CHAPTER X

EXECUTION BY SHOOTING WITHOUT TRIAL

1. The armed confrontations on September 11 and the days immediately following resulted in numerous victims on both sides. The number of casualties recorded in those armed confrontations is a subject that has given rise to the most varied estimates. The most moderate estimates total some 1500 dead, 80 of them members of the armed forces.

2. According to many statements gathered by the Commission, in Santiago and outside Santiago, when open confrontations in the first days and organized resistance against the new government had ceased, some punitive actions occurred against the opposition, which ended in some cases with execution by shooting without any form of trial. In response to these denunciations, the attempt was made to justify acts of this kind by invoking Article 2 of Decree-Law Nº 51 of the so-called “Law of Flight”.

3. Reliable sources that made the special investigation of these cases reported to the Commission that the number of those executed by shooting, regarding whom no proceedings are known to have taken place prior to the execution, was approximately 220.

These executions perhaps might explain some of the cases of “disappearances,” which it has not been possible to clear up.