Also to be summoned as a defendant is the Valdivian dentist, Armando Robles Jensen, a professional who, in his capacity as a dental surgeon, allegedly participated in torture sessions during that era.

Human Rights lawyer Roberto Ávila, together with the former intendant and former mayor of Valdivia, Sandor Arancibia and Luis Díaz, respectively, announced the progress made in a case regarding torture, kidnapping, and illicit association, which is being handled by the Minister of the Court of Appeals of Valdivia, Juan Ignacio Correa.

The plaintiffs point to the responsibilities of a former Army lieutenant, Patricio Kellet Oyarzún, who, according to witnesses, carried out torture against political prisoners inside the Cantón Bueras, and also to journalist Eduardo Hunter Abarzúa, current regional president of Renovación Nacional, who, from his position as a war correspondent, allegedly inspired the famous Plan Z with his chronicles, which was used to condemn numerous people in 1973.

Dr. Sandor Arancibia, the former intendant of that era, who currently resides in France, was at the Court of Appeals this Friday to expand upon his statements before Magistrate Correa, after which he spoke with El NavegHable and stated that the goal is for those responsible for inventing stories, as is the case of journalist Eduardo Hunter, to pay before the justice system for the damage they caused.

“I told the judge that, for example, Luis Díaz and I were tasked with calling all the children, the sons and daughters of the military, to organize a party for them at the Valdivia Municipal Coliseum, and once we had them, they would serve as hostages for us to ask their parents to surrender and hand over their weapons—that is, stories of that nature, which at the time there was a population capable of accepting and believing,” Arancibia recounted.

Lawyer Roberto Ávila, for his part, reported that the prosecution of the aforementioned individuals will be requested, adding that the Valdivian dentist, Armando Robles Jensen, will also be summoned as a defendant; a professional who, in his capacity as a dental surgeon, allegedly participated in torture sessions during that era.

This complaint was filed a year ago in the Court of Appeals and has nothing to do with the current electoral context, stated Díaz and Arancibia. The accusation questions the legitimacy and actions of the War Councils of the time and accuses them of the kidnappings and torture suffered by numerous supporters of the Unidad Popular regime.

Source: elnaveghable.cl, November 24, 2013

The abject "Plan Z," one of the infamies of the Chilean dictatorship

The "Plan Z," a creation of fevered minds, consisted, as was said in those years, of the mass murder of Armed Forces personnel. The CIA itself revealed in 1999 that said plan "never existed" and that it was merely "a psychological warfare operation by Pinochet."

Cambio21 obtained exclusive documentation that reveals the scope of this gigantic lie.

"I was standing in front of me, they had me blindfolded and tied up, inert in front of the torturer. He began to speak; I recognized him by his professional language, he was a colleague, a dentist. There were few in Valdivia at that time and it was easy to know who it was.

He selected the tooth on which the torment was to be applied; he had no mercy." This is how the doctor and scientist Sandor Arancibia Valenzuela, who was Intendant in that southern city in 1973, recounts his face-to-face encounter with the dictatorship.

Today, as a plaintiff, he accuses former Army lieutenant Patricio Kellet Oyarzún, who admits to having tortured political prisoners inside the Cantón Bueras; Armando Robles Jensen, who in his capacity as a dentist allegedly participated in torture sessions; and also imputes journalist Eduardo Hunter Abarzúa, a regional leader of Renovación Nacional, who began his chronicles by taking for granted the famous Plan Z, with which numerous people were condemned in 1973, and other citizens were even sentenced to death, others to life imprisonment.

Coup strategy

"The interrogations were brutal; in them, they sought to ratify what they wanted to be declared, what was pre-established. Then one would go to speak with the Prosecutor, where there was a right to coffee and a cigarette, of course, provided that what had been obtained under torture was ratified; otherwise, the 'chat' would end right there and one would return to the session of criminal interrogations.

Among the Prosecutors who acted was Bernardo Puga, brother of the priest Mariano Puga," recalls Arancibia.

Many years have passed, it is true; at that time he was approaching 28 and had become Allende's youngest Intendant in the area. Although friendly voices, such as a domestic worker who told him before the Coup that she had heard in her employers' house that civilians were giving names of "enemies" with whom to settle scores and were organizing for it, he was not afraid and did not doubt that the military would be loyal to the constitutional government.

It was not so. Dr. Arancibia asserts that "it was the dawn of Plan Z."

"I believe that in the military strategy, it was about condemning the first provincial authority in Valdivia in an exemplary manner. This had been prepared for a long time by civilians, not just military personnel.

It is striking," he points out, "that by September 12th, all the country's authorities were already designated and in their posts. Given how hard it is for democratic governments to do so, it is a subject that cannot go unnoticed; it was the same thing that happened with the groceries that appeared on the market the day after the coup," he reflects.

