Osvaldo Pincetti worked in Pinochet’s illegal prisons.

There are many who have never forgotten his perpetually dirty fingernails and the stench that emanated from his chubby body. Others died under his grim gaze while being tortured. No one saw him flinch at the mutilated bodies of those he tried to hypnotize so they would reveal names, allowing the men of the DINA—the secret police of former dictator Augusto Pinochet—to kidnap those who would not bow to the new order.

But his mastery of the occult did not save the "DINA psychologist," Osvaldo Pincetti, from prison. He was recently sentenced to 10 years for his participation in the crime against the carpenter Juan Alegría one day in September 1983, in Viña del Mar.

Ten years earlier, his life had taken a radical turn. He lived in La Serena in a modest house. He was known as "Professor Fortuna," the parapsychologist who predicted the future. His clients were common folk.

The same people who, one winter night in 1973 during a great storm, were shocked to learn that the children of the owner of a small fishing boat had disappeared at sea. Legend has it that it was Pincetti who, with the help of his occult powers, found them.

That story became known to Marcelo Moren Brito, an officer of the Arica Regiment in La Serena. After the coup, when he joined the DINA, he called Pincetti, who in 1974 began operating in one of the secret prisons that the DINA installed in Chile under the military boot.

There, he was met by Samuel Fuenzalida, a young recruit enrolled in the "squadrons of fear," as Colonel Manuel Contreras called his men. "Londres 38 (former headquarters of the Socialist Party) was full of prisoners.

One day I walked through the hallway that led to the stairs and in an adjacent room I saw two people: a woman they called Valeria and a man who I later learned was her father, whom they were forcing to watch.

She was naked, lying on a gynecological table with her legs spread. She was being interrogated by Ciro Torres and a subject known as Doctor Mortis, whose name was Pincetti. Three or four agents were applying electric shocks to her and asking her about a certain 'Antonio.' She was screaming.

She was blonde, pretty, thin. Pincetti gave her a Pentothal injection. I saw her again a few days later on the mezzanine, where the torture took place. She was in very bad shape, almost unconscious, she no longer spoke...

She was about to die..." Macabre Joker Pincetti later moved to another secret prison, the terrifying "Villa Grimaldi." There, he would joke during torture sessions when, after the interrogation, he would make the prisoners dance the cumbia or tell jokes. "Make him sing like Jorge Negrete!" "Make her do a striptease!" the prisoners would hear.

Gladys Díaz, a journalist and survivor of Villa Grimaldi, testified about Pincetti's activities. Another of his specialties was the preparation of mixtures with Encefabol that helped him, he claimed, to break the prisoners' will.

If hypnosis failed and the Pentothal had no effect, he would resort to another of his techniques. He would play the "good torturer" and tell them that their relatives were in an adjoining room being raped, beaten, burned...

One day, he asked to be assigned an isolated cabin in Villa Grimaldi. There, it is remembered, he would take female prisoners for special treatments. Sessions without witnesses. In 1975, Marcelo Moren took him to Paraguay to bring back Jorge Fuentes, a leader of the MIR (who was forcibly disappeared in Operation Condor).

Luz Arce, one of the prisoners who became a "collaborator," kept a small doll that Pincetti brought her as a gift. They never saw him hit anyone, nor raise his voice, and yet he symbolized terror like no other.

In 1977, the DINA died on paper, but the squadrons continued to act. A plot of land in La Pintana, seized from a prisoner, was his payment. Later, from an office in the Civil Registry and under the identity of "Andrés Vargas," he would obtain fake passports for agents in trouble or data on men and women who would very soon arrive at prisons or die in staged confrontations.

His life changed again with the return to democracy in 1990. And one day in 1992, when the justice system was looking for him with three checks that proved his functions in the DINA and a wealth of testimony, he was located in a house in Cartagena, as modest as the one he had inhabited in La Serena.

A widower and lonely, he had returned near the sea. But these were not times for justice. He went free. Now, everything has come to an end. Little or nothing remains of "Doctor Mortis" except for his perpetually dirty fingernails and the unmistakable stench.

Source: clarin.com, July 25, 2000

Corbalán Testifies Again for Carpenter's Murder

In the evidentiary phase for the crime against the carpenter Juan Alegría Mundaca—a homicide perpetrated to cover up the assassination of Tucapel Jiménez—the former metropolitan chief of the dissolved National Intelligence Center (CNI), Alvaro Corbalán Castilla, testified today before Minister Sergio Muñoz.

The former officer is serving a life sentence for this crime, committed a year and a half after the assassination of the union leader—which occurred in February 1982—with the aim of hiding the perpetrators of the homicide.

Others sentenced to life imprisonment in this case are retired Army Major Carlos Herrera Jiménez and retired Carabineros non-commissioned officer Armando Cabrera Aguilar. The civilian attached to the CNI, Osvaldo Pincetti, alias "Doctor Tormento," received ten years in prison.

However, the case was reopened to investigate the responsibilities that Brigadier Roberto Schmied and Hugo Alarcón Vergara might have. The former was dismissed, while the latter was indicted as an alleged accomplice in the murder of Alegría.

Until April 23, Minister Muñoz will jointly carry out the evidentiary phases for the crimes against the former president of the ANEF and the carpenter who resided in Valparaíso. On another note, the Sixth Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals will be in charge of resolving the procedural conflict that arose between ministers Sergio Muñoz and Hugo Dolmestch, sparked after the consolidation of the cases involving the CNI in the hands of the former.

These cases involve the death of 12 FPMR militants in Operation Albania, the assassination of four opponents of the military regime in 1986—following the attack on Pinochet, a process titled under the name of José Carrasco—and the forced disappearance of five communist militants in 1987.

The consolidation of the processes, which would form a single case, remained in the hands of Muñoz after he unilaterally decided to enforce the principle of consolidation, which prevents two judges from processing a case that involves the same defendants.

