Chilean Court Rules U.S. Had Role in Murders
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October 3, 2014 Page 5 Americas Chilean Court Rules U.S. Had Role in Murders By PASCALE BONNEFOY JUNE 30, 2014 SANTIAGO, Chile — The United States military intelligence services played a pivotal role in setting up the murders of two American citizens in 1973, providing the Chilean military with the information that led to their deaths, a court here has ruled. The recent court decision found that an American naval officer, Ray E. Davis, alerted Chilean officials to the activities of two Americans, Charles Horman, 31, a filmmaker, and Frank Teruggi, 24, a student and an antiwar activist, which led to their arrests and executions. The murders were part of an American-supported coup that ousted the leftist government of President Salvador Allende. The killing of the two men was portrayed in the 1982 film “Missing.” The ruling by the judge, Jorge Zepeda, now establishes the involvement of American intelligence officials in providing information to their Chilean counterparts. He also charged a retired Chilean colonel, Pedro Espinoza, with the murders, and a civilian counterintelligence agent, Rafael González, as an accomplice in Mr. Horman’s murder. October 3, 2014 Page 6 The two men, along with Mr. Davis, were indicted in 2011. Mr. Davis, who died in 2013, was commander of the United States Military Group in Chile. “The judge’s decision makes clear,” said Janis Teruggi Page, Mr. Teruggi’s sister, “that U.S. intelligence personnel who aided and abetted the Chilean military after the coup remain a co-conspirator in this horrible crime.” The latest ruling concludes that Mr. Davis provided his Chilean liaison, Raúl Monsalve, a naval intelligence officer, with information on both Mr. Horman and Mr. Teruggi based on F.B.I. and other United States intelligence, compiled for an investigation into suspicions that the men were engaged in subversive activities. Mr. Monsalve, now dead, passed on this information to the Intelligence Department of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which ordered the men’s arrests. The decision said the murders were part of “a secret United States information-gathering operation carried out by the U.S. Milgroup in Chile on the political activities of American citizens in the United States and in Chile.” Sergio Corvalán, a lawyer for the families of the two slain men, said the ruling confirmed what the families had long believed. “The Chilean military would not have acted against them on their own,” Mr. Corvalán said. “They didn’t have any particular interest in Horman or Teruggi, or evidence of any compromising political activity that would make them targets of Chilean intelligence agencies.” October 3, 2014 Page 7 A version of this article appears in print on July 1, 2014, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Chilean Court Rules U.S. Had Role in Murders October 3, 2014 Page 8 The Guardian Chile Chilean court links US intelligence to 1973 killings of two Americans Former US navy captain gave information to Chilean officials that led to executions of journalist and student, judge finds The Guardian, Tuesday 1 July 2014 12.06 EDT Jump to comments (51) Joyce Horman, the widow of Charles Horman, in 2000. Photograph: Santiago Llanquin/AP A Chilean court has said US military intelligence services played a key role in the killings of two Americans in Chile in 1973 in a case that inspired the Oscar-winning film Missing. A court ruling released late on Monday said a former US navy captain, Ray Davis, gave information to Chilean officials about journalist Charles Horman and student Frank Teruggi that led to their arrest and execution days after the coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power. "The military intelligence services of the United States had a fundamental role in the creation of the murders of the two American citizens in 1973, providing Chilean military officers with the information that led to their deaths," the ruling said. The judge Jorge Zepeda upheld a decision to charge Pedro Espinoza, a retired Chilean army colonel, with the murders, and Rafael Gonzalez, a former civilian counter-intelligence agent, as an accomplice in Horman's murder. The two Chileans and Davis were October 3, 2014 Page 9 indicted in 2011. Davis commanded the US military mission in Chile at the time of the American-backed coup that ousted the democratically elected government of the leftist president Salvador Allende. Davis was investigating Americans in Chile as part of a series of covert intelligence operations run from the US embassy targeting those considered to be subversives or radicals, according to the judge's investigation. Officials at the embassy in Santiago had no immediate comment. Believing Davis to be living in Florida, Chile's supreme court approved an extradition request after he was indicted in November 2011. But Davis was secretly living in Chile, and he died in a Santiago nursing home last year. Horman, 31, a freelance journalist and film-maker, was arrested on 17 September 1973. A national truth commission formed after the Pinochet dictatorship ended said Horman was executed the next day while in the custody of Chilean state security agents. The commission said Teruggi, a 24-year-old university student, was executed on 22 September. The search for Horman by his wife and father was the topic of the 1982 movie Missing, starring Sissy Spacek and Jack Lemmon. The film won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay and was nominated for best picture, actor and actress. The film suggested US complicity in Horman's death, and at the time drew strong objections from US state department officials. The case remained practically ignored in Chile until 2000 when Horman's widow, Joyce, filed a lawsuit against Pinochet. She said after the judge's ruling was released: "More than 40 years after my husband was killed, and almost 14 years since I initiated judicial proceedings in Chile, I am delighted that the cases of Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi are moving forward in the Chilean courts. At the same time, I remain outraged that, through death and delay, a key indicted US official, Captain Ray Davis, has escaped this prosecutorial process. October 3, 2014 Page 10 "Judge Zepeda's ruling both implicates and incriminates US intelligence personnel as playing a dark role in the murder of my husband. My hope is that the record of evidence compiled by the court sheds further light on how and why Charles was targeted, who actually ordered his murder, and what kind of information on one of its own citizens the US government passed to the Chilean military who committed this heinous crime." Chile's government estimates that 3,095 people were killed during Pinochet's dictatorship, including about 1,200 who. AP Santiago October 3, 2014 Page 11 October 3, 2014 Page 12 Santiago Chile June 16, 2014 HAVING REVIEWED AND TAKING INTO ACCOUNT: 1. And with the merit of the following evidence: a) Lawsuit (page 49) filed on behalf of the plaintiff, Joyce Hamren Horman, for the crime of kidnapping, first degree murder, torture, illegal burial and exhumation, and conspiracy, committed prejudicially against her spouse, Charles Edmund Horman Lazar; b) Authenticated translation (page 107) of Charles Edmund Horman Lazar’s birth certificate; c) Authenticated translation of Charles Edmund Horman Lazar’s preliminary death certificate (page 118); d) Authenticated translation (page 128) of autopsy report for the same individual; e) Photocopy of the Deputy Minister of Justice’s legal record (page 204) which includes documentation from the Secretary of State’s General History Archive regarding the two U.S. citizens known as Mr. Charles Edmund Horman and Mr. Frank Teruggi; f) Copy of a document “declassified” by the US Department of State (page 248) which identifies “González” as the individual who accompanied James Anderson to the cemetery to exhume Horman’s remains; g) Copy of a “declassified” document (page 252) of the same origin as the previously mentioned document dated October 1973 indicating that on October 12 of that same year, the U.S. ambassador, Mr. Nathaniel Davis, discussed with Pinochet the congressional request submitted by Kennedy regarding the Teruggi and Horman cases and the problem of human rights; h) Charles Edmund Horman Lazar’s death certificate (page 267); i) Notarized certificate of exhumation and transfer of corpse dated October 18, 1973 (page 269); j) Legal Document (page 271) from the Civil Registry and Identification Service in which the Chief of the General Archive Department certifies that Charles Horman died on September 18, 1973 as documented in the recorded inscription of death No. 1018, Registry E1, 1974 at the Independencia Division; k) Declaration of Joseph Francis Doherty Mac Gregor (page 288) who was arrested together with Carