Former military personnel must answer for the death of 26 people from Calama, as well as 13 victims in Copiapó. Proceedings are being carried out in the capital

Information from Santiago, released yesterday via the El Mercurio website and television channels, reports that new indictments were issued in Santiago by special judge Víctor Montiglio within the framework of the "Caravana de la Muerte" (Caravan of Death) case against 13 retired Army officers for aggravated homicide committed in Copiapó and Calama.

For the death of 26 victims in the town of Calama on October 19, 1973, Montiglio indicted the colonel and commander of the Calama Regiment, Colonel Eugenio Rivera; Brigadier Carlos Langer; Major Carlos Minoletti Arraigada; Colonel Víctor Santander Véliz; and Sergeant Major Jerónimo Rojo.

Among the 26 victims from Calama is Carlos Berger, who was the husband of human rights lawyer Carmen Hertz.

The retired officers charged were notified yesterday morning at the courthouse and were subsequently taken to the Peñalolén Police Battalion, where they will remain in custody.

This new indictment follows the reclassification of the crimes performed by Montiglio last week in the same case, during which he removed the charge of kidnapping from these proceedings.

In Calama, the list of those victims of political execution is as follows: Mario Argüéllez Toro, Carlos Berger Guralnik, Haroldo Cabrera Abarzúa, Gerónimo Carpanchay Choque, Bernardino Cayo Cayo, Carlos Escobedo Caris, Luis Gahona Ochoa, Daniel Garrido Muñoz, Luis Hernández Neira, Manuel Hidalgo Rivas, Rolando Hoyos Salazar, Domingo Mamani López, David Miranda Luna, Hernán Moreno Villarroel, Luis Moreno Villarroel, Rosario Muñoz Castillo, Víctor Ortega Cuevas, Milton Muñoz Muñoz, Rafael Pineda Ibacache, Carlos Piñero Lucero, Sergio Ramírez Espinoza, Fernando Ramírez Sánchez, Alejandro Rodríguez, Roberto Rojas Alcayaga, José Saavedra González, Jorge Yueng Rojas.

Copiapó The indictments affect retired Brigadier Patricio Díaz Araneda and retired officers Ricardo Yáñez Mora, Waldo Antonio Ojeda, and Marcelo Marambio Molina, regarding 13 victims who were detained on October 17, 1973, in Copiapó.

The magistrate also indicted retired officers Edwin Herbstard Gálvez, Fernando Castillo Cruz, Ramón Zúñiga Ormeño, and Oscar Pastén Morales as perpetrators of the aggravated homicide of three union leaders murdered on the afternoon of that same day.

The "Caravana de la Muerte" was a military delegation that traveled through various Chilean towns between October and November 1973, during which its members executed at least 75 political prisoners.

Those indicted today by Montiglio were not part of the delegation, but they belonged to the staff of the regiments in Calama, where 26 prisoners were murdered, and Copiapó, where the victims totaled 16.

According to Montiglio's resolution, some of the newly indicted participated in the executions, while others handled the clandestine burials of the victims or participated, years later, in their exhumation and the disposal of the bodies at sea.

Among those indicted is retired Colonel Eugenio Rivera Desgroux, who commanded the Calama regiment in 1973 and who in later years has claimed that he tried to oppose the order from the head of the "Caravana de la Muerte," General Sergio Arellano Stark, to murder the prisoners.

Also indicted was former Major Carlos Minoletti, who directed the regiment's Engineering company and was allegedly in charge of burying the bodies in the desert.

At the end of 1976, according to the case file, Minoletti also directed the exhumation of the bodies so that they could be thrown into the sea.

The exhumation was carried out with an excavator, and hundreds of bone fragments were left at the site, which allowed for the reconstruction of the events and even the identification of some of the victims in the 1990s.

From the Calama regiment's personnel, former Brigadier Carlos Lange von Furstenberg, Sergeant Gerónimo Rojo, and Colonel Víctor Santander Véliz were also indicted.

From those who belonged to the Copiapó regiment, retired General Erwin Gestaer Gálvez, Brigadier Patricio Díaz Araneda, Colonels Ricardo Yáñez Mora and Marcelo Marambio Molina, and Lieutenant Colonel Waldo Ojeda Torrent were prosecuted.

In addition, former officers Fernando Castillo Cruz, Oscar Pastén Morales, and Ramón Zúñiga Ormeño were prosecuted.

