22 years after the operation that killed three MIR members in Concepción and Hualpencillo, there is still no conviction for those responsible. The security agents who acted in what was called the "Alfa Carbón 1" plan did so with all the protections of the regime, avoiding identification for decades.

Today, the official version that spoke of "clashes" is being contrasted by eyewitnesses who, in an unprecedented manner, provide an account of how the events actually occurred.

Residents of the Lorenzo Arenas sector in Concepción still find it painful to recall the story of the MIR members murdered on August 23, 1984, in the vicinity of the Vega Monumental. It was one of the most public and exposed repressive operations of the defunct National Information Center (CNI) which, paradoxically, due to the protections afforded to the intelligence agencies involved, has become one of the most difficult human rights cases to clarify.

As revealed by the statement of a CNI agent contained in the case file, the idea behind the "Alfa Carbón 1" operation—as this intelligence action was named—was to "destroy the MIR's theater of operations between the eighth and tenth regions." For this reason, they acted almost simultaneously in Concepción, Los Ángeles, Valdivia, and Santiago.

In total, 9 MIR members were murdered and many others were detained in numerous raids.

In the specific case of the deaths at the Vega Monumental, the authorities of the time imposed an official version that spoke of a clash between terrorists and the regime's security agencies, despite the certainty of hundreds of people—adults, youths, and many children—who saw how the victims surrendered without offering resistance, one of them even with his hands raised.

After 22 years, the military justice system, where the case remained despite the opposition of the victims' families and human rights organizations, still keeps the summary proceedings open, without having issued an indictment against any of the alleged perpetrators to date.

Chronology of the crime

Operation Alfa Carbón 1 began on the morning of August 23 in Concepción with the arrest of a MIR militant on a public street. After midday, in Hualpencillo, the official information reported a casual clash between a suspicious subject, Luis Humberto Aedo Arias (32), and security personnel.

The CNI reported that Aedo (one of the strongest MIR members in the area) fired at the agents and that they responded, wounding him mortally. Witnesses rule out a chance encounter. They assert that a police cordon had been set up in the sector early on and that the subject was shot in the back and finished off on the ground.

A report from Revista Hoy at the time recovered a statement that complements these versions: "When the gentleman was lying on the ground, a vehicle arrived with three people; they got out, moved him, and shots were heard again. Then three other people appeared with briefcases and placed papers on him. He was stretched out and they changed his position."

Around 15:30 hrs. on the same day, CNI vehicles intercepted a "Las Bahías" line bus on the Talcahuano-Concepción route near the Vega Monumental. The target: Nelson Herrera Riveros (30), political-military head of the MIR from Concepción to the Tenth Region, and his companion, Mario Octavio Lagos Rodríguez (34).

20 days later, the bus driver, Pedro Aguayo, who would die a couple of years later under strange circumstances, stated in a sworn declaration that both subjects had boarded his vehicle in front of the Talcahuano market. "They got on, paid their fare, and sat behind me in the first seat (...) when I reached the first traffic light on Calle 21 de Mayo, in front of the Vega, I saw a red car and on the sides 4 armed people who were protecting themselves behind the car and watching me (...) from another vehicle, which was coming in the opposite direction, some people got out with weapons, submachine guns, and leaned on the hood of the bus and forced me to stop."

The first controversies

What happened after this action triggered one of the most open debates between the Catholic Church in Concepción and the regime's authorities of the time. While the latter claimed that both MIR members took the bus passengers hostage to evade pursuit, Aguayo himself denied that information to the newspaper El Sur two days later.

When asked if there was a clash or not, he was emphatic: "In honor of the truth, I have to say no (...) the two men finally decided to get off. At no point did they come out shooting. They wanted to surrender."

Journalist Marcelo Henríquez, who was 13 years old at the time, lived in the sector. He relates that, together with some friends, he witnessed everything from an apartment overlooking Calle 21 de Mayo. "We heard a lot of shouting, a lot of swearing, mainly from the people in civilian clothes.

They told the guys out loud and with megaphones that if they got off the bus, nothing would happen to them (...), but as soon as the first one got off, they killed him (...) it wasn't a shootout. The shots came from only one side. From the armed civilians," he states.

The MIR member who died at the scene was Mario Octavio Lagos. Witnesses said he got off the bus with his hands raised, which explains the bullet wound under his armpit that his body presented at the Legal Medical Institute, which was verified by the priest and journalist Enrique Moreno Laval, who at the time was the Episcopal Vicar of the Workers' Pastoral in Concepción and regional vice president of the Journalists' Association.

The circumstances of Herrera's death are not clear. The driver, Pedro Aguayo, related that he managed to see him lying in the street, but that he had no blood on his body. Only a superficial wound on his forehead, which he said "could have been from the fall or the graze of a bullet." However, he arrived dead at the Regional Hospital.

"Two men who approached him grabbed him firmly by the arms (...) they said he was wounded and that he had to be taken to the hospital. He was walking without handcuffs and they put him into a vehicle that I cannot specify which one it was," the driver related in his sworn statement.

Marcelo Henríquez does remember this event clearly. "They took him (Herrera) and put him into a civilian car. I think it was a Chevrolet Opala, a big one. A dry shot rang out and I saw how the body jumped as a result of the impact."

Something similar was affirmed in the proceedings by a former agent, who ensured that Herrera was put into a Central [CNI] car in handcuffs. "The vehicle bore the colors of a taxi. When it started, the order to eliminate him arrived.

The team eliminated him at point-blank range." Herrera's death certificate lists the cause of death as a skull-brain gunshot wound, classified as a homicide. A shocking photograph taken by the then-lawyer for CODEPU, Carlos Cabrera, who saw Herrera at the morgue, shows a perforation in the middle of his forehead that would have been made with a weapon held against it.

The judicial tangle

The substantial difference between the official version and that of eyewitnesses motivated the distrust of the Archbishop of Concepción, José Manuel Santos, who five days after the operation requested an investigating judge from the Concepción Court of Appeals, a request that was not accepted, as the Appellate Court determined that "it was not appropriate for the ordinary justice system to hear the aforementioned matters." Indignant at the response, Santos was not deterred and appealed to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court instructed the Third Military Court to appoint an ad hoc prosecutor, an appointment that fell to Commander Alejandro Abuter Campos.

In '84, the Military Justice system had already initiated an investigation into the formation of paramilitary militias and prosecuted the MIR members detained in the raids for violation of the arms control law. In this situation, among others, are Patricia Zalaquett, Herrera's partner, and Alejandro Bernsteir, to this day.

Over the next 15 years, the military prosecutor's office did not prosecute any of the agents involved in the crimes of the Vega and Hualpencillo. It even moved to definitively dismiss the case. But the CODEPU lawyers from Santiago filed a cassation appeal before the Supreme Court to invalidate the dismissal.

In September, the Supreme Court revoked this decision, issued a replacement ruling, and ordered the investigation to continue. At this moment, the title of the military file for the case of the three MIR members murdered on August 23, '84, changed to "unnecessary violence against CNI personnel."

"Unnecessary violence is manifested in the death of defenseless people; that is, the military justice system in democracy recognizes these despicable acts," asserts lawyer Carlos Cabrera. Meanwhile, the case of the living MIR members was transferred to the ordinary justice system.

Agents without masks

The investigation had been stalled for years, as most of the CNI agents involved acted with operational names (chapas). Even in that condition, two of them—Army Lieutenant Colonel Hugo José Hechenleitner, alias Antonio Martínez López, and Sub-officer Víctor Muñoz Orellana, alias Jaime Marinovic Palma—had recognized their participation in the events of the Vega operation on August 23 before prosecutor Pedro Marisio. "There was a degree of complicity here, because the prosecutor accepted the statement with chapas knowing that those names did not correspond," accuses Carlos Cabrera.

In April 1999, the Second Military Prosecutor's Office of Concepción prosecuted these two CNI agents, who still appeared under their chapas. For this reason, lawyer Cabrera requested proceedings to establish their true identities, which bore fruit in November 2002.

With this new data, their indictment was modified. Víctor Manuel Muñoz is prosecuted for the death of Luciano Aedo and Hechenleitner for that of Nelson Herrera, being detained in January 2003 at Military Battalion No. 1. Today both are free on bail, but separated from the Army. They face sentences of major imprisonment in its minimum to medium degree, that is, from 5 years and one day to 15 years.

As stated in the summary, in March 2003 both defendants testified before the Military Prosecutor's Office of Concepción. Hechenleitner did not recognize his 1984 testimony before prosecutor Marisio and indicated that he only had participation in the arrest of Patricia Zalaquett that occurred in the El Recodo sector.

He added that he arrived in Concepción in August '84 by an order from the head of the CNI's Borgoño Barracks, Major Alvaro Corbalán, accompanied by Carabineros Corporal I Egon Barra Barra, alias Raúl González, and a civilian employee with the surname Fuentes who has not been identified until now.

During the interrogation, he was also asked if he knew Claudio Rosas Fernández. He replied that they met on September 20, '84, and that he was the head of the CNI in Chillán. However, in his 1984 statement, he acknowledged that he participated in the Vega Monumental operation together with Rosas Fernández and that he fired at Nelson Herrera.

He also establishes that it was he, together with agent Rosas, who transported him "alive" to the Regional Hospital.

The other defendant, Víctor Muñoz Orellana, also disavows his '84 statement. Furthermore, he ruled out his participation in the Hualpencillo operation, since, as he said, he was not at the scene when the events occurred.

Nevertheless, he gives an account of the presence of other agents, with their real names and chapas, information that allows for probing the responsibility of others involved. He names Army sub-officers Hernán Galvez Navarro (alias Vitoco) and Carlos Palma (assumed name, Juan Carlos Vera). A third mentioned is Leandro Montenegro or Farías.

The end is near

In the context of the modernization of the Army, the Third Military Court was moved to Valdivia. According to Cabrera, at this moment the Concepción prosecutor Fernando Grandón issued a ruling and proposed a conviction for the two prosecuted agents.

The information was passed to the Valdivia Court to be ratified. "It took two years or more there, I don't remember, and the Third Army Division ordered the summary to be reopened again to continue the investigation, because it estimates that there would be more agents involved," explains the lawyer.

To date, Cabrera, who sponsors Nelson Herrera's case, does not have access to the summary, as the military instance removed the publicity of the investigation from the parties.

However, this lawyer is optimistic and hints that, according to information he handles, it would take very little to find the true perpetrators of the deaths caused by this operation, which remains indelible in the memory of its victims and witnesses.

Operation Alfa Carbón

Waiting for the big fish To materialize this plan, in the first days of August, between 25 and 30 intelligence agents, including women, arrived in Concepción from different parts of the country and joined those from the area itself. All planning was in charge of the CNI's regional unit based in Santiago, led by Army Lieutenant Colonel Marcos Derpisch Miranda.

