Retired Army Colonel convicted for the crime of Jecar Neghme Sr.

Officer Nelson Ubilla Toledo was also found guilty of the qualified homicide of Manuel Elgueta, also an employee of the National Health Service and a Socialist militant. Retired Army Colonel Nelson Ubilla Toledo was sentenced this Friday to five years of suspended imprisonment for the qualified homicide of Manuel Gastón Elgueta Elgueta and Jecar Neghme Cornejo.

The latter is the father of the also-murdered leader of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), Jecar Neghme Cristi, who was assassinated in September 1989. The ruling by the investigating judge Jorge Zepeda concerns events that occurred on October 26, 1973, in Temuco, against the aforementioned employees of the National Health Service, who were also militants of the Socialist Party (PS).

In the capital of the Ninth Region, Ubilla served as head of the Department II of Intelligence of the No. 8 “Tucapel” Mountain Infantry Regiment. After the incident, the Temuco Garrison Command communicated that during the transfer from the place of detention, Elgueta and Neghme “tried to attack the patrol and seize the sentry’s weapon, for which they were discharged.” Plaintiff lawyer Nelson Caucoto valued Zepeda’s decision and highlighted that, beyond the sentence, its importance lies in the application of International Law and the recognition of a crime against humanity.

Source: elmostrador.cl, May 12, 2006

Court ratifies indictment in the case of Jecar Neghme Sr.

The Third Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals confirmed the indictment against a former Army officer for the crime of qualified homicide of Manuel Elgueta Elgueta and Jecar Neghme Cornejo, father of the also-murdered leader of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) of the same name.

The resolution affects retired Colonel Nelson Ubilla Toledo, who had been charged by the minister with exclusive dedication to human rights cases, Jorge Zepeda, on July 22. The case refers to the events that occurred on October 26, 1973, in Temuco, against the employees of the National Health Service, who were also militants of the Socialist Party (PS).

In the capital of the Ninth Region, the accused Ubilla served as head of the Department II of Intelligence of the No. 8 “Tucapel” Mountain Infantry Regiment. After the incident, the Temuco Garrison Command communicated that during the transfer from the place of detention, Elgueta and Neghme “tried to attack the patrol and seize the sentry’s weapon, for which they were discharged.” Plaintiff lawyer Nelson Caucoto valued the work carried out by the investigating judge, which today was unanimously backed by judges Juan Manuel Pardo and Lamberto Cisternas and the member lawyer Hugo Llanos, who stated: "Through a magnificent investigation, he has managed to establish, after 30 years, criminal acts that occurred in that city in 1973," said the professional. Neghme Cornejo is the father of the MIR political leader Jecar Neghme Cristi, who was assassinated in September 1989. For that event, investigating judge Hugo Dolmestch indicted three members of the former CNI: Enrique Leady Araneda, Pedro Guzmán Olivares, and Arturo Sanhueza Ross, all former Army officers.

Source: elmostrador.cl, October 26, 2004

The pressures unleashed by the imprisonment of the Army Chief’s brother for Human Rights crimes

The resignation of former minister Alejandro Solís as an advisor to the team of judges with exclusive dedication to resolving trials for human rights violations is the latest link in the chain of pressure exerted by the Army on the Judiciary since General (ret.) Carlos Eduardo Oviedo, brother of the new Army Commander-in-Chief, was indicted as the author of seven crimes in Temuco, along with other high-ranking officers.

The strategy aims to delay the hundreds of pending trials so that, due to age, witnesses cannot testify and the guilty do not pay with prison time. Early last Friday, March 7, the former minister of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Alejandro Solís, learned that he could no longer continue collaborating with the seven ministers designated in Santiago to work full-time on the hundreds of pending cases regarding crimes and torture committed during the dictatorship.

He lasted only one month in his position. A period that illustrates the strength that the military still maintains to make its interests prevail. Because, in strict terms, what happened with Solís is only a fringe of the pressure that began from the Army itself when, last November, a general (ret.) was indicted and charged, the brother of General Humberto Oviedo Arriagada, who has just assumed the command-in-chief of the Army.

The ruling issued by the minister of the Temuco Court of Appeals, Álvaro Mesa, fell like a bomb in the Army. There were 25 military personnel and civilians whom Mesa indicted and charged for the murder of five university students, a laborer, and a farmer—all communists—on the night of November 10, 1973.

And among them was General (ret.) Carlos Eduardo Oviedo Arriagada, accused of being the material author of the seven qualified homicides and an accomplice to the torture to which the “prisoners” were subjected.

By then, it was already a fact that his brother Humberto Oviedo would be appointed by President Piñera as the new Army Chief, which was made official only ten days later: November 19. A first glimpse of military pressure fell on Supreme Court minister Hugo Dolmestch, national coordinator of human rights cases since June 2012.

Consulted by CIPER, Dolmestch denied having been pressured, but acknowledged that he called minister Álvaro Mesa, as the latter “refused to receive the military side to coordinate, as has always been done, through the CAE (Army Administrative Command) and the military police, the transfer of the indicted officers to the respective court.” From Temuco, minister Álvaro Mesa acknowledged having received that call, but pointed out: “It is not true that I refused to receive the military side.

In fact, they never asked me for an audience. I had asked the three police officers who work here on these cases to coordinate that transfer. When minister Dolmestch called me, I agreed to what he requested because the essential part was already done: the indictments and the charges.” Minister Mesa says he did not find out until days after issuing his ruling that one of the main accused was the brother of the new commander-in-chief.

And minister Dolmestch did not want to reveal how he found out that the brother of the new Army Chief had been indicted and refused to identify to whom he expressed the complaint. Nor did he explain why he called minister Mesa, since it is not within his powers to intervene in the measures adopted by each of the 32 judges who, throughout the country, are dedicated to this function with full authority over their actions.

What is a fact is that in the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court, where minister Hugo Dolmestch has his seat, the Army Auditor, Waldo Martínez, also has his place, joining it only when cases arriving from the Court Martial are heard in that chamber. A proximity that facilitates communication.

AN UNEXPLAINED DELAY

After minister Dolmestch’s intervention, the military personnel indicted by minister Álvaro Mesa in Temuco were transferred with all the care required by the Army to the Temuco Court. Once notified that the minister’s ruling ruled out granting them provisional release—considering them “a danger to society”—the accused were taken to the Tucapel Regiment, awaiting the result of the appeal.

As was foreseeable, all were released a few days later by resolution of the Temuco Court. But no one explains why murders that were disguised as extremist attacks, where there was premeditation, torture, and summary executions, devoid of all legality even in a period of war, took 40 years to obtain a ruling that would bring justice.

Moreover, if that ruling had been issued three years earlier, one of the accused, former military prosecutor Alfonso Podlech, would have had to face more severe situations in the Italian justice system.

One of the reasons that could explain that delay is that several of the accused military personnel came to occupy positions of generalship and high command in the Army. And also, that opening that gate implies immersing oneself in the complicity that judicial officials in that area, who made careers for themselves, had with impunity.

Another fact illustrates the anomalous nature of this situation in the Temuco jurisdiction: minister Álvaro Mesa, with exclusive dedication to human rights violation cases in the Temuco Court of Appeals, holds the record for cases filed in 2013 in the entire country: 50.

The person who follows him is minister Mario Carroza, of the Santiago Court of Appeals, with 49. The murder of the seven people was carried out shortly before midnight on November 10. The next day, their families would learn through a military communiqué published in the press that the seven men were part of an extremist group and died when they tried to assault the ammunition dump located in the “Isla Cautín” sector.

The version was false from beginning to end, but ratified to the press and the families of the seven victims by the regiment commander, Colonel Pablo Iturriaga Marchesse. And expanded in the following days with details of how, in a heroic action, the contingent of the Tucapel Regiment managed to repel the attack to subsequently go out in search of the “extremists” who managed to flee.