The chamber has already ruled on this judicial episode, confirming that Muñoz must oversee the processes. However, extraordinary visiting minister Hugo Dolmestch, through a written request, asked the Supreme Court to review the ruling of the appellate court, based on the fact that jurisdiction over these three processes was delegated to him by the same court.

The unification of the processes was requested by Corbalán's defense because it will allow him to have a single sentence, presumably a life sentence, of 20 or 40 years.

Source: Primera Linea, April 18, 2002

Wave of Indictments in Human Rights Cases

A total of nine more indictments were issued for human rights violations, in a context where expectations are growing regarding how the right wing, regardless of improving compensation for victims' families, will address a legislative proposal that would attempt to put an end to trials against military personnel 30 years after the military coup occurred.

In a resolution issued by Minister Juan Guzmán Tapia, the following were indicted yesterday as perpetrators of the crime of kidnapping in 1976 of nine communist militants: former DINA members retired Colonel Carlos López Tapia, retired Brigadier Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, retired Colonel Germán Barriga Muñoz, retired Carabineros Colonel Ricardo Lawrence Mires, and the doctor Osvaldo Pincetti.

The indictments were issued for the forced disappearance of former deputy Bernardo Araya and his wife, María Olga Flores, and members of the clandestine leadership of the PC, all of whom remain disappeared to this date: Mario Zamorano, Jorge Muñoz (husband of the current president of the PC, Gladys Marín), Elisa Escobar, Uldarico Donaire, Jaime Donato, Lenín Díaz, and Víctor Díaz.

The latter was the father of the former president of the AFDD, Viviana Díaz. The disappearance of the first clandestine leadership of the PC is known as the "Calle Conferencia" case, because in a house on this street, in Santiago Poniente, the DINA set up a trap to capture the leadership of the PC.

These victims are included in the first lawsuit against Augusto Pinochet and other retired military personnel, which was filed on January 12, 1998, by Gladys Marín. The plaintiff lawyer, Eduardo Contreras, highlighted that "this shows that truth and justice can continue to be pursued, unlike what the UDI wants." Contreras also stressed "the courage and ethical condition of Judge Guzmán, who, without recusing himself from the case, indicted a relative of his so directly." Indeed, Carlos López Tapia, a cousin of Judge Guzmán, was the head of the clandestine center Villa Grimaldi in 1976, the place where the PC detainees were taken and disappeared. López was also part of the Caravan of Death on its first tour through the south and, according to his own statements in the process, he attended the extrajudicial execution on the night of October 3, 1973, in Valdivia, of the MIR leader in the foothills of the current Tenth Region, José Liendo Vera, better known as "Comandante Pepe." Yesterday, Guzmán admitted that the measure "was difficult, because we judges are human beings." Four Others Meanwhile, Judge Jorge Zepeda indicted retired Army officer Claudio Lecaros Canales, retired non-commissioned officer José Muñoz Pozo, and retired Carabineros non-commissioned officer Omar Mella Lillo. The indictment was issued for them as perpetrators of the homicide of Rubén Acevedo Gutiérrez and the kidnapping of Vidal Riquelme Ibáñez and Cesáreo Soto. The three victims presented themselves on September 15, 1973, at the El Melosal police station in San Javier, in the current Seventh Region, from where they were taken by military personnel from the Linares Artillery School, driven to the Loncomilla bridge, and executed. Only Acevedo's body was found. In turn, Minister Daniel Calvo indicted retired FACH Colonel Guillermo Gómez Aguilar as the perpetrator of the kidnapping of Gabriel Marfull González. He was detained on September 13, 1973, and taken to the El Bosque Air Base. There, he was executed and his body was moved to Cuesta Barriga, where it was abandoned. In both cases, Fasic lawyer Nelson Caucoto acts as plaintiff representing the families, and he praised the investigation conducted so far by the two magistrates yesterday.

THE FALL OF THE PC

On Calle Conferencia, located in the western area of the Santiago commune, the DINA set up a "trap" in May 1976: agents of the repressive organization waited for several days for the arrival of the PC leadership that was working on the re-articulation of the party and captured them to later forcibly disappear them.

In December of the same year, the DINA struck again, and this time its agents detained members of a new PC leadership, in what is known as the "case of the thirteen." In this second wave of repression, Waldo Pizarro, husband of Sola Sierra and father of the current president of the AFDD, Lorena Pizarro, fell.

Source: La Nacion, June 3, 2003

The Story of the Military Regime's Mysterious Hypnotist

The voice of "Professor Destiny" sounded deep, serious, monophonic. Through Radio Occidente in La Serena, the man would read the horoscope, give love advice, play "Nueva Ola" songs, and predict the future for his listeners.

His program led radio ratings in the early 70s, in a city where not many people had a television. But, shortly before the coup d'état, the show ended. Days after September 11, 1973, detained at the Arica Regiment in the capital of the IV Region and blindfolded, the communist Eliseo González recognized the voice of his interrogator: "Isn't that 'Professor Destiny'? ...

But, of course, it's Pincetti," he remembers commenting to the other political prisoners in the facility. Osvaldo Pincetti Gac, the man who claimed to have paranormal powers and who amazed his audience with hypnosis shows, had been recruited by the DINA.

Today, known as "Doctor Tormento," he is imprisoned in Punta Peuco, sentenced to 10 years for his complicity in the death of the carpenter Juan Alegría Mundaca, murdered in 1983 to cover up the crime against Tucapel Jiménez.

He also faces several trials for forced disappearances. Pincetti was a singular character within the DINA and the CNI. Those who passed through his hands agree that his job was not, strictly speaking, to apply torture, but to "soften up" the detainee.

