The Antofagasta Court of Appeals has indicted 12 people, including civilians and military personnel, for the crimes of qualified homicide against 28 people that occurred in the city of Calama on October 19, 1973.

In a unanimous ruling, the appellate court ministers Enrique Álvarez, Oscar Clavería, and the presiding lawyer Nancy Mellado indicted Armando Fernández Larios and Eugenio Rivera Desgroux for the crime of illicit association.

Likewise, Armando Fernández Larios, Eugenio Rivera Desgroux, Carlos Max George Langer Von Furstemberg, Carlos Humberto Minolleti Arriagada, and Jerónimo Tomás Rojo Rojo were charged as perpetrators of the repeated crime of qualified homicide.

Furthermore, Dr. Luis Benito Rojas Delzo, Luis Mario Aracena Romo, Julio Fernando Salazar Lantery, Oscar Figueroa Márquez, Domingo Antonio Flores Figueroa, Miguel Eduardo Trincado Araneda, and the chaplain Luis Exequiel Jorquera Molina were accused as accessories to the same crime.

In the cases of Fernández Larios, Minoletti Arriagada, and Rojas Delzo, the court ordered the initiation of procedures to request their extradition from the Supreme Court, as they are currently outside the country. For the remaining defendants, the court ordered the issuance of arrest warrants so that they may be placed in pretrial detention.

Source: lasegunda.cl, August 31, 2007

The appointment of General Juan Miguel Fuente-Alba Poblete as the new Commander-in-Chief of the Army has proven controversial. According to the official version, the President of the Republic appointed him after a thorough review of his background.

They would rule out any involvement by Fuente-Alba in human rights violations committed by the military dictatorship, a period during which he spent almost his entire military career. However, the president of the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared, Lorena Pizarro, has denounced that Fuente-Alba Poblete, when he was a second lieutenant in the Calama Regiment in October 1973, was involved in the massacre of prisoners committed by the Caravana de la Muerte led by General Sergio Arellano Stark.

These statements are also supported by human rights lawyer Hugo Gutiérrez. General Fuente-Alba points out that on the date of the murder of 26 political prisoners in Calama—October 19, 1973—he was at the Chuquicamata mine, guarding equipment at that copper deposit.

He adds that the current investigating judge of the case, Víctor Montiglio, before whom he testified twice as a suspect, excluded him from prosecution due to a lack of evidence against him. Minister Montiglio issued him a certificate stating that, to date, “there are no well-founded presumptions” to consider that the officer had any participation as a perpetrator, accomplice, or accessory to the massacre.

There would, therefore, be a virtual judicial declaration of innocence. However, there are three statements from military personnel that refute Fuente-Alba. One is from Brigadier (ret.) Pedro Espinoza, second-in-command of the DINA, who took part in the Caravana de la Muerte.

His testimony has been disqualified because, it is claimed, he has lied several times. A second judicial statement is from Lieutenant (ret.) Patricio Lapostol Arno. He maintains that Second Lieutenant Fuente-Alba was present at a tense meeting held in Calama with Marcelo Morén Brito, one of the executioner-officers of the Caravana de la Muerte.

Morén allegedly reproached Lapostol for the conduct of his father, commander of the Arica Regiment, who refused to execute some prisoners. The third statement is from Sub-officer (ret.) Leopoldo Pérez Paredes in the case regarding the exhumation of the bodies of the martyrs (at the end of 1975) who were thrown into the sea.

That operation was directed by Lieutenant Miguel Trincado Araneda, who was retired and indicted in December 2006, when—with the rank of general—he was serving as commander of the II Division in the Metropolitan Region.

A documented account of this background can be found in the note by journalist Jorge Escalante in La Nación-Domingo (8/31/2008). The case of General Fuente-Alba invites reflection. There are precedents indicating that in matters involving the military, issues that appeared clear and indisputable ceased to be so later on.

This has happened with other appointments of high-ranking officers of the armed forces. This relates to the “pact of silence” that governs the uniformed personnel and has hindered the investigation of the dictatorship's crimes.

The fact that Fuente-Alba was a young second lieutenant in 1973 does not erase the fact that most of his military career took place in the army commanded by Pinochet and his clique of murderers and thieves.

Fuente-Alba could not, at the very least, have failed to hear news of the crimes and atrocities committed by his comrades-in-arms. His silence implies an evident ethical responsibility. However, the same reasoning should apply to practically all current army commanders, at least up to the rank of colonel, or even lower.

This situation means that there are elements of latent danger in the armed forces that should be addressed with tact but also with firmness, seeking to form a new military mentality that is inspired by democratic values and that allows society to advance without threats toward deeper forms of equality and social justice.

It is disturbing to know that Pinochet—with all his crimes and illicit enrichment in tow—remains an emblematic and admired figure in the army and the armed forces as a whole. This happens while the murder of the former commander-in-chief, General Carlos Prats González, and his wife, remains unpunished.

During the 20 years of the low-intensity democracy that prevails in Chile, the armed forces have been untouchable and are a taboo subject in political debate. None of the presidential candidates has dared to face the issue and propose a policy that ends privileges, corruption, and potential anti-democratic dangers.

The armed forces remain—just as Pinochet left them—a privileged stratum of society, subjected to the National Security doctrine, slightly made up and repowered for the “anti-terrorist” fight that the Pentagon advocates today and that threatens the continent from the bases it will install in Colombia.

The privileges enjoyed by the Chilean military are varied. From the discretion with which high commands decide on the purchase of armaments (4.778 billion dollars in 2008, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) with resources coming from Codelco's copper sales, to their special pension and health regimes.

Although that pension system is bankrupt, it continues to function thanks to the fiscal contribution—paid by all Chileans—at a rate of more than 1.5 billion dollars annually. The hospitals of each branch of the armed forces and the Carabineros are the most modern in the country—such as the new Military Hospital inaugurated in the commune of La Reina.

The uniformed personnel enjoy all kinds of special allowances that teachers and public servants, who shout their poverty in the streets, would wish for. The Code of Military Justice ensures them their own justice system that invariably favors them.

Each branch of the armed forces has its own assets, which they dispose of as if they had acquired them through their own work and not thanks to fiscal financing. The waste in military spending facilitates corruption, as seen in the case of the Mirage aircraft and the acquisition of the Leopard tanks.

Suicides of conscripts are rarely investigated thoroughly, and even less so are crimes like that of Pedro Soto Tapia or Corporal Orlando Morales Pinto, the latter to hide an embezzlement in the Army Health Command.

It took mobilization and protest for the army to acknowledge the cases of radiation that affected conscripts who served at the Lo Aguirre nuclear center. Nor can it be reasonably maintained that the armed forces have done their utmost to help justice in matters of human rights violations.

This fuels suspicions and misgivings when promotions occur in the high commands. Citizens rightly ask: where was and what was that general or that admiral doing when the military dictatorship was torturing, murdering, and forcibly disappearing prisoners?

Or is it that the current commanders-in-chief were selfless and clean officers, dedicated to their professional development and the training of contingents in the barracks? Were they just officers of desks, shooting ranges, and parades?

Did they never find out what their companions in the DINA, the CNI, the DINE, etc., were doing? Unfortunately, the government of President Bachelet, which due to family and professional background could have addressed the issue of the armed forces and their readjustment to serve the Fatherland in democracy with greater authority, did not even try to begin that task, which will remain frozen during the next government, according to the promises of the candidates vying for the Presidency of the Republic.

Source: puntofinal.cl, November 3, 2009

President Bachelet is a good example of how people tend to justify the aggressions from which they cannot take revenge. This is common in Chile, where the condition for exercising democracy is to respect the memory of the dictatorship and where the children of the victims must humiliate themselves before the impunity of the perpetrators.

Sometimes even defend them. As Bachelet did with her Police Chief Arturo Herrera, accused by Chávez of complicity in Pinochet's atrocities. Arturo Herrera Verdugo is the police chief. As such, he considers himself above politics.

He believes he has the right to say (speech of September 25, 2004): “We cannot ignore that an important part of Chilean society lived directly through the events that made it possible for the Rule of Law, which governed the country under the 1925 Constitution, to be broken.

This is not the occasion to analyze the causes that originated that crisis. But it is valid to point out that the civil police did not contribute with its small force, nor with its weapons or men, to the breaking of Chilean democracy.

