Senator Daniel Núñez published on is X account that “a great communist fighter, lawyer, journalist, former lawmaker and former mayor, Eduardo Contreras, has passed away.”

He was the main lawyer in the lawsuit filed by Gladys Marín against Pinochet, ‘Honor and glory!’ Meanwhile, Deputy Luis Cuello, from the PCCh bench, said that a tireless defender of human rights and a key figure in the struggle for justice in Chile has left us.

At 3 p.m., on January 12, 1998, Eduardo Contreras and Communist Party leader Gladys Marín, filed the first lawsuit against Augusto Pinochet, the website of the Chilean Judiciary recalled.

The lawsuit, when accepted by the courts, marked a new stage in the struggle for justice in the country and paved the way for 2,000 other trials of those responsible for the atrocities perpetrated during the military regime.

After hearing the news, the organization of Human Rights Lawyers lamented the departure of the prominent jurist.

Contreras, a graduate from the University of Chile, was a member of the PCCh since 1963; four years later he was elected alderman in the city of Chillán, capital of the Ñuble Region, and in 1971 he became mayor of that commune.

In 1973, he was elected lawmaker for the sixteenth departmental group (Chillán, Bulnes and Yungay) until the dissolution of the National Congress after September 11, 1973, coup d’état.

jg/abo/ro/car/eam