The brothers Raúl Bladimir and Rodolfo Iván Leveque Carrasco—the latter being the Regional Secretary of the Communist Youth of Osorno—were detained with great violence on the morning of Saturday, September 15, 1973, by a patrol composed of 8 Carabineros and led by a young Lieutenant, at Tarapacá 105, in the Rahue sector of the city of Osorno.

The Carabineros patrol was traveling in a police van and belonged to the staff of the Third Police Station of Osorno, located in Rahue. The Leveque Carrasco brothers were forced into the police vehicle, which departed for an unknown destination. Several neighbors witnessed these events.

On September 11, 1973, Rodolfo Iván Leveque Carrasco was living at the home of the Soublete family in the same city, along with his wife and child. This residence was raided that same day, and Rodolfo Iván was detained and interrogated for several hours at the First Police Station, returning the following day to his family.

His second detention occurred a few days later during a police operation at his parents' home, where he was detained along with his brother Raúl Bladimir, who had a technical police record for theft.

In a judicial complaint, Mrs. Uberlinda Inés Carrasco Carrasco, mother of the Leveque Carrasco brothers, relates the following:

"On September 15, 1973, while Raúl Bladimir and Rodolfo Iván were at their parents' home, that is, Tarapacá 145, at about 10:00 a.m., a Carabineros van from the Third Police Station of Rahue stopped in front of the house.

Eight officers descended from it under the command of a young Lieutenant. They all surrounded the house, closing off the sector, and then, without any order and acting violently, they entered our home, reaching the bedroom where the aforementioned were.

They all carried weapons, with which they threatened the young men, and amidst insults, shoves, and kicks, they took them out to the street, forcing them into the van at gunpoint with machine guns, shoves, and profanities.

Among the officers who participated in the detention, we recognized First Sergeant José Estuardo Muñoz Vera, Sub-officer Francisco Inostroza Baeza, and Carabineros Mario Maragaño Oyarzún and Gustavo Muñoz Albornoz, all of whom were known in the sector for belonging to the Third Police Station of Rahue, which was under the command of the then-Major Adrián José Fernández Hernández, who had active participation in the persecution of leftist elements, as did Corporal Eliseo Aguila and someone named Canales."

She continues her account: "Terrified as the entire civilian population was, only the next day did we dare to go and ask for the detainees at the Third Police Station, where they denied their presence.

My husband, knowing from other people that they were indeed being held at the barracks, chose to present himself so that he would be detained and thus be able to see his two sons, but when that happened, they had already been taken out of the barracks."

She then relates the situation her sons experienced during their detention: "A detainee who was released, Teodoro Escobar Mujica, told us that while he was in the barracks (also detained), they made the two Leveque brothers enter his cell at about 10:00 p.m. on September 15; both were completely beaten and Rodolfo was unconscious, so his cellmates held him up to the window so he could breathe air, at which point they threw water on his face from outside; he adds that on the 16th, at about 12:01 a.m., three Carabineros, a certain 'Cheo' or 'Chelo' (Eliseo Aguila), the Carabinero Canales, and Gustavo Muñoz, arrived at the cell and took Rodolfo and Raúl out, and we have not known of them since, as they did not return them to the cell."

A series of efforts were then initiated by the family members to find the whereabouts of the Leveque Carrasco brothers, efforts in which there was no collaboration whatsoever from the authorities and officials of the Investigative Police and the Judiciary.

The mother relates, once the kidnapping of her sons from the Third Police Station of Rahue was confirmed: "Faced with this alarming news, I restarted the search for my two sons by going to the Carabineros, the Investigative Police, and the Court.

At the Investigative Police, a detective named Peña got angry with me and scolded me because I insisted that he put in the report that my two sons were taken from my own home during a Carabineros raid, which was the truth, and the same thing happened to me at the Court regarding the clerk who attended to me.

Faced with this lack of attention and the protection provided to those who kidnapped my sons, I chose to remain silent, and even more so when my own husband was later arrested and detained, leaving me alone and without protection."

To date, the fate of the Leveque Carrasco brothers after their detention remains unknown.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

In the judicial procedure initiated by the family members, it was noted that difficulties were encountered. This is pointed out by the mother of the Leveque Carrasco brothers. A significant fact in this regard is that it was only on a second attempt, and by insisting, that she was able to effectively file a complaint at the tribunal.

On the previous occasion, judicial officials had refused to do so, at least in the terms the complainant indicated.

