In a ruling that will have significant repercussions for human rights cases, the Seventh Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals ordered the release of thirteen uniformed officers and revoked their indictments, deeming that the principle of res judicata and the Amnesty Law applied.

The ruling finds no merit in maintaining the indictments against thirteen personnel who belonged to the Comando Conjunto and who were prosecuted by the judge of the 25th Criminal Court, Carlos Hazbún, who serves as a judge with preferential dedication.

This follows the May 2 decision by the judge of the First Civil Court of San Bernardo, Cecilia Flores, to declare herself incompetent to hear the case regarding the kidnapping of David Urrutia Galaz, captured by Comando Conjunto agents in 1975, and to transfer the case files to the judge of the 25th Criminal Court of Santiago, Carlos Hazbún.

The defense for the former uniformed officers, led by lawyer Carlos Portales, stated that the resolution opens the door to follow the same path for the remaining fifty or so military personnel currently being prosecuted by judges with exclusive dedication to these cases.

According to El Mercurio, the Human Rights Program of the Ministry of the Interior ordered a special meeting for tomorrow with all its lawyers to analyze the new scenario. The director of the agency, Luciano Fouillioux, indicated that the final word regarding the application of the principle of res judicata and the Amnesty Law lies with the Supreme Court.

This is because it is the first time an appellate court has applied a ruling of this nature in human rights violation cases investigated by special judges appointed as a result of the "Dialogue Table." The judge of the 25th Criminal Court of Santiago, Carlos Hazbún, had indicted the uniformed officers César Palma Ramírez, Otto Trujillo Miranda, Raúl González Fernández, and Manuel Muñoz Gamboa on January 7, 2002, as authors of "illicit criminal association." Likewise, the retired FACh (Chilean Air Force) non-commissioned officer Pedro Caamaño Medina; the retired commander of the FACh Colina regiment, Carlos Madrid Hayden; the active FACh non-commissioned officer Robinson Suazo Jaque; the retired FACh non-commissioned officer Fernando Zúñiga Canales; the retired FACh non-commissioned officer Eduardo Cartagena Maldonado; the retired Navy lieutenant Daniel Guimper Corvalán; the retired FACh non-commissioned officer Guillermo Urra Carrasco; the retired FACh non-commissioned officer Pedro Zambrano Uribe; and the retired FACh non-commissioned officer Juan Chávez Sandoval were also indicted, and have now benefited from this provision.

Source: El Mostrador, June 16, 2002

Murder of Allende’s aide to the IACHR

Due to "denial of justice" in the murder of his father, the children of President Salvador Allende’s naval aide, Navy Captain Arturo Araya Peeters, will sue the State of Chile tomorrow before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

The filing before the body of the American Convention on Human Rights includes a civil lawsuit for the State to provide material reparations to the four children and the widow. Thus, the homicide of the officer, which occurred on July 27, 1973, will leave Chile for the first time to become a matter of international justice.

The action will be filed at 12:00 PM tomorrow at the ECLAC headquarters in Santiago. Lawyer Arturo Araya Jr., who will sponsor the appeal, explained to La Nación that "we are tired of knocking on the doors of Chilean courts to obtain justice for our father's murder." He added that "the State of Chile is responsible for our father's death because it collaborated in the impunity of his assassination.

The process instructed by the naval justice system in Valparaíso had a great number of flaws. Suffice it to say that the case was labeled as 'mistreatment of Armed Forces personnel' and the maximum sentence applied, three years in prison, was pardoned shortly thereafter by General Augusto Pinochet." The path of appealing to the IACHR was the same one used by the family of the murdered diplomat Carmelo Soria.

The Naval Court of Valparaíso recently rejected reopening the investigation into the crime. The sentence for the case was handed down on December 26, 1978. Of 19 defendants from an ultra-right-wing group linked to Patria y Libertad, only one was sentenced to three years in prison, which he did not serve.

Of the rest, three were sentenced to 541 days only for illegal possession of weapons, and the other fifteen to sentences ranging from 21 to 61 days in jail. None served their sentences. Regarding the lawsuit filed last year by the children, which is being investigated by the judge of the 17th Criminal Court of Santiago, Patricia González, Arturo Araya stated that "it has been almost a year and there is no progress.

We have been denied access to the summary six times, and we are tired of asking for justice." In addition to being directed "against those found responsible" for the "homicide of our father," the lawsuit was also filed for "denial of justice," due to multiple irregularities in the process, against former naval judge Vice Admiral (R) Arturo Troncoso; former naval prosecutor Navy Captain (R) Aldo Montagna; former naval auditor Frigate Captain (R) Enrique Campusano; and the former secretary of the Naval Court of Valparaíso and current Consul General of Chile in Caracas (Venezuela), Jorge Garretón Iturra. Surprises in the file

• Guillermo Claverie Bartet: the only one convicted, to three years in prison; he was not arrested until July 15, 1981. He entered the Valparaíso jail that day, and Pinochet pardoned him on August 10 of the same year. He served 25 days of the sentence.
• Andrés Potin Laihacar: while he was being prosecuted but free, he was a member of the repressive organization Comando Conjunto (CC). In January 1979, he asked the Naval Court to go to the U.S. for two months. "As requested," the court authorized it. In August of that year, he again asked for permission to go "to Europe" for three months as an "advisor to the Superintendency of Banks." "Granted," the court replied. In 1980, Potin requested to go to Argentina for one month to practice "parachuting." "As requested," it was authorized. Sentenced to 41 days. Today he is being prosecuted in cases involving the forcibly disappeared.
• Luis Palma Ramírez (alias ‘El Fifo’): while he was being prosecuted and a fugitive, he was a member of the CC. However, "his name is not registered in the Identification Cabinet," the file states. In 1979, he appeared "voluntarily" to be notified of the 541-day sentence, which he did not serve. Today he is being prosecuted in cases involving the crimes of the CC.
• Edmundo Quiroz Ruiz: the Naval Court of Valparaíso summoned him at the beginning of February 1979 to notify him of the 26 days of prison to which he was sentenced for the crime. According to the file, he replied, "I will go at the end of the month, because I am working."
• Rafael Mardones Saint-Jean: during the process, he asked for permission to "go on a honeymoon to the United States for 17 days." "Granted," the court authorized. Sentenced to 61 days.

Source: La Nación, June 2, 2004

Justice reaches the Comando Conjunto

The Comando Conjunto case, a group of State agents and ultra-right-wing civilians coordinated by the four intelligence agencies of the Armed Forces that operated between 1975 and 1976, has entered its final phase.

It is perhaps one of the emblematic human rights violation cases due to the ferocity directed at the victims (nearly 70) and because it is the only case in which all branches of the military participated, although the FACH and Carabineros were the most involved.

In fact, some of its members joined the Dicomcar in the 1980s. The judge with exclusive dedication from the Third Criminal Court of Santiago to investigate the crimes committed by this repressive organization, Graciela Gómez, has issued the first indictments in recent days against its agents, those responsible for the kidnapping of Carlos Contreras Maluje, son of the first UP intendant in the province of Concepción, former councilman for the commune of Concepción, and leader of the Communist Party.

