Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

RIGHTS-CHILE: General Indicted for Last Five ‘Disappearances’

Gustavo González

SANTIAGO, Jan 8 2002 (IPS) - The courts in Chile indicted a retired general and nine other former agents of the secret police of the 1973-90 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet in connection with the last five forced disappearances committed by the de facto military regime.

Judge Mario Carroza accused retired General Hugo Salas Wenzel of being the intellectual author of the 1987 abduction of five young supposed militants of the insurgent Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (FPMR). At the time of the disappearances, Salas Wenzel was the director of the Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI), the dictatorship’s secret police.

Carroza also issued arrest warrants Monday for Major Alvaro Corbalán, Colonel Kranz Bauer, Captain Luis Sanhueza and six other former CNI agents, all of whom are retired from the army.

The five young men – José Julián Peña Maltés, Alejandro Pinochet Arenas, Julio Muñoz Otárola, Manuel Sepúlveda Sánchez and Gonzalo Valenzuela Navarrete – were detained by the CNI on Sep 9 and 10, 1987.

The capture of the five men was carried out by a brigade under the command of Corbalán, CNI head of operations, who held the five alleged members of the FPMR in secret installations.

Although authorities denied that the five had been detained, writs of habeas corpus were filed in court on behalf of the missing young men.

According to information compiled on the cases, the bodies of Peña, Pinochet, Muñoz, Sepúlveda and Valenzuela were reportedly dumped into the sea in the port of San Antonio, 100 kms west of Santiago.

Prosecuting Judge Carroza’s investigations found that Salas Wenzel ordered the arrest of the five young men in reprisal for the Sep 1, 1987 kidnapping of army colonel Carlos Carreño by an FPMR commando.

Carreño was held by his captors for 93 days, until he was released on Dec 2 in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where he was taken by the FPMR, which evaded the search operation in Chile and border controls in Chile, Argentina and Brazil.

Salas Wenzel, Corbalán and the eight other former CNI agents are already under arrest in military installations, since they are also implicated in other human rights abuses committed by the CNI in the last years of the Pinochet regime.

Salas Wenzel and Corbalán are also being held for the murders of 12 other alleged members of the FPMR, committed by the CNI in Santiago in June 1987 within the framework of “Operation Albania”.

Corbalán has already been sentenced to life in prison for the 1983 murder of carpenter Juan Alegría, and is facing a similar sentence for his role in the February 1982 murder of social democratic trade unionist Tucapel Jiménez by the CNI.

None of the disappearances or murders in question are covered by the amnesty law issued by Pinochet in April 1978, which benefited members of the military who committed rights abuses between April 1973 and April 1978, when the lion’s share of the 3,190 killings and disappearances documented by a 1991 truth commission took place.

Nelson Caucoto, accusing lawyer in the case of the last five disappearances carried out during the dictatorship, said the justice system has thus clarified the circumstances of 21 killings committed by the CNI between September 1986 and September 1987.

Among the cases to which Caucoto was referring were the kidnappings and murders of journalist José Carrasco and three other leftists, perpetrated on Sep 7 and 8, 1986 in reprisal for an FPMR attempt on Pinochet’s life, in which five of the dictator’s bodyguards were killed.

He also mentioned the June 1987 murders of the 12 alleged members of the FPMR in Operation Albania, as well as the forced disappearance of the five supposed members of the insurgent group in September 1987.

Caucoto said that so far, Judge Carroza had established that the 10 former CNI agents indicted Monday had participated in the abduction of two of the five young disappeared victims.

“It is possible to bet that the five cases will be resolved. It could be affirmed that the same people participated in the five cases. The important thing is that the judge is acting with the utmost responsibility,” said the lawyer.

The indictment of the former CNI agents coincided with the naming of Judge Mario Garrido Montt as the new president of the Supreme Court, to replace outgoing president Hernán Alvarez, who completed his two-year term in that post.

After assuming his new position, Garrido Montt said the pending cases of human rights violations committed during the dictatorship were “a thorny problem.”

“With regards to the judiciary, all of the necessary efforts are being made to live up to the aspirations of society,” said the magistrate.

Among the cases not yet resolved by the courts are the fate of 1,198 people who were “disappeared” under the Pinochet regime.

Garrido Montt was named to the Supreme Court by president Patricio Aylwin during the first democratic transition government (1990-94).

In August 2000, he voted in favour of stripping Pinochet of the legislative immunity from prosecution that the former dictator enjoyed as life senator, thus paving the way for his prosecution in connection with 17 kidnappings and 58 homicides carried out in 1973 by a special army mission known as the “death caravan.”

An appeals court suspended all legal proceedings against Pinochet last July, deeming him mentally unfit to stand trial. But the Supreme Court is to hand down verdicts on two appeals on procedural grounds seeking a reopening of the case.

 
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