"Between Huérfanos and Compañía streets, Camú managed to untie himself and attempted to open the door to flee, receiving three point-blank shots that cost him his life moments later at the Posta Central," states part of the account established by the ruling of the Santiago Court of Appeals.

In a unanimous ruling, the Santiago Court of Appeals sentenced two retired members of the Navy for their responsibility in the kidnapping and murder of lawyer Arnoldo Camú Veloso, who was detained on September 24, 1974.

The Fourth Chamber of the capital's appellate court sentenced Alejandro Carrasco Flores and José Pezo Lagos to 5 years and one day in prison as perpetrators of the kidnapping of the lawyer, who was an advisor to the President of the Republic, Salvador Allende, and a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Party.

According to the evidence gathered during the investigation, Judge Mario Carroza established that Arnoldo Camú Veloso was detained along with PS militant Ernesto Gutiérrez Zegarra on September 24, 1973, without a judicial warrant, on Calle Santiaguillo in the commune of Santiago, by Navy personnel who had been searching for him since September 11, 1973.

The ruling was issued by judges Adelita Ravanales, Mireya López, and acting judge Gonzalo Ruiz. It further establishes that the detainees were loaded into a military vehicle tied with a rope and were transported north along Calle Amunátegui.

Between Huérfanos and Compañía streets, Camú managed to untie himself and attempted to open the door to flee, receiving three point-blank shots that cost him his life moments later at the Posta Central.

For these crimes, Carrasco Flores, Pezo Lagos, and the State of Chile were ordered to pay, jointly and severally, the sum of 1,476 UF ($41.3 million) to the victim's spouse, Celsa Parrau Tejos, and the sum of 1,348 UF ($37.3 million) to his children, Álvaro León and Bárbara Camú Parrau, as compensation for moral damages.

Source: eldesconcierto.cl, July 22, 2019

Twenty lawyers are working on this task, which the Undersecretariat of Human Rights is required by law to fulfill.

A total of 682 human rights cases are being processed before the courts by the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights. In a largely unknown task, it is responsible for cases of forced disappearance and political execution that occurred between September 11, 1973, and March 10, 1990.

This specific task is managed by the Human Rights Program Unit, which reports to the Undersecretary of Human Rights, Lorena Recabarren. The function was inherited from the Undersecretariat of the Interior.

As a plaintiff in these cases, the unit is authorized to exercise all legal remedies and actions to expedite these proceedings. To fulfill this function, it has 58 staff members, 49 of whom are on fee-based contracts, eight on fixed-term contracts, and one permanent staff member.

There are 20 lawyers, five social workers, 15 political scientists, 15 legal clerks, technicians, administrative staff, and others. The budget for this year is 1.531 billion 374 thousand pesos.

2019 Proceedings The most significant cases on the agenda for this year, considering procedural timelines, are:

1. Carmelo Soria, Spanish national. Qualified homicide in 1976 of the socialist economist from ECLAC. Investigating judge: Lamberto Cisternas. Accused: Pablo Belmar Labbé, Pablo Espinoza Bravo, Raúl Iturriaga Neumann, Jaime Lepe Orellana, Juan Morales Salgado, René Quilhot Palma, and Guillermo Salinas Torres.

2. MIR member Guillermo González de Asís, victim of qualified kidnapping in 1975. First-instance sentence. Investigating judge: Marianela Cifuentes. Accused: Gerardo Godoy García, Raúl Iturriaga Neumann, Miguel Krassnoff, Rolf Wenderoth.

3. Patricio Manzano González, Engineering student at the U. de Chile. Victim in 1985 of torture resulting in death. First-instance sentence. Investigating judge: Mario Carroza. Accused: Sergio Gálvez Álvarez, Guillermo Havliczek Parada, and Pedro Moyano Acevedo.

4. Operation Colombo. MIR militant Eduardo Ziede Gómez, victim in 1974 of qualified kidnapping in the Operation Colombo case. Sentence in the Santiago Court of Appeals. Special judge: Hernán Crisosto. Convicted: DINA (Espinoza Bravo, Fuentealba Saldías, Godoy García, González Moreno, Iturriaga Neumann, Krassnoff Martchenko, Lawrence Mires, Moren Brito, and others).

MIR member Teobaldo Tello Garrido, victim of qualified kidnapping. Convicted: DINA (Espinoza Bravo, González Moreno, Iturriaga Neumann, Krassnoff Martchenko, Lawrence Mires, Manríquez Bravo, and others).

5. Arnoldo Camu Veloso, member of the PS Central Committee and advisor to the Allende Presidency. Victim of qualified homicide in 1973. Sentence by the Santiago Court of Appeals. Investigating judge: Mario Carroza. Convicted: Alejandro Carrasco Flores and José Pezo Lagos.

6. Nelson Flores Zapata, Mapu militant, INDAP official. Victim of qualified homicide in 1973. Sentence in the Supreme Court. Investigating judge: Mario Carroza. Convicted: Miguel Álvarez Muñoz, Alejandro Duarte Arriagada, Miguel Núñez Grandón, Urbano Pereira, and others.

