The Supreme Court accepted an appeal and increased the sentence against the doctor who provided services at the National Information Center (CNI), Manfred Jurgensen Caesar -brother of the ex-deputy and ex-conventional Harry Jurgensen Caesar (RN)-, for his responsibility in the murder of the professor Federico Alvarez Santibanez. The crime occurred in August 1979, in the Metropolitan Region.
In a unanimous ruling, the Second Chamber of the highest court – made up of the ministers Haroldo Brito, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Jorge Dahm, Leopoldo Llanos and the minister Maria Theresa Letelier– established an error in the sentence that sentenced the doctor to 3 years and one day in prison, with the benefit of intensive probation, as an accomplice to the crime.
The court imposed, instead, the penalty of effective compliance of eight years in prison, as author.
Likewise, the Supreme Court confirmed the ruling in the part that sentenced the CNI agents. Julio Salazar Lantery, Carlos Duran Law, Jorge Andrade Gomez Y Jorge Vargas Bories to 10 years and one day in prison, as co-authors of the qualified kidnapping; and to the doctor Luis Losada Fuenzalida to 2 years in prison, with the benefit of conditional remission of the sentence, as a concealer.
Failure
When resolving, the Criminal Chamber considered that there is sufficient precedent in this case to consider that the role played by Jurgensen Caesar was not residual and that, instead, he had a direct participation in the fate of Professor Álvarez Santibáñez, after being detained at the intersection of Manuel Rodríguez avenue and Catedral street, Santiago commune, and then taken to the Borgoño barracks, in the current Independencia commune.
“That, however, with regard to Jurgensen Caesar, the situation is diametrically different since the elements of conviction contributed to the process do not allow assigning only a residual role to his participation in the events that ended with the fatal outcome in the person of Federico Álvarez Santibáñez”, states the ruling.
“As described in the eighteenth motivation of the ruling under review, the elements of the charge allow us to prove that the responsibility that assisted him is due to having collaborated with simultaneous acts with his interrogators, a contribution that was useful to the agents in relation to the execution of the crime, favoring it, which demonstrates direct cooperation in the execution of the punishable act”, adds the text.
“His participation was necessary and useful for the period that the victim remained captive before his death, which allows, with the various elements of charge, to conclude in the terms of article 456 bis of the criminal procedure code that the participation corresponded to that of the author in the terms of article 15, No. 3 of the penal code”, complements the ruling.
