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Eugenio Berríos - Magda Hassan - 08-05-2013

Eugenio Berríos Sagredo (November 14, 1947 - 1992) was a Chilean biochemist who worked for the DINA intelligence agency. Berríos was charged with carrying out Proyecto Andrea in which Pinochet ordered the production of sarin gas, a chemical weapon used by the DINA. Sarin gas leaves no trace and victims' deaths closely mimic heart attacks.[SUP][1][/SUP] Other biochemical weapons produced by Berríos included anthrax and botulism .[SUP][2][/SUP] Berríos also allegedly produced cocaine for Pinochet, who then sold it to Europe and the United States.[SUP][2][/SUP] Wanted by the Chilean authorities for involvement in the Letelier case, he escaped to Uruguay in 1991, at the beginning of the Chilean transition to democracy, and what has been identified as his corpse was found in 1995 near Montevideo.


DINA agent

Known in the DINA under his alias "Hermes", for which he began to work in 1974, Berríos was connected to the creation of the explosive used for Orlando Letelier's car-bombing assassination in Washington, D.C. in 1976.[SUP][3][/SUP] In April 1976, Berríos synthesizedsarin.[SUP][3][/SUP] He was also suspected, along with DINA agent Michael Townley, of the torture and assassination of the Spanish citizenCarmelo Soria.
In 1978, Townley, in a sworn but confidential declaration, stated that sarin gas was produced by the DINA under Berríos' direction. He added that it was used to assassinate the real state archives custodian Renato León Zenteno and the Chilean Army Corporal Manuel Leyton.[SUP][4][/SUP]
Former head of DINA Manuel Contreras declared to Chilean justice officials in 2005 that the CNI, successor of DINA, handed out monthly payments between 1978 and 1990 to the persons who had worked with Townley in Chile, all members of the far-right groupPatria y Libertad: Mariana Callejas (Townley's wife), Francisco Oyarzún, Gustavo Etchepare and Berríos.[SUP][5][/SUP] According to La Nación, Berríos also worked with drug traffickers and Drug Enforcement Administration agents.[SUP][6][/SUP]
Frei Montalva

Questioned in March 2005 by Judge Alejandro Madrid about ex-Chilean Christian Democrat President Eduardo Frei Montalva's death, DINA agent Michael Townley acknowledged links between Colonia Dignidad, led by ex-Nazi Paul Schäfer, and DINA on one hand, and the Laboratorio de Guerra Bacteriológica del Ejército (Army Biological Warfare Laboratory) on the other hand. It is suspected that the toxin that killed Frei Montalva in a Santa Maria clinic in 1982 was created there. This new laboratory in Colonia Dignidad would have been, according to him, the continuation of the laboratory that the DINA had in Via Naranja de lo Curro, where he worked with Eugenio Berríos in the clandestine unit Quetropilla.[SUP][3][/SUP] Townley would also have testified on biological experiments made upon the prisoners in Colonia Dignidad with the help of the two above-mentioned laboratories.[SUP][7][/SUP]
Escape, death and trial

On 26 October 1991,[SUP][8][/SUP] a year before the "terror archives" were found in Paraguay, Eugenio Berríos was escorted from Chile to Uruguay by the Special Unity of the DINE (Army's Intelligence agency), in order to escape testifying before a Chilean court in the Letelier caseand in the other case concerning the 1976 assassination of the Spanish diplomat and CEPAL civil servant Carmelo Soria.[SUP][9][/SUP][SUP][10][/SUP] He had just been indicted by the magistrate Adolfo Bañados in charge of the Letelier case.[SUP][1][/SUP]
This is known as "Operation Silencio", which started in April 1991 in order to impede investigations by Chilean judges concerning crimes committed during Pinochet's dictatorship, with the spiriting away of Arturo Sanhueza Ross, linked to the murder of MIR leaderJecar Neghme in 1989. According to the Rettig Report, Jecar Neghme's death was carried out by Chilean intelligence agents.[SUP][11][/SUP] In September 1991, Carlos Herrera Jiménez, who killed trade-unionist Tucapel Jiménez, flew away, before Berríos who followed in October 1991.[SUP][6][/SUP] Berríos then used four different passports, Argentinian, Uruguayan, Paraguayan and Brazilian, lifting concerns about Operation Condor still being in place. In Uruguay, he was protected by members of the Chilean and Uruguayan military intelligence as part of La cofradia, alleged to be the direct heir of Operation Condor.
In Uruguay, Berrios was hidden in the house of the Uruguayan Colonel Eduardo Radaelli, using the alias of "Tulio Orellana".[SUP][12][/SUP] Berríos, however, escaped from Radaelli's home and presented himself on 15 November 1992 to a local police office in order to claim he had been kidnapped.[SUP][13][/SUP] Uruguayan military officers Tomas Casella and Eduardo Radaelli then went to the police office to request the police to hand over Berríos, which was done. He was then never seen again.[SUP][12][/SUP]
In February 1993, Pinochet travelled to Uruguay, and the Uruguayan Tomas Casella was appointed as his aide-de-camp.[SUP][12][/SUP] Casella, Radaelli and Washington Sarli (another Uruguayan military officer) then travelled, the same year, to Chile, to attend intelligence courses, although the courses were then cancelled (according to Casella, because some countries' intelligence officers could not attend) and they were invited to pass some days, with costs paid, in the Termas de Puyehue.[SUP][12][/SUP] In a 2007 interview, Casella stated that he had first entered into contact with Berríos in March 1992 under the requests of a Chilean intelligence officer, and that he had immediately informed General Mario Aguerrondo, then head of the SID Uruguayan military intelligence agency (now retired), who allegedly ordered him to remain in contact with the Chileans.[SUP][12][/SUP]
In June 1993, an anonymous letter sent to various Uruguayan deputies denounced Berríos' presence in the country, leading them to request of President Luis Alberto Lacalle's government immediate investigations.[SUP][1][/SUP] Lacalle immediately, on June 6, 1993, dismissed the police chief of Canelones, Ramón Rivas, on charges of not having informed him of what had occurred. Three days later official investigations were initiated concerning the Berríos case. On June 9, 1993, 14 Army Generals met with the Minister of Defence Mariano Brito, and two days later, General Mario Aguerrondo was dismissed.[SUP][14][/SUP]
Finally, a corpse, identified by the Uruguayan justice as that of Berrios, was found in April 1995 in a beach of El Pinar, near Montevideo, with two gunshots in the back of the neck, his murderers having tried to make the identification of his body impossible. However,forensic dentistry immediately led to his identification as Berríos. Furthermore, DNA fingerprinting was also done several years later.
According to the daughter of Carmelo Soria, the Spanish diplomat assassinated in 1976, Chilean Eduardo Aldunate Hermann, second-in-command of the MINUSTAH United Nations force in Haiti, was also involved in the assassination of Eugenio Berríos.[SUP][15][/SUP]
Three Uruguayan military officers (Tomas Casella, Washington Sarli and Eduardo Radaelli [SUP][13][/SUP]) have been extradited in April 2006 to Chile and were detained there, before being released on bail in September 2006.[SUP][12][/SUP][SUP][16][/SUP][SUP][17][/SUP] In October 2006, the Court of Appeal of Santiago stripped Pinochet's parliamentary immunity (who was, in 1992, head of the Chilean military), opening up the way for his judgment concerning the homicide of Berríos.[SUP][17][/SUP] Furthermore, the former directors of the DINE, Hernán Ramírez Rurange and Eugenio Covarrubias, have been charged of obstruction to justice in this case.[SUP][9][/SUP] Ramírez Rurange, several other Chilean militaries and one civilian, and the three Uruguayan officers have also been charged of sequestration, while Eugenio Covarrubias was charged with sequestration and homicide.[SUP][9][/SUP] Emilio Rojas Gómez, the former Chilean cultural attaché in Montevideo, was also charged with obstruction of justice.[SUP][9][/SUP]
Allegations concerning Berríos' disappearance

