Omar Venturelli was born on February 1, 1942. He was ordained as a priest and later secularized. He resided at Pedro de Valdivia 045, Temuco. He was a professor in the Department of Education at the Universidad Católica, Temuco campus, and a member of the Christians for Socialism group.

He was detained on September 25, 1973, at the Tucapel Regiment in Temuco, where he had presented himself voluntarily after being summoned via Radio Cautín to report to that unit. The following day, he was transferred to the Public Jail of that city, from where he was forcibly disappeared on October 4, 1973.

Both the military authorities and the Gendarmerie acknowledge his arrest, stating, however, that he was released on October 3, 1973—information that does not align with the truth.

Mr. Roberto Venturelli, the victim's father, stated in his judicial testimony that on September 24, he accompanied his son to the Tucapel Regiment, recommending that he return the following day. His son arrived on the 25th and was detained; the arrest was acknowledged by the officers, who stated that Omar Venturelli would be transferred to the Public Jail.

Subsequently, Roberto went to the penitentiary, where he was informed that, like other relatives of detainees, he could see his son, and for that purpose, they had him enter the visiting courtyard. However, unexpectedly, he was told that it would not be possible to see his son.

He went to the jail daily, receiving written messages from his son, in his own handwriting and with his signature, in which he indicated the items he needed.

On October 4, he was informed that Omar had been released on the afternoon of the previous day. The same information was given to him at the Military Prosecutor's Office, where they even showed him an order to that effect.

A copy of said order was at the jail. But the truth is that he has not seen his son Omar since then. All efforts to clarify the fate he met at the hands of his captors proved useless.

In February 1991, the 2nd Criminal Court of Temuco initiated case 73.369 regarding the alleged disappearance of four forcibly disappeared persons, including Omar Roberto Venturelli Leonelli. This process began following the information that the Rettig Report submitted to the Court.

REPRESSIVE SITUATION

Omar Roberto Venturelli Leonelli, father of one daughter, former priest, member of the Christians for Socialism group, and professor at the Universidad Católica de Temuco, was detained on September 25, 1973, at the Tucapel Regiment in Temuco, where he had presented himself voluntarily after being summoned via Radio Cautín to report to that unit.

The following day, he was transferred to the city's Public Jail, from where he was forcibly disappeared on October 4, 1973. Both the military authorities and the Gendarmerie acknowledge his arrest, stating, however, that he was released on October 3, 1973—information that does not align with the truth.

Mr. Roberto Venturelli Leonelli, the victim's father, stated in his judicial testimony that on September 24, he accompanied his son to the Tucapel Regiment, where they claimed to be unaware of the summons or corresponding citation, recommending that he return the following day.

His son arrived on the 25th and was detained; the arrest was acknowledged by the officers, who told him that Omar Venturelli would be transferred to the Public Jail. Subsequently, he went to the penitentiary where he was informed, as were other relatives of detainees, that he could see his son, and for that purpose, they had him enter the visiting courtyard.

However, unexpectedly, they were told that it would not be possible to see the prisoners. He went to the jail daily, receiving written messages from his son, in his own handwriting and with his signature, in which he indicated the items he needed.

On October 4, he was informed that Omar Roberto had been released on the afternoon of the previous day. The same information was given to him at the Military Prosecutor's Office, where they even showed him an order to that effect.

A copy of said order was at the jail. But the truth is that since then he has not seen his son Omar Roberto Venturelli again; all efforts he made to clarify the fate he met at the hands of his captors proved useless.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

On June 15, 1979, a complaint for alleged disappearance was filed before the Visiting Minister Alfredo Maynet González, who was investigating case 2-79 regarding the disappearances of persons detained in the Department of Temuco.

During the process, information was requested from the Tucapel Regiment of Temuco, whose authority reported that there was no record or information regarding Omar Roberto Venturelli in that unit; however, upon examining the records held in the Military Prosecutor's Office of the Army and Carabineros of Cautín, it is noted that the victim was detained by Carabineros of Nueva Imperial and placed at the disposal of the Wartime Prosecutor's Office for political activism on September 17, 1973; after being interrogated, he was admitted under the rules of the State of Siege to a Special Annex for political prisoners established in the Public Jail of Temuco. Subsequently, the Regiment Commander's report adds, due to a lack of sufficient grounds to proceed against him, he was released on parole on October 3, 1973. On the other hand, in the respective investigation order carried out by the Investigative Police, it is noted that in the Statistics Section of the Public Jail, the affected party is registered in the Detainee Log, showing his entry on September 19, 1973, and "with Release Order No. 52 from the Military Prosecutor's Office, he was released on October 4, 1973."

