It has been 15 years of investigation, but this Friday, October 11, hearings began in Rome to determine who will be tried among the 35 defendants accused of the disappearance of 23 Italians during Operation Condor, which coordinated the repression of the Southern Cone dictatorships in the 70s and 80s.

Justice is slow. Death knows this, having already spared dozens of the uniformed torturers and murderers who participated in the grim Operation Condor from facing the courts. This plan was devised by the CIA (according to declassified United States documents) and involved joint action against opponents by the civic-military dictatorships of Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Bolivia, with sporadic cooperation from military personnel in Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador.

Within the framework of Operation Condor, some 50,000 people were murdered, some 30,000 were forcibly disappeared, and up to 400,000 were imprisoned and tortured. Now, the Rome Public Prosecutor's Office is requesting the trial of 35 of the 140 people investigated over the last 15 years by Giancarlo Capaldo, the prosecutor who launched this process in 1998 regarding the murder of 23 Italian citizens.

Now, Judge Alessandro Arturi must decide which of the defendants from Bolivia, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay to prosecute; they would be tried in absentia and would only be subject to extradition requests if convicted and if an agreement exists between their country of origin and Italy.

Of the 140 initial suspects, several have died, such as the former president of Uruguay Juan María Bordaberry Arocena or the former Chilean military officer Odlanier Rafael Mena Salinas, but the fact that the murders, disappearances, and torture carried out during Operation Condor are being investigated and clarified is a contribution to the process of truth, justice, and reparation demanded by the victims and their families.

On Friday, the judge accepted that Italy, Uruguay, and the Uruguayan Frente Amplio be admitted as parties to the proceedings, and the Democratic Party of Italy (PD) has also announced that it will assist in the process and, should the trial finally take place, will help the victims' families so they can attend.

The list of 23 forcibly disappeared persons who held Italian nationality includes six Argentines—two kidnapped in Bolivia, two in Brazil, and two in Paraguay—four Chilean citizens kidnapped in their own country, and 13 Uruguayans disappeared in Argentina.

These are the defendants named by the prosecutor's office: Bolivia: General Luis Gómez Arce, head of the Second Intelligence Department of the General Staff between 1979 and 1980, and former president Luis García Meza Tejada.

Chile: Daniel Aguirre Mora, former police prefect; General Sergio Víctor Arellano Stark (Caravan of Death); General Juan Manuel Guillermo Contreras Sepúlveda (DINA); Brigadier Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo; Carlos Luco Astroza; Colonel Marcelo Luis Moren Brito; Sub-officer Orlando Moreno Vásquez; Colonel Hernán Jerónimo Ramírez; Colonel Rafael Francisco Ahumada Valderrama; former commander of the Tacna regiment Luis Joaquín Ramírez Pineda; and Brigadier Manuel Vásquez Chahuán.

Peru: former president Francisco Morales Bermúdez, Martín Martínez Garay, Germán Ruiz Figueroa, and Pedro Richter Prada. Uruguay: former military officers Gregorio Conrado Álvarez Armellino, José Ricardo Arab Fernández, Carlos Calcagno Gorlero, José Horacio Gavazzo Pereira, Juan Carlos Larcebeau Aguirre Garay, Pedro Antonio Mato Narbondo, Luis Alfredo Maurente Mata, Ricardo José Medina Blanco, Iván Paulós, and Ernesto Avelino Ramas Pereira.

Also on the list are José Felipe Sande Lima, Jorge Alberto Silveira Quesada, Ernesto Soca, Gilberto Valentín Vázquez Bisio, former lawyer Juan Carlos Blanco, and Ricardo Eliseo Chávez Dominguín.

Source: elclarin.cl, October 13, 2013

Life imprisonment for (ret.) military officer accused of torturing and killing young man from Magallanes

This Monday, the Italian justice system sentenced one of the most controversial Chilean military officers of the military dictatorship to life imprisonment: Captain (ret.) Manuel Abraham Vásquez Chahuán, the same man investigated as responsible for the torture and death of the young student from Magallanes, Juan Carlos Ruiz Mancilla.

The Roman court's decision relates to the Operation Condor case (1970-1980), which involves military personnel from Bolivia, Uruguay, Peru, and Chile in the deaths of dozens of people, including 23 Italian citizens.

This group of convicted individuals includes presidents, ministers, and Army officers, among them Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Daniel Aguirre Mora, Carlos Luco Astroza, Orlando Moreno Vásquez, and Manuel Abraham Vásquez Chahuán.

All were convicted of the crime of voluntary homicide and must also pay the costs of the trial and a series of indemnities to the families and associations that make up the prosecution. Vásquez had been arrested in 2010 for the death of the student from Magallanes and six other young members of the Communist Party, and was charged for the same case last year.

MAGALLANES CASE

Vásquez Chahuán became known in 1973 for having the Second Hunters Company of the Tucapel Regiment under his command, the center of operations for the so-called "Chacal Patrol," which housed various atrocities that ended in the death of an undetermined number of people.

It was there that a 21-year-old from Magallanes, university student Juan Carlos Ruiz Mancilla, lived his final hours. The Civil Construction student at the Universidad Técnica del Estado, Temuco branch, was at home with family in Punta Arenas when, on November 7, 1973, he was arrested and transported to the Ninth Region on a Chilean Air Force (FACh) plane.

His destination would be the Tucapel Regiment. Two days later, he was executed along with six other people. According to the background information that is part of the investigation, in which Vásquez Chahuán appears as the perpetrator of unlawful coercion and qualified homicide against the young man from Magallanes, the youth was loaded onto an Army truck and taken to the regiment's shooting range to be executed while tied to a stake.

The event gave rise to what is known as the "Polvorín case," given that the official report provided by the Army stated that the group of seven young men killed by gunfire had attempted to assault the facilities of the Tucapel Regiment.

While Manuel Vásquez pursued a military career that led him to become a brigadier, after serving in the DINA and CNI as part of the Mulchén and Purén Brigades, Juan Ruiz Mancilla still lives on in the memory of a family and in the feeling of recognition given to him by the community. Today, a street and a kindergarten in Punta Arenas (in the Villa Cardenal Raúl Silva Henríquez) bear his name.

Source: patagonianoticias.cl, July 9, 2019

Minister Alvaro Mesa prosecutes two (ret.) military officers for applying torture to a teacher and peasant leader in Cunco

A teacher and peasant leader from Cunco had a very hard time between September, October, and November 1973, after being repeatedly detained and tortured, until a priest recognized him and interceded on his behalf.

He was able to take refuge in the French embassy, the country where he lives to this day. This is the investigation carried out by the minister of the Court | minister on extraordinary visit for human rights violation cases for the jurisdictions of Temuco, Valdivia, Puerto Montt, and Coyhaique, Álvaro Mesa Latorre, who subjected two retired Army officials, Manuel Abraham Vásquez Chahuán and Juan Bautista Labraña Luvecce, to prosecution as perpetrators of the crime of applying torture to Luis Alberto Chihuailaf Arriagada.

The crime was perpetrated in the commune of Cunco between September and November 1973. In the resolution, the visiting minister did not grant Vásquez Chahuán and Labraña Luvecce the benefit of provisional release, ordering their entry into the facilities of the No. 8 Tucapel Detachment in Temuco, considering that the freedom of the accused constitutes a danger to the security of society and due to the legal sanction they face for the crime in which they are attributed participation.

In the investigation stage of the case, Minister Mesa Latorre managed to establish that after the coup d'état of September 1973, the Armed Forces and Order took control of the city of Temuco, with Iturriaga Marchesse, commander of the No. 8 Tucapel Infantry Regiment of this city, rising to power; he was also appointed as Head of the Temuco Garrison.

Patrols by air and land In this military unit, patrols of military personnel were formed and stationed in different parts of the city for the purposes of curfew control and guarding places classified as strategic by the military command.

In this sense, the patrols were composed of officers, non-commissioned officers, and conscript soldiers from the different units that made up the No. 8 Tucapel Infantry Regiment of Temuco, as their guard duty rotation required.

Later, these patrols were also assigned to various land and air operations, inside and outside the city of Temuco, in which case other members of the Armed Forces also participated alongside the military, such as the Investigations Police and/or the Chilean Air Force; they proceeded to detain people who had political or social relevance considered to be opponents of the military regime, who in turn were generally called upon through the military decrees that began to appear in the press of the time after September 11, 1973, to proceed with their detention.

Subsequently, the detainees were taken to the different detention centers arranged for that purpose, such as police stations, outposts, the Maquehue Air Base, the Tucapel Regiment, and, in many cases, taken to more than one detention center, as ordered by the officer in command of the respective operation, as evidenced, among other proofs, in the statements of Natacha María Carrión Osorio; Antonio Monserrat Mena; Berthold Erwin Bohn Sauterel; Juan Carlos Riveras Guzmán; Nivaldo Epuñán Currihual; and Luis Fernando Tabach Illanes.

Torture in the barracks Minister Mesa's investigation managed to establish that the Cunco Carabineros station was also a detention site that housed a large number of people detained solely for their political affiliation; many of whom, as stated, proceeded to present themselves voluntarily after being called by the press of the time; others were apprehended in their homes by the Carabineros officers of that station.

Also, after the operations, the detainees were taken to the cells, or to some dependency or stables of the same police unit, where they were interrogated, generally by military personnel in the presence of Carabineros from the same station, and tortured through the application of electric current to different parts of their bodies; as evidenced, among other proofs, in the statement of Ponciano Arnoldo Sagredo Lagos.

That was what Luis Alberto Chihuailaf Arriagada experienced, a primary school teacher and leader linked to the Peasant Communal Council of the commune of Cunco, who, in the period between September 14, 1973, and November of the same year, passed through different detention centers.

At that time, he was detained along with his brother Darwin Chihuailaf Arriagada, without an apparent judicial order and on a first occasion approximately on September 14, 1973, by a Carabineros patrol from the Cunco station, to be immediately taken to the facilities of that unit.