In July 2006, after having denounced Augusto Pinochet's involvement in the cocaine trade, former DINA director Manuel Contrerasasserted in a judicial document handed to judge Claudio Pavez, presiding over the investigation concerning the 1992 assassination of Colonel Gerardo Huber, that Berríos was in fact alive and now worked for the DEA.[SUP][16][/SUP] Contreras' lawyer, Fidel Reyes, alleged that the corpse discovered in El Pinar belonged in reality to a foreigner, and that Berríos allegedly had in 2004 attended the funeral, in Chile, of one of his close relative.[SUP][16][/SUP] According to Contreras' deposition, the cocaine (which was "black cocaine" especially made to be undetectable) was produced by Berríos in a military installation in Talagante, and both Pinochet's son, Marco Antonio Pinochet, and the businessman Edgardo Batich were involved in the drug trade.[SUP][16][/SUP] The money from the trade was allegedly directly put in Pinochet's bank accounts abroad.[SUP][16][/SUP]
Manuel Contreras' allegations concerning Berríos' alleged survival have been flatly denied by the Uruguayan judge in charge of investigating his assassination, who claims that she is "99% sure" of the identification of the corpse found in 1995, and added that DNAanalysis had been made a few years later.[SUP][13][/SUP]
Film

The Uruguayan film director Esteban Schroeder produced a movie, Matar a todos, loosely based on Berríos' murder. The movie was adapted from the book 99 por ciento asesinado written by the Uruguayan writer Pablo Vierci, and was presented in the San Sebastián International Film Festival.[SUP][18][/SUP]
See also
References