On October 25, 1979, the Visiting Minister declared himself incompetent to continue hearing the case and referred the records to the IV Military Court of Valdivia, on the grounds that personnel from the Armed Forces and Order participated in his detention, acting unequivocally in the line of duty.

On December 19, 1979, the Military Court accepted its jurisdiction and ordered the Military Prosecutor's Office of Cautín to investigate case 1192 bis-79.

Said Prosecutor's Office, after adding the victim's birth certificate to the case file and without ordering any other measures, dismissed the case totally and definitively on October 24, 1980, by virtue of the Amnesty Decree Law of April 1978. During the processing of the case, the Gendarmerie was not asked for the receipt signed by the detainee at the time of his alleged release.

In February 1991, the Second Criminal Court of Temuco initiated case 73.369 regarding the alleged disappearance of 4 forcibly disappeared persons, including Omar Roberto Venturelli Leonelli. This process began following the information that the Rettig Report submitted to the Court.

Source: Corporation report

That day, the soldiers arrived at the home of Mr. Víctor, perhaps on the second or third floor of a small building located on Avenida Alemania, near the corner of Doctor Carrillo Street. From the beginning, they tried to denigrate the stoic rector: machine guns pushing against his buttocks and back—it was a language clear enough to express that the "days of change" had arrived in Temuco, at his beloved Universidad Católica where he served as rector.

A couple of blocks separated his home from the Menchaca Lira Campus, and he arrived there trembling, compelled by the force of arms at his back to open the university. Raviola maintains in a statement made before Venturelli's wife, and later ratified before the police, that his nervousness prevented him from opening the door.

Raviola also expressed that the uniformed officer in charge of the operation, armed to the teeth, had rudely rebuked him, telling him that if he was not capable of opening a door, how could he pretend to run a university.

He then ordered his troops to kick down the university door to teach him once and for all how "the change" could be materialized in a short period of time. The person in charge of enforcing Pinochet's orders after the military coup was Alfonso Podlech Michaud, military prosecutor of the Tucapel Regiment in Temuco.

And he wore a military uniform, despite the fact that he denies it these days, just as he also shamelessly denied that he was ever even a military prosecutor.

Podlech, arrested on July 26, 2008, at the Barajas airport in Madrid, looked with perplexity at his captors on that unimaginable day of his arrest. While they read him his rights, which he knew all too well in his capacity as a jurist, they informed him that they were acting on an active arrest warrant from Italy, an international capture order originating from the case of the disappearance of Omar Venturelli Leonelli, a professor at that small university where he gave the order to break down the main door so that fascism could enter and establish itself.

Venturelli, an Italian citizen, was a man of the left, recognized in the Mapuche region where Neruda's poetry flourished. Linked to what is now called the "recovery of Mapuche lands," in a political movement called "Christians for Socialism," he was certainly identified by the coup-plotting right as an agitator of "international Marxism," a "red priest" who abandoned the priesthood to live in cohabitation with Fresia Cea, a former student of the Colegio Providencia in Temuco.

No one remembers the political legacy of the former priest, not even the leftist press, as if his only virtue had been to be a leftist sympathizer and to have joined his life with Fresia's. Víctor Raviola was one of the guests at that wedding of Omar and Fresia.

That day, he went personally to deliver his gift to the newlyweds' home. Everyone, in one way or another, were Christian people. Mr. Víctor, whom many during the dictatorship considered an informer, was forced to sign decrees expelling professors from the Universidad Católica, as evidenced by his signatures at the bottom of each document.

His legacy is rather modest: literature professor; a likely political sympathizer, quite passive; a being who, to survive in life, used the decent strategy of omission, with which no one could ever seriously question him. His testimony regarding Alfonso Podlech, in the investigation of the Omar Venturelli Leonelli case, is proof of this, a matter that the widow herself confirms.