Within the support group also traveled the head of the CNI's Borgoño Barracks, Major Alvaro Corbalán Castilla, who upon his arrival reportedly had an unfortunate encounter with the Regional Chief, Major Jorge Mandiola, apparently due to a power struggle.

According to the statement of a CNI agent, the entire operation was centralized in the Third Army Division. "It was a very programmed operation, in its achievements, one hundred percent efficient (...) a lot of CNI people were moved." He also acknowledges that in Alfa Carbón I there was no prior detention, but that they knew a lot about each person.

This confirms Pinochet's words on August 16, 1984, before foreign correspondents: "We have found extremists. We are finding them and we have leads. Now, many times you have to let them get fat in order to be able to take them all. There are quite a few people detected..."

Source: RevistaNos.cl, August 2006

The crimes of Hualpén and the Vega Monumental

This September 23, the day we remember 24 years since the explosive homicide of Jaime Orellana and Nelson Lagos in Chillán, the reconstructions of the scenes of the crimes committed by the military of the Armed Forces on duty with the CNI were carried out, where they proceeded with exclusive dedication to plan and execute homicides, some mass ones like that of August 23, 1984.

With a large police deployment in which numerous PDI officers participated—some strangely hooded as in the dictatorship—and GOPE personnel, the reconstruction of the scene was carried out under the charge of Judge Carlos Aldana, who, accompanied by his secretary lawyer David Bravo and the lawyer from the Human Rights Department of the Ministry of the Interior, Mrs.

Magdalena Garcés, participated in order to clarify the criminal facts in which the leaders of the Southern zone of the MIR were executed on August 23, 1984.

In each place where the proceedings were carried out—Hualpén, Concepción, and San Pedro—in addition to their families and friends, the Association of Political Executed MIR Members of Concepción and social organizations of Hualpén were present.

A large public from the sector and press from different media outlets gathered, who from a distance—cordoned off by the officers—were attentive to the movements that described the events that occurred in those homicides.

Let us remember that on this date, seven comrades, members of the Southern leadership of the MIR, were executed in the operation called Alfa Carbón 1 by the Security Services of that time, whose objective was to eliminate the members of that MIR leadership.

During that simultaneous operation, Nelson Herrera and Mario Lagos were murdered in Concepción, Luciano Aedo Arias in Hualpén, Mario Mújica in Los Ángeles, and Juan José Boncompte, Rogelio Tapia, and Raúl Barrientos in Valdivia.

The executioners, members of the CNI, were commanded by Marcos Derpisch Miranda, Army Lieutenant Colonel in charge of the operation, and seconded by Hugo José Hechenleitner, Army Lieutenant Colonel, who appeared today at the scene of the events along with five other members of the former CNI to reconstruct the events at the corner of Grecia and Nápoles streets in the current Commune of Hualpén, where Luciano Aedo Arias was murdered.

Some of the names of the death squad that participated in the Alfa Carbón 1 operation in Concepción:

1. Marcos Derpisch Miranda: Army Lieutenant Colonel in charge of the operation. Today he continues working at the DINE (Army Intelligence Directorate). 2. Hugo José Hechenleitner: Lieutenant Colonel, his chapa was Antonio Martínez López. 3.

Claudio Rodrigo Rosas Fernández: Army Lieutenant Colonel. 4. Víctor Manuel Muñoz Orellana: Army Sub-officer, his chapa was Jaime Ricardo Marinovic Palma, and he was the one who shot Luciano Aedo. 5. Álvaro Corbalán Castilla (Army Major).

Today imprisoned in the Punta Peuco resort. 6. Francisco Zúñiga Acevedo: Army Officer. Already deceased, he left without paying. 7. Jorge Mandiola Arredondo: Army Major. 8. Carlos Palma: Army Sub-officer. 9.

Leandro Montenegro (Army Sub-officer), alias Farías. 10. Jorge Vargas: Civilian. 11. Miguel Gajardo: Civilian. 12. Andres Caris: Carabineros Sub-officer. 13. Egon Barra: Carabineros Corporal. 14. Rosa Humilde Ramos: Army Sub-officer. The most feared among her peers. They call her "La Mala" (The Bad One). 15. Teresa Osorio: Navy Sub-officer.

These are those who acted in the massacre of Concepción and Hualpén, accompanied by another numerous contingent of CNI, Army, Carabineros, and snitches.

In the case of Los Ángeles, where they murdered Mario Mujica, the following participated in the numerous contingent of evildoers: 1.- Bruno Antonio Soto Aravena 2.- José Artemio Zapata Zapata.

Currently, it is believed that one of them—it is said it has not been possible to establish which one—is living in Los Ángeles and the other in Concepción. For a short time, they were detained and were in prison, but of course, after a short time, they were released and today they enjoy full freedom.

After concluding in Hualpén, the entourage moved to the Vega Monumental sector, where Nelson Herrera and Mario Lagos were executed after having surrendered and descended with their hands raised from the bus in which they were traveling.

This fact is a clear example of how the rights of the detainee were violated; unarmed and without the capacity for armed response, they were riddled with bullets in the presence of passersby and passengers of the bus in which they were traveling, which constitutes a double homicide.

After the reconstruction in Hualpén and Concepción was finished, the Judge and his work team moved to the El Recodo neighborhood on the road to Santa Juana, where the CNI proceeded to raid the house of Nelson Herrera's family, in which his wife, Patricia Zalaquet, was detained.

Today, Judge Aldana has obtained, in the presence of the accused, the details and characteristics of these crimes that were presented at that time to public opinion as "clashes" of terrorists against CNI officials, even though these evildoers had traveled expressly from Santiago to commit the illicit acts.

It should be noted, as Judge Aldana himself pointed out to the press, that this judicial case was archived in the Military Prosecutor's Office, from where it was recovered, apparently by the Government's Human Rights Department, to transfer it to the hands of the Civil Justice system, which will now have the task of prosecuting and passing sentence, although the Judge himself indicated that he does not rule out new proceedings.

The Relatives of Political Executed MIR Members in Concepción expect a lot from the Judge; so far, all his conclusions in other cases blame only the material executioners, the last link in the chain of command, the one who pulled the trigger, leaving the intellectual authors and commanders who gave the orders to murder unpunished.

Therefore, we hope that this chain of command reaches the High Commands of the institutions that had intelligence apparatuses with exclusive dedication to commit crimes, and those are even higher than Álvaro Corbalán Castilla himself (who excused himself from attending although he participated in the events), because this bandit did not act alone.

Today it transpired that the Judge had prosecuted the second-in-command of the CNI, whom he had sent as a detainee to the Chacabuco Regiment; at the time of writing this note, it was only a rumor. The orders to murder in a highly hierarchical and centralized armed institution could only come from the Intelligence General Staff with the due approval and authorization of the de facto Government of the coup-plotting military.

It is striking that the former MIR leaders of that time are once again not present supporting the relatives, nor are they becoming parties to the lawsuits for truth and justice, nor are they undertaking initiatives against impunity; it is possible that they are hunting for votes instead of hunting criminals.

Source: Liberacion.cl, September 30, 2009

Alfa Carbón 1: The Operation Albania of the south

The Court of Appeals is about to rule on the expansion of the indictment for "illicit association" against 13 former CNI agents involved in the execution of seven MIR members in 1984, murders that were presented at the time as "confrontations." The judge presiding over the case only indicted two of the accused for "illicit association": Álvaro Corbalán and Marcos Derpich.

The following text was sent to CIPER by the victims' relatives and reconstructs the events based on the statements contained in the judicial file. Its authors aim to demonstrate that the "illicit association" included all the agents who acted in these operations.

The method of false confrontations to eliminate opponents was a common practice used by the Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI), the repressive agency of the military government. The detention, execution, and disappearance of prisoners, which was used intensely and massively by the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA), the predecessor to the CNI, during the first period of the dictatorship, was replaced in the following years by the public execution of "internal enemies" and their subsequent presentation as confrontations by the CNI.

The latter would detain and eliminate opponents in chosen locations, where the scene of the alleged confrontation was later staged. Alternatively, opponents were executed in ambushes prepared in advance.

In both circumstances, the press covered the episodes with complicit enthusiasm. The courts of justice ignored the investigations demanded by the victims' families or processed the cases in a foolish and negligent manner; in any case, the country has had to endure decades of proceedings to achieve judicial progress.

What follows accounts for the responsibility held by the courts of justice in clarifying the murder of seven MIR members in the cities of Concepción, Valdivia, and Los Ángeles, which occurred on August 23 and 24, 1984, within the framework of Operation Alfa Carbón 1 or, as it has been called, the "Albania of the South," in allusion to the well-known Operation Albania or the Corpus Christi Massacre, with which the CNI murdered twelve members of the Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez in June 1987.

The background information we present below does not constitute, according to the visiting judge presiding over the case, Carlos Aldana Fuentes, sufficient evidence to establish well-founded presumptions that the accused and charged individuals Hugo Salas Wenzel, Jorge Mandiola Arredondo, Jorge Andrade Gómez, and Aquiles González Cortés, among others, held responsibility and participation as authors of the crimes committed under the category of criminal illicit association.

Aldana also dismisses the responsibility as accomplices and cover-ups held by Miguel Ángel Parra Vásquez, then a lawyer for the CNI and responsible for instructing agents to provide false statements to the courts after the events occurred.

According to Aldana, there is insufficient evidence to consider that these agents held participation as authors, accomplices, or cover-ups in the crimes attributed to them, as required by Article 274 No. 2 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

On August 23, 1984, the CNI team led by Luís Hernán Gálvez Navarro began the second stage of Operation Alfa Carbón 1. Around 11:00, several CNI teams and a Televisión Nacional crew arrived in Hualpencillo, current-day Hualpén.

Luciano Humberto Aedo Arias, a MIR leader in the Southern Theater of Operations, lived at 3346 Nápoles Street. After midday, at the intersection of Grecia and Nápoles, agents Raúl Hernán Escobar Díaz and Roberto Antonio Farías Santelices, along with Gálvez Navarro, got out of the vehicles in which they had been following him for months, shot him in the back, and finished him off on the ground.

Finally, according to witnesses, "after a while, many vehicles began to arrive; they checked his pockets, placed two short-barreled weapons near his body, some pamphlets, and some black objects like grenades" (fs. 3907, case file 746-84).

Alfa Carbón 1 had begun at the start of 1984—or perhaps earlier—when Jorge Mandiola Arredondo, head of the CNI in Concepción, informed his superior, Marcos Spiros Derpich Miranda, head of the CNI's Regional Division, that there was already sufficient data to confirm the presence of a subversive structure in the area: the Southern Theater of Operations (TOS) of the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionario (MIR).

Joaquín Molina Fuenzalida (+), Derpich's second-in-command in the Regional Division, had directed the intelligence work for what would be the definitive dismantling of the MIR leadership in southern Chile.

Derpich and Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, then head of the CNI's Anti-Subversive Division (DAS), based at the Cuartel Borgoño in Santiago, would be in charge of commanding the operation. The report submitted by Mandiola included names, addresses, and organizational charts of the MIR members, among which was the data on Aedo.

