years and one day in prison as perpetrators of the crimes.

The magistrate also sentenced the following former CNI agents to three years and one day in prison, with the benefit of intensive supervised release, in the capacity of accomplices: Lieutenant Colonel (ret.) Sergio María Canals Baldwin, second-in-command of the Anti-Subversive Division; Juan José Pastene Osses ("El Malambo"), Patricio Leonidas González Cortez ("El Gigio"), Luis René Torres Méndez ("El Negro Mario"), Manuel Angel Morales Acevedo ("El Baretta"), Luis Hernán Gálvez Navarro ("El Vitoco"), Sergio Daniel Valenzuela Morales ("El Peque"), Juan Modesto Olivares Carrizo ("El Negro Euson"), Raúl Hernán Escobar Díaz ("El Palta"), Eduardo Martín Chávez Baeza, Luis Eduardo Burgos Cofré ("Café"), Raúl Horacio González Fernández ("El Wally Chico"), Orlando Jesús Torrejón Gatica ("El Negro Miguel"), Rafael de Jesús Riveros Frost ("El Suave"), and Juan Alejandro Jorquera Abarzúa ("El Muerto").

THE CONTEXT

Judge Carroza's exhaustive investigation allowed for the reconstruction of a large part of the structure and operation of the CNI's Cuartel Borgoño in the early 1980s, even specifying the false identities and nicknames of the agents who constituted that repressive entity.

The CNI's Metropolitan Intelligence Division was made up of six units. One was the Anti-Subversive Division, composed in turn of at least six operational brigades, named with different colors: Red, White, Green, Lead, Brown, Yellow, several of which closely followed the MIR's offensive in the so-called Operation Return.

The command of the repressive organization ordered the merger of the White and Red brigades, forming the Blue Brigade, which had great operational capacity and specialized in the rebel group led in Chile by Hernán Aguiló.

In mid-1983, after a series of MIR assaults on banks and supermarkets, CNI agents managed to identify the military chief in Santiago, the Argentine Hugo Ratier Noguera ("José"), whom they followed until they located his safe house on Calle Janequeo, in the Quinta Normal commune, where they established fixed surveillance points.

On August 30, a MIR commando ambushed and killed the Intendant of Santiago, Army Major General Cárol Urzúa Ibáñez, and two of his bodyguards in the Las Condes commune. To this day, it is not known with certainty if some of the members of that MIR detachment were being watched by the CNI from before the attack on the uniformed officer.

What is clear is that a few days after the attack, Hugo Ratier left his refuge on Calle Janequeo and was followed by agents from Cuartel Borgoño, who saw him meet with Jorge Palma Donoso, head of the MIR unit that had ambushed the intendant.

A few hours later, on September 6, Palma Donoso was arrested in the parking lots of the Parque Arauco shopping center, also in Las Condes, and taken to the basements of Cuartel Borgoño. Almost at the same time, Hugo Marchant and Carlos Araneda, two other members of the MIR unit that executed Urzúa Ibáñez, were captured.

Palma Donoso was interrogated at length and tortured by Alvaro Corbalán, Aquiles González, and Roberto Fuentes Morrison ("El Wally"), former operational chief of the Joint Command, the main repressive organization of the Chilean Air Force, who assisted the CNI in some operations.

Meanwhile, the military leadership of the MIR remained hidden in two safe houses. Arturo Vilavella; Lucía Vergara, 32; and Sergio Peña Díaz, 37, were hiding at Fuenteovejuna 1330 in Las Condes. Hugo Ratier, Alejandro Salgado Troquián, and his stepson Miguel Bustos, 15 years old, were hiding at Janequeo 5707 in Quinta Normal. All were closely watched by the CNI.

THE EVENTS

On the night of September 6, the CNI commanders decided to attack the two safe houses and exterminate their occupants.

Alvaro Corbalán picked up the phone and called Roberto Fuentes Morrison, operational chief at that time of the Anti-Subversive Command of the Air Force Intelligence Service (Sifa), to notify him that they would use all means to eliminate the leaders of the MIR resistance.

"We are going to operate tomorrow," he told him.

"Can I participate with my people?" asked "El Wally."

"Of course, buddy. Come on over!"

At dusk on September 7, 1983, around 7:00 PM, about sixty security agents gathered in the parking lots of a supermarket located next to the Avenida Colón roundabout in the eastern part of Santiago, waiting for a jeep armed with a high-caliber machine gun.

When the vehicle arrived, the caravan set off to fulfill its mission. Hours earlier, CNI agents had evacuated the inhabitants of the houses on Calle Fuenteovejuna and taken positions in those homes.

Three hooded men dressed in jumpsuits were traveling in the jeep with the machine gun. Upon arriving at the indicated location on Calle Fuenteovejuna, in front of a small chalet that had its lights on, Corbalán ordered:

"There are three MIR members in that house. I don't want any of them alive! That is the order! Did you understand?"

He took the radio from his vehicle and asked:

"Is the firing base ready?"

"Ready," was heard on the other side.

"Open fire!"

The .30 caliber machine gun began to spit 500 bullets per minute, unleashing hell in the peaceful Colón neighborhood.

"Cease fire!"

"You are surrounded! Come out with your hands up!"

"Don't shoot! We're coming out!" a man was heard shouting from inside the house.

The door opened and Sergio Peña Díaz, a veterinarian, married, with two daughters, appeared with his hands behind his neck.

"Advance! Advance!" they ordered him.

Peña stopped and spread his legs, waiting to be searched.

