The Supreme Court accepted the appeal in cassation and sentenced a retired Carabineros officer and non-commissioned officer for their responsibility in the crime of qualified kidnapping of the farmer José Domingo Llabulén Pilquinao, an illicit act committed starting on October 11, 1973, in the commune of Lautaro, La Araucanía region.

In a unanimous ruling, the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed of ministers Haroldo Brito, Leopoldo Llanos, Jorge Zepeda, and lawyers (i) Pía Tavolari and Carolina Coppo—confirmed the first-instance sentence that condemned the then-major Jorge Enrique Schweizer Gómez and corporal Domingo Antonio Campos Collao to 12-year prison terms as perpetrators of the crime.

The court established an error of law in the challenged sentence, issued by the Temuco Court of Appeals, which had applied the "half-prescription" (media prescripción) and reduced the first-instance sentence.

"Regarding the erroneous application of Article 103 of the Penal Code denounced by the appeal under study, as this Court has repeatedly held, given that both the half-prescription and the cause for the extinction of criminal liability are based on the passage of time as a justifying element for their application, the impropriety of applying full prescription necessarily extends to partial prescription.

Both institutions are based on the same element, which is rejected by the international humanitarian penal order when dealing with a crime against humanity such as the one in question, so that neither of such institutes is acceptable in the case at hand," the Supreme Court ruling states.

For the Penal Chamber: "(...) by resolving in the opposite sense, the challenged sentence has incurred in the invoked cause of Article 546 No. 1 of the Code of Penal Procedure, because, although it qualifies the crime in accordance with the law, it imposes on the defendants a less severe penalty than that designated by it, committing an error of law by granting a reduction that, according to international human rights law, is improper.

This error has also had a substantial influence on the operative part of the ruling, because it enabled a two-degree reduction of the penalty that could not have been reached otherwise."

"Regarding the mistaken rejection of the aggravating circumstance of Article 12 No. 8 of the Penal Code, which the appellant also criticizes, without prejudice to what will be determined in the replacement sentence, it should be clarified that such an error does not have a substantial influence on the operative part of the challenged ruling.

The two-degree reduction erroneously carried out by it can be based solely on the aforementioned Article 103, without the declaration that the aggravating circumstance of Article 12 No. 8 prejudices the accused having hindered that reduction, even less so if this, in any scenario of penalty determination, must be compensated with the mitigating circumstance of Article 11 No. 6 that favors all of them."

Regarding the third person convicted in the case, the Carabineros captain at the time of the events, Marcial Edmundo Vera Ríos, who passed away on September 1, 2019, the Supreme Court excludes him from this resolution, and the first-instance judge must "obtain the respective certificate and issue the resolution that corresponds by law."

Source: vivepais.cl, October 23, 2021

Minister Álvaro Mesa sentences 3 retired Carabineros for the qualified kidnapping of José Domingo Llabulén Pilquinao in Lautaro.

The visiting minister sentenced retired Carabineros Jorge Enrique Schweizer Gómez, Marcial Edmundo Vera Ríos, and Domingo Antonio Campos Collao.

The visiting minister for human rights violation cases of the Temuco Court of Appeals, Álvaro Mesa Latorre, sentenced retired Carabineros Jorge Enrique Schweizer Gómez, Marcial Edmundo Vera Ríos, and Domingo Antonio Campos Collao to 12-year prison terms for their responsibility as perpetrators of the crime of qualified kidnapping of José Domingo Llabulén Pilquinao, an illicit act perpetrated on October 11, 1973, in the commune of Lautaro.

During the investigation, the extraordinary visiting minister managed to establish the following facts:

A.- That starting on September 11, 1973, at the 1st Carabineros Precinct of Lautaro, the command in charge of the unit, including Major Jorge Enrique Schweizer Gómez and Captain Marcial Edmundo Vera Ríos, organized and coordinated a special group of carabineros that included Juvenal Santiago Sanhueza Sanhueza (R.I.P.), Enrique Ferrier Valeze (R.I.P.), Mario Ponce Orellana (R.I.P.), and Corporal Domingo Antonio Campos Collao, among others.