We were not called, nor were we part of the power that was installed.” “The events that made it possible for the Rule of Law to be broken”? These events can be none other than the government of President Allende, who would thus be responsible for the fact that “the Rule of Law was broken” or, which is the same thing, guilty of his overthrow and death, as well as the imprisonment and death by torture of the President's father, General Alberto Bachelet, who on October 16, 1973, wrote: “They broke me inside, in a moment, they ended up destroying me morally—I never knew how to hate anyone—I have always thought that the human being is the most wonderful thing in this creation and must be respected as such, but I met comrades from the FACH whom I have known for 20 years, students of mine, who treated me like a criminal or like a dog.” Those same officers are today generals of the Chilean Air Force, they are part of Bachelet's government, and they stand behind her at parades. Democracy is an infamous farce when the military only allows us to represent it on the condition of changing nothing. “Nor were we part of the power that was installed.” Does Arturo Herrera intend to make us believe that the police were not part of the government? That while it was torturing innocents, the Police respected the human rights of criminals. Lieutenant Trincado collects, bags, and throws human remains into the sea. Let us return to the original question about Arturo Herrera. I quote the Chilean journalist Pedro Alejandro Mata: “The Commander of the II Army Division, of the Santiago Garrison, and also Military Judge, General Miguel Trincado Araneda, visited the Director General of the Investigative Police, Mr. Arturo Herrera Verdugo, at his home. This fact, curious in itself, had even more surprising characteristics when it became known that the purpose of General Trincado's visit to the Director of the Civil Police was to ask him, by making use of his position, to change a police report that incriminated him in the illegal exhumation, destruction, and disappearance of the remains of 26 political executions from Calama (they were thrown into the sea from a FACH C-47 transport plane). The report had been prepared by the Human Rights Brigade of the Investigative Police based on investigation orders issued, first by former Magistrate Juan Guzmán, and subsequently endorsed by Minister Víctor Montiglio.” “At that time, General Miguel Trincado held the rank of lieutenant and was in command of the Intelligence Section of the Calama Regiment. Making use of an Army truck, and with a platoon of soldiers under his command, Lieutenant Trincado first located the burial site, to then proceed to exhume the human remains, bag them, and transport them to the FACH plane that was waiting at the Calama airport. From said plane, the human remains corresponding to 26 people who had been shot or murdered by military personnel in Calama after the 1973 coup d'état were thrown into the sea.” Arturo Herrera intervenes “The technical report prepared by the Human Rights Brigade of the Investigative Police came to the attention of its Director General, Mr. Arturo Herrera, who gave immediate orders for the technical report to be altered in its content and for Trincado's name to be omitted, as Herrera considered him innocent.” “The author of the report, Commissioner Abel Lizama, was pressured to proceed to draft a second technical report altering the conclusions that were made explicit in the first. The intention was for the new report to record Trincado's innocence in the investigated events.” “Lizama refused to execute the Police Director's order, arguing that he did not have the authority to alter a technical report, and that this was the responsibility of the Unit Chief, Commissioner Sandro Gaete. When Gaete was requested to do the same, that is to say, to proceed to alter the technical report by order of the Director General, Gaete refused flatly. Had he done so, he would have committed a crime.” “The attitude assumed by Gaete and Lizama was backed by Prefect Rafael Castillo, then Chief of the Special Affairs and Human Rights Brigade of the Investigative Police, and the immediate superior of Gaete and Lizama.” “Subsequently, Prefect Castillo, as well as Commissioners Gaete and Lizama, testified before the President of the Antofagasta Court of Appeals, Magistrate Rosa María Pinto, regarding the content of the report prepared and also the pressures received from the Director General of the Investigative Police for the report to be changed, freeing General Miguel Trincado from responsibilities and exculpating him.” “Based on this technical report, Magistrate Rosa María Pinto decided to indict General Miguel Trincado, which meant that he was immediately passed to retirement by the institution's High Command.” “However, the formal complaint to the court, made by the officials Mr. Castillo, Gaete, and Lizama, regarding having been pressured to modify the technical report by the Director General himself, had no major effects. The complaint remained incorporated in the file, but the magistrate limited herself to continuing to investigate the facts under her jurisdiction and did not initiate a parallel investigation to elucidate the very serious fact, even though it had the characteristics of a crime: abuse of authority, influence peddling, and obstruction of justice, among others.” Herrera is indeed an executioner From a certain rank, officials are jointly responsible for the acts of the State by action or omission. Arturo Herrera Verdugo was a generic accomplice in the Pinochet atrocities and a necessary accomplice in the concealment of horrendous crimes. Just as he is today by endorsing with his silence, as President of INTERPOL, the lies of his Secretary General Ronald Noble, which contradict that organization's report on the computers presented by the Colombian government as evidence against the FARC. Herrera Verdugo limits himself to remaining silent, that is to say, to lying with his silence to cover up the coverer of Uribe's crimes, the gringo policeman Ronald Noble. Unfortunately for President Bachelet, once again Chávez was right.

Source: aporrea.org, May 22, 2008

Generals (ret.) Miguel Trincado and Julio Salazar indicted in "Calama case"

The former commander of the Santiago garrison and military judge of the Metropolitan Region until 2006, now-retired General Miguel Trincado, commanded the operation of the exhumation and launching into the sea of the corpses when he occupied the head of the Intelligence Section of the Calama regiment.

The operation was supervised on the ground in a sector of the Atacama Desert by the then-head of the Intelligence Department of the I Army Division of Antofagasta, current General (ret.) Julio Salazar Lantery.

Miguel Trincado commanded the operation of the exhumation and launching into the sea of the corpses when he occupied the head of the Intelligence Section of the Calama regiment. The indictments in this human rights violation case were issued yesterday by the presiding minister of the Antofagasta Court of Appeals, Rosa María Pinto.

The magistrate also indicted Colonel (ret.) Luis Aracena and five other people. All are accused as perpetrators of the exhumation and launching into the sea, at the end of 1975 or the beginning of 1976, of the 26 bodies of the prisoners murdered by the Caravana de la Muerte in October 1973.

Generals (ret.) Miguel Trincado Araneda and Julio Salazar Lantery, together with Colonel (ret.) Luis Aracena Romo, and five other people, were indicted as perpetrators of the exhumation and disappearance between the end of 1975 and the beginning of 1976 of the 26 bodies of the prisoners murdered in October 1973 by the Caravana de la Muerte in Calama.

The indictment was resolved yesterday by the presiding minister of the Antofagasta Court of Appeals, Rosa María Pinto; however, she granted them immediate provisional release. The magistrate is investigating the case regarding the exhumations and launching into the sea of these bodies aboard a FACH plane.

The former commander of the Santiago garrison and military judge of the Metropolitan Region until 2006, now-retired General Miguel Trincado, commanded the operation of the exhumation and launching into the sea of the corpses when he occupied the head of the Intelligence Section of the Calama regiment.

The operation was supervised on the ground in a sector of the Atacama Desert by the then-head of the Intelligence Department of the I Army Division of Antofagasta, current General (ret.) Julio Salazar Lantery.

Colonel (ret.) Aracena Romo was in 1975 the second-in-command of the Calama regiment, and was also present at the exhumation. The commander of the Calama regiment was, at that time, Colonel Eduardo Ibáñez Tillería, who passed away with the rank of general.

Others indicted are Sub-officers (ret.) Héctor Iturra Orrego, Wilson Pacheco Obreque, and Emilio Pardo Pardo. These were subordinates of Trincado in the Intelligence Section of the Calama regiment, and likewise had participation in the exhumation of the remains.

Likewise, Hugo Carrasco Pérez and Pedro Gutiérrez Ruiz were also indicted. Already indicted by Minister Pinto were the then-intelligence sub-officers of the Calama regiment, now in retirement, Manuel Aguirre Cortés and Juan Carlos González Reyes.

Both also took part in the exhumation. Confessed mechanic Aguirre was the first to judicially incriminate Trincado in 2005, accusing him of commanding the operation and even driving the truck in which the bagged corpses were transported to the Calama airfield, where a FACH C-47 plane was waiting, aboard which they were thrown into the sea. "I was the co-pilot in the truck next to Trincado," Aguirre said in the proceedings.