The autopsy report performed by forensic doctor César Reyes Contreras on August 24, 1984, at 8:30, confirmed that Luciano Aedo received seven bullet impacts, four in the back, head, left wrist, and left foot, and defined the precise and necessary cause of death as a projectile fired from a distance of more than fifty centimeters that entered through the back and exited through the chest, compromising the heart and lungs (fs. 234; 292).

Likewise, in his statement on September 13, the doctor noted that the trajectory of the projectile suggests that Aedo was leaning forward, "as when running," and that the wounds in the back must have been inflicted when the thorax was very inclined, "almost horizontal to the ground" (fs. 17954). Luciano Humberto Aedo Arias was 34 years old, a father of four, and a member of the MIR.

Later, around 16:00, in front of the Vega Monumental in Concepción, the driver Pedro Aguayo Aguayo was forced to stop his minibus. About thirty CNI agents and Carabineros personnel had surrounded the area.

In Talcahuano, Mario Octavio Lagos Rodríguez, military head of the TOS, and Nelson Adrián Herrera Riveros, political-military head of the TOS, had boarded it. A Televisión Nacional crew was also taking positions.

Jorge Octavio Vargas Bories, a former Army officer hired as a civilian employee of the CNI and second-in-command of the Special Brigade, ordered the passengers to get off. Only the driver did so. Faced with this, the officers began throwing tear gas canisters into the vehicle, where about twelve people remained.

Ten got off. After a few minutes, Mario Lagos descended through the back door with his hands up. Egon Antonio Barra Barra, a Carabineros corporal and member of the CNI Special Brigade, descended from the vehicle in which they had followed the minibus, carrying an AK rifle.

Manuel Ángel Morales Acevedo, a Carabineros corporal and member of the CNI Special Brigade, did the same. As stated at fs. 3646, both fired several shots, "the subject falling face down and dying in that place." They acted under the orders of Hugo José Hechenleitner Hechenleitner, then an Army lieutenant and head of the team, before the stunned gaze of about 500 witnesses.

The autopsy report for Mario Lagos Rodríguez revealed that he received two bullet impacts fired from more than fifty centimeters away: one in the left axillary area—which proves he had his arms raised at the moment of receiving it—and another in the posterior part of the right thigh. Mario Octavio Lagos Rodríguez was 34 years old, a father of three, and a member of the MIR.

Upon seeing him on the ground, Nelson Herrera tried to flee but was intercepted. The driver, Pedro Aguayo, stated on September 10, 1984: "I headed toward him and was a meter away from him. At that same moment, two agents arrived who lifted him by the arms.

The fallen man opened his eyes and looked at me directly. He had no blood anywhere on his body, except for a scrape on the temple, which could have been caused by the fall or the graze of a bullet [...] The two men who had approached him took him firmly by the arms, lifted him up, and said he was wounded and had to be taken to the hospital" (fs. 18345).

José Abel Aravena Ruiz, a Carabineros non-commissioned officer and member of the Blue Brigade, commanded the team in charge of tracking Herrera and, together with Sergio Agustín Mateluna Pino, a civilian Army agent and member of the CNI's Concepción Regional Anti-Subversive Division; Luis Enrique Andaur Leiva, a Carabineros corporal and operational guard at the CNI's Cuartel Borgoño; and a fourth agent to this day unidentified, whose alias was allegedly "Cárdenas," put him in a car and drove him toward Santa Juana.

There, on a vacant lot, Luis Andaur Leiva fired a shot into his forehead.

The autopsy of Nelson Herrera concluded that the cause of death was a cranio-cerebral wound resulting from a point-blank shot, which penetrated through the middle nasofrontal region and whose star-shaped appearance indicates it was inflicted at a distance of two or three centimeters.

Furthermore, it revealed the presence of bruising with blood infiltration on his wrists, indicating they were tied at the time of death. Nelson Adrián Herrera Riveros was 30 years old, a father of one daughter, and a member of the MIR.

As stated at fs. 4601—and established at fs. 3089; 3419; 2700 and 2557—the day before the operation, "a meeting was held in which it was said who had to be detained and who had to be eliminated. In that meeting, photographs were placed, and those who had to be eliminated were marked with a cross; among these were Herrera and Lagos." The meeting was led by Derpich and Mandiola, and the entire command participated, meaning, in addition to them: Corbalán, Gonzales Cortés, Krantz Johans Bauer Donoso, and "the CNI officer known at the Cuartel Borgoño specifically as ‘don Oscar,’ who corresponds to Jorge Claudio Andrade Gómez." Krantz Bauer (+) was to be in charge of the teams that were going to operate in Los Ángeles, and for that reason, he moved to the regiment in that city that night.

Around 17:00 on August 23, Bauer Donoso received the order to operate and informed the teams under his command to proceed with the planned actions. Bruno Antonio Soto Aravena, an Army non-commissioned officer and member of the Concepción DAS; José Artemio Zapata Zapata, a civilian Army agent and member of the Concepción DAS; and Rafael de Jesús Riveros Frost, a civilian Army agent and member of the Caupolicán, Red, and Blue brigades, arrived at 841 Bombero Carlos Vyhmeister Street in the Orompello neighborhood, where Mario Mujica Barros, a MIR leader and member of the TOS, lived.

As stated in the file, the three members of the team commanded by Soto Aravena had arrived in the city of Los Ángeles the first week of August to follow him. On the day of the events, the team waited for him to leave his home, but Mujica did not move.

About twelve agents positioned themselves in front of and on the sides of the house, and once the perimeter was secured, the team initiated the attack by entering the home. Simultaneously, the other teams fired into the air to give the impression of a confrontation.

But, as stated at fs. 309, Mario Mujica was subdued inside his home, placed on his knees, and executed with a point-blank shot. Subsequently, and to continue with the facade, the agents continued firing, climbing onto the roofs of neighboring houses and stationing themselves in the rear alley, while a large number of Carabineros provided perimeter support (fs. 146; 191).

The autopsy report for Mario Mujica indicated as the cause of death a bullet wound to the neck with involvement of the trachea and blood vessels, hemorrhage, and anemia. Likewise, Police Report No. 44 of the PDI's Criminalistics Department indicated that at the moment of receiving the homicidal impact, Mario Mujica could have been at a lower height than the person who fired the shot, either crouching or on the floor, or partially with his back turned, with his head and neck inclined (fs. 390).

Mario Ernesto Mujica Barros was 32 years old, a father of one, and a member of the MIR.

Just as in Concepción, and as stated at fs. 392; 291, on August 22, 1984, a meeting was held in Valdivia to plan the operation in that city. The meeting was led by Patricio Lorenzo Castro Muñoz, an Army lieutenant and second-in-command of the Yellow Brigade; Luis Alberto Moraga Tresckow, an Army captain and head of the CNI in Valdivia; and Oscar Alberto Boehmwald Soto, an Army captain and head of the CNI in Puerto Montt.

There, the teams that would operate the following day and the day after in the city were assigned.

On August 23, 1984, around midday, the three teams led by Patricio Castro detained Rogelio Tapia de la Puente and Raúl Jaime Barrientos Matamala, MIR leaders and members of the TOS, in the center of Valdivia.

The three groups formed a caravan along with two other teams, one of which was commanded by Moraga Tresckow, and headed along the route to Niebla until they reached the Estancilla Bridge, where they stopped in the middle of an open field.

A red van was also in the caravan. There, one of the vehicles moved about two hundred meters toward Niebla to cut off traffic, while another did the same with the flow coming from Valdivia. The detainees, tied, blindfolded, and gagged, were forced to get out and were immediately murdered by about five or six shooters, the first of them being Patricio Castro.

He was followed by "Miguel Aliaga," Gerardo Meza Acuña, Francisco Orellana Segel, Fernando Ramírez Romero, Alberto Moraga Tresckow, and another agent to this day unidentified. Subsequently, these same agents fired at the red van that had parked nearby to simulate a confrontation.

Ernesto Arnoldo Barría Ordoñez, captain of the ferry Caupolicán, which followed a route on the Valdivia River, noted that on that August 23, from midday, many vehicles with Santiago license plates began to pass, crossing from Las Mulatas toward Torobayo, and in the afternoon, some people in civilian clothes approached him claiming to be from the CNI, accompanied by several Carabineros.

They asked him to suspend service, and since there were orders from the Maritime Governorate, he had to obey. After approximately an hour and a half, a Carabineros chief told him to cross to pick up a hearse to transport the body of two MIR members who had died in a confrontation. "The hearse was black, but it had the Carabineros logo.

I asked a known Carabinero for authorization to see the bodies." There he recognized Barrientos, because they lived in the same neighborhood (fs. 287).

The autopsies confirmed that Rogelio Tapia received six bullet impacts in the face, thorax, and abdomen, and Raúl Barrientos, three impacts in the head and thorax. Rogelio Tapia de la Puente was 31 years old, a father of two daughters, and a member of the MIR. Raúl Barrientos Matamala was 23 years old and a member of the MIR.

The execution of Operation Alfa Carbón 1 culminated on August 24 at 643 Rubén Darío Street, in the Corvi neighborhood of Valdivia. The previous day, most of the teams that had moved to Valdivia were monitoring the home of Juan José Boncompte Andreu, a MIR leader and member of the TOS, waiting for him to leave so they could execute him.

Among them were the chiefs Boehmwald Soto, Ema Verónica Ceballos Núñez, and Luís René Torres Méndez. However, Boncompte did not leave that day. The agents returned on the 24th with the order to enter his home.

Patricio Castro Muñoz entrusted Boehmwald Soto to lead the operation after midday. The team leaders, in addition to agents Patricio Castro, Pedro María Rojas Vásquez, Zinaida Lena Vicencio González, Aquiles Poblete Palominos, and Carlos Alberto Ejía López, among others, entered through the front door, while several teams surrounded the house and the entire block.

Eladio Washington Ilabel Poblete, a neighbor in the sector, noted that on the day of the events, he saw a black taxi park in front of Boncompte's house. Four individuals got out, knocked on the door, and entered.

After one or two minutes, he heard several shots: "Out of curiosity, I climbed onto the roof of my house and observed a man running toward the site (backyard) and he was riddled with bullets by several people, as many were coming from the front of the house.

I also remember that an armed woman approached the body of the shot person and lifted his nose, hearing her say: 'He was handsome, the jerk,' as if laughing, and then she fired at him with her weapon" (fs. 286).

According to the autopsy, Boncompte had 22 bullet impacts: nine in the thorax, four in the arm, and two in the right forearm; three in the right thigh, three in the left leg, and one in the face. Juan José Boncompte Andreu was 31 years old, a father of two, and a member of the MIR.

Narda Flandes, also a neighbor of Boncompte, noted at fs. 279 that one of the subjects who shot him turned him over with his foot so he would be face up and, along with others, "threw his body into a bag. I left the place, running toward the corner to keep watching. In that lapse, I saw when they took out a pregnant girl and put her in the van."

