Occupation: Surveyor. Employee of the construction company "Picasso y Olave" in Arica Political Affiliation: None Date of Detention: May 14, 1977

REPRESSIVE SITUATION

Pedro Mella Vergara, a surveyor and married man, invited his wife to dinner on May 13, 1977. As they sometimes did, they went to "Pollón de Oro"—a restaurant in Arica—where they met a coworker of the victim, Sergio Oviedo Sarría (who would disappear a few hours after the victim).

When they finished dinner, the three decided to go to the Manhattan nightclub, located on Maipú Street in that northern city. It was already 01:00 in the morning on Saturday, May 14, 1977, and a taxi and a white Peugeot were parked outside the nightclub.

An hour later, Pedro Mella, Nilda Caqueo, and Sergio Oviedo decided to leave. Upon exiting, as they were preparing to take the taxi, the victim, who was intoxicated, began shouting phrases against the military.

Immediately, two civilians—later identified during the proceedings at the Third Criminal Court of Arica as SIM agent Raúl del Canto Galdames—rushed at him, grabbing him by the arms and forcing him back into the nightclub.

Pedro Mella was violently beaten and his clothes torn; Nilda Caqueo was crudely insulted; Sergio Oviedo Sarría was threatened with arrest if he continued to intervene; the owner of the nightclub, the waiters, and the customers were forced to leave the premises.

A Radiopatrullas van arrived at the scene, carrying Carabineros officers Eduardo Soto Frívola and Roberto Mühlenbrock Carvajal. They shoved and beat the victim into the Carabineros van, while the SIM officials got into the white Peugeot; the vehicles departed for the 1st Carabineros Precinct of Arica; under these circumstances, Pedro Mella Vergara disappeared.

At 7:00 in the morning on that same day, May 14, 1977, Nilda Caqueo went to the 1st Carabineros Precinct to look for her husband. She was certain they would release him. However, the facts were very different.

The officer on duty informed her that Pedro Mella was not being held at that police station and, furthermore, that his name did not appear in the corresponding logs. Her surprise was even greater when she saw one of the Carabineros who had been in the van finishing his shift, maintaining a hermetic silence in the face of the questions she asked.

Having obtained no results, the spouse went to the Carabineros Radiopatrullas section. There, she encountered the second officer who had been in the van that morning. It was he who acknowledged the detention of Pedro Mella and told her that, indeed, he had not been booked into the 1st Precinct because the civilians had taken him away in the white Peugeot.

During the following days, Nilda Caqueo managed to speak with Commander Carrasco of the Arica Garrison, who informed her that her husband had been detained by the SIM, a fact he would later deny. Later, she received a telegram from the victim sent on May 19, 1977, from Iquique, in which he said he was heading to Tocopilla, the authenticity of which could not be verified.

Postal employees—questioned by the Court—did not identify the victim from the photograph shown to them as the person who sent the telegram. His friend Sergio Oviedo Sarría was detained hours later at the Chacalluta Customs office and, like Pedro Mella Vergara, remains forcibly disappeared to this day.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

Nilda Caqueo, without professional legal counsel, filed a complaint for "presumed misfortune" (presunta desgracia) at the Third Criminal Court of Arica on May 27, 1977, which was registered under case No. 9664.

During the processing of this case—thanks to the description and identification provided by the witness and spouse of the Carabineros who were in the van—both police officers, Eduardo Soto Frívola and Roberto Mühlenbrock Carvajal, testified.

They agreed that the detention of Pedro Mella Vergara had been carried out on the orders of two SIM agents: Army Commander Raúl del Canto Galdames and another civilian, possibly a non-commissioned officer, about whom they had no further information.

According to the Intelligence Service agent, the apprehension occurred because the victim was a "spy for Peru." The Carabineros added in court that, upon arriving at the 1st Precinct of Arica, Raúl del Canto ordered them not to enter the detainee into the logs, as he would take him away for interrogation.

