The man who served as head of the CNI in Punta Arenas in 1988 is facing a legal process regarding the death of the young woman Susana Obando, which was initially classified as a suicide. A lawsuit filed by her mother asserts that she was detained and thrown into the sea.

At least ten former agents of the Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI) confirm it in the proceedings: he was our chief in 1988 in Punta Arenas with the rank of major. On July 26 of that year, the 23-year-old socialist Susana Obando Coñué was detained—according to a witness—in that city, and hours later she appeared dead on a beach.

The clues point, as a source close to the investigation told LND, to the former CNI. Today, Rodolfo Antonio Ortega Prado, who according to his subordinates used the alias ‘Rodrigo’, is an active-duty Army colonel and serves as a military attaché at the Chilean Embassy in Spain.

He arrived in Madrid last year and is assigned until July 2005. In a list of 540 military agents of the former CNI, delivered by the Army to the courts in 1999 for the investigation of the murder of labor leader Tucapel Jiménez, Colonel Ortega occupies number 335.

From Madrid, Colonel Ortega confirmed to LND that he was “head of the CNI in Punta Arenas for four years until 1989.” But he stated that “what the CNI officials say is that I was the chief, but I can assure you, without knowing the case, that they cannot say that the CNI was involved, because it had nothing to do with it.” According to him, “the CNI in Punta Arenas was a minimal office in charge of administrative matters, without operational capacity to detain.

During the period I was head of the CNI in Punta Arenas, no one was ever detained by the CNI. We did purely informational work; it was not an operational unit.” The case regarding the death of Susana Obando is momentarily in the hands of the visiting minister Amanda Valdovinos.

She assumed interim responsibility for the 62 cases of human rights violations that were being investigated by minister Daniel Calvo, who is now outside of these inquiries. Before abandoning the cases, Judge Calvo ordered Colonel Ortega to be summoned to his home in Santiago, not knowing that he was in Madrid.

The colonel was informed of the summons by family members. The court consulted the Army regarding Colonel Ortega’s whereabouts, receiving on February 19 the official response that he is serving as a military attaché in Madrid.

The officer will be summoned to testify in Santiago to clarify the alleged participation of the CNI in the young woman’s death, which will occur after the Supreme Court decides, at the beginning of March, which judge will definitively take charge of the cases that Minister Calvo held.

Memories “I did not remember the Susana Obando case when they went to summon me at home, but now, with time, I remember that I knew it was reported as a suicide; even the Investigative Police investigated it in a case in Punta Arenas, but the CNI had nothing to do with it.

I have no idea who detained this person. That case did not have major significance in the area. It seemed like it was a suicide; she was not a well-known person in Punta Arenas, so it was not justified at all... she had no political influence, she was not known,” states Colonel Ortega over the phone.

But we tell him that according to her mother, Ema Coñué, the young woman was a “prominent and active” leader of the Socialist Youth in Punta Arenas. “But that is what the mother says, and mothers can say many things,” the military attaché responds.

The CNI was the repressive agency that replaced the DINA starting in August 1977. According to figures from the Rettig Report and the Report of the National Corporation for Reparation and Reconciliation, in the XII Region, the total number of victims of the dictatorship is nine (one forcibly disappeared and eight political executions), and eight correspond to the DINA period.

Between 1986 and 1989, the time of Colonel Ortega as head of the CNI in Punta Arenas, the only victim reported is Susana Obando. What exists In the investigation, the following facts have been established.

Susana Obando left her office in Punta Arenas at 10:30 on July 26, 1988, to buy a gift, and was never seen again. At 14:20 that same day, her body appeared dumped on the beach of Punta Arenas in the Calle Paraguay sector.

Those who saw the body, including her mother and relatives, noticed purple marks on both wrists “as if from squeezing”; a blow on the left side of her face; and a “needle hole” in her gum. The autopsy protocol performed by the Navy frigate captain and forensic doctor (now deceased) Dámaso Montebruno Zuanic recorded the cause of death as: “asphyxia by immersion in the sea of a suicidal nature due to nervous depression.” The report did not record visible wounds.