In the statement she provided on October 5, 1990, for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Inés Díaz Vallejos noted:

I, Inés Díaz Vallejos, born in Quillota, Chilean citizen, with date of birth April 25, 1952, identity card 7.152.059-5, Santiago, a teacher by profession, with current address at Sodra Ledningsgatan 39, Lilla Edet, Sweden, come to declare that:

1) Approximately at 16:00 that day, a group of people dressed in civilian clothes appeared at our home. Some wore an armband that identified them as members of the Army. Those people entered our house when I opened the door.

My partner, Juan José, remained in the bedroom. I was assaulted by four or five of the people who entered and was thrown to the floor of the living room. While lying there, I heard firearms being discharged inside the house.

At those moments, I was subjected to mistreatment by a group of those individuals. They demanded answers to questions about where weapons, explosives, etc., might be. I replied that I had no knowledge of those things.

These people insisted that I answer, and for that, they subjected me to blows and kicks all over my body. I must highlight that when this happened, I was 28 weeks pregnant. I lived with Juan José and he is the father of my daughter.

After a while, I was removed from the house and taken to police facilities in Valdivia. That same day, almost at nightfall, I was transferred again, this time to the men's prison in Valdivia. I remained there, always incommunicado. This lasted six days (although I remained) detained until the week of the birth in November 1984, without being accused or convicted.

2) On November 28, 1984, my daughter Javiera was born, affected by generalized spastic tetraparesis. This implies a state of total physical impairment that is irreparable. My daughter is not in a condition to use her legs or arms, nor can she speak.

The impairment is physical in nature. My daughter's mental capacity is intact, with an evident degree of intelligence. All medical evaluations indicate without a doubt that the physical disability is due to the mistreatment I received on August 24, 1984.

The judicial history of this case begins on that same August 23, 1984, in the military prosecutor's offices of Concepción and Valdivia with proceedings against the 16 MIR members detained in both cities and those responsible for the "unnecessary violence" that caused the death of Luciano Aedo, Mario Lagos, Nelson Herrera, Mario Mujica, Rogelio Tapia, Raúl Barrientos, and Juan José Boncompte.

That same year, Monsignor José Manuel Santos, Archbishop of Concepción—whose denunciations were picked up by Cauce magazine in a report titled "I Accuse"—requested a visiting judge from the Court of Appeals and, faced with its refusal, presented all the background information he could gather to the Supreme Court.

But the case remained in the military justice system, most of the time in charge of prosecutor Pedro Marisio, the same one who took statements from the detainees when they left the CNI barracks and went to prison.

Marisio interrogated six agents knowing that they were using false names instructed by the lawyer Miguel Ángel Parra. Claudio Rodrigo Rozas Fernández, Antonio Martínez López, Jaime Marinovic Palma, Juan Machuca Fuenzalida, Ricardo Labórquez Maturana, and Raúl González López are the "aliases" they used.

In 1998, prosecutor Marisio dismissed the case, declaring that it was not possible to find the true identities of those responsible. The lawyer representing the relatives of the MIR members murdered in Concepción and Hualpencillo appealed, but the Martial Court confirmed the dismissal.

The lawyer then filed a cassation appeal to the Supreme Court, which ordered the investigation to continue. Only in 2003 did military prosecutor Fernando Grandón, faced with a new attempt at dismissal, request that the Fifth Department of the PDI be instructed to investigate.

It was the detectives of this brigade who found the first two names: Hugo José Hechenleitner Hechenleitner and Víctor Muñoz Orellana. Finally, in 2007, lawyer Magdalena Garcés took charge of representing the majority of the victims' relatives and succeeded in having the case transferred to the civil justice system.

In 2009, Judge Aldana reopened the process for the death of Mario Mujica—which had been dismissed in 1998—and in 2011, he consolidated the three cases (Valdivia, Concepción, and Los Ángeles) into one (12-2009 of the Concepción Court of Appeals) for qualified homicide and illicit association against Marcos Derpich, Álvaro Corbalán, and others.

On June 20, 2012, Judge Aldana resolved to indict only ÁLVARO CORBALÁN CASTILLA and MARCOS DERPICH MIRANDA for illicit association and, for qualified homicide, in addition to them, 13 agents (see list below).

At the beginning of 2013, Magdalena Garcés and Patricia Parra (a lawyer for the Human Rights Program of the Ministry of the Interior, who also became a party to the process) presented two requests to expand the indictment.

The lawyers' requests are for the judge to expand the indictment for the crime of illicit association and to indict: JORGE CLAUDIO ANDRADE GÓMEZ and AQUILES MAURICIO GONZÁLEZ CORTÉS as authors of the qualified homicide of all the victims; JORGE CAMILO MANDIOLA ARREDONDO as author of the qualified homicide of Luciano Humberto Aedo Arias, Mario Octavio Lagos Rodríguez, Nelson Adrián Herrera Riveros, and Mario Ernesto Mujica Barros; HUGO JOSÉ HECHENLEITNER HECHENLEITNER and EGON ANTONIO BARRA BARRA as authors of the crime of qualified homicide of Mario Octavio Lagos Rodríguez; RAFAEL DE JESÚS RIVEROS FROST as author of the crime of qualified homicide of Mario Ernesto Mujica Barros; FRANCISCO JAVIER ORELLANA SEGUEL and JORGE FERNANDO RAMÍREZ ROMERO as authors of the qualified homicide of Rogelio Humberto Tapia De la Puente and Raúl Jaime Barrientos Matamala; and agents CARLOS ALBERTO EGUÍA LÓPEZ, LUIS RENÉ TORRES MÉNDEZ, PEDRO MARÍA ROJAS VÁSQUEZ, ZINAIDA LENA VICENCIO GONZÁLEZ, and AQUILES POBLETE PALOMINOS as authors of the crime of qualified homicide of Juan José Boncompte Andreu.

An illicit association composed of only two people, as Judge Aldana intends, is laughable in this context. Indeed, Article 292 of the Penal Code provides that any association formed with the object of attacking the social order, good customs, persons, or property constitutes a crime that exists by the mere fact of organizing.

Likewise, Article 293 of the Penal Code sanctions with the penalty of presidio mayor in any of its degrees the leaders, those who have exercised command, and their provocateurs when the agreement of wills has had as its object the perpetration of crimes, as is the case here.

Added to this, Judge Aldana has decided to prosecute only the "material" authors of the case, ignoring both the rationality and hierarchy with which the repressive apparatuses functioned in Chile, as pointed out by the progress of jurisprudence in this regard.

In order to judge the crimes committed by the Nazis, international jurisprudence replaced the distinction between material author and intellectual author with one that allowed for accounting for the way complex organizations operate.

Currently, a distinction is made between the immediate author and the mediate author, who is, ultimately, the one who gives the order and "has control over the act." For this reason, the fact that Hugo Salas Wenzel (second head of the CNI), Jorge Mandiola Arredondo (head of the CNI in Concepción), Jorge Andrade Gómez (second head of the Anti-Subversive Division commanded by Corbalán), and Aquiles González Cortés (head of the Blue Brigade in charge of the extermination of the MIR) are not being prosecuted in this case, when their participation in the crimes is proven, constitutes sufficient proof to affirm that the courts lack the will and conviction to effectively investigate and punish the State agents who committed criminal offenses during the dictatorship.

The set of statements from witnesses, agents, and survivors is not sufficient for the judge, who seems to ignore that in human rights cases, obtaining the confession of the accused is almost impossible.

Therefore, the convictions in these cases are based not on conviction, but on the configuration of well-founded presumptions: the immediate and mediate authors have not confessed and will not confess their crimes, so if there are two or more statements indicating that an agent presided over a meeting and showed photographs marked with crosses; commanded a team and gave the order to execute; fired at a man who was in the street or inside his house, or occupies a place in the organizational charts that the agents themselves have drawn up to map the operational command of the CNI—as happens throughout the 20 volumes that make up the case—that person should be being prosecuted for both illicit association and qualified homicide.

Finally, even if Judge Aldana were to indict all the most obvious commanders and immediate authors, as requested by lawyers Garcés and Parra, the convictions would be insufficient. Operation Alfa Carbón 1 involved around one hundred agents from Santiago, Concepción, Valdivia, Puerto Montt, and other cities in the south of the country in a massacre that ended the lives of seven people and for which, currently, only 15 individuals are being tried.

What do the judge and the Chilean justice system need to recognize the logic of extermination that prevailed in Chile between 1973-1990 and proceed accordingly?

Authors' note: We have written this text while waiting for the Santiago Court of Appeals to rule regarding the refusal to expand the judge's indictment. If their response is "no grounds," the Supreme Court will only be able to ratify, increase, or lower the proposed sentences, and several members of the CNI high command, responsible for the design and execution of Operation Alfa Carbón 1, will remain unpunished.

As they have until now.

Source: Ciper, June 04, 2013

This Monday, it was reported by court sources that the Special Minister for Human Rights Cases of the Concepción Court of Appeals, Mr. Carlos Aldana Fuentes, decided to indict Jorge Camilo Mandiola Arredondo as the perpetrator of the crimes of illicit association and qualified homicide committed against Mario Mujica Barros within the framework of Operation Alfa Carbón, perpetrated by the CNI on August 23 and 24, 1984, against members of the anti-dictatorial resistance in the cities of Concepción, Los Ángeles, and Valdivia.

Mandiola Arredondo, currently a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel, was at the time of the crimes the head of the Concepción Regional Brigade of the CNI, which reported to the Regional Divisions of the repressive entity and whose direct superior was Marcos Spiros Derpich Miranda, who is already indicted in this case for the same offenses, though committed against Nelson Herrera Riveros, who was murdered in Concepción on the road to Santa Juana.

Minister Aldana ordered the arrest and pretrial detention of the former CNI regional chief for his participation and direct responsibility in the execution of Mujica Barros in the city of Los Ángeles. In that city, on August 23, 1984, around 6:00 PM, a large contingent of CNI agents commanded by the late Kranz Johans Bauer and following orders from the operation's commanders, among whom Mandiola acted, attacked Mujica Barros's home located at Calle Bombero Vyhmeister No. 841, in the Población Orompello of Los Ángeles, proceeding to subdue and execute the MIR militant.

The former CNI official was admitted as a detainee to the facilities of the Chacabuco Regiment in Concepción, pending the Court of Appeals' ruling regarding the provisional release granted to him by Minister Aldana.

The material executors of the homicide of Mario Mujica Barros were agents Bruno Antonio Soto Aravena, José Artemio Zapata Zapata, and Rafael de Jesús Riveros Frost. The first two are indicted in the case for this crime, while the indictment of Riveros Frost has been denied (thus far) by Minister Aldana.

