On May 16, 1977, the Chilean-Swiss student Alexei Vladimir JACCARD SIEGLER was arrested in Buenos Aires. He had arrived in that country the previous day during a layover on a trip he was scheduled to continue to Chile the following day.

According to information provided to the Commission, Alexei Jaccard was carrying money that was to be brought into Chile. In the same operation, Ricardo Ignacio RAMIREZ HERRERA, in charge of organization and finance for the Communist Party of Chile in Buenos Aires, and Héctor Heraldo VELASQUEZ MARDONES, also a Chilean communist militant, were arrested.

Chilean and Argentine agents captured the three Chilean citizens and five Argentine members of the Committee of Solidarity with Chile in Argentina—who were sheltering the detainees—on the same day. All eight remain forcibly disappeared to this day.

The Commission was able to reach the conviction that Alexei Jaccard had been arrested on a public street and taken to a facility of the Argentine Federal Police, where he was interrogated and later transferred to the Navy Mechanics School (ESMA) in Buenos Aires.

The essentially active role played by the DINA and the Government of Chile in this case began with the illegal triple arrest on foreign soil with the complicity of Argentine security services, and ended with the delivery of false information to Swiss diplomats dedicated to searching for a Swiss national.

Regarding Ricardo Ramírez, the International Police of Chile falsely informed the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the victim's alleged travels between 1977 and 1983. Such information had been requested from that department by the Courts of the Argentine Republic.

Another report sent by the Police to this Commission, which is consistent with the actual facts, shows that the victim only traveled from Santiago to Germany in March 1976, the date on which he managed to leave as a political exile to settle in Hungary.

In light of these and other records, it was established that following the triple arrest of the Chilean communist militants in Buenos Aires, Chilean and Argentine security agencies deployed an arsenal of false documents and information to cover for one another in the face of pressure from the Swiss Government, which insisted on knowing what had happened to a national in transit.

Therefore, the Commission considered that Ricardo Ramírez and Héctor Velásquez, like Alexei Jaccard, are victims of human rights violations in which agents of the State of Chile participated in a foreign country.

Source: (Rettig Report)

The Eleventh Chamber of the appellate court modified the lower court's ruling and sentenced a total of 22 former DINA agents for their responsibility in the crimes of qualified kidnapping and qualified homicide committed in Chile and abroad.

