The First Chamber of the Valdivia Court of Appeals resolved today to grant release on bail to General (ret.) Gerónimo Pantoja Henríquez, who is being prosecuted for his alleged responsibility in the illegal detention and subsequent disappearance of the communist worker Pedro Espinoza in October 1973.

The resolution of the appellate court was immediately dispatched to the court of first instance in order to notify the defendant, who is currently under house arrest.

Source: El Mostrador, October 20, 2001

Special judge sentences two generals (ret.) for case of forcibly disappeared persons

The head of the San José de la Mariquina Court of Letters, Jaime Salas, handed down a sentence of three years and one day of imprisonment against Army generals (ret.) Héctor Bravo Muñoz and Gerónimo Pantoja for the disappearance of Pedro Espinoza Barrientos, a militant of the Communist Party and President of the "Venceremos" Agricultural Union in the town of Los Lagos.

He was detained on October 18, 1973, around 19:00 hours, at the Junco settlement, Antilhue, by military personnel who carried out an operation in the area. General (ret.) Bravo Muñoz was the head of the IV Army Division.

Pantoja was the commander of the "Maturana" Regiment of La Unión in September 1973, served as deputy director of the DINA, and also became the director of the dissolved CNI. Records from other judicial proceedings, such as the Letelier, Leighton, and Prats cases, indicate that Pantoja belonged to the inner circle of the DINA's foreign directorate.

Source: Primeralinea, November 18, 2002

Great Scams Series: Chapter VIII, "La Cutufa"

Uncovered by gunfire

In the mid-80s, Army officers set up an illegal financial firm that came to manage more than 1.5 billion pesos of the time. Its existence was discovered during the investigation into the murder of a restaurant entrepreneur.

The last thing Aurelio Sichel saw on the dawn of July 19, 1989, was his front gate. Three shots to the back of his neck erased his vision, and he was instantly lying on the ground, bathed in his own blood.

The murder of this restaurant entrepreneur, owner of the Rodizzio restaurant chain, triggered an investigation that would uncover an illegal financial firm known as "La Cutufa," which operated within the Army and managed—as was said at the time—the equivalent of US$ 4 million of the time, defrauding both civilians and military personnel.

It was 1984 when Army Captain Gastón Ramos Cid, using "a small amount of his own capital," decided to create a financing system dedicated to raising funds to invest them in high-profit businesses. Later, Captain Patricio Castro also joined.

Ramos and Castro convinced their acquaintances, especially those in uniform, to invest money in this 'financial firm' that paid much higher interest rates than usual. Both Castro and Ramos backed the return of the capital with checks from personal bank current accounts.

The funds obtained were handed over to a financial operator—who would later be identified as Jorge Larraín—to buy and sell stocks, thus obtaining significant profits. These were used on various occasions to acquire promissory notes of the Chilean foreign debt, which they subsequently sold to the Central Bank, again obtaining significant income.

Although the financial firm initially operated especially among those in uniform, over time it extended its operations to civilians, chosen especially from among the friends and relatives of the military.

During the investigation into Sichel's crime, his partner in the Gelatería Pavarotti, Carlos Pesce, would declare that "...the person who told me about this financial firm was Aurelio Sichel, inviting me to participate in it when I was working privately at the Gelatería Sebastián.

This was in February 1985, and Aurelio indicated to me that the person receiving the money was Patricio Castro, and that is how, in February 1988, I handed over one million pesos to Patricio Castro...".

Later, Pesce would add that "...I am certain that Aurelio handed Patricio Castro money from the Gelatería Pavarotti Society on two occasions, the last time being on the 18th, the day before he passed away; this last amount of money was paid to the Gelatería, attributing it to rent and electricity expenses." The funds go on a trip However, it was in 1986 when, among others, Brigadiers Jaime Lucares Robledo, Jerónimo Pantoja Henríquez, and Enrique Cowell Mancilla; Colonel Sergio Silva Castro; and Commander Gerardo Paredes became investors.

In 1988, they were among the most important money placers. That year, the problems began. The first stumble was the abrupt disappearance of the financial firm's funds. According to Isabel Margarita Pizarro, Sichel's widow, "a man with the surname Larraín took them.

We cannot pronounce his name for now." Jorge Larraín—whose existence could never be proven—had allegedly taken nearly $300 million and supposedly traveled to Ecuador to invest them in the name of the organization.

But nothing more was ever heard of Larraín. Faced with this situation, Castro and Ramos began to recruit new 'investors' to generate the resources to pay the old ones. At that moment, Lucares, Cowell, and Silva took control of the entity, assuming the roles of liaisons, recruiters, and administrators.

As principal investors, they ordered Ramos and Castro to continue issuing checks from their personal accounts. However, the lack of funds reached a crisis. The documents issued by Ramos and Castro continued to be covered until the resources ran out, at which point they began to be protested by their holders.

One investor alone held seven documents from a personal BHIF account of Ramos, for an amount of $53 million. As the matter was uncovered, a veritable avalanche of protested checks began to appear in the criminal courts.

At that moment, the investigation into Sichel's murder, through a judicial accounting expert report—carried out by Alejo Lira and Germán Cereceda—confirmed the existence of the informal financial firm and that one of the main individuals involved was Patricio Castro.

Meanwhile, the collections for the checks continued to arrive. On October 9, there were already protests for $150 million in Castro's accounts, already submitted for collection. Ramos had been declared a defendant for a sum exceeding $100 million.

While Castro fled the country, Ramos turned himself in voluntarily and was detained in a military unit. In October 1990, Ramos Cid was prosecuted by the head of the Eleventh Criminal Court of Santiago, Magistrate Mónica Tagle Madrid, and charged as the alleged perpetrator of the fraudulent issuance of checks.

While the lawsuits against Ramos accumulated in case file 571273-3, his lawyer, Sergio Rodríguez Wallis, would declare that these proceedings had nothing to do with Sichel's murder. Faced with the detention of Ramos Cid, General (ret.) Augusto Pinochet ordered an internal investigation "due to the possibility that his actions may have harmed members of the institution." The summary within the Army would cause a great stir, especially because it hinted at possible high-level corruption that even involved probable mismanagement of fiscal funds.

General Gastón Abarzúa, at that time director of Army intelligence (DINE), would even be implicated. However, the civil proceeding that visiting minister Marcos Libedinsky closed only in August 1992 would prove that there were only eight officers (ret.) involved.

Using a computer program specially created for the investigation, after interrogating more than 400 people and examining 11,200 checks, Libedinsky would reach the conclusion that La Cutufa had come to "manage" 1.5 billion pesos, which at that time was equivalent to more than US$ 4 million.

The court deemed that the investors were not guilty, according to the General Banking Law. But those who had dedicated themselves to exercising actions corresponding to banking companies—that is, collecting or receiving money from the public—were.

In this way, captains (ret.) Patricio Castro Muñoz, Gastón Ramos Cid, and Alejandro Garat; brigadiers (ret.) Jaime Lucares Robledo, Jerónimo Pantoja Henríquez, and Enrique Cowell Mancilla; Colonel (ret.) Sergio Silva Castro; and Commander (ret.) Gerardo Paredes Paredes were charged.

General Abarzúa, although he confessed to being an investor in La Cutufa, was not convicted because he had not participated in the other activities. The destination of the money was never known, nor could the existence of Jorge Larraín be proven.

In fact, the closest thing found was a currency exchange house belonging to Guillermo Larraín, but it was clear that it was not the one mentioned in the proceedings. It was even thought that Larraín could eventually have been Sichel.

Thus, what had begun as a high-profile fraud case was reduced to a fraud among those in uniform that affected some civilians. Although it was assumed that Sichel's murder had occurred because he had announced the withdrawal of his funds from the financial firm, the investigation could not detect a material link between the two crimes.

In fact, his participation as an investor was only mentioned by statements from those interrogated. It was about a year after the financial firm began that Castro made part of his businesses independent and, with funds provided by his father-in-law, partnered with Sichel in the Rodizzio restaurant in Apoquindo and the Pavarotti ice cream parlor.

But he did not abandon La Cutufa. The proceeding could not, finally, prove that Castro and Ramos had operated at any time with fiscal funds.

Source: El Mercurio, April 6, 2002

Four high-ranking officers (ret.) prosecuted for the Chihuío and Liquiñe massacres

In two resolutions in which he prosecuted four high-ranking retired Army officers and one civilian, the visiting minister with exclusive dedication to human rights cases, Alejandro Solís, reported on the episodes of Chihuío and Liquiñe in the foothills of the Tenth Region, two of the most massive in terms of the number of victims of repression during the dictatorship.

In Chihuío, some 190 kilometers southeast of Valdivia, near the border with Argentina, 17 peasants were murdered on October 9, 1973, by personnel from the "Cazadores" and "Maturana" regiments of Valdivia, whose commanders were Colonels Santiago Sinclair (former vice-commander-in-chief of the Army and former designated senator) and Jerónimo Pantoja Hernández (former second-in-command of the DINA), respectively.

