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CHRONOLOGY - 1995
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JANUARY 19, 1995
Congress approves the construction of the Punta Peuco prison, a special facility for human rights offenders. In exchange for the rightist opposition parties' support of the project, the government guarantees that until March 1998 no modifications will be made to the Military Justice Code, regarding arrest and imprisonment of military personnel.
MARCH 16, 1995
Attorney Nelson Caucoto files legal action before the Inter American Human Rights Commission (OAS) against the State of Chile for the abduction and disappearance of Eduardo Chanfreau, by DINA agents in July 1974.
MAY 30, 1995
Judge Adolfo Banados sentences former DINA chief Manuel Contreras and former DINA operations chief Pedro Espinoza to seven and six years of prison respectively in the assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronnie Moffit. Espinoza enters Punta Peuco shortly after sentencing, but Contreras evades imprisonment until October 1995, pleading for leniency on account of alleged illnesses.
JUNE 24, 1995
Manuel Contreras is sentenced in absentia to 20 years in prison by a Roman court for ordering the 1975 assassination attempt against Bernardo Leighton and his wife Ana Fresno. The ruling is confirmed July 9, 1996.
JULY 19, 1995
Pinochet sues Arturo Barrios, former university student leader and president of Socialist Party Youth, for defamation and
injuries. During a rally in June, Barrios had declared that criminal charges should be filed against the commander-in-chief for human rights violations committed during the military regime. Barrios is jailed briefly and the Supreme Court stands by the suit.
AUGUST 13, 1995
For the first time in Chilean court history the State is ordered to pay damages to the family of a man tortured to death by military personnel. The Appeals Court of La Serena awards US$263,000 to the family of truck driver and Christian Democratic Party member Mario Fernandez Lopez, killed October 17, 1984.
AUGUST 23, 1995
A government-sponsored bill to expedite human rights cases and locate the disappeared enters the Senate, despite objections from senators of the right and the Armed Forces. The bill comes three months after DINA chiefs Manuel Contreras and Pedro Espinoza are convicted for the assassination of Orlando Letelier and as the Armed Forces press for guarantees that there will be no more convictions for human rights
violations. A compromise agreement between Interior Minister Carlos Figueroa and Renovacion Nacional senator Miguel Otero proposes an
amendment to the bill providing that persons involved in human rights crimes would only be asked to testify but could not be tried or arrested and their identities would be kept confidential. Concertacion members of Congress and human rights advocates reject the agreement as a "punto final law" and legitimization of the amnesty. President Eduardo Frei eventually withdraws the proposal in early 1996.
OCTOBER 30, 1995
The Supreme Court upholds prisons sentences for 16 Dicomcar (Carabineros police intelligence) agents, including active duty police, in the 1985 abduction and murder of Santiago Nattino, Manuel Guerrero and Jose Manuel Parada, known as "Caso Degollados."
DECEMBER 12, 1995
A clandestine grave containing the remains of three persons is unearthed in the Peldehue Military Base, north of Santiago near Colina. Two of the three bodies were later identified as belonging to persons disappeared after the 1973 military coup.
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