The minister for extraordinary causes for human rights violations at the Santiago Court of Appeals, Mario Carroza, sentenced retired Air Force (FACH) general Vicente Armando Rodríguez Bustos to 10 years and one day in prison as the perpetrator of the crimes of qualified kidnapping of Domingo Bartolomé Blanco Tarrés and José Belisario Carreño Calderón.

He was also sentenced for the crime of qualified homicide of Gonzalo Mario Jorquera Leyton, Carlos Alfonso Cruz Zavalla, Luis Alfredo Gamboa Pizarro, Pedro Juan Garcés Portiagliati, Óscar Osvaldo Marambio Araya, Edmundo Enrique Montero Salazar, Jorge Osvaldo Orrego González, William Osvaldo Ramírez Barria, and Enrique Andrés María Ropert Contreras.

These illicit acts were perpetrated in September 1973. In the ruling, the visiting minister also applied to the former officer the legal accessory penalties of absolute perpetual disqualification from public offices and political rights, and absolute disqualification from professional practice during the term of the sentence, in addition to the payment of court costs.

In the case, Minister Carroza decreed the acquittal of retired Carabineros general Patricio Fernando de la Fuente Ibar, as his responsibility for the crimes against collaborators and members of the Personal Friends Group (GAP) of President Salvador Allende could not be proven.

These individuals were detained on September 11, 1973, in the vicinity of the Palacio de la Moneda and the Intendencia Metropolitana, and were taken by Carabineros personnel to the Sixth Police Station of Santiago and, subsequently, to the General Headquarters of the Investigative Police.

