In much of the national press regarding this human rights case, the second surname is misspelled.

The full and correct name is: Javier Luis Felipe Vera Jünemann and not Javier Luis Felipe Vera Jugemans (See case files N° 23.377, docket of the Criminal Court of Mariquina, per the first-instance sentence of November 12, 2003) - José Matías Ñanco Case José Matías Ñanco (Case file ECS N° 2666-2004): Javier Luis Felipe Vera Jünemann.

Sentenced with a final judgment as an accessory to 1 homicide to a penalty of 541 days of minor imprisonment in its medium degree, with conditional remission of the sentence.

Source: Memoriaviva

In an unprecedented ruling, the Third Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals applied this high sentence—the highest issued by an appellate court in cases supposedly covered by the Amnesty Law—after accepting the arguments of the plaintiffs to modify the charge of qualified homicide against Héctor Rivera Bozzo to that of qualified kidnapping.

Retired Navy officer Héctor Sergio Rivera Bozzo was sentenced to 15 years and one day in its maximum degree as the perpetrator of the qualified kidnapping of four peasants from the commune of Lago Ranco, in the Tenth Region, which occurred on October 16, 1973.

The decision was adopted in a split ruling by the Third Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals, with the votes of Justice Mario Rojas and attorney member Nelson Pozo, and with a dissenting opinion from Magistrate Jorge Zepeda.

In this way, the court revoked a ruling by Justice Joaquín Billard, who last February had sentenced Rivera Bozzo to five years and one day in prison for the qualified homicides of Cardenio Ancacura Manquián, Teofilo González Calfulef, Manuel Jesús Hernández Inostroza, and Arturo Vega González, none of whom had any known political affiliation.

This is the highest sentence issued by an appellate court for human rights violations recorded during the military dictatorship that are supposedly covered by the Amnesty Law—that is, those perpetrated between September 11, 1973, and March 11, 1978.

In fact, it is only surpassed by a first-instance ruling issued in January by Judge Alejandro Solís, who sentenced Army Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Guerra Jorquera to 18 years in prison for 11 qualified kidnappings of peasants in the Tenth Region in October 1973.

The appellate court also considered the investigation of the case to be incomplete, and therefore resolved to reopen the summary proceedings so that Billard could investigate the responsibility held by civilians Javier Vera Jünemann, Rodolfo Mondión Romo, Christián Borquez Bernucci, and Julio Vera Arraigada, who were identified as members of the far-right group Patria y Libertad.

Thus, a consultative resolution from June 25, 2002, which had favored them with a partial dismissal of the case, was revoked.

From homicide to kidnapping

In their ruling, the magistrates accepted the arguments of plaintiff attorney Hugo Gutiérrez, who had proposed the need to modify the charge of qualified homicide for which the former military officer had been convicted to that of qualified kidnapping.

In that vein, the ruling expresses among its arguments that, as it is a permanent kidnapping, "a state is created in which the typical conduct is prolonged in time until the cessation of the coercive conduct, and in such circumstances, the prolongation of the coercion or attack against the freedom of another determines the permanence of the illicit act over time." It adds that "the crime of kidnapping, which affects the victims to the present day and which is framed within Article 141 of the Penal Code, also corresponds to the crime described in Article II of the Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons, signed in Belém do Pará, Brazil, on June 9, 1994," which "points out the extreme gravity of this crime and its continuous or permanent nature, as long as the destination or whereabouts of the victim are not established."

The Lago Ranco case

The ruling bases its conviction on the fact that "on October 16, 1973, at dawn, in the town of Lago Ranco, Los Lagos Region, a group of subjects, led by the accused Héctor Sergio Rivera Bozzo, proceeded to detain 4 people: Cardenio Ancacura Manquián; Teofilo González Calfulef; Manuel Jesús Hernández Inostroza and Arturo Vega González." It adds that all of them "were embarked on board a vessel, which headed into the waters of Lake Ranco, a site from which all trace of said persons was lost, with the current whereabouts of the aforementioned detainees remaining unknown." Background information provided during the course of the investigation indicates that the victims were denounced by neighbors after the military coup of September 11 as alleged sympathizers of the government of Salvador Allende and were subsequently detained by Carabineros. The first indictments had been issued by former judge Juan Guzmán Tapia, who in April 2002 ordered a reconstruction of the scene on board a vessel on Lake Ranco, an occasion in which former uniformed personnel and witnesses participated.

