Two former Carabineros officers who are being prosecuted for the serious crimes of aggravated kidnapping of forcibly disappeared persons demanded that the judges of San Javier and Parral grant them the benefit of permanent dismissal of their cases due to "senile dementia," as both defendants, through their lawyers, presented medical reports indicating that for health reasons they are not in a condition to face trial.

However, the magistrates instructing the criminal proceedings—Eric Sepúlveda in San Javier and Walter Morales as substitute in Parral—flatly refused to grant the requests presented respectively by retired Carabineros officer Rolando Rivera Tuca and the former sub-officer major of the same uniformed institution, Pablo Luarte Valleros, both of whom are currently released on bail.

In the San Javier case, the prosecution of Rivera Tuca refers to the disappearance of Gerardo Antonio Encina Pérez, which occurred on October 2, 1973, when this person was detained by personnel from the Quinta Comisaría de San Javier and transferred to the police unit's cells, with his whereabouts remaining unknown to this date.

For these events, along with Rivera Tuca, retired Army Colonel Claudio Lecaros Carrasco and former sub-officer of the same military institution, José Basilio Muñoz Pozo, are also accused as perpetrators of the same crime.

Even after prosecuting these three former uniformed officers on August 29, 2003, and by order of the Court of Appeals of Talca, Judge Sepúlveda kept them in preventive detention until October of the same year.

On behalf of Rivera Tuca, his lawyer Omar Valdés presented the request for dismissal, citing a medical report revealing that he allegedly suffers from organic senile psychic distortion, consequently demanding that he be excluded from the criminal case.

Faced with the request, the judge of San Javier—with preferential attention to human rights cases—flatly refused, maintaining that the defendant is not classified as mentally insane and that he has the capacity for discernment, a resolution that was appealed and confirmed by the Court of Talca.

The second case under debate corresponds to another proceeding for the aggravated kidnapping of two victims registered in Parral in 1973, where the defendants are Hugo Cardemil, Pablo Coulier, César Hidalgo, and Pablo Luarte Vallejos, all released on bail.

The request regarding Luarte Vallejos is also based on the claim that the retired Carabineros sub-officer major presents advanced cognitive deterioration, visual deficit, hypertension, and "diabetes mellitus," for which dismissal due to senile dementia was requested.

The request was rejected by the substitute judge of Parral, Walter Morales, leading to an appeal that is pending in the Court of Talca. In this voluminous case, there is evidence that Cardemil, Coulier, and Hidalgo were sentenced last January to prison terms ranging from 17 to 7 years by the presiding minister of the Court of Appeals of Santiago, Alejandro Solís, also in cases of forcibly disappeared persons.

Source: June 24, 2004, Diario El Centro