One day after Chile's Supreme Court sentenced him to 20 years in prison for a "dirty war" crime, retired Gen. Hernán Ramírez Rurange shot himself in the head in his apartment in Santiago on Aug. 13. Ramírez was convicted as intellectual author of the "disappearance" of Eugenio Berríos [4], a chemist with the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA). Berrios disappeared in 1992 after fleeing to Uruguay to avoid testifying in assassination cases carried out under Operation Condor [5]. Among the cases at issue was apparently that of former foreign minister Orlando Letelier [4], slain by a car-bomb attack in Washington DC in 1976. (EFE [6], 24Horas [7], Aug. 14; TeleSUR [8], La Trecera [9], Aug 13)
On July 22, a Chilean judge formally charged 10 retired military officers in the abduction and murder of popular folk singer Victor Jara [10] and former military police chief Littre Quiroga Carvajal. Both were seized in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 1973 coup that brought Gen. Augusto Pinotchet [11] to power. Quiroga Carvajal had been commander of the Gendarmería under the ousted President Salvador Allende. (DW [12], AP [13], The Guardian [14], July 23; Diario Uchile [15], July 22)
