PART THREE
Chapter Two (A.1)

1974 through August 1977 (continued)

1. HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS COMMITTED BY GOVERNMENT AGENTS OR PERSONS WORKING FOR THEM (continued)
   
   
   1. OVERVIEW (continued)
      
      
      5. Detention and torture sites and other places used by the agencies for political repression during the 1974-1977 period
         
         This section will describe torture practices in some detail in presenting how prisoners were treated at particular sites. The following section (f) will then deal with torture in more general terms.
         
         
         1. Kinds of sites
            
            We are here dealing with facilities used by the DINA, the Joint Command, and other agencies for political repression during the 1974-1977 period. Of course there were a number of places that the various agencies used as offices. These will simply be noted in passing. The sites where people were held under arrest as a result of political repression fit into the following categories:
            
            
            • Secret detention and torture sites. Some of the prisoners brought to these sights were released after a period of confinement and torture. Others were taken out and killed, and continue to be "disappeared after arrest," except for a few exceptional cases in which the body was discovered. Others were transferred to facilities where torture was not practiced but where they were unable to receive visitors. They then either went to facilities where visitors were permitted, or were released, or returned to secret detention and torture sites from which some were released and others "disappeared."
              
              
            • Detention sites where torture was not practiced but where visitors were not allowed and no one but members of the intelligence agencies were admitted.
              
              
            • Prison camps, like Tres Alamos or Ritoque, where people were held under arrest by order of the executive branch. The prisoners' relatives and others were allowed to visit. These sites were not administered directly by the DINA or other intelligence services. This report does not deal with such sites.
              
              
            • Jails and prisons holding people whose cases were being processed or who had been sentenced. These sites are also largely ignored in this report.
              
              
         2. DINA facilities
            
            Tejas Verdes
            
            Used primarily in DINA's early phase in late 1973 and early 1974, the secret detention and torture facility at Tejas Verdes has been described in some detail in the previous chapter, which covered the later months of 1973.
            
            Cuatro Alamos
            
            No one outside the DINA had access to the prison site of Cuatro Alamos, except occasionally members of other intelligence services. It underwent little change throughout the whole period in which the DINA was actively at work.
            
            The DINA administered Cuatro Alamos directly. It consisted of a series of twelve small cells, one large cell, and offices. Together they made up a complex that was inside the Tres Alamos prison camp (located on Avenida Departmental near Avenida Vicuña Mackenna in Santiago). Cuatro Alamos was set apart from the rest of this camp which was run by the police.
            
            Some prisoners were brought to Cuatro Alamos immediately after arrest, but most were sent there after being held at some secret detention and torture site. There was usually no official acknowledgement of the arrest of people who were held at Cuatro Alamos. People were not tortured there, and life was relatively easier than it was at other detention sites.
            
            Prisoners at Cuatro Alamos could be taken back to secret detention and torture sites or they might be taken out to accompany DINA agents as they were making arrests, if circumstances so warranted. These prisoners might spend a great deal of time in this situation of waiting or being "available." The prisoner might also be removed from Cuatro Alamos and "disappear." In such cases the arrest was never acknowledged, even though many people might have seen the prisoner. Those who were no longer needed for interrogation or for making arrests and who had recuperated from the treatment they had received elsewhere were usually transferred to Tres Alamos or some other officially acknowledged detention site. From that moment on, they could receive visitors and were included on the official prisoner lists.
            
            Initially efforts were made to keep Cuatro Alamos a secret detention site. No one was to know about its existence and location. In order to keep it secret, prisoners were blindfolded when they were brought in, and when it came time to release them, they were blindfolded and taken out and left on a public thoroughfare. As time went on, it became impossible to maintain it a secret, and government officials occasionally, if hesitantly, acknowledged the existence of Cuatro Alamos as the solitary confinement building at Tres Alamos.
            
            Strictly speaking, the prisoners were not allowed to communicate with anyone outside, but they did maintain contact with their fellow prisoners (from two to six or even more in the small cells and from twenty to fifty or more in the large cell). The food and other conditions were poor but better than they were at other detention sites, and hence the prisoners, who usually arrived in very poor shape were able to recuperate to some degree. The staff at Cuatro Alamos were under DINA authority, but were not involved in operations. These were guards and staff who were apparently under the command of an officer from the national prison service who had been admitted to the DINA.
            
            Londres No. 38
            
            This secret detention site was located in downtown Santiago as the address indicates. DINA members operated here from late 1973 until approximately the end of September 1974. This and other DINA sites were previously owned by leftists or left organizations and had been taken or confiscated from them. Londres No. 38 had been the Socialist party office for the district of Santiago.
            
            The treatment of people at this location exhibits the features typical of DINA's first phase, many of which continued: immediate questioning and unlimited torture, continual humiliating treatment, a large number of prisoners, and working under pressure in which excesses and mistakes did not seem to matter. During this first period not enough information had been gathered on the underground political activity to be stamped out, the methods of repression had not been refined, and the DINA did not have all the resources it would later have at its disposal.
            
            The site itself was a relatively spacious older house but it was too small to house the swollen number of prisoners it eventually held and still carry out its other functions. Up to sixty prisoners were held blindfolded in a large living room. Chairs were put out during the day and mattresses came out at night. Prisoners were continually being taken out of this common living room to other rooms for questioning and torture, or they were taken out to make further arrests. Food was also distributed in this room, although at irregular intervals, and it was unsatisfactory in both amount and quality.
            
            The preferred torture method was to apply electricity or the "grill." Probably the most characteristic form of torture here-one made easier by the greater confusion of the initial phase of the DINA in which it was not only the suspect who was arrested but also his or her relatives and associates-was that of putting pressure on prisoners by arresting and torturing their close relatives. These family members were even abused sexually in their presence. Although the prisoners were treated harshly, the crowding and confusion characteristic of this initial period allowed the prisoners to have a good deal of contact with one another and to share information very quickly.
            
            José Domingo Cañas
            
            This was a house in Santiago at the corner of Calle José Domingo Cañas and República de Israel, which operated as a secret DINA detention and torture site from August to November 1974. It was used during the transition between the closing of Londres No. 38 and the beginning of operations at Villa Grimaldi. The number of prisoners varied, and they were interrogated under torture in ways very similar to those used elsewhere.
            
            Prisoners were kept in a relatively large common room like that at Londres No. 38 and in a place called "the hole" which was rather like a pantry, with neither windows nor fresh air. Sometimes as many as ten prisoners were packed into this space, measuring approximately one meter by two, and there was little air. Lumi Videla died at this site during a torture session, as will be described in this chapter.
            
