Chile: three charged in "Caravan of Death"

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Three retired Chilean military officers were charged with the murder of 14 prisoners in the 1973 "Caravan of Death," in which some 90 political prisoners were killed.

Chilean judge formally charged three retired military officers in Santiago on April 20 with the murder of 14 prisoners in Antofagasta in northern Chile on Oct. 19, 1973, near the beginning of Gen. Augusto Pinochet [2]'s 1973-1990 military dictatorship. The deaths of the 14 prisoners, mostly members of the Socialist Party, occurred on the "Caravan of Death [3]," in which a military group headed by Gen. Sergio Arellano Stark executed more than 90 political prisoners as it traveled through the country.

The three officers are Gen. Gonzalo Santelices, Maj. Patricio Ferrer and Lt. Pablo Martínez Latorre. Santelices was head of the Santiago garrison, the nation's largest, in February 2008 when the investigation into the murders resulted in his retirement. (123.cl, Chile, April 20; MS-NBC, April 20 from AP; La Tercera, Chile, April 23)

From Weekly News Update on the Americas [4], April 26

See our last posts on Chile [5] and the legacy of the Dirty War [6].