Raúl Urra Parada, married, father of two children, and an employee of the Compañía Manufacturera de Papeles y Cartones in Laja, was detained on September 13, 1973, at his workplace at 4:00 PM, just as he was leaving the company after finishing his shift.

In fact, at the moment Raúl was punching his time card, he was identified by Rodolfo Román, an employee of "La Papelera," who at the time was collaborating with the Carabineros by driving a company vehicle used to transport those being detained.

Immediately, the Carabineros patrol, commanded by Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos and including officers Leoncio Olivares, Mario Cerda, Juan Oviedo, and Pedro Parra Utreras, proceeded to detain Raúl Urra. Along with him, they also detained Fernando Grandón Gálvez, Federico Riquelme Concha, and Heraldo Muñoz Muñoz, all workers at "La Papelera," who became forcibly disappeared.

Witnesses to the detention included his father, Adonai Urra Torres, and other workers who were leaving the company at that hour.

The detainees were transported in a jeep to the Laja Carabineros station (now a Sub-precinct). There, Raúl Urra received visits from his spouse, Carmen Urzúa Caro, and his sister, Gloria Urra Parada, who brought him food and clothing daily between September 13 and 17, 1973.

The latter estimated that there were about thirty people detained at the facility along with her brother. Among those she remembers are Federico Riquelme and Jorge Lamana, with whom she even spoke during their confinement. She also saw Rubén Campos, Director of the Laja School, and a local merchant, Alonso Hernández, the only survivor of the group.

On the morning of September 18, the relatives of Raúl Urra, like those of the other detainees, were informed by the guard staff at the station that everyone had been transferred to the Los Angeles Regiment—a place they never reached.

According to testimonies from neighbors of the police station, it was learned that in the early hours of that morning, around 4:00 AM, the detainees held at the station were taken away to an unknown destination in a bus and several pickup trucks.

The families immediately began joint efforts. They traveled to the Los Angeles Regiment, the IANSA gymnasium in that same city, the Governor's office, and the Intendancy, seeking information. They turned to the Red Cross and the Church for help in locating their relatives.

They dedicated a significant amount of time to these efforts, and seeing that they received no positive response regarding the whereabouts of the victims, they turned to the Judiciary.

It was later established that all of the detainees—Juan Acuña Concha, Luis Araneda Reyes, Manuel Becerra Avello, Rubén Campos López, Dagoberto Garfias Gatica, Fernando Grandón Gálvez, Jack Gutiérrez Rodríguez, José Jara Herrera, Mario Jara Jara, Jorge Lamana Abarzúa, Alfonso Macaya Barrales, Heraldo Muñoz Muñoz, Wuilzon Muñoz Rodríguez, Federico Riquelme Concha, Luis Sáez Espinoza, Oscar Sanhueza Contreras, Luis Ulloa Valenzuela, Juan Villarroel Espinoza, and Jorge Zorrilla Rubio—were executed by their captors at the Fundo San Juan, located on the road between Laja and Yumbel, and buried clandestinely at the same site. Locals discovered the massacre and notified the local judge, who did nothing. In those days, the Yumbel Carabineros exhumed the bodies and buried them clandestinely in the Yumbel Cemetery. They were searched for intensely for more than 6 years; only in November 1979, as a result of judicial action, were the bodies returned to their families, who gave them a proper burial. (For further background, see the file for Jack Eduardo Gutiérrez Rodríguez).

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

In October 1977, Case No. 2355 was opened in the Laja Court of Letters regarding the alleged disappearance of Raúl Urra Parada, which was dismissed on January 9, 1978. In this process, as in others related to the forcibly disappeared in Laja, the Court ordered an investigation, which was carried out by the same police unit from which the victims had disappeared.

The report from the Laja Carabineros—which in all cases distorted reality and falsified the facts by denying the detentions—went to great lengths to misrepresent what happened, stating that "he is not a known person (in the locality), and it is presumed that this citizen is outside the country..." It added that "numerous inquiries were carried out to find the whereabouts of the aforementioned Urra, with a negative result, as he is not even a known person in the jurisdictional sector of this Sub-precinct."

Faced with this situation, on January 16, 1979, a Writ of Amparo (Habeas Corpus) was filed with the Concepción Court of Appeals, registered under No. 4313, which was rejected on February 8 of the same year on the grounds that "he is not currently detained, nor is there an arrest warrant against him." Along with rejecting the Writ of Amparo, the Court ordered the Laja Court of Letters to open a summary investigation.