How did he do it? He generally resorted to hypnosis, "a gift I have had since I was a child," he later declared before Judge Alejandro Solís. Doubts However, his extrasensory abilities were never very clear.

Fernando Moraga, a journalist and director of Radio Occidente in the times when Pincetti was "Professor Destiny," points out that "as a hypnotist, he was a bit of a hack. It's just a matter of finding the right person and they fall asleep on their own." The opinion among the political prisoners of La Serena was not very different. "We would laugh our heads off at his hypnosis sessions.

Some would trick him and pretend to be asleep, and Pincetti would say, 'He's ready, he's ready,'" says Eliseo González. Even so, the detainees prepared themselves for the sessions with Pincetti. González says: "We went with the strong conviction not to let ourselves be hypnotized, with the idea of resisting mentally." Others, like the doctor Eduardo Ilabaca Plaza, remember that Pincetti administered Pentothal to eliminate his resistance to speaking and that during the interrogations he would play Swan Lake in the background: "Today, I hear that melody and I feel distressed." Later, "Doctor Tormento" appeared in Villa Grimaldi. According to his statement before Judge Solís in the case regarding the kidnapping of the MIR member Luis San Martín, Manuel Contreras tasked him with the job of hypnotizing the personnel working at that detention center to measure their IQ. Pincetti stated that he performed the work on about 800 officials, not only in Villa Grimaldi, but also in the barracks of Londres 38, José Domingo Cañas, and Irán con Los Plátanos, known as "Venda Sexy." Then he continued with the detainees: "The system relieved them, because that way they were freed from other pressures," he assured the court. There are prisoners who have testified that they bit their tongues to avoid being hypnotized by him. Others thought of their children and pretended to be asleep, but avoided moving a muscle when other agents put out cigarettes on their hands or stuck pins into them to verify if Pincetti had done a good job. "It is important to consider the zodiac sign one belongs to, since according to it, one can determine if a person is hypnotizable," Pincetti noted to Solís. And he added another theory: "The higher the IQ, the more easily they are hypnotized due to their capacity for concentration." "Doctor Tormento," also known as "The Doc" or "The Sorcerer," hypnotized prisoners in Colonia Dignidad, according to his own confession, and during his duties, he met Miguel Krassnoff, Marcelo Moren Brito, Osvaldo Romo, Pedro Espinoza, and other military personnel linked to human rights violations. He accompanied agents Carlos Herrera Jiménez and Alvaro Corbalán in the assassination of Alegría. The justice system determined that Pincetti hypnotized the carpenter so that he would write a letter incriminating himself in the crime against Tucapel Jiménez. It was Pincetti's last act.

Source: La Tercera, February 20, 2005

Pincetti or the Banality of Evil

Osvaldo Pincetti was an agent of the DINA and the CNI; he was known as "Doctor Tormento" because he would "hypnotize" detainees before they were interrogated. A few weeks ago, he was dismissed by the justice system after examinations performed by the SML (Legal Medical Service), which ruled categorically that the patient suffered from "irreversible mental alienation." Pincetti was indicted for the forced disappearance of Juan Maino Canales, who at the time of his detention was 27 years old, a photographer and militant of the MAPU; of Antonio Elizondo, 29 years old, also of the MAPU; and his partner, Elizabeth Rekas, who was four months pregnant at the time of her detention. Nothing is known about Juan, Antonio, Elizabeth, or the child she was expecting to this day. Pincetti was also indicted as an accessory in the kidnapping case of seven Communist Party militants, in the framework of the "Calle Conferencia" case, and was serving a sentence as an accomplice to the murder of Juan Alegría. Pincetti had allegedly hypnotized him so that he would write the letter where the carpenter incriminated himself in the crime against Tucapel Jiménez. Given such a criminal record, it is not strange to think that, evidently, Pincetti was always crazy. But no. Pincetti was most likely a normal guy, with a childhood similar to anyone else's, although we know nothing about that period of his life. Perhaps his most eccentric gesture was his conviction that he possessed paranormal powers that allowed him to predict the future and hypnotize people. But none of that could predict a vocation for evil. Quite the contrary, Pincetti had a radio program in La Serena where he read the horoscope, gave encouragement to unrequited loves, and advice to disoriented lovers. All this lasted until a few days before the military coup; after that would come his activity in the DINA, the interrogations, the forced disappearance of detainees, the extermination of the Communist Party leadership, the assassination of Juan Alegría. How and at what moment did Pincetti stop being "Doctor Sentiment" to become an executioner? What were his motivations? We have no answers, but it is also possible to suspect that these are not in the realm of psychology either. We should not rule out that his cross-dressing has to do with some psychopathy, but we cannot be sure that this is the answer either. The question about the motivations that a human being, whatever their characteristics or personal history, can have to become a torturer is an enigma. Likewise, we must ask ourselves if the Pincettis here or anywhere in the world are aware of what they came to do, or how they could have justified it to others and to themselves. They say that Doctor Tormento used to take his daughter for walks to Villa Grimaldi, and she herself ended up becoming a DINA agent. Eichmann, throughout the entire trial against him, denied that he had acted out of cruelty; he was only doing his duty. He was just a good official, and he felt proud of it, and not even the death sentence he received made him change his mind. Pincetti died a week ago, alone, with a lost mind, in a room at the Posta Central. Undoubtedly, his death does not redeem him, nor does it repair his victims. It only leaves us with an endless number of questions. By Carla Peñaloza Palma. Academic, University of Chile. Contributor to Crónica Digital.

Source: cronicadigital.cl, July 2, 2007

Doctor Tormento, Osvaldo Pincetti, Has Died

Alone, wearing diapers, and with severe senile dementia, Osvaldo Pincetti ended his sad days. "Doctor Tormento" or "Mortis," as they called him, died yesterday at the Posta Central, after spending a little more than a month hospitalized in serious condition.

