The Second Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals refused to grant sentence substitution benefits to the retired military officer and the former head of the foreign apparatus of the Directorate of National Intelligence, DINA, Raúl Iturriaga Neumann.
The former DINA currently has nearly two hundred years in prison for being involved in numerous crimes against humanity, some of them related to the application of sexual torture, when he was in charge of the Venda Sexy detention center in 1974 and was head of the Purén Brigade.
Specifically, the ministers Gloria María Solís, Inelie Durán and the lawyer David Peralta, rejected the request made by the defense of the former general of the Army, last September, denying him the suspension of the effective execution of his sentences for the arrest total domiciliary, thus confirming what was resolved in the first instance by visiting minister Guillermo de la Barra Dunner.
Iturriaga Neumann is one of the 115 inmates of the Punta Peuco penitentiary, and according to the arguments made by his defense in the appeal, presented before Judge De la Barra, age and health factors would have motivated this request.
According to the document, the soldier, who is 83 years old, would have a series of pathologies, including coronary heart disease, hypertension and kidney disease, among others, which would have had him admitted to the Military Hospital last August.
The lawyer Francisco Bustos, from the Caucoto Abogados Law Firm, valued what was resolved by the capital’s appeal court and stated that “having acceded to a request of this type would have violated all obligations regarding human rights treaties, especially the duties not only to investigate or prosecute, but to sentence and impose effective sentences for serious crimes against humanity that include murders, formal disappearances, torture and acts of sexual violence ”.
In this sense, Bustos pointed out that “it seems to us that the decision of the Court of Appeals of Santiago is correct, when confirming the sentence of the visiting minister, Mr. Guillermo de la Barra, and rejecting the substitution of sentences for house arrest that requested the defense of Iturriaga Neumann, since he is an agent of the DINA foreign service and has been convicted in a dozen episodes such as Villa Grimaldi, Operation Colombo, Venda Sexy, in the crime of Carlos Prat, as well as in other causes that still they continue their course ”.
Until 2020, Iturriaga Neumann accumulated 19 effective sentences, each of them 10 years on average, for which to date it would add almost two hundred years in prison. According to the statements he has delivered to justice, he has never shown regret for the crimes committed, and has been considered a “political prisoner.” To this is added that the last time he tried to apply for parole, in 2016, he had a terrible report from the Gendarmerie.