The origin of that detention was a military decree that, from the first days after the coup d'état, ordered them to present themselves. Upon arriving at that station, he was able to observe that other people who were sympathizers of the Salvador Allende government were also there in the same capacity; they, in turn, acknowledge having been held in that facility on the date indicated with Luis Alberto Chihuailaf Arriagada.

This is confirmed in the statements of Ponciano Sagredo Lagos and Juan Carlos Riveras Guzmán. Facts that are also confirmed by the testimonies of the Carabineros officers of the Cunco station who served in that police unit at that time.

On September 17, 1973, in the afternoon, he was transferred to the facilities of the Tucapel Regiment in Temuco, where he was tortured through the application of electric current to different parts of his body, without being able to identify his attackers for now, to finally be removed from that military facility and entered as a political prisoner into the facilities of the Temuco public jail on September 19, 1973, remaining there until October 11 of the same year, the date on which he was released, as evidenced by a certificate issued by the Temuco Penitentiary Compliance Center of the Chilean Gendarmerie. Detained in Toltén But it did not end there. Between the end of October and the beginning of November 1973, in the morning, Luis Alberto Chihuailaf Arriagada was detained again; this time in the town of Toltén, where he had been assigned by the Department of Primary Education. The detention on this occasion was carried out by a military patrol, who put him in a pickup truck and took him to the Toltén Carabineros station, a facility where, after remaining for about 4 hours, he was forced to board a helicopter along with 4 military personnel, who took them back to the Tucapel Regiment in Temuco. In this military unit, the helicopter landed and they proceeded to bring in two people, also detained for political reasons, whose identities correspond to Luis Alberto Alarcón Seguel (militant and regional leader of the MIR) and Manuel Alid (socialist militant and head of the Agricultural institutions in Cunco). In this instance, Alarcón Seguel recognizes the presence of Chihuailaf, stating that "upon boarding the helicopter I saw Luis Alberto Chihuailaf Arriagada, a primary school teacher and peasant leader from the Cunco area. I had no doubts left: the military now possessed information and were taking us to Cunco or some place in the area... For his part, Chihuailaf indicates in the process that "I knew Luis Alarcón Seguel before because I was secretary of the CUT of Cunco and Mr. Alarcón also worked as a peasant representative in the CUT... and I saw Luis Alarcón at the moment they brought me from Toltén by helicopter to the Tucapel Regiment, when the helicopter lands at the Regiment Alarcón gets on... I recognized Alarcón at that moment because I was not blindfolded." Then, the helicopter headed toward the Cunco station, a facility where Chihuailaf was taken to the stables of the unit where he was tortured through beatings and the application of electricity to a large part of his body. After remaining detained for two days in that station, he was again forced to board a helicopter commanded by military personnel, this time taking flight to the town of Quechurehue or Quechereguas, the place of origin of his parents. Mock execution There the helicopter landed and he was forced by military personnel to dig in search of "weapons," at the same instant that his captors beat him with kicks, shouted, insulted, and threatened him that he would be buried in the same holes he was digging. Finally, and with his face bloodied and wounds all over his body, he was tied to a pine tree with his arms outstretched, and a mock execution was then carried out. Facts that Luis Alberto Alarcón Seguel learned about immediately, while he was detained at the Tucapel Regiment in Temuco. In that operation, the conscript Manuel Vásquez Estrada and an instructor named Juan Bautista Labraña Luvecce were effectively present, both members at that time of the 2nd Hunters Company of the Tucapel Regiment of Temuco; they narrate in detail how the events happened in that operation ordered by the officers in command of that Company; a captain named Manuel Abrahán Vásquez Chahuán, who led it and was at that moment at the Cunco Carabineros station, and a lieutenant named Manuel Espinoza Ponce. Both officers ordered the transfer of Luis Alberto Chihuailaf Arriagada to the Quechurehue area "in search of weapons," a place where the victim was physically coerced. All these facts are contained in the statements of the aforementioned conscript and instructor; as well as in the statements of Gamaliel Edison Chihuailaf Arriagada and Ambrosio Paine Calbanca; also what was pointed out by Carlos Luco Astroza, an official of the Investigations Police, and the testimony of Francisco Huenchulaf Ñancucheo. From Quechereguas and in very poor physical condition, Chihuailaf was driven in the bed of a military truck and taken to a church gymnasium where the Army headquarters was installed. In that place, the victim was recognized by the priest of the temple, who interceded for him before a military officer named Carlos Luco Astroza, which is why he was released. A week later, he set off for Santiago, taking refuge in the French embassy, to leave Chile permanently for that country in February 1974, where he currently resides.

Source: litoralpress.cl, December 27, 2019

Operation Condor: Italian justice system sentences seven Chileans to life imprisonment

The Italian justice system sentenced former military officers and leaders of the repressive services of Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay, and Peru for their participation in the death of 23 people of Italian origin within the framework of Operation Condor, which was carried out in coordination with the dictatorships imposed in South America in the seventies.

According to what was reported by El País, in the case of Chile, the sentence applied to Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Orlando Moreno Vásquez, and Manuel Abraham Vásquez Chahuán, in addition to former detectives Daniel Aguirre Mora and Carlos Luco Astroza.

Previously, the sentence had been recorded against former uniformed officers Hernán Ramírez and Rafael Ahumada Valderrama. Along with them, former Peruvian president Francisco Morales Bermúdez; his prime minister Pedro Richter Prada, who died in July 2017; and former Peruvian military officer Germán Ruiz were convicted.

In addition, Bolivian dictator Luis García Meza, who died in April 2018, and his Minister of the Interior, Luis Arce Gómez, and a dozen former members of the Uruguayan Army were added. With this, the Rome court changed a first-instance sentence delivered in January 2017, which established eight life sentences and 19 defendants acquitted because the crimes had prescribed.

All have been convicted of the crimes of voluntary homicide and must also pay the costs of the trial. None of those involved attended the hearing that decreed the measure against them.

Source: eldinamo.com, July 8, 2019

Italian prosecutor's office requests life imprisonment for former Uruguayan military officers linked to Plan Condor

The Rome Public Prosecutor's Office requested life imprisonment for 24 members of the military juntas of Uruguay, Bolivia, Chile, and Peru accused of the disappearance of Italians within the framework of "Plan Condor," the repressive coordination of the Southern Cone dictatorships between 1970 and 1980, upon presenting an appeal of the first-instance sentences this Monday, March 18.

The first-instance trial concluded on January 17, 2017, with life sentences for the Uruguayan Juan Carlos Blanco, the Chileans Hernán Jerónimo Ramírez and Rafael Ahumada Valderrama, the Bolivians Luis García Meza and Luis Arce Gómez, and the Peruvians Francisco Morales Bermúdez, Pedro Richter Prada, and Germán Ruiz Figueroa.

Meanwhile, 19 others were acquitted or dismissed. This Monday, March 18, it was learned that Rome prosecutors Francesco Mollace and Tiziana Cugini appealed the Justice system's decision and requested that the 24 defendants be sentenced to life imprisonment, among whom are the Uruguayans: Jorge Troccoli, Pedro Mato Narbondo, José Ricardo Arab, José Nino Gavazzo, and Juan Carlos Larcebeau.

Life imprisonment is also requested for: Luis Alfredo Maurente, Ricardo José Medina, Ernesto Ramas, José Felipe Sande, Gilberto Vázquez, Jorge Silveira, and Ernesto Soca. Guilty While the former foreign minister of the dictatorship, Juan Carlos Blanco, was the only Uruguayan declared guilty in the first instance, he is also serving a sentence in our country for the murders of the then-legislators Zelmar Michelini and Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz, and the teacher Elena Quinteros.

The rest of the accused are: the former Bolivian Interior Minister Luis Arce Gómez and the Chileans: Carlos Luco Astroza, Orlando Moreno, Hernán Jerónimo Ramírez, Rafael Ahumada, Manuel Abraham Vásquez Chahuán, and Daniel Aguirre Mora.

Several of the defendants have already died, as is the case of the Uruguayans Iván Paulós and Gregorio Álvarez, who was convicted as a co-author in repeated cases of highly aggravated homicide and who died while serving his sentence in 2016.

Also dead are: the dictator of Bolivia Luis García Meza and the former prime minister of Peru, Pedro Richter Prada. The Rome prosecutor's office indicated that with its appeal it seeks "to obtain a life sentence for those who were part of an abominable extermination program, since the defendants are responsible for everything they are accused of because they have been executors of death."

Source: lr21.com.uy, March 18, 2019

Massacre at the Tucapel Regiment

Former military personnel and members of the Investigations police involved in the torture and murder of seven members of the regional leadership of the Communist Party and the Communist Youth (JJ.CC.) in Temuco on November 10, 1973, are nearing the procedural stage of indictment.

Among those prosecuted is retired General Carlos Oviedo Arriagada, brother of the current commander-in-chief of the army. He was detained in April of this year and is currently under nighttime house arrest at his home in Collipulli.

Authorities at the time attempted to cover up the murders by spreading the version that twenty extremists had fired upon the guard of the Tucapel Regiment’s ammunition dump and attempted to throw incendiary bombs inside the military unit. This is the so-called “Ammunition Dump Case” (Caso Polvorín), which the justice system has been investigating for years.

The intendant of Cautín province and head of the zone under a state of siege was Colonel Hernán Jerónimo Ramírez Ramírez, one of those prosecuted in this case.

The falsehood of the official version—intended to cover up the murders—could not be sustained. A strict curfew was in effect, the victims had been detained in their homes starting on November 5, and their relatives had brought them clothing and food at a police station and later at the regiment where they were transferred...

The victims' relatives filed a complaint in 1980; however, the justice system did not act immediately. The delay could result in the former intendant Ramírez, 93, benefiting from the so-called “biological impunity” denounced by former judge Alejandro Solís.

