The minister on extraordinary assignment for human rights violation cases at the Santiago Court of Appeals, Hernán Crisosto Greisse, issued a sentence on Tuesday, November 10, in the investigation into the qualified kidnapping of Liceo Darío Salas music teacher Arturo Barría Araneda, a crime perpetrated beginning on August 28, 1974, in the Metropolitan Region.

The victim is part of what is known as "Operation Colombo."

In the resolution (case file 2182-98), the presiding judge sentenced former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) César Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, and Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann to 13 years of effective imprisonment as perpetrators of the crime.

Meanwhile, former members of the organization Orlando José Manzo Durán, Manuel Heriberto Avendaño González, Alejandro Francisco Astudillo Adonis, and Demóstenes Eugenio Cárdenas Saavedra must serve 10 years, also as perpetrators.

Likewise, Minister Hernán Crisosto applied a sentence of 3 years and one day of effective imprisonment to former DINA member Luis Humberto Pavez Parra as an accomplice.

Meanwhile, the following individuals were acquitted due to a lack of participation in the events: Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García, Alejandro Francisco Molina Cisterna, Samuel Enrique Fuenzalida Devia, Máximo Ramón Aliaga Soto, Gustavo Galvarino Carumán Soto; Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Carlos Enrique Letelier Verdugo, Herman Eduardo Ávalos Muñoz, Raúl Bernardo Toro Montes, Alfonso Humberto Quiroz Quintana, Héctor Raúl Valdebenito Araya, José Stalin Muñoz Leal, Gerardo Ernesto Urrich González, Julio José Hoyos Zegarra, Silvio Antonio Concha González, José Mario Friz Esparza, Luis Rigoberto Videla Inzunza, Jorge Segundo Madariaga Acevedo, Teresa del Carmen Osorio Navarro, Ricardo Víctor Lawrence Mires, Ciro Ernesto Torré Sáez, Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos, Basclay Humberto Zapata Reyes, Rosa Humilde Ramos Hernández, Pedro René Alfaro Fernández, Luis René Torres Méndez, Rodolfo Valentino Concha Rodríguez, Juan Angel Urbina Cáceres, Jerónimo del Carmen Neira Méndez, Luis Fernando Espinace Contreras, Palmira Isabel Almuna Guzmán, Leonidas Emiliano Méndez Moreno, Juan Ignacio Suárez Delgado, Raúl Alberto Soto Pérez, José Jaime Mora Diocares, Víctor Abraham González Salazar, Eugenio Jesús Fieldhouse Chávez, Daniel Valentín Cancino Varas, Jaime Humberto Paris Ramos, Juan Carlos Escobar Valenzuela, Pedro Segundo Bitterlich Jaramillo, Luis Eduardo Mora Cerda, Juvenal Alfonso Piña Garrido, Osvaldo Octavio Castillo Arellano, Víctor San Martín Jiménez, Reinaldo Alfonso Concha Orellana, Fernando Enrique Guerra Guajardo, Guido Arnoldo Jara Brevis, Hugo Hernán Clavería Leiva, Carlos Enrique Miranda Mesa, Víctor Manuel Álvarez Droguett, Víctor Manuel Molina Astete, Olegario Enrique González Moreno, Miguel Ángel Yáñez Ugalde, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and Héctor Carlos Díaz Cabezas.

The facts During the investigation stage, Magistrate Crisosto Greisse managed to establish the following sequence of events:

• That on August 27, 1974, Arturo Barría Araneda, who was a music teacher at the Liceo Darío Salas in Santiago and a member of the Communist Party, was summoned by the military overseer of said educational institution to the Army Non-Commissioned Officers School, located at the intersection of Calle Blanco Encalada and San Ignacio, along with two other teachers and a student, for having allegedly participated in political demonstrations during the funeral of a student from the school at the General Cemetery;
• The following day, August 28, Barría Araneda arrived at the Army Non-Commissioned Officers School, accompanied by witnesses, where he was deprived of his liberty and subsequently sent to the Military Institutes Command, and later to the clandestine DINA detention center known as "Cuatro Álamos," located at Calle Canadá No. 3000, which was guarded by armed guards and to which only DINA agents had access;
• That during his time at the Cuatro Álamos barracks, the victim Barría Araneda remained without contact with the outside world and, on one occasion, was taken out by agent Osvaldo Romo Mena to be interrogated at Villa Grimaldi, being returned to "Cuatro Álamos" the same day;
• That the last time the victim Barría Araneda was seen by other witnesses at the "Cuatro Álamos" facility occurred on an undetermined day in September 1974, and he remains forcibly disappeared;
• That the name of Arturo Barría Araneda appeared on a list of 119 people, published in the national press after it appeared in a publication of the Brazilian magazine "O’DIA" on June 25, 1975, which reported that Arturo Barría Araneda had died in Argentina, along with 58 other people belonging to leftist groups, due to internal disputes among those members, and
• That the publications that declared the victim Barría Araneda dead originated from disinformation maneuvers carried out by DINA agents abroad.

