Patricio del Carmen Rojas González
Obrero — 21 years old.
Background
Patricio del Carmen Rojas González
Obrero — 21 years old.
Case summary
Patricio del Carmen Rojas González, a 21-year-old laborer and socialist militant, was executed by State agents on November 18, 1973, in San Antonio. He was convicted by a War Council on the accusation of planning an assault that never took place, in a trial lacking evidence that constituted a violation of his human rights.
Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos[1]
On November 18, 1973, also by order of the Military Prosecutor's Office of Tejas Verdes, Jorge Antonio CORNEJO CARVAJAL, 26 years old, an inspector for the National Directorate of Industry and Commerce (Dirinco) in Melipilla and a member of the Partido Socialista, and Patricio del Carmen ROJAS GONZALEZ, 21 years old, a member of the Partido Socialista, were executed by sentence of the Consejo de Guerra Case File 18 73.
Both were arrested on September 16, 1973, in Melipilla by Carabineros from that locality, along with Jorge Luis Ojeda Jara and other individuals, and placed at the disposal of the military authority in San Antonio.
The Commission has been unable to obtain the case file, despite having repeatedly requested it from the relevant authority. It did, however, manage to obtain a copy of the sentence through other means.
After analyzing the gathered evidence, the Commission has reached the conviction that the executed men were victims of human rights violations committed by military personnel from Tejas Verdes, for the following reasons in addition to those contained in the general analysis of the Consejos de Guerra:
They were accused of having committed the crime contemplated in Article 8 of the Arms Control Law, for planning an assault on the Melipilla Police Station, which was to take place on September 15, an event that did not occur.
The summary proceedings consisted of only 13 pages and did not mention or consider any evidence other than the statements of the accused and the carabineros who arrested them. General legal standards require that a crime be proven by means other than the confession of the parties, a standard that was not met in this proceeding.
Taking into account that the defendants were arrested the day after the alleged assault was to have taken place, it is clear that they had abandoned their supposed purpose, a circumstance that was also not taken into account.
Given the documented lamentable state of health in which one of the detainees, Ojeda, was left during his detention in Melipilla, the confessions of the victims cannot be considered as having been given freely and spontaneously.
It is also absolutely irregular that one of the people detained along with the victims, Jorge Luis Ojeda Jara, was not tried in this Consejo de Guerra, despite having been apprehended for the same events, all having been transferred to San Antonio and placed at the disposal of the same military authority.
This was because Ojeda had been removed from Campamento Nº 2 on October 5, 1973, by a military patrol to be executed outside of any legal norm, as has been narrated previously.
The mitigating factor of an irreproachable prior conduct, which favored both detainees, was not weighed.
It has not been possible to determine whether the victims had legal assistance; in any case, the ruling shows no assessment of or reference to any defense arguments that the accused or their lawyers, if they had any, may have made, taking into account that in the Consejos de Guerra the defense must submit a written brief, to which no reference is made.
References
- 1Museum of Memoryhttps://interactivos.museodelamemoria.cl/victims/?p=1928