The Supreme Court rejected the appeals and confirmed the sentence that convicted 25 former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their responsibility in the kidnapping of photographer Teobaldo Antonio Tello Garrido, detained and missing since August 22, 1974 and the 119 victims who appeared on the lists of the international disinformation maneuver known as “Operation Colombo”.

In the judgment (roll 36.979-2020), the Second Chamber of the highest court – composed of ministers Haroldo Brito, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Leopoldo Llanos and lawyers (i) Eduardo Morales and Gonzalo Ruz – ruled out any error in the contested judgment .

The judgment of the highest court sentenced César Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Espinoza Bravo, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko and Raúl Iturriaga Neumann to 13 years in prison for their responsibility as perpetrators of the crime.

Meanwhile, Nelson Paz Bustamante, Gerardo Godoy García, Hermon Alfaro Mundaca, Julio Hoyos Zegarra, Silvio Concha González, José Ojeda Obando, Luis Videla Inzulza, Jorge Madariaga Acevedo, Teresa Osorio Navarro, Claudio Pacheco Fernández, José Aravena Ruiz, Manuel Carevic Cubillos, Rosa Humilde Ramos Hernández, Pedro Alfaro Fernández, Luis Torres Méndez, Rodolfo Concha Rodríguez, Jerónimo Neira Méndez, Palmira Almuna Guzmán and Leonidas Méndez Moreno must serve 10 years in prison as the perpetrators.

Agent Samuel Fuenzalida Devia must serve a sentence of 541 days in prison, with conditional remission, as the perpetrator of the crime.

Finally, Víctor Manuel Álvarez Droguett was sentenced to 4 years in prison, with the benefit of supervised release, as an accomplice to the crime.

The sentence rejected the violation of the facts established by the courts of first instance, as they were crimes against humanity.

“That with regard to the cause contained in article 546 No. 2 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, taking into account the nature of the proven events, unalterable for this Court since the cause which allows its modification was rejected, it does not no doubt that they were committed as crimes against humanity, since the illicit investigation occurred in a context of serious, massive and systematic violations of human rights, verified by agents of the State, the victim in this case constituting an instrument within a broad policy of exclusion, harassment, persecution or extermination of a group of numerous people who, in the immediate period and after September 11, 1973, were accused of ideological affiliation to the fallen political regime or who, for whatever reason, were considered suspected of opposing or hindering the realization of the social and political construction developed by the power, guaranteeing impunity to the executors of said program through non-interference in their methods, both with the concealment of reality in response to the ordinary courts’ request for relevant reports, as well as for the use of state power to persuade local public opinion and foreign that the complaints filed to this effect were false and respond to a campaign aimed at discrediting the authoritarian military regime.

Thus, people who use the means and instruments of the State to commit such serious crimes against the fundamental rights and freedoms of the individual are shrouded in a cloak of impunity woven with the State’s own resources.

It is an undeniable fact that international law has evolved on the basis of the principles which inspire it and which lead it to recognize the existence of increasingly vast and complex scenarios in which crimes against humanity are committed and which go beyond armed conflicts or declared wars, precisely. , because such clashes are no longer what they were at the birth of the notions of war crimes and crimes against humanity, forged around the 1940s, in the middle of the Second World War and used in a non-technical sense since before, in 1915. This development, marked by the innumerable forms that crimes against human beings have taken, has led various authors to specify that crimes against humanity can be committed both in times of war and in times of of peace, as expressly recognized in article 1 letter b) of the United Nations Convention on the imprescriptibility of war crimes and crimes against humanity of November 26, 1968; and, later, in Article 3 of the 1994 Rwanda Tribunal Statute and the 1996 Draft Code of Crimes against the Peace and Security of Mankind, as well as in Article 7 of the Rome Statute of 1998, specifies the judgment.

He adds: “Crimes against humanity are called unjust crimes which not only contravene the legal rights commonly guaranteed by criminal laws, but at the same time represent a negation of the moral personality of man, such that for the configuration of this illicit, there is an intimate link between common crimes and an added value that arises from the non-respect and contempt for the dignity of the person, because the main characteristic of this figure is the cruel way with which various criminal acts are perpetrated, which clearly and manifestly contradict the most fundamental concept of humanity; Also emphasizing the presence of cruelty towards a particular class of individuals, thus combining a prominent intentional element, as a specific internal tendency of the agent’s will.

In short, they constitute an outrage on human dignity and represent a serious and manifest violation of the rights and freedoms proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, reaffirmed and developed in other relevant international instruments.

The Second Chamber adds: “Among the characteristics which distinguish this type of transgressions are the imprescriptibility, the impossibility of amnesty and of establishing exclusions of liability which aim to prevent the investigation and punishment of those responsible for such serious violations of the essential rights such as torture, summary, extrajudicial or arbitrary executions and enforced disappearances, all of which are prohibited under international human rights law.

Thus, taking into account the nature of the facts which are the subject of the investigation in the present case and as they were presented in the judgment under review, as well as the context in which they must undoubtedly be recorded and the participation of the members of which the State had in them, there is no doubt that they must be subsumed in the light of international humanitarian law in the category of crimes against humanity and that they must be eradicated, because they deserve such disapproval of the universal conscience by attacking the fundamental principles of human values, which no convention, pact or positive norm can abrogate, weaken or disguise.

During the investigation, visiting minister Hernán Cristosto Greisse established:

“That on August 22, 1974, Teobaldo Antonio Tello Garrido, member of the Left Revolutionary Movement (MIR), was arrested on a public street in the center of Santiago, by agents belonging to the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), who they transferred him to the clandestine detention center called “Ollagüe”, located on José Domingo Cañas Street No. 1367, in the municipality of Ñuñoa, and then transferred him to the clandestine detention center called “Villa Grimaldi”, located in Lo Arrieta No. 1367. 8200, in the municipality of La Reina and “Cuatro Álamos”, located at 3000 Canada Street, in Santiago, premises guarded by armed guards and to which only DINA agents had access;

That the offended Tello Garrido during his stay in the José Domingo Cañas, Villa Grimaldi and Cuatro Álamos barracks remained without contact with the outside world, blindfolded and tied, being in the first two continually subjected to interrogations under torture by Dina’s agents who operated in the said barracks with the aim of obtaining information relating to members of the MIR, to proceed with the arrest of members of this organization, seen by other detainees with broken arms and legs following torture.

That the last time victim Tello Garrido was seen alive was on an undetermined date in September 1974 and that she is currently missing;

That the name of Teobaldo Antonio Tello Garrido appeared on a list of 119 people, published in the national press after having appeared on a list published in the magazine “LEA” of Argentina, dated July 15, 1975, in which it was indicated that Teobaldo Antonio Tello Garrido died in Argentina, along with 59 other people belonging to the MIR, due to internal conflicts that arose between these members; The publications which left the victim Tello Garrido for dead have their origin in disinformation maneuvers carried out by DINA agents abroad.”

In civil proceedings, the judgment ordering the Public Treasury to compensate the victim’s relatives was confirmed.