Víctor Manuel Díaz López, married, father of three, graphic worker, former National Leader of the CUT, and Deputy General Secretary of the Communist Party, was detained under the following circumstances: At 02:00 in the morning on May 12, 1976, agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) detained him during a raid, following a long search, persecution, and raids that had begun on September 11, 1973, with the objective of apprehending him.

The action on the night of May 12, 1976, was carried out at the house where the victim was living at the time, located at Calle Bello Horizonte No. 979, in the commune of Las Condes, Santiago.

The circumstances of the detention were recounted by the owner of the property, engineer Jorge Ernesto Canto Fuenzalida, who stated that at approximately 02:00 on May 12, 1976, while the entire family was sleeping, they were awakened by insistent ringing of the doorbell.

Upon looking out into the street, he could see six plainclothes subjects armed, some even with long machine guns. At that precise moment, one of the agents shouted: "We are from the DINA! We have a warrant for a full search of your house. Open the door immediately!"

Jorge Canto told them he would do so instantly, closed the window, woke his wife, and went with her to Víctor Díaz's room to warn him of what was happening.

Upon heading to the front door, he encountered two armed DINA agents in the patio, crouching among the bushes. They held him at gunpoint, and one took him to the door while the other watched the interior of the house.

After opening the door, one of the agents showed him a paper and told him it was a search warrant, which he was never able to read. He entered with about 4 agents, and one remained at the gate keeping guard, next to a large black car in which they had arrived. Another agent stayed at the entrance door inside the house.

The agents, who did not identify themselves, wore a white armband with red drawings on their left arms. There were 5 men and one woman; the latter carried a transmitter in addition to her weapon, with which she communicated constantly.

The agents entered the bedroom of the couple and their 4-month-old daughter, and then the room of their 6- and 4-year-old daughters, took a quick look around, and went back out into the hallway. Then, heading toward another part of the house, they stopped in front of the room where Víctor Díaz was, whose door remained closed. The agents then said to the homeowner: "Halt! And who is in this room?"

The subjects insisted on entering immediately, so the homeowner opened the door and, without turning on the light, approached Víctor Díaz and told him what was happening; at that instant, three agents slowly approached them.

They made them turn on the light and stared nervously and fixedly at the man who, without moving, remained lying on the bed; at all times, they pointed their weapons at him. One of them began to ask, while hitting him with his weapon: "And you, old man, who are you?

What is your name? Do you have an ID? What do you do for a living? How do you survive?" When Víctor Díaz tried to sit up to answer, he was forced to remain lying down with a gun barrel pressed against his chest, and an agent ordered him to get up slowly.

At that moment, another agent grabbed the homeowner and ordered him to show him the rest of the house. He could only hear one of the individuals who had remained in the room ordering Víctor Díaz to walk; he surely did so, and this made evident the limp he had had for years.

He was showing the maid's room when he could hear the frantic shouts of the group leader: "Chino Díaz! We finally caught you, communist...! Arrest everyone in the house!" Instantly, the other agents locked the wife and the maid in their respective bedrooms; the homeowner was held at gunpoint and locked in the small bathroom.

After a while, one of the individuals entered and hit him in the ears with his open hands, then tied his arms behind his back and forced him to lie on the floor of the hallway.

Still in that position, he managed to see how Víctor Díaz was being beaten. He was lying on the floor of his room, also tied with his arms behind his back, and was being interrogated by two agents. Each question was accompanied by a punch or a kick to the face or body.

They asked him how long he had been in the house, where he came from, where he had hidden the papers and documents, where he kept the money; they also asked him about other Communist Party leaders and who worked with him. Upon receiving no answer, the agents beat him with increasing violence.

The blows made it impossible for Víctor Díaz to speak. The leader left him and went to where the witness was, and grabbing him by the beard, asked him who he was. Not believing that his name was Jorge Canto, he ordered him to show his documents and asked if he wasn't someone else, another Communist Party leader.

He looked at him as if searching for someone else, sentencing him by saying they were from "Intelligence," so they could not be fooled. Then he took the phone, dialed a number, and asked to speak with "Contreras" (presumably General (R) Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, then Director of the DINA).

On the second attempt, he managed to communicate and said: "Boss, I'm calling to give you good news. We caught Víctor Díaz, Chino Díaz!" He also communicated the names of the other inhabitants of the house and, euphoric, commented on the efficiency of his action: "...see boss what we achieve when we work together? We deserve some good celebrations, right boss?"

Jorge Canto adds in his account that the subject was overexcited, very happy, in a state of euphoria, just like the other members of the DINA agent group; they even congratulated each other, patted each other on the back, and commented on future commendations, "on their faces and in their attitude, one could see those of someone who had finished a great battle."

Then they took Víctor Díaz out of the house; it was already close to 03:00 in the morning. As they passed through the hallway where the witness was, he could see that the victim "was dressed in his pajamas, his shoes, without socks, and a jacket draped over his shoulders.

It was a very cold night... His hands were tied behind his back, and because of the strong and numerous blows, he had one eye half-closed, his lower lip swollen, he was breathing with difficulty, he walked half-hunched, and he limped more than usual."

They sat Jorge Canto in an armchair and interrogated him about the presence of "el Chino," as they called him; they did this with his wife and the maid as well. The latter answered what she knew, which was that "Don José (she knew him as José Santos Garrido Retamal, his clandestine name) was an old friend of the house and had arrived about three or four months ago; he lived in the south and was retired.

He did not know Santiago, so he went out very little and generally stayed in the house reading."

The witness continues his account, noting that after a while, about 25 agents arrived at the house, all in plainclothes, well-dressed, armed, and with the style of the "Patria y Libertad" militants; they were young men of high socioeconomic status.

They were led by a blond, tall, solid, and pot-bellied subject, who gave instructions for a thorough search of the house. While this was being done, he began to interrogate him about the same things the other agents had.

During the search, the agents even undressed the 4-month-old baby; they also damaged furniture and books, disordered the entire house, and stole items and money. This group left around 04:30 in the morning, and after a while of waiting, "a new agent arrived, about 35 years old, in brown clothes, with a tie, and wearing a Tomé poncho over his shoulders.

He had the appearance of someone who had showered recently, of someone starting the day. He showed great authority over the other agents." The man walked through the entire house quickly but calmly and parsimoniously; then he gave instructions to a man and a woman to tidy up the place.

Subsequently, one of them proceeded to rub all the places where there might be fingerprints of the agents with a cloth, as if not wanting to leave a digital trace of their passage through the house. The man who had arrived last interrogated the homeowner about the events and about Víctor Díaz, referring to him as "el Chino." Then he presented him with some forms to sign; they said, in their upper right corner: National Intelligence Directorate DINA-CHILE.

In the forms, in duplicate, a record was made of a raid on the indicated house, the name of the homeowner was indicated, and it was established that there had been no damage or losses to the property or to the people.

The other form recorded the detention of José Santos Garrido Retamal (the clandestine name used by Víctor Díaz López) at Bello Horizonte 979 and that he would be taken to "Cuatro Alamos." After both signed, he told him to stay calm, to sleep, that he was aware that his work caused some inconvenience, but that it was necessary; he insisted that he stay calm in his house.

Regarding Víctor Díaz, he told him: "...the gentleman they took from here, I think tomorrow afternoon he will be back, because it seems that we made a mistake again. Good night." It was 05:00 in the morning, and he ordered the rest of the agents to leave the house.

Jorge Canto, his wife, and the maid remained there. While they were discussing what to do, the phone rang. When answering the call, a person who did not identify himself asked for José Santos; he was told he was not there, and he was asked who he was.

The subject replied that he was a friend and that he knew he had problems, but he did not want to say which ones. Then he was insisted: "No. Don José Santos is not here, and I don't know if he had problems or not." The voice replied that "That is fine.

Good night." It was clear that the call was related to Víctor Díaz's captors. The family decided to leave the house at 07:15 in the morning in their vehicle, taking a few personal effects. Upon being in the street, they could observe that 20 meters from the house, a white Austin Mini was parked (the same vehicle in which the family of Alejandro Rodríguez Urzúa, a communist militant kidnapped and disappeared since July 27, 1976, was watched).

As they left, the agents approached the entrance of the house; one got out, and the others followed them in the Mini. As the vehicles approached, they could recognize that the agents who had searched the house were traveling inside; then they lost them in some interior streets of the neighborhood.

Meanwhile, Víctor Díaz was already at the DINA facility known as "Villa Grimaldi," located in the commune of Peñalolén, where, among others, he was seen by Isaac Godoy Castillo, detained by the DINA in that place and subsequently released.

In his account, he says that another detainee named Pedro Silva "had his coat taken away to give it to him (referring to Víctor Díaz) since the agents told him that he was wearing very little clothing." That same day, May 12, 1976, in the afternoon, while she was going to meet Víctor Díaz, Eliana Espinoza Fernández, also a leader of the Communist Party, was detained.

Elisa Escobar had gone to her house—forced by the agents—on May 8. She was detained on May 6 in the "rat trap" at Calle Conferencia 1587, where Mario Zamorano, Jorge Muñoz, Jaime Donato, and Uldarico Donaire were detained.

Elisa Escobar was taken by DINA agents to the detention of Lenin Díaz at his house. All those mentioned are disappeared after being detained by the DINA and taken to Villa Grimaldi. On May 14, 1976, Selenisa Caro Ríos, Víctor Díaz's spouse, received a phone call at her house from a woman who did not identify herself and told her that her husband had been detained by DINA agents.

Pedro Jara, detained for the second time on August 18, 1976, and taken again to the Villa Grimaldi facility, states that Víctor Díaz was there. In his testimony, he points out that in the cell next to his were María Galindo and Marta Ugarte, with whom he spoke through a hole in the partition that separated them.

One night, Marta Ugarte commented to him that she had been hung and confronted with Víctor Díaz, who was being treated harshly by the DINA agents, which was why he was in very bad shape. Víctor Díaz was also seen in Villa Grimaldi by Rosa Leiva M., a Communist Party militant, detained on August 20 at 15:00.

