Representative Positions: Leader of the Electricians' Union (1969); National Conflict Manager of FIEME (Industrial Metallurgical Federation) (1969-70); Former Labor Relations Manager of CORFO (Production Development Corporation). Member of the Communist Party. Date of Detention: July 21, 1976

REPRESSIVE SITUATION

Raúl Gilberto Montoya Vilches, married, father of four, electrician, union leader, and member of the Communist Party, was detained by security agents on July 21, 1976, at 09:00 a.m., as he left his home located at Calle Club Hípico 2851, Población Alessandri, in the capital, while heading toward a nearby public transport stop.

At that moment, a blue Peugeot automobile, traveling in the opposite direction, pulled up beside him. Three men and one woman in civilian clothes stepped out, grabbed Raúl Montoya Vilches by the arms, and shoved him into the vehicle, which sped away immediately.

The family learned of his detention around 14:00 hours that day from a neighbor who had witnessed the events and informed one of the victim's children, who was arriving home from school: "...they took your dad...". This person later refused to provide judicial testimony for fear of reprisals, despite the family's requests.

Since that date, no further information regarding the whereabouts of Raúl Gilberto Montoya Vilches has been known.

In 1975, the victim had been summoned to the National Directorate of Investigations, where he was interrogated about his political militancy and union position before being released.

In official statements from the Directorate of Social Communication (DINACOS) published on July 15 and 17, 1976, the government stated that "...the Intelligence Services resolved to act against the 'mailbox houses' (32 in total in Santiago) that this aforementioned outlawed party maintains for liaison between the political commission and the regional leaders of the former PC."

"In the mailbox houses, those members of the clandestine Communist Party who dedicate themselves to this type of liaison were detained" (statement of July 15, 1976).

Point 2 of the statement from July 17, 1976, noted that "...the government deemed it appropriate to provide only a portion of the abundant evidence that has motivated his detention (referring to lawyer Hernán Montealegre), having to reserve, for obvious reasons, all those that affect the ongoing investigation regarding the clandestine subversive action of the Communist Party."

In a sworn statement before a Notary Public, Mrs. Molly Romero Silva, spouse of Raúl Montoya Vilches, stated that on Tuesday, February 15, 1977, she was visited by two plainclothes agents who asked for "Gilberto," claiming to be "on behalf of lawyer Montenegro from the Vicariate." Upon being informed that she did not know any lawyer by that surname, they identified themselves as members of the DINA (National Intelligence Directorate), showing credentials.

The subjects claimed to be investigating "because many Chileans were abroad or at another address, and he could have abandoned his home," to which the declarant asserted that this was impossible. They left in a light blue Chevy Nova, license plate NFC-21 of Santiago.

For his part, Mr. Iván Montoya Romero, son of Raúl Montoya Vilches, stated in a sworn declaration before a Notary Public that on March 11, 1977, two individuals in civilian clothes arrived at his home at Club Hípico 2851, Población Alessandri.

They were traveling in a small light blue car. One of them got out and approached the house, asking the declarant if Doris Viviana (daughter of the forcibly disappeared person) lived there. Upon receiving an affirmative answer, he asked for her to be called.

He was told she was not there at that moment; he then proceeded to show a photocopy of a petition that 2,248 relatives from the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared had sent to the President of the Supreme Court on March 8, 1977, which Mrs. Doris Viviana Montoya Romero had signed, questioning him about this petition.

Again in a sworn statement before a Notary Public, Mrs. Molly Romero Silva placed on record the following events: on July 20, 1977, along with many other people, she signed a petition to the Government requesting information on the investigation into multiple cases of disappeared persons.

On August 24 of that same year, around noon, three individuals arrived at her home at Club Hípico 2851. They wore no identification and claimed to belong to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; one of them carried a camera hanging from his shoulder.

They asked for Raúl Montoya Vilches and, upon being told he was disappeared, showed interest in learning details of the disappearance and its circumstances. Everything concerning the case was explained to them, including the judicial actions taken.

