Chile

Chilean Judge Sentences Three Former Secret Police Agents Over 1976 DC Murder

Is this long-overdue justice or a wrongful conviction built on zero evidence?

Published JUN 24

Chilean Judge Sentences Three Former Secret Police Agents Over 1976 DC Murder

Story

Above: A memorial plaque at the site where Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt died in Washington, D.C. Image credit: Pedro Ugarte/AFP/Getty Images

The Facts

An appeals court judge who oversees human rights cases in Chile sentenced three former agents of Gen. Augusto Pinochet's secret police Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA) last week to 15 years in prison for their roles in the aggravated homicide of U.S. citizen Ronni Moffitt in Washington, D.C., about 50 years ago.
Guardian
La Tercera
Poder Judicial de Chile
Moffitt died on Sept. 21, 1976, at the age of 25 when a remote-controlled bomb destroyed the Chevrolet Chevelle Malibu she was traveling in along with her boss, former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier, the primary target of the attack, and her husband, the only survivor.
BioBioChile
La Tercera
teleSUR English
According to the court ruling, Pedro Espinoza, José Zara and Raúl Iturriaga consciously decided to carry out "the crime, as well as its consequences and scope, controlling the development and execution of the material act."
Poder Judicial de Chile
Espinoza, Iturriaga and Zara were also among those sentenced in 2010 for the 1974 killing of former army commander-in-chief Carlos Prats and his wife in Buenos Aires. While the first two have long been held at Punta Peuco, Zara had gone free last year after serving his sentence.
El País
La Tercera
DINA chief Manuel Contreras was sentenced in 1993 for his role in the D.C. bomb attack, and U.S. citizen Michael Townley was extradited in 1978 to the U.S. where he confessed to his role in the murders. In 2012, an appeals court in Santiago ordered the reopening of the investigation.
BBC News
Emol
Guardian
CIA files related to the Letelier-Moffitt murder were declassified a decade ago, showing that the U.S. intelligence had concluded that there was "convincing evidence" that Pinochet personally ordered the killing.
Reagan Library
National Security Archive

Sources Split

LEFT

CENTER

RIGHT

ESTAB
CRIT

CENTER

PRO
ESTAB

The Spin

Narrative A

Chile has finally convicted these agents five decades after the murder. The real scandal is that the U.S. has trained the killers, knew the attack was coming, and is still ignoring Chile's extradition requests for a key conspirator. Washington has yet to deliver justice.

Common Dreams

Narrative B

This is a travesty of justice — a captured judiciary wielding old crimes as political weapons, keeping elderly retired officers behind bars long after any honest sentence would have ended. And all that has been done without a single piece of evidence.

Hermógenes Pérez de Arce on X