Under the orders of Lieutenant José Orlando Huerta Ávila (R.I.P.), they collaborated with army personnel from the La Concepción Regiment of Lautaro, conducting joint patrols through the rural area under the aforementioned police unit, while also identifying the names and addresses of individuals who were subsequently detained and taken to the Precinct to be interrogated in different areas of that unit; or who were removed by this special group of carabineros and military personnel to be taken to locations unknown to this date.

B.- That on October 11, 1973, in the afternoon, José Domingo Llabulén Pilquinao, 44, a farmer and member of the Communist Party, was traveling on a rural bus from Lautaro to his home located in the indigenous community of Quiñaco – Manzanal, along with two of his children.

At a certain point on the road, the bus was intercepted by a Carabineros patrol from the 1st Precinct of Lautaro traveling in a private pickup truck, ordering the driver to stop. Immediately afterward, they made all passengers get off the bus, subsequently detaining José Domingo Llabulén Pilquinao, whom they loaded into the pickup truck in which the patrol was traveling, apparently without carrying a judicial order authorizing them for such an act.

C.- Witnesses to the detention were the two children of the victim who were accompanying him at that moment, namely, Juan Alfonso Llabulén Llaulén (now deceased) and José Domingo Llabulén Llaulén, who identified Sergeant Ferrier (R.I.P.), Mario Ponce Orellana (R.I.P.), and Corporal Domingo Antonio Campos Collao, all from Lautaro, as members of the apprehending group.

The patrol immediately headed to the Lautaro Precinct, followed by the Llabulén Llaulén brothers, who were able to see the moment their father was taken off the vehicle and entered into the unit, this being the last time they had news about their father's whereabouts.

In the civil aspect, the ruling ordered the state to pay a total compensation of $55,000,000 for moral damages to the victim's son.

Source: diarioconstitucional.cl, February 23, 2018

Chile: The Lautaro Patrol, the secret police that disappeared Mapuches during the dictatorship.

Retired carabinero Domingo Campos Collao is the last person convicted in La Araucanía to enter the Punta Peuco prison. Last August, he left the Temuco Court of Appeals guarded by gendarmes and accompanied by his son to serve a sentence of five years and one day for his responsibility as a perpetrator of the kidnapping of Gervasio Huaiquil Calviqueo, a Mapuche with no political affiliation detained by the Lautaro Patrol.

This group was composed of military and carabineros who, under a supposed "rustler cleanup," detained and forcibly disappeared Mapuches in the Cautín province during the dictatorship.

Manuela (43) was the one who had the idea in the family to commemorate her father at the end of this month with a mass in the chapel of Lautaro, in La Araucanía. When the priest asked her for the reason, if it was in memory of a deceased person, the only thing she could answer was:

"It's just that, we don't know, Father. But if that were not the case, I would like to think that by now, he would have remembered the family, but we don't know," she told him.

Gervasio Héctor Huaiquil Calviqueo would be 69 years old today.

After the Patrol detained him on October 26, 1975, his mother Mercedes Huaiquilao (75) tried not to alter their routines much. She would tell his siblings not to be late coming home from school, that their father would arrive in the afternoon, and for tea time, she would leave a place set for him.

Over time, that wait became unsustainable, and it was better not to talk so much about what had happened to their father. They had to go on.

At that time, Manuela was only six months old, and everything she knows about Gervasio has been through the stories of others. Since she arrived to work in Santiago, she says that she has inevitably kept looking for him. And although she has no photographic references, not even his ID photo, she imagines him as one of her brothers who, according to what Mercedes has told her, looks a lot like him.

"I always look at the faces of people sleeping in the plazas, in the streets. Could it be that they beat him so much that he forgot about us? Could it be my old man who is there?" Manuela thinks sometimes.