Nevertheless, on November 8, 2013, the minister of the Temuco Court of Appeals, Alvaro Mesa Latorre, indicted retired General Carlos Eduardo Oviedo Arriagada due to well-founded presumptions of his participation in the seven qualified homicides.

That ruling involved 24 other people, including former military personnel and Investigations police officers. Carlos Oviedo Arriagada, 63, was an officer of the Mountain Detachment No. 8 of the Tucapel Infantry Regiment in Temuco.

MINISTER MESA ACTS

Minister Alvaro Mesa was appointed in September 2011 to investigate various human rights violations committed in the region.

The judge estimated that there were well-founded presumptions of the participation of retired General Carlos Oviedo, who was one of the regiment's officers when the events occurred and could not have been unaware of what happened, even though he was not present on the night of the execution of the seven prisoners.

The Penal Code, in its article 15, states that, “the following are considered perpetrators: 1. Those who take part in the execution of the act, whether in an immediate and direct manner, or by preventing or attempting to prevent it from being avoided. 2.

Those who force or directly induce another to execute it. 3. Those who, having conspired for its execution, facilitate the means by which the act is carried out or witness it without taking immediate part in it.”

Those detained in Temuco following the military coup were taken to the Tucapel Regiment, where the Military Prosecutor's Office operated. In the so-called “small gymnasium,” they were interrogated and tortured with electricity, asphyxiation using plastic bags, vinegar was poured into their nasal passages, they were beaten, soldiers walked on them, etc.

And it was there, starting on November 5, 1973, that the leaders of the Communist Party and the Communist Youth in Temuco were held.

IN THE TORTURE CHAMBER

Punto Final gained access to testimonies from the case. A conscript who belonged to the 2nd Hunters Company reported that he brought water to the detainee Pedro Mardones inside a mechanical workshop at the regiment. The detainee was unable to hold the glass due to the wounds and contusions on his hands and arms.

Officer Carlos Oviedo was there. Another conscript declared having seen him enter the torture chamber where the victims were taken blindfolded.

Oviedo, for his part, has declared that when the seven communist militants were murdered, he was in Santiago, sent to guard radio and television antennas. However, he has not been able to prove that claim, as that mission does not appear in his army service record. Minister Mesa considered his version not credible.

The magistrate established that at the end of Friday, November 10, 1973, seven detainees held in the so-called “small gymnasium” were taken out of that place.

Lieutenant Manuel Abraham Vásquez Chahuán and Second Lieutenant Espinoza were present, along with other military personnel. Vásquez ordered the prisoners to be loaded onto a truck, and they were transported to the regiment's shooting range, called “Isla Cautín.” Minutes later, the sentries at the guard post saw a caravan of military vehicles enter.

THEY WERE EXECUTED TIED TO STAKES

Second Sergeant Arnoldo Aedo Matus, one of the key witnesses, provided the justice system with an account of what happened.

Aedo stated that around 8:00 PM on November 10, 1973, Captain Rodolfo Vargas Campos (deceased) ordered him to be available in the guardroom with his SIG rifle. Aedo, Vargas, Lieutenant Norberto Francisco Uribe Moroni, and others gathered in the guardroom and walked to the shooting range.

“As we passed the right side of the range,” he said, “along a row of eucalyptus trees, I noticed that on the left side, about sixty meters away, there were four people standing one next to the other.” Two were in uniform and the other two were civilians: “The uniformed men were the commander of the Tucapel Regiment, Pablo Iturriaga Marchesse (deceased), and his aide, Lieutenant Jaime Guillermo García Covarrubias, while the civilians wearing dark coats were the military prosecutor Alfonso Podlech, and I could not identify the other civilian.” It was later established that the second civilian was Podlech’s aide, Orlando Moreno Vásquez.

Aedo saw the seven prisoners at the range, each tied to a stake, separated from each other by one meter.

A SHOT TO THE NAPE

“Next,” Aedo added, “Captain Vargas ordered us to position ourselves in front of the prisoners, about four meters away. Captain Vargas stepped forward and went to the first prisoner located on the right and shot him in the head with his Stager pistol.

Then he positioned himself in front of the second prisoner and asked him what else he had to say, but seconds later he also shot him in the head. The same happened with the others, but with the last one, who was the oldest of all, Captain Vargas said to him, ‘Come on, old man, are you going to say something?’, implying that if he spoke he could be saved, to which the prisoner replied: ‘We will see each other in heaven,’ so Captain Vargas shot him in the head.”

Subsequently, Vargas withdrew and “positioned himself behind the riflemen and ordered us to finish off the prisoners with the SIG rifle; the entire magazine was discharged, one magazine from each rifle onto the bodies,” Aedo pointed out.

The cover-up of the massacre was planned. Vargas ordered Aedo to fire a full magazine from the rifle at a thick eucalyptus tree to simulate an attack.

Sergeant Hernán Rodrigo Santiesteban Domínguez (deceased), a corporal who had arrived from Santiago, and another sergeant, all from the First Hunters Company, also participated in the execution, along with Sergeant José Gajardo Gajardo (deceased) from the 2nd Hunters Company.

It was past 11:00 PM on Saturday, November 10, 1973. Captain Vargas ordered them to withdraw and remain silent about what had happened. The next day, the “news” of the supposed attack on the regiment’s ammunition dump appeared in the press and on Temuco radio stations.

From the group of detainees, the former communist leader of Cautín, Herman Carrasco Paul, survived. He was saved by his father-in-law, René Beltrán, an army non-commissioned officer, who managed to have him taken out of the Tucapel Regiment on Friday and moved to the Temuco jail.

ALSO PROSECUTED AS AN ACCESSORY

“They tortured us mercilessly, particularly on Thursday night when they took us to the regiment’s gymnasium without blindfolds. Jaime García hit us with a riding crop and tried to make us commit sodomitic acts,” testified Herman Carrasco.

In addition to the seven executions, the now-retired General Carlos Oviedo was prosecuted on May 5 as an accessory to the homicide of Waldo Rivera Concha, 33, a father of five, who was murdered on April 30, 1974, in Temuco.

Rivera was an employee of the sanitary works company, had no known political affiliation, and was killed in the street by members of the Andean Company of the Tucapel Regiment. The military attempted to hide Waldo Rivera’s body, but the victim’s wife, Elsa Ramona Altamirano Pereda, managed to find out that he had been buried and succeeded in exhuming the body on May 10, 1974.

Another case in which retired General Carlos Oviedo was involved is the murder of Rubén Eduardo Morales Jara, 28, a mathematics professor at the University of Chile, Temuco branch, and a militant of the MIR.

The events occurred before the coup, as a result of the Arms Control Law approved by the opposition to President Allende’s government following a motion by Christian Democrat Senator Juan de Dios Carmona Peralta.

This law allowed the armed forces to carry out raids on factories and homes in search of weapons. In August 1973, a supposed guerrilla school was reported in Nehuentúe, in the coastal sector of Carahue.

Professor Rubén Morales was detained on September 5, 1973, by a military patrol and remains a forcibly disappeared person to this day. The testimony of a conscript indicates that he saw Oviedo enter the interrogation area of the Tucapel Regiment, where Morales was a prisoner.

Oviedo was the officer in charge of that investigation. However, in this case, the evidence against him was not conclusive, and the accusation did not proceed.

Victims of the “Ammunition Dump Case”

• Florentino Alberto Molina Ruiz, 44, member of the central committee and regional secretary in Cautín of the PC. The autopsy report indicated that the cause of death was cranial-encephalic explosion and multiple gunshot wounds.
• Juan Antonio Chávez Rivas, 26, student at the State Technical University and regional secretary of the JJ.CC.: cranial-encephalic explosion, multiple gunshot wounds.
• Víctor Hugo Valenzuela Velásquez, 22, public employee, propaganda secretary of the JJ.CC. of Cautín: cranial-encephalic attrition, multiple gunshot wounds. (Attrition is an injury produced by a blunt weapon).
• Juan Carlos Ruiz Mancilla, 21, civil construction student at the UTE and militant of the JJ.CC.: shock and comminuted fracture of the pelvis and right femur, multiple gunshot wounds.
• Amador Francisco Montero Mosquera, 21, electrical engineering student at the UTE, militant of the JJ.CC.: cranial-encephalic attrition, multiple gunshot wounds.
• Pedro Juan Mardones Jofré, 22, student at the UTE: cranial-encephalic attrition, multiple blunt gunshot wounds.
• Carlos Aillanir Huenchual, 57, peasant: primary shock, multiple transfixing blunt gunshot wounds to the thorax and abdomen.

Source: elsiglo.cl, August 17, 2017

Italian Supreme Court confirms life sentences for 4 Chileans involved in Operation Condor

The convicted are former DINA member Pedro Espinoza, military officer Daniel Aguirre Mora, PDI member Carlos Luco Astroz, and the former intendant, now deceased, Hernán Ramírez Ramírez.

The Supreme Court of Italy confirmed the life sentences for 14 Chilean and Uruguayan military officers and leaders involved in Operation Condor, specifically accused of the deaths of Italian citizens.

The convicted Chileans are former DINA member Pedro Espinoza, military officer Daniel Aguirre Mora, PDI member Carlos Luco Astroz, and the former intendant, now deceased, Hernán Ramírez Ramírez.

The Italian Court thus revalidated the July 2019 sentence issued by the Rome Court of Appeal, in the second instance, against 24 human rights criminals.

The investigation took more than 20 years, as it was opened in 1998, and the sentences are of high value as they must be served in absentia.

Regarding this confirmation of justice, human rights lawyer Cristian Cruz noted that they are acting in accordance with the significance of the crimes.

“These are sentences consistent with the gravity of the crime, with the way the states operated through intelligence services and armed forces, where there was a community to commit crimes not only within each of the territories—Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina—but it has become clear that, in general, the intelligence services and the dictatorships operated even outside their own borders, outside the borders that formed the Condor community.

One of the cases is the Letelier case or what happened to Bernardo Leighton in Italy.”

“What the Italian justice system has done is recognize the responsibility of the agents in this entire web of evil that the governments and agents carried out,” he added.