            Villa Grimaldi
            
            Located in Santiago in the 8200 block of Avenida José Arrieta in the La Reina district, Villa Grimaldi was the DINA's most important secret detention and torture site. DINA agents called it the Terranova barracks, and it was already operating in 1974 as the headquarters of the Metropolitan Intelligence Brigade (BIM).
            
            More and more units were gradually transferred to this area. Villa Grimaldi includes a large amount of land, and additions were made to its buildings (now demolished) to accommodate the various functions that were gradually added. The first prisoners apparently arrived in mid-1974 although they began to arrive in greater numbers only toward the end of that year. In early 1975 Villa Grimaldi became the center of operations for the BIM, which carried out repression in Santiago itself. The operational teams had their headquarters in Villa Grimaldi. They took prisoners there for initial interrogation after arrest. They had places and equipment especially prepared for the various kinds of torture. They also held prisoners who were no longer being tortured, sometimes for long periods, while they awaited further possible interrogation or a decision on what was to happen to them.
            
            As the number of prisoners expanded, new places were reconditioned to hold them. These places differed from one another, apparently in accordance with the situation of the prisoner and the effects they were expected to produce. Although the main buildings had been demolished when the Commission visited the area, by observing the layout of the foundations and ruins it was possible to confirm the following description.
            
            The most characteristic places where prisoners were held at Villa Grimaldi were:
            
            
            • "The tower." This was in fact built like a tower with a water tank on top. Inside it there were ten tight spaces for holding prisoners, about 70 by 70 centimeters [two feet square] and two meters high with a tiny door at the bottom which one had to enter on one's knees. There was also a torture chamber in the tower. One or two prisoners were held in each of these cells completely isolated. When there were two prisoners in one cell it was very difficult for them to fit together, and it was especially difficult to sleep. Apparently those who were taken to the tower were prisoners of some importance whose period of intensive interrogation was over. Many of those held in the tower were never seen again. For example, Ariel Mancilla, one of the main leaders of the Socialist party, was taken to the tower after he had been tortured. He then disappeared, as did many others.
              
              
            • "Chile houses." These were wooden structures intended to hold individual prisoners in isolation. They consisted of vertical sections like closets where the prisoner had to remain standing in darkness for several days.
              
              
            • "Corvi [acronym of government housing agency] houses." These were small wooden rooms built inside a larger room. Inside each was a two level bunk bed. Apparently this was the place for holding prisoners who were being subjected to more intensive interrogation and torture.
              
              
            While at Villa Grimaldi prisoners generally were not allowed to wash themselves or change clothing, and they could go to the bathroom only at certain times, with no exceptions. Food was very poor and quite insufficient. These conditions, compounded by torture, led to a notable worsening of the prisoners' health.
            
            There were a number of rooms in Villa Grimaldi especially set up for torture. Some agents applied the various kinds of torture, and others, usually officers, conducted the interrogations, although the officers also sometimes handled the torture instruments themselves. During the interrogation, with or without torture, one of them sometimes took notes on a typewriter.
            
            The most common form of torture was the "grill," which was a set of bedsprings to which the prisoner, naked, was tied and then given electrical shocks on various parts of the body, especially the more sensitive parts such as the lips or the genitals, or on wounds or artificial metal limbs. A particularly cruel variation of this method was to use a metal bunk bed; the person being interrogated was put on the bottom bunk, and on the top bunk a relative or friend was tortured in order to increase the pressure even more.
            
            Another frequently used torture method was suspension or hangings. The person was hung from a bar, either by the wrists or by the wrists and knees. Either way the pain produced by the pull of the body's weight over a long period of time was augmented by the electric current, beating, cuts, and insults.
            
            At Villa Grimaldi people's heads were often submerged in a container of usually filthy water or some other liquid, and were held down to near suffocation. A similar effect was produced through what was called the "dry submarine," which consisted of placing a plastic bag on the person's head to cut off air, also to the point of suffocation.
            
            In addition to these methods, people were tortured and mistreated by being beaten in all kinds of ways, ranging from violent beatings that left serious injuries, to being hit without warning many times while blindfolded. Drugs were used at Villa Grimaldi to get people to talk. At one time there were efforts to hypnotize prisoners, but that procedure does not seem to have produced any results.
            
            Besides these widely practiced kinds of torture, agents sometimes used other methods. Witnesses have consistently testified that at one point boiling water or some other liquid was poured over the Gallardo family (whose case is described below) as a way of punishing them, and as an anticipation of their death. This was a way of getting even for the fact that one of them had been directly involved in an act of terrorism: a sneak attack in which a soldier was killed.
            
            Villa Grimaldi was continually in operation, almost around the clock. The operational teams were entering and leaving twenty-four hours a day, and prisoners were brought in at any moment and tortured at all hours. The atmosphere inside Villa Grimaldi was one of general degradation. Besides torture during interrogation, the officers and other agents and some of the guards were always beating and insulting the prisoners.
            
            As the general headquarters for the BIM, Villa Grimaldi housed a team of agents who were involved in various kinds of administrative and logistical support.
            
            The Discotheque or La Venda Sexy
            
            This was the last of the main secret detention and torture sites run by the DINA. Together with Londres No. 38, José Domingo Cañas, and Villa Grimaldi, the Discotheque was one of the places where many of those who would later be the DINA's "disappeared prisoners" were held during this period. For example, Mario Fernando Peña Solari and his sister Nilda Patricia Peña Solari, both of whom were MIR activists, were seen there before they disappeared (as were many others).
            
            La Venda Sexy was a house located at Calle Irán No. 3037 near the corner of Calle Los Plátanos in the Quilín district of Santiago. It served as a detention site in early 1975 and until mid-year, parallel to Villa Grimaldi, which was the headquarters for repression.
            
            Apparently the team that used this house was different from those operating at Villa Grimaldi, since they operated in different ways. Evidence on the names of individual agents confirms that they were different. The prisoners were kept blindfolded, several in a single room, but men and women were held separately. The food was considerably better than it was at the other detention sites, and as a rule people were treated less brutally.
            
            The agents followed a schedule similar to a normal work day, and when they ended their day the prisoners were left in the hands of their guards. Prisoners were not tortured outside that schedule, and the normally strict rules might be relaxed if the guards chose. There was continual background music, and hence this place was called the Discotheque.
            