On August 29, retired carabinero Domingo Campos Collao, one of the members of the Lautaro Patrol, left the Temuco Court of Appeals guarded by gendarmes and accompanied by his son, bound for the Punta Peuco prison.

The court sentenced him to five years and one day for his responsibility as a perpetrator of the qualified kidnapping of Gervasio Huaiquil, a Mapuche farmer with no political affiliation.

Manuela says that after his detention, the carabineros and military personnel who made up this secret police locked them in and set fire to the ruka of the community in which they lived. If it hadn't been for the help of the neighbors, she, her mother, and her siblings would have burned to death inside.

From that moment, the voice of one of the carabineros remained etched in the memory of Mercedes, her mother: "Let's set fire to these fucking Indians."

That Wednesday in August, the family's lawyer told Manuela to tune in to the regional channel because Collao was appearing live as he left the court. She was not able to watch it; nor did she want to meet him in person at the trial hearings. She says it was enough with what her mother told her about the confrontation they had a few years ago. The rage and pain are transmitted.

A rustler cleanup

On the same day of the Coup, the military quartered themselves in the La Concepción Regiment, and the carabineros also remained confined to the first precinct of Lautaro. Some declared that for months they were performing administrative duties; they slept in the Carabineros archive offices without leaving the barracks.

When Colonel Hernán Ramírez Ramírez took power of the governorship that until that month of September was headed by the communist Fernando Teillier, father of the writer Jorge Teillier, they requisitioned a dark green pickup truck with a white roof.

That vehicle became the hallmark of the Patrol, a group specially formed to detain opponents of the dictatorship in the Cautín province and its surroundings.

Of the members of this secret police, four of them today carry an "R.I.P." in judicial documents: Lieutenant Orlando Huerta Ávila, the man who gave the orders, Juvenal Sanhueza, Enrique Ferrier, and Mario Ponce Orellana, while Domingo Campos Collao has been in prison for a few months.

The group had an exclusive office assigned inside the barracks where they interrogated the detainees. For the rest of the carabineros, entry was prohibited, although they knew that decisions about the "rustler cleanup" being carried out in the area were made there. In the first few days, the Patrol brought nearly forty detainees to the precinct, a figure that would increase as the months passed.

The Army officers had a disadvantage that they were quickly able to overcome with the help of the carabineros. And that was that the military did not know many sectors that became impassable due to the thick vegetation of the forests; something the police handled through their constant rounds in the territory, especially due to detentions for animal theft or cattle rustling.

It was a close collaboration that allowed the procedures to be carried out, led by Carabineros Major Jorge Schweizer and Colonel Ramírez.

"It was toward the countryside where the terrorists had the land seizures," reads the statement that Schweizer, the boss of the barracks, made in the judicial process for the case of the peasant José Domingo Llabulén, who like Gervasio Huaiquil was another victim of the Patrol.

They didn't just talk about the detainees as rustlers, but also about Mapuches with bad records or political indigenous people; the Carabineros archive unit maintained a list and a detailed sketch of the places where they lived. These were valuable coordinates for the Army.

"Regarding the other indigenous people I am named, José Domingo Llabulén, Juan Milla Montuy, Julio Paine Lipin, and José Cuevas Cifuentes, for the first one, I showed their address to the officials or the military, that's all (...) For what reason did they ask for those lists? I imagine to eliminate those people. They never appeared again," declared Campos Collao before the justice system.

The Llabulén assignment

Campos Collao was also convicted for the disappearance of José Domingo Llabulén Pilquinao, a peasant and member of the Communist Party, which occurred on October 11, 1973. Although in February of this year Minister Álvaro Mesa Latorre issued a twelve-year sentence for his responsibility as a perpetrator of qualified kidnapping, the Temuco Court of Appeals considered the half-prescription, reducing it to five years, with which Collao could opt for parole.

Bus driver Manuel "Nilo" Cid and bus assistant Benedicto Mardones were witnesses to José's detention.

Nilo was driving a 1961 Ford, white and green, that traveled between Lautaro, Chumil, and Temuco. On the morning of October 11, 1973, José took the bus along with two of his children. He was going to sell an animal in town.