External links


Eugenio Berríos - Magda Hassan - 08-05-2013

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[TD="width: 100%"]Pinochet's Mad Scientist
By Samuel Blixen
December 9, 2009 (Originally Posted January 13, 1999)
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Editor's Note: Chilean Judge Alejandro Madrid has accused the dictatorship of the late Gen. Augusto Pinochet of using poison to assassinate a political rival, former President Eduardo Frei Montalva, who died after surgery in 1982.
According to the judge's indictment released Monday, Pinochet operatives administered mustard gas and thallium to Frei causing his death that was explained at the time as septic shock resulting from stomach hernia operation. Madrid charged three Pinochet associates with Frei's murder.
Frei's family has long alleged that the former president was poisoned. Their suspicions centered on a mysterious chemist, Eugenio Berrios, who developed other poisons that Pinochet's operatives used for political assassinations. However, Berrios was himself murdered after fleeing to Uruguay from Chile.
In 1999, South American journalist Samuel Blixen wrote the following article about Berrios's grisly fate:
On Nov. 15, 1992, a terrified scientist -- trapped inside a white bungalow in the Uruguayan beach town of Parque del Plata -- broke a window to escape. Chubby, in his mid-40s, the man struggled through the opening.
"I am a Chilean citizen," the scientist told the police. He pulled a folded photostatic copy of his identification papers concealed in his right shoe. "I have been abducted by the armies of Uruguay and my country," he claimed.Once outside, furtively and slowly, he picked his way through the town's streets to the local police station.
The scientist, rumpled with a graying beard, said he feared for his life. He insisted that his murder had been ordered by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, then the chief of Chile's army who had ruled as a dictator from 1973 to 1990.
The motive for the execution order was the man's anticipated testimony at a politically sensitive trial in Chile, a case that could have sent reverberations all the way to Washington, D.C., potentially embarrassing the man who in November 1992 still sat in the White House, President George H.W. Bush.
The scientist had worked as an accomplice in a terror campaign that included the bombing deaths of Chilean dissident Orlando Letelier and an American co-worker Ronni Moffitt as they drove to work in Washington in 1976. That terrorist attack in America's capital had occurred when George H.W. Bush was CIA director, despite prior warnings to the CIA about the plot.
'Unbalanced' Chilean
The police in Parque del Plata, a beach town about 30 kilometers from Uruguay's capital Montevideo, weren't sure what to make of the man's convoluted tale.
A Uruguayan army officer had alerted them earlier that an "unbalanced" Chilean prisoner was on the loose. The scientist, who had escaped from a house owned by a Uruguayan army officer, apparently was that man.
But the issue was quickly taken out of the hands of local authorities. A half an hour after the man's arrival, armed and uniformed Uruguayan army troops burst into the police precinct station and seized control. At their head was the district police chief, a retired army colonel named Ramon Rivas.
Rivas ordered that the Chilean scientist be turned over to the soldiers. The police were told that two Uruguayan army officers would then escort the scientist out of Uruguay to Brazil. Faced with soldiers brandishing rifles, the police relented. The scientist was led away.
From that moment, the scientist's fate became a complex kidnap-murder mystery, with improbable twists and turns, an apparent disinformation trick, raw political power, a grisly discovery and, finally, forensic science.
The disappearance of the scientist, a biochemist named Eugenio Berrios, also has relevance to ongoing legal battles seeking to hold Pinochet accountable for thousands of human rights cases during his reign as Chile's dictator and for an international terror campaign that hunted down opponents of the dictatorships in Chile and other South American countries in the 1970s.
The case also underscores the enduring power of right-wing military officers within the fragile democracies of South America -- and the difficulty of bringing Pinochet to justice in Chile.
Poison Gas
The mystery of Eugenio Berrios starts in 1974 when he began doing scientific research for Chile's feared intelligence service, DINA.
Berrios worked closely with an American-born DINA agent, Michael Townley, in a clandestine unit known by the name "Quetropilla." The base of operations was a sprawling, multi-level house -- registered to Townley but purchased by DINA -- in Lo Currro, a wooded, middle-class neighborhood of Santiago, Chile.
One of Berrios's assignments was the development of sarin gas that could be packaged in spray cans for use in assassinations. DINA officials thought the nerve gas could create lethal symptoms that might be confused with natural causes while giving time for the assailants to escape.
The need for sophisticated murder devices grew more important for Pinochet's intelligence teams when they turned their sights on political enemies living abroad in 1975.
In September 1975, DINA chief Manuel Contreras launched an international assassination project called Operation Condor, named after the powerful vulture that traverses the Andes mountains from Colombia to the Strait of Magellan.
The theory behind Condor was that enemies of South American military dictatorships should be hunted down wherever they sought refuge, whether in the nations of participating governments or elsewhere.
In October 1975, after soliciting $600,000 in special funds from Pinochet, Contreras chaired the organizational meeting of Operation Condor with military intelligence chiefs from Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil.
After the meeting, the intelligence services stepped up their trans-national coordination. More than 100 Chileans were rounded up and returned to Chile for execution. Others were gunned down where they were found.
According to later testimony by DINA agent Townley, Berrios made a major contribution to the cause in April 1976 by recreating sarin, a poisonous nerve gas first invented by the Nazis during World War II.
Townley said the original plan for assassinating Orlando Letelier -- who had been foreign minister under Chile's leftist elected government of Salvador Allende, who was overthrown and killed in Pinochet's 1973 coup -- was to use a female operative to seduce the debonair former diplomat and then administer a liquid form of sarin concealed in a Chanel perfume bottle.
But Berrios also supplied the operation with explosive devices in case the nerve gas proved unworkable.
In September 1976, Townley entered the United States on an official Chilean passport with a false name. He contacted anti-Castro Cubans and recruited their help in hunting down Letelier, a vocal critic of Pinochet.
When the Cubans refused to participate unless the Chileans had a direct role in the assassination, Townley switched from poison to a car bomb.