Since he was indicted and sentenced, he spent most of his days hospitalized in the Gendarmerie Penitentiary Hospital, bedridden. Pincetti was involved in countless cases of human rights violations that occurred under the military government.

The assassination of the Communist Party leadership, a case known as Calle Conferencia, and the homicide of the carpenter Juan Alegría, perpetrated by the CNI to hide the crime against union leader Tucapel Jiménez.

This character came to represent all the horror that could be unleashed in the detention and torture centers that the DINA and the CNI had. Osvaldo Pincetti was recruited by Marcelo Moren Brito when the DINA was created in 1974.

Months earlier, he had heard that in La Serena he was known as a "fortune teller." Already working in the repressive organization, he participated in the torture sessions at Londres 38 and later at Villa Grimaldi, where he claimed to hypnotize victims and injected them with Pentothal (the truth drug).

He also injected poison into prisoners who were later thrown into the sea. Pincetti Gac, witnesses assure, had not received visitors in a long time. Other prisoners hospitalized in the penitentiary hospital assaulted him on several occasions upon learning who he was.

His family collected a military pension and brought him nothing. The last relative who came to see him only visited to find out if he was alive. May 31, 2010 La Nación Human Rights: Three former agents have died while serving sentences The death of former agent Héctor Vallejos Birtiola, which occurred the night before last, became the third case of a human rights violator who died of a terminal illness while serving a sentence.

He was hospitalized in Punta Peuco. Before him, in 2007, former repressors Osvaldo Romo and Osvaldo Pincetti died under similar circumstances. That same year, while serving preventive detention at the Military Police Battalion of Peñalolén after being indicted in the Conferencia case, former Lautaro Brigade member Carlos Marcos Muñoz died in a strange suicide.

Indicted but enjoying provisional release with trials in progress, more than a dozen former agents have died to date from various causes. In this capacity, the former vice-commander-in-chief of the Army, indicted for the crimes of Pisagua, retired General Carlos Forestier Hänsgen, died in 2005.

Also indicted and on provisional release, the former head of the Purén brigade and the Delfín group, retired Colonel Germán Barriga, died in January 2005 by jumping from a building. Vallejos, who suffered from cancer, had requested a presidential pardon on March 2, 2010, but then-President Bachelet denied it.

However, Vallejos had received an important benefit in 2009 from the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court which, applying the "Dolmetsch doctrine"—a compensatory measure named after its author and member of that chamber, Hugo Dolmetsch—reduced his sentence from ten years and one day to 5 years and one day.

At that time, Vallejos and the other two convicted men, retired Brigadier Fernando Polanco and retired non-commissioned officer Luis Fernández, to whom the same reduction was applied, were on the verge of being acquitted when two of the five members of that criminal chamber, Rubén Ballesteros and Nibaldo Segura, supporters of amnesty and the statute of limitations for crimes against humanity, voted for acquittal.

Vallejos was serving a sentence as a co-perpetrator of the 1973 crime on the border with Argentina, in La Serena, of the Argentine-Mexican couple Bernardo Ledjerman and María Avalos. According to the case file, their two-year-old son, Ernesto, was placed in the custody of the Sisters of Providence in La Serena by then-Lieutenant Juan Emilio Cheyre, arguing that his parents "committed suicide."

MINISTER

Yesterday, Minister of Justice Felipe Bulnes said that pardoning human rights violators "is a complex issue," because "natural mercy is combined with our commitment to enforce the law." The vice-president of the Association of Families of the Forcibly Disappeared, Mireya García, expressed that "life and death are part of our existence and that does not imply that human rights violators should go free because they suffer from an illness." The AFDD opposes the Church asking the government for the pardon.

Source: La Nación.cl, June 8, 2007

The personnel who worked in the clinics created by the DINA—Santa Lucía, London, and El Golf—appear in a judicial case that remains archived. Only five doctors have been convicted in proceedings for crimes committed by the repressive agency.

According to the investigation by Judge Alejandro Solís, some doctors monitored detainees while they were being tortured. CIPER accessed judicial documents containing testimonies from clinic workers regarding the role of these professionals.

In that review, we counted at least 31 people (26 doctors and five nurses) who worked in the clinics. Not all participated in torture, but none deny having placed themselves at the service of the DINA. Seven continue to practice, and three are awaiting rulings from the Supreme Court.

On June 1, 2007, a retired Carabineros officer and former agent of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), the repressive agency of the early years of the dictatorship, appeared before a judge. He was questioned about the 1977 murder of Corporal Manuel Leyton Robles, whom the DINA eliminated at the London Clinic.

Leyton was in possession of a car reported stolen—it had belonged to a forcibly disappeared person—and for that reason, he was arrested by Carabineros. At the police station, he explained what he did for a living and mentioned the illegal detentions carried out by the dictatorship's agents.

He was released. However, for the DINA leadership, he had spoken more than was advisable. They took him for a medical check-up at the London Clinic—one of the three healthcare facilities created by the DINA—where, despite his good physical condition, he suffered a fatal cardiorespiratory arrest.

The interrogation of the former agent, whose identity CIPER keeps confidential, led to a detailed description of the three DINA clinics: Santa Lucía, London, and El Golf. By now, the justice system has established that the security agency recruited a group of doctors who assisted the DINA with the monitoring, resuscitation, and, in some cases, even the homicide of detainees.

The former agent declared that when there was a detainee in a barracks who could no longer provide information, the doctors fulfilled a role: "A DINA doctor was called, who would go and attend to the detainee.

I don't remember who they were, but they were from the clinic (Santa Lucía). These doctors were there for that; it was their function and what that healthcare center was created for," he stated.