When Aguirre accused Trincado, La Nación published the information on May 3, 2005, but the Army, under the leadership of General Juan Emilio Cheyre, denied both Trincado's participation and the fact itself. "The Army categorically rejects these imputations for being unjust, unnecessarily damaging the image of the institution, and compromising the honor of the cited officer (Trincado)," the statement said.

The other person who was already indicted by Magistrate Pinto is the FACH Sub-officer (ret.) Sergio López Maldonado. He confessed in the proceedings that he was the mechanic who traveled in the C-47 and declared that "when about two hours of flight had passed, the pilot signaled to me.

Then I opened the hatch and threw the bundles into the ocean." It is the first time that Salazar Lantery and Aracena Romo have been charged with human rights violations. Trincado had been indicted this year on the initiative of the Antofagasta Court of Appeals.

But that court committed a procedural error by indicting him for the crimes of the 26 prisoners committed by the Caravana de la Muerte on October 19, 1973, in Calama, facts that are being investigated in Santiago by Minister Víctor Montiglio and for which neither that court nor Magistrate Pinto has jurisdiction.

First episode "Operation Television Removal" The Calama exhumation case is the first episode of what Army intelligence called "Operation Television Removal," which was massively carried out throughout the country starting in December 1978.

It was the date when the bodies of fifteen peasants murdered by Carabineros, who hid their corpses, were found in the ovens of a mine in Lonquén, south of Santiago. "Operation Television Removal" consisted of the exhumation of all the corpses of prisoners who had been buried in clandestine graves throughout the north, south, and central zone of Chile.

The bodies were thrown into the sea. The operation was decreed by the then-dictator Augusto Pinochet, through cryptograms (messages encrypted in code) that he sent to the country's regiments with the order.

One of the first to fix the date of the exhumation in Calama was Colonel (ret.) Aracena Romo, who declared judicially that the event happened "in the last days of 1975." For his part, Salazar Lantery acknowledged in the trial that "at the end of 1974 or 1975, there was an agreement to remove the bodies, because we knew that the relatives were looking for them in the desert." Although Trincado continues to deny his participation, in the judicial investigation there are at least eight sub-officers who accuse him of commanding the operation, or of directing the Intelligence Section of the Calama regiment at that time. The next step could be in the hands of Minister Montiglio, as the plaintiff side maintains that it is not simply a matter of the defendants having committed the crime of illegal exhumation by digging up the bodies and making them disappear, but that in their actions they would have incurred, at least, as accessories to kidnapping and homicide because they acted to erase the traces of the crimes committed by the Caravana de la Muerte in 1973. For this reason, there is the possibility that, after these indictments, Minister Pinto will declare herself incompetent and send the case to Santiago to Judge Montiglio. The case that unleashed the war in the Investigative Police The proceedings for the exhumations in Calama were the trigger for the open struggle in the Investigative Police. The one who unleashed the dispute was General Miguel Trincado, when, while on active duty, he visited the director of the civil police, Arturo Herrera, to ask him to order the changing of a police report that in July 2005 imputed responsibility to him in the operation for which he was indicted yesterday. Officers of that police force stated in the proceedings being investigated by Minister Pinto that Director Herrera attempted to have the report altered, but met with opposition from the authors of the document and their direct chief, the recently retired Prefect Rafael Castillo. From that moment on, a tough dispute broke out between Castillo and Herrera, which brought about various situations within the Special Affairs and Human Rights Brigade. In 2006, Castillo was being passed to retirement by Herrera, but the government vetoed that provision and reinstated Castillo to active duty. This year, however, the government did not continue to support him, and Director Herrera passed him to retirement. More

OFFICER WHO COMMANDED EXHUMATIONS SURRENDERED TO JUSTICE

Former Army Captain Carlos Minoletti was awaited at the airport by civil police officials, who placed him at the disposal of Judge Víctor Montiglio. The fugitive former Army Captain Carlos Minoletti Arriagada, who commanded the clandestine burial of 26 bodies of those executed in 1973 by the Caravana de la Muerte, returned to Chile from Miami and surrendered to justice.

The former commander of the Engineer Company of the Calama regiment fled to North America in 1998 to evade the judicial investigation against him led by Judge Juan Guzmán. Although he did not join the execution platoon led by General Sergio Arellano Stark, Judge Juan Guzmán ordered the military man's arrest on January 31, 2000, but Minoletti had already fled to the United States two years earlier.

His return to Chile is due, according to court sources, to the fact that an extradition would put his residency in that country at risk and, furthermore, that he is reportedly suffering from a serious heart condition.

At the airport, he was awaited by civil police officials who took him to the office of Judge Víctor Montiglio, currently in charge of the proceedings for the episodes. The military delegation traveled through the country weeks after the coup d'état of September 11, 1973, and executed 75 political prisoners in different cities without trial.

The then-Captain Minoletti directed the clandestine burial of the 26 prisoners that the "Caravana de la Muerte" murdered on October 19 in the Topater sector of the Atacama Desert. The military man must also appear before Judge Rosa María Pinto, in charge of the proceedings for the exhumation of the bodies of the Calama victims and their launching into the sea between 1975 and 1976.

For these events, last Saturday the magistrate indicted retired Generals Miguel Trincado and Julio Salazar, former Colonel Luis Aracena, and five retired sub-officers, to whom she granted provisional release upon payment of a 50,000 peso bail.

Trincado, former commander of the Santiago garrison and military judge of the Metropolitan Region until 2006, commanded the operation of the exhumation and the launching into the sea of the corpses when he occupied the head of the Intelligence Section of the Calama regiment.

The bodies were exhumed at the end of 1975 or the beginning of 1976, transported to the Calama airfield, and thrown from a plane into the sea. As established by the proceedings led by Judge Pinto, Minoletti was the one who located the grave for the exhumation and would also have been part of this operation.

The former military man could become the first officer to acknowledge the presence at the exhumation of Generals Trincado and Salazar, which both deny, although several sub-officers have implicated Trincado.

The Calama case is the first episode of the so-called "Operation Television Removal," which consisted of the exhumation throughout the country of all the corpses of prisoners who had been buried clandestinely. The operation was decreed by the late dictator Augusto Pinochet through a cryptogram that he sent to regiments throughout the country.

Source: lanacion.cl, November 27, 2007

Freedom for those implicated in the Caravana de la Muerte case

Last night, those detained for their implication in the illegal exhumation of corpses, who were being held in the facilities of the Topáter Regiment as prisoners after being indicted by the Antofagasta Court of Appeals on August 31, were notified of their release.

The notification took place in the Second Court of Calama and was carried out by Minister Enrique Alvarez, who traveled from Antofagasta exclusively to fulfill that task, and in addition to fulfilling that procedure, he explained to the relatives of the political executions that the decision was due to the fact that the case is in the hands of Minister Montiglio.

The procedure led to the presence in the area of the public buildings of relatives of the forcibly disappeared and political executions of the El Loa Province, who also, in an improvised exhibition, showed photographs of both those shot by the Caravana de la Muerte and other detainees who were killed and whose small remains have been found and identified by the Legal Medical Service of Santiago.

Supreme Court Yesterday, the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice accepted the amparo appeals (habeas corpus) presented by retired military personnel Carlos Langer and Miguel Trincado against the resolution of the Second Chamber of the Antofagasta Court of Appeals that decided to indict them in connection with the case of illegal exhumation perpetrated in Calama.

As a consequence of that decision, the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court ordered the immediate release of those granted amparo, as well as those "who are deprived of it, regarding the indictment orders that are rendered without effect by this decision, if they are not deprived of it for another reason or cause," as established by the ruling issued yesterday.

As reported, on August 31, the Antofagasta Court of Appeals indicted 12 people, including civilians and former military personnel, for the crime of qualified homicide against 28 people that occurred in the city of Calama on October 19, 1973.

In a unanimous ruling, the ministers of the appellate court Enrique Álvarez, Óscar Clavería, and the presiding lawyer Nancy Mellado indicted Armando Fernández Larios and Eugenio Rivera Desgroux for the crime of illicit association.

Likewise, Armando Fernández Larios, Eugenio Rivera Desgroux, Carlos Max George Langer von Furstemberg, Carlos Humberto Minolleti Arriagada, and Jerónimo Tomás Rojo Rojo were charged as perpetrators of the repeated crime of qualified homicide.

