Date of Birth : 09-25-24, 49 years of age at the time of his detention. Address : Asentamiento Nuevo Sendero, Paine Marital Status : Married, 7 children Occupation : Agricultural worker Political Affiliation : Member of the Socialist Party Date of Detention : October 16, 1973

CARLOS ENRIQUE LAZO QUINTEROS

ID No. : 4.254.293-8 Date of Birth : 09-11-32, 41 years of age at the time of his detention. Address : Asentamiento Nuevo Sendero, Paine Marital Status : Married, 6 children Occupation : Agricultural worker Political Affiliation : None Date of Detention : October 16, 1973

SAMUEL DEL TRANSITO LAZO MALDONADO

ID No. : 64.991 Buin Date of Birth : 08-16-49, 24 years of age at the time of his detention. Address : Asentamiento Nuevo Sendero, Paine Marital Status : Married, one child Occupation : First aid student at DUOC Political Affiliation : Member of the Socialist Party Date of Detention : October 16, 1973

LUIS RODOLFO LAZO MALDONADO

ID No. : 64.993 Buin Date of Birth : 11-25-52, 20 years of age at the time of his detention. Address : Asentamiento Nuevo Sendero, Paine Marital Status : Married Occupation : Agricultural worker Political Affiliation : Member of the Socialist Party Date of Detention : October 16, 1973

REPRESSIVE SITUATION

On October 16, Samuel Altamiro Lazo Quinteros, 49, married, 7 children, agricultural worker; his brother Carlos Enrique Lazo Quinteros, 41, married, 6 children; and the former’s sons, Samuel del Tránsito Lazo Maldonado, 24, married, one child, DUOC student, member of the Socialist Party, and Luis Rodolfo Lazo Maldonado, 20, married, agricultural worker, member of the Socialist Party, were detained.

All were arrested in the early hours of October 16 at the Asentamiento Nuevo Sendero by soldiers from the San Bernardo Infantry School. Samuel Altamiro and his sons Samuel del Tránsito and Luis Rodolfo, who shared the same house, were detained at approximately 04:00 in the morning.

The soldiers, who carried neither search nor arrest warrants, burst into the home while calling out the names of these three individuals. Awakened by the shouting, the residents found their home invaded by soldiers wearing various types of uniforms, all institutional.

These three individuals were immediately ordered to take their identity cards and get dressed. As they were being taken away, the residents were told that they would return at 6:00 a.m. after making a statement.

At that time, there was hesitation regarding the arrest of Segundo del Tránsito, another son of Lazo Quinteros, because he did not appear on a list the soldiers were carrying. He was also made to get dressed and was taken out to the street, but was brought back a few minutes later.

He later told his family that he saw Mario Enrique Muñoz Peñaloza with the soldiers, but in the capacity of a detainee. Muñoz Peñaloza had been detained on October 10, 1973, from the Asentamiento 24 de Abril by Carabineros from the Paine Sub-precinct, and from that date on, he became one of the forcibly disappeared.

Approximately fifteen minutes later, Carlos Enrique Lazo Quinteros was detained from his home in the presence of his wife by the same soldiers. To this day, they all remain forcibly disappeared.

That night and into the early morning, in a vast operation carried out by soldiers under the orders of Lieutenant Magaña, 22 people were detained in their homes; in none of these cases was there authorization to search or arrest.

These soldiers, dressed in field gear or gray uniforms with capes of the same color, wore armbands and used black berets or helmets. Their faces were in some cases smeared with soot and in others covered with balaclavas.

They moved in at least one red truck with side railings and a jeep. They were all heavily armed and illuminated the rooms with flashlights, preventing the residents from turning on the lights. The operation began at the first hour of October 16 and lasted until 04:00 in the morning.

The people who were detained, mostly settlers who had participated in the agrarian reform process, were listed on a document carried by the soldiers. Their homes were raided and the detainees were taken from their houses, with the families warned that they would return during the day after giving statements in San Bernardo.