Journalistic efforts to reveal the functioning of what the press called the DINA's "sanitary brigade" have been numerous. Chilevisión did so in 2014, when it confronted six doctors who are on the list of professionals who provided these services and revealed their workplaces: among them, ophthalmologist Vittorio Orvieto Tiplitzky, otolaryngologist Eugenio Fantuzzi Alliende, and the late Manfred Jürgensen Caesar.

Years earlier, journalist Mónica González, founder of CIPER, had already published the existence of these healthcare centers in reports that contained a list of doctors from the London Clinic. And for his book "El despertar de los Cuervos" (The Awakening of the Ravens), journalist Javier Rebolledo accessed the statements made by the health personnel of these clinics during the investigation by Minister Alejandro Solís, a file that is currently archived.

CIPER was able to review those and other testimonies that shaped this article and confirmed that at least seven doctors continue to practice in the private sector. For this report, the seven were contacted in order to incorporate their versions, but only one doctor agreed to have her testimony published.

DOCTORS INVESTIGATED BY JUDGE SOLÍS

The list of 31 professionals compiled by CIPER only includes those who were part of the clinics investigated by Judge Alejandro Solís. Of them, only five have been convicted in human rights cases. That list includes the late Manfred Jürgensen, brother of former constitutional convention member Harry Jürgensen (RN), who was sentenced to eight years of presidio mayor as an accomplice to the qualified homicide of the professor and MIR militant, Federico Álvarez Santibáñez.

Three others are awaiting a ruling from the Supreme Court.

The statements to which CIPER had access, containing accusations and accounts of torture, were mostly provided by former clinic workers. Some of those files were integrated into "Papeles de la Dictadura" (Dictatorship Papers), an online platform with more than 4,000 documents developed by CIPER with the collaboration of the CIP-UDP (see the “Papeles de la Dictadura” platform here).

In those records, sensitive data of the victims and the clinic workers who filed the complaints were redacted.

According to the judicial investigation, at least 13 doctors graduated from the Universidad de Chile. This is not surprising. At that time, FACH Colonel Dámaso González Espinosa, who led the dental area of the Santa Lucía Clinic, worked as a professor at that university and was in charge of recruiting part of the staff. This was pointed out to CIPER by some of the doctors contacted.

The statements mention three people in charge of these establishments: the FACH cardiologist Werner Zanghellini Martínez, the pediatrician Hernán Horacio Taricco Lavín, and the nurse Eliana Carlota Bolumburú Toboada.

Last March, the Supreme Court sentenced Werner Zanghellini to a prison term for the first time. The other two are under prosecution and have a sentence ratified by the Santiago Court of Appeals in the investigation into the homicide of Corporal Leyton, a case that must be reviewed by the Supreme Court.

A retired Carabineros sergeant testified that it was at the Santa Lucía Clinic where he saw the most agents with prisoners: "Indeed, I saw people arrive at that facility who apparently had just been detained by agents; they were treated, but immediately transferred by the same agents who had brought them." A nurse who worked at the site declared that "the doctors of the Santa Lucía Clinic were frequently requested at Villa Grimaldi to examine detainees, and they were always accompanied by a nurse." The villa was a secret DINA barracks where detainees were tortured and murdered. "In my case, I remember having spoken with the detainees whom the doctor examined, encouraging them to cooperate with the information requested of them," the same statement continues.

The healthcare centers were supposedly created to attend to civilian agents and their families, who did not have coverage in the Armed Forces hospitals. Indeed, medical and dental care was also provided there.

A statement by dentist Pablo César Oyanguren Plaza asserted that at the London Clinic "even President Pinochet was treated on some occasion." Other accounts say that Manuel Contreras did as well.

The statement of a retired Army non-commissioned officer who was a nurse at the Santa Lucía Clinic is chilling: "It was known that at Villa Grimaldi, cars were driven over the bodies of detainees and that sometimes they went too far and they arrived at Santa Lucía (clinic) dying.

When there was no remedy, they had to be put to death with pentothal. I don't know what happened to the detainees to whom pentothal was administered, but it was rumored that there was another brigade that took charge of them to throw them into the sea."

MISS ELIANA

"There was a code at the Santa Lucía Clinic, which was a warning: 'the package is coming.' It meant that a detainee was coming, and one understood that one should not get involved. They would take them into a room and then administer something, and later the patient would come out deceased.

I heard from conversations among these doctors and Miss Eliana that they administered eight milligrams of pentothal, which caused an arrhythmia followed by a cardiorespiratory arrest, resulting in death at the clinic. And around midnight, they would take them out 'camouflaged,' covered with a blanket."

The previous paragraph is part of the extrajudicial statement of a former DINA employee, dated June 29, 2005. His testimony is one of the most detailed within Minister Solís's investigation. The person he calls "Miss Eliana" is the nurse Eliana Carlota Bolumburú Taboada.

At the Santa Lucía Clinic, she held the position of head of nurses, even over those with military rank. Upon reviewing the statements from the judicial process, it is clear that she played a fundamental role in that facility, even though her name does not resonate with the same impact as that of other professionals who provided service to the repressive apparatus.

In 2015, Eliana Bolumburú was sentenced, in the first instance, to three years and one day, in addition to professional disqualification, as an accessory to the homicide of Corporal Manuel Leyton. But the court decided to grant her the benefit of intensive supervised release for the same period.

That sentence was ratified in 2020 by the Santiago Court of Appeals and is currently awaiting a ruling from the Supreme Court.

The statements of other former clinic workers assert that Bolumburú was aware of the treatment the DINA gave to detainees. There are testimonies that point to her as being knowledgeable and cooperative regarding the interrogations and the use of pentothal, an anesthetic known as "the truth serum," because, when administered in low doses, it causes patients to enter a state of drowsiness in which they can continue answering questions.

The application of pentothal has not been proven by the justice system, and the former nurse is only being prosecuted in the investigation into the homicide of Corporal Leyton.

