The Supreme Court ratified the sentence for the kidnapping and murder of the former DINA chemist Eugenio Berríos. The longest sentence was handed down to Arturo Silva Valdés (15 years and 1 day in prison), who was part of the core group that executed the Army’s most clandestine operations in the 80s and well into the democracy.

The following report, published in 2002 by the magazine Siete+7, reveals that the former officer also holds the secrets of two of the most powerful men in Chile: Augusto Pinochet and Agustín Edwards, owner and director of the newspaper El Mercurio.

Other protagonists of the operation to murder Berríos in Uruguay in 1992 who were sentenced today include the Uruguayan military officers Tomás Casella, Eduardo Radaelli, and Wellington Sarli, as well as the former Army Auditor General Fernando Torres Silva and the former Director of Army Intelligence Eugenio Covarrubias, among others.

Tall, attractive, elegant, with a commanding presence, a man of the world, an intelligence expert, an expert marksman, a polo player, and surrounded by an aura that even earned him the nickname of the “Chilean James Bond.” These are some of the characteristics attributed to Major (R) Arturo Rodrigo Silva Valdés, a member of the Secret Service of the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE), who is identified by at least two testimonies as the Chilean author—the other being Uruguayan—of the shots that ended the life of the DINA chemist, Eugenio Berríos.

But Silva Valdés has other attributes that contributed to enlarging his legend. He is the keeper of the secrets of two of the most powerful men in Chile: Augusto Pinochet and Agustín Edwards, the director and owner of the newspaper El Mercurio. He was the head of personal security for both, in charge of their rearguard and movements.

Silva Valdés’s name was already known in the courts. He came to the fore when Judge Sergio Muñoz prosecuted him as an accessory to the murder of Tucapel Jiménez. But his identification became known in the heart of the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE) before he was prosecuted. And measures were taken. By then, he was serving as Agustín Edwards’s personal bodyguard. A role he abandoned abruptly.

One of the aspects that remains to be clarified in his record is whether, in September 1994, Arturo Silva was indeed sent on a service commission to work for Agustín Edwards by the then-Director of Army Intelligence, General Eugenio Covarrubias.

Because later, when his retirement from the military institution occurred, his employment relationship with El Mercurio and with Edwards was assumed by the security company SERPROTEC S.A.

This company has two main partners: Juan Luis Herrera Villena and Inversiones Canelo Seis y Compañía, whose main partners are Agustín Edwards Eastman, Agustín Edwards del Río, and Inversiones Nacionales.

Valdés did not arrive alone to work for Edwards. A group of men, all trained in the CNI and in the small and select Secret Service team, accompanied him. Among them were Nelson Hernández Franco, who in 1982 served under the alias “Marcos de la Fuente” in the CNI and who was also prosecuted for the murder of Tucapel Jiménez; Marcelo Sandoval, Nelson Román, and even a woman: Erika Silva.

Later, Major Eduardo Martínez Wogner, who had been an aide to the director of the CNI, would join as chief.

General Eugenio Covarrubias followed the steps of Agustín Edwards’s security detail very closely. And their ties tightened when his son, also named Eugenio Covarrubias, assumed the management of SERPROTEC, a position he held until 1999.

Not everything in the life of this exclusive security expert has been adrenaline and glory. To his more than 500 trips around the world, one must contrast the death of one of his children. A wound that destabilized him and left him vulnerable to life. Today, despite his actions in Ecogas Limitada, Ceqsachile S.A., and Consultsistem Chile S.A., his world is collapsing again.

VIP ADVISOR

Arturo Silva began to stand out for his skills in intelligence work in the early 80s when he was part of the CNI squadrons. There are those who say that at that time they called him “Alvarito,” drawing a connection to Álvaro Corbalán, the powerful operational chief of the security agency.

Those were times when the communication channels between the CNI and the DINE were fluid and diffuse. A relationship that some officers today describe as “perverse” because it involved the institutional intelligence agency, intended for territorial security, in criminal operations, such as the murder of Tucapel Jiménez.

Today, Judge Olga Pérez is investigating another similar event that could have consequences of great proportions: the murder of former President Eduardo Frei Montalva via botulinum toxins. His death occurred days before a DINE squadron murdered Tucapel Jiménez (1982).

But Silva’s time of glory arrived on the occasion of the 1988 plebiscite, when he was able to deploy all his gifts by becoming the main “security advisor” to General Augusto Pinochet.

His role began the moment the general decided to take a trip. That was when he went into action. He would travel to the chosen location, interview the hosts and the country’s military intelligence agencies, conduct a complete review of the conditions of potential hotels to choose one, always having at least two alternatives in case of emergency; the nearby hospitals, the vehicles that would be used, the drivers, ambulances, medical check-ups, and medical records at hand.

He reviewed every last detail, including the selection of the men who would make up his security detail, and then he would sit down with Pinochet and his aide-de-camp of the moment to report on the chosen program and refine it.

His mission should have ended there, but the closeness, trust, and affection that Pinochet placed in him were such that it became a custom that when the trip began, Arturo Silva Valdés became his shadow.

To the point that on more than one occasion, the hotels where Pinochet stayed were registered in his name. This happened in October 1993, when Pinochet traveled to Brazil for vacation and the press reported that the former dictator had used the false identity of Arturo Silva Valdés at the Intercontinental Hotel in Rio de Janeiro.

But by then, Silva had become an ultra-secret agent of the DINE. A path he began in 1990 when he was chosen as one of the operational arms of the “casualty control” operation, the clandestine exit from the country of those military personnel in danger of being imprisoned or prosecuted for kidnapping, torture, or homicide during the dictatorship.

Thus, Silva Valdés was the key piece that operated in the escape of Luis Arturo Sanhueza Ross and Carlos Herrera Jiménez. Silva Valdés prepared that operation by traveling to Argentina on September 7, 1991, returned on the 12th, and left again on the same day as Herrera: September 19, 1991.

They were intense days. The escape of Eugenio Berríos was already decided and prepared. But this was covered with all special precautions: Berríos must not fall into Argentine hands. It was Arturo Silva who prepared every last detail, and when Berríos crossed the border in the south in the direction of Río Gallegos on October 26, 1991, Silva did the same toward Argentina, but by air.

From then on, he controlled every one of Berríos’s steps in his new residence. And also those of the other package he sent to be kept in Uruguay: Luis Arturo Sanhueza Ross.

The story that follows was told in issue No. 32 of Siete+7. But there is a chapter to detail. When in November of ’92 Berríos escaped from his guards from the town of Parque del Plata, 50 kilometers from Montevideo, Arturo Silva Valdés was there, controlling his capture step by step.

Along with him was Major Jaime Torres Gacitúa, one of his best friends and also a “security advisor” to Pinochet and a member of the DINE Secret Service.

When they finally recovered Berríos, the other story began. One that culminates—according to testimonies—with the murder of Berríos, which would have been executed by Silva Valdés and the Uruguayan Lieutenant Colonel Eduardo Radaelli (see box).

A witness to the operation was Major Torres Gacitúa. There, a pact would be sealed between intelligence officers that reveals that “Operation Condor” continues to be a latent danger.

SECRET SERVICE UNDER BRITISH IMPRINT

The transfer of the sash and the pin that symbolize the presidential power that General Pinochet made to President Patricio Aylwin on March 11, 1990, marking the beginning of the transition, was the trigger for other movements in the shadows. Shortly after, the Army’s audit, headed by General Fernando Torres Silva, rang the alarm bell.

According to a high-ranking Army officer of the time, it was with precise instructions from the high command that the first meeting was held between the audit and the institution’s Director of Intelligence, plus the head of the Secret Service that depended on the DINE, in which a meticulous analysis was made of which trials were “ripe”: which processes were in danger of obtaining the identification of uniformed torturers, kidnappers, and murderers.

It was in that core that the strategy was designed to get the military personnel “in danger” out of Chile. And the operational arm was precisely the impregnable and most compartmentalized jewel of the DINE, the Secret Service that for many years was directed by officer Maximiano Ferrer Lima and which was created under the advice of MI6, the Secret Service of Great Britain, under the spur of the English invasion of the Falklands in 1982.

That unit was exposed in the course of the investigation into the murder of union leader Tucapel Jiménez, developed by the minister of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Sergio Muñoz. But it has been the investigation by Judge Olga Pérez, who is investigating the murder of the chemist Eugenio Berríos, that has allowed for the unveiling of the identity of its members as well as the execution of other criminal-style operations carried out by the group.

According to statements by Brigadier Víctor Pinto Pérez, head of the Army Intelligence Command (CIE), in mid-1982—the invasion of the Falklands took place in April—he chose a small group of intelligence officers to travel to Great Britain and there learn about the functioning of MI6 to create a similar unit in Chile, of course keeping the proportions in mind.

Major Maximiliano Ferrer Lima was one of the officers who played an important role in the DINA as “Captain Max,” one of the founders of the Army Secret Service in his capacity as head of the Counter-Espionage Unit of the CIE.

Why incorporate the Secret Service, intended for the mission of shielding territorial security, into activities of covering up murderers and torturers? That is the key question that those responsible for a failed management must answer today.

Because a brief analysis of the escape operations carried out in ’91 allows one to conclude that all of them failed. And mainly, due to the deceptions and errors incurred by the men in charge of “casualty control.”

This happened with Luis Arturo Sanhueza Ross, with Carlos Herrera Jiménez, and with Eugenio Berríos. Not only were they unable to evade justice, but they ended up muddying the institution and, in the process, even compromising national security.

If they had testified before the courts at the time, the Army would have already turned that page, and without any of the costs in money, image, and vulnerability of national security.

