Ricardo Aurelio Troncoso Muñoz, married, Biology teacher, and MIR militant, was detained during a joint operation involving agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) and Carabineros officers on August 15, 1974, at approximately 07:30 hours, at his home located at Calle Bueras Nº 172, apartment D, in Santiago.

During this operation, the siblings Hernán Galo and María Elena Inostroza Suárez, Elsa Victoria Leuthner Muñoz—all of whom remain forcibly disappeared to this day—and Rosetta Pallini (who passed away in August 1975 while in exile), along with her five-month-old son, were also detained.

They all shared the apartment where they were apprehended. Witnesses to the detention included Mrs. Mercedes Vargas and her husband, Mr. Osvaldo León Rodríguez, who, in their capacity as concierge and caretaker of the apartment building where Ricardo Aurelio and his companions lived, were forced to open the building's access door for the agents.

Around eight in the morning, the León Vargas couple observed all the residents of apartment "D" being led out by plainclothes agents and Carabineros.

At least two Carabineros and four or five agents participated in the operation. One of the police officers accompanied the agents to the apartment, while another remained stationed at the building's entrance.

Subsequently, all the detainees were transported in a van to the clandestine political imprisonment and torture center of the DINA known as "Londres 38," located in downtown Santiago at the address indicated by its name. However, prior to this, the agents took Rosetta Pallini to the home of some relatives, where they handed over her young son.

On the afternoon of that same day, August 15, Pedro Eduardo Moreira Montoya, the landlord of apartment "D" at Bueras Nº 172, who had in turn sublet it to Ricardo Aurelio and his companions, was detained by DINA agents.

Mr. Pedro Moreira was taken by his captors to the Londres 38 facility, though he was not formally processed there. During this time, he was informed by the agents that his subtenants had been detained because they were "miristas" (members of the MIR), and he was questioned for information regarding the group of detainees.

After being released, Mr. Moreira was visited on several occasions by the same agents for the purpose of interrogating him about his subtenants.

At the Londres 38 facility, Ricardo Aurelio and the others apprehended at the Bueras street apartment were seen by and were able to speak with other detainees; some survivors testified regarding their confinement in that place.

Erika Hennings, who was held at the Londres 38 facility during that same period, was able to hear their voices when they responded to the daily roll call.

From that facility, Ricardo Aurelio and the other people with whom he lived at the time of his detention were transferred to "Cuatro Álamos," where they were seen by and were able to converse with other prisoners.

Rosetta Pallini, a survivor of that group of detainees who was later expelled to Mexico, where she passed away in August 1975, testified that she had been held alongside Ricardo, first at Londres 38, and that both had later been transferred to "Cuatro Álamos," where she was able to see him until August 30, 1974, the date on which he was removed from that facility to an unknown destination.

Viviana Uribe Tamblay, during her time in captivity at the "Tres Álamos" facility, met Rosetta Pallini González, who told her that she had been detained on August 15, 1974, along with Ricardo Aurelio Troncoso Muñoz, the González Inostroza siblings, and Elsa Leuthner.

She added that, regarding these same events, Rosetta Pallini testified before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Mexico in 1975, prior to August 2, the date of her death.

Ricardo Troncoso had been with his relatives in Talca between August 9 and 12, 1974. On the 13th, two days before his detention, Ricardo met with his wife, Adriana Gladys Montero Zapata.

Furthermore, the building where Ricardo resided and was detained alongside his companions was visited several times by patrols of Carabineros and the Armed Forces, who specifically requested the names of the people residing in his apartment.

It should be noted that, prior to his detention, Ricardo Aurelio Troncoso Muñoz had remained in asylum at the Mexican Embassy in Santiago from October 10, 1973, until March 1, 1974, the date on which he abandoned the asylum, desperate due to the delay in being granted a safe-conduct.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEEDINGS

On September 23, 1974, Mrs. Sila Darioleta Muñoz Cofré filed a Recurso de Amparo (writ of habeas corpus) under case file Nº 1126-74 before the Santiago Court of Appeals on behalf of her son, Ricardo Aurelio Troncoso Muñoz, which was rejected on February 19, 1975.