Everyone was loaded onto a truck waiting on the main road. The operation was carried out silently, and the victims' relatives were forbidden from looking out of their houses. The operation began with the detention of Andrés Pereira Salsberg, an industrialist and owner of a machine shop; then René del Rosario Maureira Gajardo, a merchant, was detained; immediately after, the soldiers headed toward the sector corresponding to the Asentamiento 24 de Abril, where they detained Patricio Loreto Duque Orellana, the brothers Raúl Antonio, Silvestre René, and Jorge Hernán Muñoz Peñaloza, their brother-in-law Basilio Antonio Valenzuela Alvarez, Germán Fredes García, Carlos Enrique Gaete López, Carlos Alberto Nieto Duarte, Laureano Quiroz Pezoa, Rosalindo Delfín Hernán Muñoz, and Ramón Luis Silva Carreño. Next, they went to the Asentamiento El Tránsito, where they detained Pedro Antonio Cabezas Villegas and Roberto Servando Galaz. Finally, they went to the Asentamiento Nuevo Sendero, where they detained Enrique Lazo Quintero, his brother Samuel Altamiro Lazo Quinteros and his sons Luis Rodolfo and Samuel Lazo Maldonado, José Domingo Adasme Núñez, Luis Alberto Gaete Balmaceda, and José Ignacio Gaete Maldonado.

On October 10, Carabineros from the Paine Sub-precinct had detained Samuel Altamiro Lazo Quinteros from his home in the Asentamiento El Tránsito; he had been released after 24 hours of detention at said Sub-precinct.

This farmer was detained again in the early hours of October 16, 1973. Subsequent to his first detention, he informed his fellow settlers that he had been warned by the Carabineros that in the following days, soldiers from the San Bernardo Infantry School would come to detain the settlers.

The farmers of said settlement who had approached the Sub-precinct, where they had a conversation with Sergeant Reyes about their situation, had received identical information.

The whereabouts of all the people detained on October 16, 1973, remain unknown; they are not known to have been held in any detention center. To date, there are no witnesses to this effect. Judicial records indicate that they were taken that morning in the direction of the hills of Codegua, near Melipilla, where they were executed. Their remains have not been found.

The detention and subsequent disappearance of these cases are part of the repression in Paine in 1973. (See file for José Domingo Adasme Núñez).

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEEDINGS

On March 24, 1974, a mass writ of amparo for 131 people was filed before the Santiago Court of Appeals, registered under No. 289-74. The brothers Samuel del Tránsito and Carlos Enrique Lazo Quinteros were included, as were the sons of the former, Samuel del Tránsito and Luis Rodolfo Lazo Maldonado.

Authorities were consulted without being able to establish the particular situation of each of the individuals. On November 28, 1974, the writ of amparo was rejected. The resolution was appealed. The full Supreme Court confirmed the ruling on January 31, 1975, agreeing to appoint a Visiting Judge (Ministro en Visita Extraordinaria) to conduct the corresponding investigation.

The appointment fell to Judge Enrique Zurita Camps, who on February 24 of that year initiated case file 106657 in the 1st Criminal Court of Santiago. Relatives of these four people were summoned to testify by Judge Zurita, leaving a new record before the Court regarding the circumstances of their arrests.

On September 25, 1975, without any of the reported cases having been investigated in depth, the summary was closed "because no further progress could be made in the investigation." On September 29 of the same year, the Judge issued a ruling on these four cases as well as 24 other cases of detainees from Paine, and temporarily dismissed the case because the existence of a criminal act had not been fully justified.

On May 10, 1976, the Santiago Court of Appeals approved Judge Zurita Camps' resolution.

On March 21, 1975, a complaint for alleged disappearance was filed before the Maipo-Buin Judge of Letters following the detention and subsequent disappearance of 23 local residents of Paine, the vast majority of whom were farmers detained by soldiers, except for one detained by Carabineros, including the cases of Luis Rodolfo Lazo Maldonado, Samuel Lazo Quinteros, Samuel del Tránsito Lazo Maldonado, and Carlos Enrique Lazo Quinteros.

The case for the group of affected persons was registered under No. 24005-1, presided over by Judge Javier Torres. Three months later, María Inés López Ahumada and Teresa Celinda López Meza appeared before the Court to ratify the complaint.

