Luis Alberto Chihuailaf Arriagada was tortured with blows and electricity in different parts of the body. In addition, he was subjected to other humiliations.
Chile’s Supreme Court on Friday upheld the conviction of two military officers from the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship for committing crimes against humanity against primary school teacher and peasant leader Luis Alberto Chihuailaf Arriagada between September 14 and November 1973.
In the unanimous ruling, the Second Chamber of the highest court ratified the sentence against Manuel Abraham Vásquez Chahuán and Juan Bautista Labraña Luvecce to three years of effective imprisonmentas perpetrators of the crime, after rejecting an appeal filed by the defense of the convicted.
According to the ruling, both retired soldiers are guilty of the consummated crime of applying torture against Chihuailaf, in events that occurred in the commune of Cunco and the town of Quechereguas, in the region of La Araucanía. In addition, the Chilean State must pay the victim an indemnification of 40 million pesos, about 42,400 dollars, for moral damages.
Chihuailaf was arrested on several occasions and mobilized to various Carabineros centers by the agents of the dictatorship. “He was tortured by beatings and applying electricity to different parts of the body,” the ruling details.
Then, the sentence explains, he was “forced by military personnel to dig for weapons, while his captors beat and threatened him, and he was subjected to a mock shooting, among other humiliations.” The victim managed to take refuge in the French Embassy in 1974 and then settle in that European country until today.
The Pinochet military dictatorship, between 1973 and 1990, left at least 3,200 victims in a generalized context of crimes against humanity such as torture, murders and forced disappearances. However, according to complaints and calculations from local media, the number of people attacked would exceed 40,000.