Ten former CNI agents have already declared in the process that Colonel Ortega was the head of the CNI in Punta Arenas at the date of the event, but they deny having anything to do with the case. However, it has been proven that the young woman was followed by two cars in the days prior, coinciding with raids that were carried out before a visit that Augusto Pinochet was to make to Punta Arenas.

The two cars were registered to two Navy officials who were identified. Their link to the CNI is being investigated. It is being investigated whether the CNI operated in Punta Arenas under the facade of a company.

A homeless person saw how that day “some people” threw “a bundle into the sea.” “The people” realized what he had seen and threatened him to keep quiet. He told Susana Obando’s mother some time later. A person who said he was a witness to everything that happened and who defined himself as a “former intelligence agent,” informed the commission that complemented the Rettig Report, under the condition of anonymity, that the young woman was indeed detained at the exit of her office, taken to a house with her eyes blindfolded to be interrogated, and that she was beaten before being thrown into the sea “drugged and handcuffed.” The identity of this person is known to LND, but it is withheld so as not to affect the investigation. The young woman had previous detentions for her public work against the military regime. Missing expert reports Until now, in the case, those who participated in these events have not been identified. Nor has it been determined if the action was committed by the CNI, “but things point in that direction,” a court source commented to LND. LND has the names of the former agents who are testifying and pointing to Colonel Ortega as their chief, but it also reserves their identities so as not to affect the judicial investigation. “Something could happen to them,” warns Susana Obando’s mother, Ema Coñué, from Punta Arenas. Among them are members of the Army who are already retired and former civilian agents, two of them women. Some also worked for the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE). Several still live in Punta Arenas. Apart from the inquiries to establish the identity of those who could have caused the death of Susana Obando, forensic examinations are still needed to determine the real cause of the socialist militant’s death. Because, at this stage of the investigation being carried out in Santiago since November 2000—after the case in Punta Arenas did not advance at all and was dismissed—no one believes in the version of Captain Montebruno’s autopsy. One of the statements that makes its veracity most doubtful is the phrase “suicide due to nervous depression.” The doctor did not know the young woman, and court sources maintain that he could hardly have known if she was depressed and that such a state led her to suicide. Furthermore, the autopsy report omitted the marks the body had on its wrists, which were noticed by several people at the time she was buried. To carry out a second autopsy protocol, the body was exhumed in April 2003 by order of Minister Daniel Calvo. But, for some reason, the body, which was well-preserved, was not transferred to Santiago to perform the second autopsy. An expert from the Legal Medical Service of Santiago and one from the Investigative Police extracted only a tissue sample to verify if Susana Obando was poisoned. This procedure has been highly criticized in various circles, because it prevented the second autopsy from being performed on the body in Santiago to check for any signs of violence. Therefore, a new exhumation is very likely. To this is added the complaint of Ema Coñué, who states with pain: “Almost a year has passed and the experts have done nothing, they have no results, and I was even informed that the remains they took had been lost. It is just that we are so far away here and we have not had support.” On the way to general Colonel Rodolfo Ortega has an ascending career. His last assignments place him in 1999 in Copiapó, already with the rank of colonel, serving as the plaza chief for the presidential election of that year. From there he went as commander of the Sangra regiment in Puerto Varas until the end of 2001. The leap he took was large, and he started as deputy director of the Army War Academy in Santiago, where he was already a professor. From that position, he assumed the military attaché post in Madrid in 2003. He is a General Staff officer, holds a master’s degree in Military Sciences with a mention in Defense Policy, and has a diploma in Military Sociology. Given the years he has been a colonel and his preparation, his natural destination is to become a general, which could happen this year, 2004, or the next.

Source: La Nacion; February 29, 2004

In the edition of Monday, March 1, La Nación reports on the situation affecting Army Colonel Rodolfo Ortega Prado, current military attaché of Chile in Madrid and former member of the CNI. Press reports account for his participation in the death of the socialist militant Susana Obando Coñué in 1988.

