The Chilean Court sentenced two former DINA agents to ten years for a murder

Two former intelligence agents of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1974-1990) in Chile were sentenced to ten years in prison for the murder of lawyer and leftist leader, Fernando Valenzuela. In addition to the prison sentence for Pedro Espinoza and Miguel Krassnoff, the Supreme Court sentenced them to pay 260 million Chilean pesos (304 thousand dollars) to the family of the victim for non-pecuniary damage. The conviction represents part of the comprehensive reparation that the relatives and victims of the dictatorship in the trans-Andean country need, a process that is still a pending debt that the elected president Gabriel Boric will try to begin to pay off.

In a unanimous ruling, the highest Chilean court rejected a cassation appeal and confirmed the conviction for those who were agents of the dissolved National Intelligence Directorate (DINA). The sentence came from Court of Appeals of Santiago, that sentenced Espinoza and Krassnoff to ten years and one day in prison as perpetrators of the crime, although they had appealed it to ensure that there was an error in the accusation.

Specifically, the defense argued that Espinoza’s participation in the investigated events was not proven. However, the Court established that “since an erroneous application of the law pertaining to the cause of infringement of the laws regulating the evidence has not been demonstrated, the facts demonstrated in the judgment are immovable”, therefore the intervention of Espinoza Bravo as the author of the crime of qualified homicide is clearly demonstrated, discernment that does not deserve reproach to this Court “.

Fernando Valenzuela, assassinated by two agents of the Dina

In 2019, the Santiago Court of Appeals had sentenced the former security agents to five years in prison for the qualified kidnapping of the socialist militant María Galindo Ramírez. Krassnoff is one of the military that accumulates the most convictions for crimes against humanity during the Pinochet dictatorship.

Weeks ago, when he was still in the presidential campaign, the then far-right candidate José Antonio Kast defended the idea of ​​requesting a pardon for Krassnoff, sentenced to more than 800 years in prison for torture and crimes against humanity. “The military government, or dictatorship as they say, or regime, ended 30 years ago (…) I have always argued that no one deserves to die in jail”Kast had declared in this regard, adding: “I have a project for the future, a project that invites people to dream for a different Chile.”

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The dark DINA

In its ruling, the Court recalled that the DYNE it was an “organized, hierarchical structure, with its own means, detention facilities” in charge of a Director General “who exercised national command and to whom all its members were subordinate.”

The DINA was the security agency created by Pinochet when he took power after the coup against President Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973. From this instance, made up of members of the Armed Forces and Carabineros, hundreds of kidnappings were ordered , torture, assassinations and disappearances of members of political parties and left-wing organizations.

Different brigades depended on the DINA, including the so-called Caupolicán, whose objective was to combat the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), directly related to the victim of this investigation. This section of the DINA, precisely, was coordinated by the convicted Krassnoff and Espinoza.

The assassination of Valenzuela

On November 19, 1974 Fernando Valenzuela, a member of the Central Committee and Head of Information of the MIR who at that time lived in hiding, he was going to meet another militant in the Recoleta area, in Santiago de Chile. According to the version of the authorities, at a time when a security operation was taking place to arrest him on Santa Filomena Street, the lawyer extracted a pistol and shot his captors, who responded by killing him. But over time justice proved that that story was false.

Indeed, neighbors who served as witnesses pointed out that when Valenzuela was walking down the street, an individual yelled at him to ask him to stop. Valenzuela turned around and immediately received a burst from the machine gun. The two shots to the chest and skull left him lifeless.

The DINA agents then picked up and loaded the body of the leftist militant into the truck that was transporting them. The body was finally found by his relatives in the Legal Medical Service.

During Pinochet’s de facto government, about 28,000 people were tortured, 3,197 were murdered, and about 200,000 were forced into exile., according to official figures. The dictatorship began on September 11, 1973 Y finish the March 11, 1990, almost 17 years of a repressive regime that imposed terror against anyone who dared to oppose Pinochet.

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