"Ambito" was the name of one of the classes the former priest taught at the Universidad Católica de Temuco. It was a strange course, with much of Christian social assistance, linked to a formulation of basic precepts to understand the extreme world of poverty.

The students had to go to the marginal neighborhoods of Temuco and relate to a world hidden by the system, and based on that experience, be evaluated.

Marycruz, my wife, was one of his moved students, and at some point, she told Venturelli that she could not buy the book "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State" by the famous co-author of Marx, Friedrich Engels, which they had to read.

Of course, Venturelli lent it to her. That happened more or less in June or July 1973, while David, our firstborn, was growing in her small womb. That is how the book, which I always found tedious to read, arrived in our budding library.

Two or three months later, the cursed military coup arrived, that disgusting flatulence of history that the right still strives to justify. A few days later, almost at the end of September, Marycruz and my brother-in-law, curiously also named Omar, on Avenida Prat at the corner of San Martín, encountered the spectacle of seeing Omar Venturelli Leonelli, their professor, hands tied behind his back and guarded by two soldiers, crossing the plaza bound for the Tucapel Regiment.

Arriving at our house, strictly speaking our room, Marycruz, moved, told me that we had to hide our "compromising" books, among which was naturally the Engels book, lent by Omar. For years they were like that, hidden between the folds of a door, until we could rescue them, destroying the door that hid them, now as useless as the dictatorship.

When we did, the image of Omar, hands tied and aimed at by teenage soldiers who could have been his students, surfaced.

This testimony, which we always considered superficial, suddenly, by putting dates together and connecting the dots, could finally be part of a whole.

Fresia Cea, a former student of the Colegio Providencia in Temuco—like Marycruz—has arrived at our home thirty-six years later. When Fresia takes that small piece of her history, tearfully, she denounces that Omar Venturelli Leonelli, the husband, the professor whom many still expect to return, had broken the family commitment not to lend books.

That day, Omar Venturelli was dressed in blue, a corduroy jacket perhaps, jeans, a shirt in the same tone. That is how Fresia remembered him leaving his house, never to return.

What she did not know, had no way of knowing, was that a student of her husband saw him with his hands tied and aimed at by two soldiers following the ordinances of the prosecutor of the Tucapel Regiment of Temuco, and dressed in blue with the same sobriety with which he attended to teach classes at the Universidad Católica de Temuco.

– The author is a poet and writer; author of several biographical books about his great-uncle Pablo Neruda.

Source: rebelion.org (source: el clarin) 7/1/2010 Date: 01-07-2010

The military personnel are currently facing an extradition process at the request of Italy to serve a life sentence in the foreign country. The Supreme Court minister, Ángela Vivanco Martínez, ordered house arrest for four former agents of the dictatorship, convicted to life imprisonment by the Italian justice system for the crime of 43 Latin American citizens of Italian origin in the 70s, within the framework of Operation Condor.

Among them are four Chilean victims. These are the former agents Orlando Moreno Vásquez, Manuel Vasquez Chahuán, Rafael Ahumada Valderrama, and Daniel Aguirre Mora. Of the other two requested, one is deceased and the other, Pedro Espinoza Bravo, is imprisoned in Punta Peuco serving various sentences for other crimes against humanity.

The military personnel are currently facing an extradition process at the request of Italy, in which representatives of the victims have become parties. Among them, lawyers Nelson Caucoto and Francisco Bustos act on behalf of the daughter of Juan José Montiglio Murúa, one of the four Italian-Chilean victims.

Montiglio was 24 years old, was from the Socialist Party, and was the unit chief of President Allende's Personal Guard (GAP). He was detained at the Palacio de la Moneda on the day of the military coup, subsequently taken to the Tacna Regiment, and murdered in Peldehue two days later.

To date, he remains in the status of a forcibly disappeared person. Previously, the criminals were under the precautionary measure of a national travel ban, which was modified at the request of the representation of the Republic of Italy, the Human Rights Program, and the plaintiffs, who requested a more intensive precautionary measure, for which they were granted total house arrest.

For lawyer Francisco Bustos, this new measure dictated by Magistrate Vivanco is of great importance, since "being close to the end of this phase of the process, the need to ensure that the requested parties are at the disposal of the court is recognized.