Starting in July, the first investigative steps were ordered. The National Executive Secretariat for Detainees and the San Bernardo Infantry School were officially notified. Both responded in their official letters that they had no information regarding the persons consulted.

The Legal Medical Institute, for its part, replied that the names of those 23 people did not appear in the registry of corpses admitted to that establishment. The Court issued a broad order to investigate to the Carabineros and the Investigations Police (Investigaciones).

The Carabineros limited themselves to taking statements from the 2 complainants, while the Investigations Police, in addition to carrying out similar steps to those of the Carabineros, informed the Court that they had made inquiries to "locate and identify the people who apparently wore military uniforms on the day of the events, without favorable results." Without having ordered other steps, in November 1975, the Court decided to close the summary and definitively dismiss the case, "as no presumptions appeared from the summary that the reported facts had occurred." On January 20, 1976, the Rancagua Court of Appeals confirmed the dismissal, establishing that it should be temporary. The case was archived. On March 23, 1977, the case was reopened after a request to that effect presented by the complainants was accepted. The request for reopening was based on the fact that 10 cases included in case 24005-1 appeared on a list of 63 people whom the Chilean government, at the 30th session of the United Nations (UN) in 1975, claimed were not "forcibly disappeared"—as their relatives reported—but were dead people whose corpses were recorded in the admission index books of the Legal Medical Institute. This list of 63 names was included in the document titled "Current Situation of Human Rights in Chile" (Volume II, pp. 381-383). The information contained in the report—the complainants added—was contradictory to what that Court had received from the same Legal Medical Institute when consulted. Luis Lazo Maldonado, Samuel Lazo Maldonado, Carlos Lazo Quinteros, and Samuel Lazo Quinteros were part of the lists and were assigned protocol numbers 3467, 3471, 3492, and 3472, respectively.

In May 1977, a complaint was filed for the illegal arrest of the Lazo Quinteros and Lazo Maldonado brothers; from its inception, the case was joined to case file 24005-1. The direct relatives of these 4 people appeared before the Court and provided detailed information about the circumstances of the arrests and identified the captors as soldiers from San Bernardo.

In March 1978, a criminal complaint was filed against Colonel Jorge Dawling Santa María as an accessory to the crime of arrest followed by the disappearance of the 4 people. The judicial filing stated that during the investigation carried out in case 24005-1, the aforementioned Colonel, in his capacity as Director of the San Bernardo Infantry School, had replied to the Court that he was not in a position to provide the names of the officers who participated in the operations of October 1973 in Paine and its surroundings.

On April 3, 1979, the Judge of the Rancagua Court of Appeals, Mr. Juan Rivas Larraín, was appointed to continue hearing the case, in response to a request presented by the Catholic Church to the Supreme Court to appoint Visiting Judges to hear cases of forcibly disappeared persons throughout the national territory.

Thus, two years after the reopening of the case, upon assuming the case, Judge Rivas ordered the first steps aimed at clarifying the contradiction between the information the Court possessed regarding the 10 people and that which the Chilean government provided to the UN.

In April, he officially requested the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to inform him of the background and procedures that allowed the Government to compile the list of "presumably disappeared persons" who had been located in the records of the Legal Medical Institute.

In May 1979, Judge Rivas visited the Legal Medical Institute and conducted an ocular inspection; he requested and was presented with the general index of corpse admissions corresponding to the 2nd semester of 1973 up to the date of the proceeding, verifying that the people whose disappearance was being investigated did not appear in the records of said Institute.

He also reviewed the "General Index of Autopsy Registry"; upon examining the autopsy protocol numbers that the Chilean Government report assigned to the people it indicated as admitted to the Legal Medical Institute, he found that those protocols referred to unidentified people recorded as NN (John/Jane Doe).

None of those protocols showed subsequent identification. He also verified that all those NNs were people who had died after September 11, 1973, due to gunshot wounds, whose deaths had occurred in Santiago and its surroundings.

