The Supreme Court issued a final judgment in the investigation into the aggravated kidnapping of Jaime Aldoney Vargas, a journalist and former councilman of Limache, who was executed starting on September 12, 1973, at the El Belloto naval air base.

In a split decision, Second Chamber ministers Nibaldo Segura, Jaime Rodríguez, Rubén Ballesteros, Hugo Dolmestch, and Carlos Künsemüller determined the sentences, upholding the investigation conducted by the Valparaíso Court of Appeals minister, Julio Miranda Lillo.

The conviction was issued with dissenting votes from ministers Segura and Ballesteros, who were in favor of accepting the statute of limitations for the criminal action. The ruling acquitted two of the eight defendants in the case due to a lack of participation in the events: retired Rear Admiral Ernesto Huber Von Appen and retired officer Manuel Buch López.

Five of the other defendants were sentenced to 5 years in prison with the benefit of supervised release. They are Navy captains Patricio Villalobos Lobos, Pedro Arancibia Solar, Jaime Urdangarín Romero, and Germán Valdivia Keller.

Captain Guillermo Vidal Hurtado was sentenced to the same term as an accessory, while retired Captain Sergio Mendoza Rojas received only 4 years, also with supervised release. In the civil aspect, it was determined that the convicted individuals Valdivia Keller, Arancibia Solar, Urdangarín Romero, and Mendoza Rojas must pay joint compensation of $30,000,000 to Gabriel and Iván Aldoney Vargas, the victim's brothers.

Likewise, the lawsuit against the Chilean Treasury was dismissed, accepting the court's plea of absolute incompetence. Regarding the civil aspect, the decision to accept the exception in favor of the Chilean Treasury was adopted with dissenting votes from ministers Dolmestch and Künsemüller.

Source: lanacion.cl, May 5, 2011

Court releases perpetrators of the crime against former councilman Jaime Aldoney

The Valparaíso Court of Appeals applied such low sentences that the seven convicted individuals will serve them in freedom. The Third Chamber of the Valparaíso Court of Appeals did not apply international criminal law, which declares crimes against humanity to be non-amnestiable and imprescriptible, and released the seven kidnappers of Socialist councilman Jaime Aldoney Vargas, whose body was presumably thrown into the sea by the same Navy officers who were released.

Ministers Manuel Silva Ibáñez and Gonzalo Morales (majority vote) applied the legal criterion of "half-prescription" and imposed sentences of three years and 541 days against the six retired Navy captains—Patricio Villalobos Lobos, Pedro Arancibia Solar, Jaime Urdangarín Romero, Germán Valdivia Keller, Guillermo Vidal Hurtado, and Sergio Mendoza Rojas—and retired Rear Admiral Ernesto Huber von Appen.

Since the sentences are less than five years and one day, all those sentenced will serve them in freedom. "Half-prescription" is a "reconciliation" formula, installed two years ago by the Penal Chamber of the Supreme Court, which allows for low sentences to be applied to those who committed crimes during the dictatorship.

The ruling was considered "serious and regrettable" by the lawyer for the Ministry of the Interior's Human Rights Program, Karina Fernández, a plaintiff in the case: "a type of prescription was applied to human rights violators that allows them to remain free, in a ruling absolutely contradictory to the principles of international law." The lawyer told La Nación that "the Navy did not cooperate in the investigation, which makes it even more unjust," and added that "we will file an appeal for cassation before the Penal Chamber of the Supreme Court." Jaime Aldoney, former comptroller of the Compañía de Cervecerías Unidas in Limache and brother of the former Intendant of Valparaíso, Gabriel Aldoney, was detained after the 1973 military coup and tortured at the El Belloto naval air base, from where he disappeared.

Source: Lanacion.cl, June 10, 2009

Two more former Navy personnel prosecuted in Aldoney Case

As anticipated by ZonaImpacto.cl in June of last year (Edition No. 125 "Aldoney Case: plaintiffs will request the prosecution of two other former Navy non-commissioned officers; the six detainees appeal to the Court of Appeals"), the visiting minister of the Valparaíso Court of Appeals, Gabriela Corti, issued two new indictments in the case of the disappearance of the journalist, civil engineer, Limache councilman, and comptroller of the Compañía de Cervecerías Unidas (CCU), Socialist militant Jaime Aldoney Vargas.

The indictments were decreed for the crime of aggravated kidnapping and affect retired Navy captains Guillermo Vidal Hurtado and Germán Valdivia. In 1973, when Aldoney was murdered and forcibly disappeared, the two former Navy personnel who have now been prosecuted were serving at what is now the former El Belloto Naval Air Base in Quilpué as lieutenants, according to PPD deputy Laura Soto, one of the plaintiff lawyers in the case.