The message was clear: extremists were roaming the city. And there would later be other deaths, also coldly executed during the night, which were again passed off as deaths in an “attempted escape” or “extremist attack.” There was nothing heroic in the action deployed by the Tucapel Regiment contingent in 1973.

Killing men who were tied up, mutilated, and at the limit of their strength due to the application of electricity and beatings is not worthy of appearing in any logbook of courage and bravery. But that was the version that was profusely disseminated by the press and that traveled the streets of Temuco.

The testimonies of those who were also prisoners in the Tucapel Regiment, who managed to get out alive and claimed to have seen the “extremists of the ammunition dump” in very poor physical condition prior to the supposed assault, were of no use.

No one listened to them. Neither in the courts, where judicial personnel on special service in the military prosecutor’s office, in charge of the interrogations, exerted their influence for the denial of justice.

What no one can explain is how the murderers and their accomplices kept the threads of power and managed to make 40 years pass so that, finally, a judge in Temuco would do justice and clarify step by step how that false attack on the “Isla Cautín” ammunition dump occurred.

TORTURE IN THE TUCAPEL REGIMENT

The military took control of Temuco on September 11, 1973, with the commander of the Tucapel Infantry Regiment, Colonel Pablo Iturriaga, being appointed governor of the city. That same day, the regional Military Prosecutor’s Office was put into operation, in charge of Major Luis Jofré Soto, reinforced by clerks and a rapporteur from the Court of Appeals of that city, who appointed them to that function on “special service.” The primary role in the trials and proceedings that began was held by lawyer Alfonso Podlech Michaud, who was later the military prosecutor of Temuco.

Podlech was arrested in 2008 by the Italian justice system accused of serious human rights violations. After remaining detained and held in that country, he was released in 2011 and was able to return to Chile.

Until the last minute, he denied having participated in the torture and murders of opponents of the military regime. Minister Álvaro Mesa’s ruling indicates that he failed to tell the truth. Returning to November 1973, Podlech was one of the protagonists of the new military power in Temuco, in which the Intelligence Section of the Tucapel Regiment, in charge of Captain Nelson Ubilla Toledo, played a key role, to which personnel from the Carabineros and Investigations were added.

Its members carried out interrogations of the large number of prisoners who very soon overflowed the local jail and the facilities of the regiment itself. For those interrogations, two special places were set up inside the Tucapel Regiment: a site located between the Headquarters and Mortar companies; and a gymnasium located to the side of the place designated for the conscripts’ mess.

The investigation carried out by minister Álvaro Mesa was able to determine that torture took place in both facilities. The testimonies coincide: the prisoners were tied up and electricity was applied to different parts of their bodies, “in addition to applying other types of torment with kicks and punches.” Most of the regiment’s officers and some regular soldiers participated in the interrogations.

Some soldiers and conscripts of the Second Hunters Company of the Tucapel Regiment, under the command of Lieutenant Manuel Vásquez Chahuán, played an important role in the custody and torture applied to the prisoners.

The group received the name “Patrulla Chacal” (Jackal Patrol) and was placed under the command of Second Lieutenant Manuel Espinoza Ponce. Vásquez Chahuán continued to rise in the Army, carrying with him the fame he acquired as one of the important members of the DINA, an organization in which he integrated two of its most brutal brigades: the Mulchén and the Purén.

In those months of late 1973 and early 1974, an undetermined number of people were murdered inside the Tucapel Regiment, among whom is the group that motivated the indictment and charging of the brother of the current Army Commander-in-Chief and 24 other military personnel and civilians.

The seven men murdered on November 10, 1973, are: Florentino Molina Ruiz, who was missing an arm due to a work accident and who was taken from his home and brought to the Tucapel Regiment on November 6, 1973; Juan Antonio Chávez Rivas, a student at the then-State Technical University (UTE, today Usach), who was also taken to the regiment on the same date; Víctor Hugo Valenzuela Velásquez, arrested at his workplace at the Real Estate Registrar of Temuco and taken as a prisoner to the regiment on November 7; Juan Carlos Ruiz Mancilla, a Civil Construction student at the UTE, who was arrested at his family home in Punta Arenas and taken by plane to Temuco, entering the regiment on November 7; Amador Montero Mosquera, an Electrical Engineering student at the UTE, arrested at his home and taken to the regiment on November 7; Pedro Mardones Jofré, a UTE student, arrested at his home and also transferred to the regiment, and Carlos Aillañir Huenchual, a farmer, arrested by a military patrol at his brother’s house in the town of Quepe. Minister Mesa’s investigation, in which even Bishop Bernardino Piñera testified, established the sequence of what actually happened that night. The unusual movement began around 11:00 PM on November 10, 1973. The seven “prisoners” mentioned above were huddled in a small gymnasium inside the Tucapel Regiment. They were guarded by members of the “Jackal Patrol.” Everyone was in terrible physical condition. To the point that the student Pedro Mardones, one of whose hands was very damaged, was unable to hold the glass of water that a conscript from the Hunters Company offered him (testimony of the conscript himself). Suddenly, the company commander, Vásquez Chahuán, and his second-in-command of the Hunters, surrounded by other uniformed men from the regiment, burst into the facility. The engine of a truck stifled the voices of command as it parked at the entrance of the small gymnasium. Vásquez Chahuán’s order was peremptory. One by one, the “prisoners” were loaded onto the truck. Their guards also boarded. Their bosses would do so in a jeep. Everyone would leave in a caravan heading to the entrance of the Tucapel Regiment.

SHOTS DIRECTLY TO THE HEAD

Shortly after, the entourage arrived at the sector called “Isla Cautín.” And at the shooting range, they would be executed by the members of the patrol. Without wasting time, they collected the bodies, which were taken to the morgue, where an autopsy was performed on them.

That of Florentino Molina, the worker who had lost an arm in a work accident, concluded that he died from a “cranial-encephalic explosion” resulting from multiple projectiles. The others are similar. Forty years later, with only two days left until the anniversary of that massacre, minister Álvaro Mesa accused 25 military personnel and civilians as authors and accomplices of the murder of the seven supposed attackers of the ammunition dump and of the torture to which they were subjected.

Among the authors of the seven qualified homicides is General (ret.) Carlos Eduardo Oviedo Arriagada, brother of the general who on Sunday, March 9, assumed the position of new Army Commander-in-Chief.

As authors of the crimes and also of the torture, the following military personnel were charged: Jaime García Covarrubias (he was head of Counterintelligence of the DINA; in 1988 he was appointed by Pinochet as Undersecretary General of Government, and between 1995 and 1997 he was director of the War Academy; he was also a student at the School of the Americas in 1970); Raimundo García Covarrubias; Pablo Gran López (he rose to the rank of general and became the second-in-command of the Army and director in 2003 of the Military Geographic Institute; he registered a course at the School of the Americas in 1971; together with Lieutenant Manuel Espinoza Ponce, he directed the operation that culminated in the throwing of 18 corpses into the Allipén River; he was DINA staff and was in charge of the custody of the general headquarters); and Mario Hernán Arias Díaz (Army non-commissioned officer, he was a member of the DINA). Charged as authors of the seven homicides and accomplices to the torture to which the deceased were subjected, minister Mesa charged: Carlos Eduardo Oviedo; Norberto Uribe Moroni; Pedro Tichahuer Salcedo (he worked in the finance area of the DINA; he even had the power to sign, along with Manuel Contreras, on the account that that organization opened at the Banco de Crédito e Inversiones; he appears receiving extra payments with DINA checks; he was a member of the company called “Pedro Diet Lobos,” a front for that secret organization; he has commercial companies and companies in the gastronomy sector); Romilio Osvaldo Lavín Muñoz (Army second lieutenant; in 1973 he registered a course at the School of the Americas and was a member of the CNI) and Juan Bautista Labraña Luvecce. As accomplices to the seven qualified homicides and authors of torture, the following were indicted: Orlando Moreno Vásquez (already convicted a year earlier as the author of torture in the same court), Aquiles Alfonso Poblete Muller, Raúl Binaldo Schonherr Frías, Daniel San Juan Clavería, Omar Burgos Dejean (Carabineros non-commissioned officer, already indicted and convicted for his participation in various crimes, from the application of torture to disappearances, such as that of the Ecuadorian student José Félix García Franco, for which he was sentenced to 10 years in prison, being granted the benefit of supervised release; a year ago, in another trial for the application of torture, he was sentenced to two 80-day prison terms); Alfonso Podlech Michaud (lawyer and former military prosecutor of Temuco) and Hernán Quiroz Barra. As authors of the homicides, but not of the torture, the following were indicted: Manuel Campos Ceballos (conscript), Juan Carlos Concha Belmar (conscript), Sergio Vallejos Garcés, Gabriel Alfonso Dittus Marín (he belonged to the DINA and the CNI, like his sister María) and Héctor Villablanca Huenulao. And as authors of the torture: Juan Carrillo Rebolledo; Libardo Hernán Schwartenski Rubio (member of the DINA) and José Raúl Insunza Rubio. Finally, Colonel (ret.) Hernán Ramírez Ramírez, who was commander of the La Concepción Regiment and administrative and military chief of the Cautín province, was charged as an accomplice to the seven summary executions, as well as the respective torture. Given the gravity of the crimes, minister Mesa Latorre did not grant them provisional release. But thanks to the immediate ruling of the Temuco Court, today they all enjoy freedom.