The Santiago Court of Appeals increased the sentences to be served by 22 former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for the qualified kidnappings of Jorge Fuentes Alarcón, Julio Valladares Caroca, Juan Hernández Zazpe, Manuel Tamayo Martínez, Luis Muñoz Velásquez, Alexei Jaccard Siegler, and Héctor Velásquez Mardones, and the qualified homicides of Ricardo Ramírez Herrera, Jacobo Stoulman Bartnik, Matilde Pessa Mois, Hernán Soto González, and Ruiter Correa Arce—crimes perpetrated within the framework of the so-called "Operation Condor," a cooperation agreement between the repressive groups of Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Uruguay in the 1970s. In the ruling (case file 4.545-2019), the Eleventh Chamber of the appellate court—composed of justices Jessica González, Loreto Gutiérrez, and Jaime Balmaceda—modified the lower court's sentences and increased the criminal penalties for the former agents involved in the crimes committed both in Chile and abroad. 1) Agents Cristoph Willike Floel and Raúl Iturriaga Neumann must serve a 20-year prison sentence as perpetrators of the qualified kidnappings of Jorge Fuentes Alarcón, Julio Valladares Caroca, Juan Hernández Zazpe, Manuel Tamayo Martínez, Luis Muñoz Velásquez, Alexei Jaccard Siegler, and Héctor Velásquez Mardones, and a 20-year sentence as perpetrators of the qualified homicides of Ricardo Ramírez Herrera, Jacobo Stoulman Bartnik, Matilde Pessa Mois, Hernán Soto González, and Ruiter Correa Arce. 2) Agent Juan Morales Salgado was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the qualified kidnappings of Alexei Jaccard Siegler and Héctor Velásquez Mardones, and 20 years in prison for the qualified homicides of Ricardo Ramírez Herrera, Jacobo Stoulman Bartnik, and Matilde Pessa Mois. 3) Meanwhile, agent Pedro Espinoza Bravo must serve a 20-year prison sentence for the qualified kidnappings of Julio Valladares Caroca, Manuel Tamayo Martínez, Alexei Jaccard Siegler, and Héctor Velásquez Mardones; and a 20-year prison sentence for the qualified homicides of Ricardo Ramírez Herrera, Jacobo Stoulman Bartnik, Matilde Pessa Mois, Hernán Soto González, and Ruiter Correa Arce. 4) Jorge Escobar Fuentes, Federico Chaigneau Sepúlveda, and Miguel Riveros Valderrama will serve an 18-year prison sentence for the kidnappings of Alexei Jaccard Siegler and Héctor Velásquez Mardones; and an 18-year prison sentence for the qualified homicides of Ricardo Ramírez Herrera, Jacobo Stoulman Bartnik, Matilde Pessa Mois, Hernán Soto González, and Ruiter Correa Arce. 5) Agent Gladys Calderón Carreño was sentenced to 10 years and one day in prison for the qualified kidnappings of Alexei Jaccard Siegler and Héctor Velásquez Mardones; and 15 years and one day in prison for the qualified homicides of Ricardo Ramírez Herrera, Jacobo Stoulman Bartnik, Matilde Pessa Mois, Hernán Soto González, and Ruiter Correa Arce. 6) Agents Jaime Ojeda Obando and Eduardo Oyarce Riquelme will serve a 5-year and one-day prison sentence for the qualified kidnappings of Alexei Jaccard Siegler and Héctor Velásquez Mardones; and a 10-year and one-day prison sentence for the qualified homicides of Ricardo Ramírez Herrera, Jacobo Stoulman Bartnik, and Matilde Pessa Mois. 7) Miguel Krasnoff Martchenko and Gerardo Godoy García will serve 15 years and one day in prison for the qualified kidnapping of Jorge Fuentes Alarcón. 8) Agent Hermon Alfaro Mundaca was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the qualified kidnapping of Jorge Fuentes Alarcón. José Fuentes Torres, Jorge Andrade Gómez, José Aravena Ruiz, Luis Torres Méndez, María Gabriela Órdenes Montecinos, Osvaldo Pulgar Gallardo, and Rodolfo Concha Rodríguez, who had been acquitted in the first-instance ruling, were sentenced to the same penalty for the same crime. 9) Finally, Jerónimo Neira Méndez and Manuel Rivas Díaz must serve a 3-year and one-day prison sentence for the qualified kidnapping of Jorge Fuentes Alarcón. The Court shared the first-instance criterion regarding the participation of those convicted in the case, as there were real and proven records regarding their participation in the events, whether as inducing perpetrators or direct perpetrators of the crimes attributed to each. "Regarding the sentences and, specifically, in relation to those defendants whose participation was classified as co-perpetration, the Court agrees with the conclusion reached by the first-instance judge, in that with the records collected during the investigation, it is possible to construct various judicial presumptions that, by meeting the requirements of being based on real and proven facts, being multiple, serious, precise, direct, and concordant, are sufficient to maintain with conviction that the defendants Cristoph Georg Willeke Floel, Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, Juan Hernán Morales Salgado, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Jorge Marcelo Escobar Fuentes, Federico Humberto Chaigneau Sepúlveda, Miguel René Riveros Valderrama, Gladys de las Mercedes Calderón Carreño, Carlos José Leonardo López Tapia, José Alfonso Ojeda Obando, Eduardo Alejandro Oyarce Riquelme, Héctor Raúl Valdebenito Araya, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García, Ciro Ernesto Torré Sáez, and Orlando José Manzo Durán had intervention in the capacity of co-perpetrators, in the terms of Nos. 1, 2, and 3 of Article 15 of the Penal Code, as specified in each case, of the repeated crimes of qualified kidnapping of Jorge Isaac Fuentes Alarcón, Juan Humberto Hernández Zazpe, Manuel Jesús Tamayo Martínez, Luis Gonzalo Muñoz Velásquez, Julio del Tránsito Valladares Caroca, Alexei Vladimir Jaccard Siegler, and Héctor Heraldo Velásquez Mardones, and of qualified homicide of Ricardo Ignacio Ramírez Herrera, Jacobo Stoulman Bortnik, Matilde Pessa Mois, Hernán Soto Gálvez, and Ruiter Correa Arce," the ruling states. It adds: "Indeed, in the case of those who were part of the Foreign Department of the National Intelligence Directorate—Willeke Floel, Iturriaga Neumann, and Espinoza Bravo—in the 28th, 29th, 31st, 32nd, 34th, and 35th findings, all the evidentiary records supporting the charges are set out one by one, and it is correctly concluded that the form of perpetration applicable to each of them is that of No. 1 of Article 15 of the Penal Code for the first named, having taken part in the execution of the acts immediately and directly, and of No. 2 in relation to the remaining two, as it was demonstrated that they forced or directly induced others to execute them. The same applies in the case of the agents of the National Intelligence Directorate who were part of the so-called Lautaro Brigade, which operated in the barracks located at Calle Simón Bolívar No. 8.630 in the commune of La Reina, in relation to the qualified kidnappings of victims Jaccard Siegler and Velásquez Mardones and the qualified homicides of victims Ramírez Herrera, Stoulman Bortnik, and Pessa Mois, that is, the convicted Valdebenito Araya, Morales Salgado, Oyarce Riquelme, and Ojeda Obando; and the convicted Calderón Carreño, Riveros Valderrama, Chaigneau Sepúlveda, and Escobar Fuentes in these same crimes and also in the qualified homicides of victims Soto Gálvez and Correa Arce. The 37th, 39th, 44th, and 54th findings, regarding the first four, and the 42nd, 47th, 50th, and 52nd motives, in relation to the latter four, provide a detailed account of the records according to which it is possible to conclude with certainty that at the time of the events, these defendants were part, as operational agents, of the brigade of the National Intelligence Directorate that carried out the kidnapping of Communist Party militants, among whose members were the people just named, such that, although some of them did not remember their specific names, it is indisputable to conclude, just as the a quo does, that they took part in their illegitimate deprivation of liberty, in some cases, and their homicide, in others, whether immediately and directly, or by forcing or directly inducing others to execute these acts, in the manner provided for in the aforementioned Nos. 1 and 2 of the cited Article 15 and that, therefore, they are punishable co-perpetrators of these crimes. In turn, the defendants Godoy García and Krassnoff Martchenko, agents of the National Intelligence Directorate assigned to the so-called Terranova Barracks or Villa Grimaldi and convicted for the qualified kidnapping of the victim Jorge Isaac Fuentes Alarcón, are also perpetrators in the terms of No. 1 of the same Article 15, as heads of operational groups—Tucán and Halcón, respectively—tasked with the dismantling of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) through the kidnapping and homicide of its members, one of whom was the aforementioned Fuentes Alarcón, who, as stated, was illegitimately deprived of liberty in the town of Enramada in the Republic of Paraguay and transferred first to Cuatro Álamos and then to Villa Grimaldi, the latter place being where, according to numerous pieces of evidence outlined in the first-instance ruling, he was interrogated and subjected to torture to obtain information about the organization in which he was a militant, activities in which the heads of the aforementioned operational groups evidently had to participate, and which abundant evidence also indicates they directed. In these capacities as direct interrogators or indirect custodians of a person who, after being kidnapped, was kept deprived of liberty in Villa