The assassins traveled to Washington where the exiled Letelier lived and worked at a left-of-center think tank, the Institute for Policy Studies. They planted the bomb under Letelier's car and followed Letelier as he and two American associates drove to the IPS offices on Sept. 21, 1976.
As the car proceeded past the ornate buildings of Embassy Row on Massachusetts Avenue, the assassins detonated the bomb. Letelier and one American, Ronni Moffitt, died in the blast. Moffitt's husband was wounded.
Bush's CIA
Despite official requests, George H.W. Bush's CIA provided little help unraveling the mystery. Only later would authorities discover that the CIA director's office received a warning about the Townley operation but failed to stop it. [For details, see Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege.]
Still, the FBI and federal prosecutors managed to uncover Operation Condor and break the Letelier case. Extradited to the United States, Townley agreed to plead guilty, serve a short prison sentence and enter a federal witness protection program.
But progress in bringing to justice the architects of the terror campaign was much slower, given Pinochet's continued hold on power through 1990. Long-term U.S. pressure, however, finally led to criminal charges in Chile against former DINA chief Contreras.
Berrios, who continued to work on assassination schemes even after Townley's arrest, emerged as a prospective witness. In October 1991, a Chilean judge called Berrios to testify. The move sent chills through the Chilean military establishment.
It became important for DINA to get Berrios beyond the reach of the Chilean court. That month, Capt. Carlos Herrera Jiminez, a former intelligence officer, escorted Berrios from Santiago on a clandestine trip through the Andes to Argentina.
To hide Berrios, the old Condor network quickly reasserted itself. From Buenos Aires, Uruguayan counterintelligence chief, Lt. Col. Thomas Casella, coordinated Berrios's move to Uruguay. There, Berrios and Herrara holed up in a Montevideo apartment rented by Casella, who frequently had trained with the Chilean military.
But complications continued to arise. In February 1992, while on a trip to Buenos Aires, Capt. Herrara was arrested on an Interpol warrant connecting him to another assassination plot. That forced other Chilean agents to take charge of Berrios in Uruguay. Berrios was becoming a burden -- as well as a risk -- to Chile's intelligence services.
Gen. Emilio Timmerman, a military officer at the Chilean embassy in Montevideo, assumed the Berrios duty. But Timmerman complained to an embassy cultural attaché, Emilio Rojas, that "it is costing us too much money."
Timmerman, who later became second-in-command of the Chilean army, also was growing nervous. Timmerman ordered Rojas to keep his mouth shut about Berrios's whereabouts, the cultural attaché said later.
By November 1992, Berrios realized that his Chilean superiors might want him silenced -- as the safest and cheapest alternative to a long exile. He apparently overheard his captors discussing Pinochet's orders for them to eliminate the scientist.
A Disappearance
So, on Nov. 15, 1992, Berrios climbed through the broken window of the white bungalow and fled to the precinct station at Parque del Plata. He begged the police to protect him, but the escape was cut short by the intervention of Uruguayan troops. Berrios disappeared.
Exactly what happened next remains a mystery. Senior Uruguayan officials only learned about the November 1992 police confrontation the next June from an anonymous caller.
The discovery of the abduction touched off a political crisis inside the Uruguayan government where the army still wielded great power. Uruguayan President Luis Alberto Lacalle was in Great Britain when the story broke. He immediately ducked out of a reception at the Uruguayan embassy in London and flew back to Montevideo.
There, Lacalle met with 14 of the 16 generals heading the armed forces. After four hours of tough negotiations and threats from 12 generals, Lacalle backed down to avoid a new military challenge to the civilian government.
The president relented on his initial inclination to impose severe sanctions against the intelligence services. Lacalle did fire the police chief, Rivas, but agreed only to transfer the head of military intelligence, Mario Aguerrondo.
As for Berrios's fate, Col. Casella, who had supplied an apartment for hiding Berrios, reported that Berrios had gone to Brazil. The colonel assured the government that he had talked to Berrios by phone at the end of November 1992, weeks after his disappearance.
There were public doubts that Berrios was still alive. But another assurance about Berrios's well-being surfaced in Europe. The Uruguayan consulate in Milan received an anonymous letter supposedly signed by Berrios and a photo of him holding a recent issue of the Milan newspaper, Il Messagiero.
President Lacalle, seeking political peace with Uruguay's military, announced that "Berrios is not in Uruguay. He is somewhere else." That made the Berrios mystery "a Chilean matter" again, the Uruguayan president declared.
At the end of the crisis, Uruguay's foreign minister Sergio Abreu met with the Chilean ambassador and bluntly admitted that Lacalle had no choice but to "doblar el pescuezo" -- "let it go."
If President Lacalle pursued sanctions against powerful figures in the military, the 12 generals had threatened another military coup, the foreign minister said. Chile's ambassador cabled that news back to Santiago, according to a cable that I later obtained.
For Uruguay, the Berrios case was closed -- or so the authorities thought.
Grisly Discovery
The Berrios case resurfaced, quite literally, in April 1995 when two fishermen found a man's decomposed body partially buried at a beach in El Pinar, another resort town about 25 kilometers from Montevideo. The body had broken bones suggesting torture, was wrapped in wire, and had two .45-calibre bullet holes in the back of the neck and head.
Forensic doctors used new research techniques to reconstruct the victim's face. The face looked remarkably like Berrios.
DNA tests were ordered on the remains with comparisons made against genetic samples from Berrios's relatives. In early 1996, forensic specialists concluded, with near certainty, that the dead man was Berrios. They also placed the date of his death as the first half of March 1993, just four months after his abduction.
The findings contradicted the June 1993 photograph -- which presumably had been composed using computer graphics to insert a current issue of the Italian newspaper into the photo. But the timing of Berrios's death added yet another side to the mystery.
In March 1993, Pinochet had made a personal visit to Uruguay accompanied by 12 bodyguards and with Col. Casella joining his entourage. In Uruguay, there were suspicions that Pinochet might have used the visit to confront Berrios one more time about his knowledge and then eliminate him.
But few observers in either Uruguay or Chile believe that those civilian governments were strong enough -- or determined enough -- to follow the Berrios case and others to clear answers.
The nations of Operation Condor remained in the grip of the vulture's powerful claws.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/120909a.html