Two CNI agents approached him and, without a word, emptied their UZI submachine guns on the MIR member.

"Murderers! Murderers!" shouted a woman from inside who was watching the surrender.

Then, fifty men and the .30 caliber machine gun fired again.

Five fragmentation grenades fell on the house and then a flare that caused an immediate fire.

In seconds, Lucía Vergara Valenzuela, 32, married, with two daughters; and Arturo Vilavella Araujo, 38, an engineer, married, with one son, were gunned down.

THE RULING

"In the initial actions, the agents installed a firing base in front of the property, consisting of a Rheinmetall machine gun, 7.62 mm caliber (or .30 caliber), mounted on a jeep, which on that occasion was driven by Manuel Ventura Laureada Núñez, and the weapon operated by two people: one who fired, Norman Antonio Jeldes Aguilar, and the other in charge of feeding the ammunition belt, with a firing capacity of 10 per short burst and a full firing capacity of 500 per minute," notes Judge Carroza's ruling.

The resolution adds that: "once the firing base was in position, the officer in command ordered it to be aimed and fired at the property for about a minute, that is, about 500 shots; they then stopped their action and, using loudspeakers, ordered the occupants of the property to surrender."

"One of them," it continues, "Sergio Peña Díaz, decided to surrender and came out with his hands behind his neck, but as he was walking toward the agents, they shot him, and his wounds caused his death.

This incited the reaction of the only woman in the group, who confronted them with a weapon; faced with this reaction, Alvaro Corbalán again gave the order to fire the firing base in the direction of the property, which caused not only the death of Lucía Orfilia Vergara Valenzuela from gunshot wounds, but also the burning of the house and the incineration of the third member of the movement, Arturo Vilavella Araujo."

TOWARD THE WEST

The CNI and Air Force units then set off toward the other side of Santiago, heading to a house at Janequeo 5707, near Plaza Garín, in Quinta Normal, a house that had been under surveillance for a couple of months.

In the moments prior to the agents' arrival, the Carabineros evicted about eighty people from an adjacent shelter and took them to a nearby church.

The repressive forces surrounded the house where Alejandro Salgado Troquián and Hugo Nolberto Ratier Noguera were hiding on three sides. Salgado managed to escape the house but was killed in the street by bursts of machine-gun fire from CNI agents.

Ratier tried to resist. However, the firepower of the number of agents proved insurmountable.

In the following days, the government reported that security services had arrested the members of the MIR commando responsible for the assassination of Cárol Urzúa.

On October 10, 2013, Judge Miguel Vásquez Plaza decided to prosecute and ordered pretrial detention for the following CNI agents: Roberto Urbano Schmied Zanzi, Sergio María Canals Baldwin, Alvaro Julio Federico Corbalán Castilla, Aquiles Mauricio González Cortés, Fernando Rafael Mauricio Rojas Tapia, Jorge Octavio Vargas Bories, José Abel Aravena Ruiz, José Guillermo Salas Fuentes, Luis Arturo Sanhueza Ross, Egon Antonio Barra Barra, Norman Antonio Jeldes Aguilar, Manuel Angel Morales Acevedo, Raúl Boris Méndez Santos, Rodolfo Enrique Olguín González, and Zinaida Lena Vicencio González as perpetrators of the crimes of qualified homicide against Hugo Ratier Noguera and Alejandro Salgado Troquián; and Raúl Hernán Escobar Díaz, Rafael Ricardo Ortega Gutiérrez, Luis Hernán Gálvez Navarro, and Eduardo Martín Chávez Baeza as accomplices to the crimes of qualified homicide against Ratier Noguera and Salgado Troquián.

ASYLUM SEEKERS

The balance of the events that occurred on Calle Fuenteovejuna and Calle Janequeo was impressive for the press. Just one week after the assassination of the Intendant of Santiago, security services had managed to kill five MIR members—two of them from the movement's leadership—and arrest five others.

On December 29, 1993, at the corner of Calle Andes and General Barboza, Quinta Normal, Juan Elías Espinoza Parra ("Yuri"), identified as one of those in charge of a MIR identity document forgery workshop, was killed by the CNI. His fall was the last warning for the survivors of the commando that executed Urzúa.

On the afternoon of January 16, 1984, two men and two women entered the French embassy armed and requested asylum, claiming they were wanted by the CNI. Minutes later, the four—Jaime Yovánovic(1), José Aguilera, Elba Duarte, and Pamela Cordero—jumped into the neighboring site, where the residence of the Apostolic Nunciature was located.

After a long discussion with the legation secretary, Antonio Sozzo, they handed over their weapons, two of which—according to the press of the time—had been used in the attack against Urzúa. The following day, Nuncio Angelo Sodano asked the government to grant safe conduct to the MIR members so they could leave the country.

The CNI installed 24 of its agents in a neighboring house. Nine armed Carabineros were permanently stationed next to the doors of the Vatican representation, and groups of civilians, day after day, burned MIR flags and demanded the surrender of the asylum seekers.

All vehicles entering and leaving the embassy were carefully searched. In the streets, meanwhile, the CNI continued its task of extermination.

(1) Jaime Yovánovic Prieto has denied having been part of the commando that attacked General Urzúa. See: Juan Araya Díaz: "Las andanzas de un mirista. Habla acusado por crimen del general Urzúa"; El Mercurio, September 3, 2000.

by Manuel Salazar Salvo

Source: puntofinal.cl, edition No. 894, March 9, 2018