This is one of the four episodes that divide this process, but it is the most symbolic, because the events surrounding the kidnapping of the leftist militant exposed the acts committed by the CC and provoked the immediate dissolution of the repressive organization.

Names Accused as the intellectual authors of the kidnapping were General (R) FACH Freddy Enrique Ruiz Bunger and Colonel (R) of the same institution Juan Francisco Saavedra Loyola. Meanwhile, accused as material authors were Alejandro Sáez Mardones (currently serving a sentence for the "degollados" case), Jorge Cobos Manríquez (alias ‘Kiko’ and Lieutenant (R) of the FACH), Daniel Guimpert Corvalán (retired Navy lieutenant), César Palma Ramírez (alias ‘Fifo’, a civilian formerly of Patria y Libertad and mentioned in at least 15 murders), and Manuel Muñoz Gamboa (alias ‘Lolo’, a retired Carabineros major who was also convicted in the "degollados" case). Ruiz Bunger was in charge of FACH Intelligence and was a trusted man of the then commander-in-chief of the Air Force and member of the Military Junta, General Gustavo Leigh, whom he accompanied when he was dismissed by General Augusto Pinochet in 1978. The facts In her resolution, Judge Gómez reaches the conviction that the agents kidnapped Contreras Maluje and, after torturing him, used him to set up an operation where they intended to capture other communist militants. On November 2, 1976, after obtaining information provided by another detainee under torture, the agents intercepted him on Nataniel Street and forcibly took him to the detention center known as La Firma (located on Dieciocho Street, where the offices of the newspaper Clarín previously operated). After subjecting him to illegitimate coercion, the former councilman offered to take the agents to a place where they could capture another communist militant. But Contreras Maluje’s plans were different. As established, the following day the CC set up an operation on Nataniel Street. Upon arriving at the scene, the judge states, Contreras Maluje "manages to elude his guards and throws himself into the path of a public transport vehicle traveling south on Nataniel Street, becoming injured as a result of the impact, despite which he asks passersby and a Carabineros officer for help." He said he was being kidnapped, but the officers could not do anything because a vehicle with license plate EG-588 appeared, which was later proven to belong to the FACH and was for the exclusive use of Ruiz Bunger, head of FACH Intelligence. Its occupants identified themselves as DINA agents. Nothing more was heard of Contreras Maluje.

Source: La Nación, November 24, 2004

Seven former members of the Comando Conjunto convicted

Minister Juan Fuentes Belmar today handed down various sentences to seven former members of the Comando Conjunto responsible for the disappearance in November 1976 of communist leader Carlos Contreras Maluje, judicial sources reported.

In his resolution, the magistrate did not apply the Amnesty Law issued in 1978 by former dictator Augusto Pinochet, but did apply the gradual prescription of the sentence, taking March 11, 1990, the date of the return to democracy, as the end date of the qualified kidnapping.

The first-instance convictions affect four retired officers of the Air Force (FACH), one former member of the Navy, and two from the Carabineros, members of this group of State agents and ultra-right-wing civilians coordinated by the four intelligence agencies of the Armed Forces that operated between 1975 and 1976.

The judge sentenced the director of the FACH Intelligence Service, Freddy Ruiz Bunger, Colonel Juan Saavedra Loyola, Navy officer Daniel Guimpert, and former Carabineros officer Manuel Muñoz Gamboa to three years of suspended prison (in freedom).

The same sentence, but with nightly incarceration, was given to former FACH member César Palma Ramírez and retired policeman Alejandro Sáez Mardones, who has been serving another sentence for human rights violations in prison since August 2003.

In that sense, he also sentenced former FACH captain Jorge Cobos Manríquez to three years and one day in prison. Finally, Fuentes Belmar dismissed a civil lawsuit against the State presented by the lawyer for the victim’s family, Nelson Caucoto.

The case of Carlos Contreras Maluje was one of the few in which the Court of Appeals of the time accepted a writ of amparo (habeas corpus) filed by his family after his detention. On November 2, 1976, Contreras Maluje, then 29 years old, a former councilman of Concepción and a pharmaceutical chemist by profession, was detained by Comando Conjunto agents and taken to the facility known as "La Firma" (located on Dieciocho Street, where the offices of the newspaper Clarín previously operated), where he was tortured.

Subsequently, according to the Rettig Report, the leader was taken by the agents to a place where Contreras would supposedly make a contact, on Nataniel Street, at which time he threw himself under the wheels of a bus, shouting his name and his kidnapping situation.

Immediately, the agents took him back to the "La Firma" facility and executed him that same night on a road near Santiago, where his remains were buried clandestinely without having been found to this day.

Source: La Nación, November 30, 2005

Human Rights: former repressor arrested in a mobile home

Hiding in a mobile home inside a farm located in the commune of Freire, in the Araucanía Region, the former civilian repressive agent of the Air Force, César Palma Ramírez, was captured to serve his sentence in the case of the kidnapping of communist militant Carlos Contreras Maluje.

Personnel from the Human Rights Brigade of the Investigative Police carried out the operation to achieve compliance with the sentence of 3 years and one day in prison ratified against him by the Supreme Court in November 2007.

Palma Ramírez belonged to the right-wing extremist group during the government of Salvador Allende, "Patria y Libertad," and later joined the Chilean Air Force (FACH) as a civilian agent and member of the Comando Conjunto, the group with which he committed the crime for which he was wanted.

The prefect of the National Headquarters of Crimes against Human Rights, José Luis Cabión, commented that the former repressor "fled approximately a month and a half ago" and, upon being located, was found "inside a mobile home on a plot of land 8 kilometers inside the commune of Freire." The officer ruled out any resistance from the subject when he encountered the police. "It was a totally clean arrest, like the previous procedures we have handled in similar cases," alluding, for example, to the capture of Jorge Iturriaga Neumann.

For the kidnapping of Carlos Humberto Contreras Maluje, former Councilman of Concepción, retired FACH General Freddy Ruiz Bunger was also convicted, as well as Juan Francisco Saavedra Loyola, Daniel Gimpert Corvalán, Manuel Muñoz Gamboa, Alejandro Sáez Mardones, and Rodrigo Cobos Manríquez.

Source: La Nación, March 11, 2008

César “Fifo” Palma, last former fugitive agent, falls

The former member of the Comando Conjunto and Patria y Libertad was arrested by the Human Rights Brigade of the Investigative Police, hidden in a mobile home inside a plot of land, eight kilometers from Freire, Tenth Region.

Members of the Human Rights Brigade of the Investigative Police located and arrested the last former fugitive agent convicted of crimes against humanity, César Luis Palma Ramírez, alias "Fifo." "Fifo," a former Comando Conjunto agent, was found hiding in a mobile home inside a plot of land, eight kilometers from the commune of Freire, on the so-called Camino a Boroa, in the X Region.

The former agent was fleeing to avoid serving a three-year prison sentence for the kidnapping and disappearance in November 1976 of the communist militant and former councilman for Concepción, the pharmaceutical chemist Carlos Contreras Maluje.

