Further indictments against DINA agents for disappearances of socialist militants

Juan Aurelio Villaroel Zarate

Judge Leopoldo Lanos from the Santiago Court of Appeals has indicted nine DINA agents and other accomplices for the disappearances of Juan Aurelio Villaroel Zarate, Clara Canteros Torres and Eduardo Canteros Prado.

Manuel Contreras, Carlos López Tapia, Pedro Espinoza Bravo, Juan Morales Salgado, Marcelo Moren Brito, Rolf Wenderoth Pozo, Eugenio Fieldehouse Chávez, Ricardo Lawrence Mires and Jorge Andrade Gómez have been charged with the murders and disappearances which occurred in July and August of 1976.



Clara Canteros Torres

Gladys Calderón Carreño, Rufino Jaime Astorga, José Friz Esparza, Hermon Alfaro Mundaca, Orlando Inostroza Lagos, Pedro Bitterlich Jaramillo, Claudio  Pacheco Fernández, Eduardo Reyes Lagos, Orlando Torrejón Gatica, Orlando Altamirano Sanhueza and Carlos López Inostroza are being charged as accomplices.

Juan Aurelio Villaroel Zarate, aged 55 and affiliated to Partido Comunista, was detained by DINA agents on August 13, 1976 and taken to Villa Grimaldi. His presence was witnessed by another detainee prior to his permanent disappearance.

Clara Canteros Torres was detained by DINA agents on July 23, 1976 and taken to Villa Grimaldi. Aged 21, married, and a mother of two children at the time of her detention and disappearance, Canteros was a militant of Juventudes Comunistas. Her uncle Eduardo Canteros Prado - a militant of Partido Comunista, was detained on the same day and transferred to Villa Grimaldi.



Eduardo Canteros Prado

DINA denied involvement in the kidnappings and disappearances of both Clara and Eduardo Canteros, despite testimony from former detainees claiming that both of them had been held at the notorious torture centre.

On March 21, 1990, the remains of three disappeared people were discovered in a former military site at Fundo Las Tortolas de Colina. The exhumed remains corresponded to Eduardo Canteros, Vicenter Atencio Cortes and Alejandro Avalos Davidson. The remains of Clara Canteros and Juan Villaroel were never discovered.

All three detentions and disappearances formed part of a DINA plan to eliminate all traces of formidable opposition to the dictatorship by targeting socialist and communist leaders, in order to weaken the structure of resistance.