On that occasion, Dr. Claudio Molina Fraga, Director of the Institute, informed the Court that during the investigation conducted by the Visiting Judge of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Adolfo Bañados, regarding the discovery of corpses in the town of Lonquén, a report had been issued to that Judge regarding the identity of the signature and stamp that appeared at the end of the referenced list, regarding which there were many doubts as to whether the former belonged to Dr.

Alfredo Vargas Baeza (RIP) and the latter to the Institute. The official letter in question contained information on the possible origin of the discrepancies between the Institute's records and those contained in the list used by the government.

The Visiting Judge requested a copy of that official letter (Letter No. 36 of February 12, 1979), a request that was objected to by the establishment's legal advisor, who stated that the original document had been sent as confidential to the Court, whose file was in the Military Prosecutor's Office due to the incompetence of Visiting Judge Adolfo Bañados.

Visiting Judge Rivas officially requested the Military Prosecutor's Office (May 1979) to authorize the Legal Medical Institute to provide a copy of Letter No. 36. In June of the same year, the Military Prosecutor, Gonzalo Salazar Swett, responded negatively to the Visiting Judge, stating verbatim: "I inform you that it is not possible to grant the request by your Honor for now, given the state of the case." Faced with this response, the Visiting Judge officially requested the Santiago Court of Appeals to send him an authorized copy of Letter No. 36, receiving a refusal signed by its President, Mr. Enrique Paillás P., stating verbatim: "The full Court agreed not to grant your request, given that the report referred to belongs to confidential records of this presidency. Without prejudice to what Judge Bañados may decide."

Thus, he had to officially request it directly from Judge Adolfo Bañados, who provided a copy of the mentioned letter. In August 1979, the Commander-in-Chief of the II Army Division and Military Court sent the Court its authorization for the Legal Medical Institute to provide a copy of Letter 36 to the Visiting Judge, Mr.

Juan Rivas. A few days earlier, the Judge had declared himself incompetent to continue investigating case 24005, due to the recent creation of the Presidente Aguirre Cerda Court of Appeals, to whose jurisdiction the Buin-Maipo Court belonged.

At the time of his declaration of incompetence, he established the falsity of the list used by the Chilean agency in its report on the "Current Situation of Human Rights." The investigation was continued from August 13, 1979, by Visiting Judge Humberto Espejo C., under case file 1-79.

During the investigation into the irregularities contained in reports issued under the responsibility of the Legal Medical Institute, the Director of said Institute had expressed to the Court an interest in initiating an internal summary to clarify such irregularity.

When requested for information in November 1979 regarding the result of said summary, its director, Claudio Molina Fraga, responded in April 1980, stating verbatim in one of its parts: "no summary was carried out nor did anyone request it, and if it had been done, the same conclusions contained in the Letter sent to Visiting Judge Adolfo Bañados Cuadra would have been reached, who did not deem it necessary to request further information in relation to this process."

In May 1980, Visiting Judge Humberto Espejo, by instruction of the Presidente Aguirre Cerda Court of Appeals, sent official letters to the Prosecutor of the Supreme Court communicating that the various records in the process suggested the existence of a possible irregularity in the compilation of "a list of disappeared persons"; he brought this to his attention as it corresponded to his supervision of the services of the Legal Medical Institute.

The relevant pages of case file 24005-1 were attached to the letter. There are no resolutions from the prosecutor recorded in said case.

Regarding the accused Colonel Jorge Dawling Santa María, who in 1979 served as Director of the San Bernardo Infantry School, an official letter was sent to him on September 26, 1978, requesting all information he had from his department regarding the personnel of that unit who served in the months of September and October 1973.

The response did not arrive. The Court reported this behavior to the Court of Appeals, which on November 14, 1978, resolved in Plenary that the aforementioned Colonel should abide by the provisions of Art. 191 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, in order to provide a statement on what was required, even though he was not obliged to appear before the Court due to his military rank.

The response letter finally arrived signed by the new director of the Infantry School, Carlos Meirelles Müller, in which he limited himself to expressing that there was no intention to hide information, that there were documents with the requested information, and added that Colonel Dawling Santa María had handed over command and ceased to belong to the institution; thus, he did not respond to the request.