They then put Pedro Mella into the white Peugeot, which departed for an unknown destination. On August 31, 1977, Raúl del Canto Galdames acknowledged in court the detention of the victim at the Manhattan nightclub, claiming it was for the purpose of "filing" him.

Once this procedure was completed—the apprehending agent stated—he was released. Army Colonel Oscar Figueroa Márquez, Governor of the Province of Arica, reported the same. In an official letter dated September 2, 1977, he stated: "Pedro Segundo Mella Vergara was detained on May 14 last by Carabineros at the request of Commander Raúl del Canto, the Military Chief in charge of the Intelligence Service, a service that held him for the duration of one hour, after which he was released." Days before filing her complaint, Nilda Caqueo had received a telegram from Iquique, supposedly sent by her husband on May 18, 1977, in which he said he was going to Tocopilla. The wife remained unconvinced. Without further hesitation, she traveled to Iquique and filed another complaint for "presumed misfortune" at the 2nd Criminal Court on June 22, 1977, which was registered under case No. 35.539. The Iquique Court then visited the Post and Telegraph Office of that city, confirming that there was a telegram addressed to the complainant, handwritten in block letters, with an illegible signature and no record of the sender's ID number. Regarding the sender's address, it only stated "in transit." Nothing more could be established. However, it was determined that Pedro Mella Vergara was never in Tocopilla. Investigations in that city checked residential homes, hotels, boarding houses, and the train station, confirming that the victim had not traveled there and that there were no relatives or acquaintances of the victim in that city. On July 28, 1977, the Iquique Judge declared himself incompetent and transferred the records to the 3rd Criminal Court of Arica, where they were consolidated into case No. 9664 (the first complaint for "presumed misfortune"). Judge Jorge Cañón Moya, after taking statements from Carabineros Soto and Mühlenbrock and obtaining a statement via rogatory commission from SIM agent Raúl del Canto Galdames, closed the summary proceedings on September 26, 1977, dismissing the case because "the evidence gathered does not fully justify the perpetration of the crime." Prior to the closing of the summary, Nilda Caqueo had filed a complaint with the Court of Appeals of Iquique against the Judge of the Arica Court, considering that he had not sufficiently investigated the disappearance of Pedro Mella. The Iquique Court accepted the complaint and, as a result, decided on November 5, 1977, to send the records to the VI Military Court of Arica "as it holds jurisdiction." The latter accepted jurisdiction and, on February 13, 1978, sent the records to the Army and Carabineros Prosecutor's Office of Arica, ordering them to reopen the case and bring it to a verdict. On February 28, the case was reopened and registered under No. 35-78. Three months later—after confirming that the victim never arrived in Tocopilla and that both the CIRE (Regional Intelligence Command) and the CNI (National Intelligence Center) claimed to have no information on Pedro Mella—the Military Court closed the summary on May 30, 1978, "as the investigation was exhausted," and temporarily dismissed the case on July 3 of the same year "because the perpetration of the crime was not fully justified." No one told Nilda Caqueo where her husband was held, why he was detained, how it was possible that she received a telegram supposedly written by him, and, most importantly, what truly happened to him. In order to seek answers to her numerous questions, Nilda Caqueo requested the reopening of the case in April 1990, a matter for which there is still no further information. Additionally, the spouse sent letters to the Minister of the Interior (May 11, 1978) and the Provincial Governor of Arica (June 1978), without obtaining results.

Source: Corporation report

The minister on special assignment for human rights violation cases in the far northern jurisdictions of the country, Vicente Hormazábal Abarzúa, convicted retired Army Colonel Raúl del Canto Galdames for his responsibility in the crime of aggravated kidnapping of surveyor Pedro Segundo Mella Vergara, an illicit act perpetrated starting May 14, 1977, in the city of Arica.

In the ruling (case file 13.322 Volume B), Minister Hormazábal sentenced the retired officer to 10 years and one day in prison as the perpetrator of the crime. Regarding civil damages, the visiting minister accepted the claim for compensation and ordered the State to pay a total sum of $250,000,000 (two hundred and fifty million pesos) for moral damages to the victim's spouse and children.

