AssassinationsChile to seek extradition of secret agents for deadly 1976 U.S. attack
Chile’s supreme court has ruled that the Chilean government could ask the United States to extradite two former secret police agents in the regime of General Augusto Pinochet, who, in 1976, placed explosives in a car in Washington, D.C., killing a former Chilean ambassador and a U.S. citizen. In a unanimous decision on Monday, said the Chilean foreign ministry should begin the procedures needed to seek the extradition of Michael Townley, a U.S. citizen, and Armando Fernandez Larios, a Chilean. Both now reside in the United States.
Chile’s supreme court has ruled that the Chilean government could ask the United States to extradite two former secret police agents in the regime of General Augusto Pinochet, who, in 1976, placed explosives in a car in Washington, D.C., killing a former Chilean ambassador and a U.S. citizen.
The Herald-Whig reports that the court, in a unanimous decision on Monday, said the Chilean foreign ministry should begin the procedures needed to seek the extradition of Michael Townley, a U.S. citizen, and Armando Fernandez Larios, a Chilean. Both now reside in the United States. Pinochet ruled Chile with an iron hand from 1973 to 1990.
The car explosion in Washington, D.C. killed the former Chilean ambassador to the United States, Orlando Letelier, and U.S. citizen Ronni Moffitt. Moffitt’s husband, who was an aide to Letelier, was also in the car but survived the bombing on 21 September 1976.
“After forty years of the death of … Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt, we have taken a step forward in achieving justice for this horrid and cowardly crime committed just blocks from the White House,” Nicolas Pavez, a lawyer representing Chile’s Group of Families of the Politically Executed, told the AP.
Recently declassified U.S. intelligence documents revealed that Pinochet personally ordered the illing of Letelier. One document includes an assertion by the former head of Chile’s intelligence agency, Manuel Contreras, that “he authorized the assassination of Letelier” on “direct orders from Pinochet.”
In 2005, Contreras and his second-in-command were convicted by a Chilean court in Letelier’s death. Contreras died in prison last year.
Letelier had been a top official under President Salvador Allende, a left-leaning firebrand who was ousted by a military coup, led by Pinochet, in a 1973. Letelier was tortured and imprisoned, but later fled to the United States, becoming one of the more recognizable voices against the Pinochet’s dictatorship.
At the time of the bombing, Letelier was director of the Transnational Institute at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), and Moffitt was a development associate at IPS.
Pinochet died in 2006 under house arrest.