Grimaldi, it cannot but be concluded that, as in the previous cases, although they did not remember the specific name of the victim Jorge Isaac Fuentes Alarcón, the defendants Godoy García and Krassnoff Martchenko took part in his kidnapping immediately and directly in the manner provided for in No. 1 of Article 15 of the Penal Code. It should be specified that according to this rule, in what is of interest, those who take part in the execution of the act immediately and directly are precisely considered perpetrators; and the truth is that in the case of the crime of kidnapping, the execution of the typical conduct is not exhausted with the act of—to put it one way—the material or physical "apprehension" of the kidnapped person, but continues to be executed, and therefore the crime is in the process of consummation as long as the illegitimate confinement or illegitimate deprivation of liberty lasts. Consequently, those who perform acts that allow that state to be perpetuated are strictly executing the conduct described by the type, regardless of the prior agreement that may or may not have mediated with other participants. In other words, their acts are not of simple facilitation of means for the execution or mere presence without taking direct part in it (in which case the determination of the eventual prior agreement would be relevant to qualify the intervention as perpetration or complicity, according to what is provided by Articles 15 No. 3 and 16 of the Penal Code), but are executive acts proper to perpetration. For the same reason, the one who forces or induces another to execute any of these acts is evidently a mediate perpetrator in the terms of No. 2 of Article 15 and his conduct, therefore, is also punishable. Under such conditions, it is agreed with the first-instance judge when he concludes that those who were accused as executing co-perpetrators of the crime of qualified kidnapping or as mediate co-perpetrators of the same effectively hold such status, since the conduct displayed by each of them, as was proven, satisfies the requirements of the type of Article 141 of the Penal Code, in relation to the first part of No. 1 of Article 15 of the same legal body and of No. 2 of that precept." Civil reparations In the civil aspect, the amounts of the indemnifications for some of the victims' relatives were modified, and two new reparatory measures requested by the spouse of Alexei Jaccard Siegler were accepted: ordering the Treasury to allocate the sum of $15,000,000 so that, through the Ministry of Education, books on the subject of Human Rights may be acquired, which must be delivered equitably to all public schools in the commune of Chiguayante, and that a plaque be installed in a visible place in the libraries of each of them informing of the fact that such books exist and that they were delivered in memory of Alexei Jaccard Siegler, a victim of human rights violations during the military dictatorship. In addition, the Treasury of Chile must deliver $75,000,000 to the University of Concepción so that it may institute the "Alexei Jaccard Siegler" award, which will be granted annually to a regular student of that institution who develops research on the subject of Human Rights in the context of their studies at the University of Concepción, and which will amount to the equivalent in pesos of 100 Unidades de Fomento (UF), with the University itself having to regulate the requirements, conditions, and terms of the work. The facts In the investigation stage, Justice Mario Carroza established: -That as a result of the events that took place in the country on September 11, 1973, the Military Government formally instituted on November 25, 1975, in a meeting held in the city of Santiago, Chile, a plan for the coordination of actions and mutual support between the leaders of the intelligence services of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Chile, intended to destabilize opponents of the regimes assumed by the Armed Forces and Order; -That this link generated, in a state-led and immediate manner, a reality that had already been forged in concrete actions between the aforementioned countries, that is, surveillance, arrests, interrogations under torture, transfer between countries, and the disappearance or execution of persons opposed to the de facto instituted governments; -The previous scenario would have allowed cases such as those indicated below to be consummated: -That on May 17, 1975, Jorge Isaac Fuentes Alarcón, a militant of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), was arrested in the Republic of Paraguay, in the town of Enramada, and then transferred to the city of Asunción, where he remained deprived of liberty until September 23, 1975, when his clandestine transfer to Chile by air was decided by DINA agents, who, once in the country, took him to the secret detention and torture facilities maintained by this organization, that is, Cuatro Álamos and Villa Grimaldi. It is in this latter place where Fuentes remained a prisoner and deprived of liberty for the longest time, received cruel treatment from his captors, was interrogated under torture, and was kept in inhumane conditions until probably January 17, 1976, when other prisoners saw him for the last time, his whereabouts remaining unknown to this day; -That, in turn, on July 2, 1976, in the city of La Paz, Republic of Bolivia, the Chilean citizen Julio del Tránsito Valladares Caroca, a militant of the Socialist Party, was arrested by the Directorate of Political Order, the security agency of that country at the time. In the aforementioned condition, he remained detained until November 13, 1976, the date on which he was handed over to DINA agents in the border town of Charaña, who transferred him to our country and took him to the "Cuatro Álamos" Prisoner Camp, which was located on Calle Canadá at the height of 3.000 Vicuña Mackenna, remaining under the custody of its agents, a place where, according to witnesses, he remained locked up and incommunicado, and where he was seen alive for the last time at the end of November 1976; -That on the other hand, on April 3, 1976, in the city of Mendoza, Argentine Republic, three Chilean citizens were arrested: Juan Humberto Hernández Zazpe, Manuel Jesús Tamayo Martínez, and Luis Gonzalo Muñoz Velásquez, socialist militants, who were transferred clandestinely by land to Chile and placed at the disposal of the agents of the National Intelligence Directorate, who took them to the Villa Grimaldi Barracks, located at Avenida José Arrieta No. 8.200 in Santiago, as has already been said, a political prisoner camp that belonged to the aforementioned intelligence organization; in that place they were locked up, interrogated, and tortured, and they were seen alive for the last time at the end of April 1976, their whereabouts remaining unknown to date; -That finally, in an episode that occurred in 1977, militants of the Communist Party, whose external organic leadership had decided on the need to channel external financial aid to the Party in Chile, asked one of them to travel from Switzerland—Alexei Vladimir Jaccard Siegler—to Chile, with a prior layover in Buenos Aires, to meet with another militant who was to travel from Russia—Ricardo Ignacio Ramírez Herrera—and for both to also contact the militant who resided in that city—Héctor Heraldo Velásquez Mardones. This meeting could not take place because the three were arrested by the Argentine Federal Police on May 16, 1977, without legal basis, and deprived of liberty to be handed over to the agents of the National Intelligence Directorate, who transferred them to Santiago de Chile, where they were locked up in the Simón Bolívar Barracks, located on the street of the same name, No. 8.630, were interrogated under torture, and on an undetermined date disappeared. The search continues to this day as it has not been possible to find the victims Jaccard and Velásquez, who have no recorded exits or entries, nor are their deaths documented, but part of the remains of their companion in misfortune, Ricardo Ignacio Ramírez Herrera, has been found in Chile, in the sector known as "Cuesta Barriga," as well as those belonging to the married couple Jacobo Stoulman Bortnik and Matilde Pessa Mois, who traveled to Buenos Aires to finalize the dispatch of the money to our country, but were arrested beforehand—on May 29, 1977—at Ezeiza Airport, at the moment they were getting off the plane that brought them from Chile, with all traces of them being lost from that moment on, until the aforementioned certain evidence of both having been buried in the aforementioned place; -In this operation, Communist Party militants who were in Chile and served as liaisons in this operation also participated, but when the ruse was discovered, they were executed: Hernán Soto Gálvez on an undetermined date between June 7 and November 10, 1977, and Ruiter Enrique Correa Arce on May 28 of that same year; -The analysis of the records outlined in the preceding paragraphs makes evident the noted cooperation and coordination of the intelligence services in concrete cases, where the intelligence agents of our country, in these cases, colluding with those of Argentina, Paraguay, and Bolivia, not only concerted the arrest of the victims, but also created the conditions to lock them up and transfer them to our country, with the sinister purpose of confining them in clandestine facilities to interrogate them, torture them, and then proceed with extreme cruelty to eliminate them.

Source: pjud.cl 7/25/2022

Date: 07-25-2022

Operation Condor: 20 former DINA agents sentenced, including Gladys Calderón, alias "The Cyanide Angel"

Calderón Carreño completed a nursing course in 1972 and was assigned in September 1973 to the Tejas Verdes prison camp. She was part of the DINA from its inception, where she served at the sinister Clínica Santa Lucia, which was a center for political imprisonment and torture located in downtown Santiago.

The minister presiding over human rights violation cases at the Santiago Court of Appeals, Mario Carroza, sentenced 20 former members of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) this Friday for their responsibility in the crimes of kidnapping and aggravated homicide of victims of the coordinated action of South American intelligence services in the 1970s, known as Operation Condor.

Among those sentenced is Gladys de las Mercedes Calderón Carreño, who must serve 10 years and one day in prison as the perpetrator of the repeated crimes of aggravated kidnapping of Alexei Vladimir Jaccard Siegler and Héctor Heraldo Velásquez Mardones; and as the perpetrator of the aggravated homicides of Ricardo Ignacio Ramírez Herrera, Jacobo Stoulman Bortnik, Matilde Pessa Mois, Hernán Soto Gálvez, and Ruiter Enrique Correa Arce.

According to the website www.memoriaviva.com, the Army officer, who completed a nursing course in 1972, was assigned in September 1973 to the Tejas Verdes prison camp, which operated inside the No. 2 Engineer Regiment, commanded by then-Army Colonel Manuel "Mamo" Contreras Sepúlveda.

