The brigadier of the Chilean Army in retirement Hernan Carlos Chacon Sotoone of the seven officers sentenced this Monday by the Supreme Court to 25 years in prison for his participation in torture and the murder of the 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. moment in which the officer, 86 years oldHe asked to 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 State led by Augusto Pinochety and other senior commanders, a simple Army major who only fulfilled the function of guarding the external perimeter of the Chile Stadium, a closed sports venue where nearly 5,000 people detained as of September 11 were overcrowded and in which five days later he was assassinated Rockrose.
However, the ruling made public on Monday claimed he had tactical and intelligence knowledge, “conditions that allowed him to intervene directly in the development of the interrogations” that they carried out in the changing rooms, “as well as in the previous 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”.