In addition, Dr. Luis Benito Rojas Delzo, Luis Mario Aracena Romo, Julio Fernando Salazar Lantery, Óscar Figueroa Márquez, Domingo Antonio Flores Figueroa, Miguel Eduardo Trincado Araneda, and the chaplain Luis Exequiel Jorquera Molina were accused as accessories to the same crime.

In the cases of Fernández Larios, Minoletti Arriagada, and Rojas Delzo, the court ordered the initiation of procedures to request their extradition from the Supreme Court, as they are currently outside the country.

Ruling on amparo The ruling that rendered the decision of the Antofagasta Court of Appeals without effect was pronounced yesterday after lawyer Luis Valentín Ferrada Valenzuela presented an amparo appeal to the Supreme Court in favor of Miguel Trincado Araneda, retired Army General, and for himself, Carlos George Max Langer Von Furstenberg, against the ministers of the Second Chamber of the Antofagasta Court of Appeals, in which he states that the members, who, while hearing an appeal filed by the defenses of three other defendants, in the case followed before the Visiting Minister of the Second Criminal Court of Calama, Rosa María Pinto Egusquiza, in Roll No. 28-2007, ex officio, proceeded to indict the aforementioned appellants as an accessory to the repeated crime of qualified homicide and as a perpetrator of the same crime, respectively. Other considerations include that, succinctly, they maintain that such decisions are arbitrary, since they would not only lack any reasoning but, fundamentally, because the appealed ministers would have no competence or jurisdiction, since they indicted the appellants despite the existence of another court to which the knowledge of the same facts was entrusted. That on February 4, 2005, it was resolved, in that same entry Roll No. 2182-98, to separate all the background information related to the findings of skeletal remains of the case Roll No. 37.340-A-8, which is added to the same process, which was sent to the Second Criminal Court of Calama, for corresponding its knowledge and resolution. That as stated in the background information added by the Minister of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Mr. Montiglio Rezzio, on May 10, 2005, the agreement of the Plenary of this Most Excellent Supreme Court held on the sixth of the same month and year was transcribed to him, with the object of communicating to him to continue the substantiation of the processes, until their definitive conclusion, which were in charge, by reason of the jurisdiction, of the former Minister of that court, Mr. Juan Guzmán Tapia, referred among others, to the chapter known as Caravana de la Muerte, Episode "A" Calama Roll No. 2182-98. That in the case of the appellant Langer Von Furstenberg, he appears indicted in the case Roll No. 2182-98, as a co-perpetrator of various qualified homicides, perpetrated in the Topáter sector of the city of Calama on October 19, 1973, a decision that was confirmed by the Santiago Court of Appeals on July 6, 2006, a charge that, now, the Antofagasta Court of Appeals, in relation to identical facts, makes effective in the decision appealed for amparo to which reference has already been made. Meanwhile, the defendant Trincado Araneda is only so in the case that is followed in the latter city, as an accessory to the repeated crime of qualified homicide. Another consideration, the seventh, adds that the above implies, in a manifest way, that the appealed appellate court proceeded illegally to pronounce itself regarding facts that do not bear relation to the competence given to the Visiting Minister of the Second Criminal Court of Calama, Rosa María Pinto Egusquiza, who only focuses on the investigation of aspects related to illegal exhumations that occurred in that Region; since the investigation of everything related to the crimes of kidnapping and homicide are substantiated by the Minister of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Mr. Víctor Montiglio, in case Roll No. 2182-98 letter "A" Calama. Such conduct implied for the appellants affecting the principle of non bis in idem, and the competence of the courts established by law, since the same facts were already known to another court, whose competence emanated from an express agreement of this Court; and that in the case of Langer Von Furstenberg it reached the extreme of registering two indictment orders regarding the same matter, being on bail in the case that is followed in this city, since March 23 of last year, and contradictorily in pretrial detention for the one that is followed in Antofagasta. Without effect And in accordance with what is established by articles 21 of the Political Constitution of the Republic and 540 of the Organic Code of Courts, ex officio, the indictment order of August 30, 2007, also dictated ex officio by the Antofagasta Court of Appeals, is rendered without effect. The ruling was pronounced by the Second Chamber composed of ministers Alberto Chaigneau, Nibaldo Segura, Jaime Rodríguez, Rubén Ballesteros, and Hugo Dolmestch.

Source: MercurioCalama, September 13, 2007

Caravana de la Muerte in Prison

Seven individuals implicated in the events of October 1973, related to the actions historically known as the Caravan of Death, were notified yesterday in Calama of the indictment against them for the crime of aggravated homicide.

The proceeding took place at the Second Court of Calama and was directed by the Extraordinary Visiting Minister, María Rosa Pinto Egusquiza, of the Court of Appeals of Antofagasta. According to information provided by the visiting minister herself, seven of the ten individuals indicted for varying degrees of responsibility in case 37.340 participated in the proceeding; they presented themselves in Antofagasta, Calama, and Santiago to be notified of the Court of Appeals' resolution regarding the responsibility that may be attributed to them.

The seven individuals entered the Topáter Regiment as indicted prisoners, under the custody and surveillance of the Army, in addition to security measures adopted by the institution, given that most of them, with one exception, are retired officers.

Case 37.340 was initiated due to the illegal exhumation of skeletal remains carried out in Calama on the road to San Pedro de Atacama, but the seven individuals were notified of the indictment for repeated aggravated homicide.

The group's arrival in Calama resulted in intense activity at the Second Court, and the main proceedings concluded after 6:00 PM. Security The basic aspect of the proceeding was the notification of the indictment to each of those involved, and only one of those summoned provided a statement, as made known by the visiting minister.

The event caused widespread expectation, which was heightened by the large security deployment mounted around the Second Court of Calama. The guards, including personnel from the Army, Carabineros, and Detectives, were distributed up to no less than fifty meters from the courthouse building.

The visiting minister declined to go into details on the matter and indicated that she understands the Public Relations Department of the Judiciary has reported on it. Thus, the next steps of the process are unknown, as is whether they will take place in Calama or in other parts of the country.

Among those notified are Miguel Trincado , Julio Salazar Lanteri, Colonel Luis Aracena Romo, Colonel Carlos Langer von Forthenberg, Colonel Domingo Flores Figueroa, and Sub-officer Sergio López Maldonado.

Three people have yet to appear, among them the chaplain Luis Jorquera, who is hospitalized in the Military Hospital suffering from cerebral edema. Deceased The case is clearly related to the actions of the Caravan of Death , in accordance with the claims that have been made by the families of the forcibly disappeared and political executions of 1973, who have not yet managed to identify the skeletal remains found in different parts of the Loa province.

