Roberto Salomón Chaer Vásquez, single, father of two, a former Sociology student at the Universidad de Concepción and affiliated with the MIR, worked as a Purchasing Manager for the construction company TECSA in Puente Alto. He was detained on September 6, 1974, along with his friend and coworker Héctor González Fernández, by DINA agents, presumably around noon in downtown Santiago.

Both men had gone out that morning to run work-related errands and stopped by Chaer’s home, where they spent time with his wife, Ximena Palacios, before leaving in the direction of the CORVI offices located at the intersection of Alameda and Arturo Prat.

Days later, on September 10, Héctor González’s cousin, Carlos Fernández—a MIR militant and former Economics student at the Universidad de Concepción, like his cousin—was detained at his workplace.

Finally, on the 13th of the same month, Héctor González’s girlfriend, Patricia Fernández Argandoña, also an Economics student at the Universidad de Concepción, was detained at her home in Santiago. She was taken to a secret DINA facility, presumably Villa Grimaldi, according to the descriptions provided.

At this location, she was held alongside her boyfriend, and on the 14th, she was transferred with him, Carlos Fernández, and a woman she did not know to the Cuatro Álamos camp. She remained detained in this facility, which was also under the authority of the DINA, until September 17 of that year, the date on which she was released. This was the last time she saw her boyfriend, Héctor González.

Although González was detained along with Roberto Chaer, Patricia Fernández did not see him either at the interrogation center or at Cuatro Álamos.

No information could be obtained regarding the victim's whereabouts, despite the multiple efforts made by his family members. His father even met with the President of the Court of Appeals, at that time Minister Rubén Galecio, who stated that he could do nothing because the DINA was above all of that.

Subsequently, on July 23, 1975, Chilean press outlets reproduced a news story published abroad that reported the death of 119 Chileans, some in clashes with Argentine security forces and others as a result of internal disputes within the MIR.

This news was brought to the public eye by the Brazilian newspaper O'DIA and the Argentine magazine LEA. Both publications were unknown in their respective countries and were only published once on that occasion, apparently with the sole objective of spreading this falsehood.

Despite the wide publicity given to this news by the military government authorities and the national press, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was forced to inform the Courts of Justice that, after making the relevant inquiries, there was no official record of the deaths of these people, nor any record that they had left the country.

All those who appeared on these lists were people detained by Chilean security services who have been forcibly disappeared ever since. Among these names was that of Roberto Chaer Vásquez.

Nothing further could be learned about the fate of the victim, who remains forcibly disappeared, as do Héctor González Fernández and Carlos Fernández Zapata.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

On September 20, 1974, his wife, Ximena Palacios, filed a complaint with the 4th Criminal Court, case file 106.190, for the alleged disappearance of Roberto Chaer, Héctor González, and Patricia Fernández.

The Investigations police reported that inquiries to locate the victims had yielded no results, after interviewing the complainant—who ratified what was stated in her presentation to the Court—and after having made inquiries with SENDET, in prisons, and in hospital facilities.

The Executive Secretary of SENDET, Colonel Jorge Espinoza, responded to the Court that there was no record of the detention of any of the persons consulted in that Secretariat. It should be noted that by that date, Patricia Fernández had already been released.

After learning of these facts and having his wife ratify the complaint, the Judge closed the summary proceedings and issued a temporary dismissal of the case, as the commission of a crime was not sufficiently justified.

This resolution was revoked by the Santiago Court of Appeals, which returned the case to the summary stage and ordered that Patricia Fernández be summoned to testify.

On April 24, 1975, Patricia Fernández and her mother, María Elisa Argandoña, testified before the Court, both recounting the circumstances of the young woman’s detention, and the former describing her encounter with her boyfriend in the DINA facilities.

Without taking into consideration the new information provided by Patricia Fernández and her mother, the Judge closed the summary proceedings again and decreed a temporary dismissal of the case.

While the file was under review for the dismissal at the Court of Appeals, new information emerged following the publication of the so-called "list of the 119." The Court requested the file from the Court of Appeals and reopened the summary proceedings in order to request a report from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarding what had been published by the press.

On September 9, 1975, Army Major Enrique Cid Coubles, Secretary of Human Rights for that Ministry, responded to the Court that, after making the relevant inquiries, there was no official record that the persons named in the publications had died abroad, nor was there any record that they had left the country.

After receiving this response, the Judge closed the summary proceedings again and temporarily dismissed the case.

