Chile: judge confirms US role in 1973 killings

[Judi Lynn]

Chile: judge confirms US role in 1973 killings
Submitted by Weekly News Update... on Tue, 07/08/2014 - 00:28 Southern Cone

Chilean investigative judge Jorge Zepeda has ruled that US intelligence agents shared responsibility for the killing of US journalist Charles Horman and US graduate student Frank Teruggi by the Chilean military in the days after the Sept. 11, 1973 coup that overthrew leftist president Salvador Allende Gossens. "US military intelligence services played a fundamental role in the murders of two US citizens in 1973, providing the Chilean military with information that brought [them] to death," Zepeda concluded in his report, which the Associated Press wire service cited on July 1. This was the first official confirmation of suspicions by Horman and Teruggi's families and friends that the US shared in the responsibility for the killings, the subject of the 1982 film "Missing."

Zepeda named retired Chilean army colonel Pedro Espinoza as the mastermind behind both murders and counterintelligence agent Rafael González Berdugo as an accomplice in Horman's death. Zepeda had requested the extradition of former US Navy Capt. Ray E. Davis in 2011 to stand trial for providing the information that led to the killings; Chile's Supreme Court of Justice upheld the request in October 2012. Apparently the courts were unaware that Davis was in fact living in Chile; he died in a Santiago nursing home in 2013. (El Nuevo Herald, July 1, from AP; The Jurist, July 2)

http://ww4report.com/node/13362

(Short article, no more at link.)

[HooptieWagon]

1. Duh. The US instigated and backed the coup.

Kissinger should have been hanged as a war criminal. Nixon, Schlesinger, and the U of Chicago economists, too.

The father of a good friend was a student of Victor Jara. He marched and protested with him. He was able to escape, barely, to Brazil. I tried to talk to him one time about Jara, so I could learn more, and he was unable to speak. Just sat there with tears streaming down his cheeks.

[Judi Lynn]

2. That would be unbearably sad to experience for you, feeling his pain, unable to help.

He may have witnessed the Chilean police when they stormed onto campus and arrested Victor Jara, before they took him to the national stadium, which he never left alive.

Brazil had a similar US-supported war on its own citizens, only earlier, of course.

You are so right about the US Americans involved in this vast atrocity.

[bananas]

3. Fairly long AP story

At http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/chile-court-us-role-missing-killings-24375096?singlePage=true
and http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-2676138/Chile-court-US-role-Missing-killings.html

Chile Court: US Had Role in 'Missing' Killings
SANTIAGO, Chile — Jul 1, 2014, 11:27 AM ET
By LUIS ANDRES HENAO Associated Press
Associated Press

A Chilean court said U.S. military intelligence services played a key role that led to the 1973 killings of two Americans in Chile in a case that inspired the Oscar-winning film "Missing."

A court ruling released late Monday said former U.S. Navy Capt. Ray E. Davis gave information to Chilean officials about journalist Charles Horman and student Frank Teruggi that led to their arrest and execution just days after the 1973 coup that brought Gen. Augusto Pinochet to power.

"The military intelligence services of the United States had a fundamental role in the creation of the murders of the two American citizens in 1973, providing Chilean military officers with the information that led to their deaths," the ruling by Judge Jorge Zepeda said.

Zepeda also upheld the decision to charge retired Chilean army Col. Pedro Espinoza with the murders, and Rafael Gonzalez, a former civilian counterintelligence agent, as an accomplice in Horman's murder. The two Chileans and Davis had been indicted in 2011.

<snip>

Chile's government estimates 3,095 people were killed during Pinochet's dictatorship, including about 1,200 who were forcibly disappeared.

"The judge's ruling brings the Horman and Teruggi families one step closer to a courtroom verdict, as well as a verdict of history on the role of the U.S. government and the Chilean military in these atrocities," said Peter Kornbluh, author of "The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability."

——

Associated Press writer Eva Vergara contributed to this report.

——

Follow Luis Andres Henao on Twitter: https://twitter.com/LuisAndresHenao