She was taken to the aforementioned place; there, she saw the victim on August 25, 1976, at night, after dinner time, at the moment she was being given her ration. She says it was a gallery to which she had not been taken; they served her and sat her down; there was a wall, and suddenly she heard Víctor Díaz's voice saying: "Please, come, open for me!" To which an agent said: "There he is...

Chino again." One says: "What does he want?" and he replied: "To go to the bathroom," so she spoke loudly so he could hear her. At that moment, she felt that when they were taking him, he had trouble walking; she was also able to appreciate that there were more people in that place.

Later, they took her to a room in another part of the Villa. Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda arrived there and asked the agent on guard, "Are these two the ones leaving tomorrow?" to which the other said yes.

She realized they were referring to her and Pedro Jara (mentioned above). Then, "while I was talking to Juana Hidalgo, they knocked on the partition"; it was Marta Ugarte, who, upon knowing she was being released the next day, asked her to warn some people to take care of themselves.

Subsequently, after numerous efforts and complaints made by Víctor Díaz's spouse, on October 6, 1976, two DINA agents who did not identify themselves arrived at her house. They handed Mrs. Selenisa Caro de Díaz an envelope and asked her to read the letter it contained.

She did so; she was immediately able to recognize the handwriting of her beloved Víctor. The letter was addressed to her and sent greetings to her and their three children; he expressed that he wanted to know about them, and asked her that "any procedure you do regarding my person, I beg you not to continue." He asked her to indicate a day and time to call her on the phone, and the letter ended by saying: "I say goodbye with all my affection and the love of your husband and father.

For you, dear Selita, for Toyi, Viviana, and Totín, many kisses from..." (signed Víctor Díaz). The subjects asked her to stop making efforts because that bothered them a lot and damaged the safety of her husband and her; they also informed her that he was in good health and that he was detained in a place they could not indicate to her.

Finally, they made her write a paper acknowledging receipt of the letter; before leaving, they told her that he would call her and that perhaps they would take him to the house so they could see each other.

At 06:00 in the afternoon of the following day, October 7, 1976, the phone rang. Victoria Díaz approached and answered it, as she was alone in the house. A male voice told her that they were going to speak with her.

Immediately after, she could hear the unmistakable voice, for her, of her father, who asked her about her mother. She replied that she was running errands, so he told her that he had asked her not to continue doing them, and also "don't show the letter to anyone.

It is only for you." He sent greetings to everyone and announced that he would call any day after six in the afternoon; he ended by telling her: "tell your mom to understand why, and not to continue." Víctor Díaz's children, from that afternoon on, tried not to leave the house, waiting for their father to call them on the phone at any moment.

If that happened, they wanted to be there to talk to him. On October 19, at 11:00 in the morning, a DINA agent arrived at the Díaz Caro family home, located at Miguel Campos 3004, San Miguel commune, asking for Mrs.

Díaz; he was attended to by her daughter Victoria, who was alone at home at that moment. The agent asked her to hand over a package of clothes for her father, to which she refused because she did not have her mother's authorization for such a thing.

The agent left annoyed and said that he would be reprimanded for not fulfilling his mission. The next day, October 20, 1976, at approximately 20:50 at night, Viviana Díaz answered a phone call. It was her father, and she immediately passed the phone to her mother.

Víctor Díaz asked his wife how her health was. She said: "I am not going to answer this call, I don't want calls, I want to see you here, in my house," she insisted that "I will not speak anymore until they bring you to the house." Víctor Díaz asked her if they had promised her that, to which she replied affirmatively; her husband stated instantly, "then I won't call anymore." She immediately hung up the phone.

Selenisa, Victoria, Viviana, and Víctor never heard from Víctor Díaz López again, and he currently remains in the status of forcibly disappeared. His son, Víctor Díaz Caro, after returning to the country after several years of exile, was arrested in 1986, accused of participating in the frustrated attack on the presidential motorcade of General Augusto Pinochet on September 7 of that same year.

Subsequently, in 1990, he escaped from prison. Víctor Díaz López remains in the status of forcibly disappeared since May 12, 1976, the date on which he was detained by the DINA, and since October of that same year, his trail is lost from the DINA facilities.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

On May 14, 1976, his spouse Selenisa Caro filed an Amparo appeal in his favor before the Santiago Court of Appeals, case file No. 405-76. The Court decreed a series of proceedings; however, 15 days after the filing, no response was received from any of the consulted agencies.

Only on June 4, 1976, was an official letter received from the Ministry of the Interior, in which it informed that the victim was not detained by order of said Ministry. The same authority, Army General Raúl Benavides, responded on behalf of the DINA that Víctor Díaz López was not detained by order of his Secretariat.

Based on the merit of said information, the Court rejected the amparo on June 19, 1976, a resolution that was appealed by the petitioner. However, on June 24, the Supreme Court confirmed the appealed resolution.

The Court of Appeals ordered the records to be sent to the 1st Criminal Court of San Miguel. On August 19, 1976, Selenisa Caro filed another Amparo appeal with new information, which was entered under case file No. 780-76.

In the filing document, among other facts, two statements from the Social Communication Division of the Military Junta (DINACOS), dated July 14 and 17 of that year, are pointed out. In them, it is expressed that the Security Services carried out operations against "mailbox houses" of the Communist Party, in which they detained militants of that party.

In the other statement, it adds that "...an important group of other clandestine communist leaders was detained." On September 10, the aforementioned Minister of the Interior reported that the person under amparo was not detained by order of his office.

This information was sufficient for the Court of Appeals to declare the appeal inadmissible, ordering the records to be sent to the 1st Criminal Court of San Miguel. On February 28, 1977, with new information, a third Amparo appeal was filed under case file No. 78-76.

Among other documents, it accompanied a sworn statement by Jorge Canto, a witness to the victim's detention, and a letter from Víctor Díaz to his wife dated October 6, 1976, written in his own hand. Said appeal was accumulated to case file No. 525-76 in favor of Carlos Lorca and other people, as it concerned the same facts and people.

However, before a request from the petitioner in the sense that the only thing common between both appeals is that the name of Víctor Díaz is repeated, the appeal was de-accumulated and remained under case file No. 78-77.

