The decision by the highest court applies to, among others, former Army officer Raúl Iturriaga Neumann and rejected the application of benefits such as the "half-prescription" (statute of limitations reduction) because these are crimes against humanity.

In a unanimous ruling, the Second Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court confirmed the conviction of three former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their responsibility in the crimes of aggravated kidnapping and the application of torture involving sexual violence, as crimes against humanity, perpetrated against six female and four male detainees at the clandestine center known as “Venda Sexy,” located in the Macul commune, between September and December 1974.

Justices Haroldo Brito, Jorge Dahm, María Teresa Letelier, Eliana Quezada, and lawyer (ad hoc) Gonzalo Ruz, after rejecting the appeal in cassation filed by the defense of two of the convicted, confirmed the sentence issued by the Santiago Court of Appeals.

The decision applied to agents Manuel Rivas Díaz, Hugo Hernández Valle, and Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, sentencing them to 15 years and one day in prison, plus accessory penalties, as perpetrators of the crimes of aggravated kidnapping and the application of torture involving sexual violence committed against victims Cristina Verónica Godoy Hinojosa, Laura Ramsay Acosta, Beatriz Constanza Bataszew Contreras, Sara Gabriela de Witt Jorquera, Carmen Alejandra Holzapfel Picarte, and Clivia Marfa Sotomayor Torres; and for the crimes of aggravated kidnapping and the application of torture perpetrated against Agustín Julio Holgado Bloch, Luis Rodolfo Ahumada Carvajal, Eugenio Ambrosio Alarcón García, and Luis Humberto Bernal Venegas.

The highest court, in its decision, rejected the application of the "half-prescription" figure to reduce the sentences of the convicted, as these are crimes against humanity.

Plaintiff lawyer Francisco Ugás Tapia, legal coordinator of the Caucoto Abogados law firm, stated that “this Supreme Court ruling allows for the closing of this long and complex path for truth and justice, which those who suffered these terrible crimes have traversed with enormous strength.

Unfortunately, biological impunity has prevented us from having more convicted criminals who participated in these acts.”

Ugás specified that “I highlight and positively value that this ruling reiterates this relevant jurisprudence established by the Supreme Court regarding the inapplicability of gradual prescription or half-prescription in cases related to crimes against humanity.”

Furthermore, the jurist noted that “in this case, the Judiciary considered, in its reasoning and decision, a gender perspective, which is observed, for example, in the description of the acts constituting torture as sexual violence, in the disvalue assigned to them, and in the criminal sanction imposed on those responsible, which is expressed in the final first-instance ruling by Minister Mario Carroza, which was confirmed by the Santiago Court of Appeals and subsequently validated by the Supreme Court through the final judgment we know today,” he noted.

For her part, Carmen Alejandra Holzapfel, one of the victims, detained by DINA agents on December 11, 1973, and subjected to torture and sexual violence in prison, said she received “with moderate joy the news of the Supreme Court ruling, in which the resolution of the Court of Appeals is confirmed and it is validated that we were subjected to sexual torture in the center for kidnapping, torture, and extermination called by the perpetrators ‘Venda Sexy’.”

Holzapfel highlighted, however, that “the sentences of 15 years for Raúl Iturriaga Neumann, Manuel Rivas Díaz, and Hugo Hernández Valle are ratified, rejecting the appeals filed by Rivas and Hernández, both torturers from the Investigative Police.”

She added that “as we reach 50 years since the coup d'état, despite the denialism and the enormous number of comrades who have not received justice or reparation, we have still not managed to get the repressive forces and civilian officials of the dictatorship to provide information regarding the fate of our beloved comrades.”

Source: radio.uchile.cl, August 22, 2023

The tragic story of former national cycling team members Sergio Tormen Méndez and Luis Guajardo Zamorano, both forcibly disappeared, is linked to the priest Vicente Irarrázaval.

The priest was able to save Guajardo from disappearing at the hands of the DINA and ended up allowing his recapture at the San Juan de Dios Hospital emergency ward. The priest had taken Guajardo there, wounded after he managed to escape from a DINA vehicle and threw himself under the wheels of a truck. The encounter between the priest and the wounded Guajardo was coincidental.

Yesterday, for the first time, part of the leadership of the former DINA was prosecuted for the disappearance of two Chilean athletes, Tormen and Guajardo, the former having also been a national cycling champion. Both were kidnapped on July 20, 1974, at the Tormen-Méndez family bicycle repair shop on Calle San Dionisio.

