Between 1982 and 1986, he was at the Loyola barracks. There, he exercised mid-level command over the most bloodthirsty members of the Lautaro Brigade who came from the Simón Bolívar extermination barracks.

Regarding this, he states categorically that “I only performed administrative tasks there. Besides, I am very Catholic and my hands are clean.” He says he never performed operational functions, detaining people or spying. But Jorgelino Vergara, El Mocito, maintains the opposite.

It is an old mansion on Calle Vergara where Felipe Enrique Ricardo Palacios Cabrera works. High-ceilinged rooms, with a large courtyard. A family atmosphere. The Civil Defense department of the Ministry of Defense is located there.

Palacios is the head of Planning for the entity. The Army Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) receives us kindly. Somewhat restless. It takes him barely a second to respond without hesitation, as if he were expecting the question: Yes, I was a CNI agent.

But the head of Planning was not a simple agent. Between 1982 and 1986, he was at the Loyola barracks. There, he exercised mid-level command over the most bloodthirsty members of the Lautaro Brigade who came from the Simón Bolívar extermination barracks.

Although he states categorically that “I only performed administrative tasks there. Besides, I am very Catholic and my hands are clean.” He says he never performed operational functions, detaining people or spying. But Jorgelino Vergara, El Mocito, maintains the opposite.

It was he who, without hesitation, recognized him in the official photograph of Palacios on the Civil Defense website of the Ministry of Defense. “In Palacios’s operational group were also Lieutenant Fernando Paredes Uribe, son of General Fernando Paredes who was director of Investigations, Lieutenant Brito, and Lieutenant Ramón Briceño Rodríguez, of the Carabineros,” Vergara told us. “With his group, Palacios was operational, sometimes detaining people.”

In the book by journalist Javier Rebolledo, La Danza de los Cuervos (The Dance of the Ravens), El Mocito identified Palacios Cabrera as one of those who held command at the Loyola barracks, under the supervision of Army Captain Ernesto Ureta Pernas.

Palacios’s time at the Loyola barracks gradually emerged during our conversation. At the beginning, he said he was never in Santiago during that period. Later, that he was only in Loyola for one year. Upon our insistence, his stay at that barracks increased to two years. Finally, he admitted that he was there for four years.

He reiterates categorically: “I have nothing to do with it, my hands are clean. I have never been prosecuted for anything, and a judge has never called me to testify for any human rights case.” In 2001, a witness, whose name was never publicly known, identified him as one of the custodians in Montevideo of the DINA chemist, Eugenio Berríos, who was murdered in 1992 by members of the intelligence services of the armies of Chile and Uruguay.

But, ultimately, his name was definitively ruled out in the proceedings.

With the peacocks

In 1987, after the attack in Cajón del Maipo, Palacios left to serve as head of security for Augusto Pinochet and his family at the Bucalemu mansion, in the commune of Santo Domingo in the Fifth Region. “Nothing ever happened there,” he explains, “and the Pinochets entertained themselves by playing with the peacocks they had,” which he also enjoyed.

El Mocito says that Palacios Cabrera was even one of the members of the Martyrs’ Avengers Command (Covema), which Palacios also absolutely denies. Jorgelino Vergara identified him as part of this command in the book La Danza de los Cuervos, where he also names as participants the CNI agents Jorge Díaz Radulovich, Guillermo Ferrán Martínez, and Carabineros Lieutenant Ramón Briceño Rodríguez.

After democracy was restored, Palacios leaned toward intelligence, taking courses at the Army Intelligence School in Nos. In this way, in 1992, he joined the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE), where he remained until 2003, when he retired with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. “At the DINE, I was in counterintelligence,” he states.

But his stay at the Loyola barracks keeps coming up in the conversation. He acknowledges that his alias there was Tomás Jarpa Urzúa, as recorded in a 2007 police report. We asked him about detainees at that barracks. “At least I never saw detainees there,” he responds.

But without being a place specifically designated for the torture and political imprisonment of opponents of the dictatorship, there were indeed detainees at Loyola, at least as a transit point toward the Borgoño barracks, the CNI’s operational headquarters in Santiago under the command of Álvaro Corbalán.

The Covema

El Mocito says that Palacios Cabrera was even one of the members of the Martyrs’ Avengers Command (Covema), which Palacios also absolutely denies. Jorgelino Vergara identified him as part of this command in the book La Danza de los Cuervos, where he also names as participants the CNI agents Jorge Díaz Radulovich, Guillermo Ferrán Martínez, and Carabineros Lieutenant Ramón Briceño Rodríguez.

At the beginning of 1980, the MIR regrouped part of its forces, some having returned clandestinely to Chile from Cuba and the German Democratic Republic. Bank robberies and attacks on police stations began. The regime’s security forces went on alert. On July 15, 1980, a MIR commando killed the head of Army intelligence, Colonel Roger Vergara.

Covema was a clandestine group of agents formed after the murder of Colonel Vergara, precisely to “avenge its martyrs.” To this day, it is not clear who made it up. Whether they were only CNI agents, or if Carabineros and members of the civil police also participated.

Faced with the wave of attacks, on July 24, 1980, Pinochet removed General Odlanier Mena from the leadership of the CNI and installed General Humberto Gordon. The latter formed the Anti-Subversive Command (CAS), with officials from the Investigations Homicide Brigade, the Carabineros OS-7, and agents from the CNI’s Metropolitan Brigade.

It is not yet clear if the 12 students, most of them from the MIR, who were detained in the days following the death of Roger Vergara, were detained by agents of the CAS, or of Covema, or both groups. Upon regaining their freedom, some of these detainees declared that their captors identified themselves as members of Covema, discrediting the terrible job that “the cops and the detectives” had been doing.

But they did not say they belonged to the CNI.

Among these detainees, journalism student from the Catholic University, Eduardo Jara, died as a result of torture.

The still-mysterious Covema was a feared name that circulated among opponents of the dictatorship in the early 80s. It is unknown if other victims were at the hands of this underground organization. But El Mocito maintains that he “heard” at the Loyola barracks how some agents, including those he names, spoke of Covema and met at some cafes and restaurants in the upper part of Santiago.

In 1988, in an interview, General Odlanier Mena said that Covema was composed only of CNI agents.

Felipe Palacios sees us off from the door of his office with the same confidence with which he received us, but with a slight tremor in his hands.

Source: elmostrador.cl, August 16, 2012