Meanwhile, Lieutenant Colonel Pablo Rodríguez Márquez—on active duty—was released under a travel ban. Both allegedly participated in the operation to remove the former DINA chemist from Chile. The judge of the Sixth Criminal Court of Santiago, Olga Pérez Meza, decided to keep retired Major Raúl Lillo Gutiérrez in detention regarding the case of the homicide of former DINA chemist Eugenio Berríos Sagredo.

Meanwhile, Lieutenant Colonel Pablo Rodríguez Márquez—on active duty—was granted release under a travel ban. According to the police report, both allegedly participated in the operation to remove Berríos from Chile, with the objective of preventing him from testifying in the trial for the assassination of former Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier, which was being handled at the time by Judge Sergio Bañados.

Lillo and Rodríguez were allegedly supported in this task by Arturo Silva Valdés, Jaime Torres Gacitúa, and Mario Cisternas. Investigation continues The magistrate indicated that "the investigation is practically ready, almost closed, there are still details missing." Furthermore, she stated that the third part of the inquiries, related to the chemist's homicide, are the most difficult.

The judge summoned two other people to testify in the case, a civilian and a retired Army official, both presumably as witnesses in the case. Other cases Lillo Gutiérrez was a member of the Labor Brigade of the National Intelligence Center (CNI) and was prosecuted as an accomplice to the homicide of ANEF president Tucapel Jiménez, after being charged with participating in the surveillance of the union leader.

Rodríguez, meanwhile, was the subject of an attempted prosecution for the cover-up of this assassination while he was in the Army Intelligence Directorate, but his indictment was rejected in both instances. Judge Pérez indicated that after midday she will provide more information regarding the judicial future of the two detainees.

Source: latercera.cl, August 24, 2002

Former agents, some prosecuted, receive Army salary

DINA on a retainer

Among them are former members of the Mulchén, Rengo, and Leopardo brigades. Also a former military prosecutor who falsified documents to cover up the crime of Carmelo Soria, an Army doctor who tortured prisoners, and the agent who removed Eugenio Berríos from Chile.

The ghost of the crimes of the DINA and the CNI is revived in the payrolls of the Army's contract employees. On the list, updated in 2009 by the military institution itself, are former members of the Mulchén, Rengo, and Leopardo groups, some of whom are currently being prosecuted.

Also included are a torture-practicing doctor expelled from the professional association in 1987 and a former military prosecutor accused of falsifying documentation to protect the assassins of the Chilean-Spanish diplomat Carmelo Soria.

Additionally, the former Army intelligence agent who clandestinely removed DINA chemist Eugenio Berríos from Chile appears. One of them is an old standard-bearer of the elite that surrounded Manuel Contreras at the headquarters on Calle Belgrano 11: Colonel (R) Hugo "Cacho" Acevedo Godoy, an aide to the DINA boss.

Number five on the list of CNI agents that the Army provided to Judge Sergio Muñoz in the framework of the investigation into the crime of Tucapel Jiménez, Acevedo is married to the "Pentothal Lady," the nurse-agent Carlota Bolumburu Taboada, who killed prisoners at the Clínica Santa Lucía by injecting them with overdoses of pentothal. "I was in the Rengo Brigade, a security unit in the DINA that was under the command of then-Captain Christoph Willikie Flöl (convicted for the crime of General Carlos Prats).

Later, in 1977, I was part of the personal security of my General Augusto Pinochet," "Cacho" told Judge Alejandro Madrid in the trial for the crime of agent Corporal Manuel Leyton. A lover of history, Acevedo turned to the Battle of La Concepción to choose the aliases of two MIR militants and another of socialist affiliation who became agents: Marcia Merino Vega, María Uribe Gómez, and Luz Arce Sandoval assumed the names of Marta Vergara, Gloria Vilches, and Ana María Vergara, women who participated in that combat of the War of the Pacific.

Acevedo has a current contract for $751,259 per month for "advisory services for the administration of the Casas Viejas de Chena military property." Doctor and Colonel (R) Guido Díaz Paci is another of those "benefited" by the military branch with fiscal funds.

He participated in the passage of the Caravan of Death through La Serena on October 16, 1973, the date on which 15 prisoners were executed. That afternoon, after the massacre, Díaz arranged the bodies, removed personal effects from their pockets, and with his medical report, took part in the cover-up of the slaughter, which was officially registered as the fulfillment of a "sentence of a military tribunal," according to what was reported by then-Lieutenant Juan Emilio Cheyre to the newspaper El Día de La Serena.

Díaz Paci later moved from the setup to the action and tortured prisoners at the Arica Regiment in La Serena. One of his victims there was the prisoner Margarita V.C. "I was five months pregnant and I miscarried due to the torture.