HUMAN RIGHTS TRIALS: SLOW DEATH

When former minister Alejandro Solís began his collaboration work on human rights trials last February, none of the seven ministers of the Santiago Court of Appeals who have that responsibility expressed their objection: Mario Carroza, Leopoldo Llanos, Alejandro Madrid, Jorge Zepeda, Miguel Vásquez, Patricia González, and Hernán Crisosto.

And it is understandable; in the plenary stage alone, there are 80 cases, not counting the hundreds that are waiting in the summary stage, totaling 1,022 cases in process, according to the account given by the president of the Supreme Court, Sergio Muñoz, on March 1.

The seven appointed ministers know that finishing that list of horror is an impossible task. Given Alejandro Solís’s experience in the area, and his capacity for work and seriousness, his help would be important.

It was minister Sergio Muñoz himself who alerted the full Supreme Court in 2012, when he was the national coordinator of the Human Rights area, about the enormous workload that the pending task represented.

And also about the urgent need to adopt measures to speed up the processes. Hence the consent with which the incorporation of Solís was received, who was a minister of the Santiago Court of Appeals until December 2012 and who took the trial for the murder of General Carlos Prats and his wife (1974), among others, to the end.

The first task that the new president of the Supreme Court entrusted to Alejandro Solís was the creation of a database that would allow the 32 ministers with exclusive dedication in the country on the matter to have the key information to be able to advance in their investigations.

This was published by the newspaper El Mercurio on March 7. In the same note, the lawyer for the indicted military personnel, Jorge Balmaceda, expressed his rejection of Solís’s appointment: “It is improper, unless it is for administrative tasks, but performing the work of a judge, he cannot do it.

I believe that the ministers have the capacity, or if not, I ask myself: were the high magistrates wrong to designate them?” “Improper.” That was exactly the argument that some Supreme Court ministers who have always advocated for amnesty and the statute of limitations argued in court.

What was surprising is that it was also the cause that minister Hugo Dolmestch, national coordinator of the area, would argue to challenge the hiring of Alejandro Solís. And this is because who better than Dolmestch, who handled the Operation Albania case, to know about the seriousness of Solís’s work.

CIPER consulted Hugo Dolmestch about the true reasons that led him to say that that hiring was improper. And he replied that it was because it is not appropriate for a former minister of the Court of Appeals to return to do that work. -But minister Dolmestch, isn’t that what court rapporteurs and clerks do every day in all the courts of the country, who draft rulings that they deliver to the respective judges so that they can deepen, modify, or redo them in the full exercise of their functions? -Yes, but I repeat, it is improper, because it is not appropriate for a former minister of the court to do that work. It is not appropriate. -So, what you are questioning is a problem of form and not of substance. -Call it what you want, but it is improper. What should have been done is to hire him under my supervision to organize the database and other support. And that is what I was going to propose at the plenary session on Friday (March 7). But he already resigned. It is not my responsibility. Beyond the fact that the military achieved their objective and starting March 11, Alejandro Solís no longer collaborates in human rights trials, this story will have new chapters in the courts. The pressure exerted after minister Álvaro Mesa’s ruling and the abrupt departure of Alejandro Solís have caused annoyance and discomfort in several ministers of the Courts of Appeals and also of the Supreme Court. Both episodes are added to others that make evident the strategy used by the Army and the Navy to obstruct justice: delaying the processes so that important witnesses are no longer here to recount the events or the convicted are exempted from going to prison due to age. Hence the urgency for the Supreme Court to adopt the fundamental measures that allow for truly speeding up Human Rights processes.

Source: ciper.cl, March 12, 2014

Court issues indictment for the kidnapping of Jaime Eltit Spielmann

The minister of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Alejandro Madrid, issued an indictment in the investigation into the qualified kidnapping of the lawyer and Radical militant Jaime Eltit Spielmann, a crime perpetrated starting October 13, 1973, in the city of Temuco.

The magistrate charged Alfonso Podlech Michaud, Orlando Moreno Vásquez, and Raúl Schonherr Frías as authors of the crime of qualified kidnapping; and Libardo Schwartenski Rubio, Hernán Quiroz Barra, and Daniel San Juan Clavería as accomplices.

According to the case records: “On September 11, 1973, the Armed Forces and Order and Security forces took control of the city of Temuco, appointing as Intendant Colonel Hernán Ramírez Ramírez, Commander of the “La Concepción” Regiment of the city of Lautaro (for having greater seniority) and as Governor of the same, Colonel Pablo Iturriaga Marchesse, Commander of the No. 8 “Tucapel” Infantry Regiment of Temuco.

On that same date, lawyer Alfonso Podlech Michaud was called to collaborate at the “Tucapel” Regiment to support the management of the Military Prosecutor’s Office that operated inside the unit and was in charge of the Second Commander, Major Luis Jofré Soto.

From that moment on, civilians began to arrive at the Regiment, who were called to present themselves through communiqués published in newspapers of regional circulation or brought in as detainees from different parts of the region and the country.

In view of the above, the Military Prosecutor’s Office had to be reinforced with public officials from other bodies and, thus, the aforementioned lawyer—acting as Ad-hoc Prosecutor—presented himself before the Illustrious Court of Appeals of Temuco and obtained the designation of Clerks and a Rapporteur in order to collaborate in the functions he performed.

By virtue of the above, the aforementioned lawyer held, in fact, the character of Military Prosecutor, carrying out jail visits, taking statements, and becoming the channel through which lawyers, family members, and members of the Church inquired about the fate of the prisoners.” The resolution adds: “Inside the mentioned Regiment, there was a so-called Second Intelligence Section in charge of Captain Nelson Ubilla Toledo, integrated by two non-commissioned officers and reinforced later by enlisted men and conscript soldiers, in addition to personnel from the Investigative Police.

This section, together with the Military Prosecutor’s Office, began to work to interrogate the detainees who were brought from the city jail or remained imprisoned in different facilities of the Regiment enabled for that purpose, in which there were elements to tie them up and apply electricity and other types of torment.

That, under these circumstances, Jaime Emilio Eltit Spielmann, a lawyer and militant of the Radical Youth, was arrested in the city of Santiago on September 13, 1973, by members of a military patrol and transferred to the Tacna Regiment.

His apprehension took place on the public road, at the intersection of San Ignacio and Avenida Matta streets. The next day, he was taken to an apartment building located at 1121 San Ignacio Street, second floor, where he was kept detained, without apparent custody, but controlled via telephone; for this reason, a brother of the victim, Ricardo Eltit, traveled to Santiago and visited him in the indicated apartment.