For this case, Judge Solís prosecuted Pantoja, now retired, for kidnapping; General (ret.) Héctor Bravo Muñoz, who in September 1973 was the head of the IV Army Division based in Valdivia and head of the zone under a state of siege; the then-captain Luis Osorio Garardazanic; and a civilian.

The bodies of the 17 peasants were exhumed by Army personnel at the end of 1978 and remain forcibly disappeared. On June 17, 1990, the three mass graves in which the peasants had been buried were discovered, and only small bone fragments were found, which allowed for the confirmation of the peasants' identities.

One day later, on October 10, 1973, an Army and Carabineros operation kidnapped and killed 15 peasants in the village of Liquiñe, a few kilometers from the town of Neltume, also in the foothills. For eleven of these victims, Solís prosecuted Army Lieutenant Colonel (ret.) Hugo Guerra Jorquera as the perpetrator of kidnapping.

According to witnesses from the time, these peasants were executed on the Toltén River bridge and their bodies thrown into the river. For this case, Judge Juan Guzmán previously prosecuted the civilian Luis García, owner of the Termas de Liquiñe, who collaborated in the kidnappings.

Although General (ret.) Sinclair has not been prosecuted for Chihuío until now, sources linked to the investigation state that he could indeed be.

Source: La Nacion, March 19, 2003

Only the name of one of the Chihuío victims is mentioned in the Dialogue Table report

In the Dialogue Table report, only the name of one of the Chihuío victims is mentioned: Pedro Pedreros Zenteno, who, according to information provided by the Armed Forces, was allegedly thrown into the sea.

The proceeding for the Chihuío case was transferred to the Fourth Military Court of Valdivia and dismissed due to the application of the amnesty law, in a resolution that was confirmed by the higher courts.

But in 1998, Pedreros' children filed a lawsuit against Augusto Pinochet Ugarte. The redistribution of the nearly 300 lawsuits that Guzmán was handling resulted in the case being referred to Minister Alejandro Solís, who prosecuted about 6 military personnel—including Jerónimo Pantoja and Raúl Muñoz—at the beginning of May of this year for the kidnapping of 17 people, since one victim was identified some time ago.

Source: Zonaimpacto.cl, July 7, 2003

Huber Case: Provis insists on innocence and links homicide to La Cutufa

Before the Second Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court, the defense of the retired brigadier will argue that there are no concrete elements to involve him in the events that triggered the death of Gerardo Huber, and that the Army's loyalties were disrupted by the discovery of this illegal financial firm.

The Second Chamber of the Supreme Court, specialized in criminal matters, advanced this Monday in the review of the only appeal filed by the first defendants in the judicial investigation into the death of Colonel Gerardo Huber Olivares, whose crime was allegedly perpetrated to prevent investigations regarding the illegal arms trafficking to Croatia, detected in 1991.

This is the amparo (habeas corpus) filed by the lawyers of Brigadier (ret.) Manuel Provis—Cristián Letelier and Héctor Musso—who will attempt to dismantle the arguments of visiting minister Claudio Pavez, who prosecuted the former military officer and five other former officers of this branch for the crime of illicit association, an eventual criminal organization that allegedly operated to carry out arms trafficking activities and hide the fact through the murder of the ill-fated officer.

Provis, formerly the head of the Intelligence Battalion (BIE), is charged along with Generals (ret.) Eugenio Covarrubias (former director of the DINE), Víctor Lizárraga (coordination secretary of the DINE), Carlos Krumm (former director of Logistics), and Colonel (ret.) Julio Muñoz (alleged friend of the victim), who are accused of having carried out various maneuvers so that this crime would appear as a suicide in the eyes of public opinion and the justice system.

However, suspicions point to the motive being to prevent progress in the judicial investigation into the smuggling of 11 tons of military equipment that were sold to Croatia, a country in a state of war and under a UN prohibition to acquire weaponry.

On this Monday, the highest court only managed to hear the report of the case, so the arguments will only begin tomorrow, Tuesday. Suspicions The then-head of the BIE, the operational arm of the DINE, is specifically accused of having supported a series of suspicious actions, since neither he nor Lizárraga—his superior—have given sufficient or rational explanations about the manner, timing, and conditions in which they learned of the colonel's disappearance.

However, both appear acting at the scene of the event—El Toyo bridge, in the Cajón del Maipo—at the first hour of the morning of the day after the disappearance (January 30). The magistrate notes that the DINE coordination secretary had not yet officially assumed that position, but was acting as head.

Furthermore, it is strange that the BIE reaction groups arrived around 04:30 hours at the scene, while Huber's car was found only at 03:00 hours and the report filed with the Carabineros an hour later.

It is established in the summary that neither the uniformed police, nor the Military head of the metropolitan area, nor relatives of the disappeared communicated with them. Likewise, Judge Pavez maintains that although Provis was on vacation from February 3 to March 6, 1992, he continued to intervene in the situation to join Lizárraga on a trip to Linares.

The magistrate has established that the objective of that journey had the sole purpose of seizing the colonel's youngest son, who remained disappeared and, presumably, kidnapped in a secret facility of the Army Intelligence School (EIE).

The version that the retired brigadier has maintained is that he was called to join the mission of looking for a psychic to help them find the whereabouts of Colonel Huber, which his defense has reiterated, pointing out that it is more common than it seems for teams dedicated to investigating to turn to this type of person to find clues about a disappeared person. "They did not carry out management of this type in the city of Linares, nor in any other place, and, on the other hand, the possible intervention of the aforementioned psychic refers to another place," states the document drafted by Pavez. The other fact that incriminates Manuel Provis is the intervention of BIE members at the scene of the event, who cordoned off the sector and blocked the entry of the Investigative Police—in charge of the court's inquiries—in addition to altering the conditions by even transporting the deceased military officer's body by helicopter. Those actions were not ordered by the military prosecutor in charge of the case, Humberto Julio, as he has declared. Meanwhile, sources close to the investigation report that, following the indictments issued by Pavez, the officers who have provided statements have begun to cooperate to try to reconstruct the true circumstances that determined the colonel's death. Therefore, they project that the investigation has already entered the home stretch to establish both the material executors and those who decided to eliminate Huber. La Cutufa The main argument that Brigadier (ret.) Provis has expressed regarding how the events occurred refers to the fact that he only complied with the mission of traveling to Linares because it was an order from a superior, but that he can now interpret it as a distracting maneuver to divert his attention from the real events. To that extent, sources from his defense explain that he had been "bypassed" in all the operations carried out by the troops under his command at the moment the military officer's corpse appeared. That "alteration" in the Army's hierarchies would be explained by the judicial phenomenon that the Cutufa case generated within the military ranks. As it was said, the growing distrust that originated among the military, following the murder of the restaurant entrepreneur and one of the main investors of the illegal financial firm, Silvio Aurelio Sichel, on July 19, 1989, would have influenced the change in loyalties within the Army officer corps. Sichel was killed outside his plot, located in the Casas Viejas sector, after he decided to withdraw from the business or "system," as the Cutufa was christened. However, the judicial proceeding regarding his death was dismissed without determining responsibilities. At the time, the then-Court of Appeals of Pedro Aguirre Cerda issued an indictment against Captain (ret.) Patricio Castro for his alleged participation in the crime, but the ruling was rendered ineffective some time later. La Cutufa was uncovered after a series of lawsuits for the fraudulent issuance of checks were filed in civil courts. The documents bore the signature of Castro and active-duty Captain Gastón Ramos, whose last two assignments had been the DINE and the School of Non-Commissioned Officers. On November 10, 1990, the arrest of Captain (ret.) Castro took place in Paraguay; he tried to evade justice but was located in time by the Investigative Police. On July 8, 1992, the visiting minister for the case, Marcos Libedinsky, closed the summary and charged Patricio Castro, Gastón Ramos, Alejandro Garat, Enrique Cowel, Sergio Silva, and Jerónimo Pantoja. However, doubts still persist about the real individuals involved in this illegal financial firm, as it is speculated that it would be impossible for a hidden activity that involved nearly 250 Army officers, and even businessmen, to function from the end of 1986 to mid-1989 without the Army high command finding out, since many of them were investors. Provis's defense has also hinted at their client's suspicions that the materialization of the crime would fall on the same hitmen who perpetrated the murder of Sichel. In that case, doubts fall on former agents of the then-dissolved CNI, such as Juan Carlos Solimano, Captain (ret.) Arturo Sanhueza Ross, and Francisco Zúñiga Acevedo. However, the latter committed suicide under suspicious circumstances inside his car at the end of 1991, so it is impossible that he was involved in Huber's death.