During the investigation phase, Minister Carroza established the following facts: 1.- That during the presidential term of President Salvador Allende Gossens, a security detail was formed, composed of young, armed men with paramilitary training in some cases, known as the GAP or "Personal Friends Group of the President," and that this group included, among others, José Belisario Carreño Calderón, Carlos Cruz Zavalla, Luis Gamboa Pizarro, Pedro Juan Garcés Portigliati, Gonzalo Mario Jorquera Leyton, Óscar Marambio Araya, Edmundo Montero Salazar, Jorge Osvaldo Orrego González, William Ramírez Barría, Domingo Blanco Tarrés—the latter being one of the leaders of this detail—and Enrique Ropert Contreras, who at the time was a university student and the son of Miria Contreras, private secretary to President Allende; 2.- That in the early hours of September 11, 1973, the Commanders-in-Chief of the Army, Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, and of the Air Force, Gustavo Leigh Guzmán; the Admiral of the Navy, José Toribio Merino Castro; and the General of the Carabineros of Chile, César Mendoza Durán, proceeded to carry out a coup d'état against the government of then-President Salvador Allende Gossens, as a result of which the President, who was at the presidential residence on Calle Tomás Moro, moved to the Palacio de La Moneda accompanied by a group of his escorts and Carabineros; 3.- That upon learning of these events, the head of the GAP, Domingo Blanco Tarrés, who was at the Cañaveral presidential residence, decided to travel along with members of said group, identified in the first section, accompanied by the President's secretary, Miria Contreras Bell, and her sons Max and Enrique Ropert Contreras, to the Tomás Moro residence to meet with President Allende; but upon arrival, they learned that he had already left the location for the Palacio de La Moneda. Therefore, Blanco Tarrés, along with his other escorts, traveled in a pickup truck from Tomás Moro to that location; Miria Contreras and her son Enrique Ropert Contreras did the same in a "Renoleta," while Max Ropert Contreras remained at Tomás Moro; 4.- That upon arriving in the city center and entering via Calle Morandé, near the vehicle parking areas of La Moneda, Blanco Tarrés, along with José Belisario Carreño Calderón, Carlos Cruz Zavalla, Luis Gamboa Pizarro, Pedro Juan Garcés Portigliati, Gonzalo Mario Jorquera Leyton, Óscar Marambio Araya, Edmundo Montero Salazar, Jorge Osvaldo Orrego González, and William Ramírez Barría, got out armed, but were discovered and ordered to surrender their weapons by a contingent of Carabineros belonging to the mobile group led by an officer from the Prefecture located at the Intendencia de Santiago. Due to this incident, Miria Contreras Bell, who arrived at the moment the detention was occurring, asked her son Enrique Ropert Contreras to find out what had happened, but in doing so, he was also detained by the police forces. Miria Contreras could not prevent this, so she decided to escape toward La Moneda. All members of President Allende's personal guard, along with Enrique Ropert Contreras, were taken to the police prefecture facilities inside the Intendencia, and interventions from the Presidential Palace and the Director of Carabineros at that time were unsuccessful in securing their release. The group was taken to the Intendencia, where they remained for a few hours, and were subsequently loaded onto a Carabineros bus by order of Colonel Carlos Hinrichsen González, head of the mobile group, and taken to the 6th Police Station of Santiago. Pedro Espinoza Bravo arrived at this police unit first to speak with Commissioner Jorge Retamal Berríos in order to take the detainees with him, which was denied due to the lack of a written order. Later, an Intelligence Major from the FACH arrived at the station, armed with a written order from a War Council, and he was the one who finally proceeded to take this group of detainees with him before they could be placed at the disposal of the justice system; 5.- That all or part of this group of prisoners was transferred on September 12 or 13, 1973, to the Central Headquarters of the Investigative Police, where they were subjected to interrogations. It is known with certainty that Domingo Blanco Tarrés was among them; he was admitted to the Public Jail on September 15, 1973, by order of the 2nd Military Prosecutor's Office. From there, he was taken out on several occasions and brought to the Prosecutor's Office, where he was subjected to torture, interrogations, and confrontations with other members of the GAP. He left the penitentiary facility on September 19, according to Gendarmería records, by order of the 2nd Military Prosecutor's Office, and from that date on, all traces of him were lost, and his whereabouts remain unknown to this day; 6.- That, on the other hand, the remains of José Belisario Carreño Calderón, which were initially identified as belonging to him when found on September 19, 1973, at the Bulnes bridge, were subsequently ruled out following DNA testing. Therefore, from the date he was transferred to the 6th Carabineros Station and removed by the FACH Intelligence Officer, nothing more was known about his whereabouts; 7.- That, in turn, the bodies of Enrique Ropert Contreras, Carlos Cruz Zavalla, Luis Gamboa Pizarro, Gonzalo Mario Jorquera Leyton, Óscar Marambio Araya, Edmundo Montero Salazar, Jorge Osvaldo Orrego González, and William Ramírez Barría were found on September 19, 1973, on the banks of the Mapocho River, in the area of the Bulnes Bridge, and were admitted on September 20, 1973, to the then-Medical Legal Institute, as evidenced by their autopsy protocols and death certificate reception records; 8.- That, in relation to Pedro Juan Garcés Portigliati, it is duly proven in the case files that his body was admitted to the Medical Legal Institute, with no autopsy report or death certificate reception record existing for him, with this victim being among those identified by DNA tests performed later on remains found in Patio 29; 9.- That, to date, and according to information provided to the case, the following victims have been identified by DNA tests performed in foreign laboratories on skeletal remains found in the mass grave of Patio 29 of the General Cemetery: Carlos Cruz Zavalla, Luis Gamboa Pizarro, Pedro Juan Garcés Portigliati, Óscar Marambio Araya, Edmundo Montero Salazar, Jorge Osvaldo Orrego González, William Ramírez Barría, and Enrique Ropert Contreras; 10.- That according to the autopsy of the time and burial records, it is established that the remains of Gonzalo Mario Jorquera Leyton were identified and handed over to his family in the days following the events. In the civil aspect, the ruling ordered the State of Chile to pay a total compensation of $1,320,000,000 (one billion three hundred twenty million pesos) to the victims' families.

Source: elclarin, November 14, 2018

Santiago Court orders the Treasury to pay $1.225 billion in compensation to families of GAP members who were executed or are forcibly disappeared

