SANTIAGO, Chile
Two retired colonels were sentenced Friday for their part in the 1974 death of Alberto Bachelet, the father of Chilean president Michele Bachelet.
Edgar Ceballos and Ramon Caceres Jorquera received two and three years respectively, including a ban on holding public office or official positions within the government. They were also ordered to pay court costs.
Their sentences under Chilean law could not have exceeded five years and were reduced as a result of their three-month imprisonment in 2012.
The president’s mother, Angela Jeria, told CNN Chile that the sentences were not about revenge. “It doesn’t matter that the sentences they received were small. What is important is that the justice system worked, and this will never happen again.”
Chilean human rights lawyer Christian Cruz, an integral part of the effort to bring the former colonels before a criminal court, told CNN Chile that it’s not at all certain that Cabellos and Jorquera were the only two involved in Bachelet’s death. A third person, Fernando Matthei, the then-director of the War Academy where Bachelette was held before his death, was not sentenced by judge Mario Carroza.
“We are convinced that general [Matthei] was involved,” Cruz said. “However, these sentences are confirmation that the Air Force committed crimes against humanity, against people during the dictatorship and even against their own generals.”
Alberto Bachelet was a Brig. Gen. in the Chilean Air Force who opposed the coup that brought Gen. Agusto Pinochet to power. Ceballos and Jorquera, were convicted of torture leading to Bachelet’s death, after detaining him on charges of treason against the new Pinochet regime.
They accused Bachelet of remaining loyal to former president Salvador Allende, the democratically elected Socialist president who was overthrown in the 1973 coup.
According to court documents, Bachelet was left tied up and blindfolded in the Air Force War Academy, aggravating a heart condition, which eventually resulted in his death.
Michele Bachelet and her mother were also detained for two weeks, but eventually escaped and fled into exile.
Before his death, Bachelet left a note for his wife, telling her that he had been “brutally softened” by the torture, according to the Guardian.