The Supreme Court’s decision follows one already known last week, in which the conviction of Colonel Rafael Ahumada Valderrama, non-commissioned officer Orlando Moreno Vásquez, and Brigadier Manuel Vásquez Chauan was ratified.

“I dwell on Rafael Ahumada Valderrama because he has been convicted in Chile for the forced disappearance of 2 Uruguayan citizens and one Brazilian in September 1973; that is, prior to what has been called Operation Condor, at least one of these agents had already acted against citizens of other countries,” the lawyer Cristian Cruz expressed regarding these convictions.

On the other hand, regarding the international importance of this ruling and how it should be symbolic in Chile, the lawyer stated that “the correct perspective today is to demonstrate that these crimes are internationally prosecutable, that they generate international repudiation.

Proof of this is that courts in other countries have investigated and ruled on events committed in Chile or in the Southern Cone.”

“The magnitude of the sentences is also relevant. Here in Chile, there are not usually such high sentences, although certainly our courts in general are indeed investigating. I believe they are changing their criteria regarding the statute of limitations, where the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has already given its opinion that it was not appropriate to apply it,” he added.

Furthermore, Cruz highlighted that this type of conviction makes evident the perseverance that the relatives and human rights organizations have had in seeking justice despite the passage of time and in different places.

Source: radio.uchile.cl, July 9, 2021

Operation Condor: Extradition sought for former Chilean military officers convicted in Italy

An Italian delegation composed of a lawyer and representatives of the victims arrived in Chile to seek the extradition of former military officers convicted of human rights violations within the framework of Operation Condor during the Pinochet dictatorship. Two of them remain at liberty.

This Friday, an Italian delegation arrived in Chile, composed of a lawyer and representatives of the victims of Operation Condor, who are seeking the extradition of the Chilean former military officers convicted of human rights violations in this case.

This comes after more than 20 years of investigations and judicial proceedings, when the Supreme Court of the European country concluded in 2021 the so-called “Condor Process,” which was initiated in 1998 following the arrest of dictator Augusto Pinochet in London.

The Italian litigation for Operation Condor sentenced 24 Latin American military officers and repressors involved to life imprisonment, six of them of Chilean nationality.

In addition to seeking methods for extradition, the Italian delegation will make contact with the civil parties and witnesses of the trial that took place in Rome and visit the places where the events occurred. Along with this, they will have various meetings with the victims' relatives, as well as with witnesses from the Rome trial, and with parliamentary and government authorities.

The facts The military officers convicted in the trial are accused of torturing, forcibly disappearing, and murdering 43 Latin American citizens of Italian origin in the 1970s: six Argentines kidnapped in Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Brazil; four Chileans kidnapped in Chile; and thirteen Uruguayans kidnapped in Argentina.

To these are added another 20 Uruguayans kidnapped in Argentina, but whose disappearance is attributed to only one of the defendants, the Italian-Uruguayan Jorge Néstor Troccoli, who was a member of the Uruguayan navy’s intelligence service.

The convicted Chileans, all of them to life imprisonment, are Daniel Aguirre Mora, former prefect of the Investigations Police; Carlos Luco Astroza, a PDI official (both currently at liberty); former non-commissioned officer Orlando Moreno Vásquez; former colonel Rafael Ahumada Valderrama; and former brigadiers and DINA members Pedro Espinoza Bravo and Manuel Vásquez Chahuán.

All were convicted for the disappearance, torture, and death of their victims within the framework of Operation Condor. So far, extradition has only been requested for the first three, while those of Ahumada, Espinoza, and Vásquez are in process.

The delegation is composed of Arturo Salerni, defense lawyer for relatives of Operation Condor victims; Jorge Ithurburu, representative for several of the civil parties in the trial, who also accompanied and assisted the families of the disappeared Chileans from their first complaints in 1999 until the sentences of 2019 and 2021; and Sofía Ithurburu, media officer for 24marzo.it, a non-governmental organization that promoted the action during these years and supported relatives and lawyers in the process.

The victims of the process

• Juan José Montiglio Murúa: 24 years old, PS, head of the GAP unit, was detained at the Palacio de la Moneda on the day of the coup d'état, taken to the Tacna Regiment, and murdered in Peldehue on 09/13/1973. He remains to this day in the status of a forcibly disappeared person. For his case, former colonel Rafael Ahumada Valderrama was convicted, whose extradition has been requested and is pending resolution.
• Omar Roberto Venturelli Leonelli: 31 years old, former priest, militant of the MIR, professor at the Department of Education of the Catholic University, Temuco branch. He was detained in Temuco on September 25, 1973, when he presented himself voluntarily after being called by radio. He was taken to the Tucapel Regiment and then to the Temuco jail. The family stated that they were informed that he had been released on October 4; from that date on, they searched for him without result. For his case, former PDI members Daniel Aguirre Mora and Carlos Luco Astroza, and former non-commissioned officer Orlando Moreno were convicted.
• Juan Bosco Maino Canales: 27 years old, MAPU, student. He was detained on May 26, 1976, along with two other MAPU militants, the married couple Elizabeth Rekas Urra and Antonio Elizondo Ormaechea, in the couple’s apartment. All were taken to Villa Grimaldi, from where they disappeared. For his case, Brigadier Pedro Espinoza Bravo was sentenced to life imprisonment.
• Jaime Patricio Donato Avendaño: 41 years old, member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, electrical mechanic, was detained on 05/05/1976 along with four other PC leaders in a “mousetrap” set up by DINA agents at the property located at 1587 Conferencia Street. For his case, Brigadier Pedro Espinoza Bravo was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Source: eldesconcierto.cl, April 15, 2022

Temuco Court confirms conviction against former Army brigadier for torture of primary school teacher and peasant leader in Temuco in 1973

In another human rights violation case, the Temuco Court of Appeals confirmed the sentence that convicted former Army officer—a captain at the time of the events—Manuel Abraham Vásquez Chahuán and former non-commissioned officer of the same uniformed institution Juan Bautista Labraña Luvecce to 3 years of effective prison, as perpetrators of the consummated crime of application of torture, as a crime against humanity, against the teacher and peasant leader Luis Alberto Chihuailaf Arriagada, a former political prisoner.

The crime was perpetrated between October and November 1973 in various facilities and locations in Cunco, Temuco, and the town of Quechereguas.

In a unanimous ruling (case roll 804-2022), the Second Chamber of the appellate court confirmed the sentence issued in August 2022 by the minister on extraordinary visit for human rights violation cases in the Temuco jurisdiction, Álvaro Mesa Latorre, which also imposed on Vásquez Chahuán and Labraña Luvecce the legal accessory penalties of suspension from public office and employment for the duration of the sentences.

Luis Chihuailaf was a primary school teacher and peasant leader belonging to the Peasant Communal Council of Cunco. After the military coup, he was detained on repeated occasions, the first of which took place on September 14, 1973, by a patrol of Carabineros from the Cunco Station, who locked him in the facilities of that place to subject him to beatings and torture.

The origin of that detention was a military decree that, from the first days after the coup d'état, ordered him to present himself; other people who were sympathizers of Salvador Allende’s government were also detained in the aforementioned place.

On September 17, he was transferred to the No. 8 “Tucapel” Infantry Regiment of Temuco, where he was subjected to torture and abuse by uniformed personnel in charge of the repression of left-wing individuals and the punishment of political prisoners.

A couple of days later, he was admitted to the Temuco public jail, from where he was released on October 11. However, at the end of October or beginning of November 1973, in the morning hours, Luis Alberto Chihuailaf was detained again; this time in the town of Toltén, where he was working as assigned by the Department of Primary Education.

On this occasion, the detention was carried out by a patrol of Army uniformed personnel, who put him in a pickup truck and transported him to the Carabineros Station of Toltén, a facility where, after remaining for a few hours, he was forced to board a helicopter along with 4 soldiers, who took him back to the Tucapel Regiment of Temuco, but only to make a stopover, as two other political prisoners were loaded onto the helicopter at this facility.

Immediately, the uniformed captors headed with the detainees toward the Carabineros Station of Cunco, where the detainees were placed in the facility’s stables to be tortured there by the soldiers, all of whom belonged to the Tucapel Regiment, and specifically to the 2nd Hunters Company commanded by Manuel Vásquez Chahuán, seconded by the then-lieutenant Manuel Espinoza Ponce (already deceased), and where the then-sergeant Labraña Luvecce served as an instructor.

The Carabineros Station of Cunco was a detention center that concentrated a large number of people detained solely for their political affiliation or affinity with the deposed popular government. Many of the people detained in that police facility had surrendered voluntarily after being called to do so by the press of the time, which replicated the military decrees; others were apprehended in their homes by Carabineros officials of said station, and many in operations organized for that purpose in coordination with military authorities or by their order.

In that detention center, the prisoners were placed in cells, in some facility, or in the stables of the same police unit, a place where they were interrogated by soldiers in the presence of Carabineros from the same station and tortured through the application of electric current to different parts of their bodies, among other torments.

A few days later, again by helicopter, they took Luis Chihuailaf to the town of Quechereguas, the detainee’s place of origin and where his parents and relatives lived. There, the helicopter descended, and he was forced by the soldiers to dig in search of “weapons,” while at the same time his captors beat him with kicks, shouted, insulted, and threatened him that he would be buried in the same holes he was digging.

Finally, and with his face bloodied and wounds all over his body, he was tied to a tree with his arms outstretched, and a mock execution was performed on him.

From Quechereguas and in very poor physical condition, Luis Chihuailaf was taken in the bed of a military truck and transported to Cunco to a church gymnasium where the army headquarters operating in that area was installed.

In that place, he was recognized by the priest of the temple, who interceded for him before a soldier, due to which he was released. A week later, he set off for Santiago, taking refuge in an embassy to leave Chile permanently in February 1974.