Source: cronicadigital.cl, November 12, 2015

The minister on extraordinary assignment for human rights violation cases at the Santiago Court of Appeals, Hernán Crisosto Greisse, issued a sentence in the investigation into the qualified kidnapping of Liceo Darío Salas music teacher Arturo Barría Araneda, a crime perpetrated beginning on August 28, 1974, in the Metropolitan Region. The victim is part of what is known as "Operation Colombo."

In the resolution, the presiding judge sentenced former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) César Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, and Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann to 13 years of effective imprisonment as perpetrators of the crime.

Meanwhile, former members of the organization Orlando José Manzo Durán, Manuel Heriberto Avendaño González, Alejandro Francisco Astudillo Adonis, and Demóstenes Eugenio Cárdenas Saavedra must serve 10 years, also as perpetrators.

Likewise, Minister Hernán Crisosto applied a sentence of 3 years and one day of effective imprisonment to former DINA member Luis Humberto Pavez Parra as an accomplice.

Meanwhile, the following individuals were acquitted due to a lack of participation in the events: Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García, Alejandro Francisco Molina Cisterna, Samuel Enrique Fuenzalida Devia, Máximo Ramón Aliaga Soto, Gustavo Galvarino Carumán Soto; Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Carlos Enrique Letelier Verdugo, Herman Eduardo Ávalos Muñoz, Raúl Bernardo Toro Montes, Alfonso Humberto Quiroz Quintana, Héctor Raúl Valdebenito Araya, José Stalin Muñoz Leal, Gerardo Ernesto Urrich González, Julio José Hoyos Zegarra, Silvio Antonio Concha González, José Mario Friz Esparza, Luis Rigoberto Videla Inzunza, Jorge Segundo Madariaga Acevedo, Teresa del Carmen Osorio Navarro, Ricardo Víctor Lawrence Mires, Ciro Ernesto Torré Sáez, Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos, Basclay Humberto Zapata Reyes, Rosa Humilde Ramos Hernández, Pedro René Alfaro Fernández, Luis René Torres Méndez, Rodolfo Valentino Concha Rodríguez, Juan Angel Urbina Cáceres, Jerónimo del Carmen Neira Méndez, Luis Fernando Espinace Contreras, Palmira Isabel Almuna Guzmán, Leonidas Emiliano Méndez Moreno, Juan Ignacio Suárez Delgado, Raúl Alberto Soto Pérez, José Jaime Mora Diocares, Víctor Abraham González Salazar, Eugenio Jesús Fieldhouse Chávez, Daniel Valentín Cancino Varas, Jaime Humberto Paris Ramos, Juan Carlos Escobar Valenzuela, Pedro Segundo Bitterlich Jaramillo, Luis Eduardo Mora Cerda, Juvenal Alfonso Piña Garrido, Osvaldo Octavio Castillo Arellano, Víctor San Martín Jiménez, Reinaldo Alfonso Concha Orellana, Fernando Enrique Guerra Guajardo, Guido Arnoldo Jara Brevis, Hugo Hernán Clavería Leiva, Carlos Enrique Miranda Mesa, Víctor Manuel Álvarez Droguett, Víctor Manuel Molina Astete, Olegario Enrique González Moreno, Miguel Ángel Yáñez Ugalde, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and Héctor Carlos Díaz Cabezas.