On this occasion, the Court Prosecutor, mistakenly considering that the case was only investigating the disappearance of Roberto Chaer, reported favorably on the resolution, which was confirmed by the Court on November 21, 1975.

Source: Corporation report

The Supreme Court confirmed the conviction against former Army officers and leaders of the defunct National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), César Raúl Manríquez Bravo and Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, to a sentence of 15 years in prison as authors of the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Roberto Salomón Chaer Vásquez, Héctor Genaro González Fernández, and Carlos Julio Zapata Fernández, committed in Santiago in September 1974. by Darío Núñez

In a unanimous ruling (case file 129.356-2020), the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed of ministers Haroldo Brito, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Leopoldo Llanos, María Teresa Letelier, and Eliana Quezada—rejected the cassation appeal filed by the defense of the convicted César Manríquez Bravo and upheld the prison sentence he must serve as an author of the crime; the same sentence must be served by Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, whose defense did not appeal, and therefore, it is confirmed.

In the first-instance ruling issued by the visiting judge of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Miguel Vásquez Plaza, in June 2017, he also convicted Ciro Ernesto Torré Sáez, Basclay Humberto Zapata Reyes, and José Orlando Manzo Durán, but these three criminals died during the course of the proceedings.

Regarding the civil aspect, the Second Chamber of the highest court established an error of law in the appealed sentence, issued by the Santiago Court of Appeals, which had unjustifiably reduced the amount of compensation set by the first-instance ruling. Thus, it accepted the cassation appeals filed by the plaintiff and, in a replacement sentence, confirmed the initial resolution.

The victims in this case, Héctor Jenaro González Fernández, Roberto Salomón Chaer Vásquez, and Carlos Julio Fernández Zapata, were militants of the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) since at least 1971 and carried out their party activities while studying at the Universidad de Concepción.

After the military coup, they moved to the city of Santiago at different times, where they continued their ties and militant participation, albeit in a clandestine situation. In that condition, they suffered detention by DINA agents at different times.

On September 6, 1974, Roberto Salomón Chaer Vásquez, 21 years old, and Héctor Genaro González Fernández, 27 years old, were seized. The detention occurred on a public street in downtown Santiago, where they had gone to carry out work tasks entrusted by the construction company where they worked, located in the commune of Puente Alto.

Meanwhile, Carlos Julio Fernández Zapata, 26 years old, was detained on September 10, also at his workplace located on Calle Frontera in the commune of Quinta Normal.

In the first-instance sentence, Judge Vázquez Plaza established that a group of agents belonging to the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), who depended on the Metropolitan Intelligence Brigade (BIM), focused on investigating the activities of people who were part of the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) and those who collaborated with said organization, proceeding to detain members and/or adherents of the aforementioned movement, taking them to secret detention centers maintained by the organization, where they were interrogated under physical duress, and agents would go out with them to tour different places on public streets, with the aim of identifying other members of the MIR.

In this way, after obtaining information from other detainees, they proceeded to detain, respectively, Héctor Jenaro González Fernández, Roberto Salomón Chaer Vásquez, and Carlos Julio Fernández Zapata, who were then taken to the clandestine DINA detention center known as 'José Domingo Cañas' or 'Ollagüe', with the aim of interrogating them under physical duress.

Later, they were taken to the detention center known as 'Cuatro Álamos', where they were seen by other surviving detainees. From this facility, they were taken away, and their whereabouts have been unknown ever since.

Some time later, in July 1975, the name of Roberto Chaer Vásquez was included in the list of 119 people mentioned in the fateful disinformation operation set up by the DINA known as "Operation Colombo." The three victims of this case remain as forcibly disappeared to this day, with no information or data regarding their fate.

Source: resumen.cl, March 10, 2023

Date: 03-10-2023

Supreme Court orders the state to compensate families of those forcibly disappeared by the DINA

In a unanimous ruling, the Second Chamber of the highest court established an error of law in the appealed sentence, issued by the Santiago Court of Appeals, for unjustifiably reducing the amount of compensation.

The Supreme Court accepted the cassation appeals filed by the plaintiff and, in a replacement sentence, confirmed the total compensation of $1,130,000,000 (one billion one hundred thirty million pesos), set in the first-instance resolution, which the state must pay to the families of the forcibly disappeared Héctor Jenaro González Fernández, Roberto Salomón Chaer Vásquez, and Carlos Julio Fernández Zapata, who were detained in September 1974 and tortured in the clandestine detention centers of the defunct National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), known as the Ollagüe barracks and Cuatro Álamos, from where their trail was lost.