Among those executed by firing squad on October 19 by the so-called Caravan of Death led by General Sergio Arellano Stark, as all presumptions indicate, are the residents of Calama: Mario Argüéllez Toro, Carlos Berger Guralnik, Haroldo Cabrera Abarzúa, Gerónimo Carpanchay Choque, Bernardino Cayo Cayo, Carlos Escobedo Caris, Luis Gahona Ochoa, Daniel Garrido Muñoz, Luis Hernández Neira, Manuel Hidalgo Rivas, Rolando Hoyos Salazar, Domingo Mamani López, David Miranda Luna, Hernán Moreno Villarroel, Luis Moreno Villarroel, Rosario Muñoz Castillo, Víctor Ortega Cuevas, Milton Muñoz Muñoz, Rafael Pineda Ibacache, Carlos Piñero Lucero, Sergio Ramírez Espinoza, Fernando Ramírez Sánchez, Alejandro Rodríguez, Roberto Rojas Alcayaga, José Saavedra González, Jorge Yueng Rojas . Decision of the Court of Appeals of Antofagasta The actions carried out yesterday in Calama respond to the decision of the Court of Appeals of Antofagasta, which was made known on August 31, and according to the judiciary's website, twelve people, including civilians and former military personnel, were indicted for the crime of aggravated homicide against 28 people that occurred in the city of Calama on October 19, 1973. In a unanimous ruling, the ministers of the appellate court, Enrique Álvarez, Óscar Clavería, and the member lawyer Nancy Mellado, indicted Armando Fernández Larios and Eugenio Rivera Desgroux for the crime of illicit association. Likewise, Armando Fernández Larios, Eugenio Rivera Desgroux, Carlos Max George Langer von Furstemberg, Carlos Humberto Minolleti Arriagada, and Jerónimo Tomás Rojo Rojo were indicted as authors of the repeated crime of aggravated homicide. Accomplices In addition, Dr. Luis Benito Rojas Delzo and Luis Mario Aracena Romo, Julio Fernando Salazar Lantery, Óscar Figueroa Márquez, Domingo Antonio Flores Figueroa, Miguel Eduardo Trincado Araneda, and the chaplain Luis Exequiel Jorquera Molina were accused as accomplices to the same crime. In the cases of Fernández Larios, Minolleti Arriagada, and Rojas Delzo, the court ordered the initiation of procedures to request their extradition from the Supreme Court, as they are currently outside the country. For the remaining indicted individuals, an arrest warrant was ordered to be issued so that they may be placed in preventive detention. Process Initiated by Minister Juan Guzmán On February 8, 2005, Minister Juan Guzmán signed the resolution decreeing the end of the investigation phase regarding the military delegation that traveled the country from north to south, carrying out kidnappings and homicides of opponents of the dictatorship between September and October 1973. The Caravan of Death case began to be investigated in January 1998, and the person who led the operation, Sergio Arellano Stark, was indicted for having responsibility in the deaths of all the victims: 57 executed and 19 kidnapped. Furthermore, the process led to the stripping of immunity and subsequent arrest of Pinochet in 2001, the first case involving human rights violations for which the military officer was indicted. According to Minister Juan Guzmán's file, 72 executions were carried out: four in Cauquenes, 26 in Calama, 14 in Antofagasta, 13 in Copiapó, and 15 in La Serena. The delegation, aboard a Puma helicopter, arrived in Cauquenes on October 4, 1973. Twelve days later, it arrived in La Serena, where the 15 executed individuals were taken from the city's regiment. That same October 16, it also landed in Copiapó. On the 18th, it arrived in Antofagasta, where 14 political prisoners were removed from the jail and executed in the Way ravine. The following day, the helicopter arrived in Calama, where 26 people were executed by firing squad. Of these, 13 bodies remain missing. The magistrate ordered the arrest of five former Army officers on June 10, 1999, as part of this investigation. Among them were General (ret.) Sergio Arellano Stark, Brigadier (ret.) Pedro Espinoza, Colonels Marcelo Moren and Sergio Arredondo, and Major Armando Fernández Larios. In Calama Subsequently, in Calama, the actions were assigned to the Second Court when the presiding magistrate of that court was designated as an extraordinary human rights judge. The consequence was the discovery of skeletal remains in different parts of the province, in addition to other items that allowed for the first identifications of the forcibly disappeared. Some of the identified pieces were a surprise because they belonged to people who were supposedly thrown into the sea, such as the case of Domingo Mamani, of whom a button from his jacket was found.

Source: El Mercurio de Calama, September 8, 2007

Judge investigating the dumping of bodies into the sea was married to an Army officer

The plaintiff lawyers in the process regarding the dumping into the sea of 26 bodies of political executions in Calama are studying the recusal of the Minister of the Court of Appeals of Antofagasta, Rosa María Pinto, due to her romantic ties to a former Army officer.

In 1973, the magistrate was an official at the Calama Court and was married to the military officer Álvaro Morales, who was serving in that city when Sergio Arellano Stark's delegation carried out the executions.

The judge confirmed to La Nación that she was the wife of Morales and that he was an Army officer. Indictments Last Tuesday, the visiting minister of the case indicted the Sub-officer (ret.) of Intelligence of the Calama regiment, Manuel Aguirre Cortés, and the former Air Force mechanic, Sergio López Maldonado, as alleged authors of the crime of illegal exhumation.

However, she did not indict the former commander of the Second Division of the Army, General (ret.) Miguel Trincado Araneda , who was identified as the officer in charge of directing the disinterment and transfer of the bodies to a FACH plane at the city's airport in late 1975.

When the operation was carried out, Trincado was a lieutenant and head of Section II of Intelligence of the Calama regiment, which is why he could have had some type of contact with the minister's late husband.

Despite the testimonies against him, the retired officer was not indicted. This generated annoyance in human rights lawyer Eduardo Contreras, as he believes there was sufficient merit for the retired general to face justice as an accused party. "It seems unheard of to me that after so much time of investigation, the court decided to indict the witnesses and not the culprits.

This warrants studying the situation and adopting measures to correct this procedure. Among these culprits is Miguel Trincado Araneda ," said the lawyer. According to testimonies in the case, in late 1975, the bodies were thrown into the sea from a FACH C-47 plane; they were wrapped in sacks and tied to rails so that they would sink into the ocean.

The file establishes that López Maldonado was in charge of throwing the victims of the Caravan of Death. Aguirre Cortés accused before the judge that Trincado was the person in charge of directing the disinterment of the remains of the Calama victims.

This event is part of the well-known Operation "Retiro de Televisores" (Removal of Televisions). A problem named Trincado This process has not been free of controversy, as the director of the Investigative Police, Arturo Herrera, and the head of the Headquarters against Organized Crime, Prefect Inspector Rafael Castillo, clashed in a struggle over the alleged responsibility of Trincado .

In 2005, the former military officer was Commander-in-Chief of the II Army Division and military judge of Santiago. Furthermore, during the mandate of Juan Emilio Cheyre, he was designated as the liaison with the Investigative Police to cooperate with the clarification of executions, torture, and disappearances of opponents during the military dictatorship.

Upon being involved in the events and seeing his judicial situation in danger, he requested that Herrera "soften" the report that the Human Rights Brigade was preparing, which incriminated him. This reportedly caused an argument between the two strongmen of the institution and divided opinions within the civil police for a time.

Source: lanacion.cl, March 29, 2007

General (ret.) Trincado in contempt before Calama court in case regarding disinterment of bodies

The former commander of the Santiago Garrison, General (ret.) Miguel Trincado , is accused of directing the operation of disinterment and dumping into the sea of the 26 bodies of prisoners murdered by the Caravan of Death in Calama in October 1973.

The recently retired General Miguel Trincado Araneda is in contempt before the judge of the Court of Appeals of Antofagasta, Rosa María Pinto, who is investigating the disinterment and dumping into the sea of the bodies of 26 prisoners murdered in October 1973 by the Caravan of Death in Calama.

Trincado was summoned to testify as an accused party on two occasions since last December, but he did not appear before the Calama court where the magistrate is constituted for this investigation. For this reason, he also cannot be confronted with Sub-officers (ret.) of the Calama Regiment, who accuse him of commanding the operation of disinterment and final disposal of the bodies aboard a Chilean Air Force (FACH) C-47 model plane to throw them into the ocean, as well as being the head of Section II of Intelligence of the regiment between 1975-76, the unit in charge of this operation.

Judge Rosa María Pinto confirmed yesterday from Antofagasta to La Nación the non-appearance of Trincado , but said that "he is now summoned for the third time for next week." Asked about a possible arrest warrant against the General (ret.) to ensure his appearance, the judge replied that this "has not happened." Operator The former commander of the II Army Division based in the Metropolitan Region, with jurisdiction over the IV, V, VI, and VII regions, is also accused of interceding in November 2005 before the Director General of the Investigative Police, Arturo Herrera, in order for him to order the change of a police report that identifies him as, at the very least, head of Section II of Intelligence of that regiment at the time of the disinterment and transfer of the bodies to the Calama airfield. The General (ret.) must also be confronted with the Sub-officer (ret.) of the same regiment, Manuel Aguirre Cortés, who was a member of the aforementioned Section II, because he directly accuses him of commanding the disinterment task and driving the truck in which the bodies were transported to the Calama airfield. He must also be confronted with the former FACH mechanic, a Sub-officer (ret.) with the initials S.O.L.M., who has confessed to traveling on the plane and throwing the bodies into the sea. Trincado has not appeared to testify, despite the fact that sources linked to the judicial investigation indicated to this newspaper that the Army requested at the time that his summons take place after he retired, as occurred last December. The disinterment of the corpses and their final disposal aboard the aircraft from the FACH base in Cerro Moreno, Antofagasta, corresponded to an action coordinated with the Intelligence Department of the First Army Division based in that city, in charge of the current General (ret.) Julio Salazar Lantery. The former FACH mechanic who admitted to throwing the bodies into the sea maintains that the "sacked bundles" were loaded and "arranged" aboard the machine by himself and other members of the Army who arrived one morning with the bodies at the Calama airfield.

