On Monday, the Supreme Court of Justice upheld the convictions of 18 former operatives of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990) for the kidnapping and murder of Marta Ugarte, a teacher, and a Communist Party member.

On August 9, 1976, in the Metropolitan Region of Santiago, Ugarte was seized and transferred to a clandestine location, where she was interrogated, tortured, and subsequently killed.

Her corpse was tossed into the water by an army chopper and was discovered days later on La Ballena beach in northern Chile.

Ricardo Lawrence Mires, Heriberto del Carmen Acevedo, and Claudio Pacheco Fernandez, former agents of the former National Intelligence Directorate (DINA, Pinochet's secret police), were sentenced to 25 years in jail for the murder.

Ten additional former DINA members were sentenced to ten years in jail for their roles in the kidnapping, with five receiving lesser terms as accomplices and accessories.

The Court decided that the teacher's murder was politically motivated, purely because she was a member of the Communist Party, and labeled it as a crime against humanity that does not fall under Chilean law.

More than 3,000 killings, 40,000 human rights breaches, 28,000 tortured victims, and 200,000 forced exiles were documented during the Pinochet regime.