Special judge Daniel Calvo considered the participation as perpetrators of kidnapping proven for the former head of the DINA, General (Ret.) Manuel Contreras, Colonel (Ret.) Marcelo Moren Brito, former civilian agent Osvaldo Romo, and retired detective Manuel Rivas Díaz.

The athletes disappeared from the clandestine DINA facility at Calle Londres 38. At the time, Moren was the head of the house, Romo participated in the detentions, and Rivas in the interrogations.

According to plaintiff lawyer Nelson Caucoto, “the facts are so well proven that it will be very difficult for the accused to overturn their indictment.”

Caucoto highlighted the participation of Father Irarrázaval as someone who could have saved at least Guajardo from his tragic fate if, once free from his captors after fleeing, and despite being wounded by the collision, he had taken him from the emergency ward to another safe place or a private clinic.

He could have thus avoided his second kidnapping at the hands of agents who arrived at the emergency ward hours later to recapture him.

Irarrázaval did not notify any organization to say that Guajardo and Tormen remained prisoners at Londres 38. “Don't worry, ma'am, those who took him are good people,” the priest told Luis Guajardo's mother, Eliana Zamorano, referring to the civilians who recaptured him.

Source: La Nacion, September 10, 2003

Judge Montiglio prosecutes 98 former agents for Operation Colombo victims - The biggest blow to repression

Among the accused, all retired, are eight Army colonels and 23 non-commissioned officers, 40 Carabineros officers and non-commissioned officers, two former FACH (Air Force) agents, one former Navy agent, and seven former Investigative Police agents.

The biggest blow to the repression of Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship was dealt yesterday by Minister Víctor Montiglio, by prosecuting 98 former agents from different branches of the Armed Forces, Carabineros, and the Investigative Police for 42 victims of Operation Colombo.

This is the largest resolution issued among the nearly 400 human rights violation cases currently being investigated in the country. It even surpassed the 67 former agents indicted by the same Judge Montiglio in 2007 for the crimes of the Brigada Lautaro and its "Grupo Delfín" at the Simón Bolívar barracks.

Among those indicted for Colombo are eight Army colonels (Ret.), six of whom had not been prosecuted before in any case. Also declared defendants were 23 Army non-commissioned officers (Ret.), of whom at least 50 percent appear for the first time in these types of cases.

Among these non-commissioned officers is Juvenal Piña, alias "El Elefante," a former agent of the Brigada Lautaro, who was the one who suffocated the clandestine Communist leader (1976) Víctor Díaz with a plastic bag over his head, prior to injecting him with cyanide.

In addition, the magistrate indicted 40 former Carabineros officers and non-commissioned officers, including Ricardo Lawrence, Heriberto Acevedo, Claudio Pacheco, and José Mora, all former members of the same Brigade. Among those prosecuted are also former agents who belonged to the Investigative Police. The only civilian (Army) is Juan Suárez.

Of the total list, at least thirteen are already serving sentences for other cases.

As of the closing of this edition, the accused were still being detained to be interned in various locations, such as the Peñalolén Military Police Battalion.

Among the 42 victims for whom the minister issued his resolution are María Angélica Andreolli, Miguel Acuña Castillo, Juan Carlos Perelmann Ide, Juan Chacón Olivares, Jorge Müller Silva, Luis Guendelmann Wisniak, Mario Calderón Tapia, and Carmen Bueno Cifuentes.

Operation Colombo and the media

The list of the 119 was published in the magazine Lea (Buenos Aires) and the newspaper O Dia (Brazil) in 1975; the information was false. Both publications were created by DINA agents.

Operation Colombo was part of Operation Condor and consisted of a setup by the dictatorship to make the population believe that 119 detainees who were forcibly disappeared had clandestinely left for Argentina and died there in confrontations with police and Army forces during the phase prior to the 1976 military coup in Argentina.

Some of those names appeared as militants "assassinated" in Buenos Aires and its surroundings, with signs on their bodies stating they had been executed by their own comrades due to internal disputes. However, this also turned out to be a setup.

In Chile, the pro-dictatorship press, such as the newspapers El Mercurio, La Tercera, Las Ultimas Noticias, and La Segunda, reproduced the intelligence services' setup. The headline of the evening paper remains in memory: "Exterminated like rats: 59 Chilean MIR members fall in military operation in Argentina." They were part of the list of the 119 disappeared of Colombo.

The former fugitive Raúl Iturriaga, who was one of those in charge of the DINA's foreign department, was the one who first gave clues in Buenos Aires about this operation.

