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CHRONOLOGY - 1993
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MARCH 3, 1993
Retired Naval Captain Humberto Palamara is arrested in Punta Arenas for publishing a book entitled "Etica y Servicios de Inteligencia" (Ethics and Intelligence Services), which is confiscated. Navy Commander-in-chief Jorge Martinez Busch justifies the confiscation of
the book as necessary to protect the confidentiality of classified information. Jailed for a period of 10 days, Palamara is accused of
disobedience and failure to fulfill military duties. In October 1994, a military court sentences Palamara to three years in prison.
MARCH 10, 1993
The Senate Human Right Committee extends to 60 days the time period for denunciation of human rights violations not documented by the Rettig Commission, whose work is continued by the National Reparation and Reconciliation Corporation. At the conclusion of this period of time, the Corporation's mandate is extended until December 1993. A series of congressional acts continues to extend it until January
1997, when it becomes simply the "program for the continuation of Law 19.123," still operating as of mid-1998.
MARCH 11, 1993
Former DINA agent Michael Townley is sentenced to 18 years imprisonment by an Italian court for having acted as middleman in the 1975 assassination attempt against Chile's former vice president Bernardo Leighton and his wife, Ana Fresno.
MARCH 13, 1993
An armed commando of the Lautaro Movement (FRPL) attacks two soldiers on guard duty in a residential area in East Santiago. Two weeks later, Carabinero police arrest the second-in-command of the FRPL and kill a woman member of the organization during a shoot-out in Santiago. Norma Vergara was wanted in connection with the assassination of three detectives in September, 1992.
MARCH 28, 1993
Brazilian psychologist Tania Maria Cordeiro is arrested in Rancagua for alleged terrorist activities. Cordeiro, whose 12 year-old daughter is arrested alongside with her, is raped, beaten and tortured with electric current by Investigations police. Cordeiro remains
in police custody until March 1994, when all charges against her are dropped.
MARCH 30, 1993
Two Carabinero police officers are arrested and held incommunicado as suspects in the triple murders of three Communist Party members in 1985. Sergio Saravia and Jorge Candia are suspected of participating in the throat-slitting murders of Jose Manuel Parada, Santiago Nattino, and Manuel Guerrero.
MAY 4, 1993
Gerardo Roa Olivares files a legal suit against Francisco Martorell, author of the banned book "Impunidad Diplomatica," and against the newspaper El Siglo, for printing the banned book chapter by chapter. The book alleges that Roa covered up disappearances during the military regime. On the following day, the Journalists' Guild organizes a march in support of a protective writ filed earlier in the day in defense of free circulation of all forms of mass media.
MAY 7, 1993
Three political prisoners reject exile as an alternative to imprisonment in Chile. Jose Donoso, Jose Ugarte, and Carlos Rios, whose jail sentences were commuted for exile, ask President Aylwin to reconsider his decision.
MAY 28, 1993
Heavily armed soldiers in camouflage fatigues appear in the vicinity of La Moneda and the Armed Forces building while President Aylwin is out of the country. The menacing stance, which came to be known as the "boinazo" in reference to the black berets worn by the Army Special Forces surrounding the presidential place, is understood to be in repudiation of human rights trials underway and of the possible resumption of investigations into the alleged fraudulent dealings between Pinochet's son and the Army. Human rights organizations such as the Christian Churches Social Assistance Foundation (FASIC) consider this show of military defiance to be behind the subsequent closure by military courts of 14 human rights cases and seven cases in which the amnesty law was upheld by the Supreme Court. Army pressure persuades Aylwin to promote legislation, the so-called "Aylwin law" that, among other things, assures anonymity for informants who come forward with information on the disappeared. Later in the year a storm of protests from relatives of human rights victims and much of the Concertacion, who perceive it as an impunity statute, forces the government to withdraw the legislation on September 2.
MAY 29, 1993
Santiago's former public prison opens to the public before being finally demolished. Visitors were given guided tours, which showed the galleries and the block that was occupied by political prisoners during the military regime.
SEPTEMBER 23, 1993
The Supreme Court upholds a military court decision that invoked the amnesty law in the Pisagua case, related to the investigation of a clandestine cemetery near this town and the execution of 19 persons between 1973 and 1974.
OCTOBER 28, 1993
The military regime's last woman prisoner is released after seven and a half years in prison. Belinda Zubicueta, aged 31, had been condemned to thirteen years in prison by the military courts for allegedly participating in an assault on a bakery, which resulted in the deaths of a police officer and a member of the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front. Arrested April 28, 1986, she regained her freedom through a presidential pardon.
OCTOBER 21, 1993
Seven people are killed and 16 wounded when police pursue alleged terrorist suspects onto a bus on a busy thoroughfare in Las Condes. Aylwin initially defends the police action and only when it is confirmed that all but four of the victims were bystanders does he ask
the Supreme Court to name a special prosecutor.
October 1993
The Supreme Court refuses to appoint a special prosecutor to the Prats case, as is requested by the Chamber of Deputies. The case involves the 1974 assassination in Buenos Aires of former Army Commander-in-Chief Carlos Prats and his wife Sofia Cuthbert. Upon a request from the late general's daughters, the Chamber's Human Rights Commission had initiated an investigation in May 1993 into whether Chileans had been involved in the crime.
DECEMBER 1993
Judge Marcos Libedinsky closes the case related to the assassination in 1976 of Carmelo Soria UN official and Spanish citizen, upholding a decision from the military court to apply the amnesty law. The case had been reopened in 1991 following the Rettig Commission's conclusion that DINA agents kidnapped and killed him. Civilian court judge Violeta Guzman refused to hand over the case, but on November 16, 1991 the Supreme Court overrules her and assigns jurisdiction to the martial court. Pressure brought to bear by Spain compelled the high court to assign Libedinsky to the case.
December 11, 1993
Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle is elected president, carrying 58 percent of the vote in the second presidential elections of the past 20 years. In the Chamber of Deputies, the Concertacion retains its 70 seats over the rightist coalition Union Por el Progreso's 50 seats. However, in the Senate the political coalition is still unable to offset the eight non-elected "designated senators," appointed by the military
regime to serve until 1998.
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