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The Second Chamber of the Supreme Court, in a unanimous ruling, convicted Army officer Alfonso Faúndez Norambuena and retired Investigative Police officer Roberto Arcángel Rozas Aguilera, for their responsibility in the completed crimes of qualified kidnapping of Luis Heriberto Contreras Escamilla , electrical technician and former member of the Socialist Party (PS), and the abduction of his son Luis Heriberto Contreras Peñaloza, 16 years old at the time of the events. Illegal crimes committed in November 1973, in the communes of San Miguel and San Bernardo, respectively.
The ministers Haroldo Brito, Jorge Dahm, Diego Simpertigue, and the member lawyers Leonor Etcheberry and Carolina Coppo confirmed the first instance sentence and sentenced Faúndez Norambuena to sentences of 6 and 4 years of effective imprisonment, as the author of the qualified kidnapping. and subtraction, respectively.
Likewise, the highest court confirmed the sentence of Investigative Police officer Roberto Arcángel Rozas Aguilera, to 3 years and one day, and 541 days in prison, with the benefit of supervised release for a period of 5 years, as co-author of crimes.
Rozas Aguilera was assigned to the Cerro Chena prison camp and was mentioned as an interrogator there along with police and military officials.
The plaintiff lawyer Freddy Henríquez, from Estudio Caucoto Abogados, evaluated the sentence, indicating that “from the judicial point of view, it is not common for a cassation appeal on the merits, for violations of criminal regulatory laws, to see the light.”
Likewise, Henríquez indicated that “sustaining a process for so many years, tirelessly as Nelson Caucoto did, and later for the team of lawyers who accompanied him, brings us a serene joy.”
Finally, he expressed that “from a human point of view, we cannot deny our admiration for the incomprehensible capacity for resistance of our patrons. Let this triumph be for them and through them. Our raison d’etre.”
The facts
According to the investigation carried out by the minister during an extraordinary visit of the Court of Appeals of San Miguel Marianela Cifuentes Alarcón, the following facts can be established:
“1° That on November 10, 1973, at night, soldiers from the San Bernardo Infantry School, detained, without right, Luis Heriberto Contreras Escamilla, a member of the Socialist Party, at his home, located in Porto Alegre N° 5,742, Brasilia town, in the commune of San Miguel.
2° That, immediately afterwards, the aforementioned military patrol arrested, without right, Luis Heriberto Contreras Peñaloza, 16 years old, member of the Front of Revolutionary Students of the Revolutionary Left Movement, son of Contreras Escamilla, in a building in the town of Carbomet of the commune of San Bernardo.
3° That, subsequently, both detainees were transferred to the San Bernardo Infantry School prison camp, located on Cerro Chena, where they were kept locked up, without rights, and were subjected to interrogations and physical and mental abuse. psychological.
4° That, at that time, the Cerro Chena prison camp was in charge of Captain Víctor Raúl Pinto Pérez – currently deceased – and Lieutenant Alfonso Faúndez Norambuena, both from the Chilean Army.
5° That, likewise, in the aforementioned temporal context, Army Second Lieutenant Osvaldo Andrés Alonso Magaña Bau, Carabineros Lieutenant Sergio Heriberto Ávila Quiroga and the officers of the Police of Investigations by Óscar Hernán Vergara Cruces – currently deceased – and Roberto Arcángel Rozas Aguilera.
6° That on November 15, 1973, inside the aforementioned prison camp, Luis Contreras Escamilla was executed, outside the legal system, by means of multiple shots with a firearm.”