In a unanimous ruling (case file 129.356-2020), the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed of ministers Haroldo Brito, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Leopoldo Llanos, María Teresa Letelier, and Eliana Quezada—established an error of law in the appealed sentence, issued by the Santiago Court of Appeals, for unjustifiably reducing the amount of compensation.

"That the determination of the monetary amount that allows in some way to repair, mitigate, or help to bear the pain caused by the established illicit act must necessarily be carried out prudently, given the impossibility of fixing with any exactitude and certainty the sum that serves those objectives, does not mean that this evaluation is arbitrary and capricious for the jurisdictional body, but rather that, given the impossibility of concretizing it using uniform and universal formulas, guidelines, or methods for all types of situations, the court must analyze each case based on its specificities and particularities, weighing them with caution and moderation, which certainly gives it greater flexibility for said determination, but which does not imply in any way releasing it from the duty to express the reasons that led to reaching that conclusion," the ruling maintains.

The resolution adds: "That the sentence of the Court of Appeals in its twelfth consideration simply states that it disagrees with the evaluation of the civil compensation set in the first-instance ruling, proceeding then to determine the amounts it deems appropriate, but without expressing the reasons for that modification, whether because the sums established by the a quo are disproportionate, and in that case, in relation to what, or do not bear correlation with the gravity of the proven facts, or another reason.

Specifically in this regard, the ruling only points out: 'the civil compensation demanded in the case is absolutely appropriate, but with whose evaluation this Court disagrees in the manner that will be stated'."

For the highest court, in the specific case: "(...) as is evident from what has been stated above, the denounced vice provided for in article 541 No. 9 of the Code of Criminal Procedure has been committed, insofar as the ruling lacks the considerations of fact and law that would justify reducing the amounts of compensation set by the first-instance judge, so the cassation appeals in the form filed by lawyers Caucoto Pereira and Garcés Fuentes will be accepted, annulling the challenged ruling and issuing the corresponding replacement sentence to amend the vice committed in its civil section."

In the criminal part, the Supreme Court rejected the cassation appeal filed by the defense of the convicted César Manríquez Bravo and maintained the 15-year prison sentence he must serve as an author of the crime. The same sentence must be served by Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, whose defense did not appeal.

"Indeed, cause No. 1 of article 546 of the Code of Criminal Procedure assumes accepting the facts that the sentence considers proven and that these are subsumed in the crime of aggravated kidnapping and, consequently, the correctness of the conviction decision, only discussing the determination of the penalty corresponding to the perpetrator for erring in any of the aspects indicated by the cause under examination," the ruling states in the criminal aspect.

"Then—it continues—the claim formulated through said cause is irreconcilable with that posed with cause No. 3 of the same article 546, by which it is maintained that the sentence makes an erroneous qualification of the crime, applying a penalty in accordance with that qualification.

Thus, through cause No. 1 of article 546, the qualification of the crime made in the ruling is accepted, while by the second it is controverted, an insalvable incoherence that prevents even the analysis by this Court of both reproaches."

"But the aforementioned cause No. 1 is also not harmonious with the cause of No. 7 of article 546, because as was said, the former assumes accepting that the accused must be convicted for the crime that the ruling has considered, only postulating an error in the determination of the applicable penalty, very different from what the appeal maintains with the last invoked cause, that is, that an error is committed in assessing the evidence and based on it establishing that the accused Manríquez Bravo had participation in the imputed crime of aggravated kidnapping and, therefore, requesting in the petition his acquittal," it states.

For the Criminal Chamber: "(...) the referred incongruities are insalvable and are improper for an extraordinary and strict-law appeal such as the cassation in the merits, since through some causes an erroneous application of the law is affirmed that with the others is denied, which prevents this Court from even entering into the study and decision of each of them."