Finally, a criminal complaint was filed in the First Criminal Court of Osorno on May 28, 1978, for the crimes of kidnapping, injuries, and the possible homicide of Raúl Bladimir and Rodolfo Iván Leveque Carrasco, thus initiating case file number 22.747.

This criminal complaint was directed against the officials of the Third Police Station of Carabineros of Osorno known as Chelo, another with the surname Canales, and another with the surname Muñoz. It requested that other officials be called to testify as defendants, among them their commissioner, Captain Adrián José Fernández Hernández, who was to testify in this case for having been in charge of all detention and raid operations carried out by officials under his command.

By order of the judge in charge of this case, Hugo Sandoval Poblete, various routine procedures were carried out, such as official letters to the Carabineros Prefecture of Osorno and the corresponding Military Prosecutor's Office to determine if the detention of the Leveque Carrasco brothers was recorded in those institutions, a procedure also carried out with the Gendarmerie.

In all of them, there was no record of the detention of the Leveque Carrasco brothers.

Also by order of Judge Hugo Sandoval Poblete, several witnesses to the detention and neighbors of the family and the place of detention, at Tarapacá 105, were interrogated. Other individuals interrogated were the Carabineros officials of the Third Police Station in their capacity as defendants, who denied their involvement in the detention of the Leveque Carrasco brothers.

Thus, on December 22, 1979, a year and a half after the complaint was filed, the judge determined "that from the investigated background, the perpetration of the crime that gave rise to the formation of this summary is not fully justified," and in accordance with the provisions of Article 409, numbers 1 and 414 of the Code of Penal Procedure, he temporarily dismissed the case "until new means of verification are presented." This resolution was submitted for review to the Court of Appeals of Valdivia, before which an appeal was also filed by the plaintiff.

The Court of Appeals of Valdivia, in December 1979, considered the investigation incomplete, revoking the dismissal and returning case 22.747 to the summary stage, ordering new proceedings. Magistrate Juana González Inzunza was appointed as a Visiting Minister (Ministro en Visita Extraordinaria), a role she assumed on December 11 of that year.

The request for a Visiting Minister, at the end of 1979, had been made by ecumenical church authorities in the Osorno area to investigate a series of crimes committed during the final months of 1973, a request that was accepted by the Court of Appeals of Valdivia on December 7 of that year.

New efforts were made, a series of inquiries, all of which were absolutely fruitless in finding the whereabouts of the Leveque Carrasco brothers. According to the Carabineros, the detainee registry books for 1979 had already been incinerated; they did not appear in the respective Military Prosecutor's Office, including the confrontations to which the defendants were subjected with Uberlinda Inés Carrasco Carrasco, the mother of the detainees, who recognized those who detained her sons.

However, these proceedings only confirmed and verified who committed the crimes and that it corresponded to the identity of those who had effectively been accused as such.

Thus, the Visiting Minister declared herself incompetent to continue hearing the case because members of the Carabineros were involved. On April 23, 1980, she stated "that from the merit of the background, it is clear that members of the Carabineros have had participation in the investigated events," and applying the provisions of the Code of Military Justice, "the corresponding Military Tribunals are competent to hear these facts," and according to other provisions of the same Code, she declared herself incompetent to continue hearing these facts, remitting the background to the Military Prosecutor's Office of the city of Osorno.

Two significant pieces of information emerged during this judicial investigation: in case file N°22.747 of the Criminal Court of Osorno, a record was incorporated indicating that in the Police Informatics Section, Information Office, Rodolfo Iván Leveque Carrasco was registered as a MIR extremist.

Another piece of information in relation to the detention and subsequent disappearance of Rodolfo Iván Leveque Carrasco is a charge against him by the Military Prosecutor's Office of Osorno, dated November 13, 1973, that is, two months after his detention.

On February 6, 1991, through official letter N°2086, the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation presented a complaint to the 1st Criminal Court of Osorno regarding the detention and subsequent disappearance of various people in the town of Rahue, Osorno, which occurred in the days following the coup d'état of September 11, 1973, in Chile.

The complaint was based on the powers granted by Supreme Decree N°355 of May 9, 1990.

On February 18, 1991, the Judge of the aforementioned court resolved to instruct a summary for the reported events. The case was registered under N°39.911-3. On that occasion, he summoned the relatives of the affected parties to testify.