On that occasion, the Court ordered the relevant data to be sent to the appropriate judge to initiate a summary proceeding to investigate the possible commission of a crime in relation to the disappearance of the aforementioned Troncoso.

With that objective, on March 5, 1975, case Nº 106.686 was initiated at the First Criminal Court of Santiago. In that process, the National Executive Secretariat for Detainees (SENDET) was requested to report whether the affected person was being held by any State agency.

That Secretariat responded on March 18, 1975, stating that "the citizen Ricardo Aurelio Troncoso Muñoz, as stated in documentation prepared by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, traveled to Mexico as an asylee." Taking that report into account, Judge Juana González Insunza concluded that "no crime had been committed," and therefore closed the summary and permanently dismissed the case.

This resolution was approved by the Court of Appeals on April 14, 1975.

Subsequently, on July 30, 1975, the same Court ordered the reopening of the summary based on a letter sent by Mrs. Sila Muñoz, in which she demonstrated that her son had not left the country and was, in fact, detained. She detailed a number of steps she had personally taken, including the following:

a) That due to the investigation order issued by the First Criminal Court of Santiago, she was interviewed by Investigations officer Simón Tapia, who told her that she was claiming the existence of a fictitious person, denying the authenticity of her Civil Registry booklet, the Nº 4447 A 0041 certification of her son's military status, the identity card Nº 152.161 issued in Talca, his birth certificate, his university degree, and even the photographs in which Ricardo Aurelio appeared.

b) That this officer erroneously informed the Court by stating that her son had left the country as an asylee, with passport 4160, on Canadian Pacific flight 421, bound for Mexico on July 26, 1974. Regarding this, Mrs. Sila was able to establish that:

• The passport in question corresponds to Patricio Troncoso Muñoz, a theater artist from Concepción, married to a woman with the surname Bustos, and he has no relation whatsoever to the disappeared person.
• She communicated by telephone with her son Ramón Troncoso Muñoz, who resides in Mexico, to ask him if it was true that Ricardo Aurelio was in that country, to which he replied that he was not.
• On June 17, she went to the Venezuelan Embassy, which was in charge of Mexican affairs in Chile at that time, where they promised to answer her in writing so that it could serve as evidence.
• That between August 9 and 12, her son was in Talca for a family gathering, which is why he could not have left the country on July 26, as the official information indicated.
• That the last asylees at the Mexican diplomatic mission in Santiago left on July 2, 1974.
• With the data already mentioned, she went to the Identification Cabinet at the Passports and Immigration section, where she was attended to by an International Police officer, to whom she stated that her son's name was not Patricio and that he had not left the country, but was instead being held. Faced with this, the officer asked her if he was "disappeared," to which Mrs. Sila replied in the affirmative. After some inquiries in various offices, the officer returned, informing her that for them, it was her son who had traveled, and with that, the case was considered completely closed.

c) Mrs. Sila Muñoz, in her search for her son, visited various detention centers in Santiago and the provinces, made inquiries at SENDET, took steps before the Ministry of Defense in Santiago, sent letters to the President of the Santiago Court of Appeals, to the Chilean Minister of Foreign Affairs, and appealed to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the International Commission of Jurists, etc.

However, on April 21, 1975, taking into account the aforementioned Investigations report, which stated that Ricardo Troncoso Muñoz had left via diplomatic asylum bound for Mexico on July 26, 1974, Judge Juana González Insunza again declared the summary closed and issued a permanent dismissal of the case.