            Torture methods were different from those elsewhere since the emphasis was on sexual humiliation. Rape and other sexual abuses by the guards and agents were common practice. The male prisoners were also subject to such abuses. The grill and the use of electrical current were common practice at this site. Periods of torture were often alternated with periods of relaxation, when the agents even acted friendly in order to obtain the information they wanted.
            
            Implacate
            
            Through testimony provided by DINA agents it has been possible to establish that at the far eastern end of Calle Bilbao there was a house for detention and torture that was called the Cuartel Bilbao. In front of this house was a neon sign that said "Implacate." It has not been possible to uncover much about this clandestine center, but there is information on some of the prisoners who passed through. Security measures are known to have been more strict than at other detention sites.
            
            Cuartel Venecia
            
            Located in the 1700 block of Calle Venecia, between Calles Freirina and Quezada Acharán in Santiago, the Cuartel Venecia was initially a private house that served as a hideout for high level members of the MIR. It was taken over in late 1974. The house was offered to a unit of the Caupolicán DINA group. This Commission has taken testimony confirming that this secret barracks was used to hold prisoners and for torture.
            
            Other DINA facilities
            
            General Headquarters on Calle Belgrano No. 11
            
            The DINA had its headquarters at this address located near downtown Santiago. The offices of the head of the DINA were located at this site, as was the foreign department mentioned earlier. There is no evidence that prisoners were held at this location.
            
            Rinconada de Maipú
            
            As the result of an agreement with the Ministry of Education, the DINA (and later the CNI) was able to use a part of the rural property owned by the University of Chile located in an area called Ovejería near Santiago. In practice DINA agents continually used the whole property. Apparently it was used as a training center, and the DINA seems to have run an intelligence school there. There is no clear evidence that it was used for holding prisoners, but it is known that in November 1975 the DINA executed a group of people at this site.
            
            DINA Clinics
            
            The DINA had its own clinic on Calle Santa Lucia No. 120 in downtown Santiago. It was used mainly for DINA personnel and their families. However, on a number of occasions people who were being held by the DINA, including some who later disappeared, were taken to this clinic to be treated for serious ailments or for the results of the torture they had undergone. Ida Vera Almarza was last seen at this clinic. When the clinic on Calle Santa Lucia was closed, the Clinica London on Calle Almirante Barroso served as a clandestine clinic. It served the same purposes as the previous one, but it was better equipped and had a greater capacity. This Commission has testimony from people who were treated there and from people who worked there.
            
            Some sites with DINA connections in the regions
            
            Colonia Dignidad
            
            The Commission examined a vast amount of information on the alleged use of the El Lavadero estate, which belongs to the Sociedad Benefactora y Educacional Dignidad [Dignity Welfare and Educational Association], for holding and torturing prisoners during the period covered in this chapter. This estate, which is usually called Colonia Dignidad, is located in a rather remote area of the province of Parral, on the banks of the Perquilauquén River and the El Lavadero estuary near Catillo.
            
            Several hundred people, most of them of German nationality, live at Colonia Dignidad. The Sociedad Benefactora y Educacional Dignidad is engaged in a number of farming, commercial, and philanthropic activities, including running a hospital and a school, which also receive government aid. Over the years there have been numerous incidents and public accusations about Colonia Dignidad, its activities, and its internal life. These accusations have given rise to numerous journalistic accounts, public debates, parliamentary investigations, and legal actions of various kinds. As this report was being concluded, the government's decision to withdraw the legal status of the association was made public.
            
            It is not the Commission's role to take a stand on issues or controversies outside its mandate. However, it must examine and publish its conclusions on the accusations about Colonia Dignidad, namely that its leaders had some kind of agreement with the DINA allowing it to hold and torture prisoners there, and especially the claim that all trace was lost of some of these prisoners after their time at Colonia Dignidad. To examine this matter and draw conclusions falls within the Commission's mandate to provide information not only on the most serious human rights violations committed during this period but on the surrounding circumstances.
            
            In examining this matter, the Commission had available the numerous personal testimonies it took, the testimonies and other proofs found in court records in Chile and the Federal Republic of Germany, other documentary information, and a vast amount of circumstantial evidence and background information. The Commission wrote to Colonia Dignidad requesting permission to visit, but its leaders wrote back refusing that request.
            
            Having considered all the information in hand, the Commission has come to the following conclusions:
            
            
            • It has been proven that there were various ties between the DINA and Colonia Dignidad. It is a fact that from the time the DINA began to exist as the DINA Commission in November 1973, its agents used properties like Colonia Dignidad's El Lavadero estate and the properties resulting from the division of what used to be the San Manuel estate in the hinterland of Parral for DINA business, such as training its agents or for other institutional purposes. It is also a fact that the Dignidad association bought a house at Calle Ignacio Carrera Pinto (formerly Calle Unión) No. 262, which was known to have been used as a DINA facility, particularly for training a regional intelligence brigade (transaction recorded on May 24, 1974, property put in the association's name the following year, and sold in 1986). It is also known that the head of the DINA and other DINA agents visited Colonia Dignidad and seem to have had cordial relations with its leaders.
              
              
            • The Commission received a large number of statements from people who were arrested by the DINA in Santiago and who say they were taken to Colonia Dignidad at some point and held there blindfolded, and also subjected to torture. It also took testimony from people who were arrested in the area of Parral or in nearby cities and taken to Colonia Dignidad where they received similar treatment. A significant number of these statements substantiate their assertions so well and are so detailed and consistent, that when taken with other evidence, including statements by former DINA agents and even former members of Colonia Dignidad, they cannot honestly be doubted. Hence the Commission must at least conclude that a certain number of people apprehended by the DINA were really taken to Colonia Dignidad, held prisoner there for some time, and that some of them were subjected to torture, and that besides DINA agents, some of the residents there were involved in these actions.
              
              
            • The Commission likewise received specific accusations concerning prisoners who disappeared, about whom the last information is that they were being held at Colonia Dignidad (aside from those who were held there only for a brief period). Although the Commission in fact considers some of these persons to be disappeared and believes that there are indications that they may have been taken to Colonia Dignidad after their arrest, the only prisoner about whom it can in conscience affirm that he disappeared after being transferred to Colonia Dignidad is Alvaro Vallejos Villagrán.
              
              
            • The Commission has also taken into account that other sources, some of them foreign, have likewise concluded that Colonia Dignidad was at least used as a detention center for political prisoners. Among such sources are spokespersons for the government of the Federal Republic of Germany and the United Nations Ad Hoc Working Group on the Forced Disappearance of Persons. Nevertheless, the Commission has based its own conclusions on the evidence it was able to examine directly.
              
