• Live
    • Audio Only
  • google plus
  • facebook
  • twitter
News > Latin America

Chile Asks US to Extradite Pinochet-Era Killers of UN Diplomat

  • Chile Asks US to Extradite Pinochet-Era Killers of UN Diplomat
Published 17 May 2016
Opinion

The agents of the former dictator are wanted for the 1976 detention, torture and killing of Spanish-Chilean diplomat Carmelo Soria.

Chile's Supreme Court confirmed on Tuesday a request to the United States for the extradition of three former Chilean intelligence agents suspected of the murder of a United Nations diplomat 40 years ago.

RELATED:
Operation Condor: Cross-Border Disappearance and Death

All the agents are wanted for the detention, torture and killing of Spanish-Chilean diplomat Carmelo Soria on July 14, 1976. Soria was allegedly taken by former dictator Augusto Pinochet's secret police force and his death was covered up to seem like a drunk driving accident, according to investigators.

Chilean Armando Fernandez Larios, U.S. citizen Michael Townley and Cuban Virgilio Paz worked for Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship that lasted from 1973 to 1990.

Townley and Fernandez are under the United States' witness protection program after helping with the investigation of a car bomb attack in Washington in 1976 that killed leftist Orlando Letelier, former Chilean foreign minister and his assistant Ronni Moffitt; the two were believed to have participated in the attack.

Virgilio Paz Romero was released from prison in 1991 after spending 12 years in prison for the same attack.

RELATED:
How the US Backed Pinochet’s Henchman Manuel Contreras

Fernandez attended the U.S. Army School of the Americas in Panama, a military training institute that taught soldiers to fight left-wing movements in Latin America. Many of the military dictatorships that once ruled over the countries of the region had their military officers receive training at the school.

Fernandez was also part of the 1973 coup against elected socialist president Salvador Allende in Chile. In an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department, he pleaded guilty to Orlando Letelier’s murder as an accomplice in exchange for being able to live and work in the United States after serving his sentence, with the assurance that he would not be extradited to Chile under any circumstance.

Townley was a former CIA operative who worked in Argentina and Chile and was heavily involved in Operation Condor, a coordinated U.S. effort to eliminate opposition to dictatorships in South America from 1970s to 1980s, and 50,000 are estimated to have been killed or forcibly disappeared.

Comment
0
Comments
Post with no comments.