Source: elmostrador.cl, November 15, 2006

Valdivia: Hearing of appeal for 5 prosecuted former marines postponed

The Valdivia Court of Appeals has left pending the hearing of the appeal presented by five former Navy officials, who were indicted by special judge Jaime Salas for their alleged responsibility in the disappearance of the Mapuche community member José Matías Ñanco in 1973.

The appellate court requested the case files from the magistrate, and once it has them in its possession, it will issue a resolution on the appeal presented by the defense of the former uniformed personnel, who have remained detained since last week at the Maritime Governorate of Valdivia.

They are retired Lieutenant Sergio Rivera Bosso and former marines Cristián Bórquez Verlucci, Rodolfo Mondión Romo, Julio Vera Arriagada, and Javier Vera Jünemann. The Court also rejected lowering the bail amount for the former Navy officials to be granted provisional release, which had been set at 500,000 pesos for each by Judge Salas.

The case is known as Maiquillahue, because José Matías Ñanco, 60 years old at the time of his disappearance, was detained in that location by personnel from the Maritime Governorate of Valdivia on October 31, 1973.

These former marines had already been detained in April 2002 by Judge Juan Guzmán for their participation in the execution and disappearance of four people in Lake Ranco, an event that occurred on October 16, 1973.

However, he only indicted former Lieutenant Rivera. The Corporation for the Defense of the People's Rights (Codepu) of Valdivia valued the magistrate's decision and asserted that the participation of these individuals makes the Navy responsible as an institution. "It has the duty to cooperate with information regarding the whereabouts of the forcibly disappeared in the area where its personnel participated, and to carry out concrete actions that provide families with a more certain answer about what happened to the bodies of the victims," states a declaration from the organization.

Source: elmostrador.cl, June 19, 2003

The responsibility of the Navy in Valdivia: 5 people executed and forcibly disappeared whose families ask for justice and to know where their bodies are

The indictment issued by Judge Jaime Salas against former members of the Chilean Navy for the execution and disappearance of the Mapuche community member José Matías Ñanco forces the Navy to assume its responsibility for the repression exercised in the Province during the military dictatorship and to cooperate with information and actions to provide families with a more concrete answer regarding the final destination of their relatives.

The five former marines: Sergio Rivera Bosso, Cristián Bórquez Verlucci, Rodolfo Mondión Romo, Julio Vera Arriagada, and Javier Vera Jünemann, currently indicted and detained by Judge Salas, have confessed, and former Lt.

Rivera acknowledged having shot the Mapuche community member in Maiquillahue. These former marines had already been detained in April 2002 by Judge Juan Guzmán for their participation in the execution and disappearance of four people in Lake Ranco, an event that occurred on October 16, 1973.

But after the reconstruction of the scene carried out on the lake that same month, where the former marines showed the families and the press how they executed and made 4 people disappear, Judge Guzmán only indicted Sergio Rivera, who held the rank of Lieutenant and was in charge of the operation, with the rest of the detainees remaining free.

Navy personnel, dependent on the Maritime Governorate of Valdivia, participated in several repression operations in the Province. Part of these operations were known to the government's Truth Commissions 10 years ago.

But this information was not referred to the courts of justice, as in the case of José Matías Ñanco, since he was classified as a political execution and not as a disappeared person. In the Lago Ranco situation, the investigation of this case was requested from the Río Bueno court, but not all the information provided at that time by the marines was attached.

The Lago Ranco case was also acknowledged by the Navy in the report issued at the Dialogue Table. For Codepu, the participation of these five marines in repressive acts in the Province makes the Navy responsible as an institution, and it has the duty to cooperate with information regarding the whereabouts of the forcibly disappeared in the area where its personnel participated, and to carry out concrete actions that provide families with a more certain answer about what happened to the bodies of the victims.

The response that they were taken to a regiment and disappeared, or that they are at the bottom of a lake, is not the answer that families expect to close this chapter. As the relatives stated to Judge Juan Guzmán and the government regarding those disappeared in Lake Ranco, they hope that all necessary measures will be exhausted to find out where the remains of their relatives are.

Justice is not complete only with the identification and punishment of those responsible.

Source: codepu.cl, June 19, 2003

Former military officers request disqualification of the president of the Supreme Court's Penal Chamber

Responding to a strategy that could change the balance of the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court, the defense of retired Navy Lieutenant Sergio Rivera Bozzo requested that the plenary of the Santiago Court of Appeals declare the disqualification of the president of the highest penal authority, Alberto Chaigneau del Campo, due to alleged opinions on human rights violations that would have "implicated" him in continuing to hear these cases.