Likewise, I am confident that we will demonstrate that all the requirements to access extradition are met and ensure that the sentences imposed by the Court of Rome are fulfilled."

Conviction 20 years later

The other Italian-Chilean victims are Omar Roberto Venturelli Leonelli (31), former priest, militant of the MIR, detained on September 25, 1973; Juan Bosco Maino Canales (27), militant of the MAPU, student, and detained on May 26, 1976; and Jaime Patricio Donato Avendaño (41), member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, electrical mechanic, detained on May 5, 1976.

In 1998, at the urging of their relatives, the Italian justice system initiated the investigation into this process, and only after 20 years did the Supreme Court of Italy issue the ruling that sentenced 24 Latin American genocidaires involved in Operation Condor to life imprisonment.

In April of last year, an Italian delegation composed of a lawyer and a representative of the victims visited our country to learn details of the process taking place in Chile, contribute to raising awareness about this historic trial in our country, and collaborate with the extradition of those involved and convicted in this case.

Source: eldesconcierto.cl, March 24, 2023 Date: 24-03-2023

Italy requests extradition of three convicted for "Plan Condor"

The petition targets Daniel Aguirre Mora, Pedro Espinoza Bravo, and Carlos Luco Astroza, sentenced to life imprisonment for this case. According to information published by Radio Biobío, the General Directorate of Legal Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent a confidential official letter on May 27 with the extradition request for three Chilean citizens sentenced to life imprisonment by the Italian justice system in the context of the so-called "Plan Condor." The action refers to former military officer Daniel Aguirre Mora, Brigadier (ret.) Pedro Espinoza Bravo, and former PDI member Carlos Luco Astroza. According to the background of the request, Aguirre Mora and Luco Astroza were convicted for having participated as those in charge of the "interrogations and torture in the Temuco prison, in the murder of the Italian citizen Omar Roberto Venturelli Leonelli." Regarding Pedro Espinoza Bravo, the conviction was for "having participated, together with other people, as head of operations and number two of the DINA and as responsible for the clandestine detention center 'Villa Grimaldi,' in the murder of the Italian nationals Jaime Patricio Donato Avendaño and Juan Bosco Maino Canales." The request, filed last Tuesday, May 31, with the highest court, is based on the Extradition Treaty between Chile and Italy signed in Rome on February 27, 2002, and bears the signature of the Italian Minister of Justice, Marta Cartabia, the same authority who in August 2021 requested the extradition of former military officers Orlando Moreno Vásquez, Manuel Vásquez Chahuán, and Rafael Ahumada Valderrama.

Source: RADIO.UCHILE.CL 7/6/2022 Date: 07-06-2022

Memorial to Forcibly Disappeared Persons inaugurated at UC Temuco with a heartfelt tribute

Ratifying the deep commitment that the UC Temuco has to Human Rights, the unveiling and blessing of the Memorial to Forcibly Disappeared Persons was held at the Menchaca Lira Campus, a space that remembers Professor Omar Venturelli and student Víctor Oliva, both victims of the dictatorship.

See Gallery With the presence of the Grand Chancellor of the UC Temuco, Monsignor Héctor Vargas; the Vice Grand Chancellor Fr. Juan Esteban Leonelli; the Rector Dr. Aliro Bórquez Ramírez; university authorities, and especially the relatives of those forcibly disappeared during the dictatorship, an emotional ceremony was held to inaugurate the Memorial to Forcibly Disappeared Persons and pay tribute to Víctor and Omar.