On March 25, 1977, the Minister of the Interior reported that Víctor Díaz López was not detained, adding that, as the petitioner expresses in the sense that her husband was detained under the name of "José Santos Garrido Retamal, it is my duty to inform Your Illustriousness that there is indeed a record in the registries of this Ministry of the detention of the aforementioned Garrido Retamal according to the exempt decree of the Interior No. 2052 dated May 12, 1976, ...as, likewise, it is recorded that he was released on May 13, 1976, in accordance with Interior decree No. 2054." Despite the information presented and based on what was reported by the Minister of the Interior, the Court rejected the amparo on June 21, 1977. On the 29th of the same month, the Supreme Court confirmed the resolution that had been appealed by the petitioners. All the Court's orders to investigate to the First Criminal Court of San Miguel were accumulated due to incompetence to case file No. 94.362 of the Sixth Criminal Court of Santiago. Before the Sixth Criminal Court of Santiago, a complaint was filed for the kidnapping of Víctor Díaz López, which was entered under case file No. 94.362 on July 22, 1976. The Minister of the Interior, Army General Raúl Benavides, responded that the victim was not detained by order of his Ministry. On August 4, the Judge of the 1st Criminal Court of San Miguel declared himself incompetent to hear case file No. 44.095 processed in that Court, because the place of the investigated facts did not correspond to his jurisdiction, so he determined to send the records to the Sixth Criminal Court of Santiago. In said Court, the aforementioned records were received on August 9, being entered under case file No. 94.470. On August 12, 1976, said case was accumulated to case file No. 94.362, due to the same facts investigated in that Court. On August 19, 1976, the article from "Qué Pasa" magazine titled "From the MIR to the PC" was presented to the Judge, in which, along with pointing out that the security agencies of the military government were allegedly carrying out an operation directed against the Communist Party, it makes m attention to Víctor Díaz López as one of those detained by the Security Services. Subsequently, the director of the magazine, Jaime Martínez Williams, declared before the Judge that he had not reported that the affected party was detained, but rather that he relied on information provided by third parties; he added that reference was made to the fact that the leaders of the PC (Communist Party) had gone underground. On September 7, the wife of the affected party requested that the Judge visit the DINA facility known as "Villa Grimaldi," as she stated she had information that her spouse was being held at that location. The Judge did not grant the request. In October, an official letter arrived at the Court from Corvette Captain Alejandro Armstrong, Chief of Staff to the Minister of Justice, in which he indicated that, in his capacity as such, he spoke by telephone with the Secretary to the Mayor of Bologna, Italy, regarding the detention of Víctor Díaz and other persons whose fate the Mayor was interested in knowing. To which, according to him, he replied that if the detentions were effective, there were legal norms in Chile that allowed for this and for the protection of individuals and their rights. On October 13, 1976, the summary proceedings were declared closed and, given "that the perpetration of a crime does not result as fully justified from the background of the process in the facts subject to this investigation," the case was temporarily dismissed. This resolution was confirmed by the Court of Appeals on December 13, 1976. In mid-1977, the Amparo Appeal (Habeas Corpus) roll 107-77, filed on behalf of the affected party by various International Organizations of Jurists, was entered into the Santiago Court of Appeals. On June 26, 1977, an Amparo Appeal was presented on behalf of Víctor Díaz, filed by the Primate Cardinal of France and Archbishop of Paris; the Archbishop of Reims; the General Secretary of the French Socialist Party and Senator of the Republic, François Mitterrand; the President of the University of Paris; the President of the Sorbonne University; and sponsored by the President of the French Bar Association, Louis Pettitit, which was not accepted by the Santiago Court of Appeals. Despite the express requests formalized in the various Amparo Appeals on behalf of Víctor Díaz, the Court never visited the place where his detention occurred, nor Villa Grimaldi, where it was indicated he remained held in the power of the DINA. Nor was information requested from DINACOS, in order for it to report how it was certain of the detention of "members and leaders of the Communist Party of Chile," as it had reported in separate public communiqués on June 14 and 17, 1976. On September 20, 1977, Selenisa Caro filed a criminal complaint in the Sixth Criminal Court of Santiago for kidnapping and illegal detention of her spouse, Víctor Díaz López, against the Chief of the DINA, General (R) Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, since the agents during the detention of the affected party asked to speak with "a certain Contreras" whom they later called "Jefecito" (Little Boss). At that time, the aforementioned former uniformed officer was the supreme head of the National Intelligence Directorate, responsible for the detention and subsequent disappearance of numerous militants and leaders of the Communist Party. Judge Jorge Medina, despite accepting the complaint for processing, did not grant any of the various requests made, among others, those tending to judicially obtain the Exempt Decrees of the Ministry of the Interior, by virtue of which the citizen José Santos Garrido Retamal was detained and released on May 12 and 13, 1976, respectively. However, along with decreeing the reopening of case 94.362 and assigning the complaint the number 97.410, he ordered its accumulation and the filing of the records; this occurred on September 27, 1977. On October 3, a motion for reconsideration with a subsidiary appeal was presented by the plaintiff party, which was not accepted by the magistrate, who ordered the records to be elevated to the Court of Appeals. This Court, along with instructing that the complaint be processed, requested a private reprimand for the sponsoring lawyer, Hugo Pavez, by the Bar Association, for considering the terms used in his argument before the Court when referring to the Judge of the Sixth Criminal Court to be excessive. Thus, on December 3, the complaint was deemed filed, which was also accumulated to case roll Nº94.362 processed in said Court. Without fulfilling the decreed proceedings, on April 27, 1978, the "Amnesty Law," Decree Law Nº2191, was applied, and the case was definitively dismissed. However, on July 19, 1978, the Court of Appeals revoked the resolution because the objectives that motivated the summary proceedings had not been met. The case was returned to the summary stage. The judge decreed the "compliance" on July 27, 1978. When the Director of the National Social Communication Division of the Military Junta was officially requested, he responded without providing background information regarding the information provided by his office in separate public statements on July 14 and 17, 1976, in which he reported on the repression of the PC, the detection of 32 "mailbox" houses of said Party, and the detention of leaders, among whom was the lawyer and collaborator of the Vicariate of Solidarity, Hernán Montealegre K. Without conducting further investigation, the Judge declared the summary closed on November 3, 1978, and on the 13th of the same month, temporarily dismissed the case, "for the perpetration of any crime not being fully justified." Once again, the Court of Appeals considered that the investigation was not exhausted, nor were a series of ordered proceedings completed; therefore, it returned the case to the summary stage and revoked the dismissal. After the process returned to the 6th Criminal Court of Santiago, on May 17, 1979, knowledge of the case passed to the Visiting Minister Mr. Servando Jordán López, who decreed a series of proceedings. During the months of May and June 1979, all the neighbors of Calle Bello Horizonte appeared before the Minister. Mrs. Amalia Fuentes Albornoz, an employee at the house at Bello Horizonte 979 at the time of the affected party's detention, also appeared on May 22, 1979, and in her statement confirmed the investigated facts and stated that she had not wanted to testify before out of fear. During May and June 1979, the capital's cemeteries informed Minister Jordán that no corpse had been buried under the name José Santos Garrido Retamal or Víctor Díaz López. The Director of the Legal Medical Service reported the same. In June 1979, the then Minister of the Interior of the Military Junta, Sergio Fernández Fernández, reported that his Secretariat had no information on Víctor Díaz, and also communicated that the National Intelligence Center (CNI) did not have information on said person either. The Criminalistics Laboratory of the Investigative Police informed the Minister on July 10, 1979, that the handwriting on the letter received by Selenisa Caro after the detention of Víctor Díaz effectively corresponds to him. The Minister attempted to locate José Santos Garrido, whom he could not manage to take a statement from, and could only do so with a sister of his who lived in Santiago; the truth is that this person was never detained by the DINA. On April 25, Minister Servando Jordán had before him the process roll N°553-78 of the Second Military Prosecutor's Office of Santiago, instructed against General (R) Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda and other senior Army Officers. On April 28, the Minister declared himself incompetent and resolved to remit the background of the case to the Second Military Prosecutor's Office. Although the resolution was appealed, the Court of Appeals confirmed Minister Jordán's ruling. For its part, the Military Justice accepted jurisdiction to hear the case and accumulated it to case roll Nº553-78 of the Second Military Prosecutor's Office of Santiago. The aforementioned complaint had been filed on August 1, 1978, by relatives of 70 forcibly disappeared persons, including those of Víctor Díaz López, before the 10th Criminal Court of Santiago, for the crime of aggravated kidnapping against General (R) Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, Army Colonel Marcelo Luis Moren Brito, and Army Lieutenant Colonel Rolf Gonzalo Wenderoth Pozo. The identities of other agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), information on secret detention centers of the aforementioned organization, and other data related to its structure and the means at the DINA's disposal were also delivered to the Court. Without carrying out any proceedings, on August 10 of that year, the Judge of the 10th Court declared herself incompetent and remitted the background to the Military Justice; after several appeals, in May 1979, the case was settled in the 2nd Military Prosecutor's Office of Santiago, under roll N° 553-78. In 1983, the Court had before it the four notebooks of the installation of the Extraordinary Visit for cases of forcibly disappeared persons of the Metropolitan Region, which Minister Servando Jordán substantiated; they contained important information regarding the actions of the DINA and the responsibility of that security agency in hundreds of cases of forcibly disappeared persons. Without any proceedings being carried out for four years, on November 20, 1989, Army Lieutenant Colonel Enrique Ibarra Chamorro, Military Prosecutor General, requested the application of the Amnesty Decree Law (D.L. 2.191) for this case, because the process had had the exclusive purpose of investigating alleged crimes that occurred during the period between September 11, 1973, and March 10, 1978, and because, during the 10 years of processing, it had not been possible to "determine the responsibility of any person." On November 30, 1989, the request was accepted by the 2nd Military Court, which totally and definitively dismissed the case, which was still in the summary stage, for "the criminal responsibility of the persons allegedly accused of the reported facts being extinguished." The plaintiff parties appealed said resolution to the Court Martial, which confirmed the ruling in January 1992. A Complaint Appeal was then filed before the Supreme Court of Justice, which, as of December 1992, had not yet issued its resolution. (Complete background on the complaint against Manuel Contreras can be found in the case of Eduardo Alarcón Jara, July 30, 1974).

In the sentence (roll 2.545-2019), the Sixth Chamber of the appellate court—composed of ministers Graciela Gómez, Andrea Díaz-Muñoz, and minister Matías de la Noi—confirmed the sentence of the visiting minister Miguel Vázquez Plaza against those convicted, but modified the sentences by changing the participation of some convicted persons from complicity to authorship.

The Court of Appeals sentenced 47 former agents of the dissolved National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for the qualified kidnappings of Mario Jaime Zamorano Donoso, Onofre Jorge Muñoz Poutays, Uldarico Donaire Cortez, Jaime Patricio Donato Avendaño, Elisa del Carmen Escobar Cepeda, Lenin Adán Díaz Silva, Víctor Manuel Díaz López, and Eliana Marina Espinoza Fernández, and the qualified homicide of Víctor Díaz López, victims of the so-called Conferencia 1 case.

In the sentence (roll 2.545-2019), the Sixth Chamber of the appellate court—composed of ministers Graciela Gómez, Andrea Díaz-Muñoz, and minister Matías de la Noi—confirmed the sentence of the visiting minister Miguel Vázquez Plaza against those convicted, but modified the sentences by changing the participation of some convicted persons from complicity to authorship.