There, his brother told him that he had been interrogated on several occasions at the Tacna Regiment. This stay in the apartment on San Ignacio Street lasted until October 6, 1973, the date on which Jaime Eltit Spielmann was transferred by train to the city of Temuco, guarded by military personnel dressed in civilian clothes.

The detainee and his guards arrived in that city at approximately seven in the morning on October 7, being transferred immediately to the Tucapel Regiment, a place where he is seen by his brother Ricardo Alberto Eltit Spielmann (fs. 94), Miguel Ricardo Torres Zapata (fs. 96), Armando Nelson Ariel Maldonado Barría (fs. 97), Godofredo Cotrena Cotrena (fs. 102), Victor Hernan Maturana Burgos (fs. 119), Renate Ermmy Pfeil Pabst (fs. 420), among others, who have testified in the case, the fact of having seen him and spoken with him inside the Tucapel Regiment of the city of Temuco, some of whom saw him in poor physical condition, with evident signs of having been beaten. He disappeared from this place six days later, with all traces of his whereabouts being lost starting October 13, 1973, without the prisoner having made contact with his family, carried out administrative procedures before State agencies, without registering entries or exits from the country, and without his death by real death being recorded. This event is framed within a pattern similar to other events that occurred during that time that began through the tracking and surveillance of the victims until ending with their disappearance.”

Source: crónicadigital.cl, May 28, 2014

Retired Colonel responsible for two deaths in 1973 was convicted of genocide

Minister Jorge Zepeda sentenced retired Lieutenant Colonel Nelson Ubilla Toledo to five years in prison with the benefit of supervised release as responsible for the crime of the teacher Jecar Neghme Cornejo and Manuel Elgueta Elgueta in October 1973.

The magistrate’s ruling establishes that Ubilla Toledo is responsible for genocide that occurred in the midst of a repressive policy against members of a left-wing group. The plaintiff lawyer, Nelson Caucoto, valued Zepeda’s argumentation, as he considered it unusual for Chilean courts to speak of genocide. "Minister Zepeda even advances a bit more because he is saying that the crime committed to the detriment of Jecar Neghme Cornejo and Manuel Elgueta Elgueta (...) is a crime that has a double dimension.

It is a qualified homicide and from the international perspective, it is a crime of genocide," he maintained. "That is something we have rarely seen said in our courts. Here there was a genocide in which people were persecuted, repressed, and killed because of their political militancy," he added.

The jurist added that he will now have to determine with the Neghme family if they will appeal the judicial ruling before the Santiago Court of Appeals. Neghme Cornejo—father of Jecar Neghme Cristi, leader of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), assassinated in September 1989—was executed on October 26, 1973, in Temuco, Ninth Region, when he was 32 years old.

At the time of his death, he worked as a health teacher at the local branch of the University of Chile, in addition to being an official of the National Health Service.

Source: Cooperativa.cl, May 12, 2006

Murders at the Tucapel Regiment

Anticommunism has been a constant in the training of Chilean military personnel. This has often led them to align themselves with anti-popular positions. On rare occasions have the military supported progressive governments.

From anti-communist—and generally anti-leftist—preaching, they moved to action, as demonstrated by the massacres in which they have participated throughout history and, above all, the somewhat more recent actions during the Pinochet dictatorship.

We provide two examples, one referring to words and the other to deeds. A common element between both is the affiliation of the uniformed men—the one who speaks and those who act—to the Tucapel Regiment in Temuco, as the two episodes are separated by fifty years.

In the September 1923 edition of La Bandera, a monthly army magazine aimed at non-commissioned officers and troops, an article by Olivero Segundo Muñoz, a non-commissioned officer of the Tucapel Regiment, was published.

Its title: “The Army and Communism.” It stated: “The communists, those men who know neither homeland nor borders, do not miss an opportunity to smear with their filthy slime the reputation of the men in uniform who, in many respects, are far above them, false apostles, true pariahs of humanity.”

It added: “The army is indispensable for ensuring the integrity of the territory, maintaining internal order, and ensuring respect for the laws of the government, whatever its constitution may be.”

And further on, it maintained: “The army constitutes the only impartial institution capable of maintaining order and respect for authority, in accordance with its honorable traditions.”

Most certainly, when non-commissioned officer Muñoz spoke of “its honorable traditions,” he was not referring to the 17 massacres perpetrated by army troops against Chilean workers between 1903 and 1923.

Nor could he have known that exactly 50 years after the publication of his article, the army—along with the other branches of national defense—would carry out a peculiar way of maintaining “order and respect for authority” by overthrowing the government of Salvador Allende.

Let us now turn to the actions.

In non-commissioned officer Muñoz’s regiment, the Tucapel in Temuco, one of the many false confrontations staged by members of that “impartial institution,” the army, took place. It occurred on the night of November 10, 1973.

In that operation, seven communists were murdered: Florentino Alberto Molina Ruiz, 44 years old, a laborer, member of the central committee and regional secretary of the PC (Communist Party) of Cautín, and Carlos Aillañir Huenchal, a 57-year-old agricultural laborer.

The other five were young communists: Juan Antonio Chávez Rivas, 29 years old, of the central committee of the JJ.CC. (Communist Youth) and regional secretary of that entity; Juan Carlos Ruiz Mancilla, 21 years old; Amador Montero Mosquera; and Pedro Juan Mardones Jofré.

The four were students at the Universidad Técnica del Estado, Temuco campus. The fifth young man, Víctor Hugo Valenzuela Velázquez, 22 years old, worked as a public employee.

Along with these seven, two other militants were detained: the professor Raúl Buholzer Matamala and the university student Herman Carrasco Paul. The nine were tortured by Captain Nelson Ubilla Toledo; Lieutenants Manuel Vásquez Chaguán and Jaime García Covarrubias; Raimundo García Covarrubias; an officer with the surname Espinoza; a sergeant with the surname Moreno; and the conscript Juan Carrillo.

These torture sessions were witnessed by the commander of the Tucapel Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Pablo Iturriaga Marchesse.

On the evening of November 10, 1973, Herman Carrasco and Raúl Buholzer were transferred to the Temuco jail. That saved their lives.

Herman Carrasco became an active and tireless fighter, making known the truth of what happened in that regiment so that justice might be served.

Both the Diario Austral of Temuco, as well as El Mercurio and the rest of the media, disseminated the army’s version:

“Seven terrorists who attempted to blow up the ammunition dump of the Tucapel Regiment in Temuco were taken down at the scene of the events during a skirmish with soldiers of said unit. A group estimated at twenty extremists approached the Prat bus stop in Temuco, firing at the guard protecting the ammunition dump.

Also, according to witness reports, they attempted at that moment to throw incendiary bombs and Molotov cocktails into the regiment, while another group protected their actions with automatic weapons. The event shocked Temuco because it happened during curfew hours.”

Questions arise: Is it possible that during curfew hours, twenty people could move through the streets carrying automatic weapons and bombs? Is it possible that at that hour there could be witnesses in the streets and, above all, in the surroundings of a regiment?

The National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation rejected the official version. The Rettig Report states: “This Commission cannot consider the official version plausible.” It gives reasons for this: there could not have been a confrontation without any casualties or injuries among the military personnel; there is clear evidence that the victims were tortured, as three death certificates indicate the cause of death as “cranial-encephalic attrition,” that is, crushing of the skull.

The Rettig Report emphasizes: “The most conclusive finding for this Commission is that multiple witnesses and evidence gathered confirm that the victims had been in the Tucapel Regiment for several days. This makes it impossible for them to have attempted to enter armed with explosives through the back of the regiment, as indicated in the official version.

Based on all the evidence presented, the Commission reaches the conviction that the seven individuals identified were executed by State agents, in violation of their human rights.”