Also, and a fact not to be overlooked, is that all those operations meant a millionaire financial expense and ended up nesting hubs of corruption that to this day have not been investigated. Some questions as an example: to whom did Arturo Silva Valdés account for the expenses he incurred to pay for fake passports, multiple trips, and the stay of the guards and the fugitives abroad?

Where did those funds come from? And if it is true that Sarin gas and other deadly botulinum toxins were sold to Iraq or other countries in the late ’80s, how many millions of dollars were received and in which accounts were they deposited?

RADAELLI: THE OTHER SHOT

In 1993, when the scandal of the kidnapping and disappearance of Eugenio Berríos exploded before public opinion in Uruguay, causing what they called “a technical coup” by the military, Lieutenant Colonel Eduardo Radaelli had to be brought in an emergency from Zaire, where he was on a “peace mission.”

And if at first it was thought that the officer would be punished and prosecuted, along with Lieutenant Colonel Tomás Casella, very soon the military pressure made it evident that President Lacalle was under tutelage.

Nine years have passed. Radaelli remains active and today must face a charge of homicide. He knows he is not alone. He is considered the “thinking” head of a group of nationalist Army intelligence officers who gathered around the former commander-in-chief, Lieutenant General Fernán Amado. At the time of the Berríos scandal, Amado was head of the Army Intendancy.

In that same group, Casella and another of those involved in the kidnapping and murder of Berríos closed ranks: Lieutenant Colonel Wellington Sarli. The three officers are not unknown in Uruguay. They are linked to acts of state terrorism during that country’s dictatorship.

Especially a series of bomb attacks perpetrated against dissidents in the late ’80s, which included a bomb at the law firm of then-President Julio María Sanguinetti.

The group was known under the acronym “Guardia de Artigas,” a group that was born under the protection of the largest and most powerful lodge—“Tenientes de Artigas”—but under a more clandestine profile.

The backstage of the power struggle of that time pitted General Amado against Sanguinetti. Later, when the Berríos scandal broke, the factions fought for power again. According to testimonies from Chilean officers, one prize that was in the middle of the dispute was the production of chemical weapons that Berríos had allegedly begun to carry out for the group of his Uruguayan guards.

The truth is that Amado denounced wiretapping. He blamed the Director of Intelligence, General Aguerrondo, who finally had to retire. Now the new factions are mixed with the old and current struggles in a fight for power and impunity. And Radaelli is at the center of the hurricane.

Source: ciper.cl, August 11, 2015

The former Army Auditor General Fernando Torres Silva said that he himself asked Bishop Sergio Valech, who headed the Vicaría de la Solidaridad, to intercede so that a pardon would be granted to the former director of the Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI), Odlanier Mena.

The general (ret.) committed suicide on Saturday, September 28, hours before the transfer of the inmates from the old Cordillera prison to Punta Peuco was to take place. "I asked (Bishop Valech) to help me with the pardon for General (ret.) Mena," affirmed Torres Silva in an interview granted to the "Teletrece" news program on Canal 13.

The former Army auditor asserted that when the request was presented, Monsignor Valech "said that General Mena was an example of a man who gave us facilities for everything." The role of the Vicaría Bishop Valech, who directed the Vicaría de la Solidaridad between 1987 and 1992, passed away in November 2010 at 83 years of age.

Although Torres, during his actions in the investigation of cases related to terrorist acts, had friction with the organization created by the Catholic Church, he now highlighted the work that the entity performed. "I believe that the Vicaría was an important element.

It provided support and cooperation and served so that many people, as is the case of General (ret.) Mena, for example, and those who followed later, could see and correct facts that were not right," declared the former ad-hoc prosecutor.

He also denied that he had a personal enmity with Bishop Valech. "Where did they get that? We used to have tea: he would invite me to places run by nuns and we would have tea with squash-filled empanadas," he recounted. "He was a man who committed himself, with such a special intelligence, with the strength of a bishop and the sharpness of a diplomat," he described.

Torres Silva also slipped in criticisms of the determinations adopted by President Sebastián Piñera regarding the issue of military personnel convicted of human rights violations. In this regard, he recalled that the only person pardoned for cases of this type is an Army non-commissioned officer convicted for the throat-slitting of Tucapel Jiménez, who received the benefit during the administration of former President Ricardo Lagos. "That was done by a President with the stature of a greater statesman, which is former President Lagos," he asserted.

Mena "was feeling unwell" Regarding Mena's suicide, Torres revealed that he had met with the general (ret.) days before his death. "He was a man who was feeling unwell," he recounted. "He would tell me, how is my wife going to go there: it is 50 km and she has to walk two km on foot.

He was tremendously distressed," he asserted. In the coming days, the Supreme Court must decide on the 10-year prison sentence that the former military auditor faces for the case of the homicide of the DINA chemist Eugenio Berríos, whose body was found on a beach in Uruguay in 1995.

Source: emol.cl, October 4, 2013

Torres Silva, Pinochet's favorite prosecutor

Invested with super-powers in military justice, Pinochet's favorite military prosecutor came to have more than 250 people prosecuted for attacks and actions attributed to the FPMR. His stout figure, Rayban glasses, and fearsome statements flooded the newspapers and TV news programs.

Until he tangled with the Vicaría and encountered the iron opposition of the Church. Stripped of his former power, today he declares himself an admirer of some of those he lashed out at in his glory years.

Fernando Torres Silva inspired one of the key characters in the tenth chapter of Los archivos del cardenal. Journalist Alejandra Matus wrote his profile in El libro negro de la justicia chilena, on whose text this new report by the author about prosecutor Torres is based.

A CEP survey published in 1988 revealed that 75% of Chileans knew "prosecutor Torres." He was as famous as the star political figures at that time: Ricardo Lagos and Andrés Zaldívar, and better known than Jaime Guzmán, Gabriel Valdés, and Andrés Allamand.

However, he was also the most repudiated on the list, with a score of 2.8. The military justice lawyer, who never stepped foot in the halls of military academies, was in the right place at the right time in 1986, when he assumed the investigation, as ad hoc prosecutor or special prosecutor, of the case opened in military courts for the assault on the Panadería Lautaro, committed by the Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez (FPMR) and where a carabinero died.

At the time, he held the rank of major. In 1988, when the survey was conducted, he had been promoted to colonel and as ad hoc prosecutor he concentrated the cases for the assault on the Panadería Lautaro; the importation of weapons at Carrizal Bajo; the attack against Pinochet; the kidnapping of Colonel Carlos Carreño; the escape of the frentista Sergio Buschmann and the assassination of the UDI leader Simón Yévenes, among others.

By that point, he had prosecuted some 250 people, whom he accused of varying degrees of connection to the FPMR. His unorthodox methods were the target of thunderous criticism from human rights lawyers, the political parties that had emerged from the clandestinity of the first years of the dictatorship, and even from supporters of the regime, who saw that his actions provided arguments to the opposition.

Nevertheless, Torres remained perched at the summit, with the iron support of General Augusto Pinochet and his wife Lucía Hiriart. This is the chronicle of the rise and fall of the governing couple's favorite prosecutor.

A hardworking lawyer Torres had a modest stint at the Law School of the Universidad de Chile, which he entered in the late 50s. It was difficult for him to graduate. Lawyer Roberto Garretón, former director of the Legal Department of the Vicaría de la Solidaridad, was his contemporary and remembers that when he entered the degree program, Torres was already at the Faculty.

And that when he graduated, Torres was still there. Torres graduated in 1965, but did not obtain his degree until 1974—a year after the Coup d'État—with a thesis on "military hierarchy," after having already joined the Army's justice apparatus and with the Law Faculty of the Universidad de Chile under intervention.

One of his first tasks in that department was to participate in the War Councils established immediately after September 11. Later, he was hired as a presidential advisor and head of the Legislation Secretariat in the Edificio Diego Portales, where the Government Junta functioned.

In 1986, his name began to sound in the media, when he was designated, with the rank of major, to investigate the assault on the Panadería Lautaro, which occurred on April 28 of that year. Immediately after, he was promoted to colonel.

The following October, after the attack on Pinochet, he was named "ad hoc prosecutor" for that case, the Carrizal weapons—whose illegal importation had been discovered two months earlier—and any other process in which the FPMR was involved.

The Army endowed him with resources never seen before. Torres created a mega-office, with lawyers he had transferred from various military units, on service commission. Major Francisco Baguetti helped him in the attack case; Captain Ricardo Latorre, in the Panadería Lautaro and the arsenals cases; Carlos Troncoso, in the kidnapping of Army Colonel Carlos Carreño.

His hypertrophied action began to earn him enemies within military justice itself. For example, the personnel in Concepción resented that he had appropriated the case for the assault on the Los Queñes police station—an action carried out in October 1988 by the FPMR Autónomo and which began its so-called National Patriotic War—because it was in the jurisdiction of Concepción and not the capital.