The memorial is located on the Menchaca Lira Campus, the place where Víctor Oliva and Omar Venturelli studied and worked. In this quiet space, conducive to reflection, there is a commemorative plaque with their names, as well as a writing by Saint John Paul II in which it reads: "In the defense of the universality and indivisibility of human rights, it is essential for the construction of a peaceful society for the integral development of individuals, peoples, and nations." During the ceremony, Monsignor Héctor Vargas gave a profound speech on Human Rights, recalling the importance of respect for others and inviting the community to be a "good Samaritan and merciful." He added that "this memorial, along with paying a heartfelt tribute to these two brothers of ours as a form of reparation, is a way to collaborate so that there is more peace in the hearts of the relatives of the forcibly disappeared and also within the educational community of this University that had its wounds. May this memorial remind us that as a University we must educate the new generations that pass through the classrooms in the beautiful and invaluable gift of peace, which is the fruit of justice and love and the mercy that is always ready to forgive and reconcile," noted the Grand Chancellor. An important presence at the blessing and inauguration of the Memorial was the recently awarded National Human Rights Prize winner Viviana Díaz, who commented that the unveiling "was an emotional ceremony; the tribute that has been paid to a professor and a student of this university marks a milestone in the history of our country, since there are many other university students who to this day have not been paid a proper tribute. That is why I believe this memorial is very important and to be able to leave the message to the new students to remember and build 'never again' in our country." For his part, the rector of the UC Temuco, Dr. Aliro Bórquez Ramírez, stated that "this is a gesture that the University had to make with Víctor and Omar, where we had a pending debt with the relatives to make a physical and symbolic recognition like this memorial of reparation for their families. This space will be a contribution to future generations, so that our students and officials learn from history and know that these types of things cannot happen again, for which this physical and symbolic space is a constant reminder and learning for all of us." To "never forget," the Memorial to Forcibly Disappeared Persons is open to the entire community, inviting reflection and memory "as a lesson not to commit the mistakes of the past again."

Source: prensa.uct.cl 1/12/2015 Date: 01-12-2015

UC of Temuco awarded posthumous degrees to professor and student victims of the dictatorship

The Universidad Católica de Temuco awarded the title of professor emeritus to Omar Venturelli Leonelli and the posthumous title to student Víctor Oliva Troncoso, both victims of the military dictatorship.

Professor Omar Venturelli, after the military coup, was detained and taken to the jail of the capital of La Araucanía, from where he disappeared in October 1973. Meanwhile, student Víctor Oliva was detained in Argentina in July 1975 during Operation Condor and subsequently murdered.

The Universidad Católica de Temuco, which commemorates its 55th anniversary, decided to pay tribute to them during a ceremony where other professionals were highlighted, as indicated by Rector Aliro Bórquez.

Carlos Oliva, president of the Association of Forcibly Disappeared and Politically Executed Persons of La Araucanía and brother of Víctor Oliva, commented that although the tribute was born from the university itself, they would have expected it to be sooner.

Oliva commented that this Tuesday they will announce the program of activities to commemorate another September 11, but anticipated that on that day in Temuco they will hold a march in conjunction with students from the Universidad de la Frontera.

Source: biobio.cl 9/9/2014 Date: 09-09-2014

POPE FRANCIS RECEIVES TORTURED MAN AND RELATIVES OF PINOCHET'S VICTIMS

Daughter of the Italian-Chilean priest Omar Venturelli handed the pontiff a letter asking that the Chilean Church help in the search for his body. Sister of Juan Bosco Maino gave Bergoglio a video as a gift with the symbolic funeral they held for him in Colonia Dignidad.

Pope Francis received relatives of the disappeared and victims of repression by military dictatorships in Latin America, including some Chileans, in an audience held at the Vatican. Jeremías Levinao, detained and tortured in Temuco, as well as Margarita Maino and María Paz Venturelli, sister and daughter of Juan Bosco Maino and the Italian-Chilean priest Omar Venturelli, respectively—both disappeared and murdered during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet—were received by the pontiff.

Also present at the event were Anna Milazzo Cecchi and Mena Narducci, detained and tortured in Montevideo (Uruguay); Geneviéve Jeanningros, granddaughter of Sister Leonié Duquet, murdered in Argentina; and Cecilia Romero, niece of Bishop Óscar Romero, murdered in El Salvador.

MESSAGES TO FRANCIS

After the meeting, Levinao revealed that he asked the Pope to do "something for the Mapuche people, who need justice." In turn, María Paz Venturelli said that she handed the pontiff a letter in which she asks that the Chilean ecclesiastical "representatives" help in the search for her father's body. "I imagine that, like so many, like many, they still know a lot that they didn't tell.

I think it is very important for the reconstruction of peace to achieve the truth and that each of us can live our mourning, build our history, and give dignity to the victims. The Church can choose to stay watching or take this step," she asserted.

Omar Venturelli, who had left the priesthood to marry, presented himself voluntarily at the "Tucapel" regiment in Temuco on September 25, 1973, after learning through a radio station that he was sought by the military authorities.