In a police statement from June 2005, a nurse recalled the moment he met Bolumburú when she was arriving in an ambulance from the London Clinic with a patient on a stretcher. "The one I recognized immediately was Army Corporal Manuel Leyton Robles," the nurse asserted.

He also added that, upon returning to the clinic at night, he found a lady at the entrance crying: "And I asked her what was wrong, and she stated that her husband had died of a heart attack, and I found out it was Corporal Manuel Leyton."

More than one former official of the Santa Lucía Clinic pointed to Bolumburú as one of the people who controlled the medical staff. The statements also say that she did the same, for a short period, at the London Clinic. "Due to her position, she was aware of everything that happened there," noted a former Army nurse.

Another former worker said that on one occasion he accompanied Bolumburú to Villa Grimaldi and that she "connected directly and knew the bosses. I was able to see the interrogation rooms through this nurse who had direct access to these areas."

In 2005, a retired Army non-commissioned officer declared before the PDI in Valdivia that there were doctors from Santa Lucía involved "secretly in the deaths of detainees." He provided three names: Dr. Werner Zanghellini, anesthesiologist Osvaldo Leyton, and nurse Bolumburú Taboada.

Two years later, the non-commissioned officer met Bolumburú in a confrontation. The nurse was categorical: "I was in charge of buying and supplying the medications that were for the treatment of the personnel.

I never knew about pentothal (...). Regarding the fact that there were doctors involved in deaths at the clinic, it is a slander; I don't know what could have motivated him to tell such a lie," she emphasized.

The first time Eliana Bolumburú testified, according to the records of this file, was on June 17, 2003, at the Interpol National Central Bureau. At that time, she maintained that there were no irregular situations at the DINA clinics. In 2005, she declared: "Detainees were never treated. Furthermore, I must assure you that I did not know of other DINA detention centers."

In 2006, her version changed. This time she confessed to having known about detainees at the Santa Lucía Clinic. According to her new account, Marcelo Moren, a former DINA agent who died in 2015 while serving a sentence of more than 300 years, arrived at the healthcare facility once.

On that occasion, Bolumburú said, Moren appeared together with agent Osvaldo Pincetti. They were asking for a detainee: "I knew there was a person who was in a bed on the second floor; I presume it was a political prisoner, but I did not know this person's name, although I saw that they had their wrists burned," said the nurse.

Eliana Bolumburú worked at the Santa Lucía Clinic and later at the London Clinic. She retired in mid-1977, the period in which she married the officer and DINA agent Hugo “Cacho” Acevedo Godoy, one of the men closest to the head of the repressive agency, Manuel Contreras.

Eliana Bolumburú was contacted by CIPER last Monday, August 28, but she did not respond to the messages. Through her lawyer, Hernán Aladín, she initially indicated that she could attend to our inquiries on Thursday, August 31.

But that same day, her lawyer explained that, for health reasons, she would not be able to answer our questions until after September 20. CIPER had already delayed the publication of this article given the possibility of meeting with her, but it was not possible to arrange an interview before the closing of this article.

DR. TARICCO

A surgeon with a specialty in pediatrics. His residence in Lo Barnechea, a property that according to the Internal Revenue Service has a fiscal appraisal of more than $672 million, is listed under the name of Inversiones Santo Domingo.

That company—established in 2013 and composed of the doctor and his family—also owns the car that was parked at his home when CIPER tried to contact him, a 2022 Mercedes Benz.

In 2014, the Canal 13 program "En su propia Trampa" confronted him for offering a fake laser treatment in his private practice, "Red Médica Tabancura," which promised to cure psychiatric disorders, as well as addictions such as smoking and alcoholism.

Like Bolumburú, in 2015 Taricco Lavín was convicted in the first instance in the Corporal Leyton case. The court sentenced him to three years and one day as an accessory to the homicide, but granted him conditional remission.

In 2020, the Court of Appeals reduced that sentence to 541 days, without ruling on professional disqualification. The doctor filed an appeal for annulment (casación): he claims he did not participate in the events. He is awaiting the ruling of the Supreme Court.

Taricco Lavín signed the report stating that the cause of Leyton's death was asphyxia due to aspiration of vomit, with a cardiorespiratory arrest. But, in a police statement, former DINA agent Michael Townley recounted that he received the order "to provide (sarin) gas to eliminate Corporal Leyton and that the material author who applied the sarin was an Army lieutenant."

In June 2003, Taricco denied his participation in the false report: "I never held the position of director of the London Clinic. Regarding the report that I have just read, which bears my signature, it is a technical report, and due to a specific situation and because I was a health officer, I was asked to sign it as director, a position I did not hold."

Another doctor from the clinic, Luis Hernán Santibáñez Santelices, one of those who examined the Army non-commissioned officer, declared that he saw Taricco Lavín "preparing a report for the Legal Medical Service regarding a patient who had died, not knowing more details, since I did not ask, nor was I told what had happened to the patient I had attended to previously."

Furthermore, in the judicial file, there are several statements that point to Taricco as one of the heads of the London Clinic. In 2003, nurse Bolumburú asserted that "Dr. Taricco replaced Dr. Zanghellini when he was absent from his position as general director."

Through his lawyer, Leonardo Battaglia, Dr. Hernán Taricco declined to answer CIPER's questions.

DR. LEYTON

On June 27, 2003, Osvaldo Leyton declared that it was due to an offer that he arrived at the Santa Lucía Clinic in 1974. He mentioned that, upon arriving at the address he had been given, he found out "that it was a DINA barracks and not the Air Force. In this place, they asked me if I was willing to work for them, which I accepted due to economic needs."

In July 2005, the anesthesiologist testified at the Interpol offices. There, he asserted that he did have knowledge that DINA agents arrived with detainees on several occasions: "Indeed, I had to go on several occasions to detention centers such as Villa Grimaldi and Cuatro Álamos." Leyton was pointed out in the statement of an Army nurse as part of the doctors involved in episodes that ended in the death of detainees.