In the Judiciary there were also raised eyebrows, to which the colonel responded with arrogance. For example, in a communication with the Court of San Miguel—which tried to put curbs on the abuse of his powers by asking him for reports, for example, on the justification for the long periods of incommunicado detention—Torres demanded for himself the treatment of "Your Honor." In one of his responses, Torres pointed out: "It is brought to the attention of Your Illustrious Honor that military prosecutors, like the rest of the magistrates of the country's courts, deserve the treatment of Your Honors." Despite that difficult political environment, the military lawyer felt comfortable in his role. He was a kind of super-prosecutor, benefited by the enormous powers with which military justice was endowed, to the detriment of ordinary justice. The prosecutor was generous with the demands of journalists. He constantly fed the news programs with the results of his inquiries. Television channels could, without problems, have access to his "monkeys": images of operations, raids, scene reconstructions, weaponry. He asked Chileans daily to remain alert to the threat of "terrorism" and announced he was on the trail of the instigators, of the intellectual authors of the FPMR's actions. The Justice officer gave wide publicity to plots to assassinate him that he claimed to have thwarted at the last minute and traveled with a showy security team: two motorcyclists cleared his path; two other escorts traveled with him; two more covered his rear in a different vehicle. He also obtained special perks—"pitutos" in our popular slang—that increased his income. In 1986, the Minister of Justice, Hugo Rosende, signed a decree authorizing his hiring as "legal advisor" to the Gendarmerie. He also had two other positions: Secretary of Legislation, for which he had an office in the Edificio Diego Portales, and he was the "auditor of the Commander-in-Chief for administrative matters," a position that served as cover for him to visit Pinochet very frequently. Pinochet used to say that only Torres was worried about the case regarding the attack against him. In the regime, everyone considered him one of his favorites. The detainees under his orders denounced having suffered the most aberrant torture in CNI barracks. One of the leaders of the FPMR, Sergio Buschmann, the person in charge of the logistics for the importation of weapons at Carrizal Bajo, claimed to have been tortured in the presence of the prosecutor himself. However, Torres denied it. Before the court, he asserted that the episode denounced by Buschmann must have occurred in La Serena, before he assumed the investigation of the Carrizal case. "The prosecutor did not accept packages," that is, prisoners who arrived at his office with evident signs of having been tortured, those in his circle assure, and they add that the first thing he ordered upon receiving the detainees who left the secret CNI barracks to go to his interrogations was to send them to the Legal Medical Service, to verify injuries. Nevertheless, there are numerous denunciations from prisoners of that era who point out that they could not distinguish between the secret police facilities and the prosecutor's office. Their hardships were aggravated by the long incommunicado periods that the prisoners suffered, of up to 40 days, a period in which they were at the complete mercy of CNI agents. The most dramatic case was that of Karin Eitel, prosecuted for the kidnapping of Army Colonel Carlos Carreño, which occurred in September 1987. The young woman appeared on the screens of Televisión Nacional confessing her participation in the kidnapping, with evident signs of having been subjected to torture. Colonel Carreño himself suffered the rigor of the suspicious Torres. After being released by his captors in Brazil, in December of that year, upon his return to Chile he was confined in the Military Hospital to face numerous and prolonged interrogation sessions. Torres rejected the charges against him, pointing out that such complaints could be due to the fact that he was getting closer with his investigations to the leadership of the FPMR. "Maybe we are closer than we think to some theses we are working on... That has made the Front react in the fastest way, trying to eliminate the problem... Physical elimination is one of the ways, there are others like discrediting or disabling, means all of which have been tested against my person," he told La Tercera at that time. With the "physical elimination" comment, the prosecutor was referring to the FPMR's attempts to assassinate him. There were at least two attempts at an attack against him. The first occurred in May 1987, when the armed organization sent a package with T-4 explosive to the prosecutor's office, which was discovered before it exploded. In May 1988, two frentistas on a motorcycle tried to attach a magnetic bomb to the roof of his car. The device slipped and fell to the floor without exploding. "Aberrant justice" In March 1987, Anthony Gifford, of the British Parliament's Human Rights Committee, investigated complaints against the prosecutor and reported that incommunicado periods of up to 40 days were recorded and that the officer's assistants boasted that the boss was "all-powerful." "He makes frequent statements to the press declaring the guilt of those he investigates. He imposes incommunicado detention on those who do not collaborate with him. He gives instructions to prison authorities to restrict visits, and distributes political prisoners to dangerous wings where, it is feared, they may be attacked," he revealed. Complaints were added for indictments without founded presumptions and illegal raids. The protests against the attitudes of the ad hoc prosecutor reached the United Nations. In December 1987, the special rapporteur for Chile on human rights matters, Fernando Volio, affirmed that the "hypertrophied processes that prosecutor Torres handles are contrary to due legal process and, therefore, depart or deviate from the normal to the detriment of the rights of the prosecuted and those who defend them." And he added: "Torres has become a supervisor with powers that exceed every civilized norm to investigate cases that are submitted to his knowledge (...) It is an aberrant justice that he performs." But Torres did not only count on Pinochet to defend him: Minister Rosende and the government's attorney general (a position made to measure for the one who occupied it, since it was not foreseen in the previous institutional framework), Ambrosio Rodríguez, did so with all their might. After Volio's statements, Rosende and Rodríguez met with Volio to address Torres's conduct. On that occasion, the minister harshly rebuked the United Nations official. He told him that in Chile there was a current legal order that authorized the prosecutor's conduct and that said regulations would continue to be applied as long as they were in force. The rapporteur, indignant, stood up saying: "I did not ask for this meeting to be lectured!" and withdrew from the meeting. Rosende, consulted by journalists, said at the end of the meeting that he felt "obliged to put things in their place." Torres, empowered, asserted that the comments made by the United Nations official about his actions "disqualify him morally, ethically, and professionally to speak about Chilean justice." The crisis had to be resolved by the Foreign Ministry. The courts of justice, however, beyond some soft reprimands, did not obstruct his management and rejected some 350 amparo, protection, and unconstitutionality appeals presented against him. Until the prosecutor tangled with the Church. The Files case The prosecutor, like Rosende and other high authorities of the military government, thought that the Church was used as a protective shield by the opposition to the government and by the FPMR, and the possibility of proving it presented itself with the Panadería Lautaro case. This was assaulted on April 28, 1986, by a group of frentistas who in their flight clashed with Carabineros and killed the policeman Miguel Vásquez Tobar. In the skirmish, one of the assailants also died. Doctors from the Vicaría de la Solidaridad attended to Hugo Gómez Peña on the day of the assault, who said he had been shot in the leg during a protest. Later, it turned out to be one of the assailants of the bakery. Torres believed he had found the link between the armed group and the Vicaría, and prosecuted the doctor and the lawyer who assisted Gómez Peña. During the existence of the Vicaría de la Solidaridad, it did maintain, it is true, relations with the parties and organizations of the far left. A dialogue was established in which the rules of the game were perfectly delimited. The Vicaría defended the victims of human rights abuses (arbitrary detentions, torture, crimes, disappearances), regardless of their political belief; but it did not accept acting as a "screen" in the defense of blood crimes or other orders that the militants of those groups might commit, even when they argued political legitimacy. For that, there were other organizations, such as the Corporation for the Defense and Promotion of the People's Rights (Codepu). Both the MIR and the FPMR were perfectly aware of these codes of conduct. Torres maintained, however, that the "terrorists" had their rearguard of protection in the Vicaría. The argument was not solid from a legal point of view, but his instinct told him that in that organization, whether a collaborator of leftist groups or not, the faces he wanted to catch were known. With the cunning of a hound, he sought to make the institution fall into traps. In the interrogations of minor officials of that organization, Torres used all his power of persuasion to attempt denunciations. He would put his firearm on the table and tell them: "You know that I have the power to put you in prison or set you free." The prosecutor was obsessed with the ecclesiastical organization. He wanted to know everything about it: its structure, organization, financing, personnel, procedures, links, tax situation, and the role of the vicar general. He also wanted to know the identity of the people attended by the Vicaría, especially those with gunshot wounds. He intended to seize all the medical files in the hope of reconstructing the structure of the FPMR. The patience of the vicar general, the auxiliary bishop of Santiago Sergio Valech, was exhausted when Torres raided the headquarters of the AFP Magister to seize background information on the contributions of the employees of the Vicaría de la Solidaridad from 1981 to 1988. Valech presented two complaint appeals before the Martial Court, arguing that the prosecutor had overstepped the scope of the investigation of the Panadería Lautaro assault and was meddling in the organization and functioning of the Vicaría de la Solidaridad. In fact, the media now called the investigation "the Vicaría case." The bishop defended professional secrecy. He was not protecting anyone in particular, but the sacrosanct ecclesiastical institution of the seal of confession, the basis of the trust that millions of people have placed in the Church for centuries. It was not so much a defense at a specific moment in the history of Chile, as the protection of the foundations of the Catholic belief. No political power could pretend to subjugate them. The Martial Court had rejected all previous complaints against the prosecutor, although on more than one occasion it had warned him, privately, to moderate his behavior. The president of the court, Enrique Paillás, had let "advice" and "observations" fall on the pages of the files. Until the resolution of December 7, 1988, occurred, in which the Martial Court, by four votes to one, unexpectedly accepted the appeal of the Vicaría de la Solidaridad. The civilian ministers, Paillás and Luis Correa Bulo, voted in favor. That was predictable. The unexpected was the favorable vote of the Army representative, Brigadier General Joaquín Erlbaum, and that of the Air Force, Adolfo Celedón. Only the representative of the Carabineros, Ximena Márquez, backed the ad hoc prosecutor. The ruling ordered Torres to return the files seized at Magister, without using their data, and to circumscribe his investigation to the facts strictly linked to the assault, abandoning his pretension of meddling with the Vicaría. Earthquake in military justice The event produced an earthquake in the Army. The institution's general prosecutor (superior to Torres, but inferior to Erlbaum), Commander Enrique Ibarra, commented that the ruling had been "political," influenced by the result of the plebiscite of October of that year, in which the