Source: lanacion.cl, January 24, 2007

"Retiro de televisores" episode in Calama: Army refuses to hand over service record of General Miguel Trincado

Although nine months ago the Investigative Police requested from the Army the service record of the current Commander-in-Chief of the II Army Division, Miguel Trincado Araneda , within the framework of the investigation into the removal of nearly 26 bodies at the Topater hill in Calama, to date only the "framing" of his functions during his military career has been obtained.

Although the purpose of this request seeks to clarify whether the aforementioned uniformed officer was stationed at the regiment of said city in late 1975, this was not achieved, as the brief response from the military institution only detailed years and functions, but not the specific places of assignment where the officer in question has been.

Despite this refusal, a report from the Special Affairs and Human Rights Brigade states that through this framing of functions, "it is confirmed that said Army officer was in Infantry Regiment No. 15 'Calama' on the date the operation for the exhumation of the bodies of political prisoners executed in 1973 was carried out." Trincado appeared mentioned in this episode called "Retiro de televisores" (Removal of Televisions) at Cerro Topater following the statement of a Sub-officer (ret.) Manuel Aguirre Cortés, who maintained in the process that he participated in the disinterment and subsequent placement in white sacks of the remains of said opponents, together with Sub-officer Misael Ramírez Pizarro (currently deceased) and the then-captain and now Commander of the II Army Division. "We waited for dawn, and I, along with Captain Miguel Trincado , left in the truck, which was driven by him, with no one else inside the vehicle. We left around 7:00 AM from the ravine sector, but I did not know where we were heading. The road we took was the highway in the direction of Calama, and we turned off toward the city's airfield, where we entered the landing strip, parking at the east end of the strip. When we were on the road, Trincado told me that we were going to the airfield to wait for a plane," stated the former uniformed officer. Although this is the most direct testimony linking the active military officer to these events, it is also true that there are other statements from former members of this regiment that confirm that Manuel Aguirre did perform duties in said department during the second semester of 1975. Faced with this scenario, plaintiff lawyers in the case maintained that it is of utmost importance that the Army deliver a certified copy of General Trincado 's annual service record, as after that, they would be in a position to take a new statement from him as an accused party so that the court can then pronounce itself on his procedural situation. This case remained paralyzed for several months after Judge Patricia Almazán retired. But a couple of weeks ago, the investigation was assumed by the visiting minister Rosa María Pinto, former head of the 16th Criminal Court of Santiago, who has reactivated the investigation related to the disappearance of two opponents of the military regime, in order to then dictate more proceedings on this aspect regarding the removal of bodies. Mulchén Episode Meanwhile, the one who did decree new proceedings to try to clarify the dark chapter of the removals of the bodies of the forcibly disappeared is the special minister Carlos Gajardo, who is in charge of the "Mulchén" chapter. Until now, said investigation has the confessions of two Sub-officers (ret.) of the Army who say they participated in the grim task of recovering the remains that were originally buried in the foothills area of the Ninth Region. For this reason, it is likely that in the coming months the magistrate will order excavations in the sector, as there is even a possibility that a couple of bodies that would correspond to the political executions of said locality during 1973 are still buried in that place. Along with this, the magistrate is reportedly conducting interrogations of other members of the military units existing in the area during the time and, in addition, requested all the information that was collected at the time by the justice system following the complaints of alleged disappearance filed by the victims' relatives during the first years of the military regime.

Source: elmostrador.cl, August 16, 2006

Complaint filed against Army general for exhumations

Relatives of political executions from Calama, with the sponsorship of human rights lawyers, presented a criminal complaint today against the active-duty General Miguel Trincado , within the framework of the so-called Operation "Retiro de televisores." The judicial action, which is also directed against General (ret.) Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, charges him with the authorship of the crimes of illegal inhumation and exhumation, illicit association, and obstruction of justice.

According to human rights organizations, Trincado , current Commander-in-Chief of the II Army Division, was allegedly linked in the late 70s to the exhumation of the corpses of 26 people executed by firing squad in Calama.

The bodies were allegedly loaded onto a twin-engine plane of the Chilean Air Force (FACH) and subsequently thrown into the sea. The complaint is also directed against Army Colonel (ret.) Eugenio Rivera Desgroux, Army officers (ret.) Humberto Minoletti, Julio Salazar Lanterri, Army Sub-officer (ret.) Jerónimo Tomás Rojo, and FACH officials Carlos Desgroux Camus (already deceased) and Carlos Pahoa Riroroco.

The lawyers, led by Hugo Gutiérrez and Hiram Villagra, announced that next week they will request the Plenary of the Court of Appeals of Santiago to designate a new minister to replace the current investigating judge of the case, Cornelio Villarroel, whom the appellate court ordered to reopen the investigation after he had dismissed it.

Source: elmostrador.cl, May 4, 2005

Trained at the School of the Americas, according to the NGO SOA Watch, he was congratulated by Augusto Pinochet himself for his “loyalty.” This is the story of the only person acquitted in the Calama 2 case; the man who always denied having assumed command of the Intelligence Department II of the regiment in Calama.

El Desconcierto accessed his service record, which proves otherwise. He was even recognized as the best lieutenant in the unit and congratulated for his actions in “confidential operations.”

Violeta Berríos (81) is one of those women who has had to face life with the pain of an incessant search and the anguish of a truth that was always only half-told. She is one of the relatives of the forcibly disappeared in Calama, following the passage of the Caravan of Death.

Her partner was one of those executed: Mario Argüéllez, 35 years old, a taxi driver and socialist leader in the seventies. He was murdered along with 25 other detainees.

-I know it is always said that the dead are good people. But the truth is that more than just ‘driving a taxi,’ Mario spent his life trying to fix the world-, she recalls.

Violeta searched for his body for years, and it was not until 1990 that the first remains of the victims appeared in a grave in the desert, 10 kilometers from the capital of the El Loa province. Some truth had finally arrived, but another story of horror would begin to be known.

Berríos is known for being one of the organizers of the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared (AFDD) of Calama. She no longer leads it, but she remembers everything. On September 11, 1973, she was in Santiago.

She had to travel for a medical check-up. In the morning, she left her father’s house in the Ñuñoa commune, heading toward the city center. She had barely walked a few blocks when she saw that the street was deserted and noisy helicopters were already crossing the sky.

She began to walk and managed to reach the intersection of Irarrázaval and Macul, where a Carabineros officer ordered her to turn back. She obeyed without understanding anything. At home, her father told her that “the coup d'état” had taken place.

She spent the time listening to everything that was happening on the radio. She could not return to the north; it was impossible at that time. Days later, she returned to Calama, and her partner was already detained.

He was later released, but on September 30, they locked him up again. He was tortured and murdered on October 19, 1973. That last day, Violeta managed to see him at the Dupont police station; he asked her for a thermos of coffee with milk, and she went to prepare it.

When she returned, they had already taken him away. What followed was years of tracking in the desert by a group of women, the grave, and the disbelief of it all, even with a death certificate in hand. In other words, an incomplete life.

– Do you know what it is like to have a rib, a finger bone, a vertebra, and a tendon of a loved one returned to you?- she comments, and her question hangs in the air like a hammer blow.

She says she distrusts the justice system because, in the “Caravan of Death” case, Miguel Eduardo Trincado Araneda is an important link in a chain of command that has managed to evade everything. He was prosecuted and called to retirement in 2006 when, holding the rank of general, he was serving as commander of the II Division in the Metropolitan Region.

Although he was acquitted in 2015, Trincado is identified as the author of the illegal burials and exhumations of the bodies of the 26 leaders murdered in Calama by the military committee under the command of the then-Brigadier General, Sergio Arellano Stark, who, aboard a Chilean Army Puma helicopter, visited several cities in the south and north of Chile, executing political opponents.

Among the victims in Calama was also Carlos Berger, a journalist, lawyer, and husband of congresswoman Carmen Hertz.

As head of Section 2, the then-“Lieutenant Trincado” was allegedly ordered to drive a REO military truck to the El Loa airport in Calama, where they were to await the arrival of a Chilean Air Force (FACH) plane coming from the Cerro Moreno air base in Antofagasta.