Regarding the death of Susana, the courts will decide. But the fact is that Ortega was a member of the CNI. When consulted, the Chilean ambassador in Madrid, Enrique Krauss, pointed out that it is an “old issue” and that the military attaché is a serious, compliant person, an excellent collaborator.

And he adds: “The CNI was created for specific tasks by a regime that ruled our country, but that should not stigmatize those who, for various circumstantial reasons, worked there.” A notable defense of CNI personnel, valid for some of their lawyers, but unacceptable for the ambassador of a democratic government.

The CNI was an illicit association that imprisoned, tortured, and murdered thousands of Chileans. Those were its specific tasks, and all those who were part of it are responsible for the actions of the whole.

All of them knew that in their barracks, people were illegally arrested and tortured. Colonel Ortega Prado must be removed from the Embassy in Madrid if we want a transparent diplomacy that is presentable to the international community.

Source: La Nacion, March 5, 2004

Madrid and Punta Arenas seem to be linked for military attachés. In 1998, the representative of the Chilean Air Force, Colonel Héctor Barrientos, was recognized by a guest at the diplomatic headquarters, the Foreign Ministry official Carlos Parker, as one of his torturers at the Bahía Catalina base in Punta Arenas.

That fact caused him to be unable to continue his brilliant military career and, consequently, unable to ascend to general. Now the story seems to repeat itself with the military attaché in the "Motherland," Colonel Rodolfo Ortega Prado, who was head of the dissolved Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI) in 1988, in Punta Arenas, when the 23-year-old socialist Susana Obando was detained and murdered.

The military officer was summoned to testify on March 22 of last year before Judge Carmen Garay as an accused party. At least ten former members of the CNI have testified in the case, pointing out that the local head of that repressive agency at the time the young woman appeared dead was Major Ortega Prado.

Added to this is the existence of a “secret notebook,” where a former intelligence agent who lives outside the country declared to the complementary commission of the Rettig Report that the young woman was detained, interrogated, beaten, and thrown into the sea.

