The Supreme Court in Chile sentenced four retired officers to 20 years in prison for the murder of a young man and the attempted murder of a young woman in the “Quimados” (“The Burned”) case during the era of dictator Augusto Pinochet.
On July 2, 1986, as part of a national strike against Pinochet’s rule, a military patrol stopped a young Chilean man and woman, beat them, poured fuel on them, and burned them.
Carmen Gloria Quintana, who was an 18-year-old university student at the time, survived serious burns, unlike photographer Rodrigo Rojas de Negri (19 years old), who died four days later from his burns.
The Chilean Supreme Court sentenced officers during the Pinochet era: Pedro Fernandez Ditos, Julio Castañer Gonzalez, Iván Figueroa Canobra, and Nelson Medina Gálvez to 20 years in prison on charges of murdering De Negri and attempting to kill Quintana.
Nelson Caucuto, Carmen Gloria Quintana's defense lawyer, said the ruling “puts an end to a very long and arduous process during which an official narrative promoted by the dictator had to be challenged: that the two young men set themselves on fire because they had petrol bombs under their clothes.”
The “Chemados” case had great symbolism in the last years of Pinochet’s rule, which extended from 1973 until 1990, and left more than 3,200 people dead and missing.
#Chile #imprisons #retired #officers #37yearold #case