The ruling sentences Pedro Espinoza Bravo and Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko to 20 years in prison for their responsibility as authors of qualified kidnappings. Meanwhile, Emilio Troncoso Vivallos, Claudio Pacheco Fernández, Jorge Díaz Radulovich, Orlando Altamirano Sanhueza, Eduardo Cabezas Mardones, Guillermo Díaz Ramírez, Orlando Torrejón Gatica, Víctor Manuel Álvarez Droguett, Carlos Miranda Mesa, Carlos López Inostroza, Lionel Medrano Rivas, Juvenal Piña Garrido, José Ojeda Obando, José Seco Alarcón, Roberto Rodríguez Manquel, and Leonidas Méndez Moreno were sentenced to 15 years in prison as authors of qualified kidnappings. Meanwhile, Sergio Escalona Acuña, Gladys Calderón Carreño, and Sergio Pichunmán Cariqueo must serve a sentence of 12 years in prison for the qualified homicide of Víctor Díaz López and a sentence of 5 years and one day in prison for their responsibility in the qualified kidnapping of the same victim. Agent Juan Morales Salgado will serve a sentence of 8 years in prison for his responsibility in the qualified kidnapping of the victim Díaz López. Agents Jorge Andrade Gómez and Federico Chaigneau Sepúlveda must serve a sentence of 6 years in prison for their responsibility in the qualified kidnapping of Víctor Díaz López. Finally, Elisa Magna Astudillo, Orfa Saavedra Vásquez, Celinda Aspe Rojas, Teresa Navarro, Berta Jiménez Escobar, Jorge Arriagada Mora, Eduardo Oyarce Riquelme, Ana Vilches Muñoz, Italia Vaccarella Gilio, Jorge Manríquez Manterola Sotelo, Gustavo Guerrero Aguilera, Luis Lagos Yáñez, María Angélica Guerrero Soto, Sergio Castro Andrade, Pedro Gutiérrez Valdés, Joyce Ahumada Despouy, Hiro Álvarez Vega, José Miguel Meza Serrano, Carlos Bermúdez Mendez, Marilin Silva Vergara, Camilo Torres Negrier, and Juan Suazo Saldaña were sentenced to 5 years and one day in prison as authors of the qualified kidnapping of Víctor Díaz López. The appellate court's ruling considers, in order to increase the sentence and change the participation, the following facts: “ That for the purpose of determining the quantum of the sentence, the following will be kept in mind: 1.- That in this instance, 8 crimes of qualified kidnapping have been held as proven, committed against the persons of Mario Jaime Zamorano Donoso, Onofre Jorge Muñoz Poutays, Uldarico Donaire Cortez, Jaime Patricio Donato Avendaño, Elisa del Carmen Escobar Cepeda, Lenin Adán Díaz Silva, Víctor Manuel Díaz López, and Eliana Marina Espinoza Fernández, and the qualified homicide of Víctor Díaz López. 2.- That Pedro Espinoza Bravo, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, Emilio Troncoso Vivallos, Claudio Pacheco Fernández, Jorge Díaz Radulovich, Orlando Altamirano Sanhueza, Eduardo Cabezas Mardones, Guillermo Díaz Ramírez, Orlando Torrejon Gatica, Víctor Manuel Alvarez Droguett, Carlos Miranda Mesa, Carlos López Inostroza, Lionel Medrano Rivas, Juvenal Piña Garrido, José Alfonso Ojeda Obando, José Domingo Seco Alarcón, Roberto Rodríguez Manquel, and Leonidas Méndez Moreno will be sanctioned as authors of the 8 crimes of kidnapping indicated above. 3- That in turn, Juan Hernán Morales Salgado, Jorge Andrade Gómez, Sergio Escalona Acuña, Gladys Calderón Carreño, Jorge Pichunman Curiqueo, Nelson Herrera Lagos, Federico Chaigneau Sepúlveda, Elisa Magna Astudillo, Orfa Saavedra Vásquez, Celinda Angélica Aspe Rojas, Teresa Navarro Navarro, Berta Jiménez Escobar, Jorge Arriagada Mora, Eduardo Oyarce Riquelme, Ana Vilches Muñoz, Italia Vaccarella Gilio, José Manuel Sarmiento Sotelo, Gustavo Guerrero Aguilera, Luis Lagos Yáñez, María Angélica Guerrero Soto, Sergio Castro Andrade, Pedro Gutiérrez Valdés, Joyce Ahumada Despouy, Hiro Alvarez Vega, José Miguel Meza Serrano, Carlos Bermúdez Méndez, Marilin Silva Vergara, Camilo Torres Negrier, and Juan Edmundo Suazo Saldaña will be sentenced as co-authors of the qualified kidnapping of Víctor Díaz Lopez. 4.- That, in addition, the responsibility of Juan Hernán Morales Salgado, Juvenal Piña Garrido, Sergio Escalona Acuña, Gladys Calderón Carreño, and Jorge Pichunman has been established as authors of the qualified homicide of Víctor Díaz López. 5.- That the crime of aggravated kidnapping, at the date of the events, had the penalty of major imprisonment in any of its degrees assigned to it, while qualified homicide had that of major imprisonment in its medium to perpetual degree. 6.- That all the accused are favored by the mitigating factor of criminal responsibility of their irreproachable prior conduct,” says the ruling. It adds: “That for the purposes of regulating the sanction applicable to the accused indicated in N° 1 of the preceding motive, for the 8 crimes of qualified kidnapping established, in the determination of the penalty to be imposed, the provisions of article 509 of the Code of Criminal Procedure will be applied, regulating a single one for all of them, making the rule of the second paragraph of the cited article 509 govern, since it is more favorable than the rule of article 74 of the Penal Code, and considering any of the kidnappings for the increase of degree due to reiteration, since all the infractions considered in isolation and with the circumstances of the case have the same punishment assigned by law.” The sentence also reasons: “That, as indicated above, the accused indicated in point 1 of motive 36° benefit from a mitigating factor and are not harmed by aggravating factors, so that in accordance with the second paragraph of article 68 of the Penal Code, the maximum degree of the penalty indicated in the abstract by the law in each of the kidnapping crimes will not be applied, excluding major imprisonment in its maximum degree. Subsequently, the entire penal framework will be increased by one degree due to reiteration, leaving it definitively in major imprisonment in its medium to maximum degrees, regulating the specific amount of the custodial sanction that is decided regarding each one in consideration of the extent of the harm caused by the illicit acts—disappearance of persons for almost forty-seven years—in accordance with the provisions of article 69 of the Penal Code, and the participation that specifically fell to all those convicted in them, attending to their institutional and operational position. Consequently, regarding Espinoza Bravo and Krassnoff Martchenko, the sanction to be imposed will be maintained at the quantum established by the first-instance sentencer, attentive to the roles played by both in the planning and perpetration of the cited crimes, to the entity of the harm caused by such conduct, and its graduation at the time, elements that allow a more energetic reproach to be directed at them, without the consideration of the recognized mitigating factor being able to alter the regulated quantum, given that the criteria enunciated above allow it to be determined in this way. In relation to Emilio Troncoso Vivallos, Claudio Pacheco Fernández, Jorge Díaz Radulovich, Orlando Altamirano Sanhueza, Eduardo Cabezas Mardones, Guillermo Díaz Ramírez, Orlando Torrejón Gatica, Víctor Manuel Alvarez Droguett, Carlos Miranda Mesa, Carlos López Inostroza, Lionel Medrano Rivas, Juvenal Piña Garrido, José Alfonso Ojeda Obando, José Domingo Seco Alarcón, Roberto Rodríguez Manquel, and Leonidas Méndez Moreno, the penalty to be imposed as co-authors of the eight qualified kidnappings will be regulated in the high part of the lower degree resulting from the increment operation due to the reiteration of crimes, that is, in the segment of major imprisonment in its medium degree, taking into account for this the gravity of the facts, the protection and impunity they enjoyed for all the time elapsed since the commission of the illicit acts, their number, and the extent of the harm caused.” “That in the case of Juan Hernán Morales Salgado, Jorge Andrade Gómez, Sergio Escalona Acuña, Gladys Calderón Carreño, Jorge Pichunman Curiqueo, Nelson Herrera Lagos, Federico Chaigneau Sepúlveda, Elisa Magna Astudillo, Orfa Saavedra Vásquez, Celinda Angélica Aspe Rojas, Teresa Navarro Navarro, Berta Jiménez Escobar, Jorge Arriagada Mora, Eduardo Oyarce Riquelme, Ana Vilches Muñoz, Italia Vaccarella Gilio, José Manuel Sarmiento Sotelo, Gustavo Guerrero Aguilera, Luis Lagos Yáñez, María Angélica Guerrero Soto, Sergio Castro Andrade, Pedro Gutiérrez Valdés, Joyce Ahumada Despouy, Hiro Alvarez Vega, José Miguel Meza Serrano, Carlos Bermúdez Méndez, Marilin Silva Vergara, Camilo Torres Negrier, and Juan Edmundo Suazo Saldaña, the sanction to be applied as co-authors of the qualified kidnapping of Víctor Díaz Lopez will also take into consideration the gravity of the crime, the institutional protection that the accused enjoyed and that prevented both the timely clarification of the fact and the establishment of their responsibilities at the time, in addition to the extent of the harm caused, so the sanction to be imposed—excluding the high part of the range, in attention to the concurrence of the modifying factor of criminal responsibility recognized in favor of all of them—will be determined in the high part of the minimum range for the leadership (Morales Salgado), proceeding to regulate the sanction of the remaining ones in reason of their respective responsibilities and institutional positions, which allows for the ratification of what was decided regarding Andrade Gómez and adjusting the situation of Chaigneau Sepúlveda to that parameter,” the sentence substantiates. The Court's ruling continues: “That, finally, the sanction to be imposed on Juan Hernán Morales Salgado, Juvenal Piña Garrido, Sergio Escalona Acuña, Gladys Calderón Carreño, and Jorge Pichunman, as authors of the qualified homicide of Víctor Díaz López, must be individualized separately, as indicated by the judge of the grade, given the impossibility of applying article 509 of the Code of Criminal Procedure in this case, as it is not a crime of the same species as the qualified kidnapping of said victim, and for which their criminal responsibility has also been made effective. For its regulation and given the consideration of the gravity and cruelty of the fact, the time elapsed in their favor and to the detriment of the clarification of the truth, the extent of the harm caused, the rank that Morales Salgado held at the time of the events, the functions executed by him and those deployed by his subordinates, the determination made in the appealed sentence regarding this is shared, without the consideration of the recognized mitigating factor being able to alter the regulated quantum, given the factors enunciated above and which have presided over the determination process carried out, which is why what was resolved in this part will be ratified.” In the civil aspect, the Treasury was ordered to pay compensation to the victims' relatives in the amounts detailed in the ruling.

Source: pjud.cl, April 25, 2023

Date: 04-25-2023

A heartfelt tribute was held for those who fell on Calle Conferencia

Dozens of militants from the Communist Party and the Communist Youth held a march and a ceremony in tribute to Jorge Muñoz, Víctor Díaz, Elisa Escobar, Mario Zamorano, Jaime Donato, and Uldarico Donaire. “El Siglo” Team. Santiago. 09/05/2022

The conviction that their examples endure and are part of current popular and democratic struggles, and that their militant commitments radiate ethical values and principles, was once again latent in the heartfelt tribute that dozens of militants from the Communist Party, the Communist Youth, the associations of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared and Relatives of Political Executions, and the Calle Conferencia Committee held last Saturday, May 7, at the site where these anti-dictatorship heroes and heroines fell in 1976.

The memory of Jorge Muñoz, Elisa Escobar, Jaime Donato, Mario Zamorano, Uldarico Donaire, and Víctor Díaz, who were arrested, tortured, executed, and forcibly disappeared 46 years ago during a repressive operation by the military dictatorship. They were victims of the most horrendous atrocities committed by members of the Armed Forces and Carabineros.