Revealing document

Cambio21 had access to a historical document, unknown until now, with the statements recorded in the Report of the Carabineros de Chile, 1st Precinct of Valdivia, Gil de Castro Station, signed on November 24, 1974, by René Quezada de la Plaza, Commissioner and Major of Carabineros, and by Rubén D. Aracena González, Lieutenant of Carabineros and head of the station.

In the document addressed to the Army Prosecutor's Office of Valdivia (case file 1455-73), it is reported that the "Unidad Popular, specifically the Socialist Party, prior to September 11, 1973, developed plans aimed at the neutralization of the Armed Forces and Carabineros, and also began to plan the action to be developed in the face of the evidence of a confrontation, whether with civilians or the Armed Forces."

The document details actions consisting of the "kidnapping of relatives of chiefs and personnel of the Armed Forces and Carabineros." The kidnapped individuals, captured in "commando"-style actions, would be gathered in one place and then, once in captivity, would be exchanged for "weapons." It adds that those who resisted "would be executed by firing squad." The document, made public for the first time by Cambio21, also asserts that the barracks of the uniformed personnel would be surrounded and ordered to surrender their weapons.

Plan Z detailed, according to the police report that gave rise to the War Tribunals against Intendant Sandor Arancibia Valenzuela and other authorities, that it included "ambushing (military) patrols and obtaining the largest amount of weaponry." To carry out their plan, Arancibia and the other authorities of the time would use the support of Cuban barges that would arrive by river to Valdivia.

Where did Plan Z come from?

Of course, Plan Z only existed in the fevered and Machiavellian minds of a few who sought, at a national level, to justify the violent action undertaken against Allende's followers and, on the other hand, to achieve the unity of the Armed Forces and Carabineros in the face of a common threat.

Many were capable of swearing that it did exist. Today, the majority of those who defended its existence look at the ground with shame when asked about the subject.

The serious thing is that several Chilean men and women were condemned, even to death, having the aforementioned plan as justification. Dr. Sandor Arancibia, who currently resides in France and is passing through the country to pursue the complaint being processed by the Minister of the Court of Appeals of Valdivia, Juan Ignacio Correa, was one of those condemned for "treason against the Fatherland," according to the police report that the War Council accepted as absolute truth.

"So you son of a b... were going to kill my children," they would say to him while they tortured him. There was no real defense; they were passed into the hands of the torturers and when they were "soft," they had to appear before the Military Prosecutor.

If they denied what the "voluntary" statements given in front of the torturers said, they were sent back to their hands so that they could "meditate" on their words.

What was Plan Z?

"Plan Z" is the name attributed to an alleged project of the Allende government to execute an armed insurrection, a kind of self-coup, in order to impose a Marxist government by force of arms. To do this, they would seek to decapitate the Armed Forces and Carabineros. The supposed existence of this plan was profusely disseminated by military personnel and authorities of the dictatorship.

Archives declassified by the CIA in 1999 confirmed that Plan Z never existed and that, on the contrary, it was a psychological warfare operation by Pinochet and the Chilean military, particularly the Chilean Navy, in which they imposed the logic of "it's them or us" to justify the repression and human rights violations carried out during the military dictatorship.

However, at that time, high authorities of the civil-military government assured that it was a reality. Among them, Pinochet himself. But it was not just an absurd setup, but a macabre one, which ended up taking lives and justified atrocities. Federico Willoughby, once an active collaborator of the regime, would later discard said plan, denouncing it as a "falsehood."

On September 18, 1973, El Mercurio headlined in 8 columns: "The former Marxist government was preparing a self-coup d'état." Terrifying information! According to this, the Salvador Allende Administration had fostered a plan for the mass murder of military personnel, political leaders, and opposition journalists, not forgetting their families.

The code name was "Plan Z." The note was signed by Julio Arroyo Kuhn.

Press doubts

"General, can the tunnels and weapons be seen?" That question from a young journalist, with long black hair and a thick beard, to the then-general Óscar Bonilla, during a press conference in which the existence of "Plan Z" was asserted, was enough for the military officer, annoyed, to ask who the reporter was and where he was from—a question that, of course, remained unanswered.

When he found out that he worked for a magazine with an editorial line opposed to the UP, there were no reprisals. The version that was "leaked" to the press on that occasion was that under the ellipse of Parque Cousiño (as O'Higgins Park was called in those years) there were tunnels, weapons, and explosives with which 10,000 soldiers would supposedly be taken down on September 19, 1973, during the Military Parade.

The independent press could not believe such a statement, and even less so without evidence.