Ortega, who has been stationed in Madrid since July of last year, was the subject of protests by Spanish parliamentarians who questioned his presence at the Chilean diplomatic headquarters. Interpellation The president-spokesperson of the Left-Green Parliamentary Group IU-ICV, Gaspar Llamazares, asked a series of questions to the Spanish government about Ortega’s presence in Madrid, which had great repercussions in the Hispanic press. “Did the government know about the accusations of murder that weigh against the current Chilean military attaché in Spain and that on March 22, 2004, he was summoned to testify by the then-investigating judge Carmen Garay, who is investigating 62 cases of disappeared and murdered people?” the leader asked. Llamazares interpellates the authorities and asks them “if the Government has carried out any action in this regard in recent months? Has it requested any type of information from the Chilean political authorities on this matter? When did it happen? In the event that this has not been the case in the previous assumptions, does it plan to carry them out soon?” He immediately adds: ”What is the Government’s opinion that an alleged torturer, whose case appears mentioned both in a judicial case and in the prestigious "Rettig Report," which documented human rights violations during the military dictatorship, has been able to occupy a high diplomatic representation position in Spain in the last two years before the inaction of Spanish diplomacy?” ”Does the Government know that, according to the information handled, the name of Colonel Rodolfo Ortega Prado also appears in position 335 of a list of 540 CNI agents investigated for the crime of the union leader Tucapel Jiménez?” the leader concluded. In our country, the Undersecretary of War, Gabriel Gaspar, did not want to give an opinion on a judicial case that is in process. “On human rights or judicial issues, one must support and help justice. We do not issue opinions while a case is in judicial process. I have no considerations until there is a judicial ruling,” he said. The authority stressed that “if any person is required, consulted, or summoned by justice, they must comply with what the judge tells them. Furthermore, Colonel Ortega presented himself voluntarily to testify and has not been prosecuted in the case.” The case is advancing The case of the young socialist militant, Susana Obando, continues to advance since last year in the hands of the court minister of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Joaquín Billard, who at the end of 2004 carried out on-site procedures that allowed the defense of the Obando family to think that the case could be clarified. This was at least ratified to El Mostrador.cl by the lawyer for Codepu (Corporation for the Promotion and Defense of the Rights of the People), Alejandra Arriaza, who is awaiting the results of the procedures requested from the judge. “The latest procedures were to request the statements of new witnesses, following the relevant statement of the doctor who transcribed the autopsy. According to him, there were signs of intervention and torture on Susana, which could demonstrate that we are in the presence of a homicide and not a suicide. It was also requested that the court take a statement from a neighbor who allegedly saw her walking in the opposite direction to where the young woman’s body was later found.” In parallel, Arriaza requested that Billard interrogate the military attaché in Spain via a letter rogatory, but this request was denied by the court. The lawyer believes that the case will help unveil a much broader network of intelligence services in Tierra del Fuego. “That is what is also being investigated. At first, it was thought that Investigaciones (the police) was the only one involved, but apparently there were other distinct groups that organized and operated jointly in Punta Arenas,” she added. The mother asks for collaboration For her part, the young woman’s mother, Ema Coñue (70), who has 54 years of militancy in the Socialist Party, traveled this week to Santiago to speak with the magistrate and learn about the progress of the case. Personally, Ema is satisfied with the work of the court, but at the same time disappointed in her party. As she explains, after the PC lawyer, Julia Urquieta, abandoned her daughter’s case, she knocked on doors in the collective to get legal advice, but she was never heard, which meant that the trial did not have a plaintiff for a time. “The minister went to Punta Arenas in November. He came back very happy with what was advanced, and other security agencies that were in the city, of which there was no knowledge until now, are being investigated,” she said. Ema Coñue, who is also president of the Association of Political Executions of the Region, pointed out that she is aware of the support that Spanish socialist deputies are giving to her cause, who are also pressuring for the military attaché, Rodolfo Ortega, even though he is not yet prosecuted in the case, to leave the diplomatic position he currently holds in Madrid. But what worries the mother of Susana the most is that Ortega could be promoted to general. “This year he might possibly be promoted to general. He has an ascending career, but Cheyre should object to it, because he was the head of the Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI) in Punta Arenas. Furthermore, they have found my daughter’s name on the lists of this agency, and we know that she was followed by two vehicles, one from the Navy and one from the Army,” she concluded.

Source: elmostrador.cl, April 6, 2005

Catalan deputies asked Madrid to reject the presence of the Chilean military attaché

The Spanish Government received a request from the parliamentary group of Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) to declare the military attaché of the Chilean embassy in Madrid, Colonel Rodolfo Antonio Ortega Prado, "persona non grata" for his alleged relationship with crimes against opponents during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

ERC deputy Rosa María Bonás asserted in a legal proposal, which does not have the character of law, that it is necessary for Spain to end Ortega’s diplomatic functions, due to his past link to the Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI), one of the secret police forces that operated during the military regime, which lasted between 1973 and 1990.

Bonás bases her initiative on press reports that account for the role Ortega had in the death of the socialist leader Susana Obando, detained by the CNI on July 26, 1988, hours before her corpse appeared.

Colonel Ortega is attributed with the leadership of the CNI in the city of Punta Arenas when the woman’s death occurred. The parliamentarian recalled that the 1967 Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations allows any member of an embassy’s staff to be declared "persona non grata." According to Bonás, "Colonel Ortega must be removed from the embassy in Madrid if we want a transparent diplomacy that is presentable to the international community." The ERC is a left-wing, republican political party that defends the independence of the Catalonia region, which has eight deputies in the Congress of Deputies and is part of the parliamentary majority that supports the Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.

Source: radiocooperativa.cl, April 10, 2005

Codepu opposed the possible promotion to general of the former CNI chief

The Corporation for the Defense of the Rights of the People (Codepu) opposed the possible promotion to Army general of Colonel Rodolfo Ortega Prado, who held a leadership position in the Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI) and appears involved in the disappearance of the socialist militant Susana Obando Coñué.

The case is included in the Government’s investigation into the procedural status of trials for human rights violations of about twenty colonels, candidates to be promoted to general in the institution’s next qualification board, next October.