As Resumen has reported in previous reports, Minister Aldana denied separate requests for indictments and the expansion of indictments presented by the lawyer for the victims' families, Magdalena Garcés, and by the lawyer for the Human Rights Program, Patricia Parra Poblete, but in both cases, these requests were rejected by Mr.

Aldana in January and April 2013, respectively. Following this denial, the lawyers appealed to the Concepción Court. After nearly a year of delay, the Fourth Chamber of the Concepción Court ruled on Wednesday the 15th, denying the plaintiffs' request.

Among the individuals for whom an indictment was requested was the former head of the regional CNI, Jorge Mandiola Arredondo, as he had active and direct participation in the preparation of the criminal repressive operation and intervened directly in the execution of the operation from command positions exercised both at the CNI barracks located at the corner of Calle Pedro de Valdivia and Bahamondes (in Concepción) and in the execution of the crimes in the field.

Mandiola allegedly gave the direct order for the execution of the operation against Mujica Barros in the city of Los Ángeles after having verified the completion of the Concepción phase of the extermination operation.

Likewise, Mandiola Arredondo had an active role in the cover-up of the crime, presenting the operation to public opinion and the courts as "confrontations." All the evidence demonstrating this participation and incriminating Mandiola is contained in the case file, as noted by the family members and lawyers in their request.

However, until now, Aldana and the Court had denied the existence of sufficient grounds to indict, despite the fact that there is more than enough evidence, as demonstrated by the very resolution issued by Minister Aldana regarding Mandiola.

It remains pending what resolution Minister Aldana will adopt regarding the dozen requests he previously rejected and the score of expansions he also previously rejected. It is to be hoped that the decisions he adopts and the news he generates in the future will be aimed at exercising justice for the victims and their families.

At the same time, in a parallel trial, Minister Aldana decided to indict former Carabineros officers Héctor Rivera and Luis Urrutia for the responsibilities they bear in the execution and illegal burial (disappearance) of 19 workers from the communes of Laja and San Rosendo, most of them workers at the Laja Paper Mill, who were executed by uniformed personnel and right-wing civilians in September 1973.

Furthermore, he proceeded to expand the indictment of the 10 Carabineros already charged for the crime, who are now also charged with the crime of illegal inhumation. Only the right-wing civilians and executives of the Paper Mill who enthusiastically participated in the reprisals and abuse against the workers continue to go unpunished.

Source: Resumen.cl, January 21, 2014

Once again, a criminal and torturer of the dictatorship takes his own life

On the morning of this Tuesday the 24th, the former DINA-CNI agent José Artemio Zapata Zapata, convicted for the Alfa Carbón crimes, reportedly committed suicide at his home in the city of Los Ángeles. The individual used a firearm to take his own life. At least a dozen convicted individuals have committed suicide in the post-dictatorship era.

The former civilian employee of the Army was on provisional release, although he was convicted for the murder of Mario Ernesto Mujica Barros committed on August 23, 1984, in the Población Orompello of the aforementioned city, as part of the extermination operations carried out by the CNI under the name Operation Alfa Carbón.

In this repressive action that took place on August 23 and 24, 1984, the CNI perpetrated a total of seven crimes in the cities of Concepción, Los Ángeles, and Valdivia, in addition to dozens of arrests and home raids.

José Zapata Zapata was an agent who had begun his activity in the DINA at the end of 1973, when he was fulfilling his mandatory military service, and from then on, he remained in that criminal organization as a civilian employee; with the nickname "Guaso" and the alias Mario Ramos Sanhueza, he later continued in the CNI, always as part of the Concepción regional brigade of this repressive apparatus.

In the post-dictatorship era, Zapata continued his activity in the DINE until 2005, when he was retired by the Army.

In April 2009, he was indicted by Minister Carlos Aldana for the judicial case regarding the murder of Mario Mujica. He was also processing the other cases of the massacre separately.

Nine years later, only in May 2018, with these episodes consolidated into a single judicial case, Minister Aldana issued a conviction, sentencing the former agent Zapata Zapata to ten years and one day in prison for the murder of Mario Mujica.

Former agent Bruno Antonio Soto Aravena was also convicted for the same act. The sentence had not yet begun to be served, as successive delaying tactics introduced by the lawyers for the convicted criminals have delayed the appeal and execution stages of the sentence.

A criminal is not redeemed by committing suicide, as in doing so, they achieve impunity and escape the sense of justice. Justice, moreover, continues to be complicit in the delaying efforts of criminals and their lawyers. In the post-dictatorship era, at least a dozen former DINA-CNI agents have committed suicide.

Source: resumen.cl, September 25, 2019

Conviction against 17 CNI agents for the crimes of Operation Alfa Carbón committed on August 23 and 24, 1984

The visiting minister for Human Rights violation cases of the Concepción Court of Appeals, Carlos Aldana Fuentes, convicted 6 former Army officers and 11 agents, all former members of the Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI), for the qualified homicides of Luciano Humberto Aedo Arias, Nelson Adrián Herrera Riveros, Mario Octavio Lagos Rodríguez, Mario Ernesto Mujica Barros, Rogelio Humberto Tapia de la Puente, Raúl Jaime Barrientos Matamala, and Juan José Boncompte Andreu, which occurred on August 23 and 24, 1984, in the communes of Talcahuano (currently Hualpén), Concepción, Los Ángeles, and Valdivia, within the framework of the so-called "Operation Alfa Carbón."

In the case, known as the Vega Monumental Massacre (Case No. 11-2009), the magistrate convicted former Army Brigadier Marcos Spiro Derpich Miranda, alias "Gitano," head of the CNI Regional Division at the time of the events, and former Army Lieutenant Colonel Álvaro Julio Federico Corbalán Castilla, alias "Faraón," head of the CNI Anti-Subversive Division, to 20 years in prison as co-perpetrators of all qualified homicides and 5 years and one day in prison as co-perpetrators of illicit association.

Former Army Captain Patricio Lorenzo Castro Muñoz, alias "BJ," must serve a sentence of 15 years and one day in prison for the three homicides in Valdivia, and 5 years and one day as a co-perpetrator of illicit association.

Former Army Lieutenant Colonel Jorge Camilo Mandiola Arredondo, at the time of the events the CNI regional chief in Concepción, was sentenced to 15 years and one day in prison as a co-perpetrator of the qualified homicides in Talcahuano, Concepción, and Los Ángeles. However, he was acquitted of the crime of illicit association.

Former Army Lieutenant Colonel Luis Alberto Moraga Tresckow, CNI regional chief in Valdivia and material author of the crimes perpetrated at Puente Estancilla, was sentenced to five years of supervised release (???).

Former Army Major Oscar Alberto Boehmwald Soto, CNI regional chief in Puerto Montt, was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Meanwhile, agents Roberto Antonio Farías Santelices, alias "Petete," and Luis Hernán Gálvez Navarro, alias "Vitoco," were sentenced to 10 years and one day in prison as co-perpetrators of the qualified homicide of Luciano Aedo Arias committed in Hualpén.

Meanwhile, José Abel Aravena Ruiz, alias "Muñeca," Sergio Agustín Mateluna Pino, alias "Guatón Órdenes," Luis Enrique Andaur Leiva, and Patricio Alfredo Bertón Campos were sentenced to 10 years and one day in prison as co-perpetrators of the qualified homicide of Nelson Herrera Riveros committed at kilometer one of the road to Santa Juana, in the Idahue sector.

The only person indicted and accused by Aldana for the qualified homicide of Mario Lagos Rodríguez, committed at the Vega Monumental, the criminal Manuel Ángel Morales Acevedo, alias "Baretta," was acquitted by the minister.

Regarding Los Ángeles, the ruling states that Bruno Antonio Soto Aravena, alias "Chico Pato," and José Artemio Zapata Zapata, alias "Huaso," must serve a sentence of 10 years and one day in prison as co-perpetrators of the qualified homicide of Mario Mujica Barros.

While for the events in Valdivia, Gerardo Meza Acuña, alias "Patitas," and Luis René Torres Méndez, alias "Negro Mario," were sentenced to 15 years and one day as co-perpetrators of two qualified homicides committed at Puente Estancilla, on the road to Niebla, against Rogelio Tapia De La Puente and Raúl Barrientos Matamala.

For this same act, Luis Alberto Moraga Tresckow was sentenced to 5 years in prison, granting him the benefit of supervised release.

Finally, Oscar Alberto Boehmwald Soto and Ema Verónica Ceballos Núñez, alias "Flaca Cecilia," were sentenced to 10 years and one day as co-perpetrators of the qualified homicide of Juan José Boncompte Andreu, committed in the Población Teniente Merino.

These first-instance convictions, for the most part, are in line with the magnitude of the crimes committed. But it is paradoxical that in the event that gives rise to and names this criminal case, such as the Vega Monumental in Concepción, no executor was convicted; only the leaders responsible for the crimes were convicted, but no foot soldier.

The homicide of Mario Lagos Rodríguez had no convicted executor, in Aldana's judgment.

"My father got off the bus with his arms raised. My father was immediately riddled with bullets by bursts from a UCI submachine gun. The bullet that killed him entered through his armpit. The neighbors shouted 'murderers.' My father descended from the bus with his arms raised.

That image, the little piece of hope that is at stake in that image, is irreparable." The categorical demand for justice that Mario Lagos's daughter made to Minister Aldana just a few days ago had no echo in the ethical, moral, or justice-based assessment of Mr.

Aldana. Worse yet, neither did the facts established in the case file. He had already previously left Hugo José Hechenleitner Hechenleitner, alias "Schumager," head of the execution team, and Egón Antonio Barra Barra, alias "El Siete Fachas," unindicted; in addition to refusing to indict several other participants in the crimes (Aldana left at least 15 unpunished), he now leaves the crime committed in a public place, before dozens of witnesses, without direct culprits, for which the crimes of August 23 and 24 were always known as the Vega Monumental Massacre.

"Minister Aldana: in your hands is the possibility of partially repairing the basic agreements that sustain life in society and have been permanently transgressed: that just as we walk the streets daily with the confidence that no one will run a red light and run over pedestrians, no one will pursue us and end our lives and those of our loved ones for creating, organizing, and fighting for a different world.

That my children's generation can grow up with that minimum certainty is your task and that of your colleagues. We hope you are up to the task," demanded Tamara Lagos in her public demand to the minister.

Mr. Aldana was also not up to the task when he rejected the civil reparation claim of Tamara herself (Mario Lagos's daughter), Tamara's mother, Luciano (Luciano Aedo's son), and Luciano's mother, among other shameful rejections ruled by the minister.

Once again, the infamous face of justice causing new damage, more pain, to the relatives of the fallen, particularly the children of the murdered MIR members.

Another of the unacceptable resolutions of this ruling is the supervised release granted to a proven and confessed criminal in the crimes of Puente Estancilla, in Valdivia. The criminal Moraga Tresckow was not only part of the association and prior concert for the execution of the crimes (although Aldana did not want to indict him for illicit association either), but he was a participant in the repressive and criminal acts committed in Valdivia and the executor of two treacherous murders during the development of this Operation Alfa Carbón.