              
            The house in Parral
            
            The DINA Regional Intelligence Brigade operated out of Calle Ignacio Carrera Pinto No. 262 in the city of Parral. Its operational or perhaps support responsibilities apparently went beyond this zone. People were also held prisoner there, but none of them are known to have been killed.
            
            Other sites used by the DINA
            
            Military Hospital
            
            A certain number of prisoners who were being held by the DINA, some of whom later disappeared by its actions, were taken to the military hospital in Santiago for medical attention. The hospital did not register patients who were being held by the DINA, and when the courts inquired, it said that they had not been held there. Accounts by witnesses indicate that in general the prisoners at the military hospital were treated well and professionally, and sometimes they were given an especially kind and considerate treatment, within the limits of the situation and pressure from DINA agents. For example it is known that Gonzalo Marcial Toro Garland, a MIR activist who disappeared after arrest, was seen by witnesses at the hospital where he was being treated for a wound he received April 4, 1974, when he was arrested.
            
            Other sites of the armed forces and security forces used by the DINA
            
            On a number of occasions the DINA operated out of facilities that were not its own but were provided by units from other agencies, usually the army and the police. DINA agents conducted their repressive activities at these sites, however, and the only role of the unit at the time was to provide the facilities. One example of this kind of collaboration was the DINA's use of the Maipo Regiment in Valparaíso in early 1975. The DINA's operations there resulted in the execution of one person and the disappearance of eight others, as is recounted below. However, it was more common that prisoners arrested by other intelligence services and various branches of the armed forces, the police, and the investigative police were taken from their facilities and handed over to the DINA.
            
            
         3. SIFA and Joint Command facilities
            
            Air Force Academy (AGA)
            
            This imprisonment and torture site was in operation from late 1973 to late 1974. Formally it fell under the authority of the air force prosecutor's office which itself in practice worked in close collaboration with the SIFA (Air Force Intelligence Service). Prisoners were held in the basement of the Air Force Academy where classrooms and bathrooms had been turned into cells. During 1974 an average of seventy or eighty prisoners were held here, most of them MIR activists.
            
            At this site the prisoners were tortured on the second floor or in the chapel. Those tortures included all kinds of beatings, sticking sharp objects in their nails, suspending them from the so-called pau de arará, and keeping them hooded for a long period of time. They were also subjected to other mistreatment. For example, many of them had signs around their necks with instructions for their guards such as, "No food or water for forty-eight hours," "One meal a day," or "To be kept standing until further notice."
            
            General Bachelet, whose case is described below, was held at this facility and tortured in 1973. José Luis Baeza Cruces, a member of the Communist party central committee, who is disappeared, was also held there. Some of the prisoners who were in poor health as a result of torture and mistreatment received medical care at the air force hospital.
            
            The primary aim of the interrogation conducted by the SIFA and the air force prosecutor's office was to gather all possible information on the military and intelligence apparatus of the parties who were deemed to pose a potential threat. Hence in 1974 repression was focused on the MIR (in addition to the arrest and torture of representatives of the Socialist party and those of its members who had been in the armed forces or police, who had been apprehended in 1973). Repression was later focussed on the Communist party. The information was subsequently used by the Joint Command, a group in which agents of the air force security service played the major role. Some of those arrested and tortured at this site crossed over to become permanent collaborators with the SIFA and later with the Joint Command.
            
            House in Apoquindo
            
            Around the beginning of January 1975, when the SIFA left its facility at the Air Force Academy, it transferred those prisoners it was still holding to a house in Santiago in the Apoquindo neighborhood, just two blocks from the municipal building in Las Condes. That building was used as a secret detention site until March 1975. It was run by agents of the newly created DIFA, which replaced the SIFA. The DIFA offices were then transferred to Juan Antonio Ríos No. 6, but the prisoners still being held seem to have been taken either to the Antiaircraft Artillery Regiment in Colina or to the hangar in Cerillos.
            
            Hangar in Cerrillos
            
            In late March or early April 1975 this facility began to be used as a secret detention and torture site. DIFA agents and civilians from nationalist or ultraright groups were active at the Cerillos hangar. Witnesses have testified that torture was practiced there at all hours: beating, electricity, withholding food, and suspending people.
            
            Nido 20
            
            This is the name given to a secret detention and torture site located on Calle Santa Teresa No. 037 near bus stop #20 on the Gran Avenida in Santiago. In 1975 DINA agents were in charge of this place, and they were assisted by nationalist and ultraright groups. Students from the Air Force Special Training School were responsible for guarding the outside of the building. Torture was practiced there. This Commission has stated its conviction that at this location Alonso Gahona Chávez was tortured to death, and Humberto Castro Hurtado was beaten to death.
            
            Nido 18
            
            This was a secret facility that seems to have been used exclusively for torture. It was located at Calle Peru No. 9053 in the La Florida district of Santiago. Members of DIFA, DICAR, and civilians from nationalistic or ultraright groups, all of whom were operational agents of the Joint Command, carried out actions at Nido 18. The Commission examined the case of Arsenio Leal Pereira, who committed suicide under the strain of the torture to which he was being subjected. An air force doctor visited Nido 18 several times to take care of a prisoner who had cut wounds from a frustrated suicide attempt.
            
            Remo Cero: Antiaircraft Artillery Regiment at Colina
            
            Even in 1974 the SIFA was using some cells inside this base as a detention site. Some buildings erected later were used by the so-called Joint Command. Besides DIFA agents, naval intelligence agents and some from the army (DINA) also used this site. The latter soon withdrew. The group from police intelligence was larger. Civilians from nationalist or ultraright groups who were part of the Joint Command also operated out of this facility.
            
            Several prisoners, including Humberto Fuentes Rodríguez and Luis Moraga Cruz, were taken out by helicopter and dropped into the ocean. There are also reasons for believing that Ricardo Weibel Navarrete, Ignacio González Espinoza, Miguel Rodríguez Gallardo, and Nicomedes Toro Bravo were also taken out and murdered and were then buried on military property in Peldehue. DINA collaborators Guillermo Bratti Cornejo and Carlos Flores were taken out and killed in the Cajón del Maipo. Some prisoners at this site, including José Sagredo Pacheco, died as a result of torture. A doctor visited this site frequently and took care of a number of prisoners.
            