November 10 marked 30 years since that crime perpetrated by members of the army.

Among those responsible, we can mention, in addition to Pinochet, General Hernán Ramírez Ramírez, intendant of the province of Cautín; Pablo Iturriaga Marchesse, commander of the Tucapel Regiment; Major Luis Cofré, military prosecutor; Alfonso Podlech Michaud, legal advisor to the Military Prosecutor’s Office; Captain Nelson Ubilla Toledo, head of the Military Intelligence Service; Lieutenant Jaime García Covarrubias; and Sergeant Orlando Moreno.

Source: puntofinal.cl, December 4, 2003

Javier Iturriaga: The "Hard Man" of the Army and Relative of Human Rights Violators

The general who will be in charge of security in Santiago is described as a “hard man” in the ranks of the Army. He is 53 years old and an officer of the armored cavalry branch. His secondary specialty is paratrooper and commando. His current position is Commander of Doctrine and Education of the Army.

In the early morning, the General Chief of National Defense, Javier Iturriaga del Campo, gave an assessment. Under his responsibility will be the situation due to the State of Emergency that began to govern in Santiago past midnight, which involved the deployment of military personnel in the streets, something not seen in the capital since the declaration of states of exception during the dictatorship.

Iturriaga is an officer with a rising career. He entered the Military School in 1980 and graduated with the rank of Second Lieutenant in the Infantry branch on January 1, 1984. His primary specialty is Staff Officer, and his secondary is Commando and Paratrooper, hence the black beret with which he was seen leaving the palace.

His trajectory also highlights his command experience, as he was Commander of the Reinforced Regiment No. 4 “Rancagua” (2012) and also of the 2nd Armored Brigade “Cazadores” (2013). Likewise, he was part of the “Lautaro” Special Operations Brigade as a Brigadier General, and on the international level, he was appointed as Military Attaché in Brazil for the year 2014.

Iturriaga was the zone chief of the military forces deployed in the town of Santa Olga, in Maule, during the forest fires that devastated part of the forests in the central zone of the country during the summer of 2017.

He is the nephew of Pablo Iturriaga Marchese, who is responsible for the disappearance of Omar Venturelli.

Since 1998, prosecutor Giancarlo Capalbo has been investigating the Venturelli case, along with the disappearance of Juan Bosco Maino Canales, Juan Montiglio Murúa, and Jaime Patricio Donato Avendaño. The latter two appear in the Armed Forces report as having been thrown into the sea off the coast of San Antonio.

In the process of detention, kidnapping, torture, and homicide, the following are mentioned: the former military prosecutor of Temuco-Cautín, Oscar Alfonso Podlech Michaud; Colonel (ret.) Pablo Heriberto Iturriaga Marchese; the former commander of the local air base, Andrés Pacheco Cardenas; Army Major (ret.) Luis Armando Jofre Soto; Captain (ret.) and head of intelligence services Nelson Manuel Ubilla Toledo; the former director of the Temuco jail, Máximo Vivanco; non-commissioned officer (ret.) Leonel Quilodrán Burgos; the gendarme Jorge Arias; Lieutenant (ret.) and former member of the intelligence services Manuel Vasquez Chahuan; Colonel (ret.) Hernán Jerónimo Ramírez Ramírez; officer (ret.) Armando Nelson Ariel Maldonado Barría; officer (ret.) Jaime Guillermo García Covarrubias; and officer (ret.) Raimundo Ignacio García Covarrubias.

The filing annexed to case 10205/98-R recreates the facts proven so far regarding the detention of Venturelli and sheds light on the people allegedly involved in the crime. It indicates that the former clergyman participated in the Christians for Socialism group and, immediately after the coup d'état, was summoned to report to the Tucapel Regiment in Temuco through military order number 16.

Iturriaga Marchesse is also co-responsible for the political repression in the Temuco area and throughout the entire Province of Cautín—including the Mapuche communities in the area—as a representative of the Military Government Junta in the Province of Cautín, in the company of the appointed Intendant, Army Colonel Hernán Ramírez Ramírez (now deceased), and Carabineros Colonel José San Martín (now deceased).

General Javier Iturriaga is the son of Dante Iturriaga Marchesse, accused of handing over detainees at the Colonia Dignidad torture center.

A family criminal record that corresponds to the harshness with which the general in charge of directing the state of emergency is described.

Source: laizquierdadiario.cl, October 19, 2019

Court Confirms Indictment of Military Officer (ret.) in Neghme Case

The Third Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals unanimously confirmed the indictment of Army officer (ret.) Nelson Ubilla Toledo for the qualified homicide of the Socialist Party militant Jeckar Neghme Cornejo, which occurred on October 25, 1973.

The indictment confirmed by the court—which is composed of ministers Juan Manuel Pardo, Lamberto Cisternas, and Hugo Llanos—had been issued by Special Judge Jorge Zepeda last July.

The plaintiff lawyer in the case, Nelson Caucoto, valued the work performed by the special judge, noting that “through a magnificent investigation, it has been possible to establish, after 30 years, criminal acts that occurred in that city in 1973.”

Jeckar Neghme worked as a health educator at the Temuco Hospital and as a professor at the University of Chile in that city. The former socialist leader is the father of Jeckar Neghme Cristi, who was assassinated by the CNI in September 1989 in Santiago.

Source: emol.com, October 26, 2004

Italian Justice to Begin Procedural Phase for Disappearance of Priest in Chile

While in Chile the proceedings involving former dictator Augusto Pinochet are in a state of lethargy that is expected to last for a long time, in Italy, the justice system is on the verge of beginning the procedural phase and ending the investigation stage regarding the disappearance of the priest of that nationality, Omar Venturelli, who disappeared in Temuco in October 1973.

The case has concrete evidence regarding the detention of the Italian prelate, his time at the regiment in that city, the visit of Bishop Bernardino Piñera, and his death, on the same day that the fateful Caravan of Death arrived in the capital of the Ninth Region, under the command of the official delegate of the head of the Government Junta, General (ret.) Sergio Arellano Stark.

Since 1998, prosecutor Giancarlo Capalbo has been investigating the Venturelli case, along with the disappearance of Juan Bosco Maino Canales, Juan Montiglio Murúa, and Jaime Patricio Donato Avendaño. The latter two appear in the Armed Forces report as having been thrown into the sea off the coast of San Antonio.

Italian justice—unlike the Chilean system—sets an initial investigation stage known as a “criminal complaint” in charge of a prosecutor—in this case, Capalbo—who, once all the evidence has been collected, files a formal accusation that is heard by the Court of Assizes, a tribunal composed of two magistrates and six other people.

If these steps are completed, the process reaches the stage where the first arrest warrants are issued and later the convictions of those involved. In the Venturelli case, it is estimated that the start of the formal accusation is imminent, which guarantees that in the coming years the people responsible for the case could be convicted, as Italian justice allows for sentencing in absentia for those guilty of crimes against humanity.

Known evidence indicates that the prelate and professor at the Catholic University was last seen on October 4, 1973, the same day that the Caravan of Death passed through Temuco and left a sad toll of 18 fatalities.

Primera Línea accessed the document that the plaintiffs presented to prosecutor Giancarlo Capalbo, who is instructing the first phase of the investigation.

The filing annexed to case 10205/98-R recreates the facts proven so far regarding the detention of Venturelli and sheds light on the people allegedly involved in the crime. It indicates that the former clergyman participated in the Christians for Socialism group and, immediately after the coup d'état, was summoned to report to the Tucapel Regiment in Temuco through military order number 16.