Among my torturers, I recognized the psychiatrist Carlos Andreu Albornoz and the doctor of the Arica Regiment of La Serena and the Hospital of La Serena, Guido Díaz Paci. I was raped, they put rats and spiders in my vagina, and they injected me with pentothal," the former prisoner told the Corporation for the Promotion and Defense of the Rights of the People (CODEPU), a statement recorded in the report Testimonies of Torture in Chile, published by this organization in December 2003.

In October 1987, the Medical Association expelled Díaz Paci from its ranks for his participation, in complicity with the CNI, in the falsification of records regarding the health status of the Christian Democrat transporter from La Serena, Mario Fernández López, who, as a result of the torture, had died at the Hospital of La Serena in October 1984.

Díaz Paci has a current contract for $400,000 per month for "medical attention to active and retired personnel, and their families." Until now, this doctor has not been prosecuted for crimes against humanity.

Head of "Leopardo" Colonel (R) Sergio Castillo González currently receives $1,205,298 per month from the Army for "advisory services for the development of the professional career structure project." He is part of the income earned by this member of the team of instructor officers who, between November and December 1973, formed the first contingent of agents of the nascent DINA in Rocas de Santo Domingo.

Former agent Nibaldo Jiménez Castañeda, part of that first contingent, recalled in the trial for the forcibly disappeared of Operation Colombo that in January 1974 "we arrived at the Londres 38 barracks with a group of 20 agents under the command of Captain Sergio Castillo González." Another former agent, Fernando Guerra Guajardo, declared that "in September 1974 we were assigned to the barracks at Calle Irán with Los Plátanos (Ñuñoa, known as Venda Sexy) and in March-April 1975 to that of José Domingo Cañas (Ñuñoa), to which the Ciervo and Leopardo groups of the Purén Brigade were transferred." Castillo González commanded the Leopardo group. "Within the Purén Brigade was the Leopardo Group in charge of the then-Captain Castillo," acknowledged former agent Guido Jara Brevis. Castillo operated side-by-side with the feared Marcelo Moren Brito, known as "El Ronco," at Londres 38. There, according to what Nibaldo Jiménez recounted, who worked in Leopardo under the command of Sergio Castillo, "one of our missions was to transfer detainees to the Tejas Verdes regiment." In those "transfers," dozens of detainees disappeared. Their bodies were thrown into the sea. In December 2005, before Judge Juan Fuentes Belmar, Colonel (R) Castillo González admitted his status as a DINA agent. The former head of Leopardo was prosecuted in May 2008 by Judge Víctor Montiglio as one of the perpetrators of the kidnappings and disappearances of the victims of Operation Colombo (the case of the 119): Jaime Buzio Lorca (PC), Rodolfo Espejo Gómez (PS), and Albano Fioraso Chau (MIR), all disappeared from the Londres 38 barracks in 1974. Prosecutor Cea Sergio Cea, head of the Information Law chair at the Universidad del Desarrollo, receives a monthly fee of $677,222 from the Army as a "legal advisor on the project for reforms to military justice." Professor Cea presented a particular curriculum at the university linked to the Penta group, composed of Carlos Alberto Délano and Carlos Eugenio Lavín. In 1993, Magistrate Violeta Guzmán restarted the investigation into the crime of the Chilean-Spanish diplomat Carmelo Soria, committed by the Mulchén Brigade in 1976. Before the Supreme Court transferred the case to military justice, the non-commissioned officer and member of that brigade, Remigio Ríos San Martín, managed to declare that Soria was assassinated by that group. He even gave the names. However, once the case passed to the Second Military Prosecutor's Office of Santiago, precisely in charge of the Colonel of Justice and prosecutor Sergio Cea Cienfuegos, the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE) initiated an offensive to obstruct the process. Not only did it attempt to convince the non-commissioned officer to recant by pressuring him through his family and also gifting him a pickup truck, but it also urged Prosecutor Cea to falsify some statements and forge the signature of Ríos and others who took part in or knew about the operation to kill Soria and had decided to provide information. Cea, along with his secretaries Héctor Zúñiga Cadenasso and Leonardo García Pérez, were part of the cover-up and public document falsification operation initiated by the DINE, under the command of its chief, General Eugenio Covarrubias Valenzuela. Brigadier Jaime Lepe Orellana, one of the perpetrators of the Soria crime and at that time secretary to the dictator Augusto Pinochet, had active participation in that operation. Despite the above, the Supreme Court granted amnesty to the case for the homicide of Soria in August 1996. But on January 19, 2009, Judge Alejandro Madrid—who is instructing the trial for the assassination of DINA chemist Eugenio Berríos and is also investigating new evidence in the Soria case—prosecuted the now-former prosecutor Cea, along with Lepe Orellana, as co-perpetrators of the crime of falsification of a public document. His two secretaries were indicted