"It is expected that legal assistance and judicial intervention will decrease over time because cases will gradually be closed. But the functions of social assistance, archiving, and memory will remain for a longer period." Lorena Recabarren, Undersecretary of Human Rights.

Source: economiaynegocios.cl, February 26, 2019

The Santiago Court of Appeals convicted two retired members of the Navy for their responsibility in the crime of kidnapping lawyer Arnoldo Camú Veloso, an illicit act perpetrated on September 24, 1974, in Santiago. The ruling was issued by judges Adelita Ravanales, Mireya López, and acting judge Gonzalo Ruz.

In a unanimous ruling, the Fourth Chamber of the capital's appellate court sentenced Alejandro Carrasco Flores and José Pezo Lagos to 5 years and one day in prison as perpetrators of the kidnapping of President Allende's advisor and member of the Socialist Party Central Committee.

According to the evidence gathered during the investigation phase, Judge Mario Carroza established that Arnoldo Camú Veloso was detained along with PS militant Ernesto Gutiérrez Zegarra on September 24, 1973, without a judicial warrant, on Calle Santiaguillo in the commune of Santiago, by Navy personnel who had been searching for him since September 11, 1973.

Tied with a rope, both were loaded into a military vehicle that transported them north along Calle Amunátegui. Between Huérfanos and Compañía streets, Camú managed to untie himself and attempted to open the door to flee, receiving three point-blank shots that cost him his life moments later at the Posta Central.

In civil matters, Carrasco Flores, Pezo Lagos, and the State of Chile were ordered to pay, jointly and severally, the sum of 1,476 UF ($41.3 million) to the victim's spouse, Celsa Parrau Tejos, and the sum of 1,348 UF ($37.3 million) to his children, Álvaro León and Bárbara Camú Parrau, as compensation for moral damages.

Source: elciudadano.com, September 17, 2019

Supreme Court convicts retired Navy members for kidnapping with grave injury of lawyer Arnoldo Camú Veloso

The Supreme Court rejected the cassation appeals filed against the sentence that convicted two retired members of the Navy as perpetrators of the consummated crime of kidnapping with grave injury of lawyer Arnoldo Camú Veloso. The crime was committed on September 24, 1973, on Calle Amunátegui, between Huérfanos and Compañía, in the commune of Santiago.

In a unanimous ruling (case file 33-309-2019), the Second Chamber of the high court—composed of judges Haroldo Brito, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Jorge Dahm, Leopoldo Llanos, and acting judge Diego Munita—confirmed the sentence issued by the Santiago Court of Appeals, which sentenced Alejandro Guillermo Carrasco Flores and José Ismael Pezo Lagos to 5 years and one day in prison for their responsibility in the crime, after dismissing any error in classifying the crime as a crime against humanity.

"However, the classification of the events as a crime against humanity was maintained, as this is a crime of a special nature, which differs from any other form of common crime, and conforms to what has been considered a systematic or generalized attack against fundamental legal interests, such as the life of a civilian population, for political or social reasons, with the participation of Political Power and the intervention of State agents, who, by trampling on such fundamental rights and abusing the power conferred upon them by military and/or police authority, or acting directly as military and/or police authorities, decide to execute people without prior trial, without respect for due process, and in total physical and legal defenselessness, protected by the force of arms," the ruling maintains.

The resolution adds: "The concept of 'crime against humanity,' with the passage of time, has given rise to norms of customary law, that is, general principles of law, regardless of their consecration in international treaties on the subject.

Thus, they are seen as conduct prohibited in absolute terms, constituting imperative norms or ius cogens and, of course, mandatory for all of humanity; they correspond to norms of general international law, inexcusable and binding, which cannot be derogated except by a norm of the same entity."

"The positive consecration of the concept of ius cogens is found in the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which in its Article 53 provided that 'a peremptory norm of general international law is a norm accepted and recognized by the international community of States as a whole as a norm from which no derogation is permitted and which can be modified only by a subsequent norm of general international law having the same character,'" it adds.

For the Criminal Chamber, in this case: "Consequently, a crime against humanity must be understood as the aforementioned acts, as in this case is the death of a civilian previously detained on public roads by agents of the Chilean Navy's intelligence service, who tie him with a rope along with another individual, place him in a vehicle, and proceed to transport him to an unknown destination, wounding him seriously in the process, through several shots at close range and point-blank, carried out in the face of the possible attempted escape of said detainee, and entering his body into the Public Assistance [Posta Central] with the sole purpose of confirming his death, with the understanding that these crimes were committed as part of a generalized or systematic attack against the civilian population, with the authors' knowledge of said attack, and that this constituted a habitual practice among officials of both intelligence agencies and armed and police institutions, all assimilable to what is indicated in Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, enshrined in our concept by Article 5 of the Political Constitution of the Republic."

