The young woman went to a Carabineros station in Macul to ask about a friend who had been detained, but upon returning to her home she was arrested, subjected to torture and other abuses, and subsequently placed in a vehicle in which she was to be transported to the Estadio Nacional, where she never arrived.

The Supreme Court sentenced three retired Carabineros for the kidnapping and homicide of university student Blanca Marina de la Luz Carrasco Peña, committed four days after the coup led by Augusto Pinochet on September 11, 1973, judicial sources reported today.

In a unanimous ruling, the second chamber of the highest Chilean court imposed a sentence of 10 years and one day in prison on former Carabineros officer Nelson Rivera Vidal as the perpetrator of the homicide, while former police officers Benjamín Labbé Campos and Humberto Torres Silva will serve six years in prison as perpetrators of kidnapping.

A fourth defendant, Pedro Muñoz Sepúlveda, was acquitted as his participation in the events was not proven. Blanca Marina de la Luz Carrasco Peña was 27 years old, married, and a mother of two children.

She was studying Plastic Arts at the Universidad Técnica del Estado (UTE), currently the Universidad de Santiago, was a militant in the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR), and was a student leader when she was detained on September 15, 1973.

The young woman went to a Carabineros station in her neighborhood, in the Santiago sector of Macul, to ask about a friend who had apparently been detained, but upon returning to her home she was arrested, as determined by special judge Mario Carroza, who investigated the case.

Taken back to the police station, she was subjected to torture and other abuses, and later, at night, was placed in a vehicle in which she was to be transported to the Estadio Nacional, which was used at the time as a concentration camp for political prisoners.

However, she never reached her destination, and the following day her body was found in the street with multiple gunshot wounds. Regarding civil damages, the ruling ratified the decision made by Judge Carroza, who ordered the State of Chile to pay compensation of 20 million pesos (approximately 29,850 dollars) to the victim's widower and 15 million pesos (approximately 22,380 dollars) to each of her two children.

During the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), some 2,300 people died in Chile at the hands of State agents. Of that total, 1,192 are still listed as forcibly disappeared.

Source: theclinic.cl, October 17, 2018