Morto in Cile Sergio Arellano Stark, aveva diretto la Carovana della Morte con Pinochet, era sotto processo a Roma

È morto in Cile il boia della Carovana della morte, braccio destro di Pinochet, Sergio Arellano Stark. Vigente l’autoamnistia fu condannato ad appena sei anni per 75 omicidi, scontati in una clinica di lusso. Era uno degli imputati nel Processo Condor in corso a Roma.

Quando la carovana della morte arrivò a Temuco nel sud del Cile, ai primi dekllk’ottobre del 1973,  “scomparve” dalla base aerea di Maquehue Omar Venturelli.

Ecco l’articolo del New York Times del 18 marzo 2016:

AMERICAS

Sergio Arellano Stark, Chilean General Who Led Death Squad, Dies at 94

By SAM ROBERTSMARCH 18, 2016

Sergio Arellano Stark, a Chilean general whose airborne “Caravan of Death” murdered opponents of the 1973 coup that deposed Chile’s democratically elected president, Salvador Allende, died on March 9 in Santiago de Chile. He was 94.

His death, from complications of dementia, was confirmed by the Chilean Defense Ministry.

General Arellano was a principal architect of the coup of Sept. 11, 1973, that installed Augusto Pinochet, a fellow army general, as president. He went on to provide the muscle that brutally consolidated Pinochet’s power in the early days of what would be a 17-year reign.

“Pinochet set in motion a series of massacres that came to be known as ‘the Caravan of Death,’ ” Peter Kornbluh wrote in “The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability” (2003).

Pinochet, he continued, dispatched General Arellano “to ‘expedite’ justice in the cases of political prisoners — regional representatives of the Popular Unity government, mayors, police chiefs, prominent trade unionists and civic leaders in the northern provinces.”

“They were removed from their cells, taken away, brutalized, bayoneted and shot,” he added. Mr. Kornbluh is the director of the Chile documentation project at the National Security Archive, a research group.

Ferried by helicopter across the country over several weeks, General Arellano and his combat troops, overruling local commanders, singled out dissidents who had been arrested on trumped-up charges and ordered them summarily executed.

His death squad was implicated in the murder or disappearance of more than 75 Chileans, among the estimated 3,000 who died or disappeared during Pinochet’s tenure.

“It signaled that the most important elements of the armed forces were intent not just on pacifying the country, but on exterminating the left,” Mark Ensalaco wrote in 2000 in the book “Chile Under Pinochet: Recovering the Truth.”

General Arellano retired in 1976. Two years later Pinochet imposed a sweeping amnesty for human rights violations committed after he seized power. But in 1999, the Chilean Supreme Court carved out an exception for unsolved kidnappings and for cases in which bodies were never found.

Pinochet died in 2006. To the end he challenged the charges of human rights violations and defended his regime as an economically vital alternative to the communist threat represented by Allende, a democratically elected Marxist. Allende died during the coup as troops were storming the presidential palace. An autopsy in 2011 established that he had shot himself in a suicide.

General Arellano was charged in 1999 in connection with 18 disappearances and the next year with “qualified murder” in four deaths. He maintained his innocence, insisting that any atrocities were committed by local troops who had exceeded his orders.

The court disagreed, sentencing him in 2008 to six years’ imprisonment. His sentence was suspended because of poor health, which doctors attributed to the onset of Alzheimer’s.

General Arellano was born in Santiago on June 10, 1921. He attended the United States Army Command and General Staff College and spent his career in the military. He was married and had two children.

Pascale Bonnefoy contributed reporting from Santiago, Chile.