On November 3 of that year, Contreras was detained but managed to flee by throwing himself under the wheels of a bus on Nataniel Cox Street, in order to alert people to his arrest. However, the agents recaptured him, and he has been missing ever since.

Palma Ramírez’s criminal record is extensive. He took his first steps in crime in the ranks of the ultra-right-wing group Patria y Libertad, led by lawyer Pablo Rodríguez. On the night of July 26, 1973, Palma was part of the group that the naval justice system accused of the assassination of Allende’s aide, Navy Captain Arturo Araya Peeters.

Subsequently—and this is what is still being investigated in a new trial by the ordinary justice system—clues appeared that would lead to the conclusion that the author of the aide’s homicide was not part of that group, which had only acted as a screen, but that the shots came from a sniper stationed elsewhere.

It is known that Palma was one of the few in the group who that night was aware of the true objective of the ultra-right-wing squadron’s outing, which was to cover for the true author of the shots. All of this was part of a plot to accelerate the coup d'état in which civilians like Jorge Ehlers participated alongside high-ranking Navy officers, blaming the left for the attack, as indeed happened at the beginning.

After a brief detention following the coup d'état, Palma and the rest of the group were pardoned by former dictator Augusto Pinochet. Later, Palma, a civilian agent attached to the Air Force, joined the Comando Conjunto (CC) in 1975, the criminal organization that the FACH created to challenge the DINA’s power over repression.

He is currently being prosecuted in numerous cases for human rights violations, including the homicides of former CC agents Carol Flores and Guillermo Bratti.

Source: La Nación, March 12, 2008

Court of Appeals issues conviction against former Comando Conjunto agents

The Santiago Court of Appeals confirmed yesterday the conviction for the qualified kidnapping of Humberto Fuentes Rodríguez, which occurred in 1975. In a unanimous ruling, the ministers of the Sixth Chamber, Jorge Dahm, Joaquín Billard, and the participating lawyer Nelson Pozo, ratified the ruling issued by Minister Juan Fuentes Belmar on September 29, 2006, but modified the sentences against the agents of the so-called Comando Conjunto.

Thus, Freddy Ruiz and Juan Francisco Saavedra were sentenced to 10 years and one day in prison; Manuel Muñoz, Eduardo Cartagena, and César Palma were sentenced to 5 years and one day in prison; and Otto Trujillo to 3 years and one day in prison. Meanwhile, Daniel Guimpert was acquitted due to lack of participation.

Source: La Nación, December 12, 2008

Judge in Víctor Jara case acquits six FACH military personnel

Visiting Minister Juan Fuentes Belmar applied the statute of limitations and lack of participation to the members of the Chilean Air Force Intelligence Service (SIFA), also clearing civilian official César Palma Rodríguez of charges.

The leadership of the so-called Air Force Intelligence Service (SIFA) was cleared of charges in the trial against them for the kidnapping of former Communist Party (PC) militant Carol Flores Castillo and the murder of Comando Conjunto member Guillermo Bratti Cornejo.

This occurred after Visiting Minister Juan Fuentes, the same one investigating the murder of singer-songwriter Víctor Jara, dismissed the charges against the six military personnel involved in these crimes, as well as civilian official César Palma Rodríguez.

These are the FACH Generals (R) Edgar Cevallo Jones, Roberto Serón Cárdenas, Juan Luis López López, Freddy Ruiz Bunguer, Juan Saavedra Loyola, and Daniel Guimpert Corvalán. The first three were cleared because the magistrate deemed there was a lack of participation, while for the rest, he applied the statute of limitations to the criminal action.

He decreed the same regarding the civilian. This ruling left several human rights organizations concerned, especially because the criterion of the expiration of criminal action was applied by the judge who is currently investigating the crime of Víctor Jara, as well as other inquiries linked to crimes against humanity.

Sources close to the case indicated that this sentence will be appealed to the Court so that those responsible are convicted. In the same vein, the magistrate dismissed the compensation claims for the victims' families, similarly accepting the statute of limitations for civil action for the families of Flores and Bratti.

Carol Flores Castillo was a PC militant until 1974. That year, he was detained along with his brothers and taken to the Air War Academy (AGA). In this facility, occupied by the dictatorship’s repressive agencies, he was reportedly brutally tortured and then released.

Witnesses, in the Rettig Report, declared that after this episode, Flores began to collaborate with the SIFA, denouncing PC comrades, which coincides with a series of arrests of communist militants during this period.

However, in June 1976, he disappeared. Former FACH member Andrés Valenzuela Morales declared in the process that he learned that SIFA members took Flores to the Cajón del Maipo and disposed of his body.

This was because they had reportedly found out that he was providing information to the DINA about what the command was doing. This deeply bothered those in charge of the AGA. The same conduct, according to this witness, was attributed to officer Guillermo Bratti, a victim in this judicial case.

Before the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, Andrés Valenzuela pointed out that both Flores and Bratti were executed because there was the "version that they had given information that we possessed to the DINA, which carried out operations harming our group (Comando Conjunto).

The DINA, according to the statements of the detained agents, had offered them more money, a vehicle, and a house."

Source: La Nación, August 1, 2009

Supreme Court issues sentence for human rights case

Ministers of the Second Chamber of the highest court definitively convicted former members of the FACH Intelligence Service for the qualified kidnapping of Humberto Fuentes Rodríguez. The Supreme Court issued a final sentence in the investigation into the qualified kidnapping of Humberto Fuentes Rodríguez, a forcibly disappeared person since November 1975 in the city of Santiago.

In a split decision, the ministers of the Second Chamber of the highest court, Jaime Rodríguez, Rubén Ballesteros, Hugo Dolmestch, Carlos Künsemüller, and the participating lawyer Alberto Chaigneau, determined the sanctions indicated against those responsible for these crimes attributed to SIFA (Air Force Intelligence Service) personnel.

The court sentenced César Palma Ramírez to 5 years in prison for his responsibility as an author, without benefits; Freddy Ruiz Bunguer to 5 years in prison for his responsibility as an author, granting him supervised release.

The same sentence applied to Juan Saavedra Loyola, Eduardo Cartagena Maldonado, and Manuel Muñoz Gamboa. Meanwhile, Otto Trujillo Miranda was sentenced to 541 days in prison for his responsibility as an accomplice, granting him the benefit of conditional remission.

Daniel Guimpert Corvalán was acquitted due to lack of participation. In the civil aspect, the Treasury was ordered to pay compensation for moral damages of $80 million to Humberto Fuentes Godoy, the victim’s son. In this aspect, the sentence was determined with the dissenting vote of ministers Ballesteros and Rodríguez, who were in favor of accepting the plea of absolute incompetence of the court.

Source: La Nación, April 27, 2010

39 years ago: the assassination of Commander Arturo Araya Peeters

It was a planned assassination intended to establish, within the Navy, the principles that would govern the bloody coup d'état of September 11. The fascist right perpetrated the crime... Washington sheltered and financed it. Our memory remains alive.

At midnight on July 26, 1973, the Naval Aide to President Salvador Allende, Commander Arturo Araya Peeters, was assassinated by a sniper who fired at him point-blank from somewhere in front of his home.