However, he receives a symbolic sentence in Aldana's ruling: five years of supervised release. Why this generosity? Why so much benevolence toward this criminal? The answers may be in the hallways of the courts.

Let us point out that earlier, in the course of the process, Mr. Aldana refused to indict the same Moraga Tresckow, Boehmwald Soto, and Castro Muñoz for illicit association; now, in his ruling, he does not convict Mandiola Arredondo for this offense, the head of the CNI in Concepción and manager of the concerted action of surveillance, tracking, and preparation of the operation that culminated in the crimes of August, in which, moreover, Mandiola actively participated.

Precisely, during the investigation stage, Minister Aldana managed to establish that in 1984, the head of the Concepción CNI, Army Major Jorge Mandiola, received information about the re-articulation of the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) in the area, managing to detect some of its leaders.

After informing Army Colonel Marcos Derpich Miranda, head of the CNI Regional Division, and obtaining confirmation of the fact, the director of the CNI, General Humberto Gordon Rubio (currently deceased), was informed, who determined that Army Major Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, in charge of the Anti-Subversive Division and the Regional leadership, would coordinate the operations to neutralize the members of the MIR who were operating between the Biobío and Los Ríos regions, naming it "Operation Alfa Carbón."

As a result of the above, Corbalán Castilla ordered that several teams, integrated by people from the different Santiago Brigades, composed of two or three people and with mobilization and financing granted by the Anti-Subversive Division, move to Concepción, Los Ángeles, and Valdivia, so that, in coordination with members of the CNI Regional divisions of those cities, they could carry out the proceedings that the different headquarters ordered them.

Likewise, he ordered his subordinate Patricio Lorenzo Castro Muñoz to establish himself in Valdivia, in charge of the teams he moved from Santiago, to direct and carry out the operations in that region.

In parallel, and for the same purpose, Marcos Derpich Miranda ordered that the head of the CNI Chillán barracks, Héctor Reinoso Muñoz, join his counterpart in Concepción; Mandiola and the head of Puerto Montt, Oscar Boehmwald, along with two agents from his unit, presented themselves to the head of Valdivia, Moraga Tresckow, to support the respective operations.

Once in Concepción, the teams and chiefs who arrived in the city, plus those from this region, met in the days close to August 23, 1984, at the CNI barracks located on Avenida Pedro de Valdivia, where they coordinated the actions to be developed, being led by Álvaro Corbalán, Joaquín Molina (deceased), and Marcos Derpich.

In that meeting, the decision was made to carry out various raids and arrests (without judicial orders or judicial processes) and that the fate of the detainees depended on the degree of danger to the military regime prevailing in the country, assuming that some of these could end up dead. This operation included activities in Talcahuano and Concepción as well as in Los Ángeles and Valdivia.

On the morning of August 23, 1984, several CNI teams detected three members of the MIR in the Plazoleta El Ancla, in Talcahuano. One of them, Luciano Humberto Aedo Arias, boarded a public transport bus in the direction of the Hualpencillo sector, where he got off the vehicle and tried to flee on foot, being intercepted by members of the CNI—around noon—at the corner of Grecia and Nápoles streets, where agent Luis Hernán Gálvez Navarro shot him with a firearm he was carrying, falling wounded to the ground, with the Santiago agent, Roberto Antonio Farías Santelices, approaching and finishing him off with a burst from his AKA 47 rifle, dying from a transfixing chest wound with heart and lung involvement.

The other two members of the MIR mentioned above in Talcahuano, Nelson Adrián Herrera Riveros and Mario Octavio Lagos Rodríguez, boarded another taxi-bus heading to Concepción, which was followed by other CNI operational teams, who coordinated with the Carabineros along the way to intercept the bus—which was carrying passengers—in front of the Vega Monumental.

Upon the vehicle's arrival at that location, the CNI members ordered everyone to get off the public transport vehicle, but as some refused, including those being pursued, they threw tear gas bombs. When they descended, they shot Herrera and Lagos, causing them wounds.

Lagos Rodríguez tried to flee, so an agent shot him with the AKA rifle he was carrying, causing a transfixing chest wound with visceral involvement, which caused his death. For his part, Herrera Riveros was apprehended by CNI agents Sergio Mateluna Pino, José Abel Aravena Ruiz, Luis Andaur Leiva, and Patricio Alfredo Bertón Campos, who put him into one of their vehicles and headed to the Concepción Regional Hospital for the treatment of his wounds.

However, during the journey, Derpich Miranda ordered his execution, so they took him to kilometer 0.9 of the road to Santa Juana, where they took him out of the vehicle and Andaur shot him with his revolver in the forehead, causing a craniocerebral gunshot wound, which caused his instantaneous death.

Around 5:30 PM that same day, once the Concepción CNI agents José Zapata Zapata and Bruno Soto Aravena, who were following Mario Mujica Barros, heard the news of the aforementioned events on Radio Bío Bío and following the instructions of their chief Jorge Camilo Mandiola Arredondo, they approached Mujica Barros's home in the Población Orompello of Los Ángeles, ordering him to leave the property, to which Mujica refused, so they entered by breaking down the front door, shooting the victim in the head while he was on the ground, causing a gunshot wound to the lateral side of the neck, with sectioning of the trachea and large vessels, hemorrhaging, and anemia, which caused his death.

Meanwhile, at around 4:00 PM on August 23, 1984, CNI operational teams that had arrived from Santiago, led by Patricio Castro Muñoz, arrested Rogelio Tapia de la Puente and Jaime Barrientos Matamala near the Puente Las Ánimas, in the city of Valdivia.

Subsequently, they crossed the Calle Calle River on a ferry and transported them to Puente Estancilla, located on the road from Valdivia to Niebla, in the Torobayo sector, a place where traffic for all vehicles and people had previously been cut off by Carabineros, and in circumstances where the detainees were tied by their hands and blindfolded, the agents proceeded to execute them, by order of Castro Muñoz, who fired, in addition to agents Luis René Torres Méndez and Gerardo Meza Acuña.

Likewise, the CNI regional chief of Valdivia, Luis Moraga Tresckow, who had refused to do so, finished them off upon the repeated order of Castro Muñoz. The victims received multiple projectile wounds, some of which impacted Tapia de la Puente and Barrientos Matamala in the skull, causing cranio-encephalo-facial wounds.

Subsequently, weapons were placed in the hands of the deceased to simulate a confrontation.

The following day, August 24, 1984, around 3:00 PM, several CNI operational teams, led by Patricio Castro Muñoz, surrounded the home of Juan José Boncompte Andreu, located in the Población Teniente Merino of Valdivia, entering it to arrest Boncompte Andreu, the alleged regional head of the MIR in that city, who tried to flee from his captors, being wounded by shots from Oscar Boehmwald Soto, falling to the ground, where Ema Verónica Ceballos Núñez shot him with her firearm in the head, causing his death.

It is to be hoped that, in what is to come in this process, the appeal instances of the Concepción and Supreme Courts "are up to the task," as Tamara Lagos demanded a few days ago.

Source: resumen.cl, May 4, 2018

In a resolution announced today, the Court of Appeals of Concepción ratified the sentences against 17 agents of the National Information Center (CNI) who were convicted in a first-instance ruling issued in May 2018 by Judge Carlos Aldana.

After more than four years of unjustified delays and obstructionist maneuvers introduced by the criminals' lawyers, this stage of the process, which had remained stagnant in the tangle of the courts, has been brought to an end.

The case known as the "Vega Monumental Massacre" (Case No. 11-2009) substantiates the criminal investigation into the qualified homicides of seven militants of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) committed by agents of the defunct CNI on August 23 and 24, 1984, in a coordinated repressive action called "Operation Alfa Carbón," which took place in the cities of Concepción, Los Ángeles, Temuco, and Valdivia.

The repressive action culminated in the murder of Luciano Humberto Aedo Arias, in the current commune of Hualpén; Nelson Adrián Herrera Riveros and Mario Octavio Lagos Rodríguez, in Concepción; Mario Ernesto Mujica Barros, in Los Ángeles; and Rogelio Humberto Tapia de la Puente, Raúl Jaime Barrientos Matamala, and Juan José Boncompte Andreu, in Valdivia.

In the ruling, the Sixth Chamber of the Concepción appellate court, composed of judges Rodrigo Cerda San Martín, Rafael Andrade Díaz, and Claudia Montero Céspedes, rejected the cassation appeals filed by the criminals' lawyers and confirmed the sentence convicting six former Army officers who operated as commanders in the CNI.

Former Army Brigadier Marcos Spiro Derpich Miranda, alias "Gitano," head of the CNI Regional Division at the time of the events, and former Lieutenant Colonel Álvaro Julio Federico Corbalán Castilla, alias "Faraón," head of the CNI Anti-Subversive Division, were sentenced to 20 years in prison as co-perpetrators of all the qualified homicides and to 5 years and one day in prison as co-perpetrators of illicit association.

Former Captain Patricio Lorenzo Castro Muñoz, alias "BJ," must serve a sentence of 15 years and one day in prison for the three homicides in Valdivia, and 5 years and one day as a co-perpetrator of illicit association.

Former Lieutenant Colonel Jorge Camilo Mandiola Arredondo, at the time of the events the CNI regional head in Concepción, was sentenced to 15 years and one day in prison as a co-perpetrator of the qualified homicides in Talcahuano, Concepción, and Los Ángeles. However, he was acquitted of the crime of illicit association.

Former Lieutenant Colonel Luis Alberto Moraga Tresckow, CNI regional head in Valdivia and material author of the crimes perpetrated at Puente Estancilla, was sentenced to five years of supervised release.

Former Major Oscar Alberto Boehmwald Soto, CNI regional head in Puerto Montt, was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Meanwhile, agents Roberto Antonio Farías Santelices, alias "Petete," and Luis Hernán Gálvez Navarro, alias "Vitoco," were sentenced to 10 years and one day in prison as co-perpetrators of the qualified homicide of Luciano Aedo Arias committed in Hualpén.

Meanwhile, José Abel Aravena Ruiz, alias "Muñeca," Sergio Agustín Mateluna Pino, alias "Guatón Órdenes," Luis Enrique Andaur Leiva, and Patricio Alfredo Bertón Campos were sentenced to 10 years and one day in prison as co-perpetrators of the qualified homicide of Nelson Herrera Riveros committed at Kilometer One of the Camino a Santa Juana, in the Idahue sector.

The only defendant and accused person whom Judge Aldana had indicted for the qualified homicide of Mario Lagos Rodríguez, committed at the Vega Monumental, the criminal Manuel Ángel Morales Acevedo, alias "Baretta," was acquitted by the judge.

Regarding Los Ángeles, the ruling states that Bruno Antonio Soto Aravena, alias "Chico Pato," and José Artemio Zapata Zapata, alias "Huaso," must serve a sentence of 10 years and one day in prison as co-perpetrators of the qualified homicide of Mario Mujica Barros.