On February 7, 1979, in a new letter, Colonel Meirelles was requested to provide the list of the institution's personnel as of October 1973; Meirelles responded on this occasion that he did not have the authority to provide that information and that it must be requested from the Minister of National Defense.

Starting in April 1979, with Judge Humberto Espejo in charge of the investigation, after the creation of the Presidente Aguirre Cerda Court of Appeals, which territorially corresponded to continue hearing the case, the official letters were diversified in order to establish the identification of those who participated in the operations that occurred in Paine and its surroundings.

The Minister of National Defense was officially notified, not only to inquire about the personnel already mentioned but also to request the appearance of Colonel Dawling Santa María, Lieutenant Andrés Magaña Bau—identified by the victims' families as the person in charge of the October 16, 1973, operation—and Colonel Pedro Montalva Calvo, Sub-director of the Infantry School as of October 1973.

In April 1979, Lieutenant Andrés Magaña Bau appeared before the Court, at which time he denied his participation in the October 16, 1973, operation as well as any other that might have been carried out in Paine.

When confronted with relatives of one of the forcibly disappeared from October 16, René del R. Maureira Gajardo, he denied knowing the members of that family, despite the fact that they claimed to have been together with Magaña Bau on more than one occasion at social events prior to September 11, 1973.

Regarding Colonel Jorge Dawling Santa María, the Court had been informed in a response letter that since August 1978 he had been appointed Military Attaché at the Embassy of Uruguay, a position that would last for more than a year.

For his part, Colonel Pedro Montalva Calvo, upon appearing before the Court on December 10, 1979, testified, affirming the existence of a Detention Camp at Cerro Chena dependent on the Infantry School, which, according to his statement, ceased to function in December 1973 at the time he assumed the Directorship of the School.

Prior to that, its Director had been Colonel Leonel Köning Altterman, who gave written orders regarding who entered as detainees. When the then-Director of the School, Colonel Köning, was summoned to testify, the Court was notified that he had committed suicide on June 21, 1979.

By December 1979, nine criminal complaints were joined to case 1-79 against the staff of the San Bernardo Infantry School for the crimes of kidnapping of Pedro Hernán Pinto Caroca, Ramón Luis Silva Carreño, Laureano Quiroz Pezoa, Ramiro Antonio Muñoz Peñaloza, Silvestre René Muñoz Peñaloza, José Ignacio Castro Maldonado, Luis Alberto Gaete Balmaceda, José Germán Fredes García, and Carlos Gaete López.

Five complaints against Colonel Jorge Dawling Santa María for covering up the crime of illegal arrest of Jorge Hernán Muñoz Peñaloza, Carlos Enrique Lazo Quinteros, Carlos Alberto Nieto Duarte, José Domingo Adasme Núñez, Samuel Altamiro Lazo Quinteros, Samuel del Tránsito Lazo Maldonado, and Luis Rodolfo Lazo Maldonado.

A complaint for the kidnapping and qualified homicide of Juan Guillermo Cuadra Espinoza and Ignacio del Tránsito Santander Albornoz, perpetrated by members of the San Bernardo Infantry School.

A complaint against Lieutenant Andrés Magaña Bau for the crime of illegal arrest of René del Rosario Maureira Gajardo; a complaint for the kidnapping of Andrés Pereira Salsberg; and a complaint for the crime of kidnapping of Mario Enrique Muñoz Peñaloza against Carabineros Sergeant Manuel Reyes. (More information regarding this last complaint in the account of Mario E. Muñoz Peñaloza).

On December 12, 1979, Judge Espejo declared himself incompetent and sent the records to the Military Prosecutor's Office, given that all the complaints and lawsuits contained in this case (file 1-79) attributed the authorship of the arrests to personnel of the Armed Forces and Carabineros, both from the San Bernardo Infantry School and the Paine Sub-precinct.

On March 6, 1980, the Court revoked the incompetence and ordered some steps to advance the investigation. As a result, Colonel Jorge Dawling Santa María was summoned to testify again. On April 2, 1980, the Minister of Defense, Lieutenant General Raúl Benavides E., informed the Court that Mr.