The subjects said their efforts were related to an alleged letter that Mrs. Molly Romero had supposedly sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a letter the declarant stated she did not remember sending.

During their stay at the house, the individuals made no reference to the petition addressed to the Government in July of that year.

They promised to return to give her some answer regarding the disappearance of the victim: "...a yes or a no...", as they themselves expressed, to which Mrs. Molly Romero told them it was high time, as she had received other visits like theirs without obtaining any results.

In Análisis magazine, a national weekly, in the issue corresponding to October 29 to November 4, 1985, on page 18, an article was published regarding agents of the Joint Command (Comando Conjunto).

It states that Héctor Cuevas Salvador, former President of the Construction Confederation, before passing away, told the journalists who authored the article that "...in July 1976, days before being detained, Raúl Montoya, an old personal friend of Cuevas and also a labor leader... confided to him that he had spoken with a subject named Otto Trujillo" (referring to Otto Trujillo Miranda, identified as an agent and member of the Joint Command, responsible for the detention and disappearance of militants from leftist parties).

The article continues: "...Apparently, Trujillo wanted to make contact with the leadership of the Communist Party, with the purpose of providing information of capital importance at a time when this political group was being subjected to fierce persecution."

Montoya told Héctor Cuevas that the informant showed him a thick file of photographs of different detainees who had been murdered by the security services, with whom he was associated. He also promised that he was in a position to provide names of the main heads of the Commands in charge of the task of dismantling the leadership structures of the Communist Party.

The idea was for this Party to gather an amount of money not specified by Trujillo in exchange for these "favors."

In the conversation, the late construction leader (Héctor Cuevas) recounted that he immediately advised his friend Montoya not only to never have contact with Trujillo again but that the best thing he could do was to take security measures, because he was in grave danger.

Just a few days later, Raúl Montoya disappeared, and remains so to this date.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

On July 22, 1976, Mrs. Molly Vilma Montoya Romero, daughter of Raúl Montoya Vilches, filed an amparo (habeas corpus) petition, roll 634-76, in the Santiago Court of Appeals on behalf of her father, making known the circumstances of his detention and requesting a series of measures, such as issuing writs to the Ministry of the Interior, the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), the Ministry of Justice, and the Chief of the Cuatro Alamos camp.

Except for the request for a report from the Ministry, the rest of the measures were denied.

On July 29, 1976, Division General Raúl Benavides Escobar, then Minister of the Interior, responded, informing that the person in question was not being held by order of that department.

Based solely on the merit of this report, on August 4 of that year, the Court of Appeals rejected the amparo petition, ordering the records to be sent to the corresponding Major Criminal Court.

On August 16, 1976, Mrs. Molly Montoya Romero filed a complaint for "presumed misfortune" (disappearance) regarding her father, Raúl Gilberto Montoya Vilches, at the Third Major Criminal Court of San Miguel, which was assigned roll number 24.981-3.

This case was consolidated with the one that had been initiated in the First Major Criminal Court of San Miguel under roll 44.243, in which the judge had declared himself incompetent, as the investigation of the facts fell to the Third Criminal Court of San Miguel.

On August 17, 1976, the investigating judge ordered an investigation and issued writs to the Chief of the Cuatro Alamos camp and the Legal Medical Institute. On August 30 of the same year, Lieutenant Colonel Sergio Guarategua Peña, Executive Secretary of the National Executive Secretariat for Detainees (SENDET), responded that: "...Raúl Gilberto Montoya Vilches has no records or charges against him and has not been arrested by resolution issued by that Secretariat of State."

For its part, Investigations reported on September 23, 1976, that it had made inquiries at various prison centers, SENDET, clinics, hospitals, and the International Police Department, without having achieved favorable results.

On October 6, 1976, the Court ordered the writs to the Cuatro Alamos camp and the Legal Medical Institute to be reiterated. On November 15 of that year, General Raúl Benavides Escobar, Minister of the Interior, responded, informing that that Secretariat of State had no records and had not issued any order or resolution affecting Raúl Montoya Vilches.