This resolution was rejected by the Court of Appeals, which indicated that the investigation was incomplete, ordering the Court to request information through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from the Mexican diplomatic representation in Chile as to whether Ricardo Aurelio Troncoso Muñoz had obtained asylum in that country.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded with the facsimile it habitually used to answer courts when they inquired about forcibly disappeared persons who appeared on a list of 119 Chilean citizens allegedly killed abroad, without consulting the Mexican Embassy as the Court had indicated.

On the other hand, a new Investigations report stated that "the files of the International Border Control Section, from 1973 to date, record a Ricardo Troncoso Muñoz, Chilean, Passport Nº 4160 of Chile, born in 1959, student, with the following trips: Entry: July 7, 1974, Brazil-Pudahuel. Exit: July 27, 1974, Pudahuel-Mexico."

These, apparently, were sufficient elements for the judge, on January 20, 1976, to once again declare the summary closed and the case temporarily dismissed, without reiterating the official request to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (the processing of which had given rise to the reopening of the summary) to report on the matter in the proper terms.

On March 19, 1976, the Court of Appeals ordered the case to be returned to the summary stage, as the investigation was incomplete. It ordered the judge to comply with what was decreed by the Court (to obtain the report from the Mexican Embassy via the Ministry of Foreign Affairs).

On March 23, 1976, the summary was reopened, and the diplomatic representation was officially requested through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; however, that Secretariat of State returned the official request to the Court without results.

In the judicial process, case file 107.254 regarding the disappearance of the González Inostroza siblings was reviewed, in which Pedro Moreira Montoya, who was detained by the DINA and interrogated about the group of detainees, testified. The building's caretaker also testified, confirming the detention of the group to which Ricardo Aurelio belonged.

Finally, the summary was closed and the case was temporarily dismissed on June 16, 1976, a resolution that was approved by the Court of Appeals on September 21, 1976, without establishing the fate of Ricardo Aurelio Troncoso Muñoz, who to this day remains in the status of a forcibly disappeared person.

Source: Corporation report

In the ruling (file 16.096-2021), the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed of ministers Haroldo Brito, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Raúl Mera, Roberto Contreras, and attorney (i) María Cristina Gajardo—ruled out any error of law in the sentence that condemned César Manríquez Bravo and Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko to 10 years and one day in prison.

The Supreme Court rejected the cassation appeal against the sentence that condemned two former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for the qualified kidnapping of student Rosetta Pallini González, which occurred between August 1974 and March 1975 in the Metropolitan region.

"That in considerations 9 and 10 of the first-instance ruling, which the appealed ruling adopts, the participation of Manríquez Bravo is proven as a mediate perpetrator of the crime of qualified kidnapping of Rosetta Pallini González, for having been, at the time of their detention, in command of the Metropolitan Intelligence Brigades, under whose control were the Halcón and other brigades, which were in charge of the detention and elimination of persons opposed to the Military Government, and for having decision-making power over operations in the DINA's clandestine detention barracks, such that, by prior agreement, he participated in decisions regarding the fate of the detainees.

This determination, as explained in the same reasoning indicated, is reached from the examination of the various statements analyzed therein, which are considered as presumptions under article 488 of the Code of Criminal Procedure," the ruling states.

It adds: "That, then, even if not all those statements are considered consistent regarding the matters they expose, precisely in that assumption where one of the requirements of article 459 of the Code of Criminal Procedure is missing to be able to qualify the testimonies of witnesses as sufficient demonstration that the fact has existed, article 464 of the same code allows them to be weighed as a judicial presumption, just as the sentencer has done in the case sub lite, the latter two norms regarding which the appeal does not postulate their infringement.

And it is this multiplicity of presumptions that are founded on real and proven facts based on witness statements, as authorized by the cited article 464, that fulfill the only extremes of Nos. 1 and 2 of article 488 of the Code of Criminal Procedure that can be reviewed by this Court as norms regulating evidence, according to its uniform and stable jurisprudence, and based on which it is concluded that Manríquez Bravo has responsibility as a mediate perpetrator."