Eugenio Berríos - Magda Hassan - 08-05-2013

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=G497QpeEqpwC&pg=PA190&lpg=PA190&dq=gas+sarin+eugenio+berrios&source=bl&ots=QgFO5Sstw-&sig=HVQzs8ZEIZ0I7xFU96EWbRJ4TkQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=tp2JUcnWJqSBiQff4IGoDQ&ved=0CEsQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=gas%20sarin%20eugenio%20berrios&f=false

Eugenio Berríos - Magda Hassan - 08-05-2013

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[size=12]From Perpetrator to Victim:
The Case of Eugenio Berrios Sagredo

By Maxine Lowy with collaboration from Joanna Klonsky[/SIZE]
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[TD="width: 312, align: left"][size=12]From Perpetrator to Victim[/SIZE]
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[TD="width: 312, align: left"]Cases in which Berrios is implicated[/TD]
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[TD="width: 312, align: left"]The Poisoning of Political Prisoners[/TD]
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[TD="width: 312, align: left"]The Death of Eduardo Frei Montalva[/TD]
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[size=12]From Perpetrator to Victim[/SIZE]

The systematic repression exercised as state policy for the objective of installing fear for psychosocial control of the population was the scaffolding that sustained 17 years of dictatorship in Chile. The professional tormentors of the DINA and its successor, as of 1977, the CNI, state agencies that put that policy into practice, had no qualms about inflicting extreme pain or of degrading the dignity of other human beings. And when one of their ranks softened his hand or threatened to break the code of loyalty, they had no scruples in converting their former colleague into victim.

However, that was not the case of Eugenio Berrios, who once boasted that he could cause death with a single drop of the substance he developed in the DINA chemical lab. Nor did he have compassion nor did he show any sign of repentance.

Attorney Fabiola Letelier is emphatic in this regard: there is no indication that the former DINA ex agent was willing to cooperate in court.

In Eugenio Berrios, the combination of an arrogant personality with loquaciousness when under the influence of alcohol made him become a risk for former repressive operatives who remained in active military service in the early years of the new transitional democracy in Chile.

This was a risk factor that exploded like a suicide bomb, converting Berrios, the perpetrator into victim.

Eugenio Berrios studied chemistry at the University of Concepcion, where during a brief period of time he joined the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), only to abandon it when a woman rejected his amorous intentions. Humiliated, Berrios left Concepcion to complete his degree at the University of Chile in Santiago and turned virulently against MIR. There he met Michael Townley, a US citizen, and both joined the ultra right organization Patria y Libertad. After the military coup, both Townley and Berrios joined the DINA as civilians.

In order to carry out Project Andrea, the grand program of the DINA to manufacture lethal chemicals, Townley traveled to the United States, England and Europe to obtain the substances needed to set up the lab.

Attorney Fabiola Letelier indicates:
[size=12]Those substances were sent to him from outside Chile and arrangements had to be made with customs officials to avoid having to pay taxes. The DINA plans this project meticulously and Berrios was key to this process. These plans were carried out with participation of other Chileans who now live in the United States.

The chemical laboratory was set up in a house the DINA bought in the wealthy neighborhood of Lo Curro, in which Townley and his wife lived in the upper story. There, Berrios experimented with sarin gas that causes death through neurological paralysis.

According to Samuel Blixen, author of the book Crime in Uniform:
Corruption and Impunity in Latin America, Berrios proposed that the DINA produce the gas in sufficient quantity so as to use it in combat, before launching artillery missiles. It could also be used to cover up executions, concealing the criminal intent. And the involvement of Eugenio Berrios was not restricted to manufacturing chemical substances in the lab.

According to Alvaro Varela, attorney for the family of former president Eduardo Frei Montalva, Berrios personally administered sarin gas to several victims, such as the case of DINA agent Manuel Leyton May 29, 1977, who died suddenly of an apparent heart attack at 20 years of age.

Therefore, he is also a material author of these crimes.

Fabiola Letelier describes Berrios.
He was an impassioned member of Patria y Libertad. His career clearly shows that he was frankly a fascist. Berrios made contact with a group of Italian terrorists who came to Chile. He even formed an association with those Italians who committed acts of terrorism in different parts of Italy, and the DINA provided the group with an apartment. It was a shadow business that had the appearance of a sporting goods store. Later they participated in the failed assassination attempt against Bernardo Leighton in Rome. It reveals the connections the DINA had with ultra rightist groups. Berrios was not only a chemist; he was an ideologue.

Cases in which Berrios is implicated

On January 31, 2003 the Full Supreme Court of Chile appointed Judge Alejandro Madrid to continue the inquest Judge Olga Perez had begun. The court organized the case as Rol 7981 into three files:
File A investigates the responsibility of Berrios in the assassination of Orlando Letelier, committed September 21,1976.

File B involves the strange circumstances related to the death of former president of Chile Eduardo Frei Montalva and the poisoning of political prisoners, both in 1981.

File C involves the connection between Berrios and Spanish diplomat Carmelo Soria, murdered in July 1976.

The Poisoning of Political Prisoners

In December 1981 nine political prisoners in the Santiago Public Prison (Carcel Publica), all of whom were held in the same section of the prison and shared a kitchen, became seriously ill with botulism. Two prisoners Victor Corvalan Castillo and Enrique Garrido Ceballos died as a result of food poisoning. The presence of the botulism bacteria was not previously known in Chile.
In November 2002 attorney Hector Salazar filed a criminal complaint for the intentional poisoning of the prisoners. According to Salazar, the inquest found that the bacteria entered Chile via Brazil in diplomatic pouch and was delivered first to the Health Ministry Bacteriology Research Institute, and then to the Army. Salazar speculates that the chemical laboratory where Berrios worked was probably the final destination for the bacteria and that "the political prisoners were used as guinea pigs."
http://www.clarinet.cl/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=1576&Itemid=

The Death of Eduardo Frei Montalva

The family of Eduardo Frei Montalva had its doubts whether the former president (1964 to 1970) really died a natural death in 1982. However they had to wait 20 years for a judicial inquest to reach the conclusion, beyond a doubt, that he was murdered.