According to former civilian agent Enrique Arancibia Clavel, convicted in Buenos Aires for the crime of General Carlos Prats and his wife, it was Iturriaga who met with him at the beginning of 1975 to ask him to prepare what was necessary because "we have to make some dead bodies appear for Operation Colombo."

It was about preparing the appearance of the supposed bodies of Jaime Robotham and Luis Guendelmann as part of the setup.

Source: La Nación, May 27, 2008

Prison sentences issued for 21 former DINA agents for the disappearance of a PS militant

Magistrate Hernán Crisosto established that the dictatorship's intelligence agents participated as perpetrators of the aggravated kidnapping of Bernardo Castro López, who later appeared on a supposed list of people killed in confrontations in Argentina.

The minister on special visit to the Santiago Court of Appeals designated for human rights violation cases, Hernán Crisosto, issued—on January 6—a sentence in the investigation into the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Bernardo de Castro López, an event that occurred starting September 14, 1974.

In the case, the magistrate sentenced the former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) to 13 years in prison as perpetrators: Juan Manuel Guillermo Contreras Sepúlveda, César Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Gerardo Ernesto Urrich González, Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos, and Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann.

Likewise, Minister Crisosto sentenced the following as perpetrators of aggravated kidnapping to 10 years in prison: Orlando Manzo Durán, Pedro René Alfaro Fernández, Armando Segundo Cofré Correa, Héctor Alfredo Flores Vergara, Enrique Tránsito Gutiérrez Rubilar, Hugo del Tránsito Hernández Valle, Manuel Rivas Díaz, Risiere del Prado Altez España, Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Manuel Heriberto Avendaño González, Alfredo Orlando Moya Tejeda, Alejandro Francisco Astudillo Adonis, Demóstenes Eugenio Cárdenas Saavedra, Hernán Patricio Valenzuela Salas, and Alejandro Francisco Molina Cisternas.

Meanwhile, as accomplices, he sentenced Nelson Eduardo Iturriaga Cortez and José Dorohi Hormazábal Rodríguez to 4 years in prison, without benefits; and acquitted Basclay Zapata Reyes.

THE RULING

According to the resolution, Minister Hernán Crisosto considered the following facts proven:

“That on the afternoon of September 14, 1974, Bernardo de Castro López, a militant of the Socialist Party, was detained at his home located at Calle Bilbao No. 1236, in the Providencia commune, being taken to a Chilean Investigative Police barracks where he was interrogated and then handed over to DINA agents, who took him to the clandestine detention facility called 'Venda Sexy,' located at Calle Irán No. 3037, in Santiago, and subsequently he was transferred to the clandestine detention facility called 'Cuatro Álamos,' located at Calle Canadá No. 3000, in the Santiago commune, facilities that were guarded by armed guards and to which only DINA agents had access,” he states in his first point.

In a second point, he notes that “De Castro López, during his stay at the 'Venda Sexy' barracks, remained without contact with the outside, blindfolded and tied up, being continuously subjected to interrogations under torture by DINA agents who operated in said barracks with the purpose of obtaining information regarding members of his political group, to proceed with the detention of the members of that organization, an isolation that continued at the Cuatro Álamos Center.”

“That the last time the victim De Castro López was seen alive by other detainees occurred on an undetermined day in the month of October 1974, remaining disappeared to this date,” in the third point.

In the fourth, that “the name of Bernardo de Castro López appeared on a list of 119 people, published in the national press after it appeared on a list published in the magazine LEA of Argentina, dated July 15, 1975, in which it was reported that Bernardo de Castro López had died in Argentina, along with 59 other people belonging to leftist groups, due to internal disputes that arose between those members; and that the publications that declared the victim De Castro López dead had their origin in disinformation maneuvers carried out by DINA agents abroad.”

As a fifth point, he established that “the facts established in the previous consideration constitute the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Bernardo de Castro López, provided for and sanctioned in Article 141, paragraph 3 of the Penal Code of the time, in relation to the first paragraph of the same article, since the deprivation of liberty or confinement of the victim has lasted for more than 90 days, and therefore produced serious damage to the person of the victim, which finally resulted in his disappearance.”

Source: La Nación, January 8, 2015

He was detained in July 1974 in the commune of Macul. Numerous witnesses saw him at the Londres 38 torture and extermination center. He is one of the victims of "Operation Colombo." The justice system sentenced 78 former DINA agents for this crime against humanity.

The judge of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Hernán Crisosto, issued a first-instance sentence for the kidnapping and disappearance of Miguel Angel Acuña Castillo.