The truck was used to transfer the sacks of corpses, and later, together with Manuel Aguirre (who worked under his orders and later testified in the case), they drove to the Topater bridge, where Commander Julio Salazar was waiting with the rest of the team that participated in the operation.

Captain Carlos Minoletti was ordered to wash the trucks and burn the one that had been used in the procedure.

On Thursday, March 28, the arguments for the Calama 2 case were held at the Santiago Court of Appeals for the review of the first-instance sentence. But for Violeta, this is a story that has no closure.

-There are few of us old women left. I have had to see his case (Calama 2) on the docket, see everything delayed, and he has even left the country. When will we have justice? When we are dead?-, she snaps.

The former military officer is friends with former Army commanders Juan Emilio Cheyre and Juan Miguel Fuente-Alba. Trincado always refused to hand over his service record to the PDI (Investigations Police), which only gained access to a summary of his functions, but the specific locations of his assignments were omitted.

It was journalist Jorge Escalante who shed light on this story with a series of reports for La Nación. In 2005, in an article for the newspaper’s weekly, he published the report prepared by the Human Rights Brigade of the Investigations Police.

This led Trincado himself to visit the home of the then-General Director of the PDI, Arturo Herrera, to ask him to change the report. The episode sparked a crisis within the police institution.

In the interrogations, the former military officer only acknowledged having served in the Calama Regiment “between August 1974 and December 1977” and that he was promoted to lieutenant in 1975. He denied having assumed command of the Intelligence Department II of the regiment.

El Desconcierto accessed the service record, the qualification sheet, and the Personal Background Card (TAP) of the former military officer, where the exact opposite is documented. That is to say, he was indeed in Calama as head of the Intelligence Department II of the regiment.

(Review the full document here)

Before the coup, the TAP, dated December 22, 1972, states that he was “assigned to participate in an Orientation and Training Course at the School of the Americas, Panama Canal Zone, for 30 days, starting from the date of departure from the country.” This situation is also corroborated by the list prepared by the NGO SOA Watch (School of the Americas Watch), which mentions that Trincado, with the rank of second lieutenant, took the “Combat Arms Orientation” course between January 8 and February 9, 1973.

Then, in March 1976, he was designated as a student of the “Intelligence” (Basic) Course at the Army Intelligence School (San Bernardo). He passed this course “satisfactorily,” according to the notation in his service record corresponding to the period from August 1, 1975, to July 31, 1976, specifically dated July 28, 1976.

In the qualification sheet, for the period between August 1, 1976, and July 31, 1977, under the topic titled “General Data,” it is confirmed that this former officer did indeed hold positions as Head of Department II and Assistant to Department II of the No. 15 “Calama” Reinforced Mountain Motorized Infantry Regiment.

Likewise, in the service record corresponding to the same period, dated October 5, 1976, he was congratulated under the point “Judgment and discretion.” In this regard, it is commented that “due to his personal qualities, especially his tact and accuracy in all his actions, and by the unanimous consensus of all the chief officers and captains of the regiment.

He is qualified as the best lieutenant in the unit.” Immediately following, the following appears: “He served as assistant intelligence officer of the J.Z.E.S, he is qualified as optimal.”

In the period from August 1, 1977, to July 31, 1978, dated November 30, 1977, he was congratulated regarding judgment and discretion, with the report stating that “in his capacity as an officer specializing in Basic Intelligence; he received a strictly confidential mission from the regiment commander, fulfilling it with accuracy, tact, and discretion.

He stands out in this aspect among officers of his rank. Trustworthy.”

With these merits in his history, on October 10, 1981, he was appointed Military Professor (Officer) for the Intelligence School, in the subject “Special Investigation Techniques.” The following year, on January 7, 1982, he was assigned on a service commission to South Africa, a country that was governed by Pieter Willem. During that period, his son Miguel Trincado Caviedes was allegedly born.

In his service record, for the period from July 1, 1987, to June 30, 1988, while serving at the Army Headquarters with the rank of Major, the following opinion from the superior rater, Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, is recorded: “Chief Officer who stands out for his professional conditions, serious, selfless, and very loyal.”

At the end of the dictatorship, it is observed that he held the position of Head of Department II of the Army Headquarters, also obtaining the specialty of military academy professor in the subject of “Military Intelligence” on April 13, 1988.

On February 15, 1990, he received the “Mission Accomplished” decoration, Second Class, granted by Pinochet. He then served in the Army Intelligence Directorate until 1999, and a year earlier, on February 6, 1998, he was granted the title of “Military Academy Professor.”

Victoria Saavedra (76) is a well-known member of the AFDD of Calama and has served as a leader on three occasions. Today she lives in Arica, but she is always attentive to the arguments of this case. Like the rest of the women, her life took a turn after the coup. Her brother, José Saavedra, was executed in Calama. After that day, everything turned into a search.

-Trincado is a person who has evaded justice for so many years. He always denied everything, even that he belonged to the intelligence division. He has caused harm; he could have collaborated with justice to know what the fate of our relatives was, so that we women would not have wandered for so long through the pampa-, she says.

Among her memories is tracking the desert and searching in 102 mine shafts. She also felt hope when, eight years ago, she received information about a 2-kilometer-long kukri knife drawn with lime on the slope of Moctezuma hill, as a proud military signature of the executions carried out by the Caravan of Death.

The then-minister of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Alejandro Solís, traveled to the area with the PDI and officials from the Legal Medical Service. Victoria stood near the hilt where the number 73 (the beginning of the dictatorship) and 78 appeared, one of the probable dates of “Operation TV Removal,” the name given to the exhumation and dumping of the bodies into the sea. There was no luck.

For this group of women, it was always an open secret that Trincado belonged to the intelligence division at the time the operation was carried out. Various statements placed him at the scene, but they watched time pass and everything came to nothing. Today, for them, the scenario is even more adverse.

-At this moment, with all the requests for sentence reduction that exist, if he ends up being locked up, it is most likely that he will only serve a few years. Seven of our companions have already passed away without finding the truth of what happened in Calama, which is why we will always be left with the bitterness of impunity-, she concludes.

Source: eldesconcierto.cl, April 7, 2019

Arrest of Generals (R) Miguel Trincado and Julio Salazar decreed in Calama case

The prosecutions in this human rights violation case were issued yesterday by the presiding minister of the Antofagasta Court of Appeals, Rosa María Pinto. The magistrate also indicted Colonel (R) Luis Aracena and three non-commissioned officers (R).

All are accused as authors of the exhumation and dumping into the sea, in late 1975 or early 1976, of the 26 bodies of prisoners murdered by the Caravan of Death in October 1973.

Photo

Miguel Trincado commanded the operation of the exhumation and dumping of the bodies into the sea when he held the position of head of the Intelligence Section of the Calama regiment.

Generals (R) Miguel Trincado Araneda and Julio Salazar Lantery, along with Colonel (R) Luis Aracena Romo and three non-commissioned officers (R), were prosecuted as authors of the exhumation and disappearance between late 1975 and early 1976 of the 26 bodies of prisoners murdered in October 1973 by the Caravan of Death in Calama.

The indictment was resolved yesterday by the presiding minister of the Antofagasta Court of Appeals, Rosa María Pinto, who also ordered the arrests of the accused. The magistrate is investigating the case regarding the exhumations and dumping of these bodies into the sea aboard a FACH plane.

The former commander of the Santiago garrison and military judge of the Metropolitan Region until 2006, now-retired General Miguel Trincado, commanded the operation of the exhumation and dumping of the bodies into the sea when he held the position of head of the Intelligence Section of the Calama regiment.

The operation was supervised on the ground in a sector of the Atacama Desert by the then-head of the Intelligence Department of the I Army Division of Antofagasta, current General (R) Julio Salazar Lantery.

Colonel (R) Aracena Romo was the second commander of the Calama regiment in 1975 and was also present at the exhumation. The commander of the Calama regiment at that time was Colonel Eduardo Ibáñez Tillería, who passed away with the rank of general.

The other three prosecuted are non-commissioned officers (R) Héctor Iturra Orrego, Wilson Pacheco Obreque, and Emilio Pardo Pardo. These were subordinates of Trincado in the Intelligence Section of the Calama regiment and also participated in the exhumation of the remains.