The other sponsor of the lawsuit being investigated by Minister Corti is also deputy Juan Bustos (PS), representative of District 12 (Quilpué, Villa Alemana, Limache, and Olmué). The new indictments were issued because both declared a version of the events that culminated in Aldoney's disappearance that differed from what had been previously declared by the other defendants in the case, according to deputy Soto.

The other six defendants, all retired Navy officers, are retired Rear Admiral Ernesto Huber von Appen, who in 1973—when the then-Socialist councilman disappeared—was in charge of the El Belloto Naval Air Base.

In addition to Huber, those indicted in this process are retired Captain Sergio Mendoza Rojas, retired Captain Patricio Villalobos Lobos, retired non-commissioned officer Manuel Bush López, retired Captain Jaime Undargarín Romero, and retired Lieutenant Pedro Arancibia Solar.

Detained in Limache On September 12, 1973, the then-comptroller of the CCU, Limache councilman, civil engineer, and journalist Jaime Aldoney was detained at the brewery plant in Limache. He was taken first to a Carabineros station and then to the El Belloto Naval Air Base, where he was subjected to torture that caused his death, apparently on September 14 of the same year.

Councilman Jaime Aldoney was 30 years old at the time of his detention; he had been one of the founders of MAPU (Movement of Unitary Popular Action), but later joined the Socialist Party. The case has been under investigation for more than two years by Minister Corti, appointed to hear cases of human rights violations in the Region, who has conducted an extensive investigation that included testimonies collected abroad by Interpol police agents.

Source: Zonaimapcto.cl, February 5, 2004

After a 30-year trial, murderers of Socialist militant in Chile are convicted

At the end of a trial that lasted 30 years, a judge in the Chilean port of Valparaíso today convicted six retired Navy officers for the kidnapping (disappearance) of Socialist militant Jaime Aldoney Vargas, following the 1973 military coup.

According to judicial sources, Judge Julio Miranda Lillo of the Valparaíso Court of Appeals sentenced four of the defendants to four years in prison, but at the same time granted them the benefit of supervised release.

They are former Navy captains Patricio Villalobos Lobos, Pedro Arancibia Solar, Jaime Urdangarín Romero, and Patricio Valdivia Keller, the sources indicated. Additionally, as accessories to the crime, which occurred on September 12, 1973, he sentenced former officers Guillermo Vidal Hurtado and Sergio Mendoza Rojas to prison terms of 320 days and 75 days, respectively.

For Vidal Hurtado, the judge granted the benefit of conditional remission of the sentence, with a one-year observation period by the Gendarmería (Prison Service), while for Mendoza Rojas, he considered the sentence served by the time he spent in preventive detention in 2003.

Finally, the magistrate acquitted two defendants, Ernesto Huber Von Appen and Manuel Buch López. The victim's body was never found and, according to the case records, it was thrown into the sea. In the civil aspect, the judge ordered the defendants and the Chilean Treasury to pay, jointly and severally, the sum of one hundred million pesos (about 196,000 dollars) to the plaintiffs in the case.

Socialist deputy and plaintiff lawyer in the case, Juan Bustos, announced that he will appeal the ruling because he considers the sentences "insufficient," he told reporters. The Chilean Navy, meanwhile, expressed its condolences to Jaime Aldoney's family through a statement and indicated that, as it is a first-instance ruling, it will refrain from issuing comments regarding the content of the judicial resolution.

Jaime Aldoney was a journalism student, civil engineer, councilman for the municipality of Limache, and comptroller of the Compañía de Cervecerías Unidas (CCU) when the 1973 coup occurred. After being detained by Carabineros, he was taken by Navy personnel from the police station where he was being held and taken to a naval air base, where he was tortured and where his trail was lost.

Source: panamerica.com, November 29, 2007

Former high-ranking Chilean Navy officers convicted for kidnapping of journalist

"He was a very hardworking man, extraordinarily agile. Never satisfied with what he did, he always wanted and demanded more of himself, with a great rhythm of work," says journalist Miguel Tapia González, consulted by the SIP in memory of his friend and colleague Jaime Aldoney Vargas, almost 38 years after he disappeared at the hands of Chilean Navy personnel.

Last week, the Supreme Court of Justice issued a final judgment against six former high-ranking members of the Navy accused of the disappearance of Aldoney, who was also a civil engineer and councilman of Limache (Fifth Region), whose body was never found.

The sentence imposed five years in prison for aggravated kidnapping on retired Navy captains Patricio Villalobos Lobos, Pedro Arancibia Solar, Jaime Undagarín Romero, and Germán Valdivia Keller, as well as Guillermo Vidal Hurtado and Sergio Mendoza Rojas, although for the latter the punishment is four years.

All were granted remission of the sentence, that is, supervised release, and were also ordered to pay joint compensation equivalent to 65,000 dollars to the victim's brothers, Gabriel and Iván. But for Gabriel Aldoney, who was Regional Intendant of Valparaíso upon the return of democracy to Chile (1997-2000), as well as for Tapia, the ruling is disappointing and controversial. "It does not surprise us that it is all a mask of justice, since the guilty will be able to enjoy so-called supervised release, in circumstances where no one knows who is supervising what," states journalist Tapia.