Dawling Santa María held the rank of Brigadier General and, in accordance with Arts. 191 and 192 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, must testify in writing. The Minister sent an erroneously formulated questionnaire, which gave the Brigadier General the opportunity to respond: "in relation to questions 2 and 13, I have no information to provide."

On June 5, 1980, Judge Espejo declared himself incompetent for the second time, basing his resolution on exactly the same terms as the previous one. There was an appeal, and on July 25, 1980, the resolution was revoked; on this occasion, the Court of Appeals ordered the Visiting Judge to prepare a new questionnaire to be answered by the Brigadier General based on the accusations made in the complaints against him that are part of the process.

In July 1980, the Court received a response letter from Brigadier General Dawling Santa María, the content of which did not provide new information, arguing that in 1974 there were no longer written records at the Infantry School regarding military maneuvers and operations.

His letter concluded by stating that he had brought the records of case 1-79 to the attention of the Army General Command, since he was accused in the transcribed complaints of participating as an accessory to "alleged crimes" that he would have committed "in the line of duty."

On October 17, 1980, the records were definitively sent to the II Military Prosecutor's Office; at that time, the jurisdictional inhibition took effect.

On May 24, 1982, the case was totally and temporarily dismissed: "notwithstanding that the investigation is exhausted, the perpetration of the facts reported at page 1 and attributed to personnel of the Armed Forces and Order, subject to military jurisdiction, is not fully proven."

That resolution was appealed and revoked in March 1984 by the Court Martial, which ordered steps aimed at completing the investigation. During 1985, at least 26 officers and non-commissioned officers who served in September-October 1973 at the Infantry School testified.

All of them denied their participation in operations in Paine and its surroundings, denied knowing about the presence of detainees in the Chena Detention Camp, and even denied knowing of the existence of said Detention Camp.

On November 22, the Military Prosecutor of the II Military Prosecutor's Office, Enrique Ibarra Chamorro, appeared on behalf of the Military Public Ministry and requested the application of the Amnesty Law in accordance with Decree Law 2191-78.

The Military Judge dismissed the case totally and definitively because the criminal liability of the persons allegedly accused of the reported facts had been extinguished. That resolution was revoked in February 1992 by the Court Martial; this Court instructed that the case return to the summary stage and ordered the exhumation of the six graves in Patio 29.

Said exhumation could not be carried out by order of this Court, since in September 1991, in case 4449-AF of the 22nd Criminal Court of Santiago, the exhumation of all the remains of unidentified persons buried between September and December 1973 in the aforementioned patio at the General Cemetery had been carried out.

As of December 1992, the case was still in process. It should be noted that in this case, investigations were also carried out regarding Patio 29 of the General Cemetery of Santiago starting in November 1979, when Monsignor Ignacio Ortúzar R.—in his capacity as Vicar General and Surrogate Vicar of the Vicariate of Solidarity—reported to the Court the existence of mass and irregular burials of people in Patio 29 of the mentioned cemetery, which would affect nearly 200 graves.

From the investigation, the Court was able to conclude that at least 6 graves could yield information regarding forcibly disappeared persons included in the process. Between 1981 and 1987, the exhumation of those six graves was requested from the Court on five occasions, with the request being denied on the grounds that it was inconclusive given the time elapsed. (More information in the case of Ignacio del Tránsito Santander Albornoz).

In August 1990, case 2-90-E was initiated in the Buin-Maipo Judge of Letters with the appointment of Visiting Judge Germán Hermosilla by the Presidente Aguirre Cerda Court of Appeals. Said appointment was due to a request to that effect from the Vicariate of Solidarity of the Archbishopric of Santiago, given the existence of illegal burials of people in the town of Paine that affected forcibly disappeared persons.

The records of Samuel and Carlos Lazo Quinteros and those of Samuel and Luis Lazo Maldonado were delivered to the Court.