Manuel Vásquez Chahuán, after his repressive expertise in the south, continued his career by fulfilling command functions in the Leopardo Group of the DINA’s Purén Brigade, a career he extended until reaching the rank of Army brigadier.

Source: resumen.cl, January 2, 2023

Operation Condor: House arrest for former DINA agents convicted in Italy

The military personnel are currently facing an extradition process at the request of Italy, in order to serve a life sentence in that foreign country.

Supreme Court Justice Ángela Vivanco Martínez ordered house arrest for four former agents of the dictatorship, who were sentenced to life imprisonment by the Italian justice system for the crime of murdering 43 Latin American citizens of Italian origin in the 1970s, within the framework of Operation Condor.

Among them are four Chilean victims. These are former agents Orlando Moreno Vásquez, Manuel Vasquez Chahuán, Rafael Ahumada Valderrama, and Daniel Aguirre Mora. Of the other two requested, one is deceased and the other, Pedro Espinoza Bravo, is currently imprisoned in Punta Peuco serving various sentences for other crimes against humanity.

The military personnel are currently facing an extradition process at the request of Italy, in which representatives of the victims have joined as parties. Among them, lawyers Nelson Caucoto and Francisco Bustos are acting on behalf of the daughter of Juan José Montiglio Murúa, one of the four Italian-Chilean victims.

Montiglio was 24 years old, a member of the Socialist Party, and a unit chief of the Personal Guard of President Allende (GAP). He was detained at the Palacio de la Moneda on the day of the military coup, subsequently taken to the Tacna Regiment, and murdered in Peldehue two days later. To this date, he remains in the status of forcibly disappeared.

Previously, the criminals were under the precautionary measure of a national travel ban, which was modified at the request of the representation of the Republic of Italy, the Human Rights Program, and the plaintiffs, who requested a more intensive precautionary measure, resulting in the granting of full house arrest.

For lawyer Francisco Bustos, this new measure dictated by Magistrate Vivanco is of great importance, since "as we are nearing the end of this phase of the process, the need to ensure that the requested individuals are at the disposal of the court is recognized.

Likewise, I am confident that we will demonstrate that all the requirements to grant the extradition are met and achieve the fulfillment of the sentences imposed by the Court of Rome."

Sentence 20 years later

The other Italian-Chilean victims are Omar Roberto Venturelli Leonelli (31), a former priest and member of the MIR, detained on September 25, 1973; Juan Bosco Maino Canales (27), a member of the MAPU and student, detained on May 26, 1976; and Jaime Patricio Donato Avendaño (41), a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and electrical mechanic, detained on May 5, 1976.

In 1998, at the urging of their relatives, the Italian justice system initiated the investigation into this process, and only after 20 years did the Supreme Court of Italy issue the ruling that sentenced 24 Latin American genocidaires involved in Operation Condor to life imprisonment.

In April of last year, an Italian delegation composed of a lawyer and a representative of the victims visited our country to learn details of the process developing in Chile, contribute to raising awareness about this historic trial in our country, and collaborate with the extradition of those involved and convicted in this case.

Source: eldesconcierto.cl, March 24, 2023

El Polvorín Case: Judge Álvaro Mesa sentences retired military personnel and Army collaborators for the homicides and illegal duress of seven forcibly disappeared victims

In the civil aspect, the visiting judge accepted the filed lawsuit and ordered the state to pay a total compensation of $2,780,000,000 (two billion seven hundred eighty million pesos) for moral damages to the victims' families.

The extraordinary visiting judge for human rights violation cases for the jurisdictions of the Courts of Appeals of Temuco, Valdivia, Puerto Montt, and Coyhaique, Álvaro Mesa Latorre, issued sentence number 78 on the matter, and convicted 23 retired military personnel and Army collaborators for their responsibility in the qualified homicides and illegal duress against Florentino Alberto Molina Ruiz, Juan Antonio Chávez Rivas, Víctor Hugo Valenzuela Velásquez, Juan Carlos Ruiz Mancilla, Amador Francisco Montero Mosquera, Pedro Juan Mardones Jofré, and Carlos Aillañir Huenchual, perpetrated in the commune of Temuco in November 1973.

In the sentence (docket 113.089), Judge Mesa Latorre sentenced Óscar Alfonso Ernesto Podlech Michaud to life imprisonment for his responsibility as the perpetrator of the 7 qualified homicides and 10 years of imprisonment for his responsibility as the perpetrator of 7 crimes of illegal duress against the seven victims.

Meanwhile, Daniel San Juan Clavería, Omar Burgos Dejean, Hernán Raúl Quiroz Barra, Raúl Binaldo Schonherr Frías, and Orlando Moreno Vásquez must serve a life sentence as accomplices to the 7 qualified homicides and a 10-year prison sentence as perpetrators of illegal duress.

The accused Juan Guillermo García Covarrubias, Pablo Domingo Gran López, Romilio Osvaldo Lavín Muñoz, Carlos Eduardo Oviedo Arriagada, Raimundo Ignacio García Covarrubias, Norberto Francisco Uribe Moroni, Pedro Guillermo Manuel Tichahuer Salcedo, and Juan Bautistas Labraña Luvecce will serve life sentences as accomplices to the 7 qualified homicides and 427 days in prison as accomplices to the 7 crimes of illegal duress.

Manuel Abraham Vásquez Chahuán will serve a life sentence as the perpetrator of the 7 qualified homicides.

Additionally, Gabriel Alfonso Dittus Marín, Héctor Mauricio Villablanca Huenulao, Sergio Orlando Vallejos Garcés, Juan Carlos Concha Belmar, and Manuel Rafael Campos Ceballos will serve a life sentence as accomplices to the 7 qualified homicides.

Arnoldo Aedo Matus will serve a 20-year prison sentence as an accomplice to the 7 homicides.

Libardo Hernán Schwartenski Rubio will serve a 10-year prison sentence as the perpetrator of 7 crimes of illegal duress.

Finally, José Raúl Inzunza Reyes was sentenced to 427 days in prison as the perpetrator of 7 crimes of illegal duress.

In the sentence, Judge Mesa Latorre established the following facts:

A.- That, immediately following the military pronouncement of September 11, 1973, the armed forces and security forces took control of the city of Temuco, with Colonel Hernán Jerónimo Ramírez Ramírez (deceased), Commander of the "La Concepción" Regiment of Lautaro, establishing himself as Intendant; and Colonel Pablo Iturriaga Marchesse (deceased), Commander of the No. 8 "Tucapel" Infantry Regiment of this city, as Governor of Temuco, who also remained as Chief of the Temuco Garrison.

B.- That on the same day, September 11, 1973, Temuco lawyer Oscar Alfonso Ernesto Podlech Michaud, who was also a Reserve Lieutenant of the Chilean Army, was called to collaborate with the new regime to support the work of the Military Prosecutor's Office that operated within the unit and was in charge of the Second Commander, Major Luis Jofré Soto (deceased).

This officer, however, had to assume greater functions as Second Commander 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 communiqués published in the written press and on the radio, or who were brought in as detainees from different points in the region by police and military patrols.

Given the high number of detainees and people called to testify, the Military Prosecutor's Office was reinforced to carry out its work with officials of the Judiciary who were requested from the Temuco Court of Appeals by the aforementioned lawyer Podlech Michaud, who, acting as Ad-Hoc Prosecutor, made a presentation to the Plenary of the Court of Appeals, after which some clerks from different courts and a Rapporteur of the Court were assigned on service commission.

Due to the lack of knowledge in criminal procedural matters, added to his weak character and his work as Second Commander of the regiment, Major Luis Jofré Soto began delegating functions as Military Prosecutor to the lawyer Oscar Alfonso Ernesto Podlech Michaud, advisor to the Prosecutor's Office, who began to hold the position of de facto Prosecutor, to the point that he conducted jail visits and that lawyers, relatives, and even ecclesiastical dignitaries consulted him regarding the fate of the detainees.

However, Major Jofré Soto continued to sign the majority of administrative documents and participated in some interrogations of detainees.

C.- That the people called to appear before the Military Prosecutor's Office and those brought in as detainees were kept in facilities located next to the guardhouse and in the large gymnasium. Once interrogated by personnel of the Military Prosecutor's Office, by detectives Aquiles Alfonso Poblete Müller (deceased), Daniel San Juan Clavería, and Hernán Raúl Quiroz Barra of the Investigative Police attached to the regiment, or by the officers themselves who participated in these activities, among whom were Jaime Guillermo García Covarrubias, Raimundo Ignacio García Covarrubias, Pablo Domingo Gran López, Mario Hernán Arias Díaz (deceased), Carlos Eduardo Oviedo Arriagada, Norberto Francisco Uribe Moroni, Pedro Guillermo Manuel Tichahuer Salcedo, Romilio Osvaldo Lavín Muñoz, and non-commissioned officers, among whom were Juan Bautista Labraña Luvecce, Orlando Moreno Vásquez, and Raúl Binaldo Schonherr Frías, 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.

D.- That also, by September 1973, in the No. 8 "Tucapel" Infantry Regiment 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 dependency some non-commissioned officers of that institution also performed functions, among whom were Juan Bautista Labraña Luvecce, Orlando Moreno Vásquez, and Raúl Binaldo Schonherr Frías, work that was reinforced after September 11, 1973, with the addition of Investigative Police officials Aquiles Alfonso Poblete Müller (deceased), Daniel San Juan Clavería, and Hernán Raúl Quiroz Barra, mentioned above, and Carabineros, among whom was Omar Burgos Dejean, 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 joined the intelligence tasks, among whom was Manuel Abraham Vásquez Chahuán, as well as enlisted men and conscripts of the regiment. As the days went by, the Military Prosecutor's Office and the Second Intelligence Section began to work jointly to interrogate the detainees, as in this case, who remained reclined 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 Company and the Mortar Company, 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 at the Military Prosecutor's Office and physically pressured in one of the aforementioned facilities to "soften them up" before or after these interrogations, as in this case. 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, as in this case. Participating in this task were conscript soldiers, among whom were Manuel Rafael Campos Ceballos, Juan Carlos Concha Belmar, Sergio Orlando Vallejos Garcés, Gabriel Alfonso Dittus Marín, Héctor Mauricio Villablanca Huenulao, Juan Humberto Carrillo Rebolledo, Libardo Schwartenski Rubio, and José Raúl Inzunza Reyes, and a Carabinero, Omar Burgos Dejean, who collaborated with Captain Nelson Ubilla Toledo and with the Investigative Police detectives who were there, Aquiles Alfonso Poblete Müller (deceased), Daniel San Juan Clavería, and Hernán Raúl Quiroz Barra. Most of the officers of the "Tucapel" regiment and some non-commissioned soldiers from the Headquarters and Services Companies also participated in the interrogation and/or torture sessions of detainees in those places, among whom was José Raúl Inzunza Reyes, from the Mortar, Hunter, and Second Section companies, all of whom entered these facilities at different times.