Source: elmostrador.cl, March 27, 2006

38 years after the Chihuío peasant massacre

The Chihuío peasant massacre occurred on October 9, 1973, in the commune of Futrono, Valdivia province (northeast of Lake Maihue), less than a month after the military dictatorship and its regime of State terrorism were established by blood and fire.

Executed within the framework of the regime's generalized and systematic political persecution against part of the civilian population, it is configured as one more of the dictatorship's crimes against humanity.

According to the background information gathered in the trial of those directly responsible for this aberrant crime, a military convoy left on October 7, 1973, from the "Cazadores" and "Maturana" regiments of Valdivia, which were under the command of Colonels Santiago Sinclair Oyaneder (who would later occupy the position of Vice Commander-in-Chief of the Army) and Jerónimo Pantoja Hernández (who would occupy the second command hierarchy in the DINA), respectively.

It was composed of 90 men, including troops and officers, and 7 vehicles. In charge was Captain of the Cazadores regiment Luis Alberto Osorio Gardasanich and Lieutenants Patricio Keller Oyarzún, Marcos Rodríguez Olivares, Luis Rodríguez Rigorighy, and Lautaro Ortega.

They were accompanied by Américo González Torres, one of the owners of the Chihuío estate, a faithful exponent of the abject landowning bourgeoisie, who had drawn up the lists of people who should be detained and eliminated.

The convoy headed toward Futrono, 130 km southeast of Valdivia, and traveled through the northern area of lakes Ranco and Maihue, passing through Llifén, Arquilhue, Curriñe, and Chabranco, until reaching Chihuío in the high mountain range, very close to the border with Argentina.

As it advanced, they completed the list of detentions. A total of 17 agricultural workers, belonging to the "La Esperanza del Obrero" Peasant Union of the Panguipulli Agricultural and Forestry Complex, were brutally seized by the caravan of murderers, being beaten until they bled in the presence of their families.

Among them was the minor Fernando Adrián Mora Gutiérrez, whose crime was asking where they were taking his father (Sebastián Mora Osses) upon seeing him together with other detainees aboard a military truck.

They were detained

In Futrono: Luis Arnaldo Ferrada Sandoval In Llifén: Rosendo Rebolledo Méndez and Manuel Jesús Sepúlveda Sánchez In Arquilhue: Narciso Segundo García Cancino and Ricardo Segundo Ruiz Rodríguez In Curriñe: José Rosamel Cortés Díaz, Rubén Neftalí Durán Zúñiga, Eliecer Sigisfredo Freire Caamaño, Juan Walter González Delgado, Pedro Segundo Pedreros Ferreira, and Carlos Vicente Salinas Flores In Chabranco: Carlos Maximiliano Acuña Inostroza, José Orlando Barriga Soto, Daniel Méndez Méndez, Fernando Adrián Mora Gutiérrez (minor), Sebastián Mora Osses, and Rubén Vargas Quezada At night, they arrived near Chihuío on October 9, in the rain, piled into trucks, beaten and wounded, stumbling with the irregularities of the road. Near their destination, the trucks and jeeps got stuck in the mud and could not continue. They took them down and made them walk in the dark, under the intense rain and guarded by troops with rifles pointed at them. An officer, showing off his sadism, forced them to sing. Several of them were evangelical; one began to sing a hymn. The rest followed him, and their songs became a prayer, entrusting their destiny to God. They walked slowly, sinking their shoes into the mud, their clothes soaked and their bodies numb. Near midnight, the column arrived at the main house of the henchman González Torres. Some soldiers cut pieces of the wire used to hang clothes and with them tied the wrists of each of the 17 peasants. Then they locked them in one of the rooms of the house. The military personnel dedicated themselves to eating and drinking. Meanwhile and in contrast, the peasants lying on the floor, with their wet clothes, hungry, frozen with cold, and with their hands tied behind their backs with wire, resumed their hymns of praise until they fell exhausted by fatigue and hunger. This would be the final prayer of these true martyrs of their faith who, due to their awareness, had chosen the path of the struggle for the social redemption of the poor in the countryside and the city, grouping themselves within their union. During the night, and at an unspecified hour, an officer went to the conscripts and asked for 21 volunteers. Only 9 showed up; the rest were completed with permanent staff. Each one with their rifle was taken to where the prisoners were. They violently woke them up and threw them outside. Then, the officer ordered them to run. A few steps later, the platoon began the volleys and the massacre began. Most of them, wounded and dying in the mud, were finished off on the ground with corvos (knives). The screams were heartbreaking. (These testimonies were presented to the Rettig Commission, to Magistrate Juan Guzmán Tapia in charge of the investigation of the massacre, and to the Human Rights Pastoral of the Bishopric of Valdivia by 3 conscripts who were present at the events). Thus, without even a War Council to feign a masquerade of a trial, the convoy led by Capt. Luis Alberto Osorio Gardasanich, following instructions from the commanders, murdered 17 modest peasants in a treacherous and deranged manner in a small forest adjacent to the tourist complex called Termas de Chihuío, in the high Valdivian mountain range. During the investigation for the trial of those responsible for this massacre, it was determined that the following day a witness observed that the lifeless bodies of several of the victims had cuts on their hands and stomachs. Furthermore, it was proven that the victims' bodies remained for several days at the scene of the crime covered only with branches and logs, until some relatives, also risking their lives, proceeded to bury them. In 1978, clandestinely, and within the "Operation Television Removal" ordered by the dictatorship to make the evidence of its crimes disappear, military personnel in civilian clothes arrived to exhume the remains and, again with the help of the henchman Américo González Torres, dug them up and made their bodies disappear by throwing them into the sea. Only recently did the Legal Medical Service (SML), after arduous investigative work, manage to identify, as part of the remains of 5 of the 17 murdered peasants, the scarce bone samples that were found in the grave from which the bodies were removed. Those few bone remains were handed over on July 15, 2011, to their relatives by the Regional Director of the SML of Valdivia, Patricia Benhe, and corresponded to: Luis Arnaldo Ferrada Sandoval, 42 years old, agricultural worker. Manuel Jesús Sepúlveda, 28 years old, lumber worker. Ricardo Segundo Ruiz Rodríguez, 24 years old, factory supervisor. Carlos Maximiliano Acuña Inostroza, 46 years old, lumber worker. Daniel Méndez Méndez, 42 years old, lumber worker. On the other hand, at the end of January 2011, the Supreme Court handed down a shameful sentence in this case, sentencing Luis Alberto Osorio Gardasanich to a penalty of only 10 years and one day of imprisonment for his responsibility as the material author of the 17 qualified homicides. Meanwhile, retired Carabineros officer Luis Eduardo Osses Chavarría was sentenced to 3 years and one day of imprisonment for his responsibility as an accomplice to 4 of the 17 qualified kidnappings. For his part, the civilian Bruno Esteban Obando Cárdenas was acquitted due to "lack of participation." Furthermore, the same Chamber, with the dissenting vote of Minister Dolmestch and the member lawyer Chaigneau, resolved to dismiss the payment of compensation to the victims' relatives. Former Col. Jerónimo Pantoja Henríquez, who had already been convicted for the disappearance of the communist militant Pedro Espinoza Barrientos, died before the final ruling of the Supreme Court. Former Gen. Santiago Sinclair, who gave the orders, was not convicted. Nor was the henchman Américo González Torres prosecuted. It is worth remembering that Santiago Sinclair was also prosecuted as a co-perpetrator of the kidnapping and homicide in 1987 of 5 militants of the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (FPMR): Manuel Sepúlveda Sánchez, Gonzalo Fuenzalida Navarrete, Julio Muñoz Otárola, Julián Peña Maltés, and Alejandro Pinochet Arenas, whose bodies, after being murdered, were thrown into the sea from a helicopter to make them disappear. Following the code of conduct always confirmed by the high command of the dictatorship of: "the higher the rank, the greater the cowardice," former Gen. Santiago Sinclair Oyaneder took refuge in the authoritarian enclaves of the judiciary to avoid being convicted for those horrendous and treacherous crimes, following the example of the dictator who, in the height of his cowardice to avoid facing justice, chose to declare himself insane.

Source: g80.cl, November 4, 2011

Operation Television Removal

Operation Television Removal

The “Television Removal” operation was the solution provided by Augusto Pinochet to cover up the massacres that occurred throughout Chile following the coup d'état. This cruel decision was made by him and the Military Junta after the discovery of the bodies of 11 peasants and 4 youths from Isla de Maipo in the lime kilns of Lonquén.

It was the second-to-last day of November 1978, when horror emerged from abandoned lime kilns in the town of Lonquén, a few kilometers from Santiago. The report had reached the Vicaría de la Solidaridad from a peasant who was digging in the earth, searching for his forcibly disappeared son.

At first, it was a secret known only to Cardinal Silva Enríquez, the Vicar of the Vicaría de la Solidaridad Cristián Precht, and a small group of collaborators of the Vicaría de la Solidaridad; later, it became a harsh reality regarding the fate of 15 detained persons who had been missing until that moment.