The magistrate established that the young man, a militant of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), was detained near his home located at Pasaje Talca No. 2033 in the commune of Macul by State agents belonging to the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), among them Osvaldo Romo Mena, alias "el Guatón Romo."

His sister, Rosa Acuña Castillo, stated that her father tried to climb into the back of the covered pickup truck as they were taking him away, but he was struck in the mouth by one of the subjects and fell to the ground.

A week after the kidnapping, Romo went to his home again and told her that her brother was in good condition along with Héctor Garay Hermosilla, who is also forcibly disappeared. Both were members of the Revolutionary Student Front (FER) at the Liceo 7 in Ñuñoa.

Judge Crisosto determined that the DINA agents "transferred him to the clandestine detention center known as 'Yucatán' or 'Londres 38'."

Acuña Castillo belonged to the secondary student structure of the MIR's Military Political Group 3 (GPM3), an organization that grouped militants from the eastern zone of the capital and was led by Agustín Reyes González, whose trail was lost forever at Londres 38.

There, he "remained without contact with the outside world, blindfolded and tied up, being continuously subjected to interrogations under torture by DINA agents," and the last time he was seen alive "occurred on an undetermined day in the month of July or August 1974, remaining disappeared to this date," the first-instance ruling notes.

Laughing at Londres 38 with Héctor Garay Hermosilla

At the "Yucatán" barracks, he was seen by Erika Hennings, who was detained on July 30, 1974. "I can say he was very young, I think they called him 'El Pampa'," she asserted during the proceedings. She heard the detainees' roll call twice a day.

On July 31, 1974, she heard the name Miguel Angel Acuña Castillo, who answered "present." Later, she did not hear him called again. "They took them out of Londres 38, just like other detainees, among whom she remembers María Inés Alvarado," a 21-year-old forcibly disappeared person.

Hugo Chacaltana Silva, detained on May 4, 1974, a former student of the Liceo Manuel de Salas and member of the Revolutionary Student Front (FER), also saw him at Londres 38. He recounted that in the early hours of July 8 to 9, 1974, Miguel Angel Acuña arrived along with Héctor Garay Hermosilla, whom they called "Titín"; he was able to see them through a gap formed between his nose and cheekbones under his blindfold.

Chacaltana noted that he met Castillo in 1971, when both were secondary students. Both coincided in meetings held at the time between members of the FER, the judicial ruling states. He remembers "Miguel Ángel as a young man of great leadership capacity and much physical resistance."

He stopped seeing him on September 11, 1973. He encountered him again at Londres 38. He arrived with Héctor Garay to the same room where he was lying on the floor. "At that moment, I did not address Miguel Ángel"; on the contrary, he pretended to be unaware of his presence. "The next day, when the mattresses on which we detainees lay were removed and replaced by chairs, I sat down and, to one side, I observed that they were still sitting.

It caught his attention that both were talking and laughing, which made him think they were unaware of the magnitude of what awaited them. Miguel Ángel approached him at Londres 38, saying, 'I know you'."

His mother learned at the hair salon that her son was at Londres 38

León Gómez, detained on July 15, 1974, and transferred to Londres 38, saw Miguel Angel along with Héctor Garay, whom he knew. Someone commented to him that "Pampino" was among the detainees, which he corroborated upon hearing him "with his typical jokes that he made to the guards, as if giving the impression that what was happening in the place was of no importance.

Even Titín and Pampino would drive the guards crazy. They were very irreverent."

David Cuevas Sharon, detained on May 4, 1974, also testified to having seen him. "Despite showing signs of mistreatment, 'El Pampino' appeared to have great presence of mind; he was very physically strong." He shared space with him for at least five days.

When Cuevas was released, Acuña Castillo remained a prisoner. His maternal grandmother had a hair salon in Ñuñoa, and one of her clients was Miguel Angel's mother. In a conversation, "she learned of the problem she had with a disappeared son.

Given this, my grandmother had her come to the hair salon, where she met Pampino's mother and told her what she knew about him, specifically the place where he had been imprisoned with him."

Regarding the torments applied to the detainees at Londres 38, including Miguel Angel, Judge Crisosto incorporated statements from Osvaldo Romo, who stated that among other tortures, detainees were subjected to "the dry submarine, which was covering the detainees' breathing with a plastic bag placed over their heads; their eyes would look like 'fried eggs,' and blood would come out of their noses and eardrums.

After the interrogations and duress, the detainees would be exhausted."