The facts During the investigation stage, Magistrate Crisosto Greisse managed to establish the following sequence of events:

• That on August 27, 1974, Arturo Barría Araneda, who was a music teacher at the Liceo Darío Salas in Santiago and a member of the Communist Party, was summoned by the military overseer of said educational institution to the Army Non-Commissioned Officers School, located at the intersection of Calle Blanco Encalada and San Ignacio, along with two other teachers and a student, for having allegedly participated in political demonstrations during the funeral of a student from the school at the General Cemetery;
• The following day, August 28, Barría Araneda arrived at the Army Non-Commissioned Officers School, accompanied by witnesses, where he was deprived of his liberty and subsequently sent to the Military Institutes Command, and later to the clandestine DINA detention center known as "Cuatro Álamos," located at Calle Canadá No. 3000, which was guarded by armed guards and to which only DINA agents had access;
• That during his time at the Cuatro Álamos barracks, the victim Barría Araneda remained without contact with the outside world and, on one occasion, was taken out by agent Osvaldo Romo Mena to be interrogated at Villa Grimaldi, being returned to "Cuatro Álamos" the same day;
• That the last time the victim Barría Araneda was seen by other witnesses at the "Cuatro Álamos" facility occurred on an undetermined day in September 1974, and he remains forcibly disappeared;
• That the name of Arturo Barría Araneda appeared on a list of 119 people, published in the national press after it appeared in a publication of the Brazilian magazine "O’DIA" on June 25, 1975, which reported that Arturo Barría Araneda had died in Argentina, along with 58 other people belonging to leftist groups, due to internal disputes among those members, and
• That the publications that declared the victim Barría Araneda dead originated from disinformation maneuvers carried out by DINA agents abroad.

Source: elclarin.cl, November 12, 2015

The Chilean justice system sentenced five former agents of Augusto Pinochet's secret police on Monday for the detention, kidnapping, and disappearance of ARTURO BARRIA ARANEDA.

The Chilean justice system sentenced five former agents of Augusto Pinochet's secret police (National Intelligence Directorate) on Monday the 13th for the detention, kidnapping, and disappearance of Arturo Barría Araneda, a music teacher and member of the Communist Party, in September 1974 as part of what is known as "Operation Colombo."

The Santiago Court of Appeals unanimously sentenced retired generals César Manríquez Bravo and Raúl Iturriaga Neumann to seven years in prison, as well as Brigadier Pedro Espinoza Bravo. Meanwhile, Colonel Orlando Manzo Durán was sentenced to five years and one day, and Captain Luis Pavez Parra to three years and one day, a sentence he may serve under supervised release.

In the same case, the Court of Appeals acquitted agents Manuel Avendaño González, Alejandro Astudillo Adonis, and Demóstenes Cárdenas Saavedra, and ratified the acquittal of 56 people in the same case, confirming the first-instance ruling by Judge Julio Crisosto.

Arturo Barría Araneda was 38 years old at the time of his disappearance and was last seen in a political prisoner camp in September 1974. Months later, his name was added to the Operation Colombo list to cover up his disappearance and that of 119 other political prisoners of the Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990), through maneuvers in the media in Chile and the region, where it was claimed that these deaths were the result of purges within the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), which fought actively for the return of democracy in Chile.

The group Memoria Activa published that Arturo Barría Araneda was detained after attending the funeral of a student from his school on August 26, 1974, where he allegedly sang "The Internationale" and shouted political slogans, and that the Military Delegate Rector of the school had reported the situation to Captain Luis Pavez, who was sentenced in the qualified kidnapping case of the teacher.

Source: unidiversidad.com.ar, February 14, 2017

The Supreme Court of Chile sentenced five agents of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship for the qualified kidnapping (disappearance) in 1974 of ARTURO BARRIA ARANEDA, a music teacher later included among the victims of Operation Colombo, judicial sources reported today.

In the ruling, the Criminal Chamber of the highest Chilean court sentenced Generals César Manríquez Bravo and Raúl Iturriaga Neumann and Brigadier Pedro Espinoza Bravo to six years in prison as perpetrators of the crime.

Meanwhile, Gendarmerie (Prison Service) Colonel Orlando Manzo Durán was sentenced to five years, also as a perpetrator, and agent Luis Pavez Parra received a sentence of three years and one day in prison as an accomplice.

The first four are in prison, serving sentences totaling several centuries, after being convicted in dozens of trials for human rights violations.

In August 1974, Arturo Barría Araneda, 28, a music teacher at the Liceo Darío Salas in Santiago and a member of the Communist Party, was summoned by the military overseer of the establishment to the Army Non-Commissioned Officers School, along with two other teachers and a student, for having allegedly participated in political demonstrations during the funeral of a student.

Upon attending the summons, the four were detained and sent first to another military facility and later to a DINA (National Intelligence Directorate) prisoner camp, the dictatorship's secret police, where the teacher was subjected to torture, there and at Villa Grimaldi, another clandestine prison of that organization.