The Santiago Court of Appeals confirmed the resolution ordering the Treasury to compensate the families of the forcibly disappeared Domingo Bartolomé Blanco Tarrés and José Belisario Carreño Calderón, and of the illegally executed Gonzalo Mario Jorquera Leyton, Carlos Alfonso Cruz Zavala, Luis Alfredo Gamboa Pizarro, Pedro Juan Garcés Portiagliati, Óscar Osvaldo Marambio Araya, Edmundo Enrique Montero Salazar, Jorge Osvaldo Orrego González, William Osvaldo Ramírez Barría, and Enrique Andrés María Ropert Contreras, members of the so-called "Personal Friends Group" (GAP) of President Salvador Allende, who were detained on September 11, 1973, in the vicinity of the Palacio de La Moneda. The Second Chamber—composed of ministers Omar Astudillo, María Soledad Melo, and Maritza Villadangos—confirmed the State's responsibility for the execution of crimes against humanity perpetrated by its agents, but decreed the acquittal of retired Air Force general Vicente Rodríguez Bustos, solely due to his death following the first-instance ruling, and of retired Carabineros general Patricio de la Fuente Ibar, due to a lack of proof of his participation in the events. In the civil aspect, they deemed that crimes against humanity are imprescriptible and increased the compensation amount to be received by the mothers, spouses, and children of the victims, while lowering it for siblings and nephews/nieces, meaning the State must pay a total of $1,225,000,000 for moral damages. "Regarding the exception of the statute of limitations for civil action, the truth is that it is imprescriptible, as jurisprudence has repeatedly declared. It must be remembered that the criminal offenses that have given rise to this civil liability correspond to crimes against humanity, so the right to reparation for the families of the victims of this type of illicit act also finds its foundation in the general principles of International Human Rights Law and in the regulations of international treaties ratified by our country, which oblige the State of Chile to recognize and protect the right to full reparation, by virtue of the provisions of the second paragraph of Article 5 and Article 6 of the Political Constitution of the Republic," the ruling maintains. The resolution adds: "Thus, if it is considered that the criminal action for this type of attack on human dignity is imprescriptible, it is not coherent to maintain at the same time that the civil compensation action can be extinguished by the statute of limitations through the application of internal civil law, as this would contradict the will expressed by international Human Rights regulations, which are part of the national legal system by provision of the second paragraph of Article 5 of the Fundamental Charter. Furthermore, if criminal liability is imprescriptible, the civil liability of the State—which stems from those same facts—must follow the same fate; that is, it is not extinguished by the passage of time, as it is accessory and dependent on the criminal liability of a State agent, which is declared in this ruling." Regarding the regulation of compensation or the reparatory amount, the Santiago Court of Appeals reiterates that "(...) the difficulty that exists in determining the compensation for moral damage quantitatively and economically is well known. However, in the need to carry out its valuation and given the lack of sufficiently established statistical or technical benchmarks, it is appropriate to turn to parameters that can serve as guiding criteria for those purposes, inspired by considerations of prudence, equity, and experience. Thus, as far as possible, one must tend toward the consideration of objective data—the proven facts—the nature of the damage, and the search for some degree of proportionality between the magnitude of that damage and the sum to be compensated." "From that perspective, by applying rules of experience, those that allow confirming that pain or suffering is especially related to the kinship and emotional bond that one has or has had with the direct victim of the crime or crimes committed against their person, it is considered appropriate and reasonable to carry out the regulations indicated below: a) For those who hold the status of spouse or mother of the affected person, the sum of $80,000,000; b) For those who have proven the status of children of the direct victim, the amount of $50,000,000; c) For those who sue in the capacity of siblings, the amount of $20,000,000; and d) For the person who proved the status of nephew/niece of one of the victims, the sum of $5,000,000," it resolves. The facts of the case that were proven in the first-instance ruling by Minister Mario Carroza: 1.- That during the presidential term of President Salvador Allende Gossens, a security detail was formed, composed of young, armed men with paramilitary training in some cases, known as the GAP or 'Personal Friends Group of the President,' and that this group included, among others, José Belisario Carreño Calderón, Carlos Cruz Zavalla, Luis Gamboa Pizarro, Pedro Juan Garcés Portigliati, Gonzalo Mario Jorquera Leyton, Óscar Marambio Araya, Edmundo Montero Salazar, Jorge Osvaldo Orrego González, William Ramírez Barría, Domingo Blanco Tarrés—the latter being one of the leaders of this detail—and Enrique Ropert Contreras, who at the time was a university student and the son of Miria Contreras, private secretary to President Allende; 2.