No option triumphed, which forced Pinochet to hand over power in 1990. His words, which accused his superior of having placed himself on the opposition side, unleashed an even greater crisis. On Tuesday the 13th, the first indication of the catastrophe appeared in Las Ultimas Noticias. The Army had asked for the resignation of the entire high command of military justice: General Eduardo Avello, who occupied the position of Army Auditor General; Brigadier General Erlbaum; and the auditors, Colonels Rolando Melo and Alberto Márquez, for their discrepancies with Torres. The ad hoc prosecutor himself hastened to announce that he would occupy the highest position in military justice, replacing General Avello, despite the distance in rank and seniority between both. It is "a decision of the Command that, in this particular case, makes me proud," he told the newspaper La Segunda. His words unleashed a wave of major criticism not only in the opposition. One of the main leaders of the right, Miguel Otero, at that time vice president of Renovación Nacional, said: "In my thirty-three years of professional practice, I have never before had knowledge that after an adverse ruling to a military prosecutor, the auditor general and the member of the Martial Court were immediately called to retirement." He was bothered by the timing of the measure, as it was the perfect argument for those who criticized the lack of independence of military justice. "Caesar's wife must not only be honest, but must also appear to be so," said Otero, resorting to the well-known sentence. El Mercurio and La Segunda editorialized against the dismissals. The evening paper said that "it is difficult to understand, due to its untimeliness, the mere possibility that someone who has been questioned by these (the competent judicial instances) could come to replace their hierarchical superiors." In the midst of the avalanche of attacks, the Army appeared to retract by naming General Rolando Melo Silva as interim, who, upon assuming as auditor general, admitted that military justice was in "crisis." Torres remained as Military General Prosecutor, replacing Commander Enrique Ibarra, who descended abruptly after his imprudent comments. Pinochet wanted to give him the maximum position, as auditor general, but his advisors warned him that, as a colonel, he did not have the rank. The general would have even been willing to dictate a special law to promote Torres to general in record time, if that was the requirement to put him in that position, but it was not necessary. Someone argued that the position was a "function" and did not legally require having a specific hierarchical rank to exercise it. Speculations ran in the media. It was said that the Supreme Court itself and the opposition in the generalate had influenced the failure of Torres's appointment. However, on December 28, the day of the Innocents, the board of generals, after a full day of deliberations in the Edificio Diego Portales, demonstrated that the ad hoc prosecutor was much more powerful than was thought. With the consent of the commander-in-chief, represented in this case by the vice-commander of the institution, Lieutenant General Jorge Zincke, Torres was promoted to the position of auditor general in an extraordinary hearing. Without complexes, that same day the new authority declared: "I believe that the crisis, to which Colonel Melo would have referred, does not exist." The Undersecretary of Justice and faithful advisor to Rosende, Luis Manríquez Reyes, gave the opinion of that portfolio: "Prosecutor Torres is a hero of democracy in Chile." El Mercurio did not have the same opinion, which in an acid editorial, lashed out at the lack of thoroughness in the appointment: "The damage is already done. At moments when the fight against terrorism demanded distancing all possibility of discrediting the instruments with which that fight must be carried out, priority was given to other considerations, which will only make its defense difficult when it is necessary. The pained bewilderment of the regime's supporters is explainable. And the rejoicing with which certain opposition sectors have followed the episode, which is, undoubtedly, a gift for their propaganda, cannot be surprising." The Supreme Court gave Torres one last and final boost by revoking, on the same day of his appointment, the sentences of the Martial Court that had punished him for his performance in the Vicaría case. Torres would be, as Army auditor general, a member of the highest court when there were cases that interested the military and it did not look good for a magistrate of that category to arrive with a disciplinary complaint behind his back. Although the promotion could have meant a relief for the Vicaría, because Torres, in his new function, would have to leave the cases, the truth is that for a time he continued to pay attention to them. He himself took it upon himself to warn that he would persevere: "The processes are like children. You cannot leave them alone." That summer of 1989, military prosecutor Sergio Cea finally appeared at the Vicaría to carry out the orders of his superior. He arrived accompanied by the members of his escort dressed in civilian clothes. That day, only the Vicar and a couple of assistants were in the entity's building. No public was attended to and all personnel were authorized to be absent. They did not want to be seen or identified by military personnel. Furthermore, the files that Cea was looking for were not there either. Elementary precaution. Valech's advisors had suggested that he wear his bishop's garments for the occasion, with staff and everything. But the vicar did not want to. He limited himself to the simple black suit with the classic clergyman collar. He had Cea come in and said to him in a friendly tone: -As a priest, I am obliged to respect professional secrecy and, furthermore, I am the custodian of the trust that people have placed in the Vicaría; I do not accept, therefore, that our headquarters be searched. I cannot break my commitments. If you want to see the files, you have to go over this bishop. The mere physical presence of Valech, stout and of tall stature, was imposing enough to intimidate the small and thin Cea. Although it was clear that it was not a matter of a hand-to-hand confrontation with the prelate. It was a measurement of forces that did not last more than fifteen minutes. Friendliness and tension were reflected at the same time on the faces of the vicar, the prosecutor, and the few witnesses to the scene. Cea finally opted to withdraw, ordering the retreat of the contingent of carabineros that had been waiting outside to proceed with the raid. According to Torres's circle, the staging of this proceeding, like other actions in the "Vicaría case," were agreed upon previously in secret meetings between Valech and Torres. The vicar would invite the officer to meet in convents, without press, where they would talk for hours. Valech smoked Cabaña cigarettes and developed for the prosecutor his thesis of the inviolability of confession. Torres, meanwhile, tried to persuade him, a source points out, that his acting had him in mind, because if he had wanted to, he could have applied the line of command thesis and prosecuted even the cardinal for his responsibility in the Panadería Lautaro case. He did not want to confront the Church, he affirmed, but only to pursue those within the Vicaría who were collaborating with the frentistas. To persuade the bishop, he even gave him copies of statements from some of the prosecuted, under the seal of confession. Despite their discrepancies, says the source, Torres "understood the Vicar's role. There were never any low blows." Roberto Garretón affirms that, in the understanding that Torres considered them enemies, the Vicaría's lawyers maintained a cordial treatment with him, although he in particular took pleasure in calling him "colonel" and not prosecutor, to highlight his military condition and confuse him. He also relates that the vicar considered him politically clumsy, since he accused anyone of being a frentista without basis, even relatives, friends, and casual acquaintances of the accused. The sunset The end of the dictatorship and the beginning of the first democratic government, headed by Patricio Aylwin, was the first blow to Torres Silva's power. Aylwin's Minister of Justice, Francisco Cumplido, promoted a set of laws known as "Cumplido laws" that allowed closing the cases against a large number of those prosecuted by Torres, especially those who had been accused of "aiders" for acts such as facilitating the telephone from which one of the frentistas made a call on the day of the attack on Pinochet, even without knowing who or what it was about. Others were pardoned or many saw their sentences reduced and were able to be released soon. A smaller group, those involved in the so-called "blood events," sentenced, for example, to life imprisonment, were able to commute their sentences for expulsion. As auditor general and with the rank of Supreme Court minister, in democracy Torres would begin to occupy himself with obstructing investigations into human rights violations. He himself called himself "the invited Villain" when he had to join a chamber or the plenary, since the law allowed him to do so when matters that affected the Army were seen. In the future, he would be reproached for having dismissed the weight of the trial against Pinochet in Spain and for having advised him to travel without fear to England, in 1998. He would also be criticized for traveling personally, in 1997, to try to persuade the Spanish judge Manuel García Castellón (predecessor of judge Baltasar Garzón) that the accusations against the general were motivated by political revanchism and were a conspiracy of the Communist Party, with which he not only did not convince, but, without having sought it, validated the Spanish jurisdiction to judge the military officer. It was even said that due to his clumsy actions and advice, he would have lost the favor of the Pinochet family. Nevertheless, in the circle of the retired military officer, it is assured that that friendship was never broken and that he even still visits Lucía Hiriart, despite the fact that his relationship with the widow was not as close as the one he had with her husband. In April 1999, after Pinochet's arrest in London, he resigned from the Army and his position as auditor general, amid growing pressures for him to abandon the post. After Pinochet's death in 2007, Torres was prosecuted as a member of the "illicit association" that, according to magistrate Alejandro Madrid, was created to take the DINA chemist Eugenio Berríos out of Chile at the end of 1991, and thus avoid his appearance before justice to testify in the case for the homicide of Orlando Letelier, which had been reopened and handed over to minister Adolfo Bañados. A year later, Berríos was assassinated in Uruguay when he tried to escape from his protectors. Torres was confined for more than a month in a military facility, before being granted release on bail. In 2013, the Court of Appeals increased the sentences in this case, raising Torres's to 10 years and one day. However, the sentence has not been made effective because there is a cassation appeal on the form and substance pending in the Supreme Court. The Constitutional Court will also have to pronounce itself, where Torres Silva presented an appeal for unconstitutionality against the judicial resolutions. At 75 years of age, today, the lawyer, whom Pinochet managed to promote to general before the sunset of his power, expresses in private admiration and respect for those he lashed out at in the past. He values, for example, the work of the journalists who have investigated the cases for human rights violations, such as Mónica González, and in his ranking of preferences, Bishop Sergio Valech occupies the first place. Torres, in fact, wrote a letter in 2009 that was published in El Mercurio, valuing the work of the vicar, when he announced his retirement as bishop. Valech "is a superior man," he said. A source relates that, early in the morning of that day, as soon as that note was published, Valech called the lawyer and invited him for tea. "It became a routine between both to meet periodically, once a month, to talk," he affirms. On some occasions, Torres asked him, without major results, to intercede for some uniformed personnel prosecuted, such as Odlanier Mena, the former director of the CNI and staunch enemy of Manuel Contreras. The vicar, says the source, also made requests that were fulfilled discreetly. Both continued seeing each other until the bishop's passing, in November 2010.