The day passed, and both workers of the "Rojas" buses were getting ready to return to the first city on a now-routine trip: the passengers returned loaded with purchases and would stop at different points to head into their rural homes. Everyone knew the trip started at 17:00 hours.

Thirty minutes earlier, a Carabineros Patrol asked Nilo about a certain Llabulén. He said no, that he hadn't taken him that morning. But his words would not prevent them from continuing to roam the area, a patrol that was already raising suspicions, especially among those who moved frequently through the sector.

Shortly after, José Llabulén appeared on the road again, and the driver, a bit alarmed, suggested that he go on foot on the other side of the Cautín bridge so they wouldn't see him on the bus.

"No, negro, how can it be that much!" he replied incredulously and went to sit in the back of the vehicle.

Before crossing the bridge, the pickup truck overtook the bus, forcing it to stop near a mill. They made all the passengers get off. José advanced behind the other people, and before getting off, he exchanged a few words with the driver: he entrusted him with the package he was carrying, it was a container of kerosene and a package of food.

He knew how necessary it was for his family. Corporal Enrique Ferrier hit him with the butt of his rifle, and together with his peer Domingo Campos Collao, they threw him into the pickup truck.

Of the whole group, they only took him. They accused him of cattle theft.

The next day, his wife Francisca Llaulen Antilao went to inquire at all the places where she thought her husband could be: the Lautaro Carabineros, the La Concepción Regiment, the Investigative Police, and the public jail. Nothing. No one knew of José Llabulén's whereabouts.

Two days passed, and the children went to the bus office to look for the package their father had entrusted, not knowing, until then, that he would become one of the forcibly disappeared of Lautaro.

Illicit association

It was rumored that Corporal Enrique Ferrier had marks on the butt of his revolver to keep count of the people detained or murdered.

According to what soldier Paicaví Painemal, who was doing military service in '73, saw, the detainees arrived at the regiment at night, after passing through the dungeons and stables of the first precinct of Lautaro.

He also remembers that the torture sessions of those detained for "political issues" were in the gymnasium, in the stables, and in the riding arena; punches and kicks to different parts of the body, they would hang them, and they likely applied electricity. In judicial statements, several carabineros officials acknowledge that the majority of the detainees were of Mapuche origin.

In the testimonies provided in both the José Llabulén and Gervasio Huaiquil cases, it is read that some carabineros and officers thought it was all a bad joke because they saw that everything was functioning with regularity. Retired Army Colonel Jorge Nibaldo del Río has assured the justice system that he never received instructions to detain civilians or carry out raids on their communities.

"Perhaps I should have investigated more thoroughly," said Lieutenant Marcial Vera Ríos when the lawyers reviewed these facts before the courts, and added in his January 1996 statement: "The serious problem was that the command of the precinct did not know how or could not put a stop in time to the detentions or the activities of carabineros with the military."

Until now, in none of the judicial cases in which members of the Patrol have been prosecuted has the crime of illicit association been considered, despite the fact that this was an organization that responded to a hierarchy and was constituted especially to commit crimes. And the military remains untouchable; only the carabineros have been prosecuted.

Source: cctt.cl, November 27, 2018

Supreme Court convicts former carabineros for the kidnapping and disappearance of a farmer in 1973

José Domingo Llabulén Pilquinao, a PC (Communist Party) militant, was abducted in front of two of his children in Lautaro (La Araucanía Region) one month after the military coup.

Jorge Enrique Schweizer Gómez and Domingo Antonio Campos Collao, retired major and corporal, respectively, were sentenced to 12 years in prison.

During the dictatorship (1973-1990), according to official data, some 2,300 people died at the hands of State agents, of whom 1,192 remain as forcibly disappeared and another 33,000 were tortured and imprisoned for political reasons.