At that location, she worked under the orders of physician Vitorio Orvieto Tiplizki, supposedly for the "care of the prisoners."

"The Cyanide Angel," as Calderón was known, was part of the DINA from its inception, being integrated into the Health department of this organization and initially performing duties at the Clínica Santa Lucia, which was a torture center under medical control located at Santa Lucia 162.

It is also presumed that she is directly involved in the death of former DINA agent Manuel Jesús Leyton, who died in March 1977 due to the application of torture and sarin gas, a case for which Gladys Calderón Carreño has also been prosecuted.

Gladys Calderón Carreño also served as an operative agent, and her participation alongside Elisa del Carmen Magna Astudillo has been proven in the "Calle Conferencia" operation (the "Ratonera") and in the detention of the top leader of the Communist Party (PC), Víctor Manuel Díaz López, in May 1976 in Las Condes.

The Sentenced

In the ruling, Minister Carroza also sentenced agents Cristoph Georg Willeke Floel and Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann to 17 years of effective prison time as perpetrators of the repeated crime of aggravated kidnapping of: Jorge Isaac Fuentes Alarcón, Julio del Tránsito Valladares Caroca, Juan Humberto Hernández Zazpe, Manuel Jesús Tamayo Martínez, Luis Gonzalo Muñoz Velásquez, Alexei Vladimir Jaccard Siegler, and Héctor Heraldo Velásquez Mardones; and as perpetrators of the crime of aggravated homicide of: Ricardo Ignacio Ramírez Herrera, Jacobo Stoulman Bortnik, Matilde Pessa Mois, Hernán Soto Gálvez, and Ruiter Enrique Correa Arce.

Regarding civil matters, the presiding minister accepted the claims filed by the victims' relatives, ordering the State of Chile to pay compensation for moral damages ranging from $20,000,000 to $90,000,000 (twenty to ninety million pesos). Likewise, he accepted a series of reparation measures requested by the relatives of Jaccard Siegler.

Source: elmostrador.cl 21/9/2018

Date: 21-09-2018

HUMANITARIAN ORGANIZATIONS CRITICIZE GOVERNMENT POLICY ON HUMAN RIGHTS

The President of the Association of Relatives of Forcibly Disappeared Detainees (AFDD), Lorena Pizarro, urged today at the Memorial for the Forcibly Disappeared at the General Cemetery that "authorities must, once and for all, stop ignoring the issue of state terrorism and human rights violations."

She spoke these words during the ceremony for the transfer of the remains of communist militant Ricardo Ramírez Herrera to the Memorial for the Forcibly Disappeared.

"We do not want more words that are a mere public commitment. We do not want them to say it is an important issue for them while in practice they continue to ignore it, like when on May 21 the Navy comes out with medals commemorating September 11 and says nothing," she said, demanding that the "Government, once and for all, advance in truth and justice and end this shameful impunity," during the tribute to Ricardo Ramírez Herrera.

The victim, whose remains were transferred to the memorial, was detained in 1977 in Buenos Aires by intelligence agencies from Chile and Argentina, transferred to Chile within the framework of Operation Condor, murdered at the Simón Bolívar Barracks, then illegally buried in Cuesta Barriga, and subsequently, in the so-called "Operation Television Removal" (Operación Retiro de Televisores), his body was made to disappear.

Ramírez was in charge of the organization and finances of the PC in Buenos Aires, resources that were sent to Chile.

The Legal Medical Service identified the remains of two vertebrae, which were handed over this Saturday to his relatives, who held a wake at the house that was his home in the Ñuñoa commune, before transferring him to the General Cemetery.

In that context, Lorena Pizarro demanded that the Judiciary "also begin to judge civilians responsible for the coup, at least all those who held positions as ministers and undersecretaries, accomplices to the genocide."

She requested that judges stop "always repeating the same names of the agents; it was not 70 criminals who sustained state terrorism for 17 years. We want them to go to common prisons, to start receiving sentences commensurate with the crime."

She also asked that "the Armed Forces and the Carabineros de Chile begin, once and for all, to be purged (...) and we want projects to be sent to Parliament with utmost urgency, and for all initiatives that prevent impunity and ensure truth and justice to be approved."

"We no longer accept this lack of political will that sometimes resembles cowardice. We do not accept it anymore because the struggle of our forcibly disappeared companions is immense," she stated.

The ceremony was attended by the President of the Communist Party, Guillermo Teillier, who later pointed out in statements to www.villagrimaldi.cl that "not only the Government, but the entire Chilean society is in debt (...) As a Communist Party, we have spoken on repeated occasions with representatives of the Executive to request a more decisive stance regarding the issue.

We believe there is still much to be done; there are many truths that are hidden somewhere, there are explanations that the Armed Forces owe, that the civilians who participated owe."

He also referred to the demands of the former political prisoners who remained on a hunger strike for more than 45 days. "We have supported their requests in every way we could; we share them absolutely, and it seems to us that the reparations that have been given to former prisoners and the tortured are below what a dignified reparation should be.

These are people who have suffered everything. I know it from the inside; I was intensely tortured. I know everything one loses as a person; afterward, it is very difficult to recover, and there are some who have never recovered."