Shortly before, he had arrived at his house after attending—accompanying the socialist president—a reception at the Embassy of Cuba. One of the criminals who participated in the crime, Guillermo Claverie Bartet, was sentenced to three years in prison.

However, he did not spend even a single day in jail serving that sentence. Even while a fugitive, he was pardoned by the dictatorship thanks to a decision by Admiral José Toribio Merino Castro.

It was a planned assassination intended to establish, within the Navy, the principles that would govern the bloody coup d'état of September 11, and at the same time, a reminder that any man in the Navy who did not agree with the fascist-leaning plans of Admiral Merino Castro would be considered a traitor and punished with death.

This is what happened to Araya, an honest man loyal to the Constitution.

On the night of July 26 to 27, 1973, a sniper opened fire on the sailor while mercenaries from Patria y Libertad created a commotion in the street in front of his house, after firing several shots into the air in order to get the presidential aide to come out onto the balcony of his home to investigate what was happening. At that moment, a bullet struck Commander Araya Peeters in the chest.

The crime, which at the time the right wing and naval intelligence services tried to blame on ghostly armed leftist groups, was in reality the work of a sordid far-right conspiracy with the support of coup-plotting naval officers.

A total of 32 members of Patria y Libertad, whose founder was Pablo Rodríguez Grez, were arrested and prosecuted by the Naval Prosecutor's Office, but all were set free after a few slaps on the wrist. Only one of them, Guillermo Claverie, after having been a fugitive for a time, was sentenced to three years and one day in prison as the material author of the crime, a sentence he also did not serve since, in the end, all the conspirators were pardoned in 1981 by the murderer and thief surnamed Pinochet Ugarte, "for services rendered to the Fatherland."

In an interview published by the newspaper La Nación, Claverie swore he was innocent and claimed he was forced to confess after suffering multiple tortures carried out by officers of the Navy and the Air Force, and that he was apparently chosen as a scapegoat by his bosses in Patria y Libertad, among them Pablo Rodríguez.

Although he admitted to having been at the scene of the events, he said he always remained in the street and that the trajectory of the bullet that killed the aide, who was on a balcony, was from top to bottom.

He also claimed to have fired his pistol after he saw the man fall from the balcony and that at that moment he did not know who it was. Claverie's statements were part of the argument in the Court of Appeals by Arturo Araya, the victim's son and a plaintiff lawyer in the trial.

The planned crime committed against the Navy Commander and aide to President Allende, which occurred on Fidel Oteíza Street—between Marchant Pereira and Carlos Antúnez—in the commune of Providencia, was ultimately and clearly a well-mounted terrorist operation of intelligence and political destabilization, structured by the extreme right together with fascist and ultra-nationalist groups embedded in the armed forces, who counted on the support and financing of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), just as the American government acknowledged many years later when it declassified its confidential documents.

The coup plotters of the SIN (Naval Intelligence Service) had already been carrying out dozens of attacks and staged bombings, some previously "negotiated," such as the one carried out at the house of the coup-plotting Admiral Ismael Huerta in mid-July 1973 in Viña del Mar, with the objective of building an environment favorable to the upcoming coup d'état.

The "Bataan" machine gun with which the militant of the Comando Rolando Matus and SIN agent infiltrated into the state company Ecom, Guillermo Claverie Bartet, shot Commander Araya after setting off a decoy bomb and shooting at the front of the house to make him come out to the balcony, was supplied by the SIN through Jorge Ehlers Trostel, a character who later—in the midst of the dictatorship—would occupy a high position in the sports sector (Digeder).

Claverie Bartet had already been detected firing against troops loyal to the Constitution on the day of the "Tanquetazo" (June 1973) from a terrace at Ecom (the guy believed that day the Navy was starting a coup; this was published shortly before the coup by the biweekly directed by Marta Harnecker, ‘Chile Hoy’). He was fired from Ecom, but not handed over to the Police... incredibly!!

THE MURDERERS FABRICATE AN OUTRAGEOUS ALIBI

The then-lieutenant of the SIN, Daniel Guimpert Corvalán, together with the Carabineros Intelligence captain Germán Esquivel Caballero, who would later participate in multiple "disappearances" committed by the Comando Conjunto and the Sicar, was responsible for carrying out one of the dirtiest and most cowardly aspects of the destabilizing plot.

The day after the assassination of President Allende's naval aide—a Saturday—Esquivel and Guimpert toured various police stations looking for a "scapegoat" to pin the crime on. The one chosen was a prisoner arrested for drunkenness who worked at a Corfo company (Seam) and carried a membership card for a party of the Unidad Popular (the Radical Party).

Since that was not very convincing nor enough to complete their plans, they fabricated a Socialist Party card and "privately" interrogated the official who, subjected to savage torture, incriminated himself for having participated in the assassination "together with a PS-Elenos commando" and some Cubans.

The Seam Corfo mechanic ended up charged and prosecuted by the Naval Justice system under the direction of prosecutor Aldo Montagna.

The name of the electrical mechanic from Seam Corfo tortured by Guimpert and Esquivel was José Luis Riquelme Bascuñán, and he was interrogated and charged by the conspiring minister of the Court of Appeals (Abraham Meerson) and by the military prosecutor Joaquín Erlbaum.

The unfortunate mechanic was tortured so well that he blamed himself for having participated in the crime with a group of GAPs and Cubans led by "Bruno" (Domingo Blanco), one of the leaders of the GAP.

The following day, opposition media and various politicians—among whom stood out the right-wing senators Víctor García Garzena and Fernando Ochagavía, together with the Christian Democrat deputy Claudio Orrego Vicuña and the director of the Christian Democrat newspaper ‘La Prensa’, Jorge Navarrete—initiated a campaign of insults and accusations against the UP government and the Cuban representation in Chile.

The problem for the conspirators of various stripes and affiliations who concerted themselves around the false discovery of Commander Araya's assassins was that, a few days later, the Investigative Police arrested almost all the members of the gang formed by elements of the Comando Rolando Matus (CRM), National Party (PN), Radical Democracy (DR), and Patria y Libertad, who had participated directly in the assassination of the aide.

Among them stood out: the alleged author of the shots (Guillermo Claverie), a leader of the Youth of the National Party and the CRM—Uca Eileen Lozano—, the "Patria y Libertad" son of the well-known bakery businessman Castaño, Odilio Castaño Jiménez; the Patria y Libertad militant, Luis "Fifo" Palma Ramírez, who two years later would have a prominent participation in the Sifa and in the disappearances of the Comando Conjunto, a CRM nephew of the DINA psychiatrist, Laihlacar, with the surname Potin Laihlacar, the leader of the DR, Guillermo Schilling, and a CRM militant, Miguel Sepúlveda Campos, son of a well-known retired admiral. ()

Those who were not arrested hid on a farm in the Valparaíso Region and surrendered to a Navy commando the day after the coup. Those who were detained and prosecuted in the prisons of Valparaíso and Santiago were taken out of prison on September 12 by SIN commandos and integrated into repressive activities. The crime of Commander Araya remained unpunished and with a disappeared file.

