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forest444

(5,902 posts)
Fri Aug 19, 2016, 01:44 PM Aug 2016

Chilean court sentences seven retired officers for dictatorship-era murders.

A Chilean judge yesterday sentenced seven retired members of the country’s military over their responsibility for the murders of eight civilians, and the disappearance of three others, who were opposed to the dictatorship of general Augusto Pinochet. The slayings occurred in a detention centre in Pisagua, in the northern region of Tarapacá, in 1973.

Judge Mario Carroza, who is in charge of human rights violations cases in the Court of Appeals of Santiago, sentenced retired Army Colonel Sergio Benavides and former Carabinero Major Manuel Vega to life imprisonment as the authors of the disappearances and killings. Four other former members of the military were sentenced to 15 years each in prison over their involvement in the incidents, while a seventh was sentenced to 10 years.

The victims were left-wing supporters of the ousted government of President Salvador Allende, and were arrested after the coup and taken to Pisagua camp. There they were beaten and forced to sign blank documents subsequently used in mock military tribunals to condemn the prisoners to death and execute them, according to the judge's inquest.

The ruling states that on September 19, 1973, Juan Calderón, Luis Alberto Lizardi, Marcelo Guzmán, Juan Jiménez, Jesús Cañas, and Michel Nash were taken from their cells and executed near the camp under the pretext that they had tried to escape. The bodies were wrapped in burlap and then buried in a grave in the Atacama desert. In 1990 three of the bodies were found, the others are still missing.

Then on October 11, 1973, Julio Cabezas, Juan Valencia, Mario Morris, José Córdova, and José Lizardi were also taken from their cells in the Pisagua prison camp and executed in a place close to the camp’s cemetery.

The judge’s ruling order the Chilean state to pay a total of 510 million pesos ($780,000) compensation to families of the victims for moral damages.

At: http://buenosairesherald.com/article/220116/chile-court-sentences-dictatorshipera-killers

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Chilean court sentences seven retired officers for dictatorship-era murders. (Original Post) forest444 Aug 2016 OP
The pretense prisoners were caught trying to escape has been used repeatedly to justify murder. Judi Lynn Aug 2016 #1

Judi Lynn

(160,211 posts)
1. The pretense prisoners were caught trying to escape has been used repeatedly to justify murder.
Sat Aug 20, 2016, 12:01 AM
Aug 2016

The prisoners were totally at their mercy, being tortured and released was apparently a privilege in so many cases.

Hard to imagine people could behave this way toward others.

These officers are finally brought to justice, at last. There has to be some satisfaction with that, with their knowledge that they will most likely never go home again, the 15 and 10 years sentences are they are pretty old, already.

[center]

The area where the prison camp was located. Very desolate. [/center]
Thanks, forest444. Very good news on these cretins, at long last.

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