The accused were arrested in the early hours of yesterday and taken to be notified of the resolution before Judge Montiglio, who ordered their detention at the Military Police Battalion in the eastern sector of Santiago.

Judge Guzmán The "Caravana de la Muerte" case was previously under the charge of Judge Juan Guzmán Tapia, who indicted Augusto Pinochet in 2001, but the former dictator (1973-1990) was acquitted by the Supreme Court for allegedly suffering from subcortical dementia.

Last week, Montiglio decided to change the crime for which the members of the "Caravana de la Muerte" are being prosecuted from kidnapping to homicide in the cases of nineteen victims, which sparked fears among the plaintiffs that an amnesty ruling for the perpetrators or the statute of limitations on the case might be approaching.

Montiglio Special Judge Víctor Montiglio explained the reasons why he reclassified the prosecution from kidnapping to aggravated homicide within the framework of the "Caravana de la Muerte" case.

"One must accept the facts as they objectively are," the magistrate said after notifying the 13 new defendants in the case, referring to the conviction that the victims are dead.

"We are starting from the basis that there are death certificates, testimonies, and confessions, so I believe it is almost impossible to say that they are kidnapped," the judge asserted.

Montiglio declined to comment on the possibility of applying amnesty or the statute of limitations to these crimes, maintaining that it is not appropriate to do so at this procedural stage.

Along with this, he specified that he will investigate the facts until the end. "My role is that of an investigating judge who must carry out all the necessary steps so that the case is in a position to be resolved appropriately," he affirmed.

The indicted military personnel were transported amidst a demonstration by the victims' families, who shouted "murderers" as they were taken to the military battalion in Peñalolén, where they will remain for the coming hours.

The judge must decide whether to grant provisional release to the officers who requested it.

Source: El Mercurio de Calama, March 22, 2006

Justice system accuses nine repressors in the "Caravana de la Muerte" case

General Sergio Arellano, who commanded the mission, acted as a "delegate of the commander-in-chief," which meant he was to be obeyed as if he were Pinochet himself; he also involved local military garrisons in the crimes to ensure their loyalty to the dictatorship, according to historians.

The Chilean justice system accused nine repressors of the dictatorship for the death and disappearance of 16 opponents in the so-called "Caravana de la Muerte" case, one of the most emblematic episodes of human rights violations during the regime of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).

According to judicial sources, the special judge of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Patricia González Quiroz, accuses the nine of kidnapping and aggravated homicide (disappearance) of 13 victims.

They are General Sergio Arellano Stark, who commanded the mission, Carlos Arredondo, Pedro Espinoza, Marcelo Moren, Patricio Díaz, Ricardo Yañez, Waldo Ojeda, Marcelo Marambio, and Oscar Haag.

Likewise, the judge also accused Arellano Stark, Arredondo, Espinoza, Moren, and Haag of repeated aggravated kidnapping, as well as Ramón Zúñiga Ormeño, Fernando Castillo Cruz, Edwin Herbstaedt Gálvez, and Oscar Pastén Morales.

The disappearance

According to information gathered by the Chilean justice system, on the night of October 16, 1973, a Puma helicopter arrived in Copiapó—804 kilometers north of Santiago—carrying Arellano Stark and several others.

Together with a group of soldiers belonging to the Atacama Regiment of Copiapó, they took four people who were detained at the military unit and loaded them onto a truck.

Subsequently, they went to the Public Jail and picked up nine more people who were being held by order of the military authority.

The 13 detainees were taken to Cuesta Cardone, forced to get out of the vehicle, and, together with other soldiers who were at the scene, they shot each one of them.

One day later, another group of soldiers went to the barracks where political prisoners were held and took three people from the site, also transporting them to Cuesta Cardone, where, according to the records, "their traces were lost," and to this day, no one knows the whereabouts of the three victims.

Most of the accused are already serving multi-year prison sentences for other human rights violation cases.

Opponents of the dictatorship gave the name "Caravana de la Muerte" to a military delegation that, commanded by General Sergio Arellano Stark, traveled by helicopter through various cities in Chile, where its members murdered nearly a hundred political prisoners whom they had previously removed from jails.

Source: El EconomistaAmerica.cl, February 7, 2014

The difficult life of Luis Urzúa, who will be the last miner to be rescued.

Little is known about Luis Urzúa (54 years old) and his family, who have spoken the least about the 33. However, this shift supervisor, a native of Vallenar, is just as important, or more so, than Laurence Golborne himself, the Minister of Mining, and André Sougarret, the Codelco engineer who has led the rescue operation. Without him, the rescue could not have been carried out.