EVERYTHING CHANGES

Lieutenant Guimpert Corvalán left the Navy in the late 70s and dedicated himself to running an arms sales business in the vicinity of the Armed Forces Building in Plaza Bulnes. He enjoyed release on bail until he was arrested again, accused in more than a dozen cases of forcibly disappeared persons, in some of which he was even pardoned in the early 90s.

His accomplice in the attempted falsification of Commander Araya's assassination—Guillermo Esquivel—reached the rank of colonel of Carabineros in the Dicomcar and was arrested—for bounced checks—in 1991. He died under strange and never-clarified circumstances in 1993, while he was being denounced in various trials for disappearances and murders.

35 years after the assassination of President Allende's courageous aide, the official version provided by the dictatorship began to crumble in the courts and the truth emerged: It was a crime planned by the right wing against Commander Araya.

The measure, which the officer's family had requested for the first time in August 2003, was approved following the appearance of new evidence provided by Guillermo Claverie.

On April 28, 2008, the Santiago Court of Appeals ordered the reopening of the investigation into the assassination. Unanimously, the Eighth Chamber of the appellate court determined that the court in charge of the case should proceed with the reopening of the investigation, take testimony from Guillermo Claverie Bartet (now 63 years old), and carry out other proceedings derived from it.

The account that Claverie gave to the journalists of ‘La Nación Domingo’, a few years ago, raises doubts. He assured that he still felt fear of what the old (and new) members of the coup-plotting brotherhoods could do to him.

"I could never read my statements that they made me sign at the Naval Prosecutor's Office. And one day that I started to read one of them, after an interrogation, the secretary of the naval prosecutor Aldo Montagna, the officer Jorge Garretón Iturra, put his hand into the jacket of his uniform and pulled out a pistol.

And he told me: ‘Hey, you idiot, you’re reading so much, be grateful that you’re still alive and sign there!’. And of course, that’s how I always signed everything."

His confessions confirm what the aide's children have been discovering in recent years, digging into the file of the trial initiated by the naval justice system and which culminated in 1980 with a three-year sentence for Claverie, as the only material author, and with lesser sentences for minor crimes for other members of the group that acted that night: "It’s just that that investigation is riddled with vices," maintains Arturo, the aide's eldest son, who is a lawyer.

With these confessions from Claverie, the aide's children managed to get the Santiago Court of Appeals to order the reopening of the new process initiated from the complaint they filed in 2003, but which at the time was dismissed and archived by the 18th Criminal Court of Santiago.

THE BURNING QUESTIONS

To make Commander Araya come out to the balcony, Juan Zacconi and Guillermo Necochea (members of ‘Patria y Libertad’) threw a bomb in front of his house. The aide's arrival at his home was announced to them by another bomb that exploded nearby, thrown by another group.

The second bomb, that of Zacconi and Necochea, was the signal for the third group, which was supposed to enter through Fidel Oteíza Street, to commit the assassination.

Ballistic reports detected five impacts on the walls of the naval captain's house. But the shell casings found in front of the house were only four. With the projectile that mortally wounded the aide, and which entered directly without first bouncing off anywhere, the shots total six.

But the other two shell casings were never found. And the ballistic reports established that the shell casings found in the street, corresponding to the shots fired by Claverie, did not belong to the projectile that pierced the aide's body.

That would mean that the commander was assassinated with a different weapon, and they shot him from another place—presumably from the front of his house—slightly from top to bottom. Despite all this evidence, the naval investigation concluded that Allende's aide died from one of Claverie's shots. But he insists on making explicit many questions, all of them without official answers.

Who fired the two shots that several witnesses, according to their declarations in the Naval Court process, heard immediately before the aide fired his burst toward the front and minutes before Claverie fired his four shots?

Did the former naval cadet Jorge Ehlers Trostel hire a sniper to assassinate Commander Araya Peeters, taking advantage of the chaos that Ehlers himself ordered the far-right group to create that night in the vicinity of the aide's house?

Why did Ehlers literally flee to Germany days after the aide's children filed the complaint in September 2003, taking refuge in that country until today?

Why did no one take into account the statement of two prostitutes that appears in the naval justice file, who claimed that, standing that night on the corner of Pedro de Valdivia and Providencia and seconds after hearing shots, they saw two men running out of a place, one of them with a rifle in his hand, and that they got into a pickup truck that had a disc that seemed to them to be a government vehicle?

TORTURE, PRESSURE, AND THREATS

Detained preventively in the Santiago Public Jail, one morning—still in the midst of the dictatorship—the guards took Claverie out and led him to the office of the Naval Prosecutor's Office. In that place, Claverie himself told the newspaper La Nación, he was received by the naval officer Germán Arestizábal, who served as a clerk. "He made me get into an Austin Mini, where I recognized the Air Force officer with the surname Schindler, a schoolmate." They blindfolded him and took him to the Air Force War Academy, in Las Condes.

"There they tied me to a cot and started hitting me on the soles of my feet with a stick or an iron bar. Later they injected into my vein what I believe was pentothal, because they still hadn't gotten my own confession of the aide's crime, as they wanted. I never knew what I answered, but I couldn't have said something that was false," he expresses.

Days later, upon leaving an office where he had started working, a car approached him from which an individual he knew descended, who forced him to get into the vehicle.

"It was ‘Fifo’ Palma (Luis Palma Ramírez, who later joined the Comando Conjunto) and in the car I saw about five machine guns. Fifo told me: ‘Do you know that now we can kill you for talking, you idiot? You know that people who are now very important are involved in this. Don't you forget it’."

That last phrase of the so-called ‘Fifo’ Palma—assuming Claverie is telling the truth—is what the court in charge of the reopening of the case will have to elucidate, as it is vital to establish the identity of those “people who are now very important.” How ‘important’ are those people today?

Parliamentarians? Businessmen? Chilean diplomats abroad? Retired officers of the Armed Forces? Still active officers? Political leaders? Leaders of employer associations? Sooner or later the country will know their names, which will be added to that of Guillermo Claverie, who was indeed in one of the seditious and criminal groups that fateful night.

() THE LIST OF MEMBERS OF THE ASSASSIN COMMAND (published by Revista ‘Cauce’ Nº 15, 09/07/1984).

René Guillermo Claverie Bartet Mario Eduardo Rojas Zegers Guillermo Francisco Necochea Aspillaga Miguel Víctor Sepúlveda Campos (son of a retired Admiral) Uca Eileen Lozano Jeffs (CRM-JN) Guillermo Adolfo Schilling Rojas (cousin of ‘Mamo’ Schilling, leader of the Socialist Party) José Eduardo Iturriaga Aránguiz Luis Guillermo Perry González Luis César «Fifo» Palma Jiménez (later, was a member of the Comando Conjunto) Ricardo Vélez Gómez Rafael Mardones Saint Jean (first cousin of José Luis Mardones Santander, President of BancoEstado) Adolfo Palma Ramírez (brother of Fifo Palma) Enrique Quiroz Ruiz Wilfredo Humberto Perry González Odilio Castaño Jiménez (current co-owner of the ‘Castaño’ bakery chain) Carlos Fernando Farías Corrales Juan Zacconi Quiroz Andrés Pablo Potin Lailhacar Tito Alejandro Figari Verdugo

========================================== By Wari

Source: elciudadano.cl, February 7, 2012

César Palma, former member of the Comando Conjunto and convicted of human rights crimes, has died

Nicknamed “El Fifo”, the former FAch official was imprisoned in the Punta Peuco prison.