The clue that opened the court investigation was found in a book that Mariana Callejos, the former wife of Michael Townley and also a DINA agent, published in 1995.

The book Siembra Vientos describes a conversation Callejas had with Eugenio Berrios in the chemical lab that operated in the basement of their house in Lo Curro. Berrios showed her a small vial, and commented, "With a single drop of this liquid I can make an undesirable disappear." In a footnote, Callejas says she recalled that comment upon learning of the death of Eduardo Frei Montalva. Mid 1981 was a particularly active time for the Lo Curro lab.

Attorney Alvaro Varela explains:
That laboratory was in a pitch of activity, with the delivery of certain bacteria in the period prior to the death of President Frei Montalva. We focus our prime suspicions on the production of substances that may have been used to cause the death of Frei, that originated from this laboratory.

In 1980 former President Eduardo Frei Montalva became a forceful voice of opposition to the military regime. On the occasion of the 1980 plebiscite to legitimize the Constitution drafted to institutionalize the military regime, Frei headed a political rally against the Constitution at the Caupolican Theater, from which emerged the first organized political activities in opposition to the dictatorship. Also in 1980 a group of union leaders was brutally repressed and jailed when they unveiled their Letter of Chile (El Pliego de Chile), a petition addressed to the Military Junta, demanding basic rights.

Eduardo Frei and public employees union leader Tucapel Jimenez led solidarity rallies for the imprisoned leaders. They also participated in meetings with representatives from different parties, including the Communist Party, who met together for the first time. The dictatorship responded by expelling from Chile four members of the group that had protested the jailing of union leaders: Jaime Castillo, Carlos Briones, Arnaldo Cantuarias and Alberto Jerez. Once again former President Frei reacted, by issuing public statements and was a powerful public opponent of the regime.

The judicial inquest found evidence that intelligence agents had Frei under constant surveillance during this time. Both his office and home telephones were tapped. An infiltrator, a trusted chauffeur, noted where Frei went, who visited him and the license plate numbers of their vehicles. The agent informed his superiors when Frei became ill and was hospitalized in November 1981 due to a hernia.

He recovered from surgery but a short time later he again required hospitalization. Frei died January 22,1982. Tucapel Jimenez was murdered the following month.

The involvement of Berrios in the death of Eduardo Frei Montalva is still under investigation by Judge Alejandro Madrid. However, elements of proof suggest that Berrios entered Frei's hospital room. A former Air Force official testified that a nurse at Santa Maria Clinic told him he saw someone enter the hospital room and rub a substance into Frei's wound. However, this third party testimony is still in the category of hearsay.

Judge Madrid discovered that without either the authorization or knowledge of the Frei family, an autopsy was performed. Immediately after Frei died, two doctors and a Catholic University Hospital official entered the room and locked the door behind them. Witnesses have testified and the autopsy report has confirmed that the three individuals remained in the room three hours. In that span of time they removed the vital organs with the exception of the brain, and injected a substance to preserve and embalm the body.

Attorney Alvaro Varela (interviewed by Memoria y Justicia in July 2005) explained that the embalming fluid prevents detection of bacteria.
We believe this action by doctors from Catholic University Hospital was intended to conceal and cover up the presence of lethally infectious bacteria.The investigation suggests that material authors of the murder were Army intelligence agents, specifically chemical lab staff. We know two military intelligence agents worked undercover as doctors at the hospital. Elements of proof establish the suspicion that death was caused by the involvement of third parties who applied some kind of substance produced by military intelligence.

In late 2004 the court ordered the exhumation of Frei's remains and forensic specialists took samples from his body. The samples were sent to a FBI laboratory in the United States. In May 2006 the forensic specialists issued a DNA analysis that failed to reach a conclusive determination regarding the presence of bacteria. However, in August 2006 the doctor who supervised the first hernia operation performed on Frei admitted the death was unexpected and that a foreign chemical substance was likely the cause of death.

The Death of Carmelo Soria

Berrios is also believed to have played a role in the death of Carmelo Soria, a Spaniard with diplomat status at CELADE. A DINA operative abducted Soria in July 1976, and brought him to the house in Lo Curro, where Soria was tortured and murdered. It is thought that Soria was subjected to sarin gas in the chemical laboratory run by Berrios, before breaking his back. Soria's body was found in his car submerged in the San Carlos Canal.
http://www.lanacion.cl/prontus_noticias/site/artic/20060820/pags/20060820204239.html

The Assassination of Orlando Letelier

Attorney Fabiola Letelier explains that the initial plan to assassinate her brother Orlando Letelier involved the use of the sarin gas Berrios produced:
Sarin gas was brought to the United States but no one knows what happened to it or where it is. The United States was very interested in sarin gas because it is easily transported; in fact, it is believed to have entered the United States in a Channel N 5 perfume vial.

The initial plot to assassinate Orlando Letelier utilizing sarin gas was discarded. The first act of international terrorism on US soil was carried out by a car bomb DINA agent Michael Townley manufactured from parts he purchased in a Washington DC Sears Roebuck and a Radio Shack store. Letelier and Ronni Moffit died when Townley activated that bomb, planted under the car, on September 21, 1976 in Washington, DC.

Letelier was Chilean Ambassador to the United States and also served as Foreign Relations Secretary as well as Defense Minister under the government of Salvador Allende. After the coup he was arrested together with other Popular Unity government officials at La Moneda presidential palace. He was held over a year, initially with fellow former government collaborators at wind swept Dawson Island in far southern Chile and later in another prison camp, until international pressure compelled the Pinochet regime to release and expel him from the country. From Caracas where he reunited with his family, the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C invited him to form part of its staff of progressive researchers. His access to the parliaments of various countries earned him many allies in his vocal campaign against the dictatorship of Pinochet. The Military Junta perceived Letelier as a threat and ordered the DINA to assassinate him.