On July 24, 1979, a criminal complaint, registered under No. 2770, was filed for the crimes of "kidnapping and homicide of Fernando Grandón and others"—including Raúl Urra Parada—against Lieutenant Juan Alberto Fernández Mitchel and Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos (who later became part of the CNI in Los Angeles), as well as other officers who served at the Laja Carabineros station in September 1973.

As a result of this complaint, Mr. José Martínez Gaensly was appointed as a Visiting Judge, who through his investigation was able to establish that Raúl Urra Parada was executed along with 19 other detainees at the Fundo San Juan, located about 200 meters from the road connecting the town of Laja to the city of Los Angeles.

The bodies were illegally buried by the perpetrators themselves (Carabineros from the Laja station). Later, they were clandestinely moved to the Yumbel Cemetery by Carabineros officers from that city. This occurred despite the fact that the discovery of the bodies had been duly reported by the Yumbel Carabineros to the judge of the High Court of Letters of that same city, who ordered the court secretary to keep the Carabineros' report in the safe without initiating due process.

On October 2, 1979, the remains of 19 of the 20 people for whom detention and subsequent disappearance had been reported were exhumed at the Yumbel Cemetery. After further investigation, the 20th body was found at the site of the homicide, at the Fundo San Juan.

On November 27, 1979, the remains were handed over to their families, and the funerals were held that same day. On March 18, 1980, the Visiting Judge declared his incompetence and ordered the files sent to the Military Justice system, where they were registered under No. 323-80 in the Ad Hoc Military Prosecutor's Office of Concepción.

The case was definitively dismissed on June 9, 1980, by the Judge of the 3rd Military Court, and the ruling was approved by the Supreme Court on December 3, 1981. Those responsible for the crimes of kidnapping and homicide were granted amnesty based on Decree Law 2191 of 1978.

Source: (Rettig Report)

In the first days after the 1973 coup d'état, Carabineros from the communes of Laja and San Rosendo drew up a list with the objective of detaining and killing a group of 19 peasants and forestry workers from the CMPC paper mill.

But they did not act alone; a worker from that company helped them identify a group of the victims. "They were detained by Carabineros between September 13 and 14, 1973, at the entrance/exit gate of their workplace, the CMPC Laja Paper Plant, a place where an individual (Jarpa Foerster) kept a list with each of their names, pointing out who each one was, thereby facilitating their identification and detention."

Furthermore, "on the same dates and until September 17, 1973, the other persons indicated above were detained and transported in CMPC paper mill vehicles, which had been provided by the heads of said company for the transport of the detainees and driven by a CMPC employee to the Laja station," the facts established in the case indicate.

The fate of those peasants and paper mill workers was death and a 60-meter-long trench where the police threw their bodies.

"The convoy entered a side road for about 500 meters in a southerly direction, entering the so-called Fundo San Juan, in the commune of Yumbel, where the Carabineros personnel from the Laja station, who were armed with rifles and carbines, made them get out of the vehicles, forcing them to lie on the ground, side by side, face down and with their hands tied, with the police officers proceeding to position themselves behind them.

At that moment, the officer in charge stood to one side and, armed with his revolver, gave the order to shoot them, which was carried out by the Carabineros present, positioned in the firing line, impacting the bodies of the detainees with bullets and causing injuries that resulted in their death.

Days later, Carabineros officers returned to the sector to cover the bodies with lime, the kind used at the CMPC, which had been provided by officials of the same company," the ruling states.

The Resolution After the review of the case by the Concepción Court, the sentences against some of those convicted in the first instance were increased from 5 to 15 years. This was because it accepted the appeals filed by the plaintiffs against the resolution that convicted nine retired Carabineros and one civilian for their responsibility in the crime of qualified homicide of 19 forestry workers and peasants.

These crimes were perpetrated in September 1973, within the framework of the case known as "Laja-San Rosendo."

The Third Chamber of the appellate court—composed of ministers Juan Villa Sanhueza, Carola Rivas Vargas, and Nancy Bluck Bahamonde—partially revoked the challenged resolution, issued by the extraordinary visiting minister for human rights cases of the Concepción Court of Appeals, Carlos Aldana Fuentes.