He was subsequently transferred to the Temuco jail, where he was seen by other prisoners until October 4 of that same year, the date on which his trail is lost. He was a militant of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR).

For her part, the sister of Juan Bosco Maino, Margarita Maino, stated that she appeared before Jorge Mario Bergoglio with "anguish" so that "what he said to me would be very accurate and he would be well imbued with it." "I asked him for truth, justice, and peace.

I presented myself touching my brother's photo and with a video as a gift that contains the history of the family and Juan's funeral in Colonia Dignidad," she said regarding the current Villa Baviera, used as a detention center by Pinochet.

OPERATION CONDOR

The cases of Juan Bosco Maino and Omar Venturelli are framed within Operation Condor, Pinochet's plan coordinated with other dictatorships of the Southern Cone to repress political opposition. The Italian justice system is investigating the disappearance and death of 23 Latin American citizens of Italian origin within the framework of that operation.

In this process, which is currently in the preliminary hearing phase, 17 Uruguayans, 12 Chileans, two Bolivians, and four Peruvians are charged, all of them members of the military juntas and security services of their respective countries between the years 1973 and 1978, as stated in the prosecutor's complaint.

For the Venturelli case, former prosecutor Alfonso Podlech was detained for 3 years in Italy, who was acquitted despite the fact that he risked life imprisonment for the case, and in 2011 he returned to Temuco.

Source: La Nacion 29 de Mayo 2014 Date: 29-05-2014

Widow of Omar Venturelli passed away

Fresia Cea Villalobos led the trials in Chile and Italy to clarify what happened in one of the emblematic cases of human rights violations during the Dictatorship that occurred in Temuco. Fresia Cea Villalobos, human rights defender, widow of Omar Venturelli, a forcibly disappeared person from Temuco, passed away yesterday in Bologna, Italy, as a result of a long illness that had been weakening her state of health.

The information was provided by the Association of Relatives of Forcibly Disappeared and Politically Executed Persons of La Araucanía, which confirmed the death of the activist, whom they described as an example of the fight to achieve Truth and Justice for the disappearance of Omar Venturelli Leonelli in Temuco in 1973.

Fresia Cea, in her effort to clarify the human rights violations suffered inside the Tucapel Regiment by the Italian-Chilean professor Omar Venturelli, resorted to the Chilean and Italian justice systems; "unfortunately she left with the frustration—like many of our own—of not obtaining a satisfactory response from the Courts," expressed the Association.

A native of Renaico, she arrived in Temuco to continue her studies, entering the pedagogy program at the Universidad Católica de Temuco. Fresia Cea was always linked to the defense of human rights, with actions and militancy from her student years together with the man who would be her husband, Omar Venturelli.

After the disappearance of her husband in 1973, she went into exile in Italy, returning to Chile 20 years later, an occasion where she was part of the founding of the Women's Center of Temuco. Omar Venturelli Omar Roberto Venturelli Leonelli, member of the Christians for Socialism group, professor at the Universidad Católica de Temuco, was detained on September 25, 1973, at the Tucapel Regiment in Temuco, where he presented himself voluntarily after being summoned via Radio Cautín to report to that Unit.

The following day, he was transferred to the city's Public Jail, from where he was forcibly disappeared on October 4, 1973. Both the military authority and the Gendarmerie acknowledge his arrest, stating, however, that he was released on October 3, 1973—information that does not align with the truth, indicates memoriaviva.cl It should be noted that the former military prosecutor of Temuco, Alfonso Podlech, was tried and acquitted in Italy for the disappearance of the former priest Omar Venturelli during the Pinochet dictatorship.

Source: laopinion.cl 1/3/2012 Date: 01-03-2012

Three witnesses testified against former military prosecutor detained in Italy

Three witnesses testified today in the third hearing of the first trial for the murder of the former priest of Italian origin Omar Venturelli in 1973, whose responsibility was allegedly that of the former military prosecutor during the Chilean dictatorship, Alfonso Podlech Michaud.