Another former agent, Samuel Fuenzalida Devia, specified in this regard that "the general treatment of the prisoners was to keep them blindfolded, they were not allowed to wash, there were no beds for them to sleep on, the food was scarce, and they were subjected to intense interrogations in which electricity was applied, especially to the genitals and breasts.

Another form of torture consisted of keeping the detainees sitting on chairs, tied by their feet and hands, while current was applied with magnets, although common electric current was also applied, which burned those people, a procedure in which many people died."

Eugenio Fieldhouse Chávez maintains that as an official of the Investigative Police, in mid-June 1974, he was assigned to that repressive agency and indicated that the same DINA agents who intervened in the detention and interrogation of the detainees, once the sought-after information was obtained, were the ones in charge of making them disappear, following an order from DINA superiors.

The name of Miguel Ángel Acuña Castillo appeared among the 119 Chileans of Operation Colombo, on a list disseminated in the national press, after appearing in publications that appeared only once in Brazil and Argentina, "which reported that Miguel Ángel Acuña Castillo had died in Argentina, along with 58 other people belonging to the MIR, due to internal disputes."

The sentences

"The publications that declared the victim Acuña Castillo dead had their origin in disinformation maneuvers carried out by DINA agents abroad," determined Judge Crisosto, who sentenced 78 former DINA agents for his disappearance.

The magistrate issued a sentence of 13 years of major imprisonment in its medium degree to Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda; César Manríquez Bravo; Pedro Espinoza; Marcelo Luis Moren Brito; Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko; and Raúl Iturriaga Neumann.

He also sentenced 39 other agents to 10 years of major imprisonment in its minimum degree.

As accomplices to the kidnapping and disappearance of the 19-year-old, he sentenced 33 individuals to 4 years of minor imprisonment in its maximum degree.

Regarding Víctor Manuel De la Cruz San Martín Jiménez, due to having fallen into dementia, the execution of the sentence is suspended, and he must be handed over under custody bail to a family member when appropriate.

Source: Villa Grimaldi.cl, February 3, 2015

Case File 2182-98, Operation Colombo Episode - Washington Cid Urrutia

ONE HUNDRED FIFTY-EIGHTH: That the accused Manuel Rivas Díaz, who regarding this episode testified on pages 1787, 2673, 5278, and 8236, stated that he joined the DINA between June and July 1974, his first assignment being the Londres No. 38 barracks, staying for only two months, and in August of the same year being transferred to Irán con Los Plátanos, and at the end of 1974, he was assigned to Villa Grimaldi, where detainees of diverse political ideas arrived.

His duties at Londres No. 38 were to take statements, including those of Sergio Tormen, and he noted that they were called "the papitos" as a nickname. He indicates that he did not carry out operations such as detentions and raids, never left the barracks, and his boss was Risiere Altez España, who was an inspector of the Investigative Police, and he was a first-class detective; they depended on several brigades, among them those of Miguel Krassnoff, Barriga, Godoy, and a Carabineros lieutenant whom we called "Felipe." The people who interrogated were Altez España, Hernández, and a Carabineros officer with the surname Salazar.

He maintains that he never practiced torture at Londres No. 38 and Villa Grimaldi, but he is aware that torture took place in those facilities, as there was even a metal bed called "the grill"; he only tortured at the Irán con Los Plátanos barracks.

Source: Judiciary, October 29, 2015

Venda Sexy: Former DINA agents sentenced for kidnapping and sexual torment

Regarding the ruling, it confirms the sentence of agents Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, Manuel Rivas Díaz, and Hugo del Tránsito Hernández Valle to 15 years and one day of imprisonment, as authors of the repeated crimes of aggravated kidnapping and application of torments against 10 detainees in the clandestine center known as "Venda Sexy," in the commune of Macul, between 1974 and 1975.

This Friday, the decision of the Sixth Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals was made official, which sentenced four former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their participation in the crimes of aggravated kidnapping and application of torments, and application of torments with sexual violence against 10 detainees in the clandestine center known as "Venda Sexy," in the commune of Macul, between 1974 and 1975.

In this way, the Chamber presided over by Minister María Rosa Kittsteiner and integrated by Minister (S) Paula Merino and Paola Herrera, issued a final second-instance sentence. Consequently, they confirmed what was resolved by Minister Mario Carroza in his sentence of last November, whose ruling set a precedent because, for the first time, a court applied a gender perspective regarding sexual abuse by State agents against female prisoners during the dictatorship.

