This September 23, the day we remember 24 years since the explosive-related homicide of Jaime Orellana and Nelson Lagos in Chillán, scene reconstructions were carried out for the crimes committed by military personnel of the Armed Forces on duty with the CNI, where they proceeded with exclusive dedication to plan and execute homicides, some of them mass killings like that of August 23, 1984.

With a large police deployment involving numerous PDI officers—some strangely hooded as in the dictatorship—and GOPE personnel, the scene reconstruction was carried out under the direction of Minister Carlos Aldana, who, accompanied by his secretary lawyer David Bravo and the lawyer from the Human Rights Department of the Ministry of the Interior, Mrs.

Magdalena Garcés, participated in order to clarify the criminal acts in which the leaders of the southern zone of the MIR were executed on August 23, 1984.

In every place where the proceedings were carried out—Hualpén, Concepción, and San Pedro—in addition to their relatives and friends, the Association of Political Executed Persons of the MIR of Concepción and social organizations of Hualpén were present.

A large crowd from the sector and press from various media outlets gathered, remaining at a distance—cordoned off by the officers—attentive to the movements that described the events that occurred during those homicides.

Let us remember that on this date, seven comrades, members of the southern leadership of the MIR, were executed in the operation known as Alfa Carbón 1 by the Security Services of that time, whose objective was to eliminate the members of that MIR leadership.

During that simultaneous operation, Nelson Herrera and Mario Lagos were murdered in Concepción, Luciano Aedo Arias in Hualpén, Mario Mújica in Los Ángeles, and Juan José Boncompte, Rogelio Tapia, and Raúl Barrientos in Valdivia.

The executioners, members of the CNI, were commanded by Marcos Derpisch Miranda, an Army Lieutenant Colonel in charge of the operation, and seconded by Hugo José Hechenleitner, an Army Lieutenant Colonel, who appeared today at the scene of the events along with five other members of the former CNI to reconstruct the events on Calle Grecia at the corner of Nápoles in the current commune of Hualpén, where Luciano Aedo Arias was murdered.

Some of the names of the death squad that participated in the Alfa Carbón 1 operation in Concepción:

1. Marcos Derpisch Miranda: Army Lieutenant Colonel in charge of the operation. Today he continues working at the DINE (Army Intelligence Directorate). 2. Hugo José Hechenleitner: Lieutenant Colonel, his alias was Antonio Martínez López. 3.

Claudio Rodrigo Rosas Fernandez: Army Lieutenant Colonel. 4. Víctor Manuel Muñoz Orellana: Army Non-Commissioned Officer, his alias was Jaime Ricardo Marinovic Palma, and he was the one who shot Luciano Aedo. 5.

Álvaro Corbalán Castilla (Army Major). Today imprisoned in the Punta Peuco resort. 6. Francisco Zúñiga Acevedo: Army Officer. Now deceased, he left without paying for his crimes. 7. Jorge Mandiola Arredondo: Army Major. 8.

Carlos Palma: Army Non-Commissioned Officer. 9. Leandro Montenegro (Army Non-Commissioned Officer), alias Farias. 10. Jorge Vargas: Civilian. 11. Miguel Gajardo: Civilian. 12. Andres Caris: Carabineros Non-Commissioned Officer. 13.

Egon Barra: Carabineros Corporal. 14. Rosa Humilde Ramos: Army Non-Commissioned Officer. The most feared among her peers. They call her "La Mala" (The Bad One). 15. Teresa Osorio: Navy Non-Commissioned Officer.

These are those who acted in the slaughter of Concepción and Hualpén, accompanied by another large contingent of CNI, Army, and Carabineros personnel and informants.

In the case of Los Ángeles, where they murdered Mario Mujica, the following participated in the large contingent of evildoers:

1. Bruno Antonio Soto Aravena 2. José Artemio Zapata Zapata.

Currently, it is believed that one of them—it has not been possible to establish which one—is living in Los Ángeles and the other in Concepción. They were detained for a brief time and were imprisoned, but of course, they were released shortly after and today enjoy full freedom.

After concluding in Hualpén, the entourage moved to the Vega Monumental sector, where Nelson Herrera and Mario Lagos were executed after having surrendered and descended with their hands raised from the taxi-bus in which they were traveling.