In a document filed with the appellate court, attorney Carlos Portales maintained that the aforementioned magistrate incurred in the recusal cause N° 10 of Article 196 of the Organic Code of Courts (COT), which refers to "the judge having manifested in any way his opinion on the pending matter, provided that he had done so with knowledge of it." In that sense, the filing notes that Chaigneau publicly, through various media outlets, including the newspaper El Mercurio, on June 29, 2003, maintained that "crimes against human rights are imprescriptible." Portales reproduced the following excerpt from the alluded interview, specifying that when asked if permanent kidnapping is a legal fiction, the minister replied, "without the corpus delicti, cases are never definitively dismissed, only temporarily." To the question of whether this is possible after 30 years, Chaigneau replied that "my civil criterion tells me that the person is dead, but my legal criterion tells me that as long as the corpse does not appear, death cannot be proven, nor can the cases be closed."

Against the Amnesty

Likewise, regarding the Amnesty Law, the member of the highest court said that "we—I don't know if all of us—since the law was published, were against the Amnesty." The professional highlighted in the document, which was accessed by El Mostrador.cl, that "this defense cannot explain, even more so with the infinity of cases for human rights violations called to be heard via the extraordinary route of cassation in the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court, how one of its members—today the current president—manifests with knowledge of the cause and a priori an opinion that affects the substance and ruling of these processes, whether via the application of the statute of limitations or via the application of the amnesty, institutions that the minister refuses to apply." In this way, if Portales' filing prospers before the Santiago Court of Appeals, whose plenary court must resolve this controversy, it would mean that Justice Alberto Chaigneau could be disqualified from continuing to hear judicial cases for crimes against humanity committed during the military regime. In any case, before formally formulating this request, it transpired that the attorney asked the judge to accept an amicable recusal, that is, by mutual consent. However, the member of the Supreme Court dismissed the professional's arguments.

The case in question

The alluded process, which is to be reviewed in the Penal Chamber of the highest court, corresponds to the case for the qualified homicide of fisherman José Matías Ñanco on October 31, 1973, in Maiquillahue, who, although he was executed before a series of witnesses, still remains a forcibly disappeared person as his remains have not yet been found.

The head of the Criminal Court of San José de la Mariquina, Jaime Salas, indicted four Navy officials in 2003 as accessories to qualified homicide: retired sub-lieutenants Christian Edgardo Bohórquez Bernucci, Rodolfo Ramón Mondión Romo, Julio Germán Vera Arriagada, and Javier Luis Felipe Vera Jünemann, while he charged retired Lieutenant Sergio Rivera Bozzo as the perpetrator.

However, on November 12 of that same year, the aforementioned court issued an acquittal, estimating that said crime had prescribed. This ruling was confirmed by the Valdivia Court of Appeals on June 1, 2004.

Both judicial instances determined that "as it is a crime that carries a criminal penalty and having fulfilled the deadlines established in Article 94 of the Penal Code, the allegations of the defenses of the accused regarding the criminal action being prescribed are accepted, and therefore, it is appropriate to acquit the accused." On October 31, 1973, José Ñanco, also an evangelical preacher and leftist sympathizer, 60 years old, was executed in the Maiquillahue sector when he did not obey an order from the Navy patrol that ordered him to form up with other detainees, which the victim did not obey.

Source: elmostrador.cl, August 23, 2006

Communal mourning for the death of former Los Lagos councilman rejected

A week ago, the death of former Los Lagos councilman Javier Vera Jünemann was announced; he was an authority in the commune in the 1990-1994 period and was currently serving as vice-rector of the Universidad San Sebastián in Concepción.

Councilman George Harcha presented the request to the municipal council to decree communal mourning in his name, an idea that was supported by councilmen Hugo Silva and Patricio Espinoza and rejected by councilmen Miguel Moya, Pedro Muñoz, Aldo Retamal, and Mayor Simón Mansilla.

Faced with this rejection, Aldo Retamal stated that "we do not deserve a tribute just for being a councilman. One must look at the actions and what people have been throughout their lives, and in the case of Javier Vera, we have his involvement in human rights violations, and that will never be grounds for any recognition, but rather the opposite," he said.

It should be remembered that Javier Vera Jünemann has been implicated, as a former marine, in the deaths of Arturo Vega González, Teófilo González Calfulef, Manuel Jesús Hernández Inostroza, and Cardenio Ancacura Manquián, who in October 1973 were detained in Lago Ranco and subsequently murdered on board the steamship Laja. Their bodies were thrown into the waters of Lake Ranco.

Source: diariolaguino.cl, March 8, 2015