False confrontation

In the first-instance sentence, the visiting judge of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Miguel Vázquez Plaza, established the following facts:

"a) That a group of agents belonging to the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), who depended on the Metropolitan Intelligence Brigade (BIM), focused on investigating the activities of people who were part of the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) and those who collaborated with said organization, proceeding to detain members and/or adherents of the aforementioned movement, taking them to secret detention centers maintained by the organization, where they were interrogated under physical duress, and agents would go out with them to tour different places on public streets, with the aim of identifying other members of the MIR. b) That Héctor Jenaro González Fernández, Roberto Salomón Chaer Vásquez, and Carlos Julio Fernández Zapata were militants of the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) since at least 1971 and carried out their activities in said conglomerate while they were at the Universidad de Concepción. c) That, within the activities carried out by the agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), after obtaining information from other detainees, on September 6, 1974, and September 10, 1974, subjects of the organization called 'DINA' proceeded to detain, respectively, Héctor Jenaro González Fernández and Roberto Salomón Chaer Vásquez on a public street in downtown Santiago and Carlos Julio Fernández Zapata at his workplace located at Calle Frontera No. 2857, Quinta Normal, who were then taken to the clandestine detention center of the National Intelligence Directorate known as 'José Domingo Cañas' or 'Ollagüe', with the aim of interrogating them under physical duress, and were then taken to the detention center known as 'Cuatro Álamos', where they were seen by other detainees, from where they were taken away, their whereabouts being unknown ever since, as well as the fate they have met regarding their physical and mental health and personal integrity. d) That, some time later, the news appeared in some foreign journalistic media, replicated by national media, that Roberto Salomón Chaer Vásquez had died, along with 119 other people in a confrontation between leftist militants and/or in a confrontation with foreign forces, without said news being confirmed by any national or foreign authority."

Source: pjud.cl 3/9/2023

Date: 03-09-2023

Social Sciences students commemorated the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances

Within the framework of the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances—which was established in 2011 thanks to an initiative of the Latin American Federation of Associations of Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared (Fedefam) and the support of the UN—representatives of the Sociology Coordinator and the Popular Anthropology Collective of the UdeC carried out interventions to remember colleagues who were victims of the military dictatorship.

Interrupted Sociology

With an art installation that attempted to simulate a classroom, the Sociology Coordinator of the Universidad de Concepción paid tribute to 17 students of the program who suffered political execution or forced disappearance between 1973 and 1990.

"Today we are facing a denialist onslaught that seeks to hide the crimes against humanity committed by the State of Chile during the civil-military dictatorship. That is why, as Sociology students of the Universidad de Concepción, we want to remember our colleagues who are missing, who were students like you and me, and whose families could not even bury their bodies," the Sociology Coordinator indicated in the brochures that were handed out to students who approached to witness this space of memory.

The people remembered this Thursday were: – Juan Carlos Gómez Iturra – Nelson Herrera Riveros – Luis Pincheira Llanos – Héctor Sobarzo Núñez – Héctor Velásquez – Ana Luisa Peñailillo Parra – Elizabeth Cabrera Balarritz – Carlos Fernández Zapata – Jorge Fuentes Alarcón – Sergio Riffo Ramos – Roberto Chaer Vásquez – Ariel Salinas Argomedo – Manuel Villalobos Díaz – Washington Cid Urrutia – Sergio Lagos Marín – Alejandro Robinson Mella Flores

In honor of the fallen women

Another demonstration that took place in the Faculty of Social Sciences was carried out by students of the Anthropology program, who mounted a banner with the faces of students who were pregnant at the time of suffering forced detention.

"Throughout history, women have been displaced to the private sphere and their political participation has been limited to minor positions; their active role in transformations has not been recognized and their struggle has been made invisible.

Here we have sufficient evidence that positions us as protagonists of the armed struggle and that highlights the convictions of each of those who gave their lives for this cause, all of them women, students, workers, and mothers who were repressed, tortured, murdered, and disappeared for political reasons, for being militants, for being combative, and for daring to believe in a project that aimed at a real transformation of society.

Each one of them was a fundamental part of their movement and resisted firmly until their last moments, and we must remember them not only as victims of the dictatorship but as martyrs who sowed rebellion in the new generations," communicated the Popular Anthropology Collective of the UdeC in a review that was shared during the intervention.

The women commemorated by the students were: -Jacqueline Paulette Droully Yurich -María Cecilia Labrín Saso -Michelle Peña Herreros -Cecilia Miguelina Bojanic Abad -Diana Frida Aron Svigilsky -Gloria Esther Lagos Nilsson -Reinalda del Carmen Pereira Plaza -Elizabeth Mercedes Rekas Urra -Nalvia Rosa Mena Alvarado -Gloria Ximena Delard Cabezas

Source: udec.cl 8/30/2018

Date: 08-30-2018