This event is a clear example of how the rights of the detainee were violated; unarmed and without the capacity for armed response, they were riddled with bullets in the presence of passersby and passengers of the bus in which they were traveling, which constitutes a double homicide.

After the reconstruction in Hualpén and Concepción was finished, the Minister and his work team moved to the Población el Recodo on the road to Santa Juana, where the CNI proceeded to raid the house of Nelson Herrera's family, resulting in the detention of his wife, Patricia Zalaquet.

Today, Minister Aldana has obtained, in the presence of the accused, the details and characteristics of these crimes that were presented at that time to public opinion as "clashes" between terrorists and CNI officials, even though these evildoers had traveled expressly from Santiago to commit the illicit acts.

It is worth noting, as Minister Aldana himself pointed out to the press, that this judicial case had been archived in the Military Prosecutor's Office, from where it was recovered, apparently by the Government's Human Rights Department, to transfer it to the hands of the Civil Justice system, which will now have the task of prosecuting and sentencing, although the Minister himself indicated that he does not rule out further proceedings.

The Relatives of the Political Executed Persons of the MIR in Concepción expect a lot from the Minister; so far, all his conclusions in other cases blame only the material executioners, the last link in the chain of command, the one who pulled the trigger, leaving the intellectual authors and commanders who gave the orders to murder unpunished.

That is why we hope that this chain of command reaches the High Commands of the institutions that had intelligence apparatuses with exclusive dedication to committing crimes, and those are even higher up than Álvaro Corbalán Castilla himself (who excused himself from attending although he participated in the events), because this bandit did not act on his own.

Today it transpired that the Minister had brought charges against the second-in-command of the CNI, whom he had sent as a detainee to the Chacabuco Regiment; at the time of writing this note, it was only a rumor.

The orders to murder in a highly hierarchical and centralized armed institution could only come from the Intelligence General Staff with the due approval and authorization of the de facto government of the coup-plotting military.

It is striking that the former leaders of the MIR of that time are once again not present to support the relatives, nor are they becoming parties to the lawsuits for truth and justice, nor are they undertaking initiatives against impunity; it is possible that they are out hunting for votes instead of hunting criminals.

Source: liberacion.cl, September 30, 2009

Supreme Court sentences seven CNI agents for qualified homicide in Recoleta

In a unanimous ruling, the Second Chamber sentenced Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, Jorge Jofré Rojas, Víctor Ruiz Godoy, José Salas Fuentes, and Carlos Palma López to 10 years and one day in prison as perpetrators of the crime.

The Supreme Court accepted an appeal for cassation on the merits and, in a replacement sentence, convicted seven agents of the extinct National Intelligence Center (CNI) for their responsibility in the crime of qualified homicide of Juan Antonio Díaz Cliff. The illicit act was perpetrated on April 18, 1986, in the commune of Recoleta.

In a unanimous ruling (case file 13.364-2019), the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed of ministers Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Leopoldo Llanos, Roberto Contreras, and lawyers (i) María Cristina Gajardo and Carolina Coppo—established an error of law in the appealed sentence, issued by the Santiago Court of Appeals, by accepting the mitigating circumstance of the irreproachable prior conduct of the sentenced individuals.

The highest court confirmed the appealed sentence, with the declaration that the agents Álvaro Julio Federico Corbalán Castilla, Jorge Enrique Jofré Rojas, Víctor Eulogio Ruiz Godoy, José Guillermo Salas Fuentes, and Carlos Palma López are sentenced to 10 years and one day in prison as perpetrators of the crime.

Meanwhile, Eduardo Avelino Fuenzalida Pérez and Ema Ceballos Núñez must serve 5 years and one day in prison for their responsibility as accomplices.

"It has been understood that the ground for nullity under examination occurs when the vice consists of the lack of considerations of fact or law, a situation that occurs, likewise, when those considerations are contradictory to each other or destroy each other, a situation that is noted from the study of the background," the ruling maintains.