Source: casosvicaria.cl, May 19, 2014

Imprisoned former Pinochet agents collect pensions of up to 4,800 dollars

A total of 95 retired generals and former officers convicted of human rights violations in Chile receive monthly pensions that can reach 4,800 dollars, it was reported today. In response to a request presented by the newspaper "La Tercera," through the Transparency Law, the National Defense Pension Fund reported that the convicted military personnel who currently collect pensions from the Chilean Armed Forces receive, on average, a pension of 1.6 million pesos (about 2,364 dollars).

Leading the list is the former military prosecutor Juan Fernando Torres Silva, with a retirement of 3.2 million pesos (about 4,800 dollars) per month. A retired Army general, Torres Silva is serving a 10-year sentence for the 1991 assassination of Eugenio Berríos, a former chemist of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) who manufactured the sarin gas used during the dictatorship by Augusto Pinochet's secret police.

Torres Silva is serving his sentence in Punta Peuco, a special prison for human rights violators located 35 kilometers north of Santiago. Another of the retirees with the highest payment is Eugenio Covarrubias Valenzuela, former director of the Army's National Intelligence Directorate (DINE), who receives 2.9 million pesos (about 4,284 dollars).

Covarrubias was also convicted in the Berríos case to 10 years and one day as the author of the kidnapping of the chemist, and to 5 years and one day for illicit association. Meanwhile, Miguel Krassnoff, an Army brigadier and member of the DINA's Lautaro Brigade, receives 2.4 million pesos (about 3,500 dollars).

Krassnoff is also in Punta Peuco serving sentences for various cases of human rights violations that total more than 400 years of imprisonment. In addition, the general and former deputy director of the DINA Raúl Iturriaga Neumann receives 2.1 million pesos (about 3,100 dollars) per month since 1991, and the former operational chief of the Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI) Alvaro Corbalán Castilla has a pension of 716,442 pesos (about 1,100 dollars).

Another of the pensioners is Carlos Herrera Jiménez, sentenced for the assassination of the Chilean union leader Tucapel Jiménez, who registers a monthly payment of 1 million pesos (1,470 dollars). "The fact of being a human rights violator does not prevent maintaining the pension.

The issue goes another way: how this country does not take into account a system of degradation. They should lose their positions, because the more hierarchy they hold, the more pension they receive," declared human rights lawyer Nelson Caucoto today.

Withdrawing these pensions would mean "punishing their family, and the family is different from the subject. You cannot blame the spouses and their children," he added. Meanwhile, the lawyer who represents prisoners in Punta Peuco, Raúl Meza, asserted that said pensions are "a right acquired during the time they remained in the Army in the capacity of public officials, complying at the end of their functions with all the requirements established by law." "Like any citizen, they have the right to cover their basic needs, and especially those of their family members, in the face of the inability to generate income," he concluded.

Source: lavanguardia.com, May 8, 2017

Pinochet's prosecutor: documents that confirm the relationship between Torres Silva and the Dictator

The former military prosecutor faces a complex scenario after becoming involved in the murder of former DINA chemist Eugenio Berríos. On Friday, he turned himself in to the police, perhaps to avoid following the path of General Hernán Ramírez Rurange, who was convicted in the same case and had committed suicide only hours earlier.

“Fernando Torres Silva did not conduct interrogations,” recalls a former militant of the Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez who was detained in Carrizal Bajo following the discovery of the entry of weaponry into Chile.

Claudio Molina states that whenever he was in the office of the ad hoc prosecutor on Calle Zenteno, it was his clerks who asked the questions. Meanwhile, the officer would pace behind the detainee, attempting to intimidate him with his weary gait and heavy breathing.

Torres Silva had taken on the arms importation case following the attack on Augusto Pinochet and the assault on the Lautaro bakery, at which point the dictatorship decided to grant him the title of ad hoc prosecutor to investigate those cases.

However, the FPMR militants detained in the Carrizal case decided not to testify before Torres Silva and issued a proclamation in which they publicly detailed the motives that led to the entry of the arsenal into the country.

“We declared that from that moment on, we would not make any statement to the prosecutor's office, because we did not grant it any ethical, political, legal, or moral authority to judge us. That declaration had a lot of repercussions.

It went out through Mexico and from there everywhere, and then it bounced back to Chile, which was the idea. The guy sent the five of us who were detained to testify at the prosecutor's office. We had agreed that we were not going to declare anything.

So, the guys would call us with a whole paraphernalia of military personnel and armed escorts to take us out of the Penitenciaría, and we would stand up with our hands behind our backs, looking them in the face. They would ask us everything, and we would not answer anything,” explains Molina.

The former FPMR leader adds that after the visit of Pope John Paul II to Chile, Torres Silva ordered that they be placed in the galleries of the convicted inmates of the former Santiago Penitenciaría. But the common prisoners respected them and ended up protecting the political prisoners.

Then, punishments such as solitary confinement were applied, all triggered by the act of rebellion of refusing to testify.

“They would leave us in a punishment cell, isolated in the Penitenciaría, for five days. After the five days, they would call you back and ask you the same questions… and that operetta would repeat itself, until in the end, we wore them out.

For a month and a half, we were in that kind of protest, and he kept us in solitary confinement. They wouldn't even let you have a spoon; you had to eat with your hands, plus the prison food, which is disgusting,” he points out.

Claudio Molina adds that there was harassment of the families by the prosecutor's office, who, as in his case, also ended up leaving the country.

Molina escaped from the former Santiago Public Jail in January 1990. Only after that event did Torres Silva sentence him to life imprisonment.

From civil employee to general of justice

In December 1969, Juan Fernando Torres Silva entered the Army with a grade 8 rank. On several occasions, he received recognition from Augusto Pinochet himself.

In his service record, which rated him from July 1, 1980, to June 30, 1981, it reads: “On the occasion of the study of the preliminary draft of the Constitution, the analysis of the Council of State report, and the final drafting of the text of the new Political Constitution of the Republic by the Legislative Secretariat of the Honorable Government Junta, the individual, in his capacity as a member of said body, played a prominent role due to his efficiency and professional preparation, deserving for this reason the express recognition and congratulations of H.E. the President of the Republic.” The document is signed by Colonel Jorge Zincke and dated August 26, 1980.

Torres Silva was always close to Pinochet. According to his service record and evaluations accessed by Radio Universidad de Chile, the prosecutor was congratulated on several occasions by the dictator himself, including one following the mission carried out in Argentina between March 22 and 27, 1983.

That same year, on December 10, lawyer Raúl Alfonsín assumed the presidency of that country, putting an end to the dictatorship there.

For this reason, human rights lawyer Cristián Cruz does not rule out that it was a visit within the framework of Operation Condor links during the final stages of the Argentine dictatorship. “It is entirely probable.

Let us remember that there are victims from the 80s who are classified as ‘Operation Condor,’ mainly militants of the Chilean MIR, who were detained in Argentina, forcibly disappeared, and seen at the end of the Argentine dictatorship in clandestine detention centers in Buenos Aires; therefore, there is relevant information there.

The armies continued to collaborate. Proof of this is what happened with Eugenio Berríos, who, let us remember, crossed borders, and certainly with the knowledge of the Uruguayan intelligence services; without a doubt, the Argentine intelligence services were aware—perhaps not of the details, but they knew that a Chilean intelligence mission was passing through their territory, and they detected it.”

In fact, Torres Silva took intelligence courses, and on May 13, 1974, he received the title of “Specialist in Military Intelligence” and later taught them. This is stated in the evaluation document for the period August 1974 – July 1975, which notes that he held the positions of military prosecutor and “Professor of the ESP-OL Course 7c. ‘Intelligence Specialist’ (Advanced).”

In his role as legal advisor to the dictatorship, Torres Silva was part of the group of auditors for the Government Junta and also worked on the drafting of legal bodies that are still a matter of debate today.

In his service record, on June 28, 1979, Colonel Zincke notes that the prosecutor “was tasked with joining a commission ordered by H.E. the President of the Republic for the drafting of the Sports Law and advising on labor laws in the committee of the Honorable Government Junta.” On this occasion, Pinochet himself ordered that his congratulations for the work performed be stipulated in writing.

In his 1987-1988 evaluations, one can read the positions he held as ad hoc prosecutor: Auditor of the Army General Command; Army Representative to the Legislative Secretariat of the Honorable Government Junta; Permanent Member of the Military Justice Audit Committee; Ad hoc prosecutor for the illegal arms importation case; Attack on H.E. the President of the Republic; Homicide trial of Carabineros officer Vásquez Tobar; Kidnapping of Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Carreño; Minister Member of the Illustrious Court Martial.

In those functions, on June 22, 1988, the judge of the Second Military Court of Santiago reported on his performance, highlighting his conduct. “Due to his tireless action against terrorism and the profound knowledge he possesses regarding the FMR and the MIR, he was the victim of an attempt on his life by one of these organizations,” an event that occurred on May 27 of that year.

Furthermore, as early as 1986, it was emphasized that his actions “up to the moment allow for the neutralization and/or immobilization as detainees of numerous alleged suspects, who also militate in organizations or parties of recognized opposition to the Military Government; he carries this out in an extraordinarily skillful manner, and with great tact.” That same year, numerous arrests were made, as well as the murder of a group of FPMR members, known as “Operation Albania,” an event that was presented by the dictatorship as a confrontation, which was dismissed years later by the judicial investigation of Minister Hugo Dolmestch, who determined that they were crimes committed by CNI agents.

Cristián Cruz maintains that the “military judiciary was a true support, which provided cover, which served to conceal and even perpetrate crimes during Pinochet’s dictatorship, ensuring impunity for the agents, which also carried over through time.

Let us remember that the Army’s general audit, even in democracy, is what determines the course of action that the agents are going to follow—that is, what they are going to say, the lies they are going to tell in human rights cases.

Certainly, there were cover-up operations, pacts of command so that subordinates would lie and prevent truth and justice in these cases,” a role in which Torres Silva played a relevant part and which is still a subject of debate in Chile today.

Source: radio.uchile.cl, August 14, 2015

Berríos Case: Supreme Court confirms sentence for "the sinister prosecutor Torres" for the kidnapping of Pinochet's former chemist

The Supreme Court issued a final sentence in the investigation into the crimes of illicit association, kidnapping, and homicide of the former chemist of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), Eugenio Berríos Sagredo, crimes perpetrated starting in October 1991 in Chile and Uruguay.