The news of this discovery unsettled Pinochet; it was not on his agenda. He was clear that the disappeared had not escaped the country, and that they were not wandering the world discrediting the military dictatorship.

He knew that behind every forcibly disappeared person was his own hand, so he called an emergency meeting of the Military Junta to seek a quick solution and prevent possible accidental discoveries of burials throughout the country.

It was a hot summer for the dictatorship. The discovery of clandestinely buried bodies and their rapid dissemination in the international press was added to the strong pressures from the American government to extradite Manuel Contreras and Pedro Espinoza for the terrorist attack in Washington against Orlando Letelier, further weakening his position on the international stage at a time when he was facing a serious border crisis with Argentina.

That year, pressure from the White House regarding the attack in Washington had forced Pinochet to make the decision to end the DINA, but he could not remain without an intelligence service that responded to his interests.

Thus, on August 12, he promulgated two Decree Laws: 1876, which ended the DINA, and 1878, which created the Central Nacional de Informaciones. To ensure everything was in order, he promoted Manuel Contreras to General of the Republic, completing the requirements demanded by the position of director of the nascent CNI.

American pressure continued, as did the investigations, which is why Pinochet decided to retire his loyal servant and look for a general who would provide guarantees to him and the Americans. The chosen one was retired General Odlanier Mena.

Odlanier Mena was a man of Military Intelligence who had retired after intense fights with the director of the DINA, Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda. Pinochet, to reassure him, had given him the position of ambassador to Uruguay, a not insignificant post for a retired general, since it was close to home and there were no conflicts or shocks with the civil-military dictatorship of José María Bordaberry, an ally of the Chilean military dictatorship.

On November 3, 1977, Contreras was called to retirement and replaced by General Odlanier Mena. The change was not easy. Contreras had accumulated much power and influence over his people, who, thanks to the prevailing impunity, had earned a reputation for being unscrupulous among their peers.

Mena was reticent when requested for the position and expressed this to Pinochet. The most forceful argument was that he could not assume it because he was a retired general, and the law that had been created expressly stated that its director must be a general in active service.

Pinochet, demonstrating his power, replied that there were no problems, that he would immediately order a change stating that the director could be a general in active service or retired.

He was in the midst of this in December 1978, when he went to Pinochet’s office to have several documents signed. At the entrance, he came face to face with General Mendoza, who was leaving the office very disturbed.

They did not have time to greet each other; he only heard, “Odlanier, we are discussing the Lonquén discovery and the enormous public commotion this event has produced in the country. I have been ordered to present a detailed report because I myself was unaware of this situation.”

Surprised, he opened the door slightly and saw Admiral Merino, General Leigh, and Pinochet arguing. At that moment, an aide-de-camp let him in. They greeted him without paying much attention to his presence and continued making comments, analyzing possible scenarios, and looking for ways to cover up the crimes.

Mena listened attentively from a corner of the table. At some point, the idea arose of using the institutions to carry out “the search for clandestine cemeteries throughout the country” in order to erase all traces of criminal activity. The idea contained a terrifying vision; it was a double crime: after death, disappearance.

The Operation

Despite the detailed description that Mena gave of that meeting to the justice system, he replied that he had no further information regarding the fate of the idea of searching for “clandestine cemeteries.” It was Minister Juan Guzmán who managed to clarify the course that meeting took and how the removal of graves had been ordered through “Operation Television Removal.”

In 2004, Judge Guzmán and the Fifth Department of the Investigative Police received the testimony of an Intelligence non-commissioned officer who indicated having received an A-1 category cryptogram—a nomenclature that determines the level of urgency and secrecy of the mission—while he was at the Húsares Regiment in Angol in 1979.

The non-stop account detailed data and situations that spoke of the context of the era and began to give shape to a series of gaps that had remained after the opening of graves in Liquiñe and other parts of the country.

According to his statement, due to the category of the cryptogram, he had run to the decoding machine to decipher it. When he was able to read it, seeing that it came from General Pinochet himself, he took it immediately to the office of the regiment commander.

His impression was so great that he did not forget its text, and as if he were just reading it, he told the Judge that it “ordered the exhumation of all bodies of political prisoners executed within the regiment’s jurisdiction and to make them disappear.”

The text of the cryptogram added that if any body were found after that cleanup operation in the area, the officers in charge of the mission would be retired.

Mulchén Massacre

The order began to be executed in the Húsares Regiment, but its commander remembered that the massacre of 18 peasants near the Termas de Pemehue was not in his jurisdiction and called the 17th Reinforced Mountain Infantry Regiment of Los Ángeles to communicate the order they had received.

The next day, three non-commissioned officers from the Department II of the III Army Division, based in Concepción, arrived at the 17th Mountain Infantry Regiment. All had completed courses at the School of the Americas and had specialties in counterinsurgency warfare.

They organized an eight-person team made up of officers and non-commissioned officers who headed to the Termas de Pemehue area. They went in two vehicles, equipped with pickaxes, shovels, crowbars, and black bags. They had previously established contact with a relative of a soldier to guide them to the place where the bodies were supposed to be.

The task was easy; the damp earth allowed them to reach the bodies, which were only 50 centimeters deep. Some still had the remains of their humble clothes, which were torn apart as they were pulled out, leaving small traces of the crime in the pieces of fabric and buttons that remained in the earth.

In total, 12 bodies were exhumed. The bags were loaded into the vehicles and they headed toward Concepción. The place chosen to end the task was a brick kiln of Department II. One by one, they threw the bodies in to be incinerated, just as the Nazis had done during World War II.

Among the accounts is the reference to an officer who commented to them, while they were digging in the earth in search of the bodies, that he had learned to incinerate corpses in a course he had taken in Germany.

He gave them gruesome details, such as that a large grill had to be prepared to place the bodies on and that abundant firewood should be lit under it, adding petroleum constantly. He advised them that they had to be burned until they turned to ash.

The Mulchén massacre occurred between October 5, 6, and 7, 1973, at the El Morro, Carmen y Maitenes, and Pemehue estates. On the evening of October 5, 1973, the patrol arrived at the Los Morros estate.

They carried a list with the names of peasants. They called them out loud, and they surrendered without complaint: Juan de Dios Laubra Brevis, 26 years old; Domingo Antonio Sepúlveda Castillo, 29 years old; José Edmundo Vidal Aedo, 20 years old; Celsio Nicasio Vivanco Carrasco, 26 years old; and José Florencio Yáñez Durán, 34 years old.

All were tied with wire, beaten, tortured, and taken to the banks of the Renaico River to be executed.

The next day, they went up to the Carmen y Maitenes estate looking for 8 peasants: Miguel del Carmen Albornoz Acuña, 20 years old; Daniel Alfonso Albornoz González, 28 years old; Alejandro Albornoz González, 48 years old; José Guillermo Albornoz González, 32 years old; Luis Alberto Godoy Sandoval, 23 years old; Manuel Florencio Rubilar Gutiérrez, 25 years old; José Liborio Rubilar Gutiérrez, 28 years old; and José Lorenzo Rubilar Gutiérrez, 33 years old.

All were taken to the main house. There, they were subjected to violent beatings until, amidst mockery and laughter, Lieutenant Concha Maturana made them play "Roman circus," where they would hit each other and the losers would fall under the bullets.

Seven were coldly executed, being made to dig their own graves and forced to lie face down inside them to be shot in the back. The only one who was not executed that day was José Guillermo Albornoz González, whom they tied to a trailer.

The last stop was at the Pemehue estate. There, they took Felidor Exequiel Albornoz González, 33 years old; Alberto Albornoz González, 41 years old; José Fernando Gutiérrez Ascencio, 25 years old; Jerónimo Humberto Sandoval Medina, 22 years old; and Juan de Dios Roa Riquelme, 35 years old, from their homes. Here, they repeated the same sadism they had displayed at the Carmen y Maitenes estate.

The next morning, Army Sergeant Luis Díaz Quintana realized that José Guillermo Albornoz González was still tied to the trailer. He approached and saw that he was alive, despite his bleeding wounds, fractured jaw, having not eaten for two days, swollen from the sleet that had fallen, and without water.

Together with Carabineros officer Jacobo del Carmen Ortiz Palma, they took him to the banks of the Renaico River and murdered him.

As in all the massacres that occurred in rural areas, terror took hold of the community; the law of the strongest was imposed, and the victims' relatives were left exposed to arbitrariness. Some managed to bury their dead; others did not dare to look for the bodies for fear.

Hindered by the fear inspired by the estate owners, they did not dare to rescue the bodies, nor did they think that the evil would go as far as the elimination of any trace of their relatives' lives.

The people responsible for these atrocious crimes are the Carabineros lieutenant of Mulchén, Jorge Maturana Concha, and Carabineros officers Osvaldo Díaz Díaz, alias “Alicate,” and Héctor Guzmán Saldaña.