            La Firma ["The Company"]
            
            This facility was located across the street from Calle Dieciocho No. 229. It had been occupied by the offices of the newspaper El Clarín and was now taken over by the police. The Police Intelligence School was set up there. Some of its instructors belonged not only to DICAR but also to the Joint Command. This building was directly connected to the one next door, where the Joint Command had its headquarters in the rear. Various Communist party prisoners, were secretly held at this second building. They included Carlos Contreras Maluje, Juan René Orellana, Luis Emilio Maturana, and Juan Antonio Gianelli. The Commission believes that they were taken out and killed and then secretly buried on the Barriga upgrade. José Weibel Navarrete was held there and later murdered in the Cajón del Maipo district.
            
            Other properties used by the SIFA or the Joint Command
            
            When a United Nations delegation arrived, certain people were held temporarily in a building in the Bellavista neighborhood of Santiago, which housed unmarried members of the Joint Command, and at the Las Tranqueras police headquarters in Santiago, to prevent the delegation from locating those prisoners in the most frequently mentioned detention sites. Moreover, in 1974 the SIFA used a building at Calle Maruri No. 245 in Santiago to hold people temporarily. Their relatives were even able to visit them there. Later the house was used to house single members of the Joint Command.
            
            
         4. Facilities of the Naval Intelligence Service (SIN)
            
            For its repressive actions against the MIR in Valparaíso between late 1974 and early 1975, the SIN used the Almirante Silva Palma barracks in Valparaíso as a detention and torture site. The Commission has declared some of the people who passed through that site to be disappeared, as is noted below.
            
            
         5. The SIRE in Concepción
            
            The main site utilized by the SIRE was the Talcahuana naval base, where a significant number of prisoners was held in the gymnasium and in other buildings. The El Morro stadium and the facilities of the police and investigative police were also used.
            
            
      6. Forced disappearances and other human rights violations: the victims and the motivations of the perpetrators
         
         
         1. Description of the victims
            
            The case-by-case accounts below will provide an account of the identity of each of the disappeared prisoners and the victims of executions and others who died of human rights violations in the 1974-1977 period. The victims during this period can be categorized in three groups:
            
            
            • Victims of the use of undue force or abuses of power committed by government agents without political motivation.
              
              
            • Mapuches and small farmers who were killed or who suffered forced disappearance as the result of repressive actions similar to many of those described in the period covering the final months of 1973.
              
              
            • Victims with criminal records who were accused of being habitual criminals. Those responsible for these crimes seem not to have been from the DINA but rather from other government agencies, as explained in the case-by-case account. Most of the victims from this period were left activists who disappeared after their arrest. The features of this group are analyzed below. There are cases of agents who were murdered or who were forcibly disappeared by the security services themselves because they were suspected of being "soft" or "traitors." During this period some government agents were also killed by private citizens for political reasons.
              
              
            From a political standpoint, the vast majority of those persons killed or disappeared belonged to the MIR, the Revolutionary Workers Front (FTR), or the Revolutionary Students Front (FER), the student section of MIR, the Socialist party, and the Communist party, including members of the Young Communists. Some of the victims also belonged to other parties: the MAPU, the Christian Left, and the Radical Revolutionary Youth. In some cases they were in contact with or collaborated with the MIR, or such was the assumption of those who apprehended them.
            
            In some instances it is claimed that the victim was not politically active or merely sympathized with one party or another. The Commission has presented the matter in that fashion since it had no other evidence but what was offered in each specific case. Nevertheless, taking such cases as a whole, it may be concluded that in many instances these people were indeed politically active. Either the family was unaware of that fact or felt that they should not mention it so as not to harm their relatives as they were beginning efforts to determine their whereabouts and have them released. We do not need to state that in making this observation we are not in any way implying that the seriousness of the violation of their human rights is in any way affected.
            
            Most of the MIR members who disappeared after arrest were young and had finished high school. Many had even studied in the university. Most of them were living in Santiago, although many had arrived in the capital from various provinces after September 11, 1973. The members of the Socialist party who disappeared after being arrested in 1974 were also mostly young people. The explanation may be that after September 11, 1973 many of the top Socialist leaders were arrested, had sought diplomatic asylum, or had left the country. In those circumstances younger activists took on new and greater political responsibilities. In 1975 the top underground leaders of the Socialist party and some activists close to them were killed or disappeared.
            
            Most of the Communist party activists who underwent forced disappearance in 1976 were members of the leadership bodies of this underground party. Their average age was higher than that of the victims from other parties. Many of them had been labor leaders or had occupied government posts or elected office. The victims also included many professional people and people in publishing.
            
            Many women were also among the victims in this period, although the vast majority were men, as can be seen in the statistics at the end of this report. Nine of the women imprisoned were pregnant. It has not been determined if any of their babies were born, or if so, what happened to them.
            
            
         2. Motives of the perpetrators
            
            f.2.1) Why forced disappearances?
            
            

            It is of course very difficult to attribute motives, especially for actions like ordering, planning, and implementing a policy of forced disappearances. To do so would entail not only moving into the realm of the subjective, but trying to discern a rationality in actions that are abhorrent to conscience. The Commission nonetheless believes it must present such facts as it could establish in this regard along with what can reasonably be speculated on the basis of those facts. The Commission believes that this is an important part of the truth that it has been mandated to bring to light. An examination of those cases in which people disappeared after arrest leads to the conclusion that the practice of disappearance had a twofold objective: to kill and to conceal, in order to destroy an enemy who had to be annihilated.
            
            As was noted in Part Two, Chapter One, matters reached a point in which it was regarded as justifiable to destroy an internal enemy who was regarded as assaulting higher and permanent values. The DINA basically defined the internal enemy as the MIR, the Communist party, and the Socialist party. They were so defined on the basis of the degree of danger seen in the ideology and international party connections of those parties, as well as the characteristics of each organization, particularly its size and discipline and its demonstrated or potential ability to draw in members or carry out specific actions, including armed opposition. Air force intelligence (the SIFA and later the DIFA) seems to have regarded the MIR and Communist party as most dangerous. The only repressive actions ending in death or disappearance attributed to naval intelligence during this period were isolated, and they were taken against the MIR in Valparaíso and Concepción.
            