Lautaro Calfuquir, of Mapuche origin and who was a companion of Venturelli in the Temuco jail (Chile), testified before the court that the former priest left the facility at six in the evening on October 4, 1973, "a bad sign because those who were taken out at that time were always tortured or disappeared," he told Efe. "Venturelli never returned," stressed Calfuquir, who for his part was tortured "with classic beatings and electric shocks, although they did not touch my face." Another witness, Paolo Berzhenko, who was then a History professor at the Universidad Católica de Temuco, recounted to the court that he met Venturelli at the Military Prosecutor's Office, where interrogations and war councils were held, and whose military prosecutor was Alfonso Podlech Michaud. According to Berzhenko, "Venturelli was interrogated there, but he was made to disappear before and was never tried." Finally, Eleuterio Toro, a Mathematics professor at the Universidad Católica de Temuco, explained how the repression was carried out in that town. He detailed Venturelli's Italian origin, said he knew his family, his parents, that he lived in the "Capital Pastene" Italian colony, he pointed out to Efe. The Italian judicial system allows for the trial to be held "by right of blood," which implies the initiation of processes for crimes committed anywhere in the world against citizens of Italy.

Source: latercera.com 9/12/2009 Date: 09-12-2009

Chilean lawyer was detained in Spain for human rights case

Alfonso Podlech allegedly had an international arrest warrant for the death of the Italian priest Omar Roberto Venturelli. SANTIAGO.— The well-known lawyer from Temuco and former Military Prosecutor of Cautín, Alfonso Podlech Michaud, was detained at the Barajas airport in Madrid, Spain, when he was preparing to travel to the Czech Republic.

The information, published by the newspaper El Austral de Temuco, was confirmed by his nephew Miguel Antonio Podlech, who maintained that during the morning of this Tuesday they were informed through a phone call of the professional's detention.

Alfonso Podlech traveled on July 26 to Europe together with his wife, Verónica Pinto Cáceres, with the goal of vacationing. Sources linked to the case specified that Podlech was apprehended minutes before the plane took off from the airport.

The lawyer, as detailed by the southern newspaper, was allegedly apprehended in compliance with an international capture order for the investigation being carried out by the Courts of Italy for the disappearance of the former priest Omar Roberto Venturelli Leonelli, which occurred in 1973.

The known background indicates that the prelate and professor of the Universidad Católica was last seen on October 4 of that year, the same day that the Caravan of Death passed through Temuco and left a toll of 18 fatal victims.

Source: emol.com 29/7/2008 Date: 29-07-2008

Complaint against former Temuco prosecutor Óscar Podlech

A complaint for the crimes of kidnapping, torture, and illicit association for the disappearance of the former Italian-Chilean priest Omar Venturelli Leonelli will be presented today at the Santiago Court of Appeals against the former military prosecutor, lawyer from Temuco, and current university academic in that city, Óscar Alfonso Podlech Michaud.

The criminal action, sponsored by lawyers Hugo Gutiérrez and Hiram Villagra, will be filed by his ex-wife Fresia Cea Villalobos, who resides in Italy together with her daughter but who traveled to file a complaint against the former prosecutor, as well as against the former dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Until now, the former military prosecutor has not been indicted for crimes against humanity, but the plaintiffs hope that "this will be the first time," as lawyer Gutiérrez told La Nación, since according to the accusers "he has several victims in Temuco." The charges Podlech is accused of ordering torture and defining the fate of political prisoners after the military coup as a prosecutor in that area, wearing an Army uniform.

In the case of Venturelli, he presented himself voluntarily on September 17, 1973, called by radio while his wife was detained at the Tucapel Regiment, who was later released. He was interrogated repeatedly, according to the complaint, by prosecutor Podlech, between the Temuco jail, the Tucapel Regiment, and the Maquehue air base.

In the document, it is stated that Podlech signed on October 4, 1973, official letter No. 52 in which he stated that Venturelli was "released on October 3, 1973," but nothing more was ever known of his whereabouts.

It is suspected that both the extrajudicial execution of six prisoners in Temuco, as well as the disappearance of Venturelli and two other detainees, could have had to do with the passage through that city of the Caravan of Death, since deaths and disappearances occurred between October 2 and 3, 1973, when General Sergio Arellano and his squadron were moving between Valdivia and Temuco, as has been judicially established.

Source: La Nación 25 de Julio 2006 Date: 25-07-2006