Operation Colombo: Supreme Court convicts more than 30 DINA agents for kidnapping and disappearance of chemical engineer and MIR militant Juan Carlos Perelman

The Second Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court issued massive sentences against 32 former agents of the National Directorate, DINA, for the kidnapping and disappearance of the former militant of the Revolutionary Left Movement, MIR, and chemical engineer Juan Carlos Perelman, who was arrested on February 20, 1975, in the framework of the so-called Operation Colombo, along with the journalist Gladys Díaz Armijo, a well-known militant of the MIR who after a long time in Villa Grimaldi was released.
The chamber, composed of Ministers Haroldo Brito, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Jorge Dahm, Alternate Minister Raúl Mera, and member lawyer María Cristina Gajardo, sentenced agents Pedro Espinoza, Miguel Krassnoff and Raúl Iturriaga to 13 years of imprisonment in their middle grade, ratifying what was decided by the Court of Appeals of Santiago in its November 2015 ruling.
Similarly, the highest court convicted Rolf Wenderoth, Francisco Ferrer Lima, Gerardo Godoy, Ricardo Lawrence, Rosa Humilde Ramos, Teresa Osorio Navarro, Pedro Alfaro Fernández, José Aravena, Claudio Pacheco, José Ojeda Obando, Heriberto Acevedo, Lis Torres Méndez, Rodolfo Valentino Concha, Hugo Hernández Valle, Juan Urbina Cáceres, Manuel Rivas Díaz, Jerónimo Neira, Silvio Concha, Héctor Briones, Carlos López Inostroza, José Fuentealba, Luis Videla, Raúl Rodríguez Ponte, Palmira Almuna, Osvaldo Pulgar, Roberto Rodríguez, Rafael Riveros Frost and Leonidas Mendez to the penalty of 10 years and one day of major imprisonment in their middle grade. Meanwhile, Samuel Fuenzalida Devia received a sentence of 541 days of minor imprisonment in his middle grade.
Lawyer Nelson Caucoto, plaintiff in this case, was satisfied with the ruling and indicated that it is “a hard blow to the agents of extermination, within the framework of Operation Colombo, through which the DINA tried to make believe that 119 Chileans kidnapped in Chile, had disappeared abroad, the product of internal struggles. Crimes of this magnitude cannot be forgotten or in impunity, and in that regard Minister Hernán Crisosto Greisse and the Supreme Court have given a new signal of progress in justice.”
Juan Carlos Perelman. Image: https://memoriaviva.com/
The facts
According to the investigation substantiated in the case it was possible to establish:
“That in the morning hours of February 20, 1975, Juan Carlos Perelman Ide, a militant of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), was arrested in an apartment located at Avenida Francisco Bilbao No. 2,911, commune of Providencia, by state agents belonging to the Directorate of National Intelligence (DINA) and transferred to the clandestine detention facility called ‘Cuartel Terranova’ or ‘Villa Grimaldi’, located in Lo Arrieta N° 8,200, in the commune of La Reina, which was guarded by numerous armed guards and to which only the agents of that organization had access;
“That Perelman remained in ‘Villa Grimaldi’ without contact with the outside, blindfolded and tied up, being continuously subjected to interrogations under torture by the Agents of the Dina who operated in that barracks, which they carried out with the purpose of obtaining information regarding members of the MIR, to proceed with the arrest of other members of that organization, and was last seen by other detainees on an undesodicated day in February 1975, without any precedent allowing a final destination to be established to date.”
“That later, the name of Juan Carlos Perelman Ide, appeared in a list of 119 people, published -without the corresponding corroboration-, in the national press after it appeared in a list published in the magazine ‘O’DIA’ of Brazil, dated June 25, 1975, which later it could be determined that it only had circulation on that date, noting in it that Juan Carlos Perelman Ide had died in Argentina, along with 58 other persons belonging to the MIR, because of internal quarrels aroused among the members of that Chilean political organization, and, from the antecedents that have been listed in ground 1° it is unequivocally clear that the publications that left the named Perelman Ide for dead, victim of a homicide perpetrated by people related to their political ideology, they had their origin in disinformation maneuvers planned by the DINA and carried out by agents of the same organization, abroad.”

Original source in Spanish