In the process of detention, kidnapping, torture, and homicide, the following are mentioned: the former military prosecutor of Temuco-Cautín, Oscar Alfonso Podlech Michaud; Colonel (ret.) Pablo Heriberto Iturriaga Marchese; the former commander of the local air base, Andrés Pacheco Cardenas; Army Major (ret.) Luis Armando Jofre Soto; Captain (ret.) and head of intelligence services Nelson Manuel Ubilla Toledo; the former director of the Temuco jail, Máximo Vivanco; non-commissioned officer (ret.) Leonel Quilodrán Burgos; the gendarme Jorge Arias; Lieutenant (ret.) and former member of the intelligence services Manuel Vasquez Chahuan; Colonel (ret.) Hernán Jerónimo Ramírez Ramírez; officer (ret.) Armando Nelson Ariel Maldonado Barría; officer (ret.) Jaime Guillermo García Covarrubias; and officer (ret.) Raimundo Ignacio García Covarrubias.

All of them, according to the plaintiffs’ document, were identified by survivors of the time and witnesses linked to the case; however—the document notes—the main person responsible for the crime is Augusto Pinochet, in his capacity as head of government and commander-in-chief of the Army.

Additionally, more details are being investigated regarding the participation of Arellano Stark in the case, since so far there are only coincidences in the date he arrived in the area and the date Venturelli died.

The participation of Bishop Piñera and the detention of Venturelli

The priest presented himself voluntarily at the Pastene Carabineros station, from which he was transferred to the regiment. It is in this place where the interrogation sessions combined with torture took place, which finally cost him his life at the hands of the Caravan of Death.

In the military facility, Venturelli was seen by Pablo Adolfo Berchenko Navarrete, a teacher in the area. The latter, according to data collected during the investigation in Italy, was tortured and interrogated by a soldier with the surname Soto and the officer Luis Jofre.

Witness statements say that the priest was detained in the regiment between September 16 and 20, 1973, a period during which he was visited by the then-bishop of Temuco, Monsignor Bernardino Piñera, current Archbishop Emeritus of La Serena, who confirmed the victim’s precarious state of health.

From that moment on, the only information the Venturelli family had was that on October 4, 1973, by order of the Cautín Army Prosecutor’s Office, his release was decreed. However, that same day, several deaths occurred at the hands of Arellano’s entourage, which was returning to Santiago to begin its dark journey through the north of the country days later.

Source: Primeralinea.cl, March 20, 2002

Former Prosecutor Podlech Detained for the Disappearance of Jaime Eltit

The lawyer who participated in the treatment of detainees after '73 by the dictatorship as a Military Prosecutor is under arrest at the Tucapel Regiment by order of Judge Madrid, who indicted him for the crime of kidnapping along with 5 other people.

The former Military Prosecutor, Alfonso Podlech Michaud, who was arrested in Italy for the kidnapping of the former Italian-Chilean priest Omar Venturelli, was detained again and remains in that condition for another case at the Tucapel Regiment in La Araucanía.

The lawyer is indicted for the qualified kidnapping of the Radical Jaime Eltit Spielmann, who disappeared after his time at the same barracks where, according to the newspaper El Austral de Temuco, he has been for a week and where he surely learned of Pope Francis’s meeting with relatives of victims of Operation Condor, among whom were the sister and daughter of Venturelli.

Podlech, who joined as a civilian collaborator in the work of the military with the supporters of the UP government detained in Temuco after the 1973 coup, was indicted by Judge Alejandro Madrid along with Orlando Moreno Vásquez and Raúl Schonherr Frías as perpetrators.

The magistrate, dedicated exclusively to human rights cases, also issued indictments as accomplices for Libardo Schwartenski Rubio, Hernán Quiroz Barra, and Daniel San Juan Clavería.

PODLECH’S MANAGEMENT INTERTWINED WITH TORTURE

The resolution states that Podlech “held in fact the position of Military Prosecutor, making jail visits, taking statements, and becoming the channel through which lawyers, relatives, and members of the Church inquired about the fate of the prisoners.”

It adds that “inside the mentioned Regiment, there existed a so-called Second Intelligence Section in charge of Captain Nelson Ubilla Toledo. This section, together with the Military Prosecutor’s Office, began to work to interrogate the detainees who were brought from the city jail or remained held in different facilities of the Regiment enabled for that purpose, in which there were elements to tie them up and apply electricity and other types of torture.”

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ELTIT

Eltit Spielmann, a lawyer, militant of the Radical Youth, and brother of the former intendant Jaime Eltit, was detained in Santiago on September 13, 1973, by a military patrol, and in October he was taken to the Tucapel Regiment.

There, his brother and several other witnesses say they saw him in poor physical condition and with evident signs of having been beaten, and from that place, his trail was lost as of October 13, 1973.

HE DECLARED HIMSELF INNOCENT IN THE VENTURELLI CASE

In one of his last public statements upon his return to Chile in 2011, after being released in Italy where he was detained and prosecuted for 3 years for the kidnapping of the subsequently disappeared Venturelli, Podlech accused that he is a “victim of human rights.”

Source: lanacion.cl, June 2, 2014

The minister in extraordinary visit for human rights violation cases of the Temuco Court of Appeals, Álvaro Mesa Latorre, indicted and ordered the pretrial detention of former Army Brigadier Jaime Guillermo García Covarrubias as an accomplice to the crime of qualified homicide of Rubén Morales Jara, perpetrated in the commune of Temuco during the month of September 1973.

At the time, the accused was serving at the Tucapel Regiment in the city of Temuco.

The then-Army captain continued his repressive career under the wing of "Mamo" Contreras as head of Counterintelligence for the DINA. In 1988, he was appointed by Pinochet as Undersecretary General of Government, and between 1995 and 1997, he served as director of the War Academy; naturally, prior to all of this, he had been a student at the School of the Americas in 1970.

In November 2013, he had already been indicted for the qualified homicide of 7 other victims caused in Temuco by the dictatorial repression.

Given the merit of the evidence (in case File No. 114.047), the investigating minister granted the former senior Army officer release on bail, currently complying with precautionary measures of a national travel ban and monthly signing at the corresponding court.

In the month of October just passed, Minister Mesa had already indicted and ordered the pretrial detention of 4 former uniformed officers for this crime. Luis Hernán Peña Andaur, Román Aquiles Barros Mardones, and José Albino Krause Álvarez were indicted as perpetrators, and Juan Carlos Figueroa Claus as an accomplice to the crime of qualified homicide of Morales Jara.

During the investigation stage, Minister Mesa established the following facts:

A) That in August 1973, the Minister of the Interior at the time, Jaime Tohá, contacted the lawyer for the Carabineros of the Temuco Prefecture, Hernán Morales Gómez, to take charge as an Ad-hoc Military Prosecutor of a summary proceeding to be substantiated in the investigation to be carried out due to the existence of an alleged guerrilla school in the locality of Nehuentúe, a coastal sector of Carahue.

Thus, once legally notified of his appointment, he presented himself before the Commander of the Tucapel Regiment, Col. Pablo Iturriaga Marchesse (R.I.P.), who assigned him an office inside the military unit's headquarters and ordered that the Regiment's Adjutant Lieutenant serve as secretary and clerk.

In said place, he proceeded to interrogate the detainees who had been brought by military patrols of the Tucapel Regiment of Temuco from Nehuentúe, after the guerrilla school operating in that location had been dismantled.

B) That Rubén Eduardo Morales Jara, a mathematics teacher and member of the MIR, was detained by a military patrol of the Tucapel Regiment of Temuco on September 4 or 5, 1973, in compliance with an order issued by the Military Prosecutor's Office, headed by lawyer Hernán Morales Gómez, in case file 1198-73 for violation of the Arms Control Law.

Said detention was carried out at Morales's home located at Calle Pedro Luis Valdivia No. 120, Población Dreves, Temuco. The detainee was taken to the aforementioned regiment and placed at the disposal of the Prosecutor's Office the following day.

In that place, he gave an investigative statement and confrontation proceedings were carried out on different dates between September 6 and 8, 1973, remaining as a detainee held incommunicado in the public jail of this city during that period, to finally be declared a defendant for the aforementioned crime, as recorded from page 329 to page 339.

