Judge Carlos Flores, who is exclusively dedicated to human rights violation cases, prosecuted four retired Carabineros for the murder of the former mayor of Chillán and his family in September 1973. The individuals subjected to prosecution are retired officer Patricio Jéldrez Rodríguez and former Carabineros Juan Francisco Opazo Guerrero, Pedro Loyola Osorio, and Arturo Alarcón Navarrete.

All are charged with the crime of qualified homicide. As reported by El Mostrador, the events occurred on September 16, 1973, in Chillán, when police officers broke into the home of former mayor Ricardo Lagos Reyes, his wife Alba Ojeda Grandón, who was six months pregnant, and their son, Carlos Eduardo.

According to the investigation, the uniformed officers took the victims to a terrace at the residence, where they ordered them to sit on a staircase and gunned them down. Two years after the mayor's death, his son Ricardo Lagos Salinas was detained by a military patrol in Santiago, and his name now appears on the list of the forcibly disappeared known to the Dialogue Roundtable.

Source: La Tercera, March 13, 2003

Harsh criticism of Judge Billard over light sentences in triple crime

Plaintiff lawyer Eduardo Contreras stated that he will appeal the sentence because "this is not justice." Lawyer Hugo Gutiérrez described the minister's resolution as "shameful and aberrant." Human rights lawyers formulated harsh criticisms of Santiago Court of Appeals minister Joaquín Billard, who yesterday handed down light sentences and granted the benefit of "supervised release" to those who, on September 16, 1973, murdered the socialist mayor of Chillán, Ricardo Lagos Reyes, his wife Alba Ojeda Grandón—who was seven months pregnant—and their 19-year-old son Carlos Lagos Salinas.

In a resolution—described by lawyer Hugo Gutiérrez as "shameful and aberrant" and which the plaintiff in the case, Eduardo Contreras, considered as "not doing justice and promoting impunity"—Billard sentenced retired Carabineros Colonel Luis Gajardo Arenas to five years in prison as the perpetrator of the triple homicide, allowing him to serve the sentence under a "supervised release" regime due to his "unblemished conduct." The judge also sentenced retired Carabineros Lieutenant Colonel Patricio Jeldres Rodríguez to three years in prison as an accessory, granting him the same benefit.

The lawyers also considered it a "legal aberration" that Billard acquitted those who appear, according to plaintiff Contreras, to be the material authors of the triple crime: retired Carabineros non-commissioned officers Juan Opazo Guerrero, Pedro Loyola Osorio, and Arturo Alarcón Navarrete.

Eduardo Contreras declared to La Nación that "we will certainly appeal this first-instance sentence because we consider it unjust and because these rulings do not provide justice to the victims and their families." The appeal must be heard by a chamber of the Santiago Court, which has the authority to modify Billard's ruling.

The matter will then reach the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court, which has also distinguished itself over the last two years by substantially reducing sentences and granting benefits for "unblemished conduct" to military personnel who committed crimes during the past dictatorship.

At noon on Sunday, September 16, 1973, about 30 Carabineros and Army personnel entered Mayor Lagos's house in Chillán, taking him along with his wife and son to the backyard of the house, where they killed them with multiple gunshots, despite the mayor's pleas not to kill his wife due to her advanced state of pregnancy.

Two workers who happened to be at the house because they had delivered merchandise ordered by the mayor were locked in a storage room by the military and testified in the proceedings regarding Lagos Reyes's pleas not to kill his wife and son.

They were also witnesses to the cruelty with which the perpetrators treated the family and the mockery in response to the mayor's pleas. Subsequently, the head of the Chillán state of emergency zone, Army Colonel Juan Guillermo Toro Dávila, disguised the murder as a "confrontation." Lawyer Contreras, who was a communist deputy for Chillán at the time, extended his criticisms to Billard "because he also left Toro Dávila unpunished, who clearly bears full criminal responsibility for this triple crime." The mayor was the father of Ricardo Lagos Salinas, a member of the PS Central Committee who remains forcibly disappeared. Compensation In any case, the lawyers said that "at least" the judge did not apply the amnesty law or the statute of limitations for the crime, declaring that the crime is one of those considered a "crime against humanity," and in this regard, international criminal legislation that protects human rights must be applied. At the same time, in the sentence, Billard partially accepted a civil lawsuit and ordered the state and the two retired Carabineros officers to pay the family the sum of 30 million pesos for moral damages.

Source: La Nación, August 21, 2008