The tribute began with a march along Calle San Alfonso from Avenida Blanco Encalada, followed by a political and cultural act on Calle Conferencia, next to the house where the Communist Party militants were detained in May 1976.

During the event, the militant work and the struggle against the dictatorship were highlighted, as well as the fact that in those days they were working to strengthen the union work of communists, the courage and dedication in a clandestine battle, the moral quality of those anti-dictatorship fighters, and how those days are now linked to current struggles to dismantle the neoliberal system and advance toward structural transformations for the benefit of the people, for a new Constitution that guarantees social rights, for responding to social and popular demands, and for strengthening a project of social justice and economic equity.

The call to continue seeking truth and justice in the cases of hundreds of political executions and more than a thousand forcibly disappeared persons who remain in that situation was reiterated. The continuity of the struggle for human rights was reaffirmed, even more so because cases of aggression and crimes against social activists continue to occur.

During the tribute activity for the heroes and heroines of Calle Conferencia, the relatives of the victims who passed away in recent years and who worked for decades to find their loved ones and demand justice were remembered.

The act was attended by the General Secretary of the Communist Party, Lautaro Carmona; the Mayor of Santiago, Irací Hassler; the Mayor of Recoleta, Daniel Jadue; Alicia Lira of the Association of Relatives of Political Executions; Gabi Rivera of the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared; Undersecretaries Julio Maturana and Jaime Gajardo Falcón; the deputy and president of the Communist Youth, Daniela Serrano; PC leaders Juan Andrés Lagos, Julia Urquieta, and Jaime Gajardo; and the director of El Siglo, Hugo Guzmán.

There were speeches by relatives of those who fell on Calle Conferencia, and the cultural portion featured the AFDD Folkloric Ensemble, Paulina Cortés, and Joaquín Figueroa.

Source: elsiglo.cl 9/5/2022

Date: 09-05-2022

CHRONICLE OF THE TRIBUTE TO VÍCTOR DÍAZ LÓPEZ

Organized by the Luis Emilio Recabarren Extension and Research Center (CEILER), and with a large public turnout, an emotional, combative, and well-deserved tribute was held on Wednesday, January 22, 2020, to Víctor Díaz López, a graphic worker, national leader of the CUT, and Deputy General Secretary of the Communist Party, who led the first clandestine leadership of his political group in the struggle against the fascist dictatorship.

Under the direction of Marcelo Urra and masterfully conducted by Paula Guzmán, both directors of CEILER, the act began, following the beautiful Recabarrenist tradition, with an artistic moment. It was Carlos Araneda, also a director of CEILER, who delighted those present at the Camilo Guzmán hall with two beautiful songs.

Among the numerous public, we noted the presence of Victoria and Viviana Díaz, daughters of the honoree; Isolina Ramírez, widow of Mario Zamorano; a delegation from the “Víctor Díaz López” South Regional Committee of the Communist Party, led by its political secretary Nelson Cornejo; and militants from the cell of the same name within that Regional Committee.

Carlota Espina, president of CEILER, opened the presentations with an account of the most important moments in the life and struggle of comrade Víctor Díaz.

In second place, Manuel Ahumada, president of the Copper Workers Confederation, spoke. He provided an overview of Víctor Díaz’s biography. He explained specific issues regarding the mining world, where Víctor Díaz worked. He also made references to the current situation and the relevance of Víctor Díaz’s thought and work as a contribution to how to think about what is happening in Chile today.

Then, a moment of deep emotion occurred. Nelson Cornejo, secretary of the “Víctor Díaz” South Regional Committee, presented a plaque to Victoria and Viviana Díaz.

The presentation by Juan Gajardo, a member of the Political Commission of the Communist Party, was of enormous significance. He historically described the generation of Communist Party leaders to which Víctor Díaz belonged, as well as his contribution to the Party of today.

He stated that, in his opinion, Víctor Díaz’s fundamental contribution was his consistency. He stayed in Chile; he could have left the country. He gave himself to the cause of the Party.

In another part of his speech, he maintained that Víctor Díaz’s family, Victoria and Viviana, played a historic role in the defense of Human Rights. He added that his son, Víctor, also contributed in his own way to the struggle against the dictatorship.

The Internationale, sung by all attendees, set a tone of combativeness and was a beautiful expression of confidence in the final triumph. As is also traditional, there were moments of healthy fellowship at the end, accompanied by refreshments.

Source: ceiler.cl 24/1/2020

Date: 24-01-2020

HONOR AND GLORY TO THE WORKERS FAITHFUL TO THEIR CLASS

Víctor Manuel Díaz López was born in Tocopilla on November 10, 1919. He was detained and forcibly disappeared in May 1976, during the civil-military dictatorship, due to his position as Deputy General Secretary of the Communist Party of Chile. He was 56 years old at the time of his detention; he was married and had three children.

The son of a worker father and a washerwoman mother, he had to help support the household from a young age. At 18, he began working as a mine worker. Under these circumstances, he received and accepted the postulates of the teacher Luis Emilio Recabarren to dedicate his life to the redemption of the working class, becoming a graphic union leader and later a national leader of the CUT.

The Luis Emilio Recabarren Extension and Research Center is honored to pay tribute on this day, November 10, which marks 100 years since his birth, to an outstanding son of the working class and a faithful follower of the Teacher.

We also communicate that, given the context our country is experiencing, we have unfortunately postponed the Tribute Act that had been scheduled for this Wednesday, November 13.

Source: ceiler.cl 10/11/2019

Date: 10-11-2019

Fifty-three dictatorship agents convicted for crimes in the ‘Calle Conferencia’ case

The Santiago Court of Appeals convicted fifty-three repressive agents of the civil-military dictatorship in one of the largest sentences in Chile related to human rights violations. Those convicted are responsible for the crime of eight Communist Party militants executed in 1976, who were kidnapped and tortured at Villa Grimaldi.

According to a statement from the judiciary, the minister visiting for human rights violation cases of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Miguel Vázquez Plaza, issued a sentence against the former State agents for the crime of aggravated kidnapping.

The victims of this crime were Mario Zamorano Donoso, Onofre Muñoz Poutays, Uldarico Donaire Cortéz, Jaime Donato Avendaño, Elisa Escobar Cepeda, Lenin Díaz Silva, Eliana Espinoza Fernández, and Víctor Díaz López.

All were kidnapped within the framework of the so-called ‘Calle Conferencia’ case, which consisted of the capture and extermination of the entire leadership of that party operating in clandestinity in mid-1976.

The sentences for the agents, all from the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), ranged from twenty to three years in prison. Among them is Army Brigadier Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, who with this sentence now totals 700 years in prison for human rights violations.

As established by the investigation, all the victims in the process were detained to be interrogated and tortured due to their political militancy, with the aim of obtaining information about their party activities and, especially, the subsequent identification of other members of the Communist Party in clandestinity.

“Such duress did not cease until the required information was obtained or until the victims lost consciousness,” the ruling specified. To kill them, the joint action of several agents from the barracks was used.

Once their death was confirmed, many of the opponents were placed in thick polyethylene bags, which were tied with wire around their waists and attached to a piece of rail to be thrown into the sea.

In the same vein, Judge Vázquez Plaza established that throwing bodies into the sea was a systematic practice used by security agents from early 1974 until 1978. These facts are corroborated by various accounts from personnel of the Army Aviation Command, among others, aviation mechanics and maintenance personnel, who describe those operations called ‘military secrets,’ in which they describe how the bundles were loaded, preferably into Puma model helicopters.

Source: villagrimaldi.cl 5/12/2018

Date: 05-12-2018

TRIBUTE ACT TO VÍCTOR DÍAZ

Former communist leader Víctor Díaz to be remembered with an act at Villa Grimaldi by Pablo Soto A.

This is the first tribute that his daughters have organized at the detention center where the disappeared Deputy General Secretary of the PC was taken 31 years ago.

One of the most well-known faces in the country regarding the vindication of human rights is Viviana Díaz. The leader of the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared (AFDD), together with her sister, Victoria, has dedicated her life for nearly three decades to clarifying the circumstances in which her father, the former Deputy General Secretary of the Communist Party of Chile and leader of the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT), Víctor Díaz López, disappeared.

A longing that began to gain strength starting this year thanks to the investigations of the minister visiting for the so-called Calle Conferencia case, Víctor Montiglio, who managed to get former military personnel to confess to the authorship of the crime, so now only the desire for justice remains to be fulfilled.

To share the information with the citizenry, the daughters of the disappeared leader, together with other representatives of the AFDD, will hold an artistic-cultural activity this Saturday at the former Villa Grimaldi; an activity that will include a musical show by Victoria Díaz.

“We have never held any act at Villa Grimaldi, which was the place where he was taken at the moment he was detained, and that is why we chose this place to carry out the act,” explains Viviana Díaz to El Mostrador.cl, who will also reveal the macabre route her father had to take through different detention centers before meeting his death.

“As a result of the investigation carried out by Minister Montiglio, we learned that after his time at Villa Grimaldi, my father was transferred to the ‘Casa de Piedra’ and ended his life at the extermination barracks on Calle Simón Bolívar,” she points out.

“With this information,” she notes, “the case of a person we have searched for for so many years begins to be clarified, and of course, after learning these new facts, we hope there will be justice,” she indicates regarding the progress of the case that will be mentioned by lawyer Eduardo Contreras during the activity.

Another point she highlights is the agility that Montiglio has given to the pertinent proceedings during this year to resolve the case more expeditiously. “From January to date, much more has been advanced than what was done in thirty years in the specific case of my father,” she points out regarding the nearly 70 former DINA agents prosecuted for aggravated kidnapping and homicide.

The future of Viviana Díaz

For 30 years, Viviana Díaz has literally given her life to her father, in a tireless search and facing dangers and the adversity of many paths to find the truth. A cause she says she will not stop embracing now that she is on the verge of achieving justice in the case of her father’s death.

