Condemn Pinochet’s agents who killed Spaniard Carmelo Soria

2023-08-23 00:40:31

The Supreme Court sentenced this Tuesday, definitively, six agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), the repressive secret police of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990), for the murder of the Spanish citizen Carmelo Soria Espinoza, official of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Cepal), assassinated in the Metropolitan Region, located in the Chilean central valley, on July 14, 1976.

Among the culprits are former heads of the organization, Pedro Espinoza Bravo and Raúl Iturriaga Neumann, each sentenced to 15 years in prison, and secret agents Juan Morales Salgado, Guillermo Salinas Torres, René Quihot Palma and Pablo Belmar Labbé, with penalties of between 15 and 10 years in prison.

“There is a conviction that in this case there was a criminal group in the National Intelligence Directorate (…) it is clear that the illicit association conceived, designed and applied a plan to be developed, damaging vital, individual and collective interests, that the legislator has wanted to protect given its high social significance”, explains the sentence, released this Tuesday through the official website of the Chilean Judiciary.

More than 40,000 people were victims of the Pinochet dictatorship

Eugenio Covarrubias Valenza – to 4 years for presenting a false statement under oath – and Sergio Cea Cienfuegos, the latter to 600 days for falsifying a public instrument during the investigation, were also sentenced.

“Starting in 1973, the DINA operated systematically and clandestinely against multiple political opponents of the military government and its collaborators, including Carmelo Soria Espinoza. The activity of this organization was covered up with apparent state intelligence, police and security activities,” the sentence argues.

“DINA maintained a structure, functionality, and hierarchical organization parallel to that of the Armed Forces and Public Order and Security, and was made up of members of these institutions assigned on commission of service for that purpose; likewise, civilians assigned to its criminal purposes and methods, and continuously, aware of the existence of criminal proceedings to clarify the kidnapping and death of Carmelo Soria, members of said organization carried out various acts intended to hide the circumstances in which they were committed, an activity that was carried out until the year 1993”, explained the minister of the Supreme Court, Lamberto Cisternas Rocha.

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In Chile, it is estimated that a total of 40,175 people were victims as a result of the Pinochet dictatorship, including political executions, disappeared detainees, and victims of political imprisonment and torture, according to figures provided by the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights.

The ruling comes on the eve of the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the coup, which plunged the Andean country into an authoritarian regime for 17 years.