Along with them, several civilians participated, among whom are Romualdo Guzmán Saavedra, Francisco Urrizola Elías, Ramón Elías Abella, Aquiles Guzmán Fritz, Carlos Lehman, and a sergeant from the 17th Reinforced Mountain Regiment.

Buin Regiment

Just as in the Húsares Regiment of Angol, in December 1978, Department II of the Buin Regiment received an encrypted message from the Commander-in-Chief. More than 20 years later, Lieutenant Pedro Andrés Rodríguez Bustos declared before Judge Juan Guzmán that the message was signed by Augusto Pinochet and had precise orders “to gather the officers and non-commissioned officers who had been serving in those units between the years 1973 and 1974.

Said meeting should try to obtain from that personnel the information they had regarding the whereabouts of the bodies of people executed and buried inside military units or, in this specific case, in the Peldehue military camp, considering that this camp was going to transfer part of its land to the Compañía Minera Andina and, for that same reason, it had to be known if there were clandestine burials on said land, since if so, the exact locations were required to proceed with the exhumation and elimination of the corpses.”

Later, he would ratify his statements, pointing out that the order came from the Second Army Division, in charge of General Enrique Morel Donoso, and that it was sent to all garrisons in the country. He detailed the way in which the information was delivered by those who knew about the burials of political executions and emphasized the secret nature of the entire process, mentioning two officers who came forward to provide information to Commander Mario Navarrete Barriga: Juan Ibáñez and Jorge Aguilar.

Despite the conclusiveness of his statement, it was dismissed at the time because it was considered that it could be an intelligence operation. Only in 2004 would it be concluded that “Operation Television Removal” was a decision thought out and decided at the highest levels in order to hide the massacres after the 1973 coup d'état.

Fuerte Arteaga

In 1999, while Augusto Pinochet was detained in London, the government of Eduardo Frei called on different sectors to participate in a Dialogue Table that would allow for gathering information on the fate of the victims of the military regime who were forcibly disappeared.

Human rights lawyers, representatives of the Armed Forces and Order, representatives of the different religions existing in the country, academics, and government representatives participated in it. The organizations of relatives of the forcibly disappeared and human rights organizations refused to participate, considering this instance a lifeline for Augusto Pinochet.

The work ended on June 13, 2000, with the delivery of the document of the agreements reached to President Ricardo Lagos. In it, the human rights violations that occurred during the military dictatorship were recognized by all those who participated in the Table; an absolute rejection of the use of violence as a method of political action was established, as well as a commitment as a society to generate the conditions that would lead to reconciliation, thereby facilitating the delivery of information on the fate of the forcibly disappeared.

In January 2001, the Armed Forces delivered a report that provided data on the fate of 200 forcibly disappeared persons supposedly thrown into the sea, rivers, or high mountain ranges. Of these, 180 appeared with names, surnames, and the date of their death.

A report was delivered to President Lagos containing 45 cases of forcibly disappeared persons whose data contained coordinates and maps of their location, which made it presumed that those remains would be found quickly.

This complex situation caused public commotion, since it was the recognition of the existence of information on the fate of the forcibly disappeared within the Armed Forces; to this was added the anxiety of many relatives who hoped to have answers about their loved ones.

Faced with this situation, the president of the Supreme Court, Hernán Álvarez, decided to appoint visiting ministers to clarify the fate of the forcibly disappeared.

In this framework, Judge Amanda Valdovinos was designated to investigate information on the existence of a cavern with 20 skulls of forcibly disappeared persons at Fuerte Arteaga and areas adjacent to the property surrounding this military facility.

The accounts that emerged spoke of exhumations and transfers of remains to the slopes of the El Talhuenal mountain range. There, the minister focused her investigative work, together with a team of forensic anthropologists.

The information that repeatedly mentioned the “corner of the deceased” to refer to a specific area of the military facility, where remains taken from other places had been buried, led her to determine that not all the exhumed remains had been thrown into the sea, and she reported this to the Supreme Court.

In March of that same year, the investigations on the grounds of Fuerte Arteaga in Peldehue yielded results. In the Quebrada de los Ratones, the remains of Luis Rivera Matus were found, a communist union leader detained at the exit of the Chilectra building on November 6, 1975, by men in civilian clothes who belonged to the Comando Conjunto Antisubversivo.

His name appeared in the Armed Forces' report as having been thrown into the sea off the coast of the central zone.

This meant a new discredit for the Armed Forces; they were accused of providing a list loaded with inaccuracies, causing new wounds among the relatives of the forcibly disappeared.

The minister's findings gave rise to more information that ended with the indictments of Air Force generals (ret.) Freddy Ruiz Bunger and Carlos Madrid Hayden, Army major (ret.) Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, and DINE (Army Intelligence Directorate) officer (ret.) Sergio López Díaz.

In 2004, the Court of Appeals Minister with special dedication for human rights cases, Joaquín Billard, sentenced General (ret.) Freddy Ruiz Bunger and Carlos Madrid Hayden to 600 days in prison as accessories to qualified kidnapping in the person of Luis Rivera Matus.

He sentenced Army major (ret.) Álvaro Corbalán Castilla and Army Intelligence officer (ret.) Sergio López Díaz to 10 years in prison as perpetrators of the qualified kidnapping of Luis Rivera Matus. Three years later, the Supreme Court reduced the sentences, leaving only Álvaro Corbalán Castilla with an effective prison sentence.

La Moneda

Four months after the search began at Fuerte Arteaga, the investigations began to reveal what had happened more than twenty-five years earlier with those detained on September 11, 1973, at La Moneda.

A large pit was excavated in the northern area of the campaign zone, and more than 500 bone pieces were recovered, which corresponded to fragments of limbs, teeth, pieces of skull, and other parts of human bodies, in addition to war material and pieces of clothing. Among these remains was the last piece of history of 12 of the 20 people detained on September 11, 1973, at La Moneda.

Judge Valdovinos issued a conclusive report to the Supreme Court. In it, she spoke of the violence and irrationality that had dominated these deaths. She indicated that upon observing the remains found in the pit area, one could “categorically conclude the use of grenade-type explosives to destroy the bodies,” due to the bone fragments embedded in the walls of the pit.

She also referred to the tracks of heavy machinery in the exhumation of bodies.

In June 2002, the Supreme Court decided to restructure the investigations of cases of human rights violations and appointed Judge Juan Carlos Urrutia, of the Fifth Criminal Court, to be in charge of the Fuerte Arteaga case. Based on the bone fragments, the investigation for illegal exhumation began.

One of the fundamental witnesses in this investigation was non-commissioned officer Eliseo Cornejo Escobar, who participated in the executions of those detained at La Moneda and, five years later, guided the search in the excavations to exhume the remains, within the framework of “Operation Television Removal.”

That December 23, 1978, the supervision of the work was in charge of the Tacna Regiment commander, Hernán Canales Varas. According to the accounts, it was around 10:00 hours when Eliseo Cornejo marked the exact place where those detained on September 13, 1973, had been buried.

A mechanical shovel began to dig the dry pit until reaching six meters deep; there, an iron bar appeared, which Cornejo immediately identified. The shovel began to work slowly until the first body appeared.

The bodies were almost intact, thanks to the clay soil that prevented the penetration of oxygen and the subsequent process of organic decomposition. The bodies were removed manually so they would not fall apart; despite this, small fragments remained in the earth, as if refusing to disappear completely.

Then they took the remains and loaded them onto a Unimog truck. In total, there were 12 bags, and all were transported to some parking lots in front of the San Martín highway.

Around 22:00 hours, the Army Aviation Command helicopter arrived, in charge of the then-colonel Fernando Darrigrandi. It was piloted by Emilio de la Mahotiere González, Luis Felipe Polanco, and Antonio Palomo Contreras, the same trio that flew the Puma helicopter in the Caravan of Death. The aircraft landed near where the bags were; they were quickly loaded, and the helicopter took off.

As in the previous cases, “Operation Television Removal” had been carried out silently and opportunely. The order of the Army Commander-in-Chief was fulfilled.

It was the realization of one crime to hide another, which had begun on September 12, 1973, with the arrival of Pedro Espinoza at the Tacna Regiment. The Intelligence officer carried an envelope containing precise orders from the Army Commander-in-Chief to the Tacna Regiment commander, Luis Ramírez Pineda.

In them, the people detained at La Moneda were sentenced to death, and it was ordered that they be taken to Peldehue to carry out the order.

Ramírez Pineda had given orders to apply maximum brutality against the detainees who arrived that afternoon of September 11. In those tied and exhausted men, he deposited all his hatred against the Marxists. There were 49 detainees; the next day, it was ordered to release 17 Investigative Police officials, and others were separated, reducing the La Moneda group to 21 people.

On the 13th, first thing in the morning, a truck was parked in front of the barracks where the prisoners were. List in hand, they were taken out of the stables, tied with wire, and violently thrown into the truck.