The then-intelligence non-commissioned officers of the Calama regiment, now retired, Manuel Aguirre Cortés and Juan Carlos González Reyes, were already indicted by Minister Pinto. Both also took part in the exhumation.

Confessed mechanic

Aguirre was the first to judicially implicate Trincado in 2005, accusing him of commanding the operation and even driving the truck in which the bagged corpses were transported to the Calama airfield, where a FACH C-47 plane was waiting, aboard which they were thrown into the sea. “I was the co-pilot in the truck next to Trincado,” Aguirre said in the proceedings.

When Aguirre accused Trincado, La Nación published the information on May 3, 2005, but the Army, under the leadership of General Juan Emilio Cheyre, denied both Trincado’s participation and the event itself.

“The Army categorically rejects these allegations as they are unjust, unnecessarily damage the image of the institution, and compromise the honor of the cited officer (Trincado),” the statement said.

The other person already indicted by Magistrate Pinto is the non-commissioned officer (R) of the FACH, Sergio López Maldonado. He confessed during the process that he was the mechanic who traveled on the C-47 and stated that “when about two hours of flight had passed, the pilot signaled to me. Then I opened the hatch and threw the bundles into the ocean.”

This is the first time that Salazar Lantery and Aracena Romo have been indicted for human rights violations.

Trincado had been prosecuted this year on the initiative of the Antofagasta Court of Appeals. But that court committed a procedural error by indicting him for the crimes of the 26 prisoners committed by the Caravan of Death on October 19, 1973, in Calama, events that are being investigated in Santiago by Minister Víctor Montiglio and for which neither that court nor Magistrate Pinto has jurisdiction.

First episode of “Operation TV Removal”

The Calama exhumation case is the first episode of what Army intelligence called “Operation TV Removal,” which was carried out massively throughout the country starting in December 1978. That was the date when the bodies of fifteen peasants murdered by Carabineros, who had hidden their corpses, were found in the ovens of a mine in Lonquén, south of Santiago.

“Operation TV Removal” consisted of the exhumation of all the bodies of prisoners who had been buried in clandestine graves throughout the north, south, and central zones of Chile. The bodies were thrown into the sea.

The operation was ordered by the then-dictator Augusto Pinochet through cryptograms (messages encrypted in code) that he sent to the country’s regiments with the order. One of the first to fix the date of the exhumation in Calama was Colonel (R) Aracena Romo, who declared judicially that the event happened “in the last days of 1975.”

For his part, Salazar Lantery acknowledged in the trial that “at the end of 1974 or 1975, there was an agreement to remove the bodies because we knew that the relatives were looking for them in the desert.”

Although Trincado continues to deny his participation, there are at least eight non-commissioned officers in the judicial investigation who accuse him of commanding the operation or of directing the Intelligence Section of the Calama regiment at that time.

The next step could be in the hands of Minister Montiglio, as the plaintiff side maintains that it is not simply a case of the accused committing the crime of illegal exhumation by digging up the bodies and making them disappear, but that in their actions they had incurred, at least, as accessories to kidnapping and homicide because they acted to erase the traces of the crimes committed by the Caravan of Death in 1973.

Therefore, there is a possibility that, after these indictments, Minister Pinto will declare herself incompetent and send the case to Santiago to Judge Montiglio.

The case that sparked the war in the Investigations Police

The process regarding the exhumations in Calama was the trigger for the open conflict in the Investigations Police. The person who sparked the dispute was General Miguel Trincado, when, while on active duty, he visited the director of the civil police, Arturo Herrera, to ask him to order a change to a police report that in July 2005 imputed responsibility to him for the operation for which he was prosecuted yesterday.

Officers of that police force stated in the proceedings being instructed by Minister Pinto that Director Herrera attempted to have the report altered, but encountered opposition from the authors of the document and their direct boss, the recently retired prefect Rafael Castillo.

From that moment on, a harsh dispute broke out between Castillo and Herrera, which brought about various situations within the Special Affairs and Human Rights Brigade.

In 2006, Castillo was being retired by Herrera, but the government vetoed that provision and reinstated Castillo to active duty. This year, however, the government did not continue to support him, and Director Herrera retired him.

Source: lanacion.cl, November 24, 2007

A GENERAL IN TROUBLE

The current commander of the II Army Division for (metropolitan, IV, V, VI, and VII regions), General Miguel Trincado Araneda, will for the first time be confronted with subordinates he had under his command in 1975 and 1976. Witnesses accused him of commanding an operation to make the bodies of 26 people murdered by the Caravan of Death in 1973 in Calama disappear into the sea.

His accusers, among them non-commissioned officer (R) Manuel Aguirre Cortes, charge him with directing this operation when he was a lieutenant in charge of the Intelligence Section II of the regiment in that city, in conjunction with intelligence officers from the I Division of Antofagasta who traveled to supervise the operation. As a result of this process, Trincado was retired this year.

Source: fasic.org, December 3, 2003

Santiago Court reduces sentences for retired military officers for exhumation of forcibly disappeared persons in Calama

In a unanimous ruling, the Santiago Court of Appeals reduced the sentence applied to 11 retired military officers convicted for their responsibility in the crime of illegal exhumation of the remains of forcibly disappeared persons from the city of Calama.

The appellate court established that the former uniformed officers took part in a single crime of illegal exhumation, and not in repeated crimes as considered by the first-instance sentence, issued by the visiting minister Leopoldo Llanos.

Therefore, the Court sentenced Carlos Minoletti Arriagada, Julio Salazar Lantery, Luis Aracena Romo, Manuel Aguirre Cortés, Juan Carlos González Reyes, Sergio López Maldonado, Emilio Pardo Pardo, Hugo Carrasco Pérez, Wilson Pacheco Obreque, and Pedro Gutiérrez Ruiz to 300 days in prison, in their capacity as authors of the crime.

Meanwhile, Héctor Iturra Orrego was sentenced to 60 days as an accomplice.

The sentence maintains that the facts described in the fourth foundation of the first-degree sentence make it evident that the events, despite being executed in two distinct moments with a difference of fifteen days, pursued the same purpose, that is, to hide the remains of people who had been illegally buried in the grave where they were found, in order to destroy the evidence of their murders.

As they were all buried together and in the same place, the exhumation of their remains was carried out through the same action; it was a single exhumation, and if they were later moved again, it is not possible to understand this as a different event from the one that preceded it.

The resolution adds that if one considers the degree of inhumanity with which they acted at the moment of hiding the corpses, it is difficult to accept that at the moment of their illegal burial, they proceeded with the care and respect that each body deserved and that they were ‘buried’ in such a way that the exhumation process was done separately in each case, in terms such that it could be understood that these are distinct events with their own characteristics and that they configure also distinct illicit acts.

The consequence of what has been said is that it must be considered that only one crime of illegal exhumation is configured, as referred to in article 322 of the Penal Code, and although this qualification is beneficial for its authors, the rigor with which one must proceed at the moment of judging the facts so requires, it not being pertinent that by way of understanding that a multiplicity of crimes were committed, one manages to sanction them with all the severity that their conduct deserves.

It adds that having concluded that the facts must be qualified as a crime of exhumation, the penalty that corresponds to be imposed on the prosecuted is that of minor imprisonment in its minimum degree, and as the mitigating factor of their irreproachable previous conduct favors all of them, it cannot be applied in its maximum.

Then, the resolution states that regarding the prosecuted Iturra Orrego, Gutiérrez Ruiz, Aguirre Cortés, Pardo Pardo, Carrasco Pérez, Pacheco Obreque, and López, despite having also been recognized the mitigating factor contemplated in article 211 of the Code of Military Justice, the power conferred by article 67, fourth paragraph, of the Penal Code will not be used, maintaining the sanction in the corresponding degree.

Finally, it concludes that this decision is based on the special reprehensibility of their conduct, since it was not only about the commission of the criminal act provided for in article 322 of the Penal Code, but they have a more serious connotation, since their actions were directed both at the concealment of the evidence of a mass murder and at preventing the relatives of the victims from being able to find their remains, which meant increasing their suffering with greater cruelty.

The sentence also confirmed the acquittal of Miguel Trincado Araneda because his participation in the events was not proven.

Source: diarioconstitucional.cl, July 18, 2019