A FORMER Chilean soldier has been arrested after he called into a popular radio show on relationships and unexpectedly confessed to a string of high-profile political murders.
The show is one of the biggest in the country but listeners could never have predicted what they were going to hear.
At first, the caller who identified himself as Roberto complained about his love life to the host of Chacotero Sentimental, which translates to “loving betrayal”. The call then took a dramatic turn when he began sharing intimate details of 18 executions he was involved in during the dictatorial reign of Augusto Pinochet.
“We took some of these guys into the countryside and shot them in the head,” he volunteered to the shocked host. “We blew them up. They fell apart. Nothing was left of them. Not even their shadow.”
During the unsolicited confession, he switched back and forth between complaining about his romantic partner and describing his mental anguish from the murders.
“The first time [I killed someone] I cried but the lieutenant was saying: ‘Good soldier, good soldier, brave soldier’, then ‘Pow, pow’ again,” he said. “The second time I liked it. I enjoyed it.”
While the caller didn’t give his real name or identify his victims, police tracked him down and arrested him on Friday (Saturday AEDT).
Guillermo Reyes Rammsy, 62, has since been charged with the 1973 murder of Freddy Taberna Gallegos and German Palomino Lamas. Both were members of the Chile’s Socialist Party who were taken as prisoners following the 1973 military coup that brought Pinochet to power.
Former Chilean President General Augusto Pinochet, who died in 2006, aged 91.Source:AP
Activists from Chilean human rights organisation Detained and Disappeared People at a demonstration in Santiago in remembrance of late President Salvador Allende, who died in 1973 during the military coup led by Pinochet.Source:AFP
An estimated 3,200 people were murdered during Pinochet’s rule between 1973 and 1990, and a further 28,000 were thought be have been tortured by the state.
During the call, which lasted for more than 20 minutes, Rammsy detailed a number of human rights abuses and described how members of the military were forced to carry out the killings of political dissidents. He said soldiers routinely used dynamite to blow up the corpses of their victims after they had been shot in the head.
Stunned radio presenter Roberto Artiagoitia questioned his humanity, saying: “What about your responsibilities as a human?”
Rammsy replied: “If we found them with a gun, we liquidated them. Pow. Pow. Pow. Five shots and they were gone. They were not white doves — you had to survive.”
Human rights groups in the country have welcomed his arrest following the call. Of the 3000 murders committed during Pinochet’s dictatorship, the remains of 1000 bodies are still unaccounted for.
Human rights groups in the Chile have long fought for a greater public understanding of the killings and what was done with the bodies of those who opposed the brutal dictator.
A visitor looks at a display at the Memory and Human Rights Museum in Santiago dedicated to remembering the tens of thousands of people imprisoned, tortured or killed during Pinochet’s reign.Source:AP
No comments:
Post a Comment