Chile: Priest & Cohorts Charged in Pinochet-era Death Squad

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Chile: Priest & Cohorts Charged in Pinochet-era Death Squad

Via NY Transfer News Collective All the News that Doesn't Fit

BBC via rick kissell - Sep 1, 2007

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/6973614.stm

Chile priest charged over deaths

Twelve people in Chile - including a Catholic priest - have been

charged over death squad killings during the military rule of Augusto

Pinochet.

It is the first time a Catholic priest has been charged over abuses

committed during Gen Pinochet's dictatorship.

Luis Jorquera - whose whereabouts are not known - is accused of

covering up the deaths of 28 dissidents.

More than 3,000 people were killed or "disappeared" during military

rule in Chile between 1973 and 1990.

Bodies 'exhumed'

Mr Jorquera was quoted by a newspaper in the Chilean capital of

Santiago as denying his involvement in the operation, known as the

Caravan of Death.

Witnesses say he was involved in exhuming the victims two years after

they were killed. The corpses were then wrapped in sacks and dumped

from a plane into the sea.

He was a chaplain at a military prison camp set up in Chile's north

shortly after Gen Pinochet seized power in a coup on 11 September 1973.

The Court of Appeals in Antofagasta, in northern Chile, charged the 12

- - also including retired Army Gen Miguel Trincado and Army Maj Armando

Fernandez Larios - over involvement in the squad.

The Caravan of Death was a military operation that travelled the

country to remove opponents of Pinochet's rule.

It was one of the most notorious cases of human rights violations under

Gen Pinochet and responsible for 75 summary executions, court documents

say.

Gen Pinochet - who died on 10 December, 2006 - was accused of fraud as

well as human rights abuses, but poor health meant he never faced trial.

© BBC MMVII

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