However, Leyton Bahamondes has no convictions, although in 2007 he was prosecuted for the death of Corporal Manuel Leyton.

For this investigation, the anesthesiologist was contacted by CIPER at his private practice in Providencia, but he declined to respond.

Leyton Bahamondes also testified before the police on November 17, 2006. On that occasion, he was questioned about Corporal Leyton's medical file. It was in his handwriting. "I have no explanation as to why my handwriting appears in the part that refers to the care provided during the day; speculating a little, it may be that if I did it, it was due to an order that necessarily must have come from the medical leadership, which at that period corresponded, apparently, to Dr.

Taricco or to a superior military authority."

Santiago Alfredo Matteo Galleguillos worked as an Army nurse at the Santa Lucía Clinic, and several of those who testified remember him for a single detail: the lie detector. On November 10, 2005, a nurse declared: "Both Osvaldo Leyton and Zanghellini were cardiologists, and the latter used a so-called PC1 or PC2, which was a lie detector, which operated with the advice of the nurse Santiago Matteo, who handled this equipment and which was kept in a small office at the London [clinic]."

Santiago Matteo Galleguillos was also prosecuted in the investigation into the murder of Corporal Leyton for allegedly covering up the homicide. But his participation could not be proven, and he was acquitted by the Santiago Court of Appeals in 2020.

In 2010, Matteo Galleguillos gave an extrajudicial statement. On that occasion, he said that he had traveled to Miami together with Dr. Zanghellini in 1975 for a course on the use of the lie detector or polygraph.

But he added that he had never used that machine. An Army nurse said that in the same clinic there was equipment that interrogated detainees with a lie detector that was handled—as he recounted—by the most senior nurses, Matteo Galleguillos and Lorenzo Toro Olivares.

VISITS TO DETENTION CENTERS

Among the doctors who have been convicted for crimes related to the DINA is the former director of the Santa Lucía Clinic, cardiologist Werner Zanghellini, sentenced to 10 years and one day in an investigation into the qualified kidnapping of two people, in the framework of Operation Colombo.

Also ophthalmologist Vittorio Orvieto, sentenced in several cases related to the Tejas Verdes prisoner camp. The same occurred with Manfred Jürgensen, who died after being captured in Argentina.

Jürgensen was a fugitive from justice after being sentenced by the Supreme Court, in January of this year, to eight years in prison as an accomplice to the qualified homicide of the professor and MIR militant, Federico Álvarez Santibáñez.

Along with him, rheumatologist Luis Alberto Losada was sentenced, in the capacity of accessory, to two years in prison, with the benefit of conditional remission. Both assisted Álvarez Santibáñez at the Cuartel Borgoño, near the Mapocho Station.

Nurse Orlando Jesús Torrejón Gatica is convicted in multiple cases associated with victims of Operation Colombo and in the trial for the murder of the teacher Marta Ugarte Román.

Orlando Torrejón Gatica appears described in the statements of other former workers of the DINA clinics. A nurse declared that "the term 'package' refers to detainees who were dead; generally, it was said 'the package has left,' and those who constantly spoke with that term were Torrejón or Muñoz." A retired Carabineros sergeant who worked as a nurse pointed out that "the care for the detainees was carried out by specific personnel for them; for example, I remember Orlando Torrejón."

To those names is added, but only convicted in the first instance as an accessory in the Corporal Leyton case, surgeon Pedro Valdivia Soto. Like Bolumburú and Taricco, Valdivia is awaiting the Supreme Court ruling.

In the files, there are also statements that accuse other doctors of having gone to detention centers. In 2005, a former worker of these clinics claimed to have accompanied doctors Sergio Virgilio Bocaz, Enrique Silva Peralta, Christian Emhart Araya, Eugenio Fantuzzi Alliende, and Luis Cárcamo Díaz. "I must point out that several of these were recently graduated doctors," he asserted.

Of that list, Luis Felipe Cárcamo Díaz, an otolaryngologist, is the only one who continues to practice: he does so in his private practice in Temuco. Through a person who works there, Cárcamo declined to answer questions for this article.

Among the doctors who continue to practice is also Luis Santibáñez Santelices, who currently attends at Integramédica. Santibáñez testified in the Leyton case and, apart from detailing that he attended to the deceased non-commissioned officer, he pointed out: "I started working in the summer of 1977, at the request of Dr.

Werner Zanghellini, also a doctor of the Air Force. The reason was that they intended to implement an Intensive Care Unit there, since some attacks against the DINA and military authorities were presumed.

I lasted a short time; almost at the end of March of that same year, I submitted my resignation, not reaching three months of practice at the London Clinic. I remember that the director on that date was Horacio Taricco Lavín."

Contacted by CIPER, Santibáñez refused to answer questions about his participation in the London Clinic.

Camilo Azar Saba is one of the doctors who reviewed the injuries of the professor and MIR militant, Federico Álvarez Santibáñez. He pointed this out before the justice system: "By order of General Mena, I had to recertify the injuries presented by two people who had been detained by Carabineros and then transferred to the CNI (...) One of these people subsequently died at the Posta Central, a professor named Federico Álvarez Santibáñez."

Dr. Jorge Manlio Fantini Valenzuela appears in a statement given by a former civilian employee of the DINA: "He was the one who had to be most attentive when operations and detentions were carried out. He liked to be involved." In 1982, Fantini married the nurse Isabel Margarita Jarpa Riveros, who provided services at the London Clinic.

THE GYNECOLOGISTS

One of the leads that guided the investigation into the DINA clinics was the alleged abortion due to the torture suffered by a detainee who had arrived at the Santa Lucía Clinic eight months pregnant. A police report records the testimony of a prisoner who in 1975 was detained by the DINA.