During that period, he was visited by his wife and friends at the Temuco Jail, until September 11, 1973, when said visits were denied.

C) That immediately after the military coup of September 11, 1973, the armed and security forces took control of the city of Temuco. This change in the country's institutionality caused a significant alteration in the work that lawyer Hernán Morales Gómez was carrying out in the investigation under his jurisdiction, since due to his closeness to the outgoing regime, the new authorities began to distrust him.

For this reason, he gradually lost influence in the decisions made regarding the detainees and defendants in his case, limiting himself to signing the resolutions that were drafted in the Military Prosecutor's Office in charge of Army Major Luis Jofré Soto (R.I.P.), which also operated inside the Tucapel Regiment.

D) That by September 1973, in the 8th Infantry Regiment "Tucapel" of Temuco, there existed the Second Section of Information and Intelligence, which was in charge of Captain Nelson Manuel Uldaricio Ubilla Toledo (R.I.P.), under whose command some non-commissioned officers of that institution also performed duties, a task that was reinforced after September 11, 1973, with the addition of officials from the Investigations Police and Carabineros, who provided political information to the aforementioned officer regarding all those persons subject to an investigation by the Military Prosecutor's Office. Likewise, some officers, enlisted personnel, and conscripts of the regiment joined the intelligence tasks.

E) That Rubén Morales Jara was seen in poor physical condition inside the Tucapel Regiment after September 11, 1973, in areas where the interrogation rooms maintained by the intelligence section functioned and where detainees were subjected to torture.

He was also seen in the guard room at the entrance of the regiment. On one of those occasions, during the night, the Regiment's Adjutant Lieutenant, who was also the Secretary to the Ad-hoc Military Prosecutor in charge of the case in which Rubén Morales Jara was a defendant, was at the military unit's guard post.

At a certain moment, Second Lieutenant Manuel Espinoza Ponce (R.I.P.), an officer of the Second Hunters Company, appeared at that location, having allegedly received the order to execute the detainee Morales Jara.

For this, he formed a patrol composed of at least five enlisted soldiers holding the rank of Corporal and Sergeant, among whom were Corporal Ernesto René Oberg Parra (R.I.P.) and the defendants in the case Luis Hernán Peña Andaur, Juan Carlos Figueroa Claus, Román Aquiles Barros Mardones, and José Albino Krause Álvarez.

The Regiment's Adjutant Lieutenant, once informed of the mission entrusted to Espinoza Ponce, ordered the detainee Morales Jara to be loaded into a ¾ military vehicle in which the patrol traveled toward a bridge located over the Quepe River.

At that place, they descended with Morales Jara, whom they placed in front of the bridge railing. There, Second Lieutenant Espinoza fired two shots at the detainee with his service weapon. Immediately, two enlisted soldiers threw Morales Jara's body into the waters of the Quepe, but upon realizing he was still alive, they fired bursts of gunfire at him with their weapons.

After this, the patrol returned to the Tucapel Regiment, where Second Lieutenant Espinoza reported the fulfillment of the order to the officer who had given him such instruction.

F) That during the celebration of the 1973 national holidays, information was broadcast over the radio reporting the escape of the prisoner Rubén Morales Jara while he was being transported by a military patrol from the Tucapel Regiment to the Temuco jail.

Said news was heard by the Ad-hoc Prosecutor Hernán Morales Gómez while he was spending the holidays in Pucón. Given the magnitude of the event, as it concerned a prisoner in his case and he having given no order to transfer him to the court, he immediately appeared at the Tucapel Regiment and, on September 19, issued a resolution in the case acknowledging the aforementioned event, as recorded on page 340 of the case file, calling to testify the soldier in command of the patrol that was supposedly in charge of Morales Jara's transfer.

However, the Commander of the Tucapel Regiment, Col. Pablo Iturriaga Marchesse, prevented him from continuing the investigation, ordering him to stop inquiring into that matter. Ad-hoc Prosecutor Morales Gómez submitted his resignation from the position, which was rejected by Iturriaga, forcing him to continue his duties; further indicating to him that "they were in times of war and that he would decide when he should leave the position," the resolution points out.

Source: resumen.cl, January 20, 2016

Minister Álvaro Mesa sentences military and civilians for homicides and duress at the Maquehue Air Base in Temuco

The minister in extraordinary visit for human rights violation cases of the jurisdictions of Temuco, Valdivia, Puerto Montt, and Coyhaique, Álvaro Mesa Latorre, sentenced 20 members of the Air Force, the Army, and civilians for their responsibility in the crimes of qualified homicide of Hernán Henríquez Aravena and Alejandro Flores Rivera, and the application of illegitimate duress to Jorge Silhi Zarzar, Víctor Painemal Alegría, and Sergio Riquelme Inostroza, illicit acts committed starting in September 1973 at the Maquehue Air Base, the 8th Regiment "Tucapel," and the Military Prosecutor's Office of Temuco.

Meanwhile, Luis Quezada Chandía must serve 17 years in prison as the perpetrator of the qualified homicides of Hernán Henríquez Aravena and Alejandro Flores Rivera; and Alfonso Podlech Michaud must serve 12 years in prison as the perpetrator of the qualified homicide of Henríquez Aravena.

In the case of Pablo Alister Contreras, the visiting minister sentenced him to 4 years in prison as an accessory to the homicides of Henríquez Aravena and Flores Rivera, and as an accomplice to the crime of illegitimate duress against Jorge Silhi Zarzar, Víctor Hugo Painemal Arriagada, and Sergio Riquelme Inostroza.

Finally, Jaime Echenique Seco, Berthold Bohn Sauterel, Aníbal Tejos Echeverría, Enrique Isaacs Casacuberta, Antonio Montserrats Mena, Roberto Schmied Callejón, Víctor Manuel Volante Leonardi, Xavier Pérez Chávez, and Rogelio Olivares Torruella must serve 3 years and one day in prison as accessories to the homicides and illegitimate duress.

In the investigation that Minister Mesa Latorre has been conducting since July 2010, he established the collaboration between the Maquehue Air Base, the 8th Regiment "Tucapel," and the Military Prosecutor's Office of Temuco to commit various crimes against humanity; among them: qualified kidnapping, qualified homicide, simple homicide, and illegitimate duress against opponents of the military government of the time.

The sentence establishes the following facts:

A.- That immediately after the military coup occurred on September 11, 1973, the Commander of Helicopter Group No. 3 of the Maquehue Air Base, Colonel Andrés Pacheco Cárdenas (deceased), delegated the operational command of the base to the second-in-command, Benjamín Fernández Hernández (deceased), in order to assume functions in the CAJSI (Jurisdictional Action Command for Internal Situation), whose office was located at the 8th Infantry Regiment "Tucapel" in the city of Temuco.

However, he never formally relinquished command of the aforementioned unit, going to that place daily to determine the actions to follow.

B.- That starting that same day, the new local authority called to active service several Air Force Reserve officers, who were civilian pilots, among whom were Berthold Erwin Bohn Sauterel, Pablo Aquiles Alister Contreras, and Emilio Sandoval Poo; and other retired officers who joined the Maquehue Base contingent and who, according to their rank, began to perform the same operational functions as the rest of the line officers and non-commissioned officers at least during the most critical period of September and October 1973.

These functions included joining patrols destined to enforce curfew, guarding public service facilities and bridges, participating in operations of varying magnitude whose purpose was to raid homes and carry out the detention of persons opposed to the new regime or supporters of the outgoing administration, joining helicopter crews for the purpose of transferring detainees from one point to another in the region, piloting private light aircraft to monitor the coastal zone, and performing rounds or guard duty shifts inside the air base.

These latter shifts could have been between 12 to 24 hours. It should be noted that a large part of the Air Force reserve officers were also appointed as intervenors in different state companies, so they had to balance both activities during the aforementioned period, without ceasing to fulfill these tasks, since each branch of the armed and security forces present in the city designated an intervenor per company, so the activities in the intervened companies were always well covered.