In October 1991, Santiago Court of Appeals Judge Adolfo Bañados subpoenaed Berrios to testify in the Letelier assassination investigation. As a civilian, Berrios was not bound by the oath of silence and secrecy that military officials maintained as a code of loyalty among them. According to attorney Letelier, the proceedings led by Judge Madrid indicate that the probable motive the Army Intelligence Administration had for removing Berrios from Chile was to prevent him from responding to the subpoena to testify in the Letelier case.

The Abduction and Murder of Berrios

Attorney Alvaro Varela describes Berrios as a man "out of control." He was an alcoholic and when he drank too much in restaurants, he would shout, "I am Pinochet's chemist!" In the view of military intelligence, he had become a liability, in light of the confidential information he knew and might tell. That is why they decided to take him out of the country.

Varela adds, "The court proceedings reached a very important conclusion just two years ago. Not only was he taken out of Chile; he was kidnapped and kept 10 days in the basement of a military intelligence unit, the DINE, before being taken to Uruguay."

On October 26, 1991 Chilean military in collaboration with Uruguayan military officers took Berrios to Montevideo, Uruguay, stopping first in Rio Gallegos, Argentina.

In 1991, the DINE created a unit for the specific mission of getting Berrios out of Chile. Active duty military officers who comprised the unit were:
Former Army Intelligence Director, General Hernan Ramirez Rurange
General Eugenio Adrian Covarrubias Valenzuela.

Other military personnel who participated in the kidnapping and murder of Berrios were the following:
Captain Pablo Rodriguez Marquez
Raul Lillo Gutierrez, civilian
Noncommissioned officer Marcelo Sandoval Duran
Noncommissioned officer Nelson Hernandez Franco
Noncommissioned officer Nelson Roman Vargas
Lieutenant Jaime Torres Gacitua
Lieutenant Mario Cisternas Orellana[/SIZE]
In April 2006 retired general Hernan Ramirez, former Army Intelligence director, testified before Judge Madrid that Augusto Pinochet "knew perfectly well who Berrios was." Ramirez affirmed that the former dictator ordered him to get Berrios out of Chile and "to take him to Uruguay and protect him there."

Fabiola Letelier states: "Judge Madrid reached the conclusion that the motive the Army had for taking Berrios out of Chile was to prevent him from testifying about the Letelier case before Judge Banados."

Despite an extradition order Bañados issued through Interpol, Berrios lived in Montevideo over a year with a false passport under the alias of Manuel Antonio Morales Jara.

According to Blixen, "high ranking military, police officers, and diplomats chose to ignore the absence of Berrios that had the characteristics of the political disappearances that had been a key element of military government policy guided by the National Security Doctrine."

During 1992, Berrios lived on Buxareo Street in Montevideo, constantly guarded by Chilean military. In November 1992 he was transferred to a property of Captain Jaime Torres Gacitua, in Parque de Plata, Uruguay. On November 11, 1992, Berrios made a telephone call to the Chilean Consulate and requested documents he needed for returning to Chile. The same year Berrios escaped from the house in Parque de Plata, and sought help from a local police station. Berrios begged the police officers to help him, explaining that he had been abducted and that Augusto Pinochet wanted to kill him.

The Uruguayan police permitted Berrios to be examined by Dr. Juan Bautista Ferrari Grilli. During the medical exam, Berrios insisted that he was victim of abduction and that his life was in danger. Police turned him over to Lieutenant Colonel Tomas Cassella, Chief of Counter Intelligence Operations. Berrios continued living like a prisoner another three months. He was executed on the beach in El Pinar, Uruguay. He was killed when he openly exposed his intention to return to Chile.

His skeletal remains, discovered more than two years later in April 1995, showed evidence of skull fractures due to two bullets. DNA tests confirmed the remains corresponded to Berrios.

The Investigation of the Berrios Case in Chile

On January 1, 2003, the Sixth Criminal Court of Santiago requested the extradition of three Uruguayan military officers. (ROL 7.981-OP). On January 31, 2003, the Chilean Supreme Court appointed Judge Alejandro Madrid Crohare to the investigation of the homicide of Eugenio Berrios. Madrid requested authorization from the Montevideo court the case to question the following Uruguayan militar personnel:

Soldier Tomas Cassella Santo
Soldier Eduardo Radaelli Coppola
Soldier Wellington Sarli Pose
Police Chief Helvio Hernandez Marrero
Naval Officer Hugo Cabrera Villareal
Police Officer Ramon Rivas

On March 31, 2003 Judge Madrid traveled to Uruguay to interrogate these individuals. Cassella stated that a Chilean official called Julio Concha introduced Berrios to him as Tulio Orellana. Radaelli stated that he had no recollection of the Berrios abduction, affirming that he was in Brazil during the time of the episode. Hernandez testified that Berrios told him he produced biological weapons that were sold abroad. In July 2003 Madrid initiated another stage of the investigation, related to the possible involvement of Augusto Pinochet Ugarte in the kidnapping and murder of Berrios. Pablo Rodriguez Grez, longtime defense lawyer for Pinochet, sustained that Pinochet was not fit to stand trial on account of health conditions.

Judge Madrid also sought information on the possible participation of the following individuals in obstruction of justice, illicit association, falsification of passports and malfeasance:
Former Military Prosecutor General Fernando Torres Silva
Army Colonel Enrique Ibarra
General Hernan Ramirez Rurange
Gladys Schmeisser, widow of Berrios

On April 8, 2006, retired colonel Tomas Casella, Colonel Wellington Sarli and Capitan Eduardo Radaelli were extradited to Chile, enabling Alejandro Madrid to indict the three Uruguayan military officers for illicit association and kidnapping of Berrios.