- That in the early hours of September 11, 1973, the Commanders-in-Chief of the Army, Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, and of the Air Force, Gustavo Leigh Guzmán; the Admiral of the Navy, José Toribio Merino Castro; and the General of the Carabineros of Chile, César Mendoza Durán, proceeded to carry out a coup d'état against the government of then-President Salvador Allende Gossens, as a result of which the President, who was at the presidential residence on Calle Tomás Moro, moved to the Palacio de La Moneda accompanied by a group of his escorts and Carabineros; 3.- That upon learning of these events, the head of the GAP, Domingo Blanco Tarrés, who was at the Cañaveral presidential residence, decided to travel along with members of said group, identified in the first section, accompanied by the President's secretary, Miria Contreras Bell, and her sons Max and Enrique Ropert Contreras, to the Tomás Moro residence to meet with President Allende; but upon arrival, they learned that he had already left the location for the Palacio de La Moneda. Therefore, Blanco Tarrés, along with his other escorts, traveled in a pickup truck from Tomás Moro to that location; Miria Contreras and her son Enrique Ropert Contreras did the same in a "Renoleta," while Max Ropert Contreras remained at Tomás Moro; 4.- That upon arriving in the city center and entering via Calle Morandé, near the vehicle parking areas of La Moneda, Blanco Tarrés, along with José Belisario Carreño Calderón, Carlos Cruz Zavalla, Luis Gamboa Pizarro, Pedro Juan Garcés Portigliati, Gonzalo Mario Jorquera Leyton, Óscar Marambio Araya, Edmundo Montero Salazar, Jorge Osvaldo Orrego González, and William Ramírez Barría, got out armed, but were discovered and ordered to surrender their weapons by a contingent of Carabineros belonging to the mobile group led by an officer from the Prefecture located at the Intendencia de Santiago. Due to this incident, Miria Contreras Bell, who arrived at the moment the detention was occurring, asked her son Enrique Ropert Contreras to find out what had happened, but in doing so, he was also detained by the police forces. Miria Contreras could not prevent this, so she decided to escape toward La Moneda. All members of President Allende's personal guard, along with Enrique Ropert Contreras, were taken to the police prefecture facilities inside the Intendencia, and interventions from the Presidential Palace and the Director of Carabineros at that time were unsuccessful in securing their release. The group was taken to the Intendencia, where they remained for a few hours, and were subsequently loaded onto a Carabineros bus by order of Colonel Carlos Hinrichsen González, head of the mobile group, and taken to the 6th Police Station of Santiago. Pedro Espinoza Bravo arrived at this police unit first to speak with Commissioner Jorge Retamal Berríos in order to take the detainees with him, which was denied due to the lack of a written order. Later, an Intelligence Major from the FACH arrived at the station, armed with a written order from a War Council, and he was the one who finally proceeded to take this group of detainees with him before they could be placed at the disposal of the justice system; 5.- That all or part of this group of prisoners was transferred on September 12 or 13, 1973, to the Central Headquarters of the Investigative Police, where they were subjected to interrogations. It is known with certainty that Domingo Blanco Tarrés was among them; he was admitted to the Public Jail on September 15, 1973, by order of the 2nd Military Prosecutor's Office. From there, he was taken out on several occasions and brought to the Prosecutor's Office, where he was subjected to torture, interrogations, and confrontations with other members of the GAP. He left the penitentiary facility on September 19, according to Gendarmería records, by order of the 2nd Military Prosecutor's Office, and from that date on, all traces of him were lost, and his whereabouts remain unknown to this day; 6.- That, on the other hand, the remains of José Belisario Carreño Calderón, which were initially identified as belonging to him when found on September 19, 1973, at the Bulnes bridge, were subsequently ruled out following DNA testing. Therefore, from the date he was transferred to the 6th Carabineros Station and removed by the FACH Intelligence Officer, nothing more was known about his whereabouts; 7.- That, in turn, the bodies of Enrique Ropert Contreras, Carlos Cruz Zavalla, Luis Gamboa Pizarro, Gonzalo Mario Jorquera Leyton, Óscar Marambio Araya, Edmundo Montero Salazar, Jorge Osvaldo Orrego González, and William Ramírez Barría were found on September 19, 1973, on the banks of the Mapocho River, in the area of the Bulnes Bridge, and were admitted on September 20, 1973, to the then-Medical Legal Institute, as evidenced by their autopsy protocols and death certificate reception records; 8.- That, in relation to Pedro Juan Garcés Portigliati, it is duly proven in the case files that his body was admitted to the Medical Legal Institute, with no autopsy report or death certificate reception record existing for him, with this victim being among those identified by DNA tests performed later on remains found in Patio 29; 9.- That, to date, and according to information provided to the case, the following victims have been identified by DNA tests performed in foreign laboratories on skeletal remains found in the mass grave of Patio 29 of the General Cemetery: Carlos Cruz Zavalla, Luis Gamboa Pizarro, Pedro Juan Garcés Portigliati, Óscar Marambio Araya, Edmundo Montero Salazar, Jorge Osvaldo Orrego González, William Ramírez Barría, and Enrique Ropert Contreras; 10.- That according to the autopsy of the time and burial records, it is established that the remains of Gonzalo Mario Jorquera Leyton were identified and handed over to his family in the days following the events.

Source: enestrado.com, May 7, 2021