"Establishing the configuration of a crime against humanity brings with it the legal consequences that such a declaration entails, that is, the non-application of two legal institutions inherent to criminal law, such as amnesty and the statute of limitations for criminal action, dismissing the appropriateness of the gradual statute of limitations, given that it cannot be considered as a separate and diminished figure of the statute of limitations, in accordance with what was stated in the fifteenth motivation of the first-instance ruling," it concludes.

In the sentence, the high court noted that the lower court had established the following facts:

"a) The victim, Arnoldo Camú Veloso, was detained by the accused without being authorized to do so, as they had not received any order authorizing his apprehension, as reasoned in the sixth motive of the appealed sentence. It must also be considered that detention is the means by which the deprivation of the victim's liberty is achieved.

b) The victim, already detained, was deprived of liberty by being loaded into a car against his will and tied with a rope, thus depriving him of his power of self-determination.

c) As a result of this detention and deprivation of liberty, when the victim managed to untie himself from the rope and attempted to escape, he received the shots fired by the accused, causing injuries of such severity that they caused his death.

d) Within the figure of 'grave injury,' the death of a person must obviously be considered. Indeed, the expression 'grave injury' includes serious bodily harm, mutilations, and homicide. (Etcheberry, Alfredo. Derecho Penal, special part, volume III, page 213, 1964 edition)."

"For its part," it elaborates, "the third foundation of the ruling under review discarded the classification of qualified homicide given to the events, given that the circumstances of treachery (alevosía) or known premeditation of Article 391, No. 1 of the Penal Code are not configured, pointing out that, '...regarding the first qualifying circumstance, from the same facts described, as well as from the other elements in the process, there are no elements that account for the existence of a treacherous intent on the part of the convicted, as nothing leads to the conclusion that they had created the state of defenselessness of the victim for the sole purpose of consummating his homicide or of creating the scenario to ensure the integrity and safety of the defendants themselves.

From the facts described and the examination of the evidence made by the sentence, it appears—on the contrary—that the objective of the convicted was the apprehension of the victim, for which purpose they detained him on the public road and tied him together with the witness Mr.

Gutiérrez Zegarra by their hands to the same rope or cord that bound them back-to-back, placing them in those conditions in the back of the vehicle in which they were moving in order to prevent their flight.

However, as established by the appealed ruling, 'the victim having managed to untie his bonds during the journey and attempted to open one of the vehicle's doors,' the original purpose was frustrated and as a consequence of the above, the reaction of the accused occurred, who opened fire, causing mortal wounds to the victim, with one of the convicted (Carrasco Flores) also being wounded as a result of the fire opened by Pezo Lagos, so that what is evidenced in this succession of events is an improvised or precipitated act, which escaped the control chosen and intended when tying the victim and witness by the hands to prevent their escape, which is made clear by the wounds received by one of the agents, appearing clear, then, that the goal pursued was not to ensure their own physical integrity or their own personal safety, nor to take advantage of the state of defenselessness in which the victim was to cause his death, which discards an act of "shooting on a sure thing" (obrar sobre seguro) and therefore excludes the qualifying circumstance of treachery that the sentence claims.

Regarding the second qualifying circumstance, from the same facts described, as well as from the other elements in the process, there are no elements that account for the existence of known premeditation, since, as noted, this presupposes a criminal will that is formed before the action, which persists continuously in the time that mediates between its conception and the cold and calm execution of consummating the end of killing.

On the contrary, as has been said and the sentence itself recognizes, the purpose of the detention was 'to transport them to an unknown destination,' and not to cause the death of Camú Veloso, since that determination does not appear conceived ab initio, nor is the coldness and tranquility of killing the victim visualized, since the shots are unleashed in an improvised and sloppy context that, as expressed, even caused wounds to the hand of one of the convicted.

Although one of the manifestations of known premeditation can be found in the threat to kill, conditional or not, that is made to the victim in the event that they attempt a certain action, such as escaping or evading, the facts demonstrate precisely that the intention or object of tying the two detainees (Camú Veloso and Gutiérrez Zegarra) by the hands was to prevent and not to create the conditions for their flight or evasion as a means to put into execution a prior plan to kill.

The resolution in cold blood and in a reflective manner that is required of the criminal prior to the execution of the act is not seen in the external manifestations that have been detailed in the appealed ruling, and the subsequent actions of the convicted, who decided not to take Mr. Arnoldo Camú Veloso immediately to a medical center, have no significance in configuring it.'"

"Finally, the ruling established in its fourth motivation that 'it is also not appropriate to classify the act as simple homicide because the victim's death occurs in the context of the prior kidnapping to which he was being subjected and precisely when attempting to flee, thus appearing that the bullet wounds inflicted on him had as their purpose, more than to kill him, to frustrate his escape in an improvised, sloppy manner and inside a car with five occupants, not being able to forget that if the intention had been to kill him, they would not have taken him subsequently to the public assistance center as happened,'" it concludes.

In civil matters, the sentence that ordered the convicted and the treasury to pay, jointly and severally, compensation to the widow and children of the victim was maintained.

Source: elporteno.cl, June 28, 2022