The coffin with the remains of Ricardo Ramírez Herrera was received at the entrance to the memorial with red rose petals by a group of children from the family.

The funeral ceremony was attended by the rector of the University of Chile, Ennio Vivaldi, who expressed heartfelt words in tribute to the former student of the "Casa de Bello." Also present were the Minister of the National Women's Service, Claudia Pascual; the Director of the Legal Medical Institute, Patricio Bustos; the mayor of Recoleta, Daniel Jadué; the National Human Rights Prize winner, Viviana Díaz; former minister Paulina Veloso; Carmen Hertz; María Luisa Ortiz of the Museum of Memory and Human Rights; and the lawyer for the Human Rights Program of the Ministry of the Interior, Hugo Pávez. During the event, a greeting from the board of directors and the workers of the Villa Grimaldi Peace Park Corporation was read.

Letters from the victim, sent while he was abroad after being forced to flee in 1976, were read. The "Cueca Sola" was danced, an emblematic theme of the Association of Relatives of Forcibly Disappeared Detainees, which began to be danced during the dictatorship to symbolize the absence of their loved ones.

With emotion, his family, his former party comrades, and friends finally accompanied the coffin to leave it at the Memorial for the Forcibly Disappeared, while the Communist International was played.

Source: cronicadigital.cl 6/7/2015

Date: 06-07-2015

Operation Condor: Remains of three forcibly disappeared victims kidnapped in Argentina found in Chile (excerpt)

Ricardo Ignacio Ramírez Herrera, Jacobo Stoulman Bortnick, and the latter's wife, Matilde Pessa Mois: all three were on the list of 25 people about whom Judge Juan Guzmán asked General (ret.) Augusto Pinochet on Saturday, September 25, 2004.

It had been only two months since the Santiago Court of Appeals had stripped the former dictator of his immunity for his responsibility in Operation Condor, an international plan of cooperation and joint action implemented in the 70s and 80s by the dictatorial regimes of the Southern Cone to identify, monitor, capture, kidnap, torture, eliminate, and make disappear political opponents, the so-called "subversives." It was in the context of that judicial investigation that Guzmán was interrogating Pinochet.

The minutes of that statement, which lasted barely 25 minutes and which El Mercurio published three days later, show that Pinochet claimed to remember nothing of that plan, that it was a matter of intelligence, and therefore, of mid-level commanders, and that "neither Condor nor anything like that was my problem."

Regarding the dead and disappeared left by that extermination plan, he stated:

-I was President, they were not going to inform me of small things.

Guzmán asked him again

"Did you give orders related to the detention, interrogation, torture, transfer, or forced disappearance of the following people?" and he read one by one the 25 names from a list of Chilean victims of Operation Condor.

There were Ricardo Ramírez and the Stoulman-Pessa couple. The first was a communist and was in charge of the organization and finances of the party in the underground. The other two had no political affiliation, but were supposedly part of a plan to bring funds into the country for the opposition to the dictatorship.

All three were detained in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on different dates in May 1977. Ramírez fell first, kidnapped on the 16th along with two other Chileans and five Argentines. Thirteen days later, on the 29th, Jacobo Stoulman and Matilde Pessa arrived in that city and were detained as soon as they got off the plane.

They simply vanished: all three were made to disappear. Regarding them, Pinochet said: -I was at the top. I did not give orders related to the mentioned people. I do not know any of those people about whom I am being asked.

Time passed. Pinochet died in December 2006, in his home and without a conviction. Regarding the disappeared, there were versions about their fate, but no news. Although that changed just a few weeks ago.

On May 18, 2015, 38 years after Ramírez disappeared in Argentina, Valentina, his daughter, received a call from the office of the Court of Appeals minister, Mario Carroza. Her father had been identified.

Or at least, what remained of him. These were small bone fragments that were found in 2001 in Cuesta Barriga, in Talagante. In the same grave were also parts of the remains of Jacobo Stoulman and Matilde Pessa. Their daughters also received the call from Carroza.

-They didn't tell us anything over the phone, but they summoned us to the minister's office. I was with my two sisters when he gave us the news: "You will be able to bury your parents," Judge Carroza told us. We looked at each other and didn't know what to say. We were left speechless –says Alejandra Stoulman, who was 15 years old when her parents disappeared.

The identification of Ramírez and the Stoulman-Pessas is key to proving the veracity of the macabre account that three DINA agents who operated at the Simón Bolívar barracks in La Reina gave to the justice system in 2007.

Before the latter spoke, at least regarding Ramírez and the other two people who were kidnapped with him on Monday, May 16, 1977, the version provided by the head of the dictatorship's repressive organ, General (ret.) Manuel Contreras, was that they had been arrested by Argentine intelligence and that they had made them disappear by throwing their bodies into the Río de La Plata (see report in La Nación).

The agents contradicted their former boss and revealed a completely different story, but one that still ended in death: once kidnapped in Buenos Aires, Ramírez and his two companions were brought to Chile covertly to then end up at the torture center operated by the Lautaro Brigade, one of the most bloodthirsty groups of the DINA.

That they tortured them there and eliminated them with sarin gas. That they buried them in a grave in Peldehue and that two years later, in 1978, they exhumed their bodies with a backhoe and took them to Cuesta Barriga, in the midst of the so-called "Operation Television Removal."