On March 27, 1991, the Judge, considering that "it is necessary and convenient to break down the present case in order to instruct a summary separately for each of the persons identified in the complaint presented on February 6th," proceeded accordingly.

Once new information became known, in a global manner, regarding the forcibly disappeared persons of the Osorno area, these were incorporated into case file N°39.911 titled "Illegitimate coercion and arbitrary detentions," and in another similar one, file N°40.062, of the First Civil Court of Osorno and the First Criminal Court of Osorno, respectively.

However, one of the pieces of information that is decisive for establishing guilt and responsibility in these events is knowing the staff of the Third Police Station of Carabineros of Osorno, located in Rahue, the barracks from which the victims of this case were taken, remaining from that moment as forcibly disappeared persons; the same occurs with the staff of the San Juan de la Costa Post and the Carabineros Station of Puerto Octay.

Thus, this information was requested in official letters from the First Civil Court of Osorno to the General Directorate of Carabineros, and the response—signed by the General Director of Carabineros, Rodolfo Stange Oelckers—states "that it is not possible to grant what is requested, by virtue of the fact that the required information is 'secret,' in accordance with Article 436, number 1, of the Code of Military Justice." In this way, it is impossible to know the names, addresses, RUT numbers, ranks, and whether those Carabineros officials who were serving in those police units at the time the crimes were committed—which keep some detainees in the status of disappeared—are currently in service or retired.

Case file number 40.062, regarding the alleged detention and disappearance of Venancio Bernabé García Ovando and Humberto Salas Salas in September and October 1973, due to the impossibility of obtaining "secret" information, elevated the background to the Supreme Court, noting that according to Article 107 of the Code of Penal Procedure, it must be established whether the responsibility of the accused is extinguished.

In this case—given the date of the occurrence of the reported events—the judge should have applied this legal provision, but furthermore, the Supreme Court has noted that the events in question are included in the provisions of Decree Law number 2.191, which "grants amnesty to the persons it indicates for the crimes it points out." The case regarding the detention and disappearance of Rodolfo Iván and Raúl Bladimir Leveque Carrasco, at the closing of this report, was still in process.

Source: Corporation report

The Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court issued the final sentence in the investigation into the aggravated kidnapping of brothers Rodolfo Iván and Raúl Bladimir Leveque Carrasco, which occurred starting September 15, 1973, in the city of Osorno, Los Lagos Region.

In a split decision, ministers Nibaldo Segura, Jaime Rodríguez, Rubén Ballesteros, Hugo Dolmestch, and Carlos Künsemüller sentenced Colonel (Ret.) Adrián José Fernández Hernández to five years and one day in prison as an accomplice to the crime of aggravated kidnapping.

Magistrates Rodríguez, Dolmestch, and Künsemüller were in favor of imposing the sanction, supporting the first-instance sentence issued by minister Jorge Zepeda Arancibia, who applied international human rights legislation by declaring the crimes to be crimes against humanity.

Meanwhile, Segura and Ballesteros opted for the principle of the statute of limitations for the criminal action regarding the events.

This is the fifth sentence issued by the Supreme Court in human rights cases during 2008 and the 32nd since August 2005, when the first sentence in this matter was determined.

Source: Friday, August 8, 2008, La Nacion Date: 08-08-2008

Judge convicts former Carabinero for disappearance of brothers in Osorno

Adrián José Fernández Hernández was sentenced as an accomplice in the kidnapping of brothers Rodolfo Iván and Raúl Bladimir Leveque Carrasco.

Special judge (ministro de fuero) Jorge Zepeda sentenced a retired Carabineros captain this Friday to three years of suspended prison for his participation in the aggravated kidnapping of two opponents of the military dictatorship in Osorno, perpetrated on September 15, 1973.

The ruling affected former officer Adrián José Fernández Hernández, who was charged as an accomplice in the disappearance of brothers Rodolfo Iván and Raúl Bladimir Leveque Carrasco, committed in the city in the Los Lagos Region.

The Leveque Carrasco brothers were arrested at their homes on September 15 by a Carabineros patrol from the Rahue Police Station, after which they were taken to the police facility, where they were last seen alive.

In his ruling, the magistrate also rejected the civil lawsuit filed against the State, considering that the kinship of the plaintiff, Angélica Gallegos Toledo, with the relatives of the victims, Pedro Rafael Leveque Carrasco and Tatiana Leveque Carrasco, could not be proven.

Source: January 12, 2007, El Mostrador Date: 12-01-2007