The Supreme Court sentenced three former military and police personnel for their responsibility in the consummated and repeated crimes of qualified homicide and aggravated kidnapping, perpetrated in the town of Pisagua between October 1973 and January 1974.

In a unanimous ruling (case file 36.319-2020), the Second Chamber of the high court—composed of ministers Haroldo Brito, Jorge Dahm, Leopoldo Llanos, minister María Teresa Letelier, and ad hoc lawyer Leonor Etcheberry—confirmed the sentence issued by the Santiago Court of Appeals, which sentenced former Army officer Carlos Alberto Fernando Herrera Jiménez to 20 years of effective imprisonment as the perpetrator of the consummated and repeated crime of qualified homicide of Tomás Orlando Cabello Cabello, Nicolás Chanez Chanez, Juan Apolinario Mamani García, Luis Aníbal Manríquez Wilden, Hugo Tomás Martínez Guillén, Juan Orlando Rojas Osega, and Nelson José Márquez Agusto. The murders were perpetrated in January 1974 in the town of Pisagua.

Meanwhile, former Army non-commissioned officer Miguel Chile Aguirre Álvarez must serve 15 years of imprisonment as the perpetrator of the repeated crime of aggravated kidnapping of Rodolfo Jacinto Fuenzalida Fernández, Juan Antonio Ruz Díaz, José Demóstenes Rosier Sampson Ocaranza, and Freddy Marcelo Taberna Gallegos, committed in October 1973 in the town of Pisagua.

Finally, the high court revoked the part of the sentence that had acquitted former Carabineros officer Manuel Rogelio del Carmen Vega Collao, who at the time of the events was the chief of the Pisagua police station.

In its place, the court sentenced him to 20 years of imprisonment, with the accessory penalties of absolute perpetual disqualification from public offices and political rights, and absolute disqualification from professional practice for the duration of the sentence, as the perpetrator of the qualified homicides of Cabello Cabello, Chanez Chanez, Mamani García, Manríquez Wilden, Martínez Guillén, and Rojas Osega.

Three established facts

The victims of these events

Tomás Orlando Cabello Cabello, Nicolás Chanez Chanez, Juan Apolinario Mamani García, Luis Aníbal Manríquez Wilden, Hugo Tomás Martínez Guillén, and Juan Rojas Osega were detained in the city of Iquique in November 1973 and taken to the Telecommunications Regiment of the same city.

After some time, they were transferred to the Pisagua Political Prisoner Camp. Both military units were under the authority of the General Command of the VI Army Division, under the command of the then-Army General Carlos Forestier Haensgen, now deceased.

The prisoner camp was under the direct command of an Army major named Ramón Ibarra Ibarra, who also received nearly 270 detainees transported by sea by the Chilean Navy on the merchant ship Maipo. The now-convicted Carlos Herrera Jiménez, Miguel Aguirre Álvarez, and the Carabineros officer Manuel Vega Collao carried out repressive functions at that location.

The detainees had no political affiliation nor did they engage in any type of subversive activity, but they were arbitrarily labeled by military authorities as perpetrators of crimes of smuggling goods and/or drug trafficking, without any basis to substantiate it.

One day in January 1974, it was reported via a military bulletin that the aforementioned prisoners had been released at the intersection of the Pisagua road and the Pan-American highway.

However, in 1990, upon the discovery and exhumation of human remains found in a clandestine grave located next to the Pisagua cemetery, their bodies were found in said grave, all with their hands tied, eyes blindfolded, and a red circle adhered to their clothing over the heart; each of them was wrapped in burlap sacks and buried with other prisoners who had also been executed by the Army military personnel.

The forensic examinations performed on these human remains determined that the cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds resulting from an execution, prior to their bodies being bagged and buried in the grave.

On the other hand, the victim

Nelson José Márquez Agusto, a member of the Communist Party, was detained in Iquique after the military coup and transferred to the Pisagua Prisoner of War Camp, where he was held for about four months, suffering repeated physical punishments.

These increased with the visit of General Óscar Bonilla, a military authority to whom he reported the mistreatment by the military personnel guarding him. Subsequently, he made a failed escape attempt; as a consequence, the military decided to execute him as a warning and example to the other prisoners, solely to prevent other detainees from deciding to follow his example and attempt to escape.

Finally, on October 29, 1973, in the town of Pisagua, a spurious War Council was held, which resolved to sentence to death Freddy Marcelo Taberna Gallegos, José Demóstenes Rosier Sampson Ocaranza, Juan Antonio Ruz Díaz, and Rodolfo Jacinto Fuenzalida Fernández, who were being held in the political prisoner camp in Pisagua itself.

As a result of this arbitrary decision, the four aforementioned prisoners were executed on the north side of the cemetery in that town. Following this, their bodies were made to disappear, and to this date, the whereabouts of their remains are unknown.

by Darío Núñez

Source: resumen.cl, September 28, 2022