On May 10, 2006 Judge Madrid deprived Augusto Pinochet of his prosecutorial immunity, on the basis of probable cause of participation of the former Army Commander in Chief in the abduction and murder of Berrios.

On October 12, 2006 the full session of the Santiago Court of Appeals voted 16 to 3 to approve the removal of immunity. It was the most decisive vote to for deprival of immunity that was ever produced in the courts.

Less than two months later, on December 10, 2006 Augusto Pinochet died.

Implications

The death of Berrios is not an isolated case. It is directly related to the murders of important officials in Chile. It reveals the persistence of de facto powers and how the governments of Chile and Uruguay have been complacent even in democracy in protecting individuals who committed crimes during dictatorship.

In the book, The Transition to Authoritarian Electoral Regimes in Latin America, James Petras and Steve Vieux state:

[size=12]The Berrios episode suggests the persistence of Operation Condor. It is evident that still now this network allows the military structure of both countries to ignore their national governments, evade judicial prosecution and commit crimes in other countries. It implies that the relations between military that facilitated the assassination of General Carlos Prats during his exile in Argentina as well as the murders of 100 other Chilean exiles persist even today. The years of electoral democracy have not succeeded in breaking the military network nor limit the extraordinary discretionary authority and autonomy the Chilean military enjoys.

The story of the abduction and murder of Berrios indicates that forced disappearance and political assassination continued after the emergence of democracies in Chile and Uruguay, when Augusto Pinochet was still Commander in Chief of the Army[/SIZE].

http://www.memoriayjusticia.cl/english/en_focus-berrios.html
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Eugenio Berríos - Magda Hassan - 08-05-2013

PINOCHET CHARGED IN CHILE FOR MURDER OF SECRET POLICE CHEMIST EUGENIO BERRIOS


Door May Open Revealing Dictator's Complicity In Other Human Rights Violations, Including The Death Of President Frei Montalva

(May 12, 2006) The investigation into the death of former secret police chemist Eugenio Berríos has allegedly linked Chile's former dictator General Augusto Pinochet to the murder as well as the mysterious death of former President Eduardo Frei Montalva in 1982. Prosecutors believe that the new findings may open a Pandora's box of information into these and other related human rights investigations.

Alejandro Madrid, the investigating judge in the case, submitted a request to the Santiago Court of Appeals Wednesday requesting that Pinochet be stripped of his legal immunity so that he may be questioned and ultimately tried for any part he may have had in the murder.

"There are more than enough clues linking (Pinochet) to the kidnapping and homicide of Eugenio Berrios to justify stripping him of his legal immunity," said Thomás Ehrenfeld, lawyer for the Berríos family.

Berríos is believed to have developed a lethal sarin gas for that was used to murder opponents of the military regime. Shortly before his death he had agreed to testify about his activities while working for the Directorate of National Intelligence (DINA).

According to Gen. Hernán Ramírez Rurange, former Chief of the Directorate of Army Intelligence (DINE), Pinochet ordered him to take Berríos out of the country in 1991 to prevent him from testifying in the investigation of the 1976 car-bomb murder of Orlando Letelier in Washington D.C. (ST, April 21).

Following Pinochet's orders, Berríos was first taken to Argentina and later fled to Uruguay where he tried to turn himself in to authorities requesting to be returned to Chile. Instead, Berríos was given to the Uruguay military, shot twice in the head and buried in the sands of El Pinar beach near Montevideo, Uruguay. Three former DINA members were convicted of the kidnapping and murder of Berríos' (ST, Feb 16) and three former Uruguayan military officials were extradited to Chile in April to testify in the case.

The new accusations are generating widespread publicity in Chile because of Berríos' connection to the death of former President Frei Montalva. Frei Montalva was the president of Chile between 1964 -1970 and father of Chilean President Eduardo Frei Riuz-Tagle, who governed the nation between 1994 and 2000 and who is now an elected senator and the President of Chile's Senate.

President Frei Montalva checked into a health clinic in 1982 for a simple hernia operation and died shortly after from surgical complications. The Frei family has long maintained that he was poisoned with the sarin gas developed by Berríos.

Álvaro Varela, the Frei family attorney, alleged Thursday that Chile's high Army command was fully informed of the role Pinochet played in the kidnapping and death of secret police chemist Eugenio Berríos in the early 1990s and that "there is a sequence of events…that indicates that Pinochet gave the order to kill Frei using products manufactured by Berríos and the next obvious and logical step in this sequence of criminal events was to eliminate Berríos."

"The Army high command knows exactly what happened to Berrios, and most especially, the order that was given by Pinochet (for his death)," said Varela in an interview on Radio Cooperativa.

Chile's Interior Minister Andrés Zaldívar indicated that the government and military were cooperating fully with the investigation and that any relevant information would be turned over to the appropriate authorities.

Because the crime was committed in the 1990s, after Chile's transition to democracy, Gen. Pinochet would not be protected by the 1978 Amnesty law traditionally used to protect those accused of human rights violations. Authorities hope that by questioning Gen. Pinochet they can clear up charges relating to three men already convicted for the murder as well as what, if any, role the Uruguayan officials may have had in the crime.

SOURCES: DIARIO SIETE, RADIO COOPERATIVO
http://www.southernaffairs.org/2006/05/pinochet-charged-in-chile-for-murder-of_12.html