The resolution adds: "Indeed, the first-instance sentence, in its 31st motive, after recognizing the mitigating circumstance of irreproachable prior conduct for all the accused, states 'without qualification due to lack of merit for it,' while the appellate ruling, which reproduces that of the a quo without eliminating or modifying said statement, in its 13th basis expresses the following: 'That having said the above, it is not possible to ignore that the accused Jofré Rojas, Ruiz Godoy, Salas Fuentes, and Palma López were Army non-commissioned officers, while Ema Ceballos Núñez was a Navy administrative employee with the rank of 2nd class seaman, who were assigned to perform duties—when none of them were over 30 years old—at the National Intelligence Center, an organization in which their hierarchy was that of subordinates whose capacity for resistance or disobedience was reduced. Dealing with a repressive organ that systematically engaged in the perpetration of crimes, where the aforementioned sentenced individuals had few possibilities to reject their commission or to abstain from acting wrongly, there are reasons to suppose that the execution of this illicit act was fostered by extraordinary circumstances that altered the capacity for self-determination and, therefore, it is feasible to weigh the mitigating circumstance of irreproachable conduct that favors them as highly qualified'."

For the Supreme Court: "(...) by reproducing in the analysis the 31st motive of the first-instance ruling, it becomes part of it, which means that the same resolution affirms on one hand that there is no merit to accept the qualification of the minor mitigating circumstance of irreproachable prior conduct and, on the other, that there is, providing reasons to support it, an antinomy that ultimately deprives this part of the ruling of foundation, preventing any citizen, and especially the relatives of the victim in the case, from understanding the reason why the sentencers accept the intended qualification and apply the consequent punitive reduction."

"That it is manifest, then, that the questioned sentence contains antagonistic motivations that cannot coexist, which leads to the annulment of those reasonings, leaving the ruling, regarding the qualification of the minor mitigating circumstance of Article 11 No. 6 of the Penal Code and the reduction of one degree of the penalty for the accused, devoid of the foundation required in Article 500 No. 4 and 5 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, with which the vice of formal cassation provided for in No. 9 of Article 541 of the aforementioned legal body is configured, a vice that, furthermore, has had a substantial influence on the dispositive part of the ruling, since had it not been committed, the penalty could not have been reduced by one degree when only one mitigating circumstance concurred in favor of all the accused, which is why the appeal will be accepted," it concludes.

Therefore, it is resolved in the replacement sentence that: "the appealed sentence of March 21, 2018, is confirmed, with the following declarations:

I.- That Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, Jorge Jofré Rojas, Víctor Ruiz Godoy, José Salas Fuentes, and Carlos Palma López are sentenced to the penalty of ten years and one day of major imprisonment in its medium degree and to the accessory penalties of absolute perpetual disqualification for public offices and positions and political rights, and absolute disqualification for professional titles for the duration of the sentence, and to the payment of the costs of the case, as perpetrators of the crime of qualified homicide of Juan Antonio Díaz Cliff, committed on April 18, 1986, provided for and sanctioned in Article 391 No. 1, first and fifth circumstances of the Penal Code.

II.- That Eduardo Fuenzalida Pérez and Ema Ceballos Núñez are sentenced to the penalty of five years and one day of major imprisonment in its minimum degree and to the accessory penalties of absolute perpetual disqualification for public offices and positions and political rights, and absolute disqualification for professional titles for the duration of the sentence, and to the payment of the costs of the case, as accomplices of the aforementioned crime.

III.- That given the quantum of the corporal penalties imposed, all the sentenced individuals must serve them effectively, with the times they remained deprived of liberty and which have been recognized in the first-instance ruling serving as credit."

In the first-instance resolution, the visiting minister Mario Carroza established that: "On April 18, 1986, two teams of the Blue Brigade of the National Intelligence Center (CNI), at that time under the command of agent Krantz Bauer, one of them directed by Jorge Jofré Rojas and the other by José Salas Fuentes, after tracking and surveillance of the Recoleta sector, decided to intercept a passerby who was circulating on Gabriel Palma Street in that commune—Juan Antonio Díaz Cliff, a militant of the MIR—who at that moment was walking toward his home.

In the operation, two of the agents from one of these teams, with the cover of two agents from the other team, got out of the vehicles that were transporting them and, upon seeing Díaz Cliff, drew firearms and shot him in the body, hitting him five times; one of the projectiles perforated his right lung, causing severe anemia that finally caused his death."

Source: pjud.cl, October 25, 2021