HEAD OF CHILE’S SECRET POLICE CHARGED WITH TORTURE

 


This is the first time a Chilean court has charged former military authorities with deliberately using violence against political prisoners.

Human Rights Lawyers Welcome Historical Resolution

March 8, 2005 - In a history making resolution, Judge Alejandro Solís on Monday notified Manuel Contreras, the former head of Chile’s secret police, that he will be prosecuted for tortures he help commit during the 17-year reign of ex-dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

Though Solís’ case is limited to abuses that took place at the Tejas Verdes torture center in San Antonio, Region V, his ruling could set a precedent for the 28,000 people who, according to the Valech Report on Political Detention and Torture, were tortured during the Pinochet era.

Juan Carlos Manns, Contreras’ defense lawyer, lamented Solís’ resolution, calling it the fruit of the judge’s “invention.”

“It is yet another invention, made to destroy the general’s image by attributing to Contreras things that are the fruit of his fantasy,” Manns said Monday, upon receiving Solís’ notification.

Last January Solís sentenced Contreras to 12 years and one day in prison for the 1975 abduction of left activist Miguel Ángel Sandoval, but received staunch resistance from the retired general, who was forcibly removed by policemen from his house after he pulled a gun and said he would “not go to any prison” (ST, Jan. 31).

The ex-chief of the DINA, the Pinochet-era secret police, is now serving his sentence at the Cordillera Prison in Santiago’s Peñalolén district, together with four other retired colleagues also sentenced for Sandoval’s kidnapping.

Contreras was the first in a list of eight to be notified Monday. Together with Contreras, Solís has also charged retired Army Maj. Mario Alejandro Jara Seguel and retired Investigaciones police inspector Nelson Valdés Cornejo, among others, for torturing 18 detainees and for the disappearance of three more individuals at Tejas Verdes.

Prosecuting lawyer Hiram Villagra welcomed the charges as an important step in Chile’s history.

“The most important thing is that this is the first time that somebody is being charged with the crime of torture against people who are still alive,” Villagra said. “An historical debt is being paid.”

Solís acted following a lawsuit filed by the Corporation for the Promotion and Defense of the People’s Rights (CODEPU). During the preliminary investigation, he ordered medical reports on the alleged torture victims. In five cases, analysis established that injuries dated back to the victims’ detention period. Moreover, psychological tests revealed post-traumatic symptoms.

Alejandra Arriaza, a lawyer with CODEPU, said she hoped that other judges will follow Solís’ example and bring forward lawsuits for torture.

“We hope the rest of the judges investigating torture cases will follow the same path,” Arriaza said. “We are certain that the crime has already been proved through declarations and medical reports.”

The judge based his charges on the Geneva Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which was adopted by the Chilean government in 1987, and is applicable to the period in which Tejas Verdes was used as a torture center.

Hundreds of detainees were brutalized in the camp – officially called Prison Camp No. 2 of the Military Engineers’ School – between Sept. 11, 1973, when the military swept Pinochet to power in a bloody coup, and mid-1974, when the junta, satisfied it had largely succeeded in bludgeoning dissidents into submission, began to scale down its systematic policy of torture.

According to the Valech Commission on Political Detention and Torture – which in November published the results of evidence from 35,000 people (ST, Nov. 29, 2004) – political prisoners from Santiago and San Antonio were transferred to the Tejas Verdes camp blindfolded in refrigerating vehicles which belonged to various fishing companies. Once in the camp, the prisoners were electrocuted and sexually abuse.

A woman who was detained in Tejas Verdes when she was still underage reported that she was forced to take her clothes off and sit on the so-called parrilla (barbeque), an electric chair, where she was raped several times.

By Irene Caselli (editor@santiagotimes.cl)

SOURCE: LA TERCERA, EL MERCURIO, RADIO COOPERATIVA -

[and end - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/43h2h]

HR/FPF-fwd.