The Supreme Court confirmed the conviction of 30 former agents of the dissolved Directorate of National Intelligence (DINA), for its responsibility in the completed crime of qualified kidnapping of the student of the Higher Institute of Commerce of Talca Rodrigo Eduardo Ugás Morales.
The 22-year-old young man, who was also a member of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), was kidnapped in the Estación Central commune, in Santiago, on February 7, 1975. The name of the victim later appeared in the disinformation montage known as “Operation Colombo”a DINA operation that sought to cover up the forced disappearance of 119 opponents to the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
The Second Chamber of the highest court, in a unanimous ruling, established a mistake of law in a ruling handed down by the Court of Appeals of Santiago, where the accused were acquitted by accepting appeals filed by the plaintiffs in the case.
According to the highest court, in those circumstances “it appears clear that the judges of the grade, at the time of resolving the controversy submitted to them and acquitting the accused (…), have incurred the errors of law denounced by the complainantby estimating (…) that the investigative statements of those accused and the evidence of the prosecution was insufficient to consider his participation in the crime as established.
“Despite the tenor of the facts that were considered established (…) It was evident that they, as members of the DINAat the time of the events (…) They worked in the barracks where the victim was deprived of liberty (…) and they voluntarily carried out conduct that falls within the governing verbs of the criminal offense of qualified kidnapping“, determined the Supreme Court.
In this sense, the most extensive sentences were ratified to Pedro Octavio Spinoza Bravo, Raul Eduardo Iturriaga Neuman and Miguel Krassnoff Martchenkoonly of 13 years of prison as perpetrators of the crime. It should be noted that with this conviction, Krassnoff Martchenko, adds a total of 1,030 years in prison for crimes against humanity.
On the other hand, 26 former agents must serve 10 years and one day in prison, as co-authors of the qualified kidnapping; meanwhile to Samuel Enrique Fuenzalida Devíahe was sentenced to 541 days in prison, with the benefit of conditional remission of the sentence.
That, considering “that the events were committed in a context of systematic or widespread attack against the civilian population, (…) (crime) considered crimes against humanity,” by attributing that the former officials transferred the victims to Villa Grimaldi, known clandestine detention center in the period of the civil-military dictatorship.
Review the list of names of those convicted in the Supreme Court Ruling