On March 15, 1991, Mrs. María del Tránsito Venegas Cortés testified before Visiting Judge Germán Hermosilla in her capacity as the mother of Jorge Reyes Cortés, who in 1973 served his military service at the San Bernardo Infantry School.

Her statements, which account for the fate of the 22 people detained on October 16, 1973, were recorded in the file. In one part, she said verbatim: "a few days after they took the husband of my cousin Luisa, Roberto Serrano, I went to visit my aunt Rosa's house and saw that she was very desperate and crying for the fate of her husband.

So I told her 'don't cry anymore Lucha, your husband was taken by the soldiers, Jorge was with them.' I meant that my son had to carry out this detention. My son Jorge had told me about this a few months later, I don't remember exactly when; I found out a few days later as I said before.

They kept them for months without leaving after the Coup, so when he went to the house, he told me. He wasn't calm, he was scared, desperate, and not only him but also his companions. My son didn't know Roberto Serrano; when they went to their house, Jorge met Luisa.

He told me that these detentions were done at night. Yes, it is true that my son told me that it was his turn to shoot at Serrano, but that he asked a companion to change places with him. He also told me that if he said he wouldn't shoot, they would kill him.

It is true that I told Luisa this, since she was taking clothes to her husband at Cerro Chena and they would receive them there, when Serrano was already dead." Although Mrs. María Venegas Cortez declared that she did not remember having indicated the hills near Codegua and Melipilla as the place of execution, the wife of Serrano Galaz did remember it, as recorded in her statements before Visiting Judge Humberto Espejo.

On April 22, 1980, Jorge Reyes Cortez appeared before the court in case file 1-79. In his statement, he denied any participation in the events, stating verbatim in one of his parts: "I never participated in any operation in Paine, I never knew there were detainees at Cerro Chena, nor did I recognize any of the detainees in the few times I had to be on guard when they arrived." The Visiting Judge has carried out various ocular inspections in rural sectors around Paine, without positive results for the case of the forcibly disappeared of October 16, 1973.

On August 22, 1991, case 4449-AF was initiated in the 22nd Criminal Court of Santiago upon the commencement of the judicial investigation into the crime of illegal burial of corpses that currently remain buried as NN in Patio 29 of the General Cemetery, based on information contained in a criminal complaint filed by the Vicariate of Solidarity of the Archbishopric of Santiago.

The anthropomorphic information of Luis Rodolfo and Samuel del Tránsito Lazo Maldonado, as well as Samuel Altamiro and Carlos Enrique Lazo Quintero, was delivered in that case. In September 1991, the exhumation of 108 graves in Patio 29 was carried out. As of December 1992, the extracted remains are at the Legal Medical Institute undergoing the identification process.

Source: Corporation report

Less than four months after the Armed Forces delivered their report on the whereabouts of the forcibly disappeared, experts from the Legal Medical Service announced a new error in the records, reporting that the remains of Samuel Lazo Quintero are among the remains of the bodies exhumed in Patio 29 of the General Cemetery and not, as it appears in the list prepared by the uniformed officers, among those who were thrown into the sea.

Lazo Quintero was detained in Paine in October 1973 at the age of 49. His case joins that of Juan Rivera Matus, whose body was found at the Army's Fuerte Arteaga, in circumstances where the Armed Forces had established that he had been thrown into the sea along with 150 other forcibly disappeared persons.

His name, along with those of his sons Luis and Samuel and his brother Enrique, appear among the 100 forcibly disappeared persons of Paine. Samuel Lazo Quintero's daughter, Flor, explained that her family is deeply moved by the situation.

Source: TERCERA May 21, 2001 -

Memoriaviva had access to the "presumed death" certificate of Mr. Samuel Altamiro Lazo Quinteros dated October 17, 1975, which does not coincide with the date of the documents available, which are recorded as October 16, 1973. Civil Registry and Identification FOLIO: 500653691142 Verification Code: d5aeeec5b947

Source: registrocivil.cl

The Supreme Court rejected the application of the "half-prescription" (a partial sentence reduction based on the passage of time) in favor of the uniformed personnel, as had been ruled by the San Miguel Court of Appeals.