“In 30 years of having remained in this organization for days, months, and years, today I not only search for my father but for all the forcibly disappeared in Chile, because I have known their life stories and projects that were brutally interrupted,” she says.

Stories of heartbreak and pain that have deeply touched this woman and that continue to sensitize her, especially after learning about the gruesome details of her own father’s death.

“We have learned the type of death my father had at the Simón Bolívar barracks along with other people like Reinalda Pereira, Fernando Ortiz, and Horacio Cepeda, whose deaths have been configured thanks to the arguments in court, discovering shocking information,” reveals Díaz, especially regarding the case of Pereira, who was pregnant and whose child was still alive after her death, according to the account of one of her torturers.

“Because of these things we have heard, so hard and so cruel, we believe it is necessary to make them known so that the reasons for the search for truth and justice that we have maintained for so many years are understood,” she concludes.

Source: mujeresdevillagrimaldi.blogia.com 12/5/2007

Date: 12-05-2007

4 former Navy agents prosecuted for the crime of Víctor Díaz

In the Conferencia case, Judge Víctor Montiglio also indicted six other former agents of the DINA’s Lautaro brigade, from the Army, FACH, and Carabineros.

The investigation into the crime of the acting General Secretary of the Communist Party in clandestinity during the dictatorship, Víctor Díaz, led to the identity of four female Navy agents who operated with the DINA in the Lautaro Brigade, who were prosecuted as co-authors of the kidnapping and disappearance of the leader in May 1976. Their identities had remained unknown until now.

Added to them are the two retired (R) Marine Infantry non-commissioned officers, Bernardo Daza and Sergio Escalona, indicted on Friday, January 26, by Judge Víctor Montiglio as two of those who killed Víctor Díaz by suffocating him with a plastic bag over his head.

The magistrate’s inquiries reveal the numerous participation of Navy agents in the DINA after 1975, when that institution maintains that it withdrew its officers, non-commissioned officers, and permanent cadres from that criminal illicit association.

Dark women The new female agents declared defendants on Saturday, February 3, and taken into preventive detention are the civilian employees attached in 1976 with the rank of Navy non-commissioned officer: Celinda Aspé Rojas, Teresa del Carmen Navarro Navarro, Berta Jiménez Escobar, and Adriana Rivas González.

All of them operated in the Lautaro Brigade commanded by the then-Army Major Juan Morales Salgado, also indicted the previous Friday.

This brigade depended directly on the head of the DINA, then-Colonel Manuel Contreras, and had its operations center in a clandestine barracks at Calle Simón Bolívar 8630, in the commune of La Reina. Only now is it known that many prisoners were murdered in this place.

In that place, other communist militants who were part of both the clandestine PC leadership kidnapped in May 1976, which gave rise to the process known as Calle Conferencia, and the subsequent one in December of that year, whose head was Fernando Ortiz and which is known as the “case of the 13,” would also have been exterminated.

Along with the four former Navy agents, the judge also submitted to process and ordered the arrest of the former DINA agent belonging to Carabineros, Orfa Saavedra Vásquez; the retired (R) FACH non-commissioned officer of the same Brigade, Jorge Arraigada Mora; and the former Army non-commissioned officer (R) agents who operated in that group, Jorge Escobar Fuentes, René Riveros Valderrama, Carlos Marcos Muñoz, and Jorge Pichunmán Curiqueo.

It is unknown to which institution the latter belongs.

After his detention, Víctor Díaz was kept alive for eight months and was finally suffocated in January 1977, while the then-DINA agent and Army Lieutenant Gladys Calderón Carreño injected him with cyanide. His body was thrown into the sea.

Source: 6 de Febrero 2007 La Nación

Date: 06-02-2007

Víctor Díaz was suffocated with a plastic bag by Marine infantrymen

The DINA kept the clandestine head of the PC, Víctor Díaz López, alive for eight months after kidnapping him at the beginning of May 1976 in the operation known as Calle Conferencia. In the first days of 1977, the operational head of the organization, Manuel Contreras, gave the order to kill him to the head of the Lautaro Brigade, Major Juan Morales Salgado.

At the barracks on Calle Simón Bolívar 8630 in the commune of La Reina, where this brigade known as “extermination” and “special operations” operated, the Marine infantrymen attached to the DINA, non-commissioned officers Bernardo Daza Navarro and Sergio Escalona Acuña, took the leader out of a dungeon, put a plastic bag over his head, tied a rope around his neck, and suffocated him.

Immediately, together with other agents also prosecuted last Friday by Judge Víctor Montiglio just like the Marine infantrymen, they covered the body of the father of the AFDD president, Viviana Díaz, with larger plastic bags.

They tied him up, added a piece of rail to the body which they tied with wire, and put the body inside a potato sack that they secured with other wire ties so it would not open.

The body was transported by the same agents in a vehicle to the Army training camp in Peldehue, south of Santiago, where another vehicle was waiting for them, in which the bodies of other prisoners had been transported from Villa Grimaldi, prepared in the same way as that of Víctor Díaz.

A Puma helicopter from the Army Aviation Command, the types of aircraft used for these operations, was waiting with the engines running. The agents from the Simón Bolívar barracks joined forces with those who transported the other corpses, and together they loaded the bodies on board the Puma, which, once the task was finished, left for the coast of the Fifth Region to throw the bodies into the sea.

These are the final hours of the acting General Secretary of the PC in clandestinity (the General Secretary was Luis Corvalán, who was detained before being exchanged for the Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky on December 17, 1976, at the Swiss airport of Zürich), as was established in the judicial investigation into the fate of the clandestine PC leadership.

Until now, this information regarding the death of the communist leader was unknown, and it was always presumed that he was murdered shortly after his detention.

However, Víctor Díaz was not kidnapped in the Calle Conferencia operation, but a couple of days later on Calle Bello Horizonte in Las Condes. First, they took him to Villa Grimaldi and from there they moved him to several places.

One of the places where he also remained kidnapped was in the so-called “Casa de Piedra” in the Cajón del Maipo sector, as acknowledged some time ago in a statement by the retired (R) Carabineros Lieutenant Colonel Ricardo Lawrence Mires, also a former DINA agent indicted last Friday for the crime of Víctor Díaz.

For the plaintiff lawyer Eduardo Contreras, what has been achieved “is very important and shows that those who were involved in these events have today decided to speak, feeling liberated from the presence of the dictator Pinochet.”

Minister Víctor Montiglio continues his investigations in this case to also find out what the true captivity and final destination of other PC leaders were.

Source: La Nacion 30 de Enero 2007

Date: 30-01-2007

Marine Infantry (IM) personnel who operated with the DINA in what was identified as the “Lautaro extermination brigade,” which functioned in a house on Calle Simón Bolívar and Ossandón in the commune of La Reina, commanded by the then-Army Major Juan Morales Salgado, participated in the murder of the Communist leader Víctor Díaz López, father of the vice president of the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared, Viviana Díaz.

The participation of the “Cossacks” (IM) Bernardo Daza and Sergio Escalona, Navy agents in the DINA even in the months following May 1976, when Víctor Díaz was kidnapped as part of the “mousetrap” set up at Calle Conferencia 1587 in Santiago, is another of the new pieces of evidence that emerged from the indictment issued on Friday by Judge Víctor Montiglio against seven members of the hitherto little-known Lautaro brigade.

This contradicts the claim that the Navy withdrew all its personnel from the DINA in 1975, as has been consistently reported by the institution. Daza and Escalona, who were a sub-officer and an officer respectively, both now retired, are new names compared to the better-known Navy agents who collaborated with the DINA and later with the Joint Command.

Another new element arising from Judge Montiglio’s ruling is that the house that the “Lautaro extermination brigade”—as it is known in some judicial cases—occupied on Calle Simón Bolívar, and which today borders a school, served as the final destination for several prisoners who are now among the forcibly disappeared, including some Communist leaders.

Until now, for example, it was unknown that Víctor Díaz was murdered in that place using cruel methods. It follows from Montiglio’s ruling that the order to kill Víctor Díaz was given by the brigade chief, Morales Salgado.

Although the Lautaro Brigade was under the command of Major Morales, it obeyed the orders of the DINA’s chief of operations, Manuel Contreras, directly. It was a group dedicated to “special missions” and also operated as the security detail for Contreras.

In the investigations by Judge Montiglio, described by human rights organizations and lawyers as “one of the few judges who is truly continuing to investigate,” he managed to identify a new group of former agents linked to the tasks of prisoner extermination, thanks to the collaboration of the Special Affairs and Human Rights Brigade of the Investigative Police.

In this way, the judge and the Investigative officials allowed for the clarification of a series of aspects of the repression of the Communist Party in 1976 that had remained unknown until now.

One of these is the participation of two women from the ranks of the Army’s National Intelligence Directorate who had not been located until now: Gladys Calderón, who was a lieutenant in 1976, and the then-sub-officer Elisa del Carmen Magna Astudillo.

One of them, presumably Calderón, participated in the kidnapping of Víctor Díaz, identified by a witness as “a woman who gave orders” with “very violent” behavior. With the new evidence discovered, arrests could continue this week, and the number of those indicted could increase, some of whom are also former agents whose identities were not known until now.

The others indicted by Montiglio, all as perpetrators of the kidnapping and homicide of Víctor Díaz, are the retired Carabineros Lieutenant Colonel Guillermo Lawrence Mires and the retired Army Sub-officer Guillermo Ferrán Martínez.

The judge also indicted them for the crime of homicide, in addition to kidnapping, despite the fact that Víctor Díaz’s body was never found, as it was allegedly thrown into the sea immediately after his execution.

In the Calle Conferencia operation, which accounted for the first clandestine leadership of the PC, Jorge Muñoz Poutays, husband of the late Communist leader Gladys Marín, among others, was also kidnapped.