The Supreme Court accepted an appeal in cassation and on Friday sentenced two retired Carabineros officials to 12 years in prison for the qualified kidnapping (forced disappearance) of the farmer José Domingo Llabulén Pilquinao, a member of the Communist Party, committed in the southern commune of Lautaro, La Araucanía Region, on October 11, 1973, one month after the military coup that began the dictatorship.

The II Chamber of the highest court unanimously ratified the sentence issued in the first instance by Judge Álvaro Mesa, which condemned the then-major Jorge Enrique Schweizer Gómez and Corporal Domingo Antonio Campos Collao as perpetrators of the crime.

The magistrates established an "error of law" in a sentence issued by the Temuco Court of Appeals, which had applied the half-prescription and reduced the first-instance sentence.

Regarding the third person convicted in the case, former captain Marcial Edmundo Vera Ríos, who passed away on September 1, 2019, the Supreme Court excluded him from this resolution, and Judge Mesa must "obtain the respective certificate and issue the resolution that corresponds by law."

KIDNAPPED IN FRONT OF HIS CHILDREN

Regarding the case, the first-instance ruling established that the victim, 44, "was traveling on a rural bus from Lautaro to his home located in the indigenous community of Quiñaco-Manzanal, along with two of his children" on October 11, 1973, when "at a certain point on the road the bus was intercepted by a Carabineros patrol from the 1st Precinct of Lautaro that was traveling in a private pickup truck, ordering the driver of the vehicle to stop."

"Immediately afterward, they made all passengers get off the bus, subsequently detaining José Domingo Llabulén Pilquinao, whom they loaded into the pickup truck in which the patrol was traveling, apparently without carrying a judicial order authorizing them for such an act," the investigation found.

"Immediately the patrol headed to the Lautaro Precinct, followed by the Llabulén Llaulén brothers (the victim's children), who were able to see the moment their father was taken off the vehicle and entered into the unit, this being the last time they had news about their father's whereabouts," it indicated.

During the dictatorship (1973-1990), according to official data, some 2,300 people died at the hands of State agents, of whom 1,192 remain as forcibly disappeared and another 33,000 were tortured and imprisoned for political reasons.

Source: cooperativa.cl, October 23, 2021

Minister Álvaro Mesa prosecutes retired Army officer and retired carabinero for illegal coercion and illegal detention of a CORFO employee

The visiting minister for human rights violation cases of the Temuco, Valdivia, Puerto Montt, and Coyhaique jurisdictions, Álvaro Mesa Latorre, indicted retired Army Colonel Jorge Nibaldo Del Río Del Río as a perpetrator of the crimes of illegal coercion and illegal detention of Guido Erwis Venegas Avilés, in their character as crimes against humanity.

These illicit acts were perpetrated in September 1973, in the commune of Lautaro.

In the resolution (case file 45.373), the instructing minister also indicted retired Carabineros First Sergeant Domingo Antonio Campos Collao as an accomplice to the crime of illegal coercion, in the character of a crime against humanity against the same victim.

During the investigation stage of the case, Minister Mesa Latorre managed to gather sufficient evidence to establish the following facts, which constitute crimes against humanity:

A.- That the Armed Forces and Public Order and Security Forces assumed the Supreme command of the Nation on September 11, 1973, gathering the Constituent, Legislative, and Executive powers in the Government Junta as established in Communiqué No. 5 of the same date, as well as in Decree Law No. 1, subsequently clarified and complemented by Decree Laws Nos. 128, 527, and 788.

Among other measures, a State of Siege was ordered throughout the national territory, ordering level-one quartering for the Armed Forces and Order.

B.- That by September 11, 1973, as a result of the events occurring in the country, a special operational group called a "civil commission" was formed in all Precincts, dedicated to intelligence work that consisted of finding out information about specific people who were considered in military communiqués, among others; that is, they were tasks that escaped common police procedures [the foregoing is recorded in case file 113.987 of the First Criminal Court of Temuco, file 14-2013 of the Illustrious Court of Appeals of Valdivia, file 45.359 of the Lautaro Civil Court, file 45.362 of the Lautaro Civil Court, file 45.368 of the Lautaro Civil Court], among others, all followed by this Tribunal and which are of public knowledge.