Regarding the ruling, it confirms the sentence of agents Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, Manuel Rivas Díaz, and Hugo del Tránsito Hernández Valle to 15 years and one day of imprisonment, as authors of the repeated crimes of aggravated kidnapping and application of torments to Agustín Julio Holgado Bloch, Luis Rodolfo Ahumada Carvajal, Eugenio Ambrosio Alarcón García, and Luis Humberto Bernal Venegas.

And for aggravated kidnapping and application of torments with sexual violence to the victims Cristina Verónica Godoy Hinojosa, Laura Ramsay Acosta, Beatriz Constanza Bataszew Contreras, Sara Gabriela de Witt Jorquera, Carmen Alejandra Holzapfel Picarte, and Clivia Marfa Sotomayor Torres.

In parallel, former agent Alejandro Francisco Molina Cisternas was sentenced to two terms of 541 days of imprisonment as an accomplice to the kidnappings of Agustín Julio Holgado Bloch and Luis Rodolfo Ahumada Carvajal, granting him the benefit of supervised release.

Source: eldesconcierto.cl, January 1, 2021

Supreme Court sends 59 former DINA agents to prison for Operation Colombo

Operation Colombo was a major intelligence operation and a communication setup by the DINA, which attempted to make 119 people kidnapped in Chile appear as having been killed abroad.

The Second Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court revoked the sentence that had acquitted more than 60 former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) and sentenced them as responsible for the disappearance of 16 leftist militants, mostly from the MIR, in the process known as Operation Colombo, which in this case was perpetrated between June 17, 1974, and January 6, 1975, during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

The ruling was issued by ministers Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Jorge Dahm, Leopoldo Llanos, María Teresa Letelier, and Diego Simpertigue, who revoked the sentence issued by the Court of Appeals and sentenced former DINA chiefs and officers César Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Miguel Krassnoff, and Raúl Iturriaga Neumann to the penalty of 15 years and one day of major imprisonment in its maximum degree as authors of the crimes of aggravated kidnapping of the victims.

Likewise, the court sentenced 53 former agents to the effective penalty of 10 years and one day of major imprisonment in its medium degree as authors of the same crime, who had previously been acquitted by the capital's appellate court, despite having been sentenced in the first instance as accomplices and authors.

Furthermore, this time all must enter prison, with some of them already in prison for other crimes against humanity.

This is an extensive process that had its first first-instance sentence in 2017 at the hands of Minister Hernán Crisosto Greisse. During the course of the investigation, some agents have died, such as Basclay Zapata, Ciro Torré, Manzo Duran, Ricardo Lawrence, among others.

For Nelson Caucoto, a plaintiff lawyer representing 13 of the 16 victims, this is "a transcendent ruling in Chilean judicial history, since the Supreme Court has restored the sense of justice for crimes of this nature, which had literally been left in an unacceptable situation of impunity.

The highest court has once again rejected the partial statute of limitations and the appeals of the defense of the convicted, and has accepted the appeals of the plaintiffs," he noted.

Source: radio.uchile.cl, March 3, 2023

Chile. A Pinochetist torturer and murderer has gone to hell: Manuel Rivas Díaz has died

A criminal against humanity has passed away. His name was Manuel Rivas Diaz; his death dates to Saturday, March 30, 2024. He was a Commissioner of the PDI, from where he was assigned on a service commission to the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA).

He specialized in torture with the application of electric current at the Clandestine Detention, Torture, and Extermination Centers Londres 38, Villa Grimaldi, and Irán 3037, also known as "Venda Sexy."

His participation is proven in the cases of Operation Colombo—Rodrigo Ugás Morales and Juan Chacon Olivares—as well as Miguel Acuña Castillo and the siblings Nilda and Mario Peña Solari. In 2023, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the crimes of torture and rape by Minister Marianela Cifuentes of the San Miguel Court of Appeals.

The survivors of his torments remember him for his peculiar way of extracting information during the torture sessions; he would ask them to give information to "Papi Rivas," reiterating in a mocking way this nickname he attributed to himself. For many years, he lived without being detected, until the Funa Commission publicly exposed him at his home in the commune of Renca in November 1999.

At that time, his neighbors defended him because he was a neighborhood soccer leader, with no one knowing his criminal record.

He was serving his sentence at home, from where he was transferred to the Carabineros Hospital, where he died surrounded by his family.

Today we leave him exposed for what he was: a criminal, murderer, torturer, and rapist who died almost without paying in prison for his crimes.

Source: resumenlatinoamericano.org, April 1, 2024