            Destroying political parties meant physically eliminating the activists who made such an organization possible. According to that logic, those who by their training and experience in the party, their positions in the party, and their personal qualities of education, training, persistence, or physical courage were seen as dangerous and beyond redemption, and had to be physically eliminated. A prisoner's unwillingness to be forthcoming even under torture only confirmed that he or she was dangerous. This primary motivation or rationality, heavily imbued with ideology, is inherently contrary to those most basic values of justice and of respect for the rule of law from which human rights laws draw their inspiration.
            
            Besides the primary motivation of eliminating the enemy thus defined, the use of disappearance accomplished other objectives. It intimidated other political activists, and it allowed the government and the security services to avoid having to accept responsibility for their actions. In particular it saved them from having to deal with the legal actions, and other pressures and "misunderstanding" that might have been created in Chile and elsewhere and even among the members of the armed forces themselves, if they had acknowledged having arrested and then executed so many people, rather than arresting and killing them secretly.
            
            This notion of a task that was both necessary and not understood-and was all the more noble insofar as some would sacrifice themselves and dirty their hands in order to preserve the values that serve everyone, without receiving acknowledgement or gratitude from the rest-must be brought out into the open. That notion entails so unacceptable an effort to justify means that are intrinsically unjustifiable and such a perversion of values, that it is imperative that we be fully aware of its gravity so as to prevent its recurrence.
            
            Within this overall picture there are also institutional or personal motivations of another kind, ranging from the prestige or leadership involved in participating and achieving results in what some regarded as war, to other lesser considerations.
            
            

            f.2.2) How was the fate of prisoners decided?
            
            

            The motives just listed apply to most of those who lost their lives, particularly those who disappeared after arrest during the 1974-1977 period. They are particularly valid for the arrest and subsequent disappearance of the Communist party leadership in 1976. However, there were many other situations. With regard to the Mapuche prisoners and others whose death or disappearance was not the work of the security services and not in accord with the logic of their activity, the perpetrators had a number of motivations, such as getting even for political feuds of the recent past, or anti-Mapuche discrimination, or purely personal passions. Killing habitual criminals reflects a distorted notion of the duty to impose order. There have been even more notorious examples of this notion in other parts of the world.
            
            There was some variation in the treatment of activists from left parties, particularly those prisoners who disappeared in 1974, who were predominantly MIR members. In early 1974 arrests were more indiscriminate, and torture was used without restraint in an effort to gather quickly as much information as possible on underground political activity. Consequently, during this period, (and also later to a lesser extent) it is very likely that prisoners disappeared not because of their political importance, which seems to have been slight, but rather because they died under torture or their state was such that the DINA decided that it was not appropriate that anyone see them later. There were some instances of mistaken identity, when the disappeared person was taken to be someone else whom they were seeking. Sometimes the only reason for the disappearance of a prisoner was that he or she had been apprehended together with the activist being pursued. Such was the case of Maria Olga Flores Barraza, who disappeared after being arrested with her husband, the Communist leader Bernardo Araya, who is also disappeared.
            
            In some instances, relatives visiting prisoners in acknowledged detention sites were arrested for trying to pass messages during their visit and then disappeared. Likewise there were cases of staff or guards of the intelligence services who were accused of being traitors and were therefore killed by agents of the service in which they worked. On the other hand, some political prisoners agreed to collaborate and then tried to ingratiate themselves with their parties, which then killed them in punishment. Some people weakened and became ongoing collaborators and thus survived. There were also a few rare instances in which someone powerful in the government, the armed forces, or the police, prevented a prisoner from being killed. Finally there were situations in which the prisoner survived due to strange and complex relations with his or her captors, which are difficult to explain outside of the secret environment of violence and degradation existing in secret prison sites. Some people disappeared after being seized as they were trying to seek asylum in an embassy. The only apparent reason was to punish them for the attempt and to intimidate others who might have attempted to do the same.
            
            

      7. Methods of repression: arrest, torture, execution, and concealment
         
         
         1. Arrest
            
            Over time the methods used by the intelligence services, and especially the DINA, became more sophisticated. During the first few months of 1974, the DINA often carried out arrests in the victims' homes, with numerous witnesses present. As already noted, sometimes relatives or friends of those being sought were arrested. Once they were released, they were able to talk about what had happened. As time went on, the methods became more refined, partly as a result of the vast amount of information the DINA had already gathered. Hence the very presence of witnesses could be avoided and it became easier to conceal what had happened.
            
            Starting in 1975 and even more in 1976, the prevailing method of work seems to have been to first locate the victim, study his or her habits, and then carefully select the manner, time, and place for the arrest. Nevertheless the Joint Command did not exercise the same kind of caution in making arrests even into 1976, and hence relatives or neighbors were often not only aware of what had happened but of the identity of those making the arrest.
            
            In addition to information gathered through interrogating other prisoners and capturing documents, the intelligence services acquired sophisticated methods of intercepting private communications. Sometimes different agents were responsible for the various tasks of locating persons, following them, studying their habits, and seizing them. When those making the arrest identified themselves to those being arrested or their families at the moment of arrest, they often gave false names or falsely claimed to represent a particular institution. However, on some occasions they did identify themselves directly as DINA agents.
            
            
         2. Torture
            
            Torture and mistreatment were practiced systematically at the DINA's secret detention sites and those of other intelligence services, as we have already pointed out when mentioning some specific places. The main object of torture was to obtain information from the victims-either to bend their resistance or to assure that what they had already said was true. A second purpose was to break their resistance or their physical or moral integrity, so as to directly instill fear into others who could see or hear the torture and to intimidate other persons who might hear about it.
            
            Mistreatment, including beatings, humiliations, insults, degrading conditions of confinement, being held blindfolded and poorly fed for a long time, went along with torture and contributed toward the same aims. Such mistreatment, even if it did not fall directly into the category of torture, should be regarded as those other forms of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment that are likewise categorically prohibited by international human rights law.
            
            Often mistreatment or torture were practiced not as part of a particular interrogation process, but were rather the expression of the cruelty or base passions of an agent or a guard. Sometimes they were deliberately used to kill or punish a prisoner.
            
            This section deals with the torture methods used by the intelligence services. Since the DINA was responsible for most of the cases of torture during this period, this account deals primarily with its practices. Observations are made on the practices of the other intelligence services when they diverge from the general practice. The methods described below were used at all DINA facilities, with the exceptions noted in the previous remarks about each particular site.
            
            g.2.1) Usual methods
            
            

            Certain methods were routinely practiced on all prisoners held at secret facilities. These sites had permanent installations for applying such methods and personnel trained to use them. These people were not the same as the officers who took charge of the interrogation, although these officers might take part in applying torture and indeed did so directly.
            