In the civil aspect, the Court increased the compensation granted by Minister Aldana Fuentes to the victims' families, ordering the State of Chile to pay a total compensation of $5,440,000,000.

In the resolution, the appellate court confirmed the sentence that convicted Alberto Juan Fernández Michell to life imprisonment as the author of the qualified homicides of Fernando Grandón Gálvez, Jorge Andrés Lamana Abarzúa, Rubén Antonio Campos López, Juan Carlos Jara Herrera, Raúl Urra Parada, Luis Armando Ulloa Valenzuela, Óscar Omar Sanhueza Contreras, Dagoberto Enrique Garfias Gatica, Luis Alberto del Carmen Araneda Reyes, Juan Antonio Acuña Concha, Juan de Dios Villarroel Espinoza, Heraldo del Carmen Muñoz Muñoz, Federico Riquelme Concha, Jorge Lautaro Zorrilla Rubio, Manuel Mario Becerra Avello, Jack Eduardo Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Mario Jara Jara, Wilson Gamadiel Muñoz Rodríguez, and Alfonso Segundo Macaya Barrales.

In the case of José Jacinto Otárola Sanhueza, Mario Sebastián Montoya Burgos, and Manuel Enrique Cerda Robledo, the Concepción Court considered that they participated as authors in the 19 homicides, and not as accessories, for which it increased their sentences from 5 years of imprisonment to 15 years and one day of incarceration.

Likewise, it ratified the convictions issued against Gerson Nilo Saavedra Reinike, Pedro del Carmen Parra Utreras, Víctor Manuel Campos Dávila, and Nelson Casanova Salgado, increasing them from 5 years and one day to 15 years and one day of incarceration, as authors of the 19 qualified homicides.

Meanwhile, in the case of Anselmo del Carmen San Martín Navarrete, the Concepción court set the sentence he must serve at 5 years and one day of imprisonment, with the benefit of intensive supervised release, in his capacity as an accessory to the crimes.

"Regarding the employee of the Compañía Manufacturera de Papeles y Cartones (CMPC) of Laja, Pedro Luis Jarpa Foerster, the Third Chamber revoked the sentence that acquitted him of responsibility, sentencing him instead to 5 years and one day of imprisonment, as an accomplice in the crimes of qualified homicide of the victims: Fernando Grandón Gálvez, Jack Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Heraldo Muñoz Muñoz, Raúl Urra Parada, Federico Riquelme Concha, Juan Villarroel Espinoza, and Wilson Muñoz Rodríguez," the Judiciary's statement notes.

Finally, the Concepción Court confirmed the acquittal of Alejandro Lionel Aguilera Covarrubias, as his responsibility for the events as an accomplice was not proven; and confirmed the acquittal of the former police officer René Luis Alberto Urrutia Elgueta, as his participation in the crime of illegal inhumation, committed at the end of October 1973 in a mass grave at the Yumbel Parish Cemetery, was not proven.

Source: enestrado.com 15/8/2021 Date: 15-08-2021

Former Carabineros prosecuted for illegal inhumation of political executions

The bodies were discovered in October 1973 in Yumbel and buried without a judicial order.

The detainees were murdered by gunfire. Subsequently, they were buried in a 60-centimeter-deep trench, covered with a layer of lime and earth.

A group of former Carabineros who served at the Laja station were prosecuted as co-authors of the crime of illegal inhumation of 19 political executions after September 11, 1973.

The investigation is part of the Laja-San Rosendo case, investigated by the visiting minister for Human Rights of the Concepción Court of Appeals, Carlos Aldana Fuentes, as indicated in a statement by the Judiciary.

Evidence provided by the investigation proved that between September 13 and 17 of that year, officials from said unit arrested 19 people in both communes located in the current Biobío Region.

The detainees were murdered by gunfire, face down and with their hands tied, at the Fundo San Juan in Yumbel. Subsequently, they were buried in a 60-centimeter-deep trench, covered with a layer of lime and earth.

For the qualified homicides, Samuel Francisco Vidal Riquelme, Florencio Osvaldo Olivares Dade, Pedro del Carmen Parra Utrera, Gerson Nilo Saavedra Reinike, Alberto Juan Fernández Michell, Anselmo del Carmen San Martín Navarrete, Víctor Manuel Campos Dávila, Lisandro Alberto Martínez García, Juan de Dios Oviedo Riquelme, Luis Antonio León Godoy, Gabriel Washington González Salazar, and Nelson Casanova Salgado are already being prosecuted.