He added in his writ: "...In this regard, it will be appreciated by this Secretariat of State if Your Honor would see fit to consider the Resolution of the Minister of Justice expressed in his confidential writs Nos. 506 and 835, both dated June 14 and September 30, 1976, by which instructions have been issued by that Ministry regarding the advisability that the Courts refrain, for reasons of national security, from requesting reports from the DINA regarding the procedural status of arrested or disappeared persons.

Consistent with the above, please request the pertinent reports through the Ministry of the Interior."

The writs to the Legal Medical Institute were reiterated again on November 24, 1976, and January 12, 1977. The entity finally sent a report to the Court dated December 20, 1977, stating that, after reviewing the entry logs of said establishment, the body of Raúl Montoya Vilches did not appear as having been admitted in the years 1975 and 1976.

On February 10, 1977, the summary proceedings were declared closed and the case was temporarily dismissed. Mrs. Molly Romero Silva, spouse of the disappeared, requested the Court of Appeals to restore the case to summary status, suggesting new measures to contribute to the success of the investigation. The request was denied.

However, on March 10, 1977, the Prosecutor of the San Miguel Court of Appeals was of the opinion that the investigation was incomplete and proposed new measures: adding the filiation extract of Raúl Montoya Vilches; issuing a writ to the International Police; and issuing a writ to the General Directorate of the Civil Registry to inform the Court if there were any registration or sub-registration in the birth certificate corresponding to the victim.

For its part, the San Miguel Court of Appeals, on June 16 of the same year, revoked the ruling of the investigating judge, restoring the case to summary status and accepting the Prosecutor's proposals already enumerated.

Once the requested measures were carried out, and without any of them having yielded a positive result, on July 18, 1977, the judge again closed the summary and declared a temporary dismissal, to the surprise of the complainant, who, without having knowledge of such a resolution, had sent a written request to the Court on July 20 asking for further inquiries.

She made this known to the San Miguel Court of Appeals, noting that on that day, July 20, 1976, her lawyer had gone to speak with the clerk, who informed him that: "...the responses to the recently dispatched writs had not yet arrived," consequently, the Court's ruling had been pronounced two days earlier.

Despite the above, the San Miguel Court of Appeals confirmed the resolution of temporary dismissal of this case on September 17, 1977.

In October 1991, a new complaint for kidnapping was filed before the 3rd Criminal Court of the President Aguirre Cerda Court, which entered processing under roll No. 24981-3. A manuscript by Raúl Montoya was delivered to the Court, which accounts for a contact he had days before his detention with the Joint Command agent, Otto Trujillo Miranda.

The agent had requested money in exchange for information about the actions of the repressive group to which he belonged. Regarding this evidence, the Court was requested, among other measures, to summon Otto Trujillo to testify and to perform a handwriting analysis of the submitted manuscript.

As of December 1992, the aforementioned case was in the summary stage with pending measures.

To the date of this report, nothing is known about the fate of Raúl Gilberto Montoya Vilches, who remains in the status of a forcibly disappeared person.

Source: Corporation report

In a unanimous ruling, the Second Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court issued a sentencing judgment against agents of the Joint Command who, in July 1976, kidnapped two Communist Party militants, causing them to disappear to this date.

The victims are Raúl Gilberto Montoya Vilches, detained on July 21, 1976, PC union leader, electrician, married, 4 children; and Nicomedes Segundo Toro Bravo, PC militant, 31 years old, single, construction worker, detained on July 28, 1976.

The highest court sentenced Juan Francisco Saavedra Loyola (FACH), Daniel Guimpert Corvalán (Navy), Manuel Muñoz Gamboa (Carabinero), Raúl González Fernández (FACH), Juan Atilio Aravena Hurtuvia (Navy), and Ernesto Lobos Gálvez (Carabinero) as authors of the crime of repeated aggravated kidnapping of both victims.

They must serve a sentence of 10 years and one day in prison for their responsibility in the repeated aggravated kidnapping of both victims.