C.- That given the need to systematize and coordinate activities destined for the detention of persons and their transfer to the Maquehue air base for subsequent interrogation, the Second-in-Command Benjamín Fernández Hernández (deceased) organized a specially selected group to deal with intelligence and political detainee issues, a group that was under his command and included Lieutenants Ángel Campos Quiroga (deceased), Jorge Freygang Campaña (deceased), Captain Leonardo Reyes Herrera, Sergeant Orlando Garrido Riquelme (deceased), several personnel of the permanent staff of different ranks including, among others, Luis Arturo Soto Pinto, Heriberto Pereira Rojas, Luis Osmán Yáñez Silva, Jorge Aliro Valdebenito Isler, Jorge Eduardo Soto Herrera, and Enrique Alberto Rebolledo Sotelo; and a civilian employee who had a nursing specialty named Crisóstomo Hugo Ferrada Carrasco. This group, from that date on, gradually stopped performing the functions proper to their specialty to devote themselves to the tasks assigned to them by the high command of the Maquehue base.

D.- That this special group received the alternating and sporadic collaboration of line and reserve officers who, of their own volition or by an express order received, joined on some occasions the patrols destined to raid homes and detain persons, or witnessed and collaborated in the interrogations of the detainees who remained inside the base, among whom are Aníbal Arturo Tejos Echeverría, Enrique Alcides Isaacs Casacuberta, Antonio Sergio Monserrat Mena, Rodolfo Ernesto Schmied Callejón, Víctor Manuel Volante Leonardi, Xavier Fernando Pérez Chávez, Rogelio Aníbal Olivares Torruella, and Jaime Mauricio del Corazón de Jesús Echenique Seco. The persons detained in the various operations were kept in the guard facilities, the infirmary, in two offices located in the Administrative or Headquarters building, in an old wooden tower that was previously used to store unused material, and which after September 11 was enabled for the indicated purposes, and on some occasions, they were also moved to a hangar located inside the base.

E.- That many of these detainees remained held at the Maquehue base for a period of no less than a week, during which time they were interrogated and tortured by the aforementioned officers and non-commissioned officers who formed part of the intelligence group specially formed for such purposes, among whom are the Second-in-Command Benjamín Fernández Hernández (deceased), Lieutenants Ángel Campos Quiroga (deceased), Jorge Freygang Campaña (deceased), Captain Leonardo Reyes Herrera, Sergeant Orlando Garrido Riquelme (deceased), the non-commissioned officers Luis Arturo Soto Pinto, Heriberto Pereira Rojas, Luis Osmán Yáñez Silva, Jorge Aliro Valdebenito Isler, Jorge Eduardo Soto Herrera, and Enrique Alberto Rebolledo Sotelo; and the civilian employee Crisóstomo Hugo Ferrada Carrasco. The latter, in certain cases, supplied the detainees with drugs, such as Pentothal, so that they would confess their alleged crimes. Also during that time, the detainees were taken out to the unit's courtyard during the day so they could rest a little or were taken to the bathrooms existing in the unit, an opportunity in which they were seen and attended to by conscript soldiers who were able to verify the deteriorated physical state in which these persons were found. Some of these conscripts had to perform sentry duties to guard the place where the detainees were located.

F.- That the aerial operations carried out in helicopters on some occasions consisted of transporting Army troops toward localities of the IX Region whose mission was to detain persons opposed to the military regime.

These persons were transported toward the Maquehue Air Base and also to the 8th Infantry Regiment "Tucapel" of this city, with the aircraft transporting them landing in both units, as the case may be. Likewise, transfers of detainees were carried out by land from the Maquehue air base to the Tucapel regiment, which were carried out by members of the special group described above and also on some occasions by reserve officers who received an order for such purposes.

G.- That on the same day, September 11, 1973, the lawyer Óscar Alfonso Ernesto Podlech Michaud, who was also an Army Reserve Lieutenant of Chile, was called to collaborate with the new regime; he presented himself at the "Tucapel" regiment to support the management of the Military Prosecutor's Office that operated inside the unit and was in charge of the Second-in-Command, Major Luis Jofré Soto (deceased).

This officer, however, had to assume greater functions as Second-in-Command of the Tucapel regiment shortly thereafter. From that day forward, civilians began to arrive at the regiment who had been called to appear before the Military Prosecutor's Office through edicts published in the written press and on the radio, or who were brought in as detainees from different points in the region by Carabinero and military patrols.

H.- That given the high number of detainees and persons called to provide statements, the Military Prosecutor's Office was reinforced to carry out its work with officials of the Judiciary who were requested from the Illustrious Court of Appeals of Temuco by the aforementioned lawyer, who, acting as Ad-hoc Prosecutor, made a presentation to the Plenary of the Appellate Court, after which some clerks from different courts and a Rapporteur of the Court were assigned on service commission.

I.- That due to the lack of knowledge in criminal procedural matters, added to the weak character he possessed and the work as Second-in-Command of the regiment, Major Luis Jofré Soto (deceased) began delegating functions as Military Prosecutor to the advisory lawyer of the Prosecutor's Office, Óscar Alfonso Ernesto Podlech Michaud, who began to hold the position of de facto Prosecutor, to the point that he carried out jail visits and that lawyers, family members, and even ecclesiastical dignitaries consulted him about the fate of the detainees.

However, Major Jofré Soto (deceased) continued to sign the administrative paperwork most of the time and participated in some interrogations of detainees.

J.- That the persons called to appear before the Military Prosecutor's Office and those who were brought in as detainees were kept in facilities located next to the guard post and in the large gymnasium.

Once interrogated by personnel of the Military Prosecutor's Office, by detectives of the Investigations Police attached to the regiment, or by the officers themselves who participated in these activities, some of them were released, others were sent to their homes under house arrest, and others were taken to the public jail where they remained while their procedural situation was resolved.

K.- That also by September 1973, in the 8th Infantry Regiment "Tucapel" of Temuco, there existed the Second Section of Information and Intelligence, which was in charge of Captain Nelson Manuel Uldaricio Ubilla Toledo (deceased), under whose command some non-commissioned officers of that institution also performed duties, a task that was reinforced after September 11, 1973, with the addition of officials from the Investigations Police and Carabineros, who provided political information to the aforementioned officer regarding all those persons subject to an investigation by the Military Prosecutor's Office. Likewise, some officers, enlisted personnel, and conscripts of the regiment joined the intelligence tasks.

L.- That as the days went by, the Military Prosecutor's Office and the Second Intelligence Section began to work together to interrogate the detainees who remained held in the jail or in some facility of the Tucapel regiment.

To articulate this work, two locations were enabled in the military unit, one located between the Headquarters and Mortar Companies and another in an old disused gymnasium located to the side of the conscript soldiers' "mess hall." In this way, the detainees were taken to and from the jail to the regiment by military personnel of the Second Section, being interrogated in the Military Prosecutor's Office and physically pressured in one of the aforementioned facilities to "soften them up" before or after these interrogations.

M.- That in both interrogation and torture rooms, there were implements to tie up the detainees and apply electricity to different parts of their bodies, in addition to applying other types of torment such as kicks and punches.

Conscript soldiers and a Carabinero who collaborated with Captain Nelson Ubilla Toledo and with the detectives of the Investigations Police who were there participated in this task. Most of the officers of the "Tucapel" regiment and some enlisted soldiers from the Headquarters and Services, Mortar, Hunters, and Second Section companies also participated in the interrogation and/or torture sessions of detainees in those places, all of whom entered these facilities at different times.

In the civil aspect, the state treasury was ordered to pay a total compensation of $910,000,000 to the family members of the deceased victims and to the survivors.

This is the 40th sentence issued by Minister Mesa Latorre since he was appointed to investigate human rights violation cases; of these, 24 are final, with 130 convicted individuals.

Source: diarioconstitucional.cl, January 6, 2020