In a split decision, the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed of ministers Milton Juica, Hugo Dolmestch, Carlos Künsemüller, Haroldo Brito, and Lamberto Cisternas—rejected the cassation appeals and confirmed the sentences issued by the Santiago Court of Appeals against 14 retired military personnel from Chile and Uruguay, including former military prosecutor and former Army auditor Fernando Torres Silva, who will have to serve a sentence of 10 years and one day in prison, without benefits, as the perpetrator of the crime of illicit association.

The dissenting vote came from Dolmestch, who was in favor of accepting said appeals and issuing “the corresponding replacement ruling for the criminal section, acquitting him of that charge.”

Regarding the civil aspect, the cassation appeal filed by the State Treasury was accepted, and the civil lawsuit filed by the victim’s relatives was rejected.

The sinister prosecutor Torres

Torres Silva, known as one of Pinochet’s Favorite Prosecutors, was recognized for leading the proceedings against the FPMR; he also accused the Vicaría de la Solidaridad of harboring terrorists. In 1973, he was a member of the War Councils, and later he was a presidential advisor to Pinochet.

The lawyer was in charge of the investigation into the attack on Pinochet and the importation of weapons in Carrizal Bajo. In his obsession with the FPMR, he pursued an investigative line against the Vicaría de la Solidaridad, convinced that it was infiltrated by militants of the resistance group against the dictatorship.

In 1988, according to the archive of the Vicaría de la Solidaridad, “by four votes to one, the Court Martial surprisingly accepts a complaint appeal from the vicar of the Vicaría de la Solidaridad, Sergio Valech, alleging that prosecutor Torres has exceeded his authority by meddling in the organization and functioning of the Vicaría.

The ruling orders Torres to maintain the investigation only regarding the facts strictly linked to the assault on the Lautaro Bakery—which he had been conducting from the beginning. Six days later, Pinochet asks for the resignation of the entire senior staff of the Army’s Justice hierarchy, among them General Joaquín Erlbaum, who had voted against Torres,” a sentence that was subsequently revoked.

In 1989, the prosecutor closed the investigation into the attack on Pinochet, requesting the death penalty for the 9 FPMR militants who had been detained for the 1986 attack. Once in democracy, he was in charge of the legal defense of military personnel implicated in human rights violation cases.

Furthermore, he is pointed to as one of those responsible for not warning Pinochet that his trip to London could be dangerous, after which he was arrested.

Berríos: from perpetrator to victim

The Berríos case is not like others. The chemist from the University of Concepción was a militant of Patria y Libertad before being part of the DINA, where he was in charge of Project Andrea, from which he experimented with sarin gas, which causes death through neurological paralysis—a stealthy weapon used during the dictatorship in the cases of the death of the Real Estate Registrar Renato León Zenteno (1976), and the case of the Army corporal and DINA agent Manuel Leyton (1977), among others.

The chemist was allegedly implicated in different cases: the assassination of Orlando Letelier, committed on September 21, 1976; the death of former President Eduardo Frei Montalva and the poisoning of political prisoners in 1981; and finally, the death of the Spanish diplomat Carmelo Soria in July 1976.

Eugenio Berríos did not maintain a low profile; on repeated occasions, he referred to himself as “Pinochet’s chemist,” who could cause death with a single drop of his formula. In the midst of the transition, in October 1991, the minister of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Adolfo Bañados, summoned Berríos to testify in the investigation of the Letelier assassination, which was a problem for the Pinochet supporters, since Berríos, being a civilian, was not under the institution’s pacts of silence, according to the Memoria y Justicia website.

This was allegedly the reason why the Army General Directorate decided to take Berríos out of Chile. “On October 26, 1991, Chilean military personnel, in collaboration with their Uruguayan counterparts, took Berríos out of Chile, transferring him to Montevideo, Uruguay, via Río Gallegos, Argentina. In 1991, the DINA created a unit with the specific mission of taking Berríos out of Chile.”

During 1992, Berríos resided in Montevideo under constant surveillance by Chilean military personnel. In November 1992, he was transferred to the property of Captain Jaime Torres Gacitúa in Parque de Plata, Uruguay.

That same month, the chemist called the Chilean Consulate and requested the necessary documentation to return to Chile; he escaped from the house in Parque de Plata and requested help at a police station.

After being handed over to Lieutenant Colonel Tomás Cassella, head of Counterintelligence Operations, Berríos continued living as a prisoner for another three months. Finally, he was executed on the beach of El Pinar, Uruguay.

His remains were discovered in April 1995 and showed evidence of cranial fractures as a result of two bullet wounds. DNA tests confirmed that the remains belonged to Berríos.

The convicted

In his capacity as a justice officer, Fernando Torres Silva was one of the strongmen of Augusto Pinochet’s regime. In addition to his participation in the Berríos case, he took charge during the dictatorship of the most relevant cases involving leftist groups that organized against the de facto government, and human rights organizations attribute to him a key role in the obstruction of numerous cases involving military personnel.

In addition to Torres Silva, the following were convicted:

• Arturo Silva Valdés: 15 years and one day in prison as the perpetrator of the crime of kidnapping with homicide, plus 5 years and one day for illicit association. Without benefits;
• Hernán Ramírez Rurange: 10 years and one day as the perpetrator of the crime of kidnapping; 10 years and one day for illicit association, and acquitted of obstruction of justice. Without benefits;
• Eugenio Covarrubias Valenzuela: 10 years and one day as the perpetrator of kidnapping; 5 years and one day for illicit association, acquitted of his participation as a concealer of kidnapping with homicide and obstruction of justice. Without benefits;
• Jaime Torres Gacitúa: 10 years and one day as the perpetrator of kidnapping and 5 years and one day for illicit association. Without benefits;
• Manuel Provis Carrasco: 10 years and one day as the perpetrator of kidnapping and 5 years and one day for illicit association. Without benefits;
• Pablo Rodríguez Márquez: 10 years and one day as the perpetrator of kidnapping and 800 days for illicit association. Without benefits;
• Raúl Lillo Gutiérrez: 10 years and one day as the perpetrator of kidnapping and 800 days for illicit association. Acquitted of the charge of obstruction of justice. Without benefits;
• Manuel Pérez Santillán: 5 years and one day as an accomplice to kidnapping and acquitted of the charge of illicit association. Without benefits;
• Tomás Casella Santos (Uruguayan military): 10 years and one day as the perpetrator of kidnapping and 5 years and one day for illicit association. Without benefits;
• Eduardo Radaelli Copolla (Uruguayan military): 10 years and one day as the perpetrator of kidnapping and 800 days for illicit association. Without benefits;
• Wellington Sarli Pose (Uruguayan military): 5 years and one day as an accomplice to kidnapping and 60 days for illicit association. Without benefits;
• Marcelo Sandoval Durán: 10 years and one day as the perpetrator of kidnapping, 800 days for illicit association, and acquitted of infringement of article 295 bis of the Penal Code. Without benefits;
• Nelson Román Vargas: 10 years and one day as the perpetrator of kidnapping, 800 days for illicit association, and acquitted of the charge of infringement of article 295 bis of the Penal Code. Without benefits.

The ruling also acquits five defendants:

• Enrique Ibarra Chamorro: acquitted of responsibility as the perpetrator of the crime of illicit association;
• Mario Cisternas Orellana: acquitted of his responsibility as the perpetrator of infringement of article 295 bis of the Penal Code;
• Nelson Hernández Franco: acquitted of his responsibility as the perpetrator of infringement of article 295 bis of the Penal Code;
• Érika Silva Morales: acquitted of her responsibility as the perpetrator of infringement of article 295 bis of the Penal Code; and
• Emilio Rojas Gómez: acquitted of his responsibility as the perpetrator of the crime of obstruction of justice.

Source: elmostrador.cl, August 1, 2015

Supreme Court rejects appeal by former prosecutor Torres Silva in Berríos case

The Supreme Court rejected the review appeal filed by the defense against the sentence that convicted retired Army General Fernando Torres Silva to 10 years and one day in prison as the perpetrator of the crime of illicit association, within the framework of the investigation into the homicide of the former chemist of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), Eugenio Berríos Sagredo.

In a unanimous ruling (case file 366-2019), the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed of ministers Hugo Dolmestch, Carlos Künsemüller, Lamberto Cisternas, Jorge Dahm, and acting lawyer Diego Munita—ruled out the existence of new or unknown information in the process that would allow for the acceptance of the special appeal and the annulment of the appealed conviction.

“The grounds for review upon which Torres Silva’s defense articulates its argument require that, subsequent to the conviction, some fact occurs or is discovered, or some document appears that was unknown during the process, which is of such a nature that it is sufficient to establish the innocence of the convicted person.

Something unknown is something ignored, not known before, and what is discovered is that which comes to the knowledge of something that was ignored; therefore, for the grounds under study to be configured, there must necessarily exist an antecedent, relative to the occurrence of a fact or the holding of a document ignored by the sentencer that is sufficient to establish innocence,” the ruling maintains.

The resolution adds that: “however, from the merit of the antecedents taken into view, it appears that at the moment this Court heard the cassation appeals and issued the replacement sentence that maintained the conviction imposed for the crime of illicit association on Torres Silva—that is, August 11, 2015—both this Court, the appellant party, and the legal community were fully aware of the acquittal for the crime of illicit association in the process followed for the death of Colonel Gerardo Huber, whose replacement sentence was pronounced by this Chamber on November 23, 2012, that is, almost three years before the sentence whose review is requested. And, precisely, it was cited by the defense of the petitioner in the text of its substantial cassation brief, as expressed by the lawyer for the State Defense Council in court; therefore, not meeting the requirements of article 657 N° 4 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, this extraordinary remedy cannot prosper, given that the fundamental requirement is not met, which is the ignorance of the antecedent or new document.”

