Declassified U.S. documents demonstrate that Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet, ordered the assassination of Orlando Letelier, who had served as foreign minister to socialist President Salvador Allende, in Washington, 1976. They also reveal that he didn’t rule out killing those who carried out the order, to cover up his own participation.
The revelations are contained in a report by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) composed of some 1,000 recently declassified official documents, which were handed to President Michelle Bachelet by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, during his recent visit to Chile for a conference on marine protection in Vina del Mar.
President Bachelet ordered that the documents be provided both to Senator Juan Pablo Letelier, the son of the murdered diplomat, and the Supreme Court. “There is a conclusive document from the CIA that shows Pinochet ordered the murder of my father,” Pablo Letelier stated.
“What is new is the proof we were lacking that Pinochet issued the order. We had the political certainty, but not the legal basis to support it,” the senator added.
After examining the files provided by Washington, along with 11,000 other pages, Letelier noted that the then Secretary of State George Shultz was aware of the CIA report.
General Manuel Contreras, head of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), received the order to carry out the crime, which occurred on September 21, 1976, in the U.S. capital. Letelier and his U.S. colleague Ronni Moffit were killed by the car bomb planted under the driver’s seat of his vehicle.
The son of the former minister stressed that it is now possible that evidence may arise on others who are still alive, who not only participated in the order and execution of the crime, but also in the cover up.
He mentioned suspicion surrounding Cristián Labbé, a former army colonel and mayor of the commune of Providencia and militant of the far-right Independent Democratic Union (UDI).
The Chilean Supreme Court recently rejected an appeal by Labbé, in regards to another case, seeking to halt proceedings for his alleged role in the execution of 13 people detained in the Tejas Verdes regiment during the first months the Pinochet dictatorship, which lasted from 1973-1990.
Letelier noted that the case regarding his father, closed in 1995, could be reopened. Contreras, who recently died, was sentenced by the Chilean justice system to seven years in prison as the mastermind of the crime, among other convictions, along with fellow General Pedro Espinosa. U.S. agent Michael Tonwley was also implicated and extradited to his country. (La Jornada)