Among the 21 were Jaime Barrios Meza, Sergio Contreras, Daniel Escobar Cruz, Enrique Huerta Corvalán, Claudio Jimeno Grendi, Jorge Klein Pipper, Oscar Lagos Ríos, Juan Montiglio Murúa, Enrique Paris Roa, Eduardo Paredes Barrientos, Julio Moreno Pulgar, Héctor Pincheira Núñez, Arsenio Poupin Oissel, Julio Tapia Martínez, Héctor Urrutia Molina, Oscar Valladares Caroca, Juan Vargas Contreras, Luis Rodríguez Riquelme, José Freire Medina, and Luis Avilés Jofré, who had arrived at the La Moneda Palace to support the government.

The truck headed north, guarded by military vehicles and followed by the watchful eye of the then-colonel Pedro Espinoza Bravo, who was traveling in one of the column's vehicles. Espinoza was a high-ranking Army Intelligence officer whose role in the post-coup repression was decisive.

He was in charge of supervising the main extermination operations committed throughout the country, by order of the Intelligence General Staff.

Upon arrival, they went immediately to a dry pit next to a building. There, they set up a machine gun operated by Lieutenant Jorge Herrera López and began to take the detainees down, calling them by their names.

Without complaint and looking straight ahead, the 21 men faced death standing on the edge of the pit. They faced alone the muffled sounds of the bullets that echoed in the solitude of the hills. When the last detainee fell, the order was given to throw grenades so that the walls of the pit would collapse, thus covering up the crime.

The Process

The case has had a long journey through the justice system. Since Judge Amanda Valdovinos began the investigation into illegal burials, until the present, the investigation has been in the hands of the judge of the Fifth Criminal Court, Juan Carlos Urrutia; Court of Appeals Minister Alejandro Madrid Crohare; Special Minister for human rights cases Juan Fuentes Belmar; and it is currently in the hands of Court of Appeals Minister Miguel Vásquez Plaza.

Of the 21 victims, only 11 forcibly disappeared persons have been identified through the work of identifying remains and genetic analyses carried out by the University of North Texas Laboratory, United States, which included expert examinations of the victims' bone samples and comparative tests on blood samples donated by the families.

Currently, General (ret.) Luis Ramírez Pineda is being prosecuted as the perpetrator of the qualified homicide of 11 people detained at La Moneda on September 11, 1973, and transferred to the Tacna Regiment, where he was commander.

The expansion of the extradition is also being processed in the Argentine justice system, because it was initially requested for the charges of qualified kidnapping of 11 people, and currently, he is being prosecuted for qualified homicide; as the legal figure has changed, it is necessary to request a change of extradition from the country granting it.

The resolution affected eight other retired members of the Army who confessed to having participated in the kidnappings of Jaime Barrios Meza, Daniel Escobar Cruz, Enrique Huerta Corvalán, Claudio Jimeno Grendi, Oscar Lagos Ríos, Juan Montiglio Murúa, Julio Moreno Pulgar, Arsenio Poupin Oissel, Julio Tapia Martínez, Oscar Valladares Caroca, and Juan Vargas Contreras.

The eight prosecuted as perpetrators of the crime of qualified kidnapping were Army colonel (ret.) Servando Maureira Roa, Army major (ret.) Jorge Iván Herrera López, Army Brigadier (ret.) Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, and Army non-commissioned officers (ret.) Eliseo Antonio Cornejo Escobedo, Jorge Ismael Gamboa Álvarez, Teobaldo Segundo Mendoza Vicencio, Juan de la Cruz Riquelme Silva, and Bernardo Eusebio Soto Segura.

Linares Artillery School

A secret character who toured the barracks at the beginning of 1979 arrived at the Linares Artillery School. Without hesitation, the director of the Linares Artillery School, Lieutenant Colonel Patricio Gualda Tiffani, ordered the formation of a special team to exhume the bodies and placed Captain Mario Gianotti Hidalgo in charge of this mission.

He chose two officers, among whom was Lieutenant Hernán Véjar Sinning, and two non-commissioned officers to carry out the mission. They were joined by an intelligence non-commissioned officer from the III Army Division who had arrived along with two other members of that department to supervise the fulfillment of the order.

Equipped with shovels and pickaxes, they dug in different places inside the Regiment, finally finding two bodies that were without clothing. After putting them in bags, they kept them safe inside the Regiment and left for the city of Constitución to search for a clandestine burial site located in a cave at the mouth of the Maule River.

The constant rising of the river and the tides had slightly changed the appearance of the terrain, so it was difficult for them to find the exact spot. Finally, they found three skulls, concluding that it was the place they were looking for. They exhumed them, put them in bags, and returned to the Artillery School.

With the first stage of the mission accomplished, they went to look for a metal drum, put oil in it, then put the five bodies inside, doused them with oil again, and set them on fire. The remains of five forcibly disappeared persons were turned into ashes, and the double crime was finalized.

In April 2003, Minister Alejandro Solís had initiated investigations in the area of the Polígono General Bari, where, according to information provided by a former conscript, there had been a mass grave with the bodies of the forcibly disappeared persons from the area. The proceedings did not yield results, and only some traces of possible burials were found at the site.

In 2008, the Minister of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Alejandro Solís, issued a sentence and set penalties of 15 years and one day for five defendants, and 10 years and one day for a sixth defendant for the disappearances of María Isabel Beltrán Sánchez, José Gabriel Campos Morales, Anselmo Cancino Aravena, Héctor Hernán Contreras Cabrera, Alejandro Róbinson Mella Flores, Arturo Enrique Riveros Blanco, Jaime Bernardo Torres Salazar, José Alfonso Saavedra Betancourt, and Jorge Bernabé Yáñez Olave, detained between September 1973 and February 1974.

On April 27, 2011, the Supreme Court reduced the sentences issued by Minister Solís, acquitting General (ret.) Gabriel del Río Espinoza, who had been convicted for the disappearance of five people, and sentencing the Army Colonel (ret.) Juan Hernán Morales Salgado and Army Lieutenant Colonel Claudio Abdón Lecaros Carrasco to five years and one day in prison with the benefit of supervised release for the disappearance of María Isabel Beltrán, José Gabriel Campos, Anselmo Antonio Cancino, and Alejandro Róbinson Mella.

Army non-commissioned officer (ret.) Antonio Aguilar Barrientos was sentenced to five years and one day in prison with the benefit of supervised release for four counts of aggravated kidnapping, and Army Colonel (ret.) Antonio Cabezas Salazar was sentenced for three counts of aggravated kidnapping.

General (ret.) Humberto Lautaro Julio Reyes, who was Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs during the military dictatorship, was sentenced to three years in prison with the benefit of conditional remission, remaining on supervised release.

This was one of the most damning pieces of evidence available to demonstrate that Pinochet knew about the atrocities that occurred during his mandate. No one creates such a perverse mechanism to hide crimes if they are not directly involved.

Chihuío

On October 9, 1973, the locals of Chihuío thought the worst of the period had passed. News of the detention of workers in Neltume and the violence that the Llifén Carabineros had unleashed among the peasants of Chabranco, Arquilme, and Curriñe had spread like wildfire.

That day, a patrol consisting of 90 well-armed and equipped soldiers in seven vehicles set out for the foothills area, where only poor workers of the Empresa Maderera Panguipulli lived. They were from the No. 2 Armored Cavalry Regiment "Cazadores" of Valdivia, commanded by General (ret.) Santiago Sinclair, who was later a member of the Military Junta and a designated senator at the beginning of the transition to democracy.

In charge was Squadron Commander Luis Osorio Gardasanich, and officers Patricio Keller, Lautaro Ortega, Marcos Rodríguez Olivares, and Luis Rodríguez Rogorrichi. Lieutenant Cristián Labbé Galilea was in charge of the special unit.

The patrol toured the towns and hamlets of the area, read lists of names, and proceeded to detain them. The owner of the Chihuío estate, Américo González Torres, participated actively and enthusiastically in this journey of death.

Without any shame, they asked the locals for wires and ox yokes to drag the vehicles that had gotten stuck in the mud.

At the Curriñe administration office of the Complejo Maderero Panguipulli, they tortured some detainees, while a patrol went up to detain workers at the Folilco sawmill. Their last stop was in Chabranco, where they detained the last workers.

With their cargo, they left for the main house of the Chihuío estate, where they brutalized the workers. According to testimony received by the Rettig Report, at first glance, there were no bullet impacts, but rather signs of cuts, throat-slitting, dismemberment, and other traces of torture impossible to describe.

The next morning, a local saw some bodies covered with branches and logs, recognizing some of the victims as workers from the area. The corpses remained in the open for about 15 days and were then buried.