Source: elperiodista.cl, August 26, 2019

He was one of the cover-up agents and judicial members of the dictatorship who "protected" the regime. Finally, more than 20 years after the death of the DINA chemist, Eugenio Berríos, the dictator's strongman will have to serve a decade of effective prison time for the crime.

The sun rises on an April morning in 1995. Near Montevideo lies El Pinar beach. Everything is proceeding normally, until a former police official finds skeletal remains buried nearby. It is the body of Eugenio Berríos, a Chilean chemist who had been forcibly disappeared since 1992.

He was the person who developed sarin gas on behalf of Augusto Pinochet, the same gas used to murder communist militants at the dictatorship's extermination bases. But he was no longer of use. He had two bullet wounds in his skull.

The chemist's case has resurfaced with the final ruling issued by the Supreme Court, in which it convicted 19 people for his crime. Among them is the former Army auditor general Fernando Torres Silva, who was convicted of illicit association and must serve 10 years in prison, without benefits.

This is a sentence of effective prison time due to his prior criminal record, as he is accused of obstruction of justice in the case of the murder of union leader Tucapel Jiménez.

In a split decision, the Second Penal Chamber rejected the appeals filed and confirmed the sentences previously issued by the Santiago Court of Appeals against retired Chilean and Uruguayan military personnel.

The Prosecutor Favored by Pinochet

Torres Silva became one of the emblematic faces of the dictatorship. His daily appearances before the media ratified his position as a strongman within the regime. As a prosecutor, he led the persecution of members of the MIR and the FPMR, labeling them as perpetrators of terrorist acts against the dictatorship.

However, the so-called Berríos Case was his undoing. The chemist was an agent of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), taken out of the country in October 1991 during "Operation Silence" and brought to Uruguay via Argentina.

The operation was carried out quickly. He was accused of being part of the network that ended the lives of the regime's opponents and of having links to the murder of former Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier in Washington.

When Judge Adolfo Bañados was preparing to interrogate him about his operations within the DINA, he was taken to Uruguay to live in hiding. He possessed a great deal of information, and it was necessary to keep it secret. He is also involved in the death of President Eduardo Frei Montalva. They kept him under Uruguayan police guard. "The brotherhood" allied with Pinochet.

He was kidnapped by his captors, taken for a "ride" to the beach, and murdered. Arturo Silva Valdés and Jaime Torres Gacitúa were the material authors of the crime. After shooting him, they buried Berríos's body in the dunes near the beach. The Supreme Court sentenced them to 15 years for the homicide and another 5 for illicit association.

Tucapel Jiménez

Torres Silva is entering prison for his complicity in an "illicit association" devised within the Army that allowed various DINA agents and members of the dictatorship to face justice or be interrogated, given the delicate situation that military personnel would face before judges in the early 90s.

The case of Eugenio Berríos is just one of many that link him to the crimes of the dictatorship. He was also accused of covering up the murder of union leader Tucapel Jiménez in 1982. For this crime, he had already been detained and prosecuted under the order of Magistrate Sergio Muñoz, the current president of the Supreme Court.

The Twilight

According to journalist and writer Alejandra Matus, the end of the dictatorship and the beginning of the first democratic government, led by Patricio Aylwin, was the first blow to Torres Silva's power.

Aylwin's Minister of Justice, Francisco Cumplido, promoted a set of laws known as the "Cumplido Laws," which allowed for the closing of cases against a large number of those prosecuted by Torres, especially those who had been accused of being "aiders" for acts such as providing the telephone from which one of the FPMR members made a call on the day of the attack on Pinochet, even without knowing who or what it was about.

Others were pardoned, or many saw their sentences reduced and were able to be released shortly thereafter. A smaller group, those involved in so-called "bloody events" and sentenced, for example, to life imprisonment, were able to commute their sentences to exile.

As auditor general and with the rank of Supreme Court minister, Torres began to occupy himself in democracy with obstructing investigations into human rights violations. He himself called himself "the invited villain" when he had to join a chamber or the plenary, as the law allowed him to do so when matters affecting the Army were being reviewed.

In the future, he would be reproached for having dismissed the weight of the trial against Pinochet in Spain and for having advised him to travel to England without fear in 1998. He would also be criticized for traveling personally in 1997 to attempt to persuade Spanish judge Manuel García Castellón (predecessor to Judge Baltasar Garzón) that the accusations against the general were motivated by political revanchism and were a conspiracy by the Communist Party—an effort that not only failed to convince the judge but, unintentionally, validated Spanish jurisdiction to judge the military officer.

It was even said that because of his clumsy actions and advice, he lost the favor of the Pinochet family. However, those in the retired military officer's circle assert that the friendship was never broken and that he even still visits Lucía Hiriart, despite the fact that his relationship with the widow was not as close as the one he had with her husband.

In April 1999, after Pinochet's arrest in London, he resigned from the Army and his position as auditor general, amid growing pressure for him to leave the post.

Source: cambio21.cl, August 11, 2015

The complete list of pensions received by prisoners at the Punta Peuco prison

The defense attorney for the prison's inmates, Raúl Meza, opined that these pensions “are a right acquired during the time they remained in the Army as public officials, fulfilling at the end of their duties all the requirements established by law (…), like any citizen, they have the right to cover their basic needs and especially those of their family members in the face of an inability to generate income.”

Some pensions in certain cases reach over 3 million pesos, which is what the prisoners at the Punta Peuco prison receive, reported La Tercera following a request presented under the Transparency Law. According to the morning newspaper, former military officer Juan Fernando Torres Silva leads the list of the best pensions with a gross amount of $3,254,850.

The pension for the Army colonel (ret.) began to be paid to him starting November 11, 1999. It should be noted that this inmate must serve a decade-long sentence for the homicide of the former DINA chemist, Eugenio Berríos, in 1991.

Meanwhile, the former director of the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE), Eugenio Covarrubias Valenzuela, receives a pension of $2,940,671 since August 1997. This inmate was also sentenced to 10 years and one day for the Berríos case.

Former Army brigadier Miguel Krassnoff receives a pension of $2,489,658 since 1999. For his part, Raúl Iturriaga Neumann has a pension of $2,143,977 since 1991. Regarding the former head of the CNI, Álvaro Corbalán, it can be said that he receives a pension of $716,442.

According to La Tercera, the amounts are deposited through BancoEstado via checking accounts, Cuenta Rut, or over-the-counter withdrawal. When asked about the information, the attorney for torture and murder cases during the dictatorship, Nelson Caucoto, stated that “the fact of being a human rights violator does not prevent one from keeping the pension.

The issue lies elsewhere: how this country does not take into account a system of degradation. They should lose their positions, because the higher the rank they hold, the more pension they receive.” He added that one should not take away said pension, since “it means punishing their family, and the family is different from the subject.

One cannot blame the spouses and their children.” At the same time, the defense attorney for the prison's inmates, Raúl Meza, opined that these pensions “are a right acquired during the time they remained in the Army as public officials, fulfilling at the end of their duties all the requirements established by law (…), like any citizen, they have the right to cover their basic needs and especially those of their family members in the face of an inability to generate income.” To see the complete list of the pensions of the Punta Peuco inmates, click here (La Tercera).

Source: theclinic.cl, May 18, 2017

Prisoners for human rights violations in Punta Peuco have pensions of up to $3.2 million

Via the Transparency Law, Capredena reported the monthly amounts received by former members of the Armed Forces who are incarcerated. The highest pension is held by former military prosecutor Fernando Torres Silva, while Miguel Krassnoff receives $2.4 million per month.

Through a request presented by La Tercera via the Transparency Law, the National Defense Pension Fund (Capredena) conducted a census of people belonging to the three branches of the Armed Forces who currently receive pensions from this institution. The result: 95 retired generals and former officers convicted of human rights violations receive on average $1,618,459 monthly.

This request was answered based on the names and RUT (tax ID) numbers of the inmates appearing in the registry prepared by the Ministry of the Interior's Human Rights Program in 2015, which indicates their place of incarceration, with Punta Peuco concentrating the majority of the cases. All pensions provided by Capredena are listed in gross amounts.

Leading the list is former military prosecutor Juan Fernando Torres Silva, with a pension of $3,254,850. The date the pension began to be paid was November 11, 1999. The Army colonel (ret.) is serving a 10-year sentence for the homicide of Eugenio Berríos, a former chemist for the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), which occurred in 1991.

Another of the retirees with the highest payment is Eugenio Covarrubias Valenzuela, former director of the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE). He has received $2,940,671 since August 1, 1997. He was also convicted in the Berríos case to 10 years and one day as the author of kidnapping and five years and one day for illicit association.

Meanwhile, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, former Army brigadier and member of the Lautaro Brigade of the DINA, also receives one of the highest pensions on the list: $2,489,658 since 1999. Former DINA deputy director Raúl Iturriaga Neumann receives $2,143,977 per month since 1991, and the former operational chief of the National Information Center (CNI), Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, has a pension of $716,442.

Another of the emblematic convicts is Carlos Herrera Jiménez, sentenced for the murder of Tucapel Jiménez, who registers a monthly payment from Capredena of $1,019,730.

The registry includes active and suspended pensions. The latter status means it was halted due to the death of the beneficiary and no survivor's pension exists.

These payments are made monthly through BancoEstado via Cuenta RUT or checking account. They can also be paid via over-the-counter withdrawal.

For human rights attorney Nelson Caucoto, "the fact of being a human rights violator does not prevent one from keeping the pension. The issue lies elsewhere: how this country does not take into account a system of degradation. They should lose their positions, because the higher the rank they hold, the more pension they receive."