On Saturday night, César Palma Ramírez, a former member of the Comando Conjunto and Patria y Libertad, who was convicted of human rights crimes, died. The former FAch official was an inmate at the Punta Peuco prison, and his death was confirmed by the Ministry of the Interior.

Palma was sentenced in 2007 to three years in prison for the kidnapping and disappearance in 1976 of the communist militant and pharmaceutical chemist Carlos Contreras Maluje, and in 2010 to five years for the qualified kidnapping of Humberto Fuentes Rodríguez, a member of the PC arrested in 1975.

Palma, nicknamed "El Fifo", was prosecuted in six other cases for the disappearance of 13 communist militants between the years 1975 and 1976. His death was recorded at the FAch Hospital, and he will be buried this Monday at the General Cemetery.

Source: adnprensa.cl, December 18, 2016

After "more than 17 thousand days" of having been kidnapped by the Comando Conjunto: Finally, there is justice for José Flores Garrido

The former agents who were convicted are currently serving other sentences at the Punta Peuco prison for cases of human rights violations.

This week, Judge Marianela Cifuentes of the San Miguel Court of Appeals issued a first-instance ruling, sentencing four former agents of the Comando Conjunto—members of the Navy, Air Force, and Carabineros—as responsible for the aggravated kidnapping of José Edilio Flores Garrido, a university student and leader of the Partido Comunista, which occurred beginning on August 11, 1976.

The magistrate sentenced Air Force Colonel Juan Francisco Saavedra to 10 years of major imprisonment in its minimum degree as the perpetrator of the aggravated kidnapping of the victim, who is currently classified as a forcibly disappeared person.

Similarly, Navy Captain Daniel Guimpert Corvalán and Carabineros Colonel Manuel Muñoz Gamboa were sentenced to 8 years of major imprisonment in its minimum degree, and Alejandro Saéz Mardones, a second sergeant of the Carabineros, was sentenced to 6 years of imprisonment, all as perpetrators of aggravated kidnapping.

In the case of former Air Force employee Roberto Flores Cisterna, the judge acquitted him of the crimes of aggravated kidnapping and illicit association.

The former agents are currently serving sentences at the Punta Peuco prison, having been involved in other cases of human rights violations.

Regarding this, the plaintiff lawyer and legal coordinator of the firm Caucoto Abogados, Francisco Ugás Tapia, stated that "as lawyers representing the family that survives Mr. José Edilio Flores Garrido, we celebrate and positively value the ruling by Judge Marianela Cifuentes.

This brings an end to the first instance of the case, convicting 4 individuals for their intervention as perpetrators of the aggravated kidnapping of the victim."

"Nearly 47 years after the events, national justice is acting through this decision, which begins to put an end to that state of impunity that covered those responsible for this crime against humanity," the professional added.

Ugás also maintained that "while we identify some legal aspects that we do not share, which will motivate our appeal, we recognize in this ruling a great effort by the national judiciary, personified by the judge, as it demonstrates compliance with the international obligations that require the State to investigate and punish these acts and those responsible, and to provide reparations to the victims, as required by international law."

For his part, the victim's brother, Roberto Flores Garrido, expressed that "nearly 47 years have passed since the kidnapping of my brother by the State security apparatus under the civil-military dictatorship. 47 years of pain, tragedy. It has been 47 years of constant searching."

"My parents, like many parents in my country, passed away with the heartbreaking pain of not knowing what happened to their son. Nearly 47 years have passed, that is to say, more than 17,000 days that we have tried to live one by one in dignity, preserving the memory.

Perhaps we will never know the absolute truth, perhaps we will never find the body to fulfill the human ritual of saying goodbye to our dead," Flores added.

Finally, the victim's brother stated that "this sentence serves to alleviate this injustice in a considerable, though not absolute, way. I hope this ruling contributes to strengthening the 'never again' that we so long for and need for our homeland. My family and I receive this ruling in peace, without resentment but with memory."

The facts According to the investigation led by Judge Cifuentes, it was established that:

1) That, at the time of the events, August 11, 1976, a group of people, composed of members of the Air Force, Navy, Carabineros, and civilians, formed a de facto hierarchical organization called the Comando Conjunto, with the purpose of investigating and repressing the Partido Comunista de Chile and the Juventudes Comunistas.

2) That, during that period, said organization was directed by Air Force Brigadier General Freddy Enríquez Ruiz Bunger, director of the Air Force Intelligence Directorate (DIFA); Group Commander (A) Antonio Benedicto Quiroz Reyes, head of the Counterintelligence Department of the DIFA; and Squadron Commander (A) Juan Francisco Saavedra Loyola, chief officer of the Armed Forces Intelligence Directorate, and was composed of 1st Lieutenant (IM) Daniel Luis Enríque Guimpert Corvalán, head of the Counterintelligence Department of the Navy Intelligence Service (SIN); Carabineros Lieutenant Manuel Agustín Muñoz Gamboa, of the Counterintelligence Department of the Carabineros Intelligence Directorate (DICAR); Carabineros officer Alejandro Segundo Sáez Mardones; and civilians César Palma Ramírez and Miguel Arturo Estay Reyno, among others.

3) That said organization had an institutional building located at Calle Juan Antonio Ríos N°6 in the commune of Santiago and detention centers, among them the facility known as “La Firma,” located at Calle Dieciocho N°229 in the same commune.

4) That on August 11, 1976, in the afternoon, agents of the aforementioned organization, moving in a light blue Peugeot 404 and a cream-colored Renault, illegally detained José Edilio Flores Garrido, a militant of the Partido Comunista, at the intersection of Avenida Club Hípico and Calle Lago Pirihueico.

5) That, subsequently, the victim was taken to the clandestine detention center located at Calle Dieciocho in the commune of Santiago, known as “La Firma,” a place that was under the charge of 1st Lieutenant of the Chilean Navy Daniel Guimpert Corvalán and Carabineros Lieutenant Manuel Muñoz Gamboa, among others, and where civilians César Luis Palma Ramírez, former communist militant Miguel Estay Reyno, and Alejandro Saéz Mardones, among others, performed duties.

6) That, to date, the whereabouts of José Edilio Flores Garrido remain unknown.

by Opazo

Source: elciudadano.cl, April 23, 2022

Murderers and torturers: the ten agents of the Pinochet dictatorship who committed shocking crimes

They shot people who were already immobilized, threw boiling oil on a pregnant woman, used chemical weapons—such as sarin gas and botulinum toxin—and perpetrated terrorist attacks in Washington, Rome, and Buenos Aires.

Some were convicted and remain in Punta Peuco; others died without ever being questioned by the justice system, such as Ingrid Olderöck, the woman with the dog that raped prisoners. These are ten agents who executed terrifying crimes during the dictatorship that began exactly 52 years ago.