Furthermore, it is considered: "That, such being the case, with the sentence fulfilling the requirement of basing the presumptions it establishes on real and proven facts through witness evidence, the cassation appeal in the substance under analysis cannot prosper."

The investigation by visiting minister Mario Carroza established that: "Rosetta Gianna Pallini González, 22 years of age, university student, militant of the MIR, was detained on August 15, 1974, by agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), Halcón group, together with militants Ricardo Aurelio Troncoso Muñoz, María Elena González Inostroza, Hernán Galo González Inostroza, and Elsa Victoria Leuthner Muñoz, currently forcibly disappeared, being taken to the 'Londres 38' or 'Yucatán' barracks, a place where she was subjected to exhausting interrogations along with the application of physical and psychological duress, to subsequently be transferred to the prison camps known as 'Tres Álamos' and 'Cuatro Álamos,' where she was kept deprived of liberty, without any administrative or judicial order to justify it, this lasting for more than 90 days. On March 21, 1975, she was expelled from the country bound for Mexico, a country where she underwent surgery for a gallbladder emergency at the end of July 1975, passing away days later for not having survived the operation."

In the civil aspect, the ruling condemned the State of Chile to pay total compensation of $160,000,000 (one hundred and sixty million pesos) to the victim's son and siblings.

Source: pjud.cl, November 10, 2021 Date: 11-10-2021

Supreme Court issues new conviction against DINA agents

In a new ruling that dismisses the Amnesty Law and the statute of limitations, the Penal Chamber condemned four members of the DINA's Caupolicán Brigade for the kidnapping of four members of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) in August 1974, who were taken from an apartment in downtown Santiago.

The Supreme Court ratified a sentence of 10 years and one day in prison for members of the Caupolicán Brigade of the dissolved National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for the disappearance of four militants of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) that occurred in August 1974.

In a unanimous ruling, the Penal Chamber confirmed the sentence issued against Colonel (R) Marcelo Moren Brito, Brigadier (R) Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, Sub-officer (R) Basclay Zapata, and civilian agent Osvaldo Romo Mena for the qualified kidnappings of Ricardo Aurelio Troncoso Muñoz, Hernán Galo González Inostroza, María Elena González Inostroza, and Elsa Victoria Leuthner Muñoz, who were detained on August 15, 1974, at different points in the capital.

The ruling ratified the judgment of the special minister Joaquín Billard Acuña issued in April 2004, which had not been modified by the Santiago Court of Appeals, applying once again the criterion of the country's highest court to accept the Geneva Conventions for cases of human rights violations committed during the dictatorship, thereby dismissing the figures of amnesty and the statute of limitations.

"It is not acceptable that the same people who took refuge in the advantages granted to them by the aforementioned declaration of a state of war, established by the only legislative instrument available after the breakdown of the constitutional institutional order in force until then, now intend to ignore its value to disregard the sanctions that the transgressions of the laws of such a state and the limits that the Geneva Conventions and other international instruments already in force on the matter impose on self-exoneration," says the ruling drafted by Minister Jaime Rodríguez Espoz, which has more than 70 pages and 90 considerations.

It adds that "if, by making use of the superiority of force, a state of war was consecrated to facilitate the fight against those who opposed the military government, one must also abide by the consequences that follow from having violated the regulations that govern armed conflicts in relation to the treatment of combatants, who could no longer be considered common criminals and, much less, be made victims of brutal repressions like the one accounted for by the background of this process."

Of those sentenced, only Sub-officer Zapata, known as "El Troglo," is not currently serving time for a previous conviction for human rights violations, so once the files are sent to the first instance, he must enter one of the two special military penal facilities located in the Metropolitan Region.

Ricardo Aurelio Troncoso Muñoz, Hernán Galo González Inostroza, María Elena González Inostroza, and Elsa Victoria Leuthner Muñoz were detained on August 15, 1974, in a raid carried out by DINA agents at the apartment located at Calle Bueras 172, Apartment D, in Santiago, and taken to the detention facilities of Londres 38 and Tres and Cuatro Álamos, from where their trail was lost.