Former agent Otto Trujillo Miranda was also sentenced to 10 years in prison as the author of the crimes of illicit association and aggravated kidnapping of the victim Raúl Montoya Vilches.

Finally, Viviana Lucinda Ugarte Sandoval, a FACH agent known as "La Pochi," was sentenced to 7 years in prison as an accomplice to the crimes of aggravated kidnapping against Montoya Vilches and Toro Bravo.

All defense appeals were rejected, as was the partial statute of limitations, due to the application of international law. However, the Court exercised its ex officio powers and annulled part of the first-instance and Court of Appeals sentences, acquitting all the named agents, with the exception of Otto Trujillo Miranda, regarding the crime of Illicit Association, since all those agents had already been previously convicted for that crime in the case of the kidnapping of PC militant Aníbal Riquelme Pino.

All this at the suggestion of defense attorney Maximiliano Murath in his courtroom arguments.

For lawyer Nelson Caucoto, plaintiff and representative of the relatives of Nicomedes Toro Bravo, "this ruling constitutes a new brick in the construction of the 'Never Again' building that we all aspire to as a society.

The important thing is to overcome impunity and bring a degree of comfort to the relatives, who have waited for so many years for the courts of justice to clarify their dramatic cases," he noted.

The facts

The investigation led by Judge Llanos managed to determine the following facts: a) That during the years 1975 and 1976, a repressive organization functioned—called the "Intelligence Community" and later known as the "Joint Command"—formed by members of different branches of the Armed Forces and Carabineros, and also by some civilians who were former members of the anti-Marxist group called "Patria y Libertad." Said repressive organization was constituted by decision of the Intelligence Directorates of the Armed Forces and Carabineros, whose headquarters were installed in a building located at Calle Juan Antonio Ríos No. 6 in downtown Santiago (JAR 6), where the Intelligence Directorates of the Air Force (DIFA), the Army (DINE), the Navy (SIN), and the Carabineros (SICAR) were located. b) Operationally, the aforementioned repressive organization functioned in clandestine detention and torture centers, called "Nido 20" (located in the sector of Paradero 20 of Gran Avenida) and "Nido 18" (located in the sector of Paradero 18 of Vicuña Mackenna); and subsequently, from October or November 1975, in "Remo 0," located inside the Air Force of Chile (hereinafter, FACH) Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment in Colina. Finally, the operational agents moved from this last place—excluding the members of the Army, who withdrew from the organization—at the beginning of 1976, to the "La Firma" barracks, located at Calle 18 de Septiembre in downtown Santiago, near the 200 block, in the building of the former newspaper "El Clarín." c) In all the clandestine detention centers mentioned above, torture was inflicted on the detainees, some of whom died as a result, or were executed by the agents, who made their bodies disappear. d) The "La Firma" barracks operated until December 1976 and corresponds to an old building with several dependencies, some of which were offices, others interrogation rooms, and others, dungeons. Some of these dependencies had black and white tiled floors. In addition, the operational agents who were there used several vehicles to go out and detain people, including a yellow Chevy Nova and two Peugeot 404 model cars. e) The heads of said barracks were Navy Lieutenant Daniel Luis Guimpert Corvalán, who in turn reported to Commander Sergio Barra von Kretschman, director of the S.I.N.; FACH Lieutenant Roberto Fuentes Morrison, who reported to FACH Commander Juan Saavedra Loyola, who in turn reported to the director of the DIFA, Freddy Enrique Ruiz Bunger; and Carabineros Lieutenant Manuel Agustín Muñoz Gamboa, who was a subordinate of the Captain of that corps, Germán Esquivel Caballero, with Colonel Rubén Romero Gormaz being the head of the Carabineros intelligence area. f) Guimpert Corvalán, Fuentes Morrison, and Muñoz Gamboa each directed groups of subordinates who carried out operational tasks, detaining people to transport them to the aforementioned facility, where they were interrogated under torture, as noted above. g) From the end of 1975 and throughout 1976, the repressive activity of the aforementioned organization was directed especially against the clandestine structure of the Communist Youth (hereinafter, JJ.CC.); but