The minister visiting for Human Rights cases of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Miguel Vázquez Plaza, sentenced 29 former agents of the Comando Conjunto for their responsibility in the kidnappings and qualified homicides of Communist Party militants Ricardo Manuel Weibel Navarrete, Juan René Orellana Catalán, Luis Desiderio Moraga Cruz, Ignacio Orlando González Espinoza, and Luis Emilio Gerardo Maturana González, committed between October 1975 and June 1976 in the city of Santiago.

The so-called Comando Conjunto was a repressive apparatus created by the dictatorship under the tutelage of the Air Force (Fach) with the participation of agents from the Army, the Navy, the Carabineros, and civilian collaborators, which operated mainly between the years 1975 and 1977.

Its purpose was to compete in repressive and criminal tasks with the absolute power held by the DINA under the tutelage of the Army and the direction of Pinochet and Contreras.

In this particular case, Minister Vásquez Plaza substantiated the case for the kidnapping and disappearance of communist militants, one of the main objectives of this repressive entity.

The magistrate sentenced former Fach officer Juan Francisco Saavedra Loyola and former Carabineros officer Manuel Agustín Muñoz Gamboa to terms of 18 years in prison, plus 13 years, and plus 3 years in prison, each.

Former Navy officer Daniel Luis Enrique Guimpert Corvalán was sentenced to terms of 18 years, plus 12 years, and plus 3 years in prison.

Former Fach officer Antonio Benedicto Quiros Reyes was sentenced to terms of 18 years, plus 6 years, and plus 541 days in prison.

Former Army officers Álvaro Julio Federico Corbalán Castilla and Sergio Antonio Díaz López, and former Navy officer Jorge Aníbal Osses Novoa, were sentenced to terms of 12 years in prison, plus 10 years and one day, plus 400 days in prison each.

Agents Raúl Horacio González Fernández and Alejandro Julio Segundo Sáez Mardones were sentenced to two terms of 10 years and one day in prison, plus 400 days in prison each.

Agents Roberto Alfonso Flores Cisterna and Juan Carlos Hernán Rodrigo Villarreal were sentenced to terms of 10 years and one day, plus 5 years and one day, plus 400 days in prison each.

Civilian collaborator Otto Silvio Trujillo Miranda was sentenced to 10 years and one day in prison.

Agent Lenin Figueroa Sánchez was sentenced to two terms of 5 years and one day, plus 400 days in prison.

The converted civilian Miguel Arturo Estay Reyno, and agents Sergio Daniel Valenzuela Morales and Juan Atilio Aravena Hurtuvia, were sentenced to terms of 5 years and one day in prison, plus 5 years, plus 400 days in prison.

Civilian collaborators Andrés Pablo Potín Lailhacar, Viviana Lucinda Ugarte Sandoval, Emilio Mahias del Río, and agents Juan Luis Fernando López López, José Evaristo Rojas Alruiz, and Francisco Segundo Illanes Miranda, were sentenced to terms of 5 years and one day in prison, plus 400 days in prison.

Ernesto Arturo Lobos Gálvez and Alejandro Jorge Forero Álvarez were sentenced to terms of 5 years and one day in prison, plus 60 days in prison.

Roberto Francisco Serón Cárdenas was sentenced to 5 years and one day in prison.

Robinson Alfonso Suazo Jaque, Pedro Ernesto Caamaño Medina, Pedro Juan Zambrano Uribe, and José Hernando Alvarado Alvarado were sentenced to 4 years, plus 60 days in prison each.

Agents Eduardo Enrique Cartagena Maldonado, Alex Damián Carrasco Olivos, José Osiris Vera Reyes, Juan Luis Huaiquimilla Coñuepan, and Víctor Iván Zúñiga Zúñiga were acquitted.

In the judicial investigation, Minister Vásquez Plaza established that:

a) There existed a de facto group that operated clandestinely between the years 1975 and 1976, composed mainly of agents who belonged to the Air Force Intelligence Directorate, in addition to the Carabineros of Chile, the Navy, and the Army, with the collaboration of civilians, whose main objective was the repression of the Communist Party Youth, for which they proceeded to detain several of them.

b) The aforementioned group used the following for detentions and torture: Hangar de Cerrillos; Nido 20, a secret detention and torture center located at Calle Santa Teresa No. 037, Paradero 20 of Gran Avenida; Nido 18, a secret center located at Calle Perú No. 9053, La Florida, Santiago, which was used exclusively for torture; La Prevención or Remo Cero, which were dungeons located inside the Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment in Colina, all during the year 1975; La Firma, at the beginning of 1976, when said group moved its operations to the rear of the property under the charge of the Carabineros of Chile, located on Calle Dieciocho, opposite No. 229, which belonged to the former newspaper Clarín, naming it La Firma.

c) The operational conduct of the group, regarding persons illegitimately deprived of their liberty and kept in secret centers, was to obtain information from them under psychological and physical torture, achieving the collaboration of some of them to the point that some were assimilated as operational agents of the group, which provided greater effectiveness in the chain detention of communist militants, who were then forcibly disappeared, with the remains of some of them being found over the course of the years.

d) On November 07, 1975, at approximately 10:00 PM, Ricardo Manuel Weibel Navarrete was detained at his home at Río Maule No. 1893, Recoleta Commune, by subjects dressed in civilian clothes; he was kept deprived of liberty in the center called La Prevención or Remo Cero, located inside the Anti-Aircraft Regiment in Colina, the last place he was seen alive, and subsequently, his remains were found on the grounds of Fuerte Arteaga, Peldehue.

e) On June 08, 1976, in the Estación Central sector, Juan René Orellana Catalán met with Luis Emilio Gerardo Maturana González, both militants of the Communist Youth in hiding due to the political persecution they were subjected to, for the purpose of receiving money from the party from the hands of Maturana González, the latter being in charge of distributing it; at which moment he was detained by agents of the group referred to in letter a), kept imprisoned in the center called La Firma, and was subsequently executed at Cuesta Barriga, where remains consisting of teeth and a removable prosthesis were found.

f) On October 20, 1975, in the early morning hours, Luis Desiderio Moraga Cruz was detained at his home at Pasaje Tokio No. 5862, Población Juanita Aguirre, Conchalí commune, Santiago, by subjects dressed in civilian clothes; he was kept imprisoned in the Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment in Colina, inside which was the center called La Prevención or Remo Cero, where he provided the statement found on page 5532, this being the last place he was seen alive.

g) On December 04, 1975, in the early morning hours, Ignacio Orlando González Espinoza was detained at his home at Calle Soberanía No. 1220, Santiago, by subjects dressed in civilian clothes; he was kept deprived of liberty in the center called La Prevención or Remo Cero, located inside the Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment in Colina, the last place he was seen alive, and subsequently, he was executed on the grounds of Fuerte Arteaga, Peldehue, where his remains were found.

h) On June 08, 1976, in the Estación Central sector, Luis Emilio Gerardo Maturana González met with Juan René Orellana Catalán, both militants of the Communist Youth in hiding due to the political persecution they were subjected to, for the purpose of giving party money to Orellana Catalán for himself and for him to in turn give it to other party militants, as Maturana González was in charge of distributing it; at which moment he was detained by operational agents of the group described in letter a), and kept imprisoned in the center called La Firma, from where his trail is lost.

Source: resumen.cl, October 10, 2019