There were 17 workers from the area: Carlos Maximiliano Acuña Inostroza, José Orlando Barriga Soto, José Rosamel Cortés Díaz, Rubén Neftalí Durán Zúñiga, Luis Arnaldo Ferrada Sandoval, Eliecer Sigisfredo Freire Caamaño, Narciso Segundo García Cancino, Juan Walter González Delgado, Daniel Méndez Méndez, Sebastián Mora Osses, Pedro Segundo Pedreros Ferreira, Rosendo Rebolledo Méndez, Ricardo Segundo Ruiz Rodríguez, Carlos Vicente Salinas Flores, Manuel Jesús Sepúlveda Rebolledo, Rubén Vargas Quezada, and the minor Fernando Adrián Mora Gutiérrez, who, upon helping to pull a military vehicle out of the mud, saw that his father was among the detainees and asked the soldiers where they were taking him. They replied that if he wanted to go with his father, he should get into the vehicle, and so he did. At the end of 1978, a military operation returned to Chihuío and exhumed the bodies of the 17 peasants to throw them into the sea. The grave containing the skeletal remains from the exhumation was found on June 17, 1990, by a group of relatives and friends of forcibly disappeared persons.

In the first days of July 2011, the director of the Legal Medical Institute, Patricio Bustos, announced the names of the first five identified people: Carlos Maximiliano Acuña Inostroza, 46 years old at the time of his death, agricultural worker; Luis Arnaldo Ferrada Sandoval, 42 years old at the time of his death, agricultural worker; Daniel Méndez Méndez, 42 years old, agricultural worker and peasant leader; Ricardo Segundo Ruiz Rodríguez, 24 years old, factory manager and militant of the Socialist Party; and Manuel Jesús Sepúlveda Rebolledo, 28 years old, timber worker.

On July 15, the director of the Valdivia Legal Medical Service, Patricia Benhe, handed over the few skeletal remains to the families so they could bury them.

The identifications were carried out with the fragments found in the clandestine grave, where the bodies were thrown and later removed to be thrown into the sea, within the framework of the so-called "Operation Television Removal."

In January 2011, the Supreme Court sentenced Army Colonel (ret.) Luis Osorio Gardasanich to 10 years and one day as the perpetrator of the aggravated homicide of 17 people, including a minor.

Carabineros officer (ret.) Luis Eduardo Osses Chavarría was sentenced to 3 years and one day in prison for his role as an accomplice to 4 kidnappings. The civilian Bruno Esteban Obando Cárdenas was acquitted for having no participation in the events.

General Santiago Sinclair, who gave the orders, was acquitted. Meanwhile, Colonel (ret.) Jerónimo Pantoja Henríquez died before the Supreme Court's sentence.

The 17 workers belonged to the Esperanza del Obrero Peasant Union of the Complejo Maderero Panguipulli. Most of them were evangelical believers who had organized to participate in building a more just life.

Cuesta Barriga

Enrique Erasmo Sandoval Arancibia was an army lieutenant when he was called to the DINA in 1976. Although he does not say much about his role in the repressive organization that year, he hints at his time at the Intelligence School in Rinconada de Maipú, which served to instruct Argentine, Uruguayan, and Chilean agents.

He also claims to have been part of the security for the VI OAS Assembly held in Santiago, which Henry Kissinger attended. Disjointedly, he says that at the end of 1976, he became part of the Caupolicán Brigade, which was under the command of Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, assigned to the Cóndor group.

He claims not to remember names, nor the activity he carried out; he only remembers that he spoke a lot with the former MIR member who collaborated with the DINA, named "Joel," Emilio Iribarren.

But "Pete el Negro," as he was known in the DINA, had a whole criminal history behind his apparent innocence before the courts. After the coup d'état and the indiscriminate repression, this man murdered the boy Carlos Fariña with a shot in the back and burned the corpse. In the 80s, he participated in the murder of Lisandro Sandoval.

In 1978, he joined the Red Brigade of the National Intelligence Center (CNI), in charge of the repression of the MIR. During his time there, he reported directly to Álvaro Corbalán.

He remembers that at the beginning of 1979, Jerónimo Pantoja, subdirector of the CNI, received information that a rabbit hunter had discovered an abandoned mine with bodies in Cuesta Barriga, and the information had been delivered to the Vicariate of Solidarity.

Alarmed, Pantoja sent him to check the place, "which was a mine shaft, and I verified that it was true. It was full of rodents, bats, putrefied remains, and there was a smell consistent with the remains. This smell would have alerted and disturbed the hunter's dogs, and that is how he would have arrived at the place."

With a photograph in hand, Lieutenant Sandoval arrived before Pantoja, who ordered him not to dynamite the mine and ordered him to use acid. Given the difficulty he had due to his ignorance of the use of chemicals, he called General Odlanier Mena at his vacation home in Mehuín to inform him of the situation.

The delicate information caused Mena to suspend his vacation, return to Santiago, and take charge of the removal of the bodies. For this, he entrusted Sandoval with removing the bodies with a trusted team. "My team was made up of 9 people and we went to the mine for three days." He claims to have no idea how many bodies there were, but calculates that there were about 20, which were put into 50 potato sacks.

Some of the bodies were skeletonized, others still retained soft tissues.

When they finished removing the bodies, they took some dogs, killed them, and threw them inside to justify the presence of bones. Then they loaded the sacks onto a truck and took them to the Malloco plot that had belonged to the Political Commission of the MIR. Finally, the remains were transported to Peldehue and possibly thrown into the sea.

Operation Television Removal covered the entire national territory and is the clearest example of the policy of concealment of human rights violations that prevailed during the military dictatorship.

Source: elmostrador.cl, September 2013

Minister Álvaro Mesa prosecutes retired Army general for illegal coercion of detainees in the so-called "Plan Z" in Valdivia

The minister on special assignment for human rights violation cases for the jurisdictions of the Temuco, Valdivia, and Puerto Montt Courts of Appeals, Álvaro Mesa, prosecuted retired Army General Santiago Arturo Sinclair Oyaneder for his responsibility in the crime of illegal coercion against nine political prisoners, an illicit act perpetrated after September 11, 1973, in the city of Valdivia.

In the resolution (case file 3-2012 Valdivia), Minister Mesa, in consideration of the former military officer's age, ordered the house arrest of the accused as the perpetrator of the inhuman, cruel, and degrading treatment applied to: Sandor Arancibia Valenzuela, Juan Yilorm Martínez, Víctor Hormazábal Rozas, José Daniel Gallardo Saldivia, Rogers Delgado Sáez, Joel Asenjo Ramírez, Luis Díaz Bórquez, Uldaricio Manuel Figueroa Valdivia, and Carlos Jaime Bahamondez Hormazábal, detained in the Valdivia public jail.

"Plan Z"

During the investigation stage, the visiting minister was able to establish the following facts:

A.- That as a result of the events that occurred on September 11, 1973, Sandor Arancibia Valenzuela, Juan Yilorm Martínez, Víctor Hormazábal Rozas, José Daniel Gallardo Saldivia, Rogers Delgado Sáez, Joel Asenjo Ramírez, Luis Díaz Bórquez, Uldaricio Manuel Figueroa Valdivia, and Carlos Jaime Bahamondez Hormazábal, among others, were detained in several cities of the country and especially in the commune of Valdivia.

Some of them held public office or were members of political parties of the government of President Salvador Allende Gossens until that date. All of them were accused of being the ringleaders of a fanciful plan for the extermination of the members of the Armed Forces and Order, known to this day as "Plan Z." All the detainees, on different dates after September 11, 1973, were taken to the Valdivia Public Jail by order of the existing Military Prosecutor's Office.

These detentions were decided by the military authority of the time, without a judicial order, and there is no record in the case file of their execution under a procedure adjusted to the regulations in force at that time.

B.- That in the Cazadores Regiment of the commune of Valdivia, after the military pronouncement, by order of General Héctor Bravo Muñoz (currently deceased), the Second Section of Information and Intelligence was reinforced with the addition of officials from the same military unit, among them Hernán Soriano Ávila; a member of the Investigative Police of Chile, Germán Jesús Borneck Matamala; and personnel from the "José Gil de Castro" Carabineros Station of the same commune, among them Lieutenant Rubén Aracena González and Corporal Juan Bautista Yáñez Ruiz, nicknamed "es bastante grande." This group was in charge of Army Lieutenant Patricio Kellet Oyarzún and their mission was to interrogate detainees on political matters, who after that date were admitted to the Valdivia jail.

C.- That furthermore, at the end of September 1973, Bernardo O’Higgins de las Mercedes Puga Concha, who until that date served as an assistant lawyer for the State Defense Council, was called to join the Army, assuming functions as a legal advisor to the Military Prosecutor's Office, in charge until then of Mr.

Mario Piraíno Valenzuela (currently deceased). Some defense lawyers even went to the Military Prosecutor's Office, interviewing said advisory lawyer, who identified himself as a Military Prosecutor.