as accomplices to that illicit act. Sergio Lautaro Cea Cienfuegos continues with his classes at one of the so-called "cota mil" universities, nestled in San Carlos de Apoquindo. The same institution where Joaquín Lavín and his main samurai impart knowledge. An Iturriaga in Mulchén The Iturriaga Neumann brothers were fierce agents. Raúl Eduardo—head of the Purén Brigade and the DINA foreign department—and Jorge Enrique are convicted for the double crime of General Carlos Prats and his wife. A third member of the clan, Alfredo Patricio, was also an agent of the Mulchén Brigade. "The members of that unit were Guillermo Salinas Torres, Pablo Belmar Labbé, and Patricio Quilhot Palma," declared Alfredo Iturriaga Neumann to Judge Alejandro Madrid. Although he did not recognize the name Mulchén Brigade and said that the group received the elegant name of "General Pinochet's Advanced Security Unit," in his statement he added that "that unit was part of the DINA." The named individuals precisely made up Mulchén, in addition to Jaime Lepe. In any case, their membership in this group, which operated in coordination with Michael Townley and Eugenio Berríos, with sarin gas and other lethal chemical elements, is proven in the trial for the crime of Carmelo Soria and in the other cases that Madrid is instructing. Black beret and commando, symbol of the elite of the dictatorship's repression organs, Alfredo Iturriaga Neumann is part of the current payroll of Army contract employees, receiving a monthly salary of $700,000 as an "advisor on matters related to the assessment of land force competencies." Pablo Rodríguez Márquez—prosecuted and formally accused by Judge Alejandro Madrid as the perpetrator of the crimes of kidnapping, criminal conspiracy, and obstruction of justice in the Berríos case—also appears on the Army's contract employee payroll. On October 26, 1991, Lieutenant Rodríguez removed chemist Eugenio Berríos from Chile clandestinely to Uruguay, with the false identity of "Manuel Morales Jara." In February 1990, Rodríguez had moved from the CNI to the DINE. There, he joined the Special Operations Unit, pompously disguised as the Analysis Advisory Unit. This department, with reserved funds provided by Pinochet, obstructed the work of the judges who were investigating the crimes of the dictatorship. The unit also removed agents Carlos Herrera Jiménez and Arturo Sanhueza from Chile, destined for Argentina and Uruguay. In Montevideo, Rodríguez was one of the main participants and articulators in keeping Berríos under kidnapping. Shortly before, on September 10, 1991, he went to Argentina in search of a false passport. Two days later, he returned to Santiago "debuting" the name "Mauricio Gómez," with which Herrera was removed seven days later to extract him from the trial for the crime of Tucapel Jiménez. Today, Pablo Rodríguez Márquez receives a monthly fee of $700,000 from the Army as an "advisor to the force preparation section." Consulted by telephone by LND, there was no response from the institution's Communications Department. Nor was an opinion received regarding the inquiry made via the public relations email address. Families: "National shame" For the president of the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared, Lorena Pizarro, the fact that the Army is financing with funds "from all Chileans" former agents who committed crimes during the dictatorship "is a national shame and an affront to the Chilean people, but the greatest infamy is that we, the relatives of our own victims, are helping with our taxes to pay the salaries of these criminals who kidnapped, assassinated, and forcibly disappeared our parents and children." She adds that "this proves that the Army has not disassociated itself from these criminals. We cannot continue to endure such complicity. Thanks to the Transparency Law, this list of contract employees has become known, but who knows how many more of these same subjects are being paid with public funds, since the list of the Army's contract personnel appears as classified, protected by the Code of Military Justice." Carmen Soria, daughter of the Chilean-Spanish diplomat assassinated by the Mulchén Brigade, maintains that "this is a shame that must be denounced internationally. It is simply a double standard, because, while they talk to us about respecting human rights and achieving justice, the Army continues to finance these criminals." Soria anticipates that she will demand that the government force the Army to immediately end the contracts of these individuals. "I am also helping to pay their salaries, while there are thousands of politically exonerated people who are in misery today. I am going to bring this to the attention of the authorities in Spain so that they present this fact to the Chilean government," she points out. Roberto D’Orival, a member of the 119 Collective, which groups the relatives of the 119 victims of Operation Colombo, lost his brother Jorge in that operation. Aware of this irregularity, he states that "this is something immoral that calls into question Chilean democracy, since it is assumed that the dictatorship came to an end, but we see that the State of Chile continues to finance human rights violators. As a collective, we are going to demand explanations from the Ministry of Defense."

Source: lanacion.cl, August 30, 2009