The evidence collected during the investigation stage, which served as the basis for the indictment, allowed Minister Hormazábal Abarzúa to establish the following facts: “That on May 14, 1977, Pedro Segundo Mella Vergara was in the company of his spouse Nilda Caqueo Olcay and his friend Sergio Oviedo Sarria inside the Manhattan nightclub in the city of Arica, being detained and transferred to the First Carabineros Precinct at the request of Army personnel belonging to the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA, which changed its name to the National Intelligence Center in August 1977), after having labeled him a spy and explosives expert, a place from which he was removed by one of said personnel, with his whereabouts remaining impossible to determine from that date to the present moment.”

Source: aricahoy.cl, February 5, 2021

Date: 02-05-2021

The resolution adds that there is no disproportion in the sums granted for moral damages, which are sufficiently justified by the immeasurable harm to the plaintiff victims, taking into account the extensive period during which they anxiously sought to learn the whereabouts of Pedro Mella Vergara.

The Court of Appeals of La Serena confirmed the sentence that convicted retired Army Colonel Raúl del Canto Galdames as the perpetrator of the aggravated kidnapping of surveyor Pedro Segundo Mella Vergara, an illicit act perpetrated starting May 14, 1977, in the city of Arica.

The appellate court ratified the appealed resolution, issued on January 30 by the visiting minister Vicente Hormazábal Abarzúa, with the declaration that the sentence to be served by Del Canto Galdames is increased to 15 years and one day in prison.

The sentence maintains that, regarding the appeal filed by the defense of the convicted man, which omits all types of arguments, this Court shares the conclusions reached by the trial judge to arrive at the guilty verdict and dismiss any claim for reform in his favor, considering that the evidence brought to these records allows for the establishment of the corpus delicti and the culpable participation of the accused, as well as the concurrence of circumstances that allow the punishable act to be classified as aggravated kidnapping.

Likewise, the resolution adds that there is no disproportion in the sums granted for moral damages, which are sufficiently justified by the immeasurable harm to the plaintiff victims, taking into account the extensive period during which they anxiously sought to learn the whereabouts of Pedro Mella Vergara. “For these considerations, keeping in mind the report of the Judicial Prosecutor, and in accordance with the provisions of articles 5 and 6 of the Political Constitution of the Republic, 63 of the American Convention on Human Rights, and the other international law instruments and legal norms cited, as well as articles 40, 54 bis, 55, 63, and 514 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, THE APPEALED SENTENCE of January 30, 2021, written on pages 1,683 to 1,710 of these records, IS CONFIRMED, with costs, WITH THE DECLARATION that the length of the corporal punishment imposed on the sentenced RAÚL DEL CANTO GALDAMES, already identified, in his capacity as perpetrator of the crime of aggravated kidnapping provided for and punished in article 141, paragraphs 1 and 3 of the Penal Code, in its consummated degree, against Pedro Segundo Mella Vergara, committed in the city of Arica starting on May 14, 1977, is increased to FIFTEEN YEARS AND ONE DAY of major imprisonment in its medium degree, maintaining the accessory penalties decreed by the trial judge,” it orders. In the appealed ruling, Minister Hormazábal Abarzúa established that on May 14, 1977, Pedro Segundo Mella Vergara was in the company of his spouse Nilda Caqueo Olcay and his friend Sergio Oviedo Sarria inside the Manhattan nightclub in the city of Arica, being detained and transferred to the First Carabineros Precinct at the request of Army personnel belonging to the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA, which changed its name to the National Intelligence Center in August 1977), after having labeled him a spy and explosives expert, a place from which he was removed by one of said personnel, with his whereabouts remaining impossible to determine from that date to the present moment. Regarding civil damages, the appellate court confirmed the resolution that ordered the State to pay a total sum of $250,000,000 for moral damages to the victim's spouse and children.

Source: pdju.cl, September 21, 2021

Date: 09-21-2021