According to testimonies from surviving prisoners, Barría was tortured for having traveled a couple of years earlier to Cuba, where he took a professional development course as a music teacher.

The following September, prisoners stopped seeing or hearing the teacher, who used to sing pieces such as Schubert's "Ave Maria" and other classical music pieces.

In May 1975, his name was included among the victims of Operation Colombo, a DINA setup to cover up the disappearance of 119 political prisoners, with the support of the secret police of Argentina and Brazil.

In those countries, unique editions of non-existent newspapers, Lea and O Novo Dia, were published, claiming that the disappeared had died in internal purges of the MIR (Revolutionary Left Movement) that occurred in Argentine and Brazilian territory.

The Chilean press of the time replicated those publications with headlines such as "Exterminated like rats."

During the Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990), according to official data, some 3,200 Chileans died at the hands of state agents, 1,192 of whom are still listed as forcibly disappeared, while another 33,000 were tortured and imprisoned for political reasons.

Source: efe.com, August 24, 2018

In her capacity as a member of the First Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals, she had to rule on case file 192-2016, where the sentences of several agents who participated in that operation were reduced, halving the sentences of 5 agents, including Pedro Espinoza and Raúl Iturriaga.

The minister of the Court of Appeals maintained before the Senate that she never ruled on that case, which investigated crimes against humanity that occurred in the 70s.

"With the passage of time, those investigations served to determine criminal responsibilities in human rights, and I clarify that I have not ruled on Operation Colombo," she said before the senators who must approve her name to join the highest court.

However, in her capacity as a member of the First Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals, she had to rule on case file 192-2016, where the sentences of several agents who participated in that operation were reduced, halving the sentences of 5 of them.

In a unanimous ruling (case file 192-2016), the First Chamber of the appellate court—composed of ministers Dobra Lusic, Guillermo de la Barra, and Jenny Book—sentenced former army officers César Raúl Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, and Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann to 7 years of effective imprisonment.

It sentenced agent José Orlando Gonzalo Manzo Durán to 5 years and one day of imprisonment, and agent Luis Humberto Pavez Parra to 3 years and one day of imprisonment, with the benefit of supervised release.

In addition, the acquittal of agents Manuel Avendaño González, Alejandro Astudillo Adonis, and Demóstenes Cárdenas Saavedra was ordered, and the acquittal of 56 other DINA agents was ratified.

In the first instance, in a ruling issued in November 2015, Minister Hernán Crisosto had applied sentences of 13 years for the former, 10 years for Manzo, Avendaño, Astudillo, and Cárdenas, all as perpetrators of the crime, and 3 years and one day for Pavez as an accomplice.

During the investigation stage, the visiting minister Hernán Crisosto managed to establish the following sequence of events:

"That on August 27, 1974, Arturo Barría Araneda, who was a music teacher at the Liceo Darío Salas in Santiago and a member of the Communist Party, was summoned by the Military Overseer of said educational institution to the Army Non-Commissioned Officers School, located at the intersection of Calle Blanco Encalada and San Ignacio, along with two other teachers and a student, for having allegedly participated in political demonstrations during the funeral of a student from said school at the General Cemetery;

On August 28 of that same year, Arturo Barría Araneda arrived at the summons at the Army Non-Commissioned Officers School, accompanied by witnesses, where he was deprived of his liberty, to subsequently be sent to the Military Institutes Command, and later to the clandestine DINA detention center known as "Cuatro Álamos," located at Calle Canadá No. 3000, which were guarded by armed guards and to which only DINA agents had access;

That during his time at the Cuatro Álamos barracks, the victim Barría Araneda remained without contact with the outside world, and on one occasion was taken out by agent Osvaldo Romo Mena to be interrogated at Villa Grimaldi, being returned to "Cuatro Álamos" the same day;

That the last time the victim Barría Araneda was seen by other witnesses at the "Cuatro Álamos" facility occurred on an undetermined day in the month of September 1974, and he remains forcibly disappeared;

That the name of Arturo Barría Araneda appeared on a list of 119 people, published in the national press after it appeared in a list published in the Brazilian magazine "O’DIA" on June 25, 1975, which reported that Arturo Barría Araneda had died in Argentina, along with 58 other people belonging to leftist groups, due to internal disputes among those members;

That the publications that declared the victim Barría Araneda dead originated from disinformation maneuvers carried out by DINA agents abroad."

Source: elperiodista.cl, May 13, 2019