2023-08-29 08:47:48
The Supreme Court of Chile has handed down the final sentence against seven retired soldiers for the crimes of kidnapping and murder of the Chilean singer-songwriter Víctor Jara, arrested on September 12, 1973, one day after the coup d’état, and assassinated a few days later, in one of the most symbolic crimes left behind by the dictatorship.
“The facts outlined (…) are real, since they occurred in a certain place and time and are proven, legally accredited through the evidence,” said the high court in a unanimous ruling.
The judges thus ruled out the arguments of the defendants’ defense against the sentence handed down by the Court of Appeals in November 2021, which sentenced Raúl Jofré González, Edwin Dimter Bianchi, Nelson Haase Mazzei, Ernesto Bethke Wulf, Juan Jara Quintana and Hernán Chacón Soto sentenced to 25 years in prison for the murder and kidnapping of the musician and also the director of the Prison Service at the time, Littré Quiroga.
«The Court, in addition to referring to the procedural issue, has the delicacy to explain the cases and the facts (…) The judicial sentences have a remedial role when not only the guilty are sentenced and the stories of the victims,” said the Minister of Justice, Luis Cordero after hearing the ruling.
That of Jara, a member of the Communist Party and collaborator of the Popular Unity Government of former socialist president Salvador Allende (1970-1973), was one of the most relevant cases that the Chilean Justice had pending to close.
More than 40,000 victims
A reference to the New Chilean song, the artist was transferred and tortured in the Chile Stadium, where more than 5,000 prisoners were locked up, and his body was found near the Metropolitan Cemetery on September 16 and clandestinely buried two days later.
In December 2009, the Chilean Justice ordered the exhumation of his remains, which, 36 years after his death, were buried in an official and massive tribute in which then-President Michelle Bachelet (2006-2010 and 2014-2018) participated.
The final sentence comes just 15 days before the commemoration in Chile of the 50th anniversary of the coup d’état and in the midst of strong social polarization due to the official account of the events of September 11, 1973 and the subsequent years of the dictatorship.
The regime of General Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) lasted 17 years and left more than 40,000 victims, including those executed, detained-disappeared, political prisoners, and tortured, and more than 3,200 opponents died at the hands of State agents.
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