The shift supervisor of the San José miners, a surveyor by profession, was the first to speak with the outside world. -"Hello, who am I speaking to?" said Golborne. "Can you hear me?" replied a voice from more than 650 meters deep. "We all hear you loud and clear.

Who is speaking?" "This is the shift supervisor, Luis Urzúa. We are fine. Waiting to be rescued." Official sources have already confirmed that this 'hero of Atacama' will be the last to come out, thus becoming the human being who will have spent the most time under the Earth's surface, a title that, after 67 days of suffering and joy, he has well earned.

However, very few people know how hard the life of this born fighter has been.

A quiet person, the eldest of six siblings, he helped raise the younger ones. Luis was a sufferer; he had no other choice. His father, Luis Urzúa Sr., was murdered by the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet when he was just a child. He belonged to the Communist Party (PC). His stepfather, Benito Tapia, was also murdered in the Caravan of Death. He belonged to the Socialist Party.

Government authorities and the United States space agency (NASA) described the trapped Luis Urzúa Jr. as a 'natural leader.' "My son has always been very disciplined; at home, he was the one who called the shots among his six siblings.

Since my husband died when they were small, Luis has been the man of the house, the one who helped me raise his siblings and the one who always set the rules," says Nelly Iribarren, mother of the 'hero of Copiapó.'

"Luis has been a miner for 31 years; he has knowledge of underground rescue and first aid, which is why we knew he would find some way to get out of there. In fact, I imagined how my 'negro' must have been walking around the shelter taking roll call of his companions, rationing the food, and assigning them tasks, because that is how he is: bossy, but organized," asserts this 78-year-old woman, who does not go up to Campamento Esperanza due to health problems.

What this good woman does not recount is the suffering that she and her children went through, including the one who will be the man who spent the most time in the bowels of the Earth, if all goes well.

Little is known about Luis Urzúa's first father. Only that he was also named Luis Urzúa and that he disappeared during the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. More is known about the second husband of Nelly Iribarren, Luis's mother.

Benito Tapia Tapia, 32 years old, an employee of Cobresal, was Luis Urzúa's stepfather, a true father to the miner. He was a national leader of the Copper Workers' Confederation and a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Youth. On September 17, 1973, he was arrested and taken to the Copiapó prison. From there, he was taken to the regiment of that city. He did not live any longer.

Benito was murdered by the Caravana de la Muerte along with the general manager of Cobresal, Ricardo Díaz Posada, and Maguindo Castillo Andrade, a union leader like himself.

At nine in the morning on Wednesday, October 17, 1973, Major Carlos Brito of the Atacama Regiment of Copiapó took Ricardo García out of the public jail. At 7:20 PM that day, Sergeant Óscar Pastén did the same with Benito Tapia and Maguindo Castillo. The three were taken to the regiment.

From the regiment, they went to the cemetery. "The execution of García, Castillo, and Tapia was directed by Lieutenant Ramón Zúñiga Ormeño, and he was accompanied by Second Lieutenant Fernando Castillo Cruz," Díaz Araneda declared a few years ago before Judge Juan Guzmán.

Arturo Araya, an assistant to medical examiner Juan Mendoza, arrived early at the Copiapó morgue that day, the 18th. He saw the three bodies lying on stretchers and covered with white sheets. He uncovered one to undress him and prepare the autopsy, but the cemetery administrator, Leonardo Meza, stopped him. "Those bodies are untouchable," he told him.

The three bodies were buried without coffins in an open grave in Patio 16. In the entry log, García was assigned number 13, Tapia 14, and Castillo 15. Days later, Bernardo Pinto, a worker at Cobresal, paid a gravedigger to open the grave, and what he saw he never forgot.

"They were without coffins and the three bodies were mangled, with gashes on their faces, torsos, and legs; you could sometimes see the bones in the wounds," stated Bernardo. Shortly after, the three bodies, including Benito's, would disappear forever from the cemetery.

Maglio Cicardini, mayor of Copiapó, and Sergio Iribarren, Luis Urzúa's cousin and a councilman in Vallenar, corroborate the story: "Yes, it is true, his father and his stepfather were murdered." Jaime Tapia, brother of the murdered Benito, is at the camp.

He represents Luis Urzúa. When asked if his brother was murdered during the dictatorship or not, he replies: "I cannot say anything; things will be known in due time, after they come out."

Source: ElPinguino.com, October 13, 2010