The former officers were now prosecuted for the illegal inhumation of the 19 victims, along with Héctor Orlando Rivera Rojas and René Luis Alberto Urrutia Elgueta. The political executions in this case are Fernando Grandón Gálvez, Jorge Andrés Lamana Abarzúa, Rubén Antonio Campos López, Juan Carlos Jara Herrera, Raúl Urra Parada, Luis Armando Ulloa Valenzuela, Oscar Omar Sanhueza Contreras, Dagoberto Enrique Garfias Gatica, Luis Alberto del Carmen Araneda Reyes, Juan Antonio Acuña Concha, Juan de Dios Villarroel Espinoza, Heraldo del Carmen Muñoz Muñoz, Federico Riquelme Concha, Jorge Lautaro Zorrilla Rubio, Manuel Mario Becerra Avello, Jack Eduardo Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Mario Jara Jara, Wilson Gamadiel Muñoz Rodríguez, and Alfonso Segundo Macaya Barrales.

The victims' remains were found in October 1973 and buried in a mass grave at the Yumbel Parish Cemetery, without autopsies being performed and without the corresponding sanitary authorization or judicial order.

Source: El Mercurio 21 de Enero 2014 Date: 21-01-2014

Supreme Court confirms convictions of nine former Carabineros for the crimes of 19 forestry workers in Laja and San Rosendo in 1973

The Supreme Court convicted nine former Carabineros for their responsibility in the crimes of qualified homicide of forestry workers Fernando Grandón Gálvez, Jorge Andrés Lamana Abarzúa, Rubén Antonio Campos López, Juan Carlos Jara Herrera, Raúl Urra Parada, Luis Armando Ulloa Valenzuela, Oscar Omar Sanhueza Contreras, Dagoberto Enrique Garfias Gatica, Luis Alberto del Carmen Araneda Reyes, Juan Antonio Acuña Concha, Juan de Dios Villarroel Espinoza, Heraldo del Carmen Muñoz Muñoz, Federico Riquelme Concha, Jorge Lautaro Zorrilla Rubio, Manuel Mario Becerra Avello, Jack Eduardo Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Mario Jara Jara, Wuilzon Gamadiel Muñoz Rodríguez, and Alfonso Segundo Macaya Barrales, perpetrated in September 1973 in the communes of Laja and San Rosendo, in the Biobío province.

In a unanimous ruling (case file 82.317-2021), the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed of minister Manuel Antonio Valderrama, ministers María Soledad Melo, María Loreto Gutiérrez, and lawyers (i) Pía Tavolari and Ricardo Abuauad—partially invalidated the challenged sentence, issued by the Concepción Court of Appeals in August 2021, only in the part that convicted the civilian Pedro Luis Jarpa Foerster, a former executive official of the CMPC, to 5 years and one day of imprisonment as an accomplice to the homicides of seven workers and, in its place, decreed his acquittal as the attributed responsibility for the crimes was not proven. Furthermore, it rejected the cassation appeals filed by the other convicted persons.

In all other respects, the highest court confirmed the sentence of the Concepción court that convicted former Carabineros officer Alberto Juan Fernández Mitchell to life imprisonment as the author of the qualified homicides of the 19 victims.

Meanwhile, former Carabineros José Jacinto Otárola Sanhueza, Mario Sebastián Montoya Burgos, Manuel Enrique Cerda Robledo, Gerson Nilo Saavedra Reinike, Pedro del Carmen Parra Utreras, Víctor Manuel Campos Dávila, and Nelson Casanova Salgado remain convicted to the sentence of 15 years and one day of imprisonment as authors of the 19 qualified homicides.

Meanwhile, former Carabinero Anselmo del Carmen San Martín Navarrete was sentenced to 5 years of incarceration, with the benefit of intensive supervised release, as an accessory to the crimes.