The request for information on the procedural status of the officers emanated from the Ministries of Defense and Interior, because it is the responsibility of President Michelle Bachelet to approve the promotions.

The current Colonel Ortega was head of the CNI in Punta Arenas between 1986 and 1989, and is accused of being, in his capacity as chief, one of those responsible for the crime of the socialist militant Susana Obando Coñué, which occurred on July 26, 1988, in the capital of the Magallanes Region.

The case is temporarily dismissed by the judge of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Joaquín Billard, despite the fact that the magistrate’s own investigation established that it was a homicide, without finding the culprits.

The plaintiffs, among them the victim’s mother, Ema Coñué, and the Corporation for the Defense of the Rights of the People (Codepu), are looking for new evidence to contribute to the case and ask for the reopening of the process.

At least 10 former CNI agents recognized Ortega during the trial as the one who gave the orders linked to the repression in Punta Arenas. The colonel testified in the case as an "accused party," admitting that he was the head of the CNI for four years in Punta Arenas, including the year in which Susana Obando was murdered, but denied any link to the event.

Codepu lawyer Federico Aguirre indicated that “it seems very serious to us that the government of Chile can give the green light for Colonel Rodolfo Ortega to be promoted to general. Our conviction is that he cannot become part of the general corps.” The body of the young socialist militant, then 23 years old, appeared on a beach in Punta Arenas the same day of her arrest by intelligence agents, and the autopsy performed by the Navy frigate captain and doctor, Dámaso Montebruno Zuanic, determined that the death occurred due to “asphyxia by immersion in the sea of a suicidal nature due to nervous depression.” However, those who saw the woman’s body, including her mother, noticed marks on her body that are attributed to torture and beatings.

Source: radiocooperativa.cl, September 22, 2006

Dictatorship Papers: the DINA and CNI agents who continued to be promoted in the PDI, Carabineros, and Army upon the return to democracy

The records accessed by CIPER show that at least 827 former agents of the dictatorship’s repressive agencies came from the PDI, Carabineros, and the Army. Many of them returned to their original institutions and, after the return to democracy, continued their careers in them.

Some came to occupy leadership positions. Several even continued to be hired, as civilians, after retiring. Among the former agents who returned to the ranks without facing questioning, there were some who worked in intelligence and in the training of new generations of police officers.

For decades, after the return to democracy, former agents of the dictatorship’s repressive bodies made careers in the PDI, Carabineros, and the Army, institutions that opened their doors to them despite the fact that they had served in entities where opponents of the military regime were kidnapped, tortured, murdered, and forcibly disappeared.

According to official documents reviewed by CIPER, a total of at least 827 officials from both police forces and the Army had been assigned to the DINA and the CNI. The return of the former agents to their original institutions was not questioned by the governments of that time, led by the Concertación (DC, PS, and PPD).

The files analyzed by CIPER indicate that at least 111 former repressive agents belonged to the PDI. Another 126 were from the ranks of Carabineros (only nine officers among them). And 590 came from the Army (152 officers and 438 non-commissioned officers).

The review of the backgrounds of those reincorporated into the police and the Army shows that several occupied leadership positions in areas related to narcotics investigation, training of new officials, special operations, logistics, intelligence, criminalistics, and administration, as recorded in the registers of the three institutions reviewed by CIPER.

Among these former agents, stand out, among others, José Enberg Castro, who was a professor at the Army War Academy until 2021 (see the report: “The exorbitant fiscal expenditure for Armed Forces pensions: $3.8 trillion between 2011 and 2015”) and Kurt Dechent Palau, a graduate of the School of the Americas (see link) who was appointed zone chief during electoral processes (see link) and who at least until 2019 appeared as an interest manager for the German company Diehl Defence, specialized in the manufacture of air-to-air and air-to-ground missile systems (see link) .

Another of the most striking cases is that of retired Army officer Alberto Elías Magluf, who is currently a permanent staff official of the National Disaster Prevention and Response Service (Senapred, the former Onemi), an institution in which he serves as head of the Supply Division.

