The officials detained and tortured Nicza Baez and her husband at the Regimiento de Infantería Motorizada Número 23 in the city of Copiapó. The detainees were placed at the disposal of the Court of Appeals of La Serena.

The Policía de Investigaciones arrested six retired military officers and one Carabineros officer this afternoon, accused of the detention and torture of Nicza Baez and the disappearance of her husband in Copiapó in 1975.

The individuals are former officials Patricio Sergio Román Herrera, Army Brigadier (ret.); Hernán Ernesto Portillo Aranda, Army Sergeant Major (ret.); Juan Artemio Valderrama Molina, Army Lieutenant Colonel (ret.); José de Carmen Quintanilla Fernández, Army Sergeant (ret.); Felipe Luis Guillermo González Astorga, Army Sergeant Major (ret.); and Erasmo Francisco Vega Sobarzo, Army Sergeant Major (ret.).

Additionally, retired Carabineros Sergeant Pedro Eduardo Vivián Guaita was arrested. All were placed at the disposal of the Court of Appeals of La Serena, as reported by Radio Cooperativa. The events for which they are accused occurred in Copiapó in 1975, where they detained the couple and took them to the guardroom of a military facility where they were separated.

They were later reunited and taken to the second floor of the Regimiento de Infantería Motorizada Número 23, where they were blindfolded, interrogated, and tortured. Ultimately, only Baez was released, while her husband remains forcibly disappeared.

Source: elmostrador.cl, April 15, 2014

Convictions confirmed against eight former Army members for human rights crimes committed during the dictatorship

The Supreme Court confirmed the convictions issued against eight former military officers for their responsibility in the crime of aggravated kidnapping of university student Nicza Estrella Báez Mondaca, committed between November 1975 and June 1976 in the cities of Copiapó, La Serena, and Santiago.

In a unanimous ruling (case file 33.661-2019), the Second Chamber of the high court—composed of ministers Haroldo Brito, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Jorge Dahm, Leopoldo Llanos, and acting lawyer Ricardo Abuauad—rejected the appeals for cassation and ruled out any error of law in the sentence that convicted the former Army officials Patricio Sergio Román Herrera, Juan Artemio Valderrama Molina, Adolfo Nicolás Lapostol Sprovera, Felipe Luis Guillermo González Astorga, Hernán Ernesto Portillo Aranda, José del Carmen Quintanilla Fernández, Erasmo Francisco Vega Sobarzo, and Héctor Florentino Navarrete Jara as perpetrators of the crime. However, in this case, the 5-year prison sentence only has a criminal record and social effect, as the criminals were granted supervised release for the same period. The criminal act of kidnapping and torture was perpetrated in November 1975 in the city of Copiapó by agents of the so-called Centro de Inteligencia Regional (CIRE) of the Third Region, composed of Army and Carabineros personnel, specifically by personnel from the second section of the Regimiento de Infantería Motorizada N°23 Copiapó, under the direction of the Commander of said Regiment, who also served as Regional Intendant, and under the operational command of an Army captain. This repressive body concentrated actions to persecute left-wing militants and the resistance to the dictatorship, as well as the detention and torture of political prisoners. In the case of this proceeding, the plaintiff and former political prisoner Nicza Báez Mondaca and her husband Alonso Lazo Rojas, at the time these events occurred, were students at the Universidad de Chile in La Serena with active participation in the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR). Consequently, they were intensely sought by intelligence agents from the Regimiento "Arica" in La Serena, who carried out various raids on both their home and those of their relatives; some of the latter were even captured and interrogated in order to obtain information about their whereabouts. To evade persecution and harassment, the young couple chose to move to the city of Huasco, then went to Vallenar, and finally settled in Copiapó to hide and avoid being apprehended. Nevertheless, they were detained on November 14, 1975, by CIRE agents and taken to the Regiment's facility in that city. There, they were interrogated separately and jointly, being subjected to constant torture. The victim, Nicza Báez Mondaca, was separated from her husband after the interrogations, and he was ultimately made to disappear, as there has never been any news of his whereabouts since. For the kidnapping and disappearance of Alonso Lazo Rojas, these same criminals were convicted in August 2015 (Patricio Sergio Román Herrera, Juan Artemio Valderrama Molina, and Adolfo Nicolás Lapostol Sprovera to a 6-year prison sentence, while Felipe Luis Guillermo González Astorga, Hernán Ernesto Portillo Aranda, José del Carmen Quintanilla Fernández, and Erasmo Francisco Vega Sobarzo were sentenced to 5 years and 1 day in prison). After fifteen days of constant anguish due to the confinement and torture received, they decided to transfer the prisoner to Santiago along with other detainees. But on the way, they made a stop at the Regimiento "Arica" in La Serena, where agents of the second section of that city's Regiment renewed the interrogations and torture. The victim's transfer finally concluded at the Cuatro Álamos detention facility and later at the Tres Álamos detention center, where she was kept prisoner until June 1976, the date on which she regained her freedom and decided to go into exile.

Source: resumen.cl, July 28, 2022