The sentence established an error of law in establishing the responsibility of Jarpa Forester. In this regard, the resolution states: "In this case, as an initial matter, it should be indicated that the convicted Jarpa, in the first instance, was acquitted of his participation in the tragic events, a decision that was reversed by one of the chambers of the Concepción Court of Appeals, which considered the existence of testimonies that allow him to be visualized in acts of cooperation... which allowed them to conclude that he executed acts of cooperation prior to the perpetration of the homicides of the seven people detailed, facilitating their identification and detention, acting at least with eventual intent, keeping in mind the context in which these detentions occurred, carried out by police officers who acted without any judicial order, with the country in a state of siege after the military coup of September 11, 1973, which led them to conclude that he could not have failed to project or represent that the identification he made of the workers, supposedly contrary to the new de facto regime, would end in their death."

Executions and illegal inhumation

Between September 13 and 17, 1973, a date when the country was in a state of siege, in the communes of Laja and San Rosendo, the following workers were detained by personnel from the Laja Carabineros station and transported to said police unit: Fernando Grandón Gálvez, Jorge Andrés Lamana Abarzúa, Rubén Antonio Campos López, Juan Carlos Jara Herrera, Raúl Urra Parada, Luis Armando Ulloa Valenzuela, Oscar Omar Sanhueza Contreras, Dagoberto Enrique Garfias Gatica, Luis Alberto del Carmen Araneda Reyes, Juan Antonio Acuña Concha, Juan de Dios Villarroel Espinoza, Heraldo del Carmen Muñoz Muñoz, Federico Riquelme Concha, Jorge Lautaro Zorrilla Rubio, Manuel Mario Becerra Avello, Jack Eduardo Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Mario Jara Jara, Wilson Gamadiel Muñoz Rodríguez, and Alfonso Segundo Macaya Barrales.

The Compañía Manufacturera de Papeles y Cartones (CMPC) workers Grandón, Gutiérrez, Muñoz, Urra, Riquelme, Villarroel, and Muñoz Rodríguez were detained by Carabineros at the entrance/exit gate of their workplace, the CMPC Laja Paper Plant, a place where a senior official kept a list with each of their names, indicating to the Carabineros who each one was, thereby facilitating their identification and detention.

Likewise, the other persons indicated above were detained and transported in CMPC paper mill vehicles, which had been provided by the heads of said company for the transport of the detainees and driven by a CMPC employee to the Laja station.

The detainees were placed in the cells, remaining in that facility until the night of September 17, 1973. That night, they were taken out by uniformed personnel and loaded into vehicles that belonged to the CMPC paper mill, to be, supposedly, transported to the Regiment in the city of Los Ángeles.

However, while they were traveling along Route Q-90, at the height of the Perales Bridge, the convoy entered a side road for about 500 meters in a southerly direction, entering the so-called Fundo San Juan, in the commune of Yumbel, where the aforementioned Carabineros, who were armed with rifles and carbines, made them get out of the vehicles.

Immediately, they forced them to lie on the ground, side by side, face down and with their hands tied, with the Carabineros proceeding to position themselves behind them. At that moment, the officer in charge stood to one side and, armed with his revolver, gave the order to shoot them to murder them.

Immediately thereafter, the same Carabineros, using shovels they carried for that purpose, dug a 60-cm-deep trench where they threw the bodies, which they covered with a layer of earth. Once this operation was finished, they returned to the Laja station, remaining silent regarding what had happened.

Days later, Carabineros officers returned to the sector to cover the bodies with lime, the kind used at the CMPC, which had been provided by officials of the same company.

A month after these crimes occurred, at the end of October 1973, dogs in the sector found human remains, a fact noticed by a person passing through that place, who notified the Yumbel Carabineros. Faced with this report, the commissioner of the aforementioned station ordered a subordinate to go to the site.

The subordinate verified the validity of the report and informed the commissioner, who ordered the corresponding report to be drawn up by the Salto del Laja Carabineros station and sent to the Yumbel Court of Letters, where he took it, accompanied by the chief physician of the Yumbel Hospital.

The aforementioned physician stated to the then-Judge of Letters of that locality, Corina Mera, the impossibility of receiving the bodies at the hospital facility for health reasons. Faced with this, the judge ordered that they be transported directly to the parish cemetery for burial in a mass grave, which the police officer carried out using a trailer pulled by a tractor, during the night and during the hours when the curfew was in effect.

This procedure was carried out without performing the required autopsies on the bodies found, and they were inhumed without obtaining the corresponding sanitary authorization, nor a competent judicial order.

by Darío Núñez

Source: resumen.cl, March 2, 2024