This Thursday, September 11, marks 52 years since the coup d'état that brought the civil-military dictatorship led by General Augusto Pinochet to power. This new anniversary finds public opinion exposed to a campaign, mainly on social media, in which some sectors claim that authoritarian government was a positive social, political, and economic period.

As a contribution to historical memory and the deepening of democracy, CIPER publishes the actions of the ten agents who, in our opinion, committed the most terrible crimes of the dictatorship. The lists of repressive agents and the records of their crimes can be reviewed on the "Papeles de la Dictadura" platform, an initiative of CIPER and the CIP of the Universidad Diego Portales, in which more than 4,000 original documents related to that period have been registered.

Although supporters of that regime, which lasted until March 1990, often justify these actions as having been carried out to confront ultra-left political-military groups, the truth is that, as judicial investigations cited in this article have shown, both the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) and its successor, the National Information Center (CNI), quickly turned to the kidnapping, torture, and murder of all types of opponents, including pregnant women and minors.

Rape with dogs, electricity to the genitals, beatings on the soles of the feet and ears, electric shocks on electrified bed frames, mock executions, immersion in dirty water, and acid burns are part of the arsenal used by the agents of these organizations. And this is the story.

KRASSNOFF AND A PREGNANT WOMAN BURNED WITH OIL

Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, known as "El Ruso," was born on February 15, 1946, in Tyrol, Austria. The son of Semión, a Don Cossack, and Dhyna, a Kuban Cossack, his family emigrated to Chile after World War II.

He joined the army in 1963 and participated in the assault on the Tomás Moro presidential house during the 1973 coup d'état. In the first months of 1974, he was sent to the School of the Americas in Panama, where he trained in urban counterinsurgency. Upon his return to Chile, he joined the DINA's Caupolicán Brigade, dedicated to the execution, disappearance, and torture of civilians.

He participated in the confrontation that culminated in the murder of MIR leader Miguel Enríquez. He was a protagonist in various crimes. One of the most gruesome was the torture and murder of Mónica Pacheco, a woman three months pregnant, who was burned with boiling water and oil, as corroborated by the justice system.

Despite his extensive criminal record, he remained in the Army until 1998, when he retired. Today, he is incarcerated at the Punta Peuco prison, where he is serving more than a thousand years in prison for his multiple crimes.

During these years of imprisonment, Krassnoff has received two public tributes. The first was organized in late 2011 by the then-mayor of Providencia, Cristián Labbé. The last was held in 2018 at the Military School.

In an interview with T13, current presidential candidate José Antonio Kast said he had met Krassnoff during a visit to Punta Peuco. "I had the opportunity to cross paths with him. He gave me his book and presents his version of the facts. I know Miguel Krassnoff and, seeing him, I don't believe all the things that are said about him," he said.

MOREN BRITO AND THE TERROR OF VILLA GRIMALDI

Colonel Marcelo Moren Brito, known as "El Ronco" or "El Coronta," participated in key operations of the dictatorship from September 11, 1973, when he commanded the assault on the Universidad Técnica del Estado, now the Universidad de Santiago (USACH).

Two weeks later, the then-captain joined the Caravan of Death, an operation led by General Sergio Arellano Stark that murdered 93 political prisoners held in prisons between Puerto Montt and Pisagua.

Moren Brito continued his career as commander of the clandestine detention facility Villa Grimaldi, a true extermination center where the vast majority of detainees were murdered after extensive torture sessions.

Located in the commune of Peñalolén, in Santiago, Moren Brito personally interrogated various people subjected to torture there. At Villa Grimaldi, one of the most common forms of painful abuse was the "parrilla": detainees, men and women, were stripped, laid down, and tied to a metal bed frame, and then subjected to electric shocks.

Judicial proceedings have confirmed that Moren Brito also integrated the DINA's Caupolicán Brigade, from which members of the Partido Socialista, the MIR, and the MAPU were especially persecuted. As he himself acknowledged before the courts, during the dictatorship he was sent on missions abroad, which included, for example, teaching new forms of interrogation, through hypnosis, to members of the Paraguayan army, although in that testimony he avoids his responsibility and maintains that Villa Grimaldi may have only been a transit point for detainees.

He was sentenced to more than 300 years in prison. He died in the Military Hospital in 2015, coincidentally, on September 11.

OLDERÖCK, THE WOMAN WITH THE DOG

Carabineros officer Ingrid Olderöck left a dark memory among the men and women who passed through the clandestine detention barracks "Venda Sexy," because she trained a German Shepherd, which she called Volodia, and which she used to rape people held in that torture center, located in the house at Calle Irán 3037, in Macul, Santiago.

Olderöck was not only a field agent of the Purén Brigade of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), but she became the director of the Women's School of that criminal organization, a structure that trained about 70 women in political repression practices.

In August 1987, during the final years of the dictatorship, Olderöck gave an interview to West German television, in which she admitted that torture took place in Chile, including the torture of children to obtain confessions from their parents, as she recounted.

She died with impunity on March 17, 2001, at the age of 57, due to acute gastrointestinal bleeding. She was never questioned by the justice system.

CORBALÁN, A SILVER GULL AND 25 MURDERS

Army officer Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, known as "El Faraón" or "Don Juan," served as an agent of the National Information Center (CNI) during the dictatorship. During his time in that organization, he was involved in multiple cases of serious human rights violations. In fact, he has been convicted in various judicial instances as the author or co-author of the murder of more than 25 people.

In 1987, he led the so-called "Operation Albania," also known as the "Corpus Christi Massacre," an action in which CNI agents executed 12 members of the Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez (FPMR) when they were already detained and defenseless.

Corvalán was also responsible in 1982 for the murder of union leader Tucapel Jiménez, a member of the Partido Radical, who received 5 bullets to the skull, in addition to having his throat slit. To cover up this crime, Corvalán and his agents simulated the suicide of carpenter Juan Alegría Mundaca by cutting the veins of both his arms down to the bone, which proved it was not a suicide.

Juan Alegría was a worker with no political affiliation. For these crimes, Corvalán received a life sentence.

In addition, Corbalán participated in the murders of journalist José Carrasco, publicist Abraham Muskablit, painter Felipe Rivera, and architect Gastón Vidaurrázaga, which occurred in 1986.

At the beginning of the 1980s, he was in charge of security for the Viña del Mar International Song Festival and received a "Silver Gull" from the appointed mayor of that commune, Eugenia Garrido, "for his services rendered in defense of the homeland."

Before being arrested and convicted, Corbalán was a member of the far-right political party Avanzada Nacional, of which he became president between August and November 1989.

MANUEL CONTRERAS, THE BRAIN OF DARKNESS

Holding the rank of Army Colonel, Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda came to have more power than the vast majority of the generals of that military branch who were on active duty after the coup d'état. "El Mamo," as his supporters and detractors called him, spread terror among Pinochet's opponents—whether they were supporters of subversive tactics or not—as head of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), the body that was born along with the dictatorship and was responsible for the kidnapping, torture, and murder of hundreds of people.