Two other defendants, retired Rear Admiral Ernesto Huber Von Appen and former non-commissioned officer Manuel Buch López, were acquitted "for lack of participation in the facts," although Aldoney's wife, María Isabel Basignan, states that Huber, head of the El Belloto naval air base at that time, assured her a month after her husband's disappearance that it had all been a mistake and that the journalist was free. "In the military sphere, it is unacceptable that the authority does not know what is happening in its barracks.

We are all dissatisfied with this ruling, which also leaves the person most responsible for what happened at El Belloto free," adds Gabriel in a conversation with the SIP. "They told us that Jaime escaped, was released, fled—all implausible things to happen in a prison camp under a military dictatorship." In the judicial file, Oscar Villanueva González, who was detained at that naval base, testifies among others, and says that he was returning from an interrogation to which he was subjected when he saw Aldoney up close, "whom I noticed was agonizing due to his immobility and way of looking.

I wanted to assist him to take him to the infirmary, but I could not because I had a dislocated shoulder. Later I asked about his situation and some conscripts told me 'he left,' meaning he had died..." Jaime Aldoney was detained the day after the military coup of September 11, 1973.

The uniformed men burst violently into the premises of the Compañía Cervecerías Unidas in Limache (Fifth Region), where he was the comptroller appointed by the government. He had managed to put the company's accounting in order and instill a great work ethic among the employees.

But when the Navy men burst in, without a word, they arrested several people, and the comptroller was taken away and mistreated in various facilities: the Carabineros barracks, the El Belloto air base, and the merchant ship Maipo, where he was last seen. "They were torturing him," recalls Sergio Clark Lillo, head of personnel at the brewery company, who says he saw him when a Navy man was hitting him, complaining that he had "stolen" a girlfriend from him at the University (?).

Aldoney had studied Civil Construction (Engineering). A student leader, affiliated with the Socialist Party, as soon as he finished those studies, he entered the School of Journalism at the University of Chile in Valparaíso, encouraged by his love for writing. "He had an innate talent as a journalist," they remember.

At 30 years old, he managed to develop a program on Radio Latina and collaborate in the now-defunct newspaper La Unión, of Valparaíso, where Tapia also worked, still practicing today at the newspaper Impacto, in La Calera, in addition to his press portal: www.zonaimpacto.cl He was the youngest councilman elected in the municipality of Limache in 1973.

His case became one of the most emblematic for human rights defenders, as Navy personnel were directly involved, which was not as common as it was with Army and Air Force officers. The Santiago newspaper La Nación, echoing a statement of repentance from one of the defendants and a strong national rumor, reported in November 2007 that Jaime Aldoney's body was thrown into the sea by the same Navy officers who at that time held the rank of lieutenants, now convicted of aggravated kidnapping.

Divers searched the bay of Quintero in vain. "We as a family have never sought revenge. We only want to know the truth. We still haven't obtained it. There are many unresolved cases of human rights violations in the country. And for the humblest people, it is impossible," concludes Gabriel Aldoney.

Source: sipiapa.org, November 30, 2007

Supreme Court sentences six retired Navy officers for kidnapping of former Limache councilman

Jaime Aldoney was detained in the commune of Limache on September 12, 1973, and was transferred to the El Belloto naval air base, where, according to the testimony of various witnesses, he was beaten by naval military personnel.

Currently, his family does not know where his body may have been buried. The Penal Chamber of the Supreme Court once again applied the principle of "half-prescription" in matters of human rights violations, sentencing six retired Navy officers for the aggravated kidnapping of former Limache councilman Jaime Aldoney Vargas.

In a split decision, ministers Nibaldo Segura, Jaime Rodríguez, Rubén Ballesteros, Hugo Dolmestch, and Carlos Künsemüller determined sentences of 5 and 4 years in prison with the benefit of supervised release against Patricio Villalobos Lobos, Pedro Arancibia Solar, Jaime Urdangarín Romero, German Valdivia Keller, Guillermo Vidal Hurtado, and Sergio Mendoza Rojas.

Jaime Aldoney was detained in the commune of Limache on September 12, 1973, and was transferred to the El Belloto naval air base, where, according to the testimony of various witnesses, he was beaten by naval military personnel.

Currently, his family does not know where his body may have been buried. In the same resolution, retired Rear Admiral Ernesto Huber Von Appen and former corporal Manuel Bush López are acquitted for lack of participation.

In the civil aspect, the convicted individuals Valdivia Keller, Arancibia Solar, Urdangarín Romero, and Mendoza Rojas must pay, jointly and severally, a total compensation of $30 million to the victim's brothers, Gabriel and Ivan Aldoney.

Source: elmostrador.cl, May 5, 2011