A court on Monday ruled to uphold the prison sentences issued to former Chilean soldiers who played roles in two dictatorship-era murders, Prensa Latina has reported.
The Temuco Court in southern Chile ruled to uphold the sentences previously issued by Judge Álvaro Mesa Latorre to the men who carried out- and were complicit in- the October 1973 murders of Eliseo Segundo Jara Ríos and Pedro Mario Alonso Muñoz Apablaza.
Jara was a member of the socialist party, while Muñoz is not believed to have had any specific political affiliation. They were both detained, taken by two patrol cars to an open area in the commune of Victoria, and shot dead.
Now, former captain Sergio Hernán Valenzuela González and former soldiers Exequiel Eugenio Trullenque Sepúlveda, Eduardo Urrutia Ronda, and Ariel Valdemar Reyes Figueroa have been found guilty of the murders. The four men have been sentenced to 20 years in prison, while civilian Jorge Octavio Temer San Martín faces 19 years in prison for his role as an accomplice.
Retired officers Hernán Augusto Salazar Schifferli and Manuel Alfonso Fernández Domínguez are also facing 15 years of imprisonment for being accomplices, as are former soldiers Carlos Enrique Molina Cabrera, Jacinto Mansilla Villarroel, and Juan Bautista Santibáñez Hermosilla.
Former officers Darío Alejandro Reyes Núñez and Alfredo Hernán Parra Uslar have also been sentenced to five years in prison for being accessories to the crimes.
According to the sentence upheld by the court, the murders were premeditated, preceded by an informal meeting at Temer’s home, during which the convicted were heard plotting the murder of one or more people, according to a witness.
The then-soldiers were described by a witness as being “euphoric” after carrying out the murders, and as having “laughed a lot.”
The bodies of Jara and Muñoz were transported to Victoria Hospital; while witnesses described seeing bullet wounds in the bodies, the military doctor’s report stated that “acute anemia” was the sole cause of their deaths.
In addition to the prison sentences, the court upheld the decision to order the Treasury to pay 100 million Chilean pesos ($105,000 USD) to one of Jara Ríos’ family members.
DNA samples will also be taken from the convicted men and be stored in the national DNA database.
During Chile’s dictatorship, which lasted from 1973 until 1990 and was headed by Augusto Pinochet, 2,123 people are confirmed to have been killed. Another 1,093 were “disappeared,” with their bodies yet to be recovered, 120 of whom were prisoners who were thrown from helicopters into Chilean bodies of water.
Those who were detained by the regime, which included political opponents and those without political affiliation, were subject to various forms of torture, including beatings, hangings, electric shots, Russian roulette, sleep deprivation, and sexual abuse – particularly in the case of women.
Featured image credit:
Image: Anti-Pinochet protesters in 1987
Photographer: Paulo Slachevsky
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chile_pa%C3%ADs_torturado,_septiembre_1987.jpg#
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en