The men and women under the command of Contreras, an officer trained by U.S. soldiers under the National Security Doctrine at the School of the Americas in Panama, used torture such as the application of electricity to various parts of the body, beatings, broken arms, asphyxiation, and acid and cigarette burns, in addition to mock executions.

"El Mamo," who died in 2015 after being sentenced to more than 500 years in prison, also led the creation of Operation Condor, a joint initiative of the secret police forces of the contemporary dictatorships of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay, which coordinated the capture and death of opponents throughout the subcontinent.

With at least 1,500 agents under his direct command and various clandestine detention centers to his name, terrorist attacks were planned and executed from Contreras's office in Buenos Aires (against the former commander-in-chief of the Army, Carlos Prats, and his wife, Sofía Cuthbert), in Rome (against DC leader Bernardo Leighton and his wife, Ana Fresno), and in Washington (against former Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier and his secretary, Ronni Moffitt).

In fact, the terrorist attack with double murder in the capital of the United States led to his persecution by that country and, eventually, the dissolution of the DINA in 1978 and the opening of the Letelier Case in Chile, a process that ended up sending him to prison.

However, Contreras's power was not only operational. Documentation available in the "Papeles de la Dictadura" of CIPER shows that the DINA was also responsible for approving all hiring in the State, in addition to coordinating the internal war plans of each ministry, by order of Pinochet himself.

TOWNLEY AND HIS TERRORIST BOMBS

American Michael Townley Welch was an agent of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) who participated in various murders inside and outside Chile. To avoid prison, he joined the United States Federal Witness Protection Program, because he provided information to that country's justice system about his participation in the explosive terrorist attack perpetrated in Washington in 1976 against former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier and his secretary, Ronni Moffitt.

The son of a Ford Motor Company executive based in Chile since 1957, Townley studied at Saint George’s College and lived in the exclusive neighborhoods of Los Dominicos and Lo Curro. Before the justice systems of the United States, Chile, and Argentina, he separately confessed his participation in terrorist attacks executed by order of the dictatorship in America and Europe.

He also revealed how the civil-military regime used chemical weapons to murder opponents.

Townley's secret statements to the FBI were published in 2023 by the National Security Archive of the United States, including a letter written in his own hand in 1978: "If there has been sufficient motive to open this envelope, I accuse the Government of Chile of my death," he wrote on that paper.

Those declassified documents revealed a frustrated assassination operation in Paris against socialist leader Carlos Altamirano and MIR leaders, as well as details of the manufacture of sarin gas in his house in Lo Curro, where he lived with writer Mariana Callejas.

Those declassified documents also provided information on how the Spanish UN official, Carmelo Soria, was beaten to death by agents of the DINA's Mulchén Brigade in the garden of Townley's house, as well as information on the latter's role in recruiting the Italian fascists who shot at Bernardo Leighton and his wife in Rome.

EMA CEBALLOS, "LA FLACA CECILIA"

Ema Ceballos Núñez, known as "La Flaca Cecilia," was a Navy agent who worked for the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) and later for the National Information Center (CNI). She was recruited by Carabineros officer Ingrid Olderöck and stood out for her operational participation in several crimes.

In 2017, at age 70, she became the first woman in Chile to enter prison to serve a sentence for a human rights violation case. On that occasion, she was sentenced to ten years and one day in prison for the aggravated kidnapping of Julián Peña Maltés, which occurred in 1987, a member of the Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez (FPMR) who remains disappeared to this day.

In 2024, she was convicted as a co-author of the homicide of Juan José Boncompte Andreu, whom intelligence services attributed the status of regional head of the MIR in Valdivia in those years. According to the Supreme Court ruling, Ema Ceballos shot Boncompte in the skull during a chase, when he was already down and wounded by gunfire.

"I followed orders," she said in writing to El Mercurio in her only contact with the press.

BERNARDO DAZA, MURDERER OF THE PLASTIC BAG

Bernardo Daza Navarro was a non-commissioned officer in the Chilean Navy and an agent of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) during the dictatorship. He was part of the Lautaro Brigade, a DINA unit that was responsible for the detention, torture, and murder of numerous leaders and militants of the Partido Comunista.

Among the best-known victims of this brigade is Víctor Díaz, general secretary of the PC in hiding, who was arrested in May 1976 and murdered months later, when Daza suffocated him with a plastic bag, as reconstructed by the justice system.

Daza Navarro was also involved in the Calle Conferencia Case, in which the DINA dismantled the leadership of the PC. In that operation, carried out in May 1976, several communist leaders were detained and disappeared, including Jorge Muñoz, Mario Zamorano, Uldarico Donaire, and Jaime Donato.

In 2007, Judge Víctor Montiglio prosecuted Daza Navarro and six other former uniformed officers for their responsibility in the kidnapping and homicide of Víctor Díaz. He died in 2016 while serving his sentence in Punta Peuco. Due to his death, he was dismissed from the other cases in which his name appeared.

FIFO PALMA, THE MAN FROM PATRIA Y LIBERTAD

César Palma Ramírez, known as "El Fifo," was a civilian employee of the Chilean Air Force (FACh) and an agent of the Comando Conjunto during the dictatorship. He committed his first crimes before the coup d'état, as a member of the far-right terrorist group Patria y Libertad.

In that capacity, he participated in the murder of President Salvador Allende's aide-de-camp, Navy Captain Arturo Araya, an event that occurred on July 27, 1973.

Palma Ramírez later joined the Comando Conjunto, an intelligence unit created by the FACh, where he participated in numerous human rights violations. These include the kidnapping and disappearance of former communist councilman Carlos Contreras Maluje and the homicides of fellow Comando Conjunto agents Carol Flores and Guillermo Bratti.

He was arrested by the Human Rights Brigade of the Investigative Police in 2008, while he was hiding in a trailer in the Araucanía Region. He died in 2016.

FUENTES MORRISON AND 39 FATAL VICTIMS

Roberto Fuentes Morrison, known as "El Wally," was a commander in the Chilean Air Force and an agent of that military branch's intelligence service (SIFA) during the dictatorship.

From mid-1974, he acted as one of the main torturers in the basements of the Chilean Air Force War Academy (FACH), under the orders of Colonel Edgard Cevallos Jones. That was the place where "they tortured all day and all night," according to former agent Andrés Valenzuela.

As head of operations for the Comando Conjunto, he was responsible for numerous detentions, kidnappings, torture, disappearances, and murders. His fatal victims total 39 people, including Miguel Rodríguez Gallardo, Arsenio Leal Pereira, Gustavo Castro Hurtado, Alonso Gahona Chávez, Luis Moraga Cruz, and Francisco Ortiz Valladares.

The torture methods used by the Comando Conjunto, where Fuentes Morrison was one of the leaders, included beatings, hanging, application of electricity to the genitals, stripping, and sexual abuse.

On June 9, 1989, already in retirement, he was murdered in an FPMR attack outside his home in Ñuñoa, Santiago. He was ambushed by two subjects who shot him 14 times.

by Mauricio Weibel Barahona

Source: ciper.cl, September 9, 2025