E.- That within the aforementioned military unit, a special group called "Patrulla Brava" (Brave Patrol) or "Patrulla Chacal" (Jackal Patrol) was formed, integrated by non-commissioned soldiers and conscripts of the 2nd Hunter Company, among whom were Manuel Rafael Campos Ceballos, Juan Carlos Concha Belmar, Sergio Orlando Vallejos Garcés, Gabriel Alfonso Dittus Marín, Héctor Mauricio Villablanca Huenulao, Juan Humberto Carrillo Rebolledo, and Libardo Schwartenski Rubio, under the orders of Sub-Lieutenant Manuel Espinoza Ponce (deceased), who in turn received orders from Lieutenant Manuel Abraham Vásquez Chahuán, who was in command of the Company. This group was in charge, among other functions, of guarding the detainees who were kept in the facilities of the "Tucapel" regiment of Temuco.

F.- That during the days following September 11, 1973, a significant number of people were killed or disappeared in the IX region, with several of these deaths being explained by regional military authorities through the publication of communiqués issued either from the Intendancy or the Temuco Military Garrison.

The communiqué that explained the events subject to this investigation, in light of the evidence gathered in this process, gives an implausible version of how the events of the night of November 10, 1973, unfolded, taking into consideration what was declared by Manuel Ángel Fernández Carranza, who, after the events of November 10, 1973, and upon returning from a mission he was entrusted with toward the Pucón sector in search of guerrillas, was summoned by the then-commander of the No. 8 Tucapel Regiment of Temuco, Pablo Iturriaga Marchesse (deceased), to inform him that the assault on the ammunition dump had not been such, but rather an execution carried out at the shooting range, information he gave him personally so that he would not find out through rumors.

G.- That Florentino Alberto Molina Ruiz, a member of the Central Committee and Regional Secretary of the Communist Party, was detained and taken from his home on Monday, November 5, 1973, by two Carabineros who were members of the Civil Commission, who transported him in a red pickup truck to the Second Police Station of Carabineros of Temuco, where he spent the night in a cell.

At dawn the following day, he was transferred to the "Tucapel" Regiment of Temuco by order of the Military Prosecutor's Office of Temuco, remaining reclined in that place until the night of November 10, 1973.

During that period, his wife went daily to leave him clothes and food, which were channeled through the guards at the entrance of the military compound. In turn, Molina Ruiz would send her his used clothes as a sign that he was still detained in that place.

Molina Ruiz, who was missing an arm due to a work accident, was seen as a detainee inside the aforementioned military compound by Hermán Carrasco Paúl, who was also in the same condition, who pointed out that both were victims of illegal duress. He was also recognized due to his disability by some conscripts who guarded them.

H.- That Juan Antonio Chávez Rivas, a student at the State Technical University, Regional Secretary, and member of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth, was detained on November 6, 1973, by two Carabineros who were members of the Civil Commission, who transported him in a red pickup truck to the Second Police Station of Carabineros of Temuco, where he spent the night.

The next day, he was transferred to the "Tucapel" Regiment of Temuco. Relatives of the detainee approached the military unit to ask about him, where they were told that he was not there, despite the fact that he was seen in the courtyard of the military compound, heavily guarded and in very poor physical condition.

I.- That Víctor Hugo Valenzuela Velásquez, a public employee and propaganda secretary of the Communist Youth of Cautín, was detained on November 7, 1973, around 10:00 a.m., at the Real Estate Registrar of Temuco, where he worked.

The arresting personnel, who were dressed in civilian clothes, belonged to the Army Intelligence Service, one of them being a Sergeant of the "Tucapel" Regiment of Temuco. Relatives of the detainee went to the "Tucapel" Regiment, where they confirmed the fact of the detention and for three days delivered clothes and blankets for him at the guardhouse.

J.- That Juan Carlos Ruiz Mancilla, a Civil Construction student at the State Technical University and member of the Communist Youth, traveled to the city of Punta Arenas, where his parents lived, after September 11, 1973. In that place, he was detained on November 7 of that same year and transported by plane to Temuco, where he was taken to the "Tucapel" Regiment.

K.- That Amador Francisco Montero Mosquera, an Electrical Engineering student at the State Technical University and member of the Communist Youth, was detained at his home on November 7, 1973, by personnel of the Carabineros Civil Commission and transported to the Tucapel Regiment of Temuco. Relatives went to that place to find out about his situation and to deliver food and clothes to him.

L.- That Pedro Juan Mardones Jofré, a student at the State Technical University, was detained at his home and transported to the Tucapel Regiment of Temuco. The conscript soldier of the 2nd Section of the 2nd Hunter Company, Luis Humberto Llamunao Huaiquinao, asserted that it was his turn to bring water to Mardones Jofré, who was reclined in a warehouse located inside a mechanical workshop.

At that moment, he noticed that the detainee had a very injured hand, making it impossible for him to hold the glass that was offered to him.

M.- That Carlos Aillañir Huenchual, a farmer and sympathizer of the Popular Unity government, was detained on November 6, 1973, by a military patrol that was moving in an institutional 3/4 truck. The detention was carried out in the rural sector of Pelales, in the town of Quepe, where the house of a brother of the detainee was located.

The military officer in charge of the patrol indicated that the detainee was going to be taken to the Tucapel regiment of Temuco.

N.- That at the end of the day on November 10, 1973, while the aforementioned detainees were reclined in the "small" gymnasium of the Tucapel regiment of Temuco, guarded by conscript soldiers of the 2nd Hunter Company belonging to the "Jackal patrol," Lieutenant Manuel Abraham Vásquez Chahuán, Commander of the aforementioned company, and Sub-Lieutenant Espinoza (deceased) appeared, accompanied by other military personnel from the regiment.

In addition, an institutional truck parked at the location, backing up in front of the entrance to the compound where the victims were detained. Said vehicle, due to its characteristics, was recognized as the one usually used to transport meat and bread, and on some occasions, it was used to transport conscripts to carry out guard duty shifts.

Immediately afterward, Lieutenant Manuel Abraham Vásquez Chahuán instructed the subordinate personnel to make the detainees board the truck along with them. Then, the truck with the detainees plus the officers and their companions left the place.

Regarding this same truck, the following day its cleaning was ordered, among others, to conscript soldier Héctor Florentino Navarrete Leiva, who pointed out that it was full of human flesh remains and brains.

Ñ.- That minutes later, sentries at the surveillance post located in the sector of the entrance to the military compound called "Isla Cautín" saw a caravan of institutional vehicles enter the place, composed of at least one Toyota jeep and the truck indicated in the previous paragraph.

O.- That in the final hours of November 10, 1973, the previously identified detainees were taken out of the Tucapel regiment of Temuco, loaded onto the aforementioned military vehicle, and transported to the shooting range sector of the "Isla Cautín" military compound by the officers and their companions.

In that place, the victims were tied to stakes that had been arranged there in a row. A short time later, Captain Rodolfo Vargas Campos (deceased), Sergeant Hernán Rodrigo Santiesteban Domínguez (deceased), and Sergeant Anacleto Aguirre Rivera (deceased), all from the 1st Hunter Company, plus Sergeant José Gajardo Gajardo (deceased) from the 2nd Hunter Company, joined the group of military personnel present in that sector.

Also part of this entourage was 2nd Sergeant of the First Hunter Company, Arnoldo Aedo Matus.

P.- That once the patrol commanded by Captain Vargas arrived at the place, he ordered its members to position themselves behind the detainees who were tied to the stakes, with the exception of 2nd Sergeant Arnoldo Aedo Matus of the 1st Hunter Company, whom he told to position himself in another, distant place and to proceed to fire shots toward the trees located in a specific sector of Isla Cautín.

This Sergeant Aedo Matus was able to see that the regiment commander, Colonel Pablo Iturriaga Marchesse (deceased), was present at the place, accompanied by an officer of medium-tall stature, and that two civilians were also witnessing the maneuvers in the same sector, recognizing one of them as the advisor lawyer to the Military Prosecutor's Office of Temuco, Oscar Alfonso Ernesto Podlech Michaud.

Q.- That subsequently, the detainees in those conditions were executed at the place one by one and finished off with bursts of gunfire, after which their bodies were sent to the morgue of the regional hospital of Temuco, where the required autopsy was performed, determining the causes of their deaths as indicated: Molina Ruiz, craniocerebral explosion, multiple blunt force gunshot wounds; Chávez Rivas, craniocerebral explosion, multiple blunt force gunshot wounds from a firearm; Valenzuela Velásquez, craniocerebral attrition, multiple blunt force gunshot wounds from a firearm; Ruiz Mancilla, shock from comminuted fracture of the pelvis and right femur, multiple gunshot wounds; Montero Mosquera, craniocerebral attrition, multiple blunt force gunshot wounds from a firearm; Mardones Jofré, craniocerebral attrition, multiple blunt force gunshot wounds from a firearm; Aillañir Huenchual, primary shock, multiple blunt force transfixing gunshot wounds to the thorax, abdomen, and limbs. Finally, a military communiqué was drafted to be published in the press the following day, in which an attempted assault on the Isla Cautín ammunition dump by a group of extremists was reported.