Little was known about the Stoulman-Pessas: only that they had disappeared in Buenos Aires. But the recent and surprising identification of their remains constructs a different narrative: that of a route that brought them back to Chile and that ended with an illegal burial in the same spot as Ramírez and his companions.

At the same time that a chapter begins to close for the families, a completely new one opens for the investigation led by Minister Carroza; one that confirms that there was a transfer and exchange of detainees between the repressive organs of the dictatorships that made up Operation Condor, only to then make them disappear.

THE KIDNAPPING OF THE FINANCIERS

The story of the final days of Ricardo Ramírez Herrera and the couple Jacobo Stoulman and Matilde Pessa starts at the Ezeiza airport, with Alexei Vladimir Jaccard Siegler and his failed trip to Chile. He was a student, 20 years old, and had been in exile in Switzerland since '73.

Although he was Chilean, he also held the nationality of that country. He had married there a year earlier, in 1976, to Paulina Veloso Valenzuela, who much later, already in democracy and during the first government of Michelle Bachelet, would become Minister Secretary General of the Presidency and then a member of the State Defense Council (CDE).

Jaccard was a militant in the Communist Party (PC) and had an important and dangerous mission in those days: to fly from Switzerland to Santiago with US$ 20,000 in cash in a briefcase that he had to deliver to the party leaders.

Since there were no direct flights, he had to pass through Buenos Aires and coordinate the rest of the trip there. He landed on Sunday, May 15, 1977. It was with his arrival that the joint operation of the DINA with the Argentine Federal Police was activated.

19 people would fall during those days into the clutches of Operation Condor on both sides of the Andes Mountains. Seven Chileans, twelve Argentines. There were only three survivors.

The agents did not strike immediately, but let Jaccard act. His contacts in Argentina were two other Chileans: Ricardo Ramírez, who had recently arrived from Hungary to take charge of the organization and finances of the PC in Buenos Aires, and fellow communist Héctor Velásquez Mardones.

They also had the support of a group of Argentines who were members of the Committee of Solidarity with Chile in Argentina. All their steps were monitored.

One day later, on Monday, May 16, the entire plan to finance the PC fell apart. The three Chileans were ambushed by the Federal Police on the busy Avenida 9 de Julio, outside the downtown Hotel Bristol in Buenos Aires. That same day, five of their Argentine collaborators were kidnapped. All eight disappeared. The money as well.

Since Jaccard was also Swiss, that country's embassy in Argentina requested the opening of an investigation to find the whereabouts of its disappeared citizen. Then came another stage of the Condor operation: the setup.

A report published in Infojus points out that the Argentine police informed the justice system that Jaccard's trip to Chile did take place and that on May 26, 1977, twelve days after his kidnapping, he crossed the mountains on flight No. 630 of the Varig company, with an Argentine passport.

For its part, the International Police of Chile provided reports on alleged trips that Ricardo Ramírez would have made between 1977 and 1983. But it was all a lie. A deception that the DINA and the Pinochet dictatorship had already carried out previously with the victims of the so-called "Operation Colombo," by making 119 Chileans executed and made to disappear in Chile appear as "murdered by their own comrades abroad."

The background information collected by the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation to prepare the Rettig Report in 1992 allowed for the creation of a first roadmap of what really happened to Jaccard, Ramírez, Velásquez, and their Argentine associates.

After their detention outside the hotel, they were allegedly taken to a Federal Police facility and then to the Navy Mechanics School, the ESMA, which at that time was one of the largest and most active clandestine centers for detention, torture, and extermination in Argentina and all of South America. At least 5,000 people were taken to that Buenos Aires facility to then be made to disappear.

The report says: "In light of this and other background information, it was established that subsequent to the triple detention in Buenos Aires of the Chilean communist militants, the Chilean and Argentine security agencies deployed an arsenal of false documents and information to cover for each other in the face of pressure from the Swiss Government, which insisted on knowing what had happened to a national in transit."

The repressors had not yet neutralized the entire PC financing network. Ruiter Correa Arce was a 61-year-old communist who had a wife, three children, and a newspaper kiosk in Santiago that served as a mailbox for the exchange between the external and internal leadership of the party.

This is also stated in the Rettig Report. He had allegedly participated in the coordination of the plan to bring the money into the country. On May 27, '77, twelve days after the kidnapping of Jaccard, Ramírez, and Velásquez in Argentina, Ruiter Correa vanished while he was going to have lunch. His corpse appeared the following day in the bed of the Mapocho River.

On the DINA's list, there were only two people left to eliminate: Hernán Soto Gálvez, the "financial liaison" of the PC between Argentina and Chile, and the businessman of Jewish origin Jacobo Stoulman Bortnick.

Soto was an easy target, and this became evident when they kidnapped him in San Miguel at the beginning of June of that year and made him disappear. Nothing more was known about him until he was identified in 2012 among the remains found in Cuesta Barriga.