            Such methods were:
            
            

            • The "grill," that is, applying electrical current to prisoners while they were tied to a metal bed spring. The current was applied to the most sensitive parts of the body.
              
              
            • Suspension, that is, hanging the victim either by the wrists or by the wrists and knees for long periods of time. Sometimes the guards made it worse by hanging onto the victim themselves thus adding their weight. While thus suspended the person was given electric shocks, and was beaten, cut, or humiliated.
              
              
            • Immersion, or the "submarine," which consisted of pushing a person's head into a vessel of liquid, generally filthy water, and holding it there to the point of asphyxiation, and doing so over and over. One variation of this method was the so-called "dry submarine," in which a plastic bag was used to cut off a person's air supply.
              
              
            • Beatings of all kinds, inflicted with fists, feet, rifle butts, and chains on different parts of the body, causing serious wounds and even killing people. Hitting people over the ears with cupped hands, or the "telephone," left some people with permanently impaired hearing.
              
              

            The SIFA commonly held back food and water, a method that the Joint Command took to greater extremes. The Joint Command tended to use the "grill" and suspension. It also beat prisoners with such intensity that in at least one proven case a prisoner was beaten to death.
            
            Other methods were also often used, but they were generally extraordinary measures taken when other methods were not producing results. The official in charge of the interrogation made the decision to use such methods. They included:
            
            

            • Torture of a psychological nature, that is, abducting a relative of the prisoner who was not politically involved and torturing or sexually abusing that person in the presence of the one being interrogated, or perhaps threatening such possibilities.
              
              
            • Wounds caused by bullets, cuts, or even once breaking a person's legs by running over them in a vehicle, as well as other fractures.
              
              
            • Rape or other sexual assaults or the threat of them. It seems that at some places such practices were regarded as an excess and were the work of guards or lower ranking personnel without the permission of their superiors. At other sites, however, as is noted, it was common practice.
              
              

            Apparently on some rare occasions officers used extreme methods, because they became carried away with anger or sadism. Among these were burning prisoner's bodies with boiling liquids and unnatural acts involving animals.
            
            

            g.2.2) Other methods
            
            

            The DINA is known to have used drugs (the exact kind is not known) during interrogation, apparently to get people to talk. Hypnosis was also attempted but did not produce significant results. Sometimes torture was relieved with periods of rest between sessions, when there was even the appearance of friendly treatment. The Joint Command also sometimes used drugs and often used strong sedatives when taking prisoners to be executed. The head of air force intelligence and others in that agency fluctuated in their treatment of prisoners. They switched from mistreatment to periods of rest when they would converse about theoretical points, and even lavish favors on prisoners.
            
            Guards and lower ranking troops in secret prison sites also humiliated and mistreated the prisoners in both word and deed, on top of their interrogation. Some of the things they did at some sites seem to have been concealed from their superiors.
            
            

         3. Execution and disposal of the bodies
            
            Information on this point is based on where and how certain bodies were found, autopsy reports, and statements by former security agents, insofar as the information they provided could be confirmed through comparison with the general information available.
            
            g.3.1) Execution
            
            

            It would seem that most prisoners who disappeared were taken from the secret locations where they were being held and were executed close to the place where the bodies were to be buried or thrown. Witnesses testifying on the execution of prisoners on the Barriga upgrade and on the properties in Peldehue say that the ridicule and mistreatment continued almost to the moment of execution. An automatic rifle with a silencer or knives were used for the execution itself. Witnesses have also testified to a way of executing that consisted in taking prisoners out while asleep or drowsy from heavy sedation and putting them onto a helicopter and dropping them into the ocean after first cutting their stomach open with a knife to keep the bodies from floating. The ocean washed in the body of Marta Ugarte, as is recounted further on in this chapter. In other instances the person died at the prison site, either due to direct execution, from torture, or in a few cases, by committing suicide out of desperation.
            
            We also report on some cases during the 1974-1977 period in which people were executed in the street in an ambush or even after being arrested. Such people were sometimes made to run and were then shot in the back. Finally some of the DINA's crimes outside the country were executions in which one or other extremist group from Argentina or the United States provided help. In the Prats and Letelier cases bombs were used to blow up the victim's car. There are some indications of a lethal gas code-named "Andrea" that the DINA is said to have made or possessed, but the Commission did not find any cases in which it could be said that such a gas was used.
            
            

            g.3.2) Disposal of the body
            
            

            As has been noted, the bodies of the disappeared were generally buried secretly, or thrown into the ocean or a river. In some instances the bodies of those who had been killed were left on a public thoroughfare or even taken to the Medical Legal Institute. In some cases people were buried anonymously at a cemetery. In a very few cases relatives were called, and the body was turned over to them when it was already in a coffin which was sometimes sealed. This usually happened at a hospital.
            
            During the second half of 1976 the bodies of eighteen people murdered by the Joint Command were found in the Cajón del Maipo. Only Guillermo Bratti could be identified-on the other bodies the fingers were mutilated and the faces disfigured to prevent them from being identified. During this period bodies were also found on the banks of the Mapocho, Maipo, and Rapel rivers, or washed up by the waves on the beach at Los Lilenes on the central coast, and at the beach at Los Molles, at El Melón upgrade, and on the La Laguna del Maipo estate. On March 21, 1990, the remains of three people were found on lands in Peldehue near Santiago. Two of them could be identified as Eduardo Canteros Prado and Vicente Atencio Cortés, both of them prisoners who had disappeared, but the third person remained unidentified. There is reason to believe that other bodies were buried on these lands as well as at the Barriga upgrade.
            
            The DINA sent some bodies of those who disappeared after arrest to the Medical Legal Institute and even inexplicably had them turned over to their relatives. It can be conjectured that perhaps killing these persons had not been part of the original intention; or perhaps presenting a certain number of those who had been officially executed as killed in shootouts was useful for maintaining a public image that a subversive threat still existed. It might also serve to send a clear message to leftist groups. The latter is obviously the case of the Gallardo family, described below. In that instance, very soon after a subversive action, the security forces made known the names of those involved and claimed that they had been killed in a clash with those arresting them. Actually the DINA had captured and killed a number of people, some of whom were involved in that action while others were not. Another incident that seems to have been intended to send a macabre message was the killing of Lumi Videla, whose body was thrown into the patio garden of the Italian embassy, where many people had taken political asylum.
            