R.- That the day after these events occurred, the news appeared published in the local written press indicating that an assault had occurred on the Isla Cautín ammunition dump of the Tucapel Regiment, in which an indeterminate number of extremists had participated, news that was ratified by Colonel Pablo Iturriaga Marchesse (deceased), which must be contrasted with what was declared by Manuel Fernández Carranza, who, after the events of November 10, 1973, and upon arriving from a mission he was entrusted with toward the Pucón sector in search of guerrillas, was summoned by the then-commander of the No. 8 Tucapel Regiment of Temuco, Pablo Iturriaga Marchesse (deceased), to inform him that the assault on the ammunition dump had not been such, but rather an execution carried out at the shooting range, information he gave him personally so that he would not find out...

learned of it through rumors. Over the following days, details continued to appear in the press regarding how these events allegedly occurred and the manner in which military personnel had supposedly repelled said attack, subsequently setting out in search of the alleged extremists who were not killed in the confrontation and who managed to flee the scene.

In the civil aspect, the visiting judge accepted the filed claim and ordered the state to pay a total indemnity of $2,780,000,000 (two billion seven hundred eighty million pesos) for moral damages to the victims' families.

Source: pjud.cl, September 21, 2023

Supreme Court confirms conviction of retired military personnel for the application of torture against a primary school teacher

In a unanimous ruling, the Second Chamber of the highest court confirmed the sentence convicting a retired Army officer and instructor for his responsibility in the consummated crime of the application of torture against Luis Alberto Chihuailaf Arriagada, a primary school teacher and peasant leader at the time of the events.

The illicit acts were committed between October and November 1973, in the commune of Cunco and the locality of Quechereguas, La Araucanía Region. In a unanimous ruling (case file 13.233-2023), the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed of Justice Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Justice María Teresa Letelier, Justice Jean Pierre Matus, ad hoc attorney Pía Tavolari, and ad hoc attorney Carlos Urquieta—rejected the appeal in cassation filed by the defense of the convicted Manuel Abraham Vásquez Chahuán against the sentence that condemned him, along with Juan Bautista Labraña Luvecce, to 3 years of effective imprisonment as authors of the crime.

“Indeed, as can be inferred from the facts that the lower court established, Luis Alberto Chihuailaf Arriagada was detained a second time, at the end of October and the beginning of November 1973, in the locality of Toltén, by a military patrol, being taken to the Carabineros station in that place, subsequently conducted by his captors by helicopter to the Tucapel Regiment in Temuco and, later, to the Carabineros station in Cunco, being moved to the stables of that unit, where he was tortured through beatings and the application of electricity to different parts of his body.

After remaining two days in the aforementioned station, he was again taken by helicopter to the locality of Quechurehue or Quechereguas, where he was forced by military personnel to dig in search of ‘weapons,’ while his captors beat and threatened him, being subjected to a mock execution, among other outrages,” the ruling states.

The resolution adds that: “The lower court judges also established that the aforementioned operation involved conscript Ricardo Jesús Vásquez Estrada and instructor Juan Bautista Labraña Luvecce, both members of the 2nd Hunters Company of the Tucapel Regiment of Temuco, who acted under the orders of the officers in command of that Company, Captain Manuel Abraham Vásquez Chahuán—who led it and was at that moment at the Carabineros station in Cunco—and Lieutenant Manuel Espinoza Ponce (deceased).”

“Consequently, the facts thus established not only satisfy all the elements of the criminal offense of the application of torture, provided for and sanctioned in Article 150 No. 1 of the Penal Code in force at the time of its occurrence, since the grave torments to which the victim was subjected, both in the stables of the Cunco Carabineros station and in the locality of Quechurehue or Quechereguas where he was taken, were carried out by members of the 2nd Hunters Company, which was led by Vásquez Chahuán, who was at the aforementioned station and ordered them; but they also evidence the intervention of the accused in the described events, in the degree of author, provided for in No. 1 of Article 15 of the Penal Code, by having taken part in their execution, whether in an immediate and direct manner, or by preventing or attempting to prevent them from being avoided,” it adds.

“Then,” it continues, “what is alleged in the appeal under examination is not consistent with the merits of the established facts, regarding the claim that the acts, conduct, or omissions in which Vásquez Chahuán allegedly engaged are not described, as the sentence does contain the actions deployed by him, who, as noted, led the military group that intervened in the assaults to which the victim was subjected, was present at the Carabineros station when they occurred, and ordered them.”

“Therefore, the demonstrated illicit act and the participation of Vásquez Chahuán in it discard the ground for substantial nullity provided for in Article 546 No. 3 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, as the lower court correctly qualified them as constituting the crime for which he was convicted, in which he intervened as an author,” the ruling highlights.

“Now then, to consider the facts described in the preceding considerations and the culpable participation of Vásquez Chahuán in them as proven, the attacked sentence adopted that of the first instance, which considered mainly the statement of the victim Luis Chihuailaf Arriagada, of the co-defendant Juan Labraña Luvecce, and of the witnesses Ricardo Jesús Vásquez Estrada, Gamaliel Soto Segura, Edison Chihuailaf Arriagada, Ambrosio Paine Calbanca, Carlos Luco Astroza, Francisco Huenchulaf Ñancucheo, as the first expresses that he was detained in Toltén, taken by helicopter to the Tucapel Regiment of Temuco, where they loaded a detainee with the surname Alarcón whom he knew, they took them to the Carabineros station of Cunco, where he was locked alone in a bathroom, then moved to the stables to be hung and tied by his feet and hands, blindfolded, with electricity applied to his whole body and beaten, being accused of hiding weapons, to subsequently be moved to Quechurehue, where he was subjected to outrages, which he describes in similar terms to those that have been considered demonstrated,” the resolution details.

Likewise: “Such circumstances are corroborated by the co-defendant Juan Labraña Luvecce, who at the time of the investigated events served as an instructor for the 2nd Hunters Company, under the command of Lieutenant Vásquez Chahuán, who stated that he went to Cunco in the company of the latter and on that occasion had to transport a detainee to Quechereguas in search of weapons, together with Lieutenant Manuel Espinoza Ponce, while Vásquez Chahuán remained at the Cunco station, with whom he communicated.

In turn, witness Ricardo Jesús Vásquez Estrada stated that at the time of the events he was part of the 2nd Hunters Company, which was under the command of Vásquez Chahuán, and that he had to participate in the operation of taking detainees to the Cunco Carabineros station, where he saw the victim Luis Chihuailaf, whom he knew for being a teacher, and also pointed out that Vásquez Chahuán was at the station, who together with Officer Espinoza decided to move Chihuailaf to Quechereguas, where they made him dig holes because, according to the officers, there were weapons there.

Witness Gamaliel Soto Segura, 1st Corporal of the Cunco station, recounted that he saw Luis Chihuailaf detained at the Cunco station, guarded by FACH and military personnel; witness Ambrosio Paine Calbanca told of the duress that Luis Chihuailaf suffered in Quechereguas, which he was able to see because he was a neighbor of the sector; the assertions of Carlos Luco Astroza, a PDI official assigned to the Temuco Regiment, who stated that he had to accompany military patrols to Cunco and Curarrehue, that he saw Luis Chihuailaf and his brother detained at the Regiment and in Cunco, and recounted that the military followed the orders of Captain Rubio and in Curarrehue of Lieutenant Vásquez Chahuán; witness Edison Chihuailaf Arriagada, the victim's brother, who told the court how his brother arrived physically deteriorated after being released; and the testimony of Francisco Huenchulaf Ñancucheo, a hearsay witness of the victim's father's account,” it notes.

“For what has been expressed, joined with the documentary evidence and expert reports examined, the judiciary concludes, in finding 17 of the first-instance sentence, that there are sufficient antecedents to presume that the accused took part in the execution of the act in an immediate and direct manner in the terms described in Article 15 No. 1 of the Penal Code,” concludes the ruling of the Criminal Chamber.

Therefore, it is resolved that: “The appeal in cassation filed on page 2,486 by attorney Katerina Gnecco Sandoval on behalf of the convicted Manuel Abraham Vásquez Chahuán is rejected.”

In the civil aspect, the sentence ordering the state to pay an indemnity of $40,000,000 for moral damages to the victim was maintained.

Teacher and leader

In the first-instance sentence, the extraordinary visiting judge for human rights violation cases of the Temuco Court of Appeals, Álvaro Mesa Latorre, established the following facts:

A. That immediately after the events of September 11, 1973, the Armed Forces and order enforcement agencies took control of the city of Temuco, with Colonel Pablo Iturriaga Marchesse, commander of the No. 8 ‘Tucapel’ Infantry Regiment of this city, establishing himself as governor of this city, who also remained as head of the Temuco Garrison…

B. That within the aforementioned military unit, patrols of military personnel were formed and stationed in different parts of the city for the purposes of curfew control and guarding places classified as strategic by the military command.

That, in this sense, the patrols were composed of officers, non-commissioned officers, and conscript soldiers from the different companies that made up the No. 8 ‘Tucapel’ Infantry Regiment of Temuco, as it corresponded for them to be on guard…

C. That these patrols were also assigned to various operations, both terrestrial and aerial, inside and outside the city of Temuco, in which case, along with the military, other members of the Armed Forces also participated, such as the Investigations [Police] and/or the Chilean Air Force.

They proceeded to detain people who had political or social relevance ties considered as opposing the military regime, who in turn were generally called through the military decrees that began to appear in the press of the time after September 11, 1973… With this, they proceeded to their detention and subsequent transfer to the different detention places arranged for that purpose, such as police stations, outposts, Maquehue Air Base, Tucapel Regiment of Temuco, and, in many cases, they were taken to more than one detention center, as ordered by the officer in command of the respective operation…

D. That likewise, the Cunco Carabineros station was a detention place that housed a large number of people detained solely for their political affiliation; many of whom, as stated, proceeded to present themselves voluntarily due to being called by the press of the time; others, apprehended in their homes by the Carabineros officials of said station, and many, in the operations indicated in letter B).