With Stoulman, it was different: through his company Cambios Andes, he had become a prominent businessman in Santiago, especially in the circuit of Jewish investors. Making him disappear in Chile was risky. Doing it in Argentina, when he traveled with his wife, was the option. (excerpt)

Source: ciperchile.cl 16/6/2015 (excerpt)

Date: 16-06-2015

SML handed over remains of forcibly disappeared victim kidnapped in Argentina in 1977

This morning, the remains of Ricardo Ignacio Ramírez Herrera, a communist militant who was detained in Buenos Aires and made to disappear within the framework of Operation Condor in 1977, were handed over at the Legal Medical Service.

Outside the institution, relatives and some party comrades gathered, who emotionally sang the Communist International to reunite with their loved one. "Who would have imagined this moment if so much time has already passed," his loved ones commented. It was 38 years of waiting that concluded today amidst applause and hugs in memory of those who are not here.

"Comrade Ricardo Ramírez, present!" they proclaimed, while a dozen red flags accompanied the small coffin to the hearse.

His remains will be held at the family home until Sunday, the day his funeral will be held next to the Memorial for the Forcibly Disappeared at the General Cemetery around noon.

IDENTIFICATION

In mid-June, as detailed in a Ciper report, the remains of Ricardo Ramírez were identified through small bone fragments that were examined at the SML, along with two other forcibly disappeared victims who had been kidnapped in Argentina.

The deputy director of the Legal Medical Service, Dr. David Montoya, commented that the institution does very close work with the families of the forcibly disappeared, a support that strengthens the bond to face together the difficult situation they are living through.

"It is an enormously emotional and moving situation. It is what it means to face the final certainty that the person is dead," he points out.

"We will always be open to receiving these cases as they are found," he declares, considering that there are thousands of cases that still await justice and truth from the State and from those who possess information about the whereabouts of their relatives.

Source: eldesconcierto.cl 3/7/2015

Chile: Remains of disappeared victim of military dictatorship buried

The remains of Ramírez, a member of the Communist Party who disappeared on May 16, 1977, in Argentina within the framework of Operation Condor, were buried on Sunday at the General Cemetery of Santiago by his relatives and relatives of other disappeared victims, led by his daughter Valentina, in an emotional ceremony that laid bare the wounds that still bleed in Chile.

The country was immersed on Sunday in the euphoric celebrations of the national soccer team's first major trophy, the Copa América. But there was no lack of those who remembered, as player Jean Beausejour did, that in that same stadium where Chile defeated Argentina on Saturday in the final, militants and opponents of Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship (1973-1990) were kidnapped, detained, imprisoned, and tortured.

"In a place where there was so much sadness and death, today we gave Chile a joy," declared Beausejour, who admitted to having prayed for the disappeared shortly before taking the field at the National Stadium.

The collective of relatives of the disappeared, which still fights to rescue the social and political memory that the country sometimes seems to want to forget, met on Sunday at noon, amidst silence, in an intimate ceremony to commemorate them all, but especially Ramírez, from whom two of his emotional letters written from exile were read.

Ramírez, in charge of the finances of the Communist Party of Chile in the underground in Argentina, was kidnapped along with four other comrades from the same party and five Argentines from the Committee of Solidarity with Chile as part of Operation Condor, a joint device of the dictatorships of Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Bolivia to persecute and make disappear opponents—mostly left-wing militants.

In total, 66 Chileans were detained, kidnapped, and made to disappear in Argentina within the framework of this operation, according to official data.

The remains of Ramírez, who was 40 years old when he disappeared, were found in Cuesta Barriga, Chile, in 2001 and analyzed by the country's Legal Medical Service (SML).

On Friday, the SML handed over to his family the part of a vertebra, the only available remnant identified as belonging to Ramírez, in an act in which The Associated Press was present and in which anxiety and sadness were palpable, since everything points to his death having been violent.

It is also believed that he was transferred from Argentina to be tortured and murdered in Chile. The remains found in Cuesta Barriga confirm the transfer and exchange of detainees by the Chilean National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) and its Argentine equivalent, SIDE, to eliminate dissidents.

"For us, this is the closing of the circle of an enigma for which Ramírez's widow, Edna Canales, fought for a long time, in her tireless search for the truth of what had happened to her husband, where he was, who had captured him," explains David Canales, Edna's brother and Ricardo Ramírez's brother-in-law, to the AP.

"For me, it is a satisfaction to know that the majority of my family feels better about finding closure to this, but personally, if you ask me, I will continue fighting for the restitution of Truth and Justice for all the disappeared of the dictatorship," he pointed out when asked about the personal meaning of the ceremony. Canales himself was one of those who fought against the Pinochet regime.

"In Chile, as a State, there is still much to be done to provide reparations; there is oblivion for all the people who suffered imprisonment, torture, exile, physical or emotional wounds that invalidated their lives in some way and who receive, for example, a monthly pension of 70,000 pesos from the State (about 110 USD), that is not a reparation, it does not allow one to survive with dignity," he noted.

The red figures of the dictatorship include 40,018 victims, of which 3,095 are murdered opponents. A thousand remain on the list of disappeared, according to successive official investigations.

Source: americateve.com 5/7/2015

TRIBUTE TO RICARDO IGNACIO RAMÍREZ HERRERA

From Sweden, a tribute of our remembrance for Ricardo Ramirez Herrera. Thanks to everyone who participated. Från Sverige, vår hyllning till Ricardo Ramirez. Tack alla som medverkade i det här.

Source: youtube.com