This Tuesday, the Supreme Court confirmed the sentence that the Minister for extraordinary cases, Marianela Cifuentes Alarcón, had handed down on October 29, 2019, in the case titled “Paine principal.” This ruling concerns the responsibility of 11 retired members of the Army and Carabineros in the qualified homicides of 38 residents from various settlements in Paine, crimes that occurred between September 24 and October 16, 1973.

The application of the half-prescription, with which the San Miguel Court of Appeals had subsequently favored the uniformed personnel, was thus dismissed, and instead, some of the imposed sentences were increased.

The Supreme Court accepted the cassation appeals filed by the plaintiffs against the aforementioned ruling of the San Miguel court. In this regard, the Supreme Court considered that such a legal figure should not be applied in cases of crimes against humanity, such as those in Paine, arguing that International Human Rights Law rejects “impunity and the imposition of sentences not proportional to the intrinsic gravity of the crimes.”

The 38 victims in this case are José Cabezas Bueno, Francisco Calderón Nilo, Héctor Castro Sáez, Domingo Galaz Salas, José González Espinoza, Juan González Pérez, Aurelio Hidalgo Mella, Bernabé López López, Juan Núñez Vargas, Héctor Pinto Caroca, Hernán Pinto Caroca, Aliro Valdivia Valdivia, Hugo Alfredo Arenas, Víctor Zamorano González, José Adasme Núñez, Pedro Cabezas Villegas, Ramón Capetillo Mora, José Castro Maldonado, Patricio Duque Orellana, José Fredes García, Luis Gaete Balmaceda, Carlos Gaete López, Luis Lazo Maldonado, Samuel Lazo Maldonado, Carlos Lazo Quinteros, Samuel Lazo Quinteros, René Maureira Gajardo, Rosalindo Herrera Muñoz, Jorge Muñoz Peñaloza, Mario Muñoz Peñaloza, Ramiro Muñoz Peñaloza, Silvestre Muñoz Peñaloza, Carlos Nieto Duarte, Andrés Pereira Salsberg, Laureano Quiroz Pezoa, Roberto Serrano Galaz, Luis Silva Carreño, and Basilio Valenzuela Álvarez.

In the sentence, the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court sentenced retired Army members Jorge Romero Campos and Arturo Fernández Rodríguez to 20 years of imprisonment for their responsibility in the 38 qualified homicides that occurred in the “El Escorial” sector and the “Campo Lindo” and “24 de abril” settlements.

Meanwhile, fellow retired members of that branch of the Armed Forces—José Vásquez Silva, Carlos Lazo Santibáñez, Juan Opazo Vera, Roberto Pinto Labordarie, Jorge Saavedra Meza, Víctor Sandoval Muñoz, and Carlos Durán Rodríguez—were sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment for their responsibility in the same crimes.

Furthermore, retired Army conscript Raúl Areyte Valdenegro must serve a sentence of 7 years and 6 months of imprisonment for his responsibility in the 14 homicides in the aforementioned “El Escorial” sector.

Finally, retired Carabineros officer Nelson Bravo Espinoza was sentenced to 10 years and one day of imprisonment for his responsibility in the qualified kidnappings of Ramón Capetillo Mora and Mario Muñoz Peñaloza, committed on October 8 and 10, 1973.

The murders The Court's ruling details that after the illegal arrests of the residents of the “El Escorial,” “Campo Lindo,” “24 de abril,” “Nuevo Sendero,” and “El Tránsito” settlements by the uniformed personnel, they were taken to the Cerro Chena prisoner camp at the San Bernardo Infantry School.

Some were taken to a ravine in the Cuesta de Chada, where they were executed; their bodies were found abandoned at the site some time later.

Others were taken to the Los Arrayanes ravine in the vicinity of Lake Rapel, where they were executed by soldiers, who buried their bodies at the same site. Years later, only bone and dental fragments of 11 victims were found, as their bodies had been exhumed and moved to an unknown location.

Regarding civil reparations, the State was ordered to pay compensation to the victims' families.

Source: lavozdelosquesobran.cl 17/6/2022

Date: 06-17-2022