2023-08-30 05:01:00
Retired brigadier of the Chilean Army, Hernán Carlos Chacón Soto, committed suicide on Tuesday before being arrested to begin serving his 25-year prison sentence. On Monday he had been sentenced for being one of the seven officers who tortured and murdered the singer-songwriter, Víctor Jara, and the former director of prisons, Littré Quiroga, in 1973.
According to the local press, units from the human rights section of the Chilean security forces showed up this morning at Chacón’s home in the Las Condes commune, in Santiago, to arrest him and transfer him to the Punta Peuco prison -located in the commune of Til Til-. At that moment, the 86-year-old officer told them that he would make himself available, but that he first had to go to his bedroom for some medicines and personal belongings. However, he took advantage of the moment to kill himself with a pistol that had his name inscribed on it.
The investigations are carried out by the Homicide Brigade of the Investigative Police (PDI). The head of the Metropolitan Brigade, Sub-Prefect Óscar Alvarado, indicated that a series of scientific-technical tests are being carried out in the place, which will be sent to the institutional laboratory “in order to issue the respective expert reports.”
their crimes
Chacón Soto’s defense maintained throughout the long process that the brigadier was, in those days of brutal repression after the coup led by Augusto Pinochet and other high command, a simple Army Major who only fulfilled the function of guarding the perimeter outside of the Chile Stadium. It is a closed sports complex where nearly 5,000 people detained as of September 11, 1973 were overcrowded and in which Jara was assassinated five days later.
However, the ruling made public on Monday assured that the ex-soldier had tactical and intelligence knowledge, “conditions that allowed him to intervene directly in the development of the interrogations carried out in the locker room, as well as in the prior process of classifying the detainees.” , According to the argument, Chacón Soto participated in the decision of who was separated to be taken to the interrogations and, finally, the final destination of these, “being of all evidence that inside the Chile Stadium there was an order imposed by the rigid existing command structure.
“Several testimonies corroborated that the ex-soldier participated in the selection work, reporting the same to his superiors, for which reason his statements were not credible or credible insofar as he maintained that he had only guarded the external perimeter of the compound, functions that are not consistent with his high degree, nor with the various elements of conviction gathered, “added the sentence. “At that time, he was carrying a 9-millimeter STEYR pistol, weapons fully consistent with the technical description of the injuries that, according to the forensic records, caused the death of Jara Martínez and Littré Quiroga,” he concluded.
The other former Army officers who were sentenced are Raúl Jofré, Edwin Dimter, Nelson Haase, Ernesto Bethke and Juan Jara. All of them must pay 15 years for the murder of Jara and Quiroga, in addition to 10 years for both kidnappings. Meanwhile, the soldier Rolando Melo received an eight-year sentence as an accessory after the fact.
other suicides
Chacón Soto is not the first convicted Chilean officer to take his own life. A similar decision was made on September 28, 2013 by Police General Odlanier Mena, former head of the National Information Center (CNI), Pinochet’s secret police and repressive arm of the dictatorship. He practiced illegal detentions, torture, murders and participated in the forced disappearance of people.
Mena fired his weapon a few centimeters from his temple after learning that the Government of Sebastián Piñera had authorized and ordered the transfer of a group of officers convicted of human rights violations from the Cordillera military prison to the Punta Peuco prison.
The first soldier to commit suicide was, however, Army General Hernán Ramírez Rurange. He was sentenced to prison in August 2015 for the kidnapping and murder of Eugenio Berríos, a chemist and agent of the dictatorship’s secret police who had fled to Uruguay in November 1991 to avoid testifying in the open trial for the murder of former Foreign Minister Orlando. Letelier, perpetrated in Washington in 1976.
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