Chilean judge sentences murderers of US-American citizens Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi

[In the exposure of the murders, 4 decades ago, of Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, the US-spnsored Pinochet coup against Chilean President Salvador Allende, the role of the US and the terrorism master-minded by Henry Kissinger came into public view.  The fact that the murderers were not successfully prosecuted for 41 years is proof that US control  has been effective, even long after the fact.  And now the Chilean prosecution aims to put some of this embarassing history behind them as they sentence two of the murderous perpetrators.  —  Frontlines ed.]

Tlaxcala, 2/23/2015 Translated by  Richard Ferguson, Edited by  Supriyo Chatterjee

Almost 42 years after the events, Special Judge Jorge Zepeda Arancibia sentenced two intelligence officers for the murders of US-Americans Charles Edmond Horman, a 31-year-old journalist, and Frank Randall Teruggi Bombatch, a 24-year-old student, shot in the Estadio Nacional (National Stadium) days into the coup headed by Pinochet.

The 276-page judgment sentences Army intelligence official Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, who serves several other sentences for assassinations, to seven years of prison for the murders,while Air Force officer Rafael Agustín González Berdugo will serve two years of probation as an accomplice to Horman’s homicide. Judge Zepeda’s exhaustive investigations confirmed the direct intervention of the United States in the coup through Operation Unitas, carried out in Valparaíso simultaneously with the offensive, and further revealed the ruthless persecution that the United States ordered the Chilean intelligence services to undertake against American radicals in Chile sympathetic to Salvador Allende, or simply interested in learning at close quarters and living among the peaceful revolutionary process led by the Head of State overthrown by it. In the Estadio Nacional up to 24 detained Americans were registered (Horman and Teruggi weren’t), both men and women, including students, academics, writers and two Maryknoll priests. Charles Horman                                                  Frank Teruggi The instigators of and accessories to this persecution of American citizens were their fellow countryman, Ray Elliots Charles, Marine Captain and chief of the American military mission, supported by the Ambassador Nathaniel Davis. Far from protecting their compatriots, they covered up the murders and detentions of Americans, going as far as providing false information to family members like Edmund Horman, Charles’s father, who moved to Chile in search of his son.

Chilean protesters in street battles with police, seized 30 election-polling booths

[Massive protests of government policies favoring the rich have seen government repression , and denunciations by the goverrnment of the opposition as “extremist.”   — Frontlines ed.]More than 100,000 join demonstrations as students seize 30 polling stations to be used for presidential vote on Sunday

Jonathan Franklin in Santiago, guardian.co.uk, Thursday 27 June 20

[Protesters run from teargas during demonstrations in Santiago, Chile. Photograph: Ariel Marinkovic/EPA]

 

Hooded protesters have vandalised shops and fought running street battles with riot police in Chile‘s capital after more than 100,000 joined mostly peaceful demonstrations across the country to demand education reform.

The violence began early on Wednesday when masked youths attacked a police station and left burning tyres at road junctions hours before thousands of university and secondary school students marched through central Santiago.

While riot police battled a flurry of rocks and molotov cocktails, students seized an estimated 30 locations scheduled to be official voting sites for Sunday’s presidential primary vote.

Chile: Over 320 Student Protesters Arrested Amid Police Repression

by Denis Culum, The Argentine Independent, 14 June 2013.

The front of the University of Chile (Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

Yesterday a march of Chilean students protesting against the latest education policies of President Sebastián Piñera turned violent when riot police intervened. Official reports stated, 324 students were arrested and at least 74 injured, including 24 policemen and 50 youths.

Before the conflict occurred, students marched peacefully through the main streets of the Chilean capital to demand free public education in protest against Piñera’s intention to fully privatise the university sector.

According to official reports, there were 214 arrests and 17 police officers injured in Santiago, while the other arrests occurred in various cities across the country. Local media has reported of violent police repression during student protests throughout the country.

Later in the day the most serious incident broke out, close to Santiago’s Centro Cultural Estación Mapocho, when a group of masked men split from the main body of marching students and started throwing stones and petrol bombs at the police.

Chile remembers its 9/11

Thousands march to remember more than 3,000 people killed during Pinochet dictatorship that was launched 38 years ago. Al Jazeera, 11 Sep 2011

Thousands of Chileans have marched in the capital Santiago to remember the more than 3,000 people killed during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet that was launched 38 years ago with a military coup on September 11, 1973.Organised by a group of relatives of those killed, the march on Sunday led to a memorial erected at a cemetery to commemorate the victims of Pinochet’s 17-year long regime. They marched peacefully through the streets, unable to approach the presidential palace La Moneda because of the tight police cordon. Salvador Allende, the first and only Marxist to come to power in Chile through a popular vote, died at the palace when military forces surrounded it during the coup.  He is believed to have committed suicide.