C.- That in the case of the 1st Carabineros Precinct of Lautaro, it was in charge of the Carabineros Commissioner, Major Jorge Enrique Schweizer Gómez (deceased), followed in command by Captain Marcial Edmundo Vera Ríos (deceased).

The special group was integrated and led by Lieutenant José Orlando Huerta Ávila (deceased), Enrique Ferrier Valeze (deceased), Mario Ponce Orellana (deceased), Egidio Manuel Sandoval Umaña (deceased), Juvenal Santiago Sanhueza Sanhueza (deceased), Santiago Millangir Hueche (deceased), and Domingo Antonio Campos Collao, among others.

This special group carried out patrols through the rural and urban area and at the same time collaborated with personnel from the La Concepción Regiment of Lautaro. The group was led by Captain Jorge Nibaldo Del Río Del Río, carrying out joint patrols through the rural area under the jurisdiction of said police unit, proceeding to indicate the names and addresses of people who were subsequently detained and taken to the precinct to be interrogated in different areas, such as in the Lautaro precinct itself and in the La Concepción Regiment of Lautaro.

D.- That the facilities of the 1st Carabineros Precinct of Lautaro were used to hold those detained by this special group and those detained by personnel from the La Concepción Regiment of Lautaro, who were subsequently transported by this special group to an unknown destination or were removed by personnel from the La Concepción Regiment of Lautaro, according to testimonies, among others, of Víctor Matus Vásquez (Vol.

II, pp. 426-427); José Domingo Segundo Llabulén Llabulén (Vol. III, p. 810); Francisca Llaulén Antilao (Vol. III, p. 811); Sergio Samuel Jara Sandoval (Vol. III, p. 814); Santiago Millangir Hueche (Vol.

III, pp. 807-808); Paicavi Lemolemo Painemal Morales (Vol. II, pp. 507-509); Hernán Patricio Mardones Díaz (Vol. II, pp. 495-497); Rafael García Ferlice (Vol. III, pp. 801-803); Mario Ponce Orellana (Vol.

III, p. 804); Ida del Carmen Meliquén Quilodrán (Vol. III, p. 806); Carlos Antonio Navarro Schifferli (Vol. III, p. 807), a place where men and women were held indiscriminately. The superior command composed of Jorge Enrique Schweizer Gómez (deceased), Marcial Edmundo Vera (deceased), and José Orlando Huerta Ávila (deceased) had knowledge of all these records of detentions of people who were taken to the Lautaro precinct, as has been indicated.

E.- That Guido Erwis Venegas Avilés, in 1973, was 26 years old, worked as an executive for the agricultural company Magrimsa, and was on that date on a service commission at CORFO in the city of Concepción, and was also the communal secretary of the Socialist party of the city of Lautaro. (As recorded in other evidence, Vol. I, pp. 01, 14, 232, 312, 384).

F.- That on September 13, 1973, Venegas Avilés was at the Calatayú Estate in the Quillem sector (Perquenco), along with Luis Candia Figueroa, a leader of the socialist party and student leader at the University of Temuco.

Both were hiding, with intentions to flee to Argentina, as they had been sought by the authorities, at which moment two trucks and a jeep arrived with personnel from the La Concepción Regiment of Lautaro, who detained them and loaded them into one of the trucks, in which a teacher named Norton Maza Ferreira and a merchant named Rodolfo Mencke were also detained.

The detainees were threatened at all times by a military officer who hit them with his fists, breaking their noses.

G.- That upon being detained, Guido Venegas and Luis Candia were transferred to the La Concepción Regiment of Lautaro, where Venegas Avilés was taken into a room and interrogated by approximately three to four people, remaining blindfolded and staying at that facility until midnight, to then be taken to the First Carabineros Precinct of Lautaro, where he saw carabineros Domingo Campos Collao, Sergeant Santiago Millanguir Hueche, and Víctor Matus Vásquez (as recorded in other evidence, Vol.