Days later, there was another outlandish piece of information. The secretary of the Government Junta, Colonel Pedro Ewing, on September 22 of that year in a press conference before national and foreign journalists, reported that on September 19, Army Day, "Allende planned to invite the High Command to lunch at the La Moneda presidential palace.

Surprisingly, his guards, disguised as waiters, would gun down the officers, while in the park the soldiers preparing to parade and the opposition leaders would be executed. Similar massacres would take place in the provinces." The next day, the "Democratic Popular Republic of Chile" was to be established.

That was one of the many "confirmations" of the existence of this imaginary Plan Z. To this day, fevered minds continue to believe in it, such as UDI leader Felipe Cuevas, detained in Venezuela for taking photos of a military facility without identification, who described the "persecution" he had allegedly suffered: "My grandfather was on the Plan Z blacklist."

Vengeance is not sought

Sandor Arancibia has lived in the city of Montpellier, in the south of France, since he was exiled by commutation of his life imprisonment sentence. There, he stood out as an important scientist, just like his wife, Lucy.

He has just arrived in Chile to carry out judicial procedures as a plaintiff against those who kidnapped him, kept him illegally deprived of liberty, tortured him, and condemned him in a War Council without foundation or legal basis.

He points out that he is responding to what his conscience dictates. There are two motivations: "The first is strictly personal; I was condemned for a crime of treason against the Fatherland, which I did not commit, and I must be morally and legally repaired for it.

I cannot end my days conceiving that in my country I was accused of a crime of treason. The second reason is that our complaint contributes to clarifying the facts of what really happened in Chile," he asserts.

"In Valdivia, there was genocide, with more than 3,000 political prisoners, aberrant torture, crimes, and so many other abuses that it is difficult to recount. It is a good sample of what happened in the entire country, starting from September 11, 1973," affirms Arancibia.

And as in the other cases attempted for human rights, Valdivia has not been exempt from an incredible stagnation in the processing of complaints that end in conviction.

Paramedic decided to speak

His testimony has been vital in the case; it is the paramedic Rolando Jaramillo, who testified on page 485 dated May 15 of this year before the Court, for the complaint filed by Dr. Arancibia. At the end of September 1973, he was working in the Gendarmerie; from there, he was taken to the infirmary by an Army doctor "with the surname Saldías, who apparently was named Francisco; he asked me to go work and help there (since) there were many wounded as a result of the torture."

Among others, the name of the doctor (Marcelo) Jara de la Maza appears in his statements, "who attended to some cases and also verified the state in which some political prisoners returned who had been taken from the place by military patrols (...) the one who gave the orders to take the prisoners was Lieutenant (Patricio) Kellet (Oyarzún); I remember that when he returned people, he threw them like a rag, in very bad conditions, and I had to go attend to them," stated Jaramillo in the process.

"(...) I saw cigarette burns on different parts of the body, also from electricity, and purple and reddish lesions remained; I also saw patches on the skin that may have been from beatings, but in the genital area, it was noticeable that it was from electricity," are some of his judicial statements.

Roberto Ávila: "They blame and exonerate each other"

Today the conditions are in place to prosecute the guilty, lawyer for the case Roberto Ávila declares to Cambio21. "There is abundant testimony, around 20, among which are not only those of the victims, but also of at least 3 people who testify, accrediting the torture, who were part of armed institutions, who were in that place and at that time, who directly witnessed these terrible events."

For the professional, "There is also abundant documentation, including international medical reports (and expert reports from the Legal Medical Institute of Chile), which prove the loss of teeth as a result of the traumatic action of torture, for example, but not only that, but also confessions like that of Patricio Kellet, who recognizes beatings and cruel and degrading treatment of political prisoners," he points out.

"It is incredible that the Major of Carabineros who signs this police report, an unpublished document that accounts for the application of Plan Z, although he recognizes the signature, blames the lieutenant who also put his signature as the person responsible for the content, whom he also accuses of having subsequently gone on to provide services to the CNI," indicates Ávila.

"Furthermore," the professional asserts, "this process has led to the absolute perversion of different professions: military personnel who rise up against the legally constituted government, to which they had the obligation to provide the force for the execution of its resolutions; professionals of the medical sciences like Marcelo Jara de la Maza and Armando Robles Jensen, whose science is directed at mitigating pain and not creating it; journalists like Eduardo Hunter Abarzúa, who must provide the citizenry with knowledge of reality, and he fabulates, constructs myths that lead to torture, to prison, and to the death of people; and also teachers, as in the case of Ms. Layla Mahuad Chabair, whose profession is to train young people, but who transformed into an informer," concludes lawyer Ávila.

Source: Cambio21, November 20, 2014