Retired Chilean Army brigadier Hernán Carlos Chacón Soto, one of the seven officers sentenced this Monday by the Supreme Court to 25 years in prison for his participation in the torture and murder of singer-songwriter Víctor Jara and Littré Quiroga in 1973, he committed suicide today moments before he was to be arrested and transferred to the Puntateuco prison to begin serving his sentence.
According to the local press, units from the human rights section of the Chilean security forces showed up this morning at his home in the Las Condes commune of the capital to proceed with his arrest, at which time the 86-year-old officer asked take some medicine and took advantage of the moment to take his own life.
Chacón Soto’s defense maintained throughout the long process that the brigadier was in those days of brutal repression after the coup d’état led by Augusto Pinochet and other senior commanders a simple Army major who only fulfilled the function of guarding the external perimeter of the Estadio Chile, a closed sports venue where nearly 5,000 people detained as of September 11 were overcrowded and where Jara was assassinated five days later.
However, the ruling made public on Monday assured that he had tactical and intelligence knowledge, “conditions that allowed him to intervene directly in the development of the interrogations” that were carried out in the changing rooms, “as well as in the prior process of classifying the detainees.”
According to the argument, he participated in the decision of who was separated to be taken for interrogation and, finally, “the final destination of these, being of all evidence that inside the Chile Stadium there was an order imposed by the rigid structure of the command existing”.
“Several testimonies corroborated that he participated in the selection work, reporting the same to his superiors, for which reason his statements were not credible or credible inasmuch as he maintained that he had only guarded the external perimeter of the enclosure, functions that are not consistent with his high degree, nor with the various elements of conviction gathered”, adds the sentence.
“At the time, he was carrying a 9-millimeter STYER pistol, a weapon fully consistent with the technical description of the injuries that, according to the forensic records, caused the death of Víctor Jara Martínez and Littré Quiroga,” he concluded.