In April 2023, he was even appointed third in the order of succession of that entity by order of President Gabriel Boric (see link). This retired colonel, in his previous capacity as acting head of Army Acquisitions, was precisely the one who signed the contract for the purchase of a Cessna plane in 2012, an operation investigated by the Justice system for fraud against the treasury ( see document ).

As published by La Tercera this week, the visiting minister of the Court Martial, Ana María Osorio, notified the prosecution of Magluf and three other former military officers in this judicial branch. The files reviewed for this report are now part of the online document search engine “Dictatorship Papers,” an initiative developed by CIPER with the collaboration of the Center for Journalistic Research and Projects (CIP) of the Diego Portales University ( access the “Dictatorship Papers” search engine here ).

THE PDI AGENTS

According to the official records accessed by CIPER, at least some 111 agents of the civil police were assigned on service commission to the DINA and then to the CNI, between 1973 and 1990 ( ver documento ).

Some, such as sub-commissioner Armando Almendra Muñoz, were assigned to the Lincoyán Brigade that operated within the Foreign Ministry and performed analysis work ( see judicial statement ). Others, such as Manuel Chirinos Ramírez, carried out tasks in units such as the Purén Brigade, which was in charge of detaining and eliminating militants and leaderships of the Socialist and Communist parties ( see judicial statement ).

Likewise, there were agents who participated directly in interrogations of detainees or crimes against humanity, such as the deceased prefect Juan Ángel Urbina Cáceres, who was sentenced in a first-instance ruling by the Santiago Court of Appeals to ten years as the author of the crime of qualified kidnapping in Operation Colombo, which occurred in 1975 ( see statement ).

During the dictatorship, the usual practice was for agents to return to their institution after their time in the secret police. This procedure was maintained in democracy, facilitating that several of them were reincorporated into the civil police or remained in it, when one of the main tasks of this institution was precisely the investigation of the kidnappings and murders committed by the military regime.

According to the official records reviewed by CIPER, three of these agents remained in the PDI until the first decade of this century and a fourth until 1997. The first three are Sergio Audiel Mellado Faúndez, Ricardo Montecinos Fuentes, and Andrés Aburto Bustamante.

The other is Carlos Jorge Serrano González. Mellado, who retired only in 2009, even became head of the National Informatics and Telecommunications Headquarters. Once retired, this agent was also hired as an advisor at the Carabineros Pension Directorate, Dipreca.

CARABINEROS: CONVICTED OFFICERS

According to the official records of Carabineros, reviewed by CIPER, a total of 126 agents performed functions in the DINA and the CNI. Only nine of them were officers ( ver documento ) . After the recovery of democracy, seven of those officers remained linked to the uniformed police for many years, as was the case of Captain Dina Petric, who in the 1980s worked in the CNI under the orders of Álvaro Corbalán, convicted in multiple human rights cases ( ver documento ) .

Officer Petric retired in 1999 ( ver documento ) , but was later hired as a civilian in 2012. Major Norma Salinas Vallejos was another officer who remained linked to Carabineros for many years after her time in the dictatorship’s secret police.

Her last assignment was the 48th Police Station of Santiago. Officer Iván Quiroz Ruiz remained in the institution until 1997, despite the fact that by that time he was already being investigated by the military justice system for his participation in Operation Albania, a CNI action that led to the murders of Esther Cabrera, Elizabeth Escobar, Patricia Quiroz, Hernán Rivera, Ricardo Silva, Manuel Valencia, and José Valenzuela, all members of the Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez (FPMR).

For this case, he was sentenced to ten years and one day as the author of the homicides. After that 2008 judicial resolution, he remained a fugitive until he was finally captured by the PDI ( ver documento ).

Quiroz was also convicted for his participation in the qualified homicides of journalist José Carrasco and communist militant Abraham Muskatblit, which occurred in September 1986 in Santiago. Another officer who remained in the institution until 1997 and who was later convicted of homicide was Miguel Soto Duarte, whom the Justice system sanctioned for the murder of Paulina Aguirre Tobar, a 20-year-old MIR militant, whose autopsy report indicates that she received two shots to the head, one in the neck, three in the right hand, and two in the left forearm ( ver documento ).