also against some of the clandestine militants of the Communist Party (P.C.). For this, it used information provided by militants of the JJ.CC. who, after being detained, became collaborators and in some cases agents, such as Carol Flores Castillo, Miguel Estay Reyno, and René Basoa Alarcón. This is how numerous leaders of the aforementioned political organization began to be detained, those who performed or had assumed leadership tasks in it to replace those who were detained, or who were "frozen" (hidden in safe houses) as a preventive measure against the wave of repression unleashed against the organization. h) Indeed, at 19:30 hours on July 28, two individuals who identified themselves as agents of the Air Force Intelligence Directorate (DIFA) arrived at the home of Nicomedes Toro Bravo, traveling in a pickup truck. The subjects came to drop off Nicomedes Toro Muñoz—father of the victim—since, as they stated, they had detained him due to a case of mistaken identity. Likewise, the agents told the homeowner that later they would bring back her children Sonia Rodina and Nicomedes Segundo, who had also been detained by that service. Indeed, Sonia Rodina Toro Bravo returned to her home the same day, July 28, around 21:30 hours. However, the victim would never return. Nicomedes Toro (father) and his daughter Sonia told their relatives that they had remained held, along with the victim, in a secret detention and torture center, which they could not identify because they remained blindfolded at all times. In that place, they could hear the voice and screams of the victim at the moments he was subjected to illegal coercion, accompanied by strong insults. In the same facility and on the same date, Nicomedes Toro Bravo was confronted with another detainee of the security agencies, Benito Pascual Arias—a personal friend of the victim—who later, after obtaining his freedom, traveled abroad to preserve his life. He asserts having been detained in the "Joint Command" facility located on Calle Dieciocho de Septiembre called "La Firma," the former premises of the newspaper "El Clarín." This is also affirmed in different testimonies provided by the former member of the Air Force of Chile, Andrés Antonio Valenzuela Morales, due to which it has been possible to reconstruct, in part, the gestation and actions of an illicit organization that has come to be called the "Joint Command," of which the former agent was a part. i) Raúl Montoya Vilches, married, four children, electrician, union leader, member of the Communist Party, was detained by security agents on July 21, 1976, at 09:00 a.m., as he left his home located at Calle Club Hípico 2851, Población Alessandri, in the capital, while heading toward a nearby public transport stop. At that moment, a blue Peugeot 404 automobile, traveling in the opposite direction, pulled up beside him. Three men and one woman in civilian clothes stepped out, grabbed Raúl Montoya Vilches by the arms, and shoved him into the vehicle, which sped away immediately. The family learned of his detention around 14:00 hours that day from a neighbor who had witnessed the events and informed one of the victim's children, who was arriving home from school: "...they took your dad...". This person later refused to provide judicial testimony for fear of reprisals, despite the family's requests. In the days prior, Montoya Vilches had met with an agent who performed functions for both the Joint Command and the DINA, named Otto Trujillo, who offered to provide him with information about the whereabouts of forcibly disappeared persons in exchange for money. His kidnapping was perpetrated after the aforementioned meeting, which he mentioned to his family and party comrades, and of which he left an explicit account in a handwritten letter. Since that date, no further information regarding the whereabouts of Raúl Gilberto Montoya Vilches has been known. Although Otto Trujillo was discharged in February 1976 by the Joint Command, he remained in close contact with Roberto Fuentes Morrison, alias "Wally," who protected him and who was the operational Chief at "La Firma" during 1976. j) From the moment of the disappearance of Nicomedes Toro Bravo and Raúl Montoya Vilches, they have not contacted their relatives, there are no records of them leaving the country, nor is there any record of their death.

Source: radionuevomundo.cl 02/28/2023 Date: 02-28-2023

VILMA MONTOYA TELLS OF HER EXPERIENCE IN THE SEARCH FOR HER FORCIBLY DISAPPEARED FATHER.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZCPs3YHQUk video available on youtube.com

Source: youtube.com 2016