Santiago Court convicts former military officers for death of Bolivian lawyer in 1973
The Third Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeal upheld convictions against two former military officers for the aggravated kidnapping of Jorge Soto Quiroga, a Bolivian refugee who died in custody.
Convictions upheld for death of Bolivian lawyer in military custody in Santiago
The Third Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeal upheld sentences imposed on two former military officers for the aggravated kidnapping of Bolivian lawyer Jorge Ignacio Soto Quiroga, who was detained on 26 September 1973 and died that same day after falling from the roof of the then Army Engineering Command Barracks. According to cronicadigital.cl, Francisco Bórquez Navarro received a sentence of five years and one day in prison, whilst Raúl del Canto Galdames was sentenced to four years in prison.
Soto Quiroga, aged 28, was a Bolivian citizen, married, a lawyer and a postgraduate student at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO). Following the coup d'état in Bolivia, he had taken refuge in Chile. He was detained without judicial order on 26 September 1973 from his residence at Sazié Street No. 2014, in the Santiago municipality, by military personnel from the Army Engineering Command.
In the same operation, his wife Ruth Miriam Canelas Lujan and two family members—Homero Bustos Quiroga and cousin Medardo Navia Quiroga, a Sociology student—were also arrested. All were transferred to the Engineering Command building and later to the National Stadium, from where they were eventually released. Soto Quiroga did not meet the same fate.
Suicide version dismissed by the courts
The Army informed the family at the time that the lawyer had committed suicide by throwing himself into the void whilst in detention. That version was rejected in 2011 by the Presidential Advisory Commission for the Classification of Detainees Disappeared, Executed for Political Reasons and Victims of Political Prison and Torture, which concluded that it was a murder perpetrated by State agents.
The Court of Appeal has now rejected the suicide thesis as there are no supporting antecedents. The court stated that Soto Quiroga was kept on the roof of the building—approximately the height of a four-storey building—without restraints on his feet or hands and without any protective or safety measures, conditions that "facilitated and/or caused" the fall.
The ruling detailed that it was the accused Del Canto who, together with a military group, transferred Soto Quiroga to the Engineering Command premises on Sazié with República Street and led him to the roof. Direct custody fell to Lance Corporal José Enrique Contreras Pacheco, known as "the hairdresser", the accused Bórquez and other non-commissioned officers who were not identified, though they obeyed Del Canto's orders. Del Canto himself acknowledged having gone up to see the detainee and having found him on the roof floor.
The ruling: crime against humanity
The appellate court concluded that "given the established facts, that in the context of deprivation of liberty, executed without right, serious harm has been caused to the victim and for which his captors are responsible, given that they are the ones who took him to a facility that lacked safeguarding elements, thereby facilitating the fatal outcome, verified in custody", its classification as a crime against humanity was correct.
The investigation by investigating judge Paola Plaza established that on 11 September 1973, with a State of Siege declared throughout national territory, the military regime installed from its beginnings a policy of generalised persecution and repression against those considered opponents or simply contrary to its objectives. That policy included arbitrary deprivations of liberty, torture, deaths and disappearances, carried out by State agents and civilians in their service.
The magistrate clarified that amongst the victims of those human rights violations there were both Chileans and foreigners, including properly legalised residents who believed they were exempt from such outrages and who were nevertheless equally persecuted.
The events of 26 September 1973
Soto Quiroga was detained at his residence without there being any order from a civil or military court, nor any record of proceedings against him. After being questioned and subjected to physical mistreatment in his home, he was transferred along with one of his cousins to the Engineering Command building. There he was beaten and questioned again before being taken to the roof.
From that place he fell to the street, at the entrance of the building, dying instantly from cranioencephalic thoracoabdominal trauma. The Court established that all these events occurred whilst Soto Quiroga was under the custody of Army personnel and within a military facility.
The court concluded that the accumulated evidence is sufficient to establish that both Bórquez and Del Canto had participation as perpetrators in the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Jorge Ignacio Soto Quiroga, thus confirming the first-instance sentence.
Source: Google News CL — Crime