According to her account, she was held at Colonia Dignidad and Villa Grimaldi. The report maintains that "it was at Villa Grimaldi where she was able to see a detainee in poor physical condition due to the torture received, and who came from a clinic located near Cerro Santa Lucía, where they had murdered her eight-month-old son, when he was in her womb."

According to the statements reviewed by CIPER, on repeated occasions, doctors and nurses were questioned about the passage of a pregnant woman through the Santa Lucía Clinic. The Ministry of the Interior, a plaintiff in the case, requested Minister Solís to officially ask the Vicaría de la Solidaridad to remit the records of three women who had allegedly given birth while they were detained by the DINA.

On July 6, 2009, Solís granted the request.

Two gynecologists passed through the Santa Lucía Clinic: Juan Pablo Figueroa Yáñez and Eduardo Francisco Contreras Valcarce. It was the former who once declared that he remembered an occasion when they requested him to attend to a pregnant detainee: "To that request, I refused to perform the auscultation on the pregnant woman, and subsequently, they requested it of me as a personal favor, and I agreed to examine her, finding no problems in her pregnancy.

I remember that while I was performing said examination, Mr. Marcelo Moren Brito was present." Figueroa said he did not remember the name of that woman.

Eduardo Francisco Contreras Valcarce died in 2016. According to a statement by Dr. Eugenio Fantuzzi Alliende, Contreras Valcarce arrived at the clinic like other classmates from his graduating class, by offer of Zanghellini.

His name is often confused with that of his brother, Enrique Eduardo Contreras Valcarce, a surgeon. But while the former provided services in DINA clinics, the latter suffered the repression of the "Caravan of Death" and, according to the version of his relatives, was even a prisoner in a facility in the north.

OTHER DOCTORS MENTIONED

The investigation points to a series of doctors, dentists, and health personnel who were part of the Santa Lucía Clinic. According to the files, they were hired on a fee basis, mostly recently graduated from the university.

The accounts of witnesses coincide that on the first floor was the dental clinic and that on the third floor was concentrated the medical corps destined to keep alive detainees who had been tortured.

The dentists on the first floor assert that they never saw detained patients and that they did not know about abortions. The head of that department was the dentist Dámaso Luis Augusto González, who still attends his practice in Providencia.

As other doctors from DINA clinics explained, it was he who recruited students from the Universidad de Chile—where he taught classes—to join the Santa Lucía Clinic. And, as stated in the file, on occasions he was left in charge of the clinic.

CIPER communicated with the doctor's office. His secretary indicated that he was out of Santiago and that she would give him our message. At the closing of this report, there was no response.

Sergio Muñoz Bonta is also pointed out as a dental surgeon who held a leadership position at the London Clinic. A nurse declared: "Dr. Sergio Muñoz Bonta, who was a dentist who came from the War Academy, was brought by Colonel (Manuel) Contreras to the London Clinic." Muñoz Bonta died in 2005.

Dentists Carlos Rodolfo Ullrich Dunner and Milena Cecilia Zulic Lolic declared in 2010 that they worked at the Santa Lucía Clinic. Ullrich did so in the rest of the clinics set up by the DINA and until the return to democracy in 1989. Just blocks away, in Las Condes, both currently have their dental practices, and both denied before the justice system having seen or treated tortured patients.

Zulic—who was married to Ullrich—told CIPER that she has a clear conscience: "I never had and do not have anything to hide (...). I worked at the clinic. I had just graduated and was looking for a job.

I was a very good student and I was not from the left. I have never been a member of a party, but I feel like a free thinker, but I was not at all in agreement with what was happening at that moment (the Unidad Popular).

But, independent of the political thing, we were never told that it was to work for the DINA nor that there were going to be detainees and things, nothing. When they contacted me, they told me it was to attend to the children of officials." She says that they paid her well, that she was there for several months, and that, when she was already working in that place, she found out it was related to the DINA.

Asked by CIPER if she left that job due to ethical objections, after finding out that the DINA was behind the clinic, she responded: "No, because at that time I was a bird (naive) (...). There I didn't know anything about what was happening."

Mario Augusto Hernández Cáceres is another doctor mentioned in the file who denies having participated in events linked to human rights violations. He gave an extrajudicial statement in 2010. That same year, dentist Gonzalo Luarte Romo stated before the justice system to have worked only for the London Clinic and that he also did not see or know anything. He died on July 10 of this year.

In the team of dentists, there also appeared Pablo César Oyanguren Plaza, who was a professor at the Universidad Mayor until 2019. In the process, he said that it was Dámaso González who recruited him. He also declared that he was part of the CNI clinic, that they gave him an identity card with the name Cicerón Videla to vote in the 1988 Plebiscite, and a card that was used as a "line-breaker."

The list of mentions also includes doctors of other specialties: psychiatrist Roberto Emilio Lailhacar Chávez. He declared in 2010 that he was only at the El Golf Clinic, but that he provided services to the DINA from before: "I entered the DINA as a civilian employee (...).

Probably during the year 1973." Furthermore, he explained that he worked with Lucía Hiriart when Augusto Pinochet was still in power. He asserted that he never attended to wounded people nor participated in interrogations. Contacted by CIPER, he declined to refer to the detail of what he witnessed and did at the DINA clinic.

Cardiologist Sergio Pliscoff Marovich worked at the London and El Golf clinics. He declared in 2010 and pointed out that he never visited detained people: "I lack all types of information," he said. He died in 2016.

(*) Valentina Valenzuela and Soledad López Figueroa collaborated on this report. () The background information presented in this article includes ongoing judicial proceedings, so the people mentioned should not be considered guilty until the justice system issues a final sentence.

Source: ciper.cl, September 1, 2023