Regarding the option of withdrawing these pensions, the attorney indicated he does not agree with that, since "it means punishing their family, and the family is different from the subject. One cannot blame the spouses and their children."

Meanwhile, the attorney representing prisoners in Punta Peuco, Raúl Meza, stated that "it is a right acquired during the time they remained in the Army as public officials, fulfilling at the end of their duties all the requirements established by law (...), like any citizen, they have the right to cover their basic needs and especially those of their family members in the face of an inability to generate income."

Finally, he indicated "that any law initiative (that seeks to take away that right) would violate the principle of res judicata and the non-retroactivity of criminal law."

Source: latercera.cl, May 18, 2017

CNI lawyer convicted for crime committed during the dictatorship

Visiting Minister Sergio Troncoso issued a verdict that considered the responsibility as a cover-up agent of the lawyer, who traveled from Santiago to La Serena to—the ruling indicates—instruct the agents on what they should say to evade their responsibilities.

For the first time since investigations into human rights violations during the dictatorship began in 1991, a visiting minister has convicted one of the lawyers who provided services to the defunct National Information Center (CNI), the secret police of Augusto Pinochet, which only formally ceased to exist in 1990.

In previous rulings, various judges had prosecuted and convicted other lawyers linked to the repression unleashed after the 1973 coup d'état, as was the case with the former Army auditor and ad hoc military prosecutor, Fernando Torres Silva, convicted for the crimes of Eugenio Berríos and Tucapel Jiménez (and pardoned in 2021 due to a terminal illness), or with the former military prosecutor of Temuco, Alfonso Podlech, convicted for several crimes executed in La Araucanía.

However, various actors in the human rights world indicate that, before the convictions issued by the visiting minister of the La Serena Court of Appeals, Sergio Troncoso, for the homicide of former intendant Daniel Acuña and the frustrated homicide of his son, there were no precedents like the current one, due to the conviction as a cover-up agent of the lawyer Guido Poli Garaycochea, 78.

The Ruling

According to the investigation by the special judge, the events occurred during the early morning of August 13, 1979, in Coquimbo, when a CNI commando attacked Daniel Acuña Sepúlveda, a militant of the Socialist Party and former intendant of Antofagasta, and his son Roberto Enrique Acuña Aravena, in their home.

The investigation determined that the operation was carried out by an "elimination order" issued against Acuña Sepúlveda by the Regional Division of the National Information Center (CNI) in Santiago.

According to what was confessed many years later on his deathbed by Captain Patricio Padilla Villén (who died 13 years ago), the CNI agents under his command traveled to plot 222 in Tierras Blancas, Coquimbo, where, after falsely identifying themselves as carabineros, they fired at the victim's son, Roberto Enrique Acuña Aravena, who managed to survive, and then entered the home, where Padilla shot Daniel Acuña Sepúlveda in the skull.

Subsequently, in an attempt to cover up the murder and make it look like a suicide, the CNI agents placed dynamite on the victim's body and detonated it, destroying his corpse.

The survivor, meanwhile, was detained at the hospital and then subjected to pretrial detention for about six months, under the false accusation of crimes linked to the Arms Control Law and possession of explosives.

After the investigation, Minister Troncoso convicted Juan Viterbo Chiminelli Fullerton, head of the CNI Regional Division, of qualified homicide (15 years and one day); while Gustavo Adolfo Camilo Ahumada was sentenced to 10 years for the homicide and 540 days for the serious injuries caused to Acuña Aravena.

Regarding the accomplices, Manuel Humberto Catalán Arriola received 5 years and one day for the homicide and 41 days in prison as a cover-up agent for the serious injuries, while René Hugo Ojeda Caro was sentenced to 5 years for the qualified homicide.

Finally, the lawyer Guido Poli was convicted as a cover-up agent for both illicit acts, receiving sentences of 3 years of imprisonment for the qualified homicide and 40 days in prison for the serious injuries, obtaining the benefit of conditional release.

The Schneider Case

On October 10, 1970, at 23 years of age, Poli—who at that time was studying law at the Catholic University and was a militant of the National Party—was arrested, accused along with two other defendants of having installed several explosive devices (some of which failed) in different areas of Santiago, in the midst of the maneuvers prior to the homicide of General René Schneider, Commander-in-Chief of the Army at that time and a strict constitutionalist, who maintained that if Salvador Allende were elected by the Full Congress on October 24, 1970 (after having won the first round on September 4 of that year), the Army should remain attached to the Constitution and not participate in any military uprising.

This led to an absurd plan concocted in Washington D.C. at the behest of Agustín Edwards, in which U.S. military intelligence agents (the CIA chief in Santiago, Henry Hecksher, was removed from the plot due to his criticisms of how poorly designed it was), retired and active-duty Chilean generals, common criminals, and young people belonging to far-right and other pro-Nazi groups participated, as was the case with Guido Poli, who was part of several movements of that type.

On October 22, a clumsy attempt to kidnap Schneider culminated in his homicide, and in 1972 the implicated parties were sentenced to various penalties.

Poli was among the 43 convicted in that case, although he had no responsibility in the homicide; instead, in the first instance, he received a sentence of 2 years of internal exile in Caldera for violating the State Internal Security Law, but later, after the 1973 coup d'état, almost all the participants were pardoned.

The Legal Advisor

In 1979, as established by Judge Troncoso's ruling, Poli worked as a lawyer for the CNI, being second in hierarchy in the staff of lawyers for said secret police. According to him, his role was "to provide legal advice on all requests made, analysis of legal bodies and draft laws, and to prepare responses to the courts, in accordance with the background information provided to them." That team, as specified by former CNI agent Fernando Rojas Tapia, was composed, in addition to Poli, of several lawyers, among them Víctor Gálvez (who was the chief), René Alegría, Juan Carlos Manns, Fernando Dumay, and a certain "Iribarra."

Poli assured the Justice system that in August of that year, Chiminelli ordered him to travel to La Serena in order to "advise" Captain Padilla on the statement he would provide before the military prosecutor's office, for which he ordered another CNI agent, Captain Manuel Catalán, to accompany him.

Still according to Poli's statement, on August 13, 1979, in the afternoon, Víctor Gálvez told him that "an event had occurred where CNI personnel were involved and a person had died as a result of an explosion in their home, managing to travel around 11:00 PM in a CNI vehicle.

They arrived the next morning in La Serena, waiting for the time in the unit's facilities. Around 8:30 AM, Captain Padilla, who was the chief and with whom he had to interview, arrived at the unit. At that moment, he explains his version of the events to him and that everything was reported to the Regional Government.

He indicated to Padilla that if there were requests from the court, he should satisfy them in a timely manner. Subsequently, he accompanied Captain Padilla to the Intendancy, then they returned to the unit, and shortly after, he returned to Santiago on August 14, never to know about the case again."

Likewise, as he argued, "the legal department only knew the official version of the events."

Poli also asserted that he did not transmit any instruction to Captain Padilla regarding what to declare and that he only limited himself to telling him "to cooperate with the court." Likewise, "he stated he was unaware that the event was a setup, adding that Padilla never told him that there was a wounded person who fled the scene and who was in prison," and asserted that it was "absurd that they would give a lawyer an order to go and check the fulfillment of a military order." He also said that "he never worked with Chiminelli at that time (1979), and that they only had a social relationship."

The Doubts

However, several pieces of evidence caused the judge to doubt the version. For example, the version provided by the then-procurator Miguel Ángel Parra Vásquez, who, in addition to recounting that in the summer of 1980 he was sent to accompany Padilla to another statement, specified that the lawyers belonged to a unit called "legal intelligence," also explaining that Poli and Chiminelli had known each other from before and that between them "there was a very familiar treatment."

In turn, one of the agents who participated in the event, Luis Pavez Silva, "pointed out having lied in court in his statement at the time and assured that they told him what he had to say, realizing that everything was a setup by the chiefs," states the ruling, which points out that Poli's version that he only traveled to La Serena to carry out "the delivery of a brief message, regarding the duty to cooperate with the courts" is "inadmissible, as it lacks logic to organize a trip from Santiago to deliver a simple message like that, when it could have been delivered directly to Padilla by phone, or by telex if it was deemed necessary to encrypt the message. It is certainly absurd that a message like cooperating with the investigation should be delivered in person, when Padilla himself confessed that he received an order as serious as killing Acuña by telex, which notoriously merited more reserved treatment."

Given this, among other arguments, Poli's defense attorney, Maximiliano Murath, asserted that the elements against his client are not sufficient to be able to incriminate him, indicating that "it was not within his functions in the CNI Legal Department to prepare judicial angles or similar things" and that "it is contradictory to think that the lawyer Poli would go to tell the agents or the chief of the operation what to say, since they had already prepared the false facts and version" and that "in that sense, one cannot cover up what is already covered up."

However, the judge rejected the allegations and determined that the real reason for Poli's trip was "to meet with those involved in the execution operation of Daniel Acuña, to verify how the mission had been carried out and to issue directives for what would be the CNI's official version before the courts," adding that "his trip was motivated by the need to safeguard the institution before the 'blunder' (in Chiminelli's words) that the existence of a surviving victim and eyewitness to the events implied, making it necessary to coordinate the statements of those involved."

It should be noted that, before being a member of the CNI, Poli was a member of the DINA and in that capacity, according to the biography of Manuel Contreras written by journalist Manuel Salazar, he had close contact with the Italian neo-fascists of the terrorist group Avanguardia Nazionale and its leader, Stefano Delle Chiaie.

Poli eventually became the Army's auditor general, where he worked until 1999, and was subsequently one of the founders of the NGO Jure (Justice and Reconciliation), which defends military personnel accused of human rights violations.

by: Carlos Basso Prieto

Source: elmostrador.cl, September 27, 2025