There, they were entered into the dungeons, or some dependency or stables of the same police unit, a place where they were interrogated, generally by military personnel in the presence of Carabineros of the same station, and tortured under the application of electric current to different parts of their body…

E. That Luis Alberto Chihuailaf Arriagada, a primary school teacher and leader, linked to the Peasant Communal Council of the Cunco commune in the period between September 14, 1973, and November of the same year, passed through different detention places:

E.1) He was detained together with his brother Darwin Chihuailaf Arriagada, without an apparent judicial order and on a first occasion approximately on September 14, 1973, by a Carabineros patrol from the Cunco station, to immediately be taken to the facilities of said police unit…

E.2) That after the events described above and at the end of October, beginning of November 1973, in the morning hours, Mr. Luis Alberto Chihuailaf Arriagada was detained again; this time in the locality of Toltén, where he had been assigned by the Primary Education Department.

The detention on this occasion was carried out by a military patrol, who put him in a pickup truck and took him to the Toltén Carabineros station, a facility where, after remaining for about 4 hours, he was forced to board a helicopter together with 4 military personnel, who took him again to the Tucapel Regiment of Temuco.

E.3) That at the Tucapel Regiment of Temuco, the helicopter descended and they proceeded to bring in two people, also in the capacity of detainees for political reasons, whose identities correspond to Luis Alberto Alarcón Seguel (militant and regional leader of the MIR) and Manuel Alid (socialist militant and head of agricultural institutions in Cunco)…

E.4) That after which, the helicopter headed toward the Cunco Carabineros station, a facility where Mr. Chihuailaf was taken to the stables of the unit where he was tortured through beatings and the application of electricity to a large part of his body.

That after remaining two days detained in that station, he was again forced to board a helicopter commanded by military personnel, this time taking flight to the locality of Quechurehue or Quechereguas, the place of origin of his parents.

There, the helicopter descended and he was forced by military personnel to dig in search of ‘weapons’ at the same instant that his captors beat him with kicks, shouted, insulted, and threatened him that he would be buried in the same holes he was digging.

Finally, and with his face bloodied and wounds all over his body, he was tied to a pine tree with his arms open, and a mock execution was then performed. Events of which Mr. Luis Alberto Alarcón Seguel learned immediately, while he was detained at the Tucapel Regiment of Temuco…

F. That present at that operation were indeed conscript Ricardo Jesús Vásquez Estrada and an instructor named Juan Bautista Labraña Luvecce, both members at that time of the 2nd Hunters Company of the Tucapel Regiment of Temuco.

Persons who narrate in detail how the events happened in that operation ordered by the officers in command of that Company; a captain named Manuel Abrahán Vásquez Chahuán, who led it and was at that moment at the Cunco Carabineros station, and a lieutenant named Manuel Espinoza Ponce (deceased, page 1,275, vol.

IV); who ordered, as stated, to take Mr. Luis Alberto Chihuailaf Arriagada to the Quechereguas area ‘in search of weapons,’ a place where the victim was physically subjected to duress…

G. That from Quechereguas and in very poor physical condition, Mr. Chihuailaf was taken in the bed of a military truck and moved to a church gymnasium where the Army headquarters was installed. In that place, he was recognized by the priest of the temple, who interceded for him before a military man named Carlos Luco Astroza (who in those days was attached to the Tucapel Regiment of Temuco as recorded on page 188), which is why he was released.

A week later, he set off for Santiago, taking refuge in the French embassy, to leave Chile definitively for that country in February 1974, where he currently resides.”

Source: Judiciary, June 28, 2024

Life imprisonment for former military prosecutor Podlech: 7 detainees executed at Army shooting range in Temuco

Former military prosecutor Alfonso Podlech is serving his sentence at Colina 1 after being sentenced to more than 100 years in prison for crimes against humanity committed during the Pinochet dictatorship.

The justice system confirmed the life imprisonment sentence for former military prosecutor Óscar Alfonso Ernesto Podlech Michaud and retired Army officer Manuel Abraham Vásquez Chahuán as authors of the murders in the so-called “Polvorín Case” in Temuco.

These are the events recorded in November 1973, when seven political detainees were executed at the Army shooting range in the Isla Cautín sector of Temuco, under the argument of an alleged assault on an armory of the Tucapel Regiment, which turned out to be false.

In a unanimous ruling (case file 1.665-2023), the Third Chamber of the Temuco Court of Appeals also sentenced Podlech Michaud to 4 years of imprisonment as the author of seven crimes of illegal duress, committed inside the No. 8 Tucapel Infantry Regiment and Isla Cautín in Temuco.

According to the ruling of the Court of Appeals, the seven victims, five of them members of the Communist Party, were detained between November 5 and 7, 1973, and were taken to the military facility, which at the time was one of the places where opponents of the recently initiated dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet were tortured.

The background information present in the sentence indicates that, during the night of November 10, Florentino Alberto Molina Ruiz, Juan Antonio Chávez Rivas, Víctor Hugo Valenzuela Velásquez, Juan Carlos Ruiz Mancilla, Amador Francisco Montero Mosquera, Pedro Juan Mardones Jofré, and Carlos Aillañir Huenchua were taken to the shooting range sector in Isla Cautín.

According to the ruling: “The victims in the case were tied to stakes that were arranged there in a row (…) the detainees in those conditions were executed at the place one by one and finished off by bursts of gunfire.”

Executed at Army shooting range

In the ratified base sentence, the extraordinary visiting judge Álvaro Mesa Latorre established the following facts: On the same September 11, 1973, when the coup d'état against President Salvador Allende was perpetrated, which gave rise to the Pinochet dictatorship, the Temuco lawyer Oscar Alfonso Ernesto Podlech Michaud was called to collaborate with the new regime, who was also an Army Reserve Lieutenant of Chile 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 (deceased).

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

Given the high number of detainees and people 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 Temuco Court of Appeals by the lawyer Podlech Michaud, indicated above, who, acting as Ad-Hoc Prosecutor, made a presentation to the Plenary of the Court of Appeals (Minutes from page 3010 to 3011, vol.

IX), after which some clerks from different courts and a Court Rapporteur were assigned in service commission. Due to the lack of knowledge in criminal procedural matters, added to the weak character he had and the work as Second Commander of the regiment, Major Luis Jofré Soto began delegating functions as Military Prosecutor to the lawyer Oscar Alfonso Ernesto Podlech Michaud, advisor to the Prosecutor's Office, 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 continued to sign the majority of the administrative documents and participated in some interrogations of detainees. That the people called to appear at the Military Prosecutor's Office and those who were brought in as detainees were kept in facilities located next to the guardhouse and in the large gymnasium. Once interrogated by personnel of the Military Prosecutor's Office, 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. Likewise, it is established that by September 1973, in the No. 8 “Tucapel” Infantry Regiment of Temuco, there existed the Second Section of Information and Intelligence, with agents who provided political information on all those persons subject to an investigation by the Military Prosecutor's Office. As the days went by, the Military Prosecutor's Office and the Second Intelligence Section began to work jointly 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 Company and the Mortar Company, and another in an old disused gymnasium located to the side of the conscript soldiers' “mess hall.” In this way, the detainees were brought and taken from the jail to the regiment by military personnel of the Second Section, being interrogated at the Military Prosecutor's Office and physically subjected to duress in one of the aforementioned facilities to “soften them up” before or after these interrogations. In both interrogation and torture rooms, there were implements to tie the detainees and apply electricity to different parts of the body, in addition to applying other types of torture such as kicks and punches. That within the aforementioned military unit, a special group called “Patrulla Brava” (Brave Patrol) or “Patrulla Chacal” (Jackal Patrol) was formed. This group was in charge, among other functions, of guarding the detainees who were kept in the facilities of the “Tucapel” regiment of Temuco. During the days following September 11, 1973, a significant number of people were killed or disappeared in the IX region, with several of these deaths being explained by the regional military authorities through the publication of decrees issued either from the Intendancy or the Military Garrison of Temuco. “The decree that explained the events subject of this investigation, in light of the antecedents gathered in this process, gives an unbelievable version of how the events unfolded,” points out part of the investigation into a series of people, which accounts for grotesque stagings, such as El Polvorín, which involved the articulation of various agents, including Podlech, to massacre a group of people, several of them members of the Communist Party. In the “El Polvorín” case, it is mentioned: “That in the final hours of November 10, 1973, the previously identified detainees were taken from the Tucapel regiment of Temuco, loaded into the aforementioned military vehicle, and moved to the shooting range sector of the ‘Isla Cautín’ military facility by the officers and their companions. In that place, the victims were tied to stakes that were arranged there in a row (…) That subsequently, the detainees in those conditions were executed at the place one by one and finished off by bursts of gunfire, after which their bodies were sent to the morgue of the regional hospital of Temuco where the required autopsy was performed.” “The day after these events occurred, the news appeared published in the local written press indicating that an assault had occurred on the Isla Cautín armory of the Tucapel Regiment, in which an indeterminate number of extremists had allegedly participated, news that was ratified by Colonel Pablo Iturriaga Marchesse,” the report notes. These events also involve the responsibility of another 23 retired military personnel and Army collaborators.

Convictions for military personnel and Army collaborators

The resolution issued by the Temuco Court comes after the filing of appeals by more than twenty convicted persons, against whom life imprisonment had been dictated in September 2023. On that occasion, this sentence fell upon a series of former members of the Army, the Investigative Police, and Carabineros, in addition to Alfonso Podlech Michaud and retired Army officer Manuel Abraham Vásquez Chahuán.

After reviewing these legal actions, the court decided to maintain life imprisonment only for the latter two, in their capacity as authors of the crime of qualified homicide.

by Leonardo Buitrago

Source: elciudadano.cl, July 4, 2025