I, pp. 14, 15), being able to recognize the first of these because he was a cousin of his ex-spouse. He arrived at said police unit at approximately one or two in the morning, where Venegas Avilés was beaten with a baton on the head and all over his body.

At the same time, his head was shaved on one side, and he was left in a dungeon along with other detainees, where he told the others what had happened. Among them was the priest Wilfredo Alarcón, who relates in his book Biography of Juan Ansina that "...They were the ones who impressed me the most that day, you saw them arrive that night, around two or three in the morning, Guido Venegas, soaking wet, dripping water, drenched... his face looked like a bag of bruised meat, his eyes had sunk, his nose broken, his lips impossible, his head broken, according to him his ribs broken so he couldn't move, he didn't have a good part... and then Candia, I don't know if they hit him less or if he was more resistant, but he seemed less damaged... although his nose was also broken and the blows were noticeable on his face" (as recorded in other evidence, Vol. I, pp. 01, 14, 32, 43, 59, 84, 85, 87; Vol. II, p. 543). That despite the aforementioned uniformed officers, including Domingo Campos Collao, being part of the group of people (carabineros) present at the aforementioned precinct while Venegas Avilés was being beaten and tortured by a carabinero (Badge 79, unidentified), they did not take any action to prevent the execution of the illicit act, nor did they report or inform the Carabineros superior command or any other authority of the fact. Likewise, there is no record that an investigation was carried out for those illicit acts or that they were reported to the courts of justice at the time of the events, nor does it appear that an administrative investigation was initiated as a consequence of the commission of this illicit act.

H.- That the day after what was related in the previous paragraph, Guido Venegas was transferred to the La Concepción Regiment of Lautaro and led to a room while blindfolded; they beat him with feet and fists, placed a bag of wet sand on his body, and tortured him, putting a plastic bag over his head, suffocating him until he almost lost consciousness, and interrogated him while threateningly showing him photographs of his wife and infant daughter.

This session was directed by Captain Jorge Nibaldo Del Río Del Río, a person whom Venegas Avilés was able to recognize, as he states on p. 15: "...I recognized him by his voice since it had been he who had interrogated me the first time I was taken to the aforementioned regiment...", while he received blows with an iron bar to his lips, which caused several of his teeth to come loose.

These facts coincide with the statement of Lidia del Carmen Torres Abarzúa, widow of retired Army non-commissioned officer Nelson Medina Caro, who details on p. 167 that "...three more people, Guido Venegas, Luis De la Maza, and Luis Candia, were detained and tortured by Jorge del Rio and Rafael García, after having been surprised hiding in a well located in the Field..." adding that her husband had received orders from Jorge Del Rio to execute the aforementioned individuals, which he did not fulfill, only to then be returned to the Lautaro Carabineros precinct, where he remained until the first days of October 1973. (as recorded in other evidence, Vol. I, pp. 01, 09, 10, 14, 15, 16, 134, 150, 167, 175; Vol. II, pp. 674, 675).

I.- That while detained at the Lautaro precinct, during the first days of October 1973, Guido Venegas Avilés was taken to the Temuco jail, being released at the end of October of that year, without a prior trial. (As recorded in other evidence, Vol.

I, pp. 01, 366 bis, 368). Subsequently, he continued to be sought by Carabineros, a situation that ended in January 1975, that is, after a process before the military prosecutor's office, being temporarily dismissed by Military Prosecutor Alfonso Podlech Michaud, subsequently obtaining his freedom."

Regarding the accused Jorge Nibaldo del Rio Río, his house arrest was ordered due to his age, for which the 34th Criminal Court of Santiago was notified to enforce the decreed precautionary measure. Meanwhile, regarding the accused Domingo Campos Collao, no precautionary measure was decreed, as he is currently serving a sentence at the Punta Peuco Prison for other trials regarding human rights violations.

Source: pjud.cl, April 24, 2023