The case of Troncoso Muñoz is particular. Before his detention, he had remained in asylum at the Mexican Embassy in Santiago from October 10, 1973, until March 1, 1974, the date on which he abandoned the asylum, desperate due to the delay in being granted a safe-conduct. Fifteen days later, he was detained by DINA agents.

Source: May 12, 2007, El Mostrador Date: 05-12-2007

Judge issued convictions in three cases of forcibly disappeared persons

The head of the First Criminal Court of Santiago with exclusive dedication to human rights cases, Joaquín Billard, sentenced the former CNI operations chief Álvaro Corbalán Castilla to ten years and one day in prison for the qualified kidnapping and death of Juan Luis Rivera Matus, which occurred in December 1975.

Along with Corbalán, and receiving the same sentence, the former member of the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE), Sergio Díaz López, was convicted.

Meanwhile, in the capacity of accessories after the fact, the head of the Air Force Intelligence Service (SIFA), Freddy Ruiz Bunger, and Carlos Madrid Hayden received sentences of 600 days of remitted prison time.

The notification for Corbalán was made this morning at Punta Peuco. Sources close to the case indicated that the Army preferred not to transport him to the court in order to avoid problems following his recent outings.

Juan Luis Rivera Matus was named in the first report of the Dialogue Table as one of the victims of the repression who had been thrown into the sea, along with 131 other people. However, in 2001, his remains appeared on the grounds of the "Justo Arteaga Cuevas" Fort in Peldehue. For many, this fact destroyed the credibility of that body.

Rivera Matus was a militant in the Communist Party (PC) and a union leader at Chilectra. He was detained on November 6, 1975, at the corner of Santo Domingo and San Antonio by about five people in plainclothes who put him into a white Peugeot station wagon without license plates.

On the same day of his kidnapping, a recurso de amparo was filed on his behalf before the Santiago Court of Appeals, which, like almost all similar actions filed during the military regime, was rejected without further processing by the appellate court after a negative report on the detention was issued by the Ministry of the Interior. On May 26, 1976, the case had been temporarily dismissed.

Other cases But this was not the only sentence issued by the magistrate. He also convicted former DINA agent Osvaldo Romo Mena for the crime of qualified kidnapping of Jorge Espinoza Méndez, nicknamed "Abel" or "Juancho," whose last traces date back to June 18, 1974.

According to the Rettig Report, Espinoza Méndez was seen by witnesses at the Londres 38 detention facility and disappeared while in the custody of the DINA, without any further news of him.

The magistrate also sentenced former DINA agents Miguel Krassnoff, Marcelo Moren Brito, Basclay Zapata, and Osvaldo Romo to ten years and one day for the crime of qualified kidnapping against former MIR militants Elsa Leuthner, María González, Hernán González, and Ricardo Troncoso Muñoz.

The case of Troncoso Muñoz is particular. Before his detention, he had remained in asylum at the Mexican Embassy in Santiago from October 10, 1973, until March 1, 1974, the date on which he abandoned the asylum, desperate due to the delay in being granted a safe-conduct. Fifteen days later, he was detained by DINA agents.

The magistrate is still investigating the case of Juan Suil Faúndez, who was made to disappear by SIFA agents in the mid-seventies. The other two cases the magistrate had, one of them regarding Operation Colombo, were attached to the file being processed by special minister Juan Guzmán Tapia.

With the convictions in these three cases, the path is opened for the Supreme Court to unify the criteria regarding the application of the Amnesty Law. In 1997, the criteria of the Second Penal Chamber of the highest court changed, where the application of that legal body was modified and the theory of permanent kidnapping was established.

Source: May 4, 2004, El Mostrador Date: 05-04-2004