Regarding the events in Valdivia, Gerardo Meza Acuña, alias "Patitas," and Luis René Torres Méndez, alias "Negro Mario," were sentenced to 15 years and one day in prison as co-perpetrators of two qualified homicides committed at Puente Estancilla, on the road to Niebla, against Rogelio Tapia De La Puente and Raúl Barrientos Matamala.

For this same event, Luis Alberto Moraga Tresckow was sentenced to 5 years in prison, with the benefit of supervised release.

Finally, Oscar Alberto Boehmwald Soto and Ema Verónica Ceballos Núñez, alias "Flaca Cecilia," were sentenced to 10 years and one day in prison as co-perpetrators of the qualified homicide of Juan José Boncompte Andreu, committed in the Población Teniente Merino.

Three of the criminals involved died in the period between the first-instance ruling and the Court's resolution; in September 2019, the convicted criminal José Zapata committed suicide; in July 2020, the also-convicted Gerardo Meza Acuña passed away; and in December 2021, "Baretta," Manuel Ángel Morales Acevedo, passed away, whose acquittal—unusually, even though he had not been convicted by Aldana—was appealed by the plaintiff lawyers.

It should be noted that during the course of the process, Judge Aldana refused to prosecute Moraga Tresckow and Boehmwald Soto for illicit association, and in his first-instance ruling, he did not convict Mandiola Arredondo for this crime—the CNI head in Concepción and the manager of the concerted action of surveillance, tracking, and preparation of the operation that culminated in the August crimes, in which, moreover, Mandiola participated actively.

Likewise, Judge Aldana refused to prosecute another dozen agents involved, a decision that was endorsed by the Concepción Court at the time.

Tribute act to the murdered militants. Concepción. Photograph by Natalia Figueroa.

Alfa Carbón

Precisely, during the investigation stage, Judge Aldana was able to establish that in 1984, the CNI head of Concepción, Army Major Jorge Mandiola, received information about the re-articulation of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) in the area, managing to detect some of its leaders.

After informing Army Colonel Marcos Derpich Miranda, head of the CNI Regional Division, and confirming the fact, they informed the CNI director, General Humberto Gordon Rubio (currently deceased), who determined that Army Major Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, in charge of the Anti-Subversive Division and the Regional leadership, should coordinate the operations to neutralize the members of the MIR who were operating between the Biobío and Los Ríos regions, naming these actions "Operation Alfa Carbón."

As a result of the above, Corbalán Castilla ordered several teams, composed of agents from the different Brigades of the Cuartel Borgoño in Santiago, consisting of two or three people and with mobilization and funding provided by the Anti-Subversive Division, to move to Concepción, Los Ángeles, Temuco, and Valdivia, so that, in coordination with members of the CNI Regional units of those cities, they could carry out the tasks ordered by the various commands.

Likewise, he ordered his subordinate Patricio Lorenzo Castro Muñoz to establish himself in Valdivia, in charge of the teams he brought from Santiago, to direct and carry out the operations in that region.

In parallel, and with the same purpose, Marcos Derpich Miranda ordered that the head of the CNI Chillán barracks, Héctor Reinoso Muñoz, join his counterpart in Concepción; Mandiola and the head of Puerto Montt, Oscar Boehmwald, along with two agents from his unit, were to report to the head of Valdivia, Moraga Tresckow, to support the respective operations.

Once in Concepción, the teams and commanders who arrived in the city, plus those from this region, met in the days leading up to August 23, 1984, at the CNI barracks located on Avenida Pedro de Valdivia, where they coordinated the actions to be developed, led by Álvaro Corbalán, Joaquín Molina (deceased), and Marcos Derpich.

In that meeting, the decision was made to carry out various raids and arrests (without judicial orders or legal proceedings) and that the fate of the detainees would depend on their degree of danger to the military regime prevailing in the country, assuming that some of them could end up dead.

This operation included repressive actions in Talcahuano and Concepción as well as in Los Ángeles, Temuco, Valdivia, and other locations in the southern zone.

The Facts

On the morning of August 23, 1984, several CNI teams set up surveillance actions on three members of the MIR at the Plazoleta El Ancla in Talcahuano. One of them, Luciano Humberto Aedo Arias, boarded a public transport bus heading to the Hualpencillo sector, where he got off the vehicle and tried to flee on foot, being intercepted by CNI members—around noon—at the corner of Grecia and Nápoles streets, where agent Luis Hernán Gálvez Navarro shot him with a firearm he was carrying, causing him to fall wounded to the ground, at which point agent Roberto Antonio Farías Santelices approached and finished him off with a burst from his AKA 47 rifle into his back.

The other two members of the MIR detected and watched earlier in Talcahuano, Nelson Adrián Herrera Riveros and Mario Octavio Lagos Rodríguez, boarded another bus heading to Concepción, and were followed by other CNI operational teams, who coordinated with the Carabineros along the way to intercept the bus—which was carrying passengers—in front of the Vega Monumental.

When the vehicle arrived at that location, the CNI members intercepted the bus and ordered everyone to get off, but since some refused, including those being pursued, they threw tear gas bombs.

When they descended, they shot Herrera and Lagos, causing them wounds. Lagos Rodríguez tried to flee, so an agent shot him with the AKA rifle he was carrying, causing his death on the spot.

For his part, Herrera Riveros was apprehended by CNI agents Sergio Mateluna Pino, José Abel Aravena Ruiz, Luis Andaur Leiva, and Patricio Alfredo Bertón Campos, who put him into one of their vehicles and headed to the Regional Hospital of Concepción for the treatment of his wounds.

However, during the journey, Derpich Miranda ordered his execution, so they took him to kilometer 0.9 of the road to Santa Juana, where they took him out of the vehicle and Aravena Ruiz ordered Andaur Leiva to execute the crime; the latter shot him in the forehead with his revolver, causing a craniocerebral gunshot wound that caused his instantaneous death.

Around 5:30 p.m. that same day, once the CNI agents from Concepción José Zapata Zapata and Bruno Soto Aravena, who were following Mario Mujica Barros, along with several teams led by the deceased Karl Johans Bauer, following the instructions of their boss Jorge Camilo Mandiola Arredondo, approached Mujica Barros's home in the Población Orompello in Los Ángeles.

They entered the property by surprise and violently, shooting the victim in the head while he was on the ground, causing his death.

Meanwhile, around 4:00 p.m. on August 23, 1984, CNI operational teams that had arrived from Santiago, led by Patricio Castro Muñoz, arrested Rogelio Tapia de la Puente and Jaime Barrientos Matamala near the Puente Las Ánimas in the city of Valdivia.

Subsequently, they crossed the Calle Calle River on a ferry and took them to the Puente Estancilla, located on the road from Valdivia to Niebla, in the Torobayo sector, a place where traffic for all vehicles and people had previously been cut off by Carabineros, and in circumstances where the detainees had their hands tied and their eyes blindfolded, the agents proceeded to execute them, by order of Castro Muñoz, who fired, along with agents Luis René Torres Méndez and Gerardo Meza Muñoz and others not identified in the process.

Likewise, the CNI regional head of Valdivia, Luis Moraga Tresckow, who had allegedly refused to shoot, finished them off upon the repeated order of Castro Muñoz. The victims received multiple projectile wounds, some of which struck Tapia de la Puente and Barrientos Matamala in the skull and thorax. Subsequently, weapons were placed in the hands of the deceased to simulate a confrontation.

The following day, August 24, 1984, around 3:00 p.m., several CNI operational teams, led by Patricio Castro Muñoz, surrounded the home of Juan José Boncompte Andreu, located in the Población Teniente Merino in Valdivia, entering it to arrest Boncompte Andreu, who tried to flee from his captors, being wounded by shots from Oscar Boehmwald Soto, falling to the ground, where Ema Verónica Ceballos Núñez shot him in the head with her firearm, causing his death.

by Darío Núñez

Source: resumen.cl, June 10, 2022

Supreme Court confirms convictions of 15 CNI agents for Operation Alfa Carbón crimes

The Supreme Court confirmed the sentences against 15 former agents of the National Information Center (CNI) for their responsibility in the qualified homicides of seven militants of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) perpetrated on August 23 and 24, 1984, in a coordinated repressive action that took place in the cities of Concepción, Los Ángeles, Temuco, and Valdivia, called "Operation Alfa Carbón" by the repressive organs, but popularly known as the "Vega Monumental Massacre."

The repressive operation culminated on August 23 with the murder of Luciano Humberto Aedo Arias, 34 years old, committed in the current commune of Hualpén; in Concepción, in front of the Vega Monumental, Nelson Adrián Herrera Riveros, 30, and Mario Octavio Lagos Rodríguez, 34, were killed.

The same day in Los Ángeles, Mario Ernesto Mujica Barros, 32, was murdered, and in Valdivia, Rogelio Humberto Tapia de la Puente, 31, and Raúl Jaime Barrientos Matamala, 23, were executed. The following day, Juan José Boncompte Andreu, 31, was executed.

In addition to this, as part of the repressive offensive, dozens of people, militants, and resistance members against the dictatorship were arrested in the aforementioned cities and in other towns and localities in the south.

In a unanimous ruling (Case Rol 75.716-2022), the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed of judges Haroldo Brito Cruz, Jorge Dahm Oyarzún, Leopoldo Llanos Sagristá, ad hoc lawyer Leonor Etcheberry C., and ad hoc lawyer Gonzalo Ruz L.—rejected the cassation appeals in form and substance filed by eight of the convicted criminals and ruled out any error of law in the challenged sentence, issued by the Court of Appeals of Concepción in June 2022 (Rol 325-2019), which ratified the first-instance ruling issued in May 2018 (Rol 11-2009) and convicted the accused for their responsibility in the crimes.

The Criminals

With this resolution, the Second Chamber confirms the sentence convicting the 15 former CNI agents; two other individuals convicted in the first instance died during the course of the process. The convicted are six former Army officers who operated as commanders in the CNI: former Brigadier Marcos Spiro Derpich Miranda, at the time of the events head of the CNI Regional Division, and former Lieutenant Colonel Álvaro Julio Federico Corbalán Castilla, head of the CNI Anti-Subversive Division, who were sentenced to 20 years in prison as co-perpetrators of all the qualified homicides and to 5 years and one day in prison as co-perpetrators of illicit association.

Former Captain Patricio Lorenzo Castro Muñoz, alias "BJ," must serve a sentence of 15 years and one day in prison for the three qualified homicides committed in Valdivia, and 5 years and one day in prison as a co-perpetrator of illicit association.

Former Lieutenant Colonel Jorge Camilo Mandiola Arredondo, at the time of the events CNI regional head in Concepción, was sentenced to 15 years and one day in prison as a co-perpetrator of the qualified homicides committed in Talcahuano, Concepción, and Los Ángeles.