Meanwhile, among the non-commissioned officers, a total of 31 remained in the institution for many years after the return to democracy, performing functions in police stations, the Traffic Accident Investigation Section (SIAT), the Non-Commissioned Officers School, the Air Police Prefecture, and Special Forces.

THE ARMY BATTALION

The Army was the military branch that provided the most agents to the DINA and the CNI. According to the institutional records reviewed by CIPER, there were at least 152 officers and 438 non-commissioned officers ( ver documento ).

This list, of course, is not exhaustive, and it does not incorporate key figures, such as the director of the DINA, Manuel Contreras, and officers Raúl Iturriaga and José Zara, both involved in the assassination of General Carlos Prats, which occurred in Argentina in 1974, among other crimes.

Nor does Colonel Miguel Krassnoff, convicted in multiple cases for homicide and kidnapping, appear. However, in this list, the Army officially recognizes that it assigned personnel to perform functions as DINA and CNI agents.

Of them, several remained active in democracy or were hired once retired, despite facing trials for crimes against humanity. Some of the most notorious cases correspond to the aforementioned officers José Enberg Castro, Kurt Dechent Palau, and Alberto Elías Magluf.

But there are more. For example, retired officer Jorge Pérez Labayru was an advisor to the General Directorate of National Mobilization (DGMN) until 2018 (see link) . For his part, retired Lieutenant Colonel Nazario Aracena Robles was hired as a supervisor of security, cleaning, ornamentation, and landscaping for the Military School from February 1, 2013, to December 31 of the same year.

Lieutenant Colonel Francisco Miranda Murray was in service for 32 years and worked on a fee basis until 2015. His colleague José Pérez Manríquez worked in the Undersecretariat of Defense until 2011, when he was dismissed from his position.

A similar case occurred with Colonel Rodolfo Ortega Prado, who in 2005 was appointed military attaché in Spain, during the government of Ricardo Lagos (2000-2006). In 2016, he published the book Military History of the Virtues of the Chilean Army.

Colonel Martín Borck Keim served in 2007—during the first government of Michelle Bachelet—as executive secretary of the Demining Commission that operated with the Ministry of Defense. In addition, in 2011, he served as director of the Army Non-Commissioned Officers School (see link).

Likewise, several of these former agents were also appointed as plaza chiefs for the successive electoral acts that the country experienced since 1990. One of them was retired Colonel Rodolfo Martinic Marusic (see link) , who was also director of the Army Mountain School until 2002 (see link).

Meanwhile, other officers, such as retired Captain Luis Fuenzalida Bernal, were attached to the Military Polytechnic Academy. In his case, he was a professor, among other things, of supply courses during 2013 and 2014, and, for one day, of the subject of organization and control and ethics in 2016 (see link) .

Another of the CNI agents who remained in the Army ranks for many years was Carl Marowski Pilowski, who retired in 2015. His service record includes his work as director of the Joint Center for Peace Operations of Chile (CECOPAC), a function he held between 2002 and 2004.

In September 2016, Carl Marowski attended as secretary general of the War Academy to the Defense Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, as reported by CIPER at the time (see link) . Some of the officers who performed functions in the repressive agencies were also assigned to the areas of logistics, acquisition, and projects, the administrative core of the processes of purchase and renewal of weapons and military spare parts.

For example, Colonel Néstor Vera Salvo appears signing resolutions on behalf of the Army even in the first government of Sebastián Piñera, in 2011 (see link) . Others, such as Jaime Norambuena Aguilar, worked at FAMAE until the beginning of the century.

A similar situation occurs with Humberto Nilo Penroz, who was an advisor to the Army Housing Savings Headquarters (JAVE). But without a doubt, the one who had the longest active career was Juan Vidal García Huidobro, who reached the rank of general and in 2012 was decorated at La Moneda by President Piñera, together with the High Command of the time (see link) .

Source: ciperchile.cl, September 8, 2023