The relatives of the San Rosendo massacre, in the framework of which Carabineros de Chile officials murdered 19 people in the Biobio region after the 1973 coup d’état, expressed this Saturday their agreement with a recent ruling by the Supreme Court that confirmed the sentences against those responsible.
This is stated in a public statement by the Group of Relatives and Political Detainees and Executed Persons of Laja and San Rosendo, in a text prepared by lawyers Sergio Bustos Peña, Francisco Santibáñez Yáñez, Hernán Fernández Rojas and Mauricio Araneda Medina.
“We are putting an end to a long, and why not say it, often exhausting, tiring, cruel, and certainly painful path that since its beginning saw practically 51 years pass waiting for this final moment from a judicial and human point of view. “This is the reality and the time we had to face,” the text states.
“It is said and sometimes repeated that late justice is not justice, but we, always with a look towards the future, sincere and without a spirit of revenge, can say that ‘justice, although late, is also justice when it arrives’” .
“Tranquillity”
The statement adds that “once this path is over, legally and humanly, we can express our tranquility for what we did, for the paths we opened, for the truths we denounce, for the relevance that we give at the national level to this cause, which has “It has been and will be the best tribute of memory and dignity for our parents, spouses, brothers and children, those who saw their lives vilely cut short in the early hours of September 18, 1973.”
“We cannot miss this opportunity by sincerely thanking all those who gave us their support and follow-up in this cause, those who shared the distressing days of uncertainty, those who broke the fear and gave their vital testimonies, those who in our towns did not avoid us. and they knew that the events that occurred had painfully transformed our lives, that what we sought was to impose the truth against silence, that the disappeared were their neighbors and to whom death came with unusual cruelty,” they stated.
Likewise, they thanked the media that reported on what happened, such as Chilevisión, CIPER Chile, The counterDiario Summary, Radio Bio Bio, TVU, and many others, and also to journalists, writers, playwrights, actresses and actors, musicians, filmmakers, photographers, “all who gave light in their different forms of work in art to the visibility of our history, the Laja and San Rosendo Massacre, works that today constitute a wealth of history and memory.”
Investigation
The relatives recalled that as soon as the massacre occurred, on September 18, 1973, various appeals for protection were presented, all of which were rejected by the courts of the time.
Later, in 1979 and with the support of the Social Department of the Archbishopric of Concepción, they filed the first criminal complaints against those responsible, which led to an investigation by the Minister of the Court of Appeals of Concepción, José Martínez. “For him and the lawyers Martita Worner, Jorge Barudi, Fernando Saldaña, among others, our eternal recognition and respect,” they indicated.
The investigation by Judge Martínez Gaensly managed to locate the bodies of our relatives, identify them and hand them over for burial, after which he declared himself incompetent and the case was left in the military justice system, which without investigating applied the Amnesty Law of 1978.
In 2010, the case was reopened and investigated by another minister of the Court of Appeals of Concepción, Carlos Aldana Fuentes, who in 2018 handed down a conviction in the first instance regarding the uniformed officers involved. That same court increased the sentences.
After the appeals filed by both the plaintiffs and the defendants and against the ruling of the Illustrious Court of Appeals of Concepción, of August 2021, now the Supreme Court, in summary, practically maintained in its entirety what was resolved in its opportunity by the Court of Concepción, maintaining the sentences of the direct material executors of the 19 homicides, and whose perpetrators were former uniformed officers of the Carabineros de Laja tenure at that time.
Convicts
It was resolved to maintain the sentence of life imprisonment with respect to former police lieutenant Alberto Juan Fernández Michell; the maximum sentence of 15 years and one day in prison for the former police officers, Gerson Nilo Saavedra Reinike, Pedro del Carmen Parra Utreras, Víctor Manuel Campos Dávila, Nelson Casanova Salgado, José Jacinto Otárola Sanhueza, Mario Sebastián Moya Burgos and, Manuel Enrique Cerda Robledo, all those named as perpetrators of the 19 qualified homicides. Finally, the minimum sentence of 5 years in prison was maintained in respect of former police officer Anselmo del Carmen San Martin Navarrete.
Likewise, with respect to 4 other former police officers, Luis León Godoy, Lisandro Martínez García, Gabriel González Salazar and Samuel Vidal Riquelme, uniformed officers who had been temporarily dismissed by Minister Aldana Fuentes, for alleged reasons of insanity, the Court’s ruling was upheld. of Concepción in its ruling of August 2021, in order that it was not appropriate to favor them with said procedural decision and, instead, it was ordered to continue the trial against them by a non-disqualified judge, also foreseeing convictions for each one with penalties similar to those mentioned above.
On the other hand, the ruling of the Supreme Court ended by absolving Pedro Jarpa Foester of criminal responsibility with respect to the homicides, considering that the aforementioned crimes were not attributable to him because there was no fraud or possible fraud in his actions, “notwithstanding that the same Court takes charge of the criminal reproach that deserved the conduct displayed by him on the occasion of the arrests and kidnappings of former workers of the CMPC Planta Laja, mainly his actions consisting of the direct identification of the people who were being detained and kidnapped by police officers at the end of CMPC shifts.”
“Finally, with respect to the CMPC company and its relationship and connection with the criminal acts investigated, our conviction is reinforced that said paper company and its agents effectively allowed, encouraged and facilitated the consummation of the criminal design, as irrefutably stated in the investigation. of Minister Carlos Aldana, in the considerations taken into account by the Court of Concepción and in the reflections and considerations made his own in the ruling of the Supreme Court – supply of vehicles, lime to cover the bodies of the victims, ownership or possession of the property where the victims were sacrificed, proportion of drivers from the company itself, etc.”
At the time, a definitive dismissal was issued for the CMPC executive Carlos Ferrer Gómez and the management driver Rodolfo Román Román, due to their death, considering that they had previously been prosecuted. Regarding Lionel Alejandro Aguilera Covarrubias, the ruling of the Supreme Court did not innovate what was ruled by the Court of Concepción.