Former Lieutenant Colonel Luis Alberto Moraga Tresckow, at the time of the events CNI regional head in Valdivia and material author of the crimes perpetrated at Puente Estancilla in Valdivia, was sentenced to five years of supervised release.

Former Major Oscar Alberto Boehmwald Soto, CNI regional head in Puerto Montt, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the qualified homicide perpetrated in the city of Valdivia against Juan José Boncompte Andreu.

Meanwhile, agents Luis Hernán Gálvez Navarro and Roberto Antonio Farías Santelices are sentenced to 10 years and one day in prison as co-perpetrators of the qualified homicide of Luciano Aedo Arias committed in Hualpén.

Meanwhile, José Abel Aravena Ruiz, Sergio Agustín Mateluna Pino, Luis Enrique Andaur Leiva, and Patricio Alfredo Bertón Campos were sentenced to 10 years and one day in prison as co-perpetrators of the qualified homicide of Nelson Herrera Riveros committed at Km.

One of the Camino a Santa Juana, in the Idahue sector. The only defendant and accused person whom the investigating judge Carlos Aldana had indicted for the qualified homicide of Mario Lagos Rodríguez, committed at the Vega Monumental, Manuel Ángel Morales Acevedo, was acquitted by the judge. Later, in the course of the process, this individual died in December 2021.

Regarding the crime committed in Los Ángeles, agent Bruno Antonio Soto Aravena must serve a sentence of 10 years and one day in prison as a co-perpetrator of the qualified homicide of Mario Mujica Barros.

The other person convicted in the first instance to the same sentence for this crime, José Artemio Zapata Zapata, committed suicide in September 2019. For the criminal acts committed in Valdivia, agent Luis René Torres Méndez was sentenced to 15 years and one day in prison as a co-perpetrator of the two qualified homicides committed at Puente Estancilla, on the road to Niebla, against Rogelio Tapia De La Puente and Raúl Barrientos Matamala.

For this same event, agent Gerardo Meza Acuña had also been convicted in the first instance to the same sentence, but this individual died in July 2020. Finally, in addition to Oscar Alberto Boehmwald Soto, agent Ema Verónica Ceballos Núñez was sentenced to 10 years and one day in prison as a co-perpetrator of the qualified homicide of Juan José Boncompte Andreu, committed in the Población Teniente Merino.

It should be noted that during the course of the process (Case Rol 11-2009), Judge Carlos Aldana refused to prosecute another dozen agents involved in the criminal acts, a decision that was endorsed at the time by the Concepción Court of Appeals.

Likewise, Judge Aldana refused to prosecute the implicated officers Luis Moraga Tresckow and Oscar Boehmwald Soto for illicit association; and for this crime, despite indicting him, he did not convict Jorge Mandiola Arredondo, the CNI head in Concepción and manager of the concerted action of surveillance, tracking, and preparation of the operation that culminated in the August crimes, in which Mandiola Arredondo participated actively.

Furthermore, the convicted criminal Patricio Castro Muñoz attempted to question the legality of the judicial process and the conviction against him, and appealed last October to the Constitutional Court (TC), invoking unconstitutionality flaws in the trial and the conviction that affected him.

However, on January 9 of this year, the TC ruled, declaring the appeal filed by the criminal and his representative inadmissible, rejecting the petition.

Operation Alfa Carbón

During the investigation stage, it was established that at the beginning of 1984, the CNI head of Concepción, Major Jorge Mandiola, received information about the re-articulation of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) in the area, managing to detect some of its leaders and a large number of militants and resistance members.

After informing his superior, Colonel Marcos Derpich Miranda, head of the CNI Regional Division, and having confirmed the detection of the MIR organization in the south, they informed the CNI director, General Humberto Gordon Rubio (currently deceased), who determined that Major Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, in charge of the Anti-Subversive Division, should coordinate with the Regional leadership to carry out operations aimed at neutralizing the members of the MIR who were operating between the Biobío and Los Ríos regions, naming these actions "Operation Alfa Carbón."

As a result of the above, Álvaro Corbalán ordered several teams, composed of agents from different Brigades of the Cuartel Borgoño (Blue, Yellow, Green, Brown, and Special) from Santiago, consisting of two or three people and with mobilization and funding provided by the Anti-Subversive Division, to move to Concepción, Los Ángeles, Temuco, and Valdivia, so that, in coordination with members of the CNI Regional units of those cities, they could carry out the tasks ordered by the various commands.

Likewise, Corbalán ordered his subordinate Patricio Lorenzo Castro Muñoz, deputy head of the Yellow Brigade, to establish himself in Valdivia, in charge of the teams he brought from Santiago, to direct and carry out the operations in that region.

Similarly, he ordered Krantz Johans Bauer, deputy head of the Special Brigade, to establish himself in Los Ángeles to take charge of the operational work, supported by joint teams from Santiago and the Regional units.

In parallel, and with the same purpose, Marcos Derpich Miranda ordered that the head of the CNI Chillán barracks, Héctor Reinoso Muñoz, and agents from his unit, join his counterpart in Concepción, and that the head of Puerto Montt, Oscar Boehmwald, along with agents from his unit, report to the head of Valdivia to support the repressive operations.

With the information accumulated through tracking, surveillance, and wiretaps, the CNI commanders decided to strike the final blow. In the days prior to the event, led by Álvaro Corbalán, Joaquín Molina Fuenzalida (deceased), Marcos Derpich, and others, the commanders, heads, and teams that arrived in the city, plus the local agents, met at the CNI barracks located on Calle Bahamondes at Avenida Pedro de Valdivia, in Concepción, where they coordinated the actions to be developed.

In that meeting, the decision was made to carry out various raids and arrests (without judicial orders or proceedings regarding them) and that the fate of the detainees would depend on their degree of danger to the military regime prevailing in the country.

There, the CNI commanders established which MIR members would be eliminated and who would be arrested at the moment of "bursting" or executing the operation. This operation included repressive actions in Talcahuano and Concepción as well as in Los Ángeles, Temuco, Valdivia, and other locations in the southern zone.

The Facts

The date chosen by the CNI commanders was August 23, 1984. On the morning of the 23rd, in Concepción, several CNI teams set up surveillance actions on three members of the MIR, who converged at a restaurant located at the Plazoleta El Ancla in Talcahuano. They were Nelson Herrera, Mario Lagos, and Luciano Aedo.

Around noon, one of them, Luciano Humberto Aedo Arias, boarded a public transport bus heading to the Hualpencillo sector where he resided, where he got off the bus upon noticing the obvious surveillance, and tried to flee on foot, being intercepted by CNI agents at the corner of Grecia and Nápoles streets.

At that moment, agent Luis Hernán Gálvez Navarro shot him with a firearm he was carrying, Luciano falling wounded to the ground; then agent Roberto Antonio Farías Santelices approached the fallen man and finished him off with a burst from an AKA 47 rifle into his back.

A couple of hours later, and without perceiving what was happening outside, the other two members of the MIR detected and watched at the restaurant in Talcahuano, Nelson Adrián Herrera Riveros and Mario Octavio Lagos Rodríguez, boarded another bus heading to Concepción, and were followed by other CNI operational teams, who coordinated with the Carabineros along the way to intercept the bus—which was carrying passengers—in front of the Vega Monumental.

When the vehicle arrived at that location, the CNI members intercepted the bus and ordered everyone to get off the public transport vehicle, but since some people refused, including those being pursued, they threw tear gas bombs inside the bus, forcing its evacuation.

Once the passengers got off, the two MIR members descended from the bus with their hands up, but the CNI agents shot Herrera and Lagos on the spot, causing them wounds. Mario Lagos tried to flee, so an agent shot him with the AKA rifle he was carrying, causing his death on the spot.

For his part, Nelson Herrera Riveros was apprehended by CNI agents Sergio Mateluna Pino, José Abel Aravena Ruiz, Luis Andaur Leiva, and Patricio Alfredo Bertón Campos, who put him into one of their vehicles and—as part of the setup—announced aloud that they were heading to the Regional Hospital of Concepción for the treatment of the detainee's wounds.

However, they deviated from the route and took him to kilometer 0.9 of the road to Santa Juana, where they took him out of the vehicle and Aravena Ruiz ordered Andaur Leiva to execute the crime; the latter shot him in the forehead with his revolver, causing a craniocerebral gunshot wound, which caused his instantaneous death, just as Derpich Miranda had ordered them by radio.

To culminate the farce, the executioners headed with the murdered man to the Regional Hospital and admitted him through the emergency room, already deceased. The agents left Nelson Herrera at the hospital handcuffed behind his back. Later they returned to release and recover the handcuffs.

Los Ángeles

In Los Ángeles, around 5:30 p.m. on the same day, the 23rd, once the CNI agents from Concepción José Zapata Zapata and Bruno Soto Aravena, who were following Mario Mujica Barros, along with several teams led by the deceased Krantz Johans Bauer, following the instructions of their boss Jorge Camilo Mandiola Arredondo, approached Mujica Barros's home in the Población Orompello in Los Ángeles.

They entered the property by surprise and violently, shooting the victim in the head while he was on the ground, causing his death.

Valdivia

Meanwhile, in Valdivia, around 4:00 p.m. on August 23, CNI operational teams that had arrived from Santiago, led by Patricio Castro Muñoz, arrested Rogelio Tapia de la Puente and Jaime Barrientos Matamala near the Puente Las Ánimas in the city of Valdivia.

Subsequently, they crossed the Calle Calle River on a ferry and took them to the Puente Estancilla, located on the road from Valdivia to Niebla, in the Torobayo sector.

In that place, where traffic for all vehicles and people had previously been cut off by Carabineros, and in circumstances where the detainees were tied by their hands and blindfolded, the agents proceeded to execute them, by order of Castro Muñoz, who fired himself, in addition to agents Luis René Torres Méndez and Gerardo Meza Muñoz and others not identified in the process.

Likewise, the CNI regional head of Valdivia, Luis Moraga Tresckow, who in principle had allegedly refused to shoot, finished them off with shots from his weapon upon the imperative order of Castro Muñoz.

The victims received multiple projectile wounds, some of which struck Tapia de la Puente and Barrientos Matamala in the skull and thorax. Subsequently, weapons were placed in the hands of the deceased to simulate a confrontation.

The following day, August 24, around 3:00 p.m., several CNI operational teams, led by Patricio Castro Muñoz, surrounded the home of Juan José Boncompte Andreu, located on Calle Rubén Darío, in the Población Teniente Merino in Valdivia, entering it to eliminate Boncompte Andreu, who tried to flee from his captors through the backyard of the house, being wounded by Oscar Boehmwald Soto.

In the backyard, other agents were waiting in ambush and also shot him; once on the ground, agent Ema Verónica Ceballos Núñez finished him off, shooting him in the head with her firearm, ensuring his death. Juan José Boncompte received 22 bullet impacts.

by Darío Núñez

Source: resumen.cl, March 5, 2024