            

         4. Concealing what had happened
            
            An examination of the cases reported in this chapter indicates that the security services and government authorities used a variety of methods to conceal what had happened.
            
            g.4.1) Concealing matters from the prisoners' families
            
            

            At the moment of arrest, DINA agents often gave false identities, claiming to be members of police intelligence or the investigative police. Later the DINA strove to arrest people out in the streets in such a way that relatives or acquaintances of the victims would not be present. After the arrest was made, government authorities systematically refused to acknowledge it to the families or gave false information. The fact that there were no lists of prisoners made matters all the worse. Consequently, for many years, as is noted further on in the chapter on the harm done to families, the relatives of disappeared prisoners went from one office to another attempting to discover what had actually happened.
            
            

            g.4.2) Concealing matters from various Chilean and foreign officials
            
            

            When appeals for protection or other measures were attempted, the courts often asked government officials, and particularly those in the Interior Ministry, about what had happened to the person in question. In some cases the arrest was acknowledged but it was claimed that the person had been released subsequently. In most cases, however, the very fact of arrest was denied with answers which came to have standard content: it was either stated that the Interior Ministry had not ordered that the person be arrested, or that the ministry's files contained no information concerning such an event. The courts always interpreted the tenor of these responses to mean that the government was denying that the person was being held under arrest. No doubt that was the interpretation the government wanted, although the text of the response did not expressly say that the person was not being held prisoner by the DINA or some other intelligence service.
            
            The government also made denials about arrest or provided patently false accounts to United Nations agencies and to the Interamerican Human Rights Commission. Such widely varying replies included claims that the victim did not legally exist, had left the country, had been shot by snipers, or simply had never been arrested. The DINA denied or concealed the fact of arrest whenever various officials of the government or armed forces or people close to the government made unofficial inquiries about what had happened to one prisoner or another.
            
            Various methods of concealment included transferring prisoners from one facility to another to prevent them from being traced, temporarily transferring them to prevent foreign delegations from finding them in a particular detention site, and an elaborate kidnapping operation, which is presented below in the Silberman case.
            
            

            g.4.3) Misinforming public opinion
            
            

            The notable limitations on freedom of the press during this period help explain why there was little public information on these events. Moreover the DINA put particular care into organizing disinformation operations. The most elaborate of these was aimed at convincing public opinion that the disappeared prisoners had actually been killed during infighting in Argentina and elsewhere. These disinformation operations were known as "Operation Colombo." They were also referred to in the media as the "lists of the 119."
            
            In July 1975 the papers in Santiago announced that two bodies had been found in Ciudad Pilar, Buenos Aires, Argentina. They bore a number of bullet wounds and burns, and were carrying documentation and identification cards with the names Luis Alberto Wendelman Wisnik and Jaime Eugenio Robostan Bravo. These were misspellings of the names of two disappeared prisoners, Luis Alberto Guendelman Wisniack and Jaime Eugenio Robotham Bravo. Their relatives went there and established that the bodies were not those of their relatives, and that the documents were clumsy forgeries full of mistakes.
            
            A revealing detail is the fact that the identification photograph for Ronbotham [sic] was in fact that of the disappeared prisoner, but when he was an adolescent. His relatives testified before this Commission that Jaime Robotham's mother had given the photo to a member of the investigative police who had come to her house several times claiming that he was investigating her son's disappearance and that he needed a passport-size photo for his investigation.
            
            In July another body appeared in Buenos Aires. This time it was said to be that of the disappeared prisoner Juan Carlos Perelman Ide. Perelman's family members who gathered in Buenos Aires soon proved that the corpse was not that of their relative. It was easy to see since the body had not been burned even though fuel had been poured over it. In this case as well the relatives proved that the Chilean identification card on the body was false.
            
            Subsequent careful investigation made it possible to determine that these efforts to identify the bodies of people killed in Argentina's political violence with those of disappeared prisoners were a phase in the so-called Operation Colombo, which was implemented by the DINA with help from Argentinean security agencies. The intention was to relieve the DINA of the pressures to which it was being subjected because of disappearances. There is evidence that one of the operation's main objectives was to relieve the DINA in particular of the major pressure to which it was being subjected due to the kidnapping of David Silberman. An effort was made to lend credibility to the claim that he had been kidnapped by the MIR. This Commission has demonstrated that in May 1975 a body with a Chilean identification card with information on David Silberman appeared in Buenos Aires. However, for unknown reasons information concerning that event was not spread in the same way as was done with similar cases later.
            
            The high point of such manipulating of disinformation occurred in July 1975, when the DINA published two lists totalling 119 names of Chileans who had disappeared after arrest. They did so through lavish periodicals especially created or reactivated for this purpose which reported on the death of all these persons outside the country. They were said to have been killed as a result of infighting within the left in the overall context of political violence in various Latin American countries. The Chilean press was quick to publish the news with sensationalistic headlines thus setting in motion a campaign to discredit accusations over disappearances. The result was confusion within public opinion, and humiliation and isolation for the relatives of the victims and those circles involved in defending human rights. In Chile the publication of those lists was reinforced with other news items, whose sources were obscure or unclear, reporting that MIR activists had allegedly left for Argentina or that Chilean subversives were said to be in the country.
            
            The lists were published in the Argentinean magazine Lea and the Brazilian newspaper Novo O Dia. Subsequent investigation revealed that Lea was the first issue of a magazine that did not legally exist and provided no names of anyone involved in it, and that Novo O Dia was published irregularly in the city of Curitiba, Brazil. Further investigation into the source of the single issue of Lea led to a print shop linked to ultraright groups in the Argentinean government at that time. It also became clear that such unusual publications were used because despite considerable efforts the more serious media refused to publish the news.
            
            

      8. Final observation
         
         Having set forth the DINA's objectives and established the means it used, we must not forget (even if strictly speaking there is no need to make this point) that this whole series of grave violations is not the work of an abstract entity. Like any other institution, the DINA was conceived and set in motion by human beings who had to plan it and bring together all the required ingredients. They had to choose people to be members, and they in turn had to be already disposed to disregard even extreme human suffering, or at least gradually get to that point. All these people together did what is recounted here. Those who recruited or trained them for that task must also accept responsibility. Becoming aware that such was the case is thus part of that truth for which the country is striving.
         
         

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Posted by USIP Library on: October 4 2002
Source: Report of the Chilean National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation
(Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), vol. II/II, Part Three, Chapter Two (A.1.e through A.1.h), 483-505.
Note: Digitized and posted by permission of the University of Notre Dame Press, February 22, 2000.