D.- That in order to comply with the order given by the superior authority, the gymnasium of the Cazadores regiment was enabled, placing desks to interrogate political detainees. In this way, the detainees were taken to and from the jail to the regiment by military personnel of the section led by Patricio Kellet Oyarzún, being interrogated at the Military Prosecutor's Office and physically coerced in the gymnasium facilities before and/or after these interrogations.

In the gymnasium or torture room, there were implements to tie up the detainees and apply electricity to different parts of the body, in addition to applying other types of torture such as kicks and punches.

All the members of the group led by Lieutenant Patricio Kellet Oyarzún participated in this task, in addition to the detective from the Investigative Police and Carabineros officials who were attached there and mentioned above.

Once the people were interrogated at the aforementioned Regiment, they were taken back to the Valdivia jail. In that place, their own cellmates and one of the prison infirmary officials verified their poor physical condition as a result of the interrogations under torture.

E.- That following the line of letter B above, Division General Héctor Bravo Muñoz, in addition to reinforcing the intelligence unit, gathered the commanders of the Cazadores and Maturana regiments, which operated in the same military compound known as "cantón Bueras" of the commune of Valdivia, and verbally instructed that Colonel Pantoja (currently deceased) take charge of the entire operational part in order to find the presence of subversives, this in the presence of the commander of the Cazadores regiment, whom he designated to carry out patrol functions in the city of Valdivia and assume security in the Urban area of Valdivia, as well as government delegate at the Universidad Austral de Chile. Despite his designation as education authority, the commander of the Cazadores regiment continued to perform his duties daily in the unit under his command - since, as indicated, he had to assume security in the commune of Valdivia and because his residence was located inside the military compound - going to that place daily, finding out that Colonel Pantoja had control of the regiment's gymnasium and a registry of the detained persons. He also knew about the supervision that Pantoja carried out in the search for information. All of the above because he observed on more than one occasion, both day and night, people who were taken to the aforementioned gymnasium to be interrogated.

Furthermore, the same commander of the Cazadores Regiment ordered Hernán Soriano Ávila, an official of the unit under his dependency, to join the group led by Lieutenant Patricio Kellet Oyarzún, as has been said previously.

Source: tuvoz.cl, 2020

The spy who was with Frei and Lagos

1998, Chillán. Then-President Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, together with his Minister of Public Works Ricardo Lagos, tours the construction of a bridge. They are accompanied by the intendant of the VIII region, Martín Zilic, and a burly man with a mustache and white helmet, wearing a double-breasted jacket and orange loafers.

The mustachioed man is named Luis González Sepúlveda; he is a civil engineer and works as a fiscal inspector for the MOP in Concepción, for the Talca-Chillán section. González escorts the minister. At one point, he stands to the left of the future socialist ruler.

Eduardo Frei does not know who he is standing next to. The man who circles his minister was linked to the most dangerous group that operated in the National Intelligence Center (CNI) of Pinochet; he was an informant and infiltrator for the security services that controlled clandestine union activities and, especially, those of the Christian Democrats in the seventies.

And not only that: his team was in charge of spying on the steps of his father, former President Eduardo Frei Montalva, in the plot that—everything indicates—culminated in his assassination in 1982, as has been proven by the investigation of Judge Alejandro Madrid.

A photo of him next to former President Eduardo Frei, which the CNI had in its possession, vouched for the closeness that this son of an Army non-commissioned officer achieved with the DC leadership in those years, a party in which he had been a militant since 1969.

A militancy that did not prevent him from working after the Coup d'état in the construction of the Investigations Prefecture, at the 12th stop of the Gran Avenida, and in the hangar of the Aeropolice Brigade that the same institution built at the Cerrillos airport. Such was the trust placed in González Sepúlveda that he even had an important role in the construction of the police shooting range.

By the time the photo was taken on the bridge, he had been at the MOP for two years. Just like Lagos.

CODE NAME “FELIPE ONETTO”

The life of González Sepúlveda took a radical turn in 1978. That year, Colonel Jerónimo Pantoja, the second man in the CNI who replaced the DINA, personally enrolled him in his office at the organization's central headquarters, located on Belgrado Street.

From then on, González became another man for the CNI. González worked at the CNI, integrated into the payroll of the company Elissalde y Poblete. His boss would be the then-Captain Juan Jara Quintana, second in command of the brigade in charge of monitoring the DC.

At the head of that group was the Navy officer Alejandro Campos Rehbién, who had been involved in repressive activities since the early days of the DINA, as confirmed in the deed of the company Pedro Diet Lobos, one of the first companies created by the organization headed by Manuel Contreras.

Campos joined the DINA's Caupolicán Brigade, which operated at Londres 38, becoming a trusted man of the officer and superior commander of the DINA, Miguel Krasnoff Marchenko, and then moved to another of the emblematic prisons of the repressive organization: Villa Grimaldi.

A man with that experience was what General Odlanier Mena, head of the CNI, needed to lead the team that would take charge of the DC at the precise moments when the leaders and militants who advocated a direct and active opposition to Pinochet's dictatorship were gaining ground in that party.

Already installed in his small office on the second floor of the CNI headquarters, Campos chose as his secretary a woman of absolute trust whom he had known since the days of the DINA: Alicia Uribe Gómez, better known as “Carola,” the MIR leader who became a collaborator after being tortured for months.

In the CNI, they called her “Gloria,” and there she did not speak to anyone. Her close relationship with Brigadier Pedro Espinoza had created a true trench of protection around her.

Luis González Sepúlveda joined that group. With a new identity, which the CNI gave him: “Felipe Onetto.”

In that team, González was a witness and actor in the intense monitoring that was carried out on all the steps of Frei Montalva. And he knew, from the very mouth of Captain Jara and the Navy officer Alejandro Campos, that Frei complicated General Pinochet, and a lot.

The former President had decided to be an opponent of the dictatorship, and his international influence became a danger to the regime.

In March 1979, the group that followed the steps of Frei, Andrés Zaldívar, and other DC leaders needed to increase its ranks in the face of the reactivation of the opposition, joined by union leaders such as Tucapel Jiménez. The economic flank was also beginning to get complicated.

The CNI had to re-engineer, and a new subdirector arrived to reinforce operational action: Colonel Fernando Arancibia Reyes, brother of the current senator Jorge Patricio Arancibia, former commander-in-chief of the Navy.

The unit that dealt with the DC and union leaders left the headquarters on Belgrado Street and moved to the CNI barracks on República Street at the corner of Toesca. There, on the second floor, Luis González Sepúlveda was installed.

The new head of his unit was Captain Juan Jara, who was very soon replaced by the FACH squadron commander Osvaldo Cordero Cuevas. Jara left to lead the unit for monitoring and repression of union activity. Both would be in close relationship.

THE BOSSES

During his time in the new structure, Luis González Sepúlveda related especially with retired Colonel Sergio Herrera Silva, the right-hand man of the man who controlled the Intelligence structure and handled all the information on the steps of Eduardo Frei Montalva: Colonel Fernando Suau Baquedano, a member of Contreras's DINA and with intelligence and commando courses in France, with the generals who had fought the independence rebellion in Algeria.

Suau, like many agents, subsequently moved to the DINE, where he retired in 1981 to be rehired shortly after in the Foreign Department of the organization, where he worked with Francisco Maximiliano Ferrer Lima (sentenced to 8 years in prison for the murder of Tucapel Jiménez), the man involved in the departure from the country of the DINA chemist Eugenio Berríos, manufacturer of the deadly toxins with which potential enemies of the regime and Pinochet were eliminated.

And also those with which Frei was presumably murdered.

His right-hand man, with whom González related, would remain in the CNI until 1989, and was in charge for a long time of the El Golf Clinic, which replaced the sinister London Clinic of the DINA, where sarin gas was injected into those who put clandestine operations at risk.

Luis González, the man who did his higher studies in the evening and who began his work as a MOP laborer, says he left the CNI in 1980. A key date: more than a year before Frei Montalva was murdered. There are several CNI officers and non-commissioned officers who knew him and worked with him.

It will be easy to determine if it is true that he left on that date and what his role was within the repressive organization.

His story, had it not been for the judicial investigation into the murder of the former President Frei, would have been a secret. Just like that of Luis Becerra, the driver for Frei and Andrés Zaldívar who worked for the intelligence services for 14 years. Spying on his bosses.

Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle does not know who he is standing next to. The man who circles Lagos at the inauguration was linked to the most dangerous group that operated in the National Intelligence Center, CNI, and that spied on his father, in the plot that—everything indicates—culminated in his assassination in 1982.

Luis González Sepúlveda joined the special group of the CNI with a new identity: “Felipe Onetto.”

There, he was a witness and actor in the intense monitoring that was carried out on all the steps of Eduardo Frei Montalva, who was already beginning to be a problem for the dictatorship.

by Mónica González

Source: ciper.cl, September 1, 2023