The former operators of the Lautaro Brigade

Others who were part of the “Lautaro extermination brigade” were agents Jorge Escobar Fuentes, Celinda Aspeé Rojas (using the alias Carolina Bascuñán Rodríguez), Adriana Rivas González, María Guerrero, Orfa Saavedra, Violeta González, Joice Ahumada, Luisa Durandi, Italia Vaccarella Giglio, René Riveros Valderrama, Armando Fernández Larios (now a refugee in the United States and one of the criminals of the Caravan of Death), and an officer with the surname Chaigneau.

In the Calle Conferencia case, the confession of several retired Army sub-officers, former mechanics of the Army Aviation Corps, given to officials of the Special Affairs and Human Rights Brigade of the Investigative Police, has been decisive.

The former military personnel have revealed in detail the method used to make the bodies of prisoners murdered by the DINA—many of them militants of the Communist Party, the MIR, and the Socialist Party—disappear into the sea aboard helicopters. The procedure used years later to exhume bodies and throw them into the sea was known as “Operation Television Set Removal.”

Source: La Nación, January 29, 2006

Date: 01-29-2006

Seven former military personnel indicted for the murder of Víctor Díaz

The decision was adopted by the magistrate within the framework of the Calle Conferencia case, after the defendants confessed to their participation in the kidnapping and subsequent homicide of the member of the Communist Party (PC) leadership who remained in hiding after the 1973 military coup.

The resolution affects Colonel Juan Morales, Officer Guillermo Ferrán, Lieutenant Gladys Calderón, and Sub-officer Eliana Magna Astudillo, all retired from the Army. Also indicted by the magistrate were former Carabineros Lieutenant Ricardo Lawrence and retired Navy personnel Sergio Escobar and Bernardo Daza Navarro.

All those indicted will remain in prison in various military units to which they had been admitted in the middle of this week by order of Judge Montiglio. Within the framework of this investigation, Lawrence had acknowledged that Díaz was visited by the late former dictator Augusto Pinochet while the former remained held in the Villa Grimaldi detention and torture center.

The term “Calle Conferencia” refers to the operation carried out on that street in Santiago by the dictatorship’s repressive apparatus, in which they dismantled the PC leadership that was operating in clandestinity, including Jorge Muñoz, husband of the disappeared secretary general Gladys Marín.

In the action carried out in the first days of May 1976, in addition to Díaz and Muñoz, Mario Zamorano, Uldarico Donaire, and Jaime Donato were also detained; they have remained forcibly disappeared ever since.

Source: La Nación, January 27, 2006

Date: 01-27-2006

Calle Conferencia: Court of Appeals dismisses case against General (ret.) Manuel Contreras

The Second Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals dismissed the case and absolved the former head of the dissolved National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), General (ret.) Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, of all responsibility.

The retired officer, according to lawyer Juan Carlos Manss, was being investigated for the kidnappings suffered by the Communist Party leadership in 1976, a case known as “Calle Conferencia.” According to judges Dobra Lusic, Rosa María Maggi, and the acting lawyer Ángela Radovic, the principle of res judicata applies.

In 2002, the summer chamber of the capital’s appellate court dismissed the case against Contreras regarding his participation in the disappearances of Jorge Muñoz, Mario Zamorano, Jaime Donato, Víctor Díaz López, and Eliana Espinoza Fernández, who were detained in an operation deployed between April and August 1976, which was aimed at neutralizing PC militants in hiding.

Later, the resolution was confirmed by the Supreme Court, and the special judge Juan Guzmán Tapia had to desist from investigating him. Lawyer Manns stated that with this ruling, it is clear that his client had no participation in the illicit acts being investigated.

Source: La Nación, September 2, 2005

Date: 09-02-2005

Conferencia Case: Indictment of General (ret.) Benavides confirmed

The Fifth Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals confirmed the indictment of Pinochet’s former minister César Benavides Escobar, reducing his participation from accomplice to accessory after the fact in the crime of aggravated kidnapping against 3 forcibly disappeared persons, victims of the so-called “Calle Conferencia.” The retired general had been indicted by retired judge Juan Guzmán Tapia in the cases of Víctor Díaz López, Eliana Espinosa Sernádez, and Mario Zamorano Donoso.

Meanwhile, the court, composed of judges Carlos Gajardo, Amanda Valdovinos, and the acting lawyer Roberto Mayorga, revoked the indictments of two other uniformed officers, identified as Juan González Dubó and Sergio Castro Cano, who had been indicted for the crime of obstruction of justice in the investigation into the kidnapping resulting in the homicide of Marta Ugarte Román.

Source: El Mostrador, July 16, 2005

Date: 07-16-2005

Conferencia Case: Plaintiffs appeal dismissal of Contreras

The plaintiff lawyer in the Calle Conferencia case, Nelson Caucoto, appealed to the Santiago Court of Appeals against the resolution of special judge Juan Guzmán to dismiss the case against the former director of the dissolved DINA, General (ret.) Manuel Contreras.

The magistrate closed the case against Contreras by applying the principle of “res judicata,” ratifying a similar resolution from the capital’s appellate court. For the professional, the resolution affects his clients, the children of Bernardo Araya, former secretary of the Central Workers' Union (CUT), who has been disappeared from a property on Calle Alejandro Fierro since April 30, 1976.

Caucoto explained that it is not possible to apply the principle of “res judicata” because the facts of these detentions, known as the Calle Venecia case, which is parallel to the Calle Conferencia case, were never investigated.

In this case, the disappearance of Communist leaders detained on May 4, 1976, at Conferencia 1587 is being investigated. Among the victims are Jorge Muñoz (husband of Gladys Marín), Mario Zamorano Donoso, Jaime Donato Avedaño, Uldarico Donaire Cortés, and Elisa Escobar Cepeda.

Furthermore, it is estimated that Víctor Díaz López, father of the president of the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared, Viviana Díaz, died in the crime.

Source: Primera Línea, June 25, 2002

Date: 06-25-2002

Conferencia Case: Judge Guzmán issues definitive dismissal for Contreras

Special judge Juan Guzmán Tapia decided to definitively dismiss the case against the former director of the DINA, General (ret.) Manuel Contreras, for the Calle Conferencia case, where the disappearance of the Communist Party leadership after the 1973 military coup is being investigated.

Defense lawyer Juan Carlos Manns declared to Radio Cooperativa that the judge applied the definitive dismissal because a decision of this type had previously been adopted by the Santiago Court of Appeals.

In this case, the disappearance of Communist leaders detained on May 4, 1976, at Conferencia 1587 is being investigated. Among the victims are Jorge Muñoz (husband of Gladys Marín), Mario Zamorano Donoso, Jaime Donato Avedaño, Uldarico Donaire Cortés, and Elisa Escobar Cepeda.

Furthermore, it is estimated that Víctor Díaz López, father of the president of the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared, Viviana Díaz, died in the crime.

Source: Primera Línea, June 21, 2002

Date: 06-21-2002

The most emblematic, at the bottom of the sea

The military report reveals that three of the most emblematic disappeared persons were thrown into the sea. “It is very painful, after having fought so hard to find him, to know tonight that I am not going to find him.

I would like to find his remains. But knowing that he is in the depths of the ocean is terrible.” Viviana Díaz spoke on Sunday night at the headquarters of the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared, the organization she presides over.

Journalists and relatives of the victims listened in silence. Until the first cry broke out and faces filled with tears. Commotion invaded the room. “The data must be verified, we do not know if they are true,” some voices shouted.

Víctor Díaz, former secretary general of the Communist Party (PC), was detained in May 1976 by military personnel in a house in the eastern sector of Santiago, where he was hiding. He was taken to an unknown destination and nothing more was heard of him.

On Sunday, his daughter Viviana learned that he had been thrown into the sea along with other party comrades. That same month, Jorge Muñoz, a member of the PC Political Commission, was detained by DINA (secret police) agents in a raid carried out on a house on Calle Conferencia, where a group of Communist leaders had agreed to meet.

Since that day, his fate has been unknown. His daughter, Gladys Marín, current secretary general of the PC, filed the first lawsuit against Pinochet before Judge Guzmán in January 1998 for the disappearance of her husband.

Upon learning of the report delivered to the Chilean president, Ricardo Lagos, with the information compiled by the Dialogue Table, Marín declared herself deeply dissatisfied to find that the data is insufficient and expressed her rejection of the information being delivered personally and privately to the victims' relatives, since, she maintained, “all of Chilean society has the right to know the truth.” Andrés Pereira Salsberg was the father of Pamela Pereira, a human rights lawyer and a key figure within the Dialogue Table.

He was an industrialist, a supporter of the Popular Unity, a radical, and a Mason when he was detained for the first time on September 11, 1973, in Paine. He was later released. Pamela was then a law student at the University of Chile and already belonged to the Vicariate of Solidarity.

On October 6 of that same year, he was taken from his home again by a military patrol from the San Bernardo Infantry School and, along with 23 other people, was taken to the School, where they were all murdered that same night. The fate of his body was not known until this report from the Armed Forces was made public, according to which he had been thrown into the sea.

Source: elpais.com, January 8, 2001

Date: 01-08-2001

TESTIMONY OF VIVIANA DÍAZ, daughter of Víctor Manuel Díaz López

September 29, 2008. I am the daughter of Víctor Manuel Díaz López, former Deputy Secretary General of the Communist Party of Chile and former leader of the Central Workers' Union of Chile (CUT), who has been a forcibly disappeared person since May 12, 1976, at the age of 56.

Since his detention, I have participated day by day in the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared, maintaining, together with the members, a permanent activity of searching for Truth and Justice.

For years, faced with the insistent actions we carried out to learn the whereabouts of our loved ones, the response was always the same: rejection of habeas corpus petitions, arrests during public protest demonstrations, death threats, raids, telephone tapping, surveillance, etc., all with a single purpose—to guarantee impunity for human rights violators.

Despite all this, we continued the search, and over the years we have been building the truth and moving closer to justice. Today I remember the mixed feelings I had on October 16, 1998, upon learning of the arrest of Augusto Pinochet in London.

On one hand, immense joy, and on the other, enormous sorrow that my mother was not with us, her children, to share that great news, since she had passed away a year earlier with the sadness of not seeing progress in the judicial search process for my father. 22 years had passed since his detention.

For Chilean society, his detention represented the concrete and real possibility of judging Pinochet, thus putting an end to that impunity that he himself provided for himself during 17 long years of military dictatorship.

It should be noted that despite having achieved his stripping of immunity and his house arrest in Chile, it was not possible to convict him; the process was interrupted because his defense declared him mentally unfit, and therefore, at the date of his death, he did not answer for his crimes.

During his stay in London, Pinochet accumulated dozens of lawsuits; once back in the country, they followed one after another, reaching more than three hundred, which were investigated by special judge Juan Guzmán, and which later passed into the hands of Judge Víctor Montiglio.

Nine years after Pinochet’s detention in London, in January 2007, and 31 years after my father’s detention, we finally began to know the truth, that truth which, as we have always said, however painful it may be, must be faced; it is the only way to begin to live the mourning that could perhaps only be closed with true justice.

It has been terrible to learn of the horror that my father lived through at the hands of his torturers, all members of the Chilean Armed Forces, and the cruel, inhuman, and cowardly way in which he was murdered after they kept him alive for eight months under constant torture.

In the investigation by Judge Víctor Montiglio (Case File No. 2182-98 “Conferencia”) and the work of the Human Rights Brigade of the Investigative Police, another detention center was discovered, the Simón Bolívar Barracks and the Lautaro extermination brigade, a site about which there was no information because there were no survivors.

In the judicial process, it can be concluded that all the prisoners who passed through that place were cowardly murdered under unimaginable torture and—according to some confessions of those responsible—their bodies were tied to rails to then be thrown into the sea from Army helicopters.

Given these facts, Judge Montiglio has indicted and charged 67 people, men and women, of the Chilean Armed Forces, for aggravated kidnapping, torture, and aggravated homicide, solely for my father’s case.

One of the great achievements reached with Pinochet’s detention is that the precedent is set that there will be no immunity for Heads of State who commit crimes against humanity; another is that the crimes of genocide and torture can be judged by any State, regardless of the place and time of their commission, and that the practice of forced disappearance also constitutes mental torture for the victim’s family group, as noted in the ruling by Judge Ronald Bartle.

The impact of Augusto Pinochet’s arrest on the world stage was incalculable, allowing victims and relatives for the first time to have access to the world press to relate in detail what happened during the military dictatorship. 503 days that I will never forget. 10 years ago, the world gave its verdict: guilty, and history will record it as such.

Source: amnesty.org

Letter from the daughters of Víctor Díaz López

Santiago de Chile, February 16, 2007.

THE PAINFUL TRUTH FACING EXTREME COWARDICE

31 years into the search for our father, Víctor Díaz López, we have only just begun to know the truth, that truth which, as we have always said, however painful it may be, must be faced; it is the only way to begin to live the mourning that could perhaps only be closed with true justice.

And in reality, it is very terrible to know of the months of horror he lived through at the hands of his torturers, all members of the Chilean Armed Forces, and the cruel, inhuman, and cowardly way in which he was murdered.

Today, in the summer of 2007—as thousands of times before—we are going to the courts, but this time to listen to the arguments regarding the freedom of the military murderers and kidnappers of our father.

The criminals' lawyers have no arguments for their defenses; they defend “honorable people and fathers of families,” yet the judge indicted them for kidnapping and aggravated homicide. We remember the bloody military coup and the figures of the political right that truncated not only the lives of thousands of Chileans but also destroyed all hope for a better tomorrow; we remember the pounding on the door of our house by the military and civilian DINA agents looking for Víctor Díaz López, Deputy Secretary General of the Communist Party, for the sole fact of having been a participant in the triumph of Salvador Allende and that beautiful Popular Unity project. You know us from this long journey of more than thirty years, and for that reason, we want to share some of our history with you. How can we not remember how hopeful we were, together with our mother and brother, that time we went to the Courts of Justice to file the first habeas corpus petition in favor of our father, a few days after he had been detained by the DINA in the raid carried out at Calle Bello Horizonte 979, commune of Las Condes, on May 12, 1976. Months later, we would learn from an eyewitness to his detention that more than 25 agents participated in his kidnapping, who identified themselves as agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA). At that moment, they did not allow him to get dressed, and when they took him out of the house, he was already semi-unconscious as a result of the first brutal interrogation, taking him to an unknown destination. One cannot forget the painful episode experienced with the former President of the Supreme Court, José María Eyzaguirre, who, at the moment of telling him about our father’s detention and the information provided to the Vicariate of Solidarity by a person who had just been released from the sinister Villa Grimaldi—who had shared a cell with Marta Ugarte, who was detained and severely tortured in that facility—sent a message expressing that neither she nor our father would leave that place alive. Upon expressing our concern to the President and requesting his presence as the highest representative of the Judiciary at the Villa Grimaldi facility so that he could verify this serious fact, his response was: “But what an imagination you have; why don’t you go home and write a book, because what you are telling me, that does not happen in Chile.” In that way, Eyzaguirre demonstrated his indifference and complicity with the dictatorship. The pain was even greater when, a week after this situation (September 1976), the body of our dear comrade Marta Ugarte Román appeared on Playa La Ballena (near La Ligua), attempting to make her appear as a victim of a crime of passion. At that moment, we were facing for the first time a possible and terrible outcome for our father’s fate. DINA members arrived at our house one morning in October 1976 to threaten us, telling us that we would suffer the same fate as our father if we did not abandon the search, even going to the extreme of forcing him to write to us and call us on the phone asking us to do the same, that is, not to continue searching for him. Our mother’s attitude at that time was one of absolute rejection, and this forced us as a family to file a protection order in our favor and continue pursuing his whereabouts. By August of that year, our brother Víctor had to leave the country as a consequence of the DINA’s attempts to detain him as a way to pressure our father, a method of torture that the DINA used to obtain information. Our brother’s departure had to be authorized by a judge because he was a minor, as his life had to be saved, causing us new pain. Over the years, Víctor returned to our country to try to lead a normal life; he resumed his studies and, while a Theater student at the University of Chile, was suspended for student struggle activities. The prolongation of the dictatorship, added to the lack of truth and justice, led him to be part of the group that attempted to assassinate the former dictator Augusto Pinochet. Because of this, Víctor was detained, tortured, and imprisoned for several years. Today he lives far away and is unable to live in his own country, despite seventeen years of the democratic process. For years, faced with the insistent actions we carried out together with the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared to learn the whereabouts of our loved ones, the response was always the same: rejection of habeas corpus petitions, arrests during public protest demonstrations, death threats, raids, telephone tapping, surveillance, etc., all with a single purpose—to guarantee impunity for human rights violators. Despite all this, we continued the search, and over the years we have been building the truth and moving closer to justice. Our father was a man who always fought for a more just society; he was self-taught, a worker consistent with his principles, who wanted the best for his children, and for that, we are proud of him; a great Pacifist, he always helped those who asked him, and for that, he is remembered by his party comrades, his friends, and neighbors as a great leader and a man of great human quality and a great friend. Our mother, Selenisa Caro Ríos, is no longer with us; she fought hard to find him, she died in 1997 without knowing but intuiting this sad truth, but here we are, her children, to tell her that her struggle was not in vain. Now, for her memory and that of many others, we are making efforts together with lawyers and human rights organizations to achieve justice, without which it is impossible to heal the wounds. According to the diligent investigation by Judge Víctor Montiglio (Case File No. 2182-98 “Conferencia”) and the support of the Special Affairs and Human Rights Brigade of the Investigative Police, another DINA Brigade directed by Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda and another detention center were discovered; we refer to the Lautaro extermination brigade and the Simón Bolívar Barracks, a site about which there was no information because there were no survivors. In the judicial process, it can be concluded that all the prisoners who passed through that place were cowardly murdered under unimaginable torture and—according to some confessions of those responsible—their bodies were tied to rails to then be thrown into the sea from Army helicopters. Given these facts, Judge Montiglio has indicted 23 defendants—among them men and women from the Army, the Navy, the Carabineros, and the Air Force, and civilians—as responsible for the detention, kidnapping, and torture of our father. Likewise, we would be facing the possibility of clarifying what happened to the entire Communist Party leadership in clandestinity and to more than a hundred militants and sympathizers who are still forcibly disappeared today. In this endless struggle, today we want to thank all those who have been by our side, those who have supported and welcomed us, giving us strength and motivating us to continue; in other words, those who always trusted our truth. A special thanks to the Communist Party that inspired our father’s life. We also highlight the selfless work of the lawyers, social workers, and journalists, and the human rights organizations (Vicariate of Solidarity, Foundation for Social Assistance of Christian Churches (FASIC), Chilean Commission for Human Rights, Committee for the Defense of the People’s Rights (CODEPU), Foundation for the Protection of Children Damaged by States of Emergency (PIDEE), Service for Peace and Justice (SERPAJ), Latin American Institute of Mental Health (ILAS), Center for Human Rights and Mental Health (CINTRAS), Amnesty International, and the current Human Rights Program (Continuity of Law No. 19.123)) that have accompanied us permanently in our demands for Truth and Justice and that work day by day without wavering in the defense of human rights. We also thank all those who write to us and send us their support. Thank you once again for the national and international solidarity manifested during all these years, which allows us to continue fighting against impunity. We need to redouble our efforts to achieve the annulment of Amnesty Decree Law 2191 and for the principles of International Law to be definitively adopted so that crimes against humanity are sanctioned, not amnestied or prescribed, as is the case in our father’s judicial case. And finally, to each of the members of the AFDD, an inexhaustible source of dignity and perseverance in the search for this so painful and long-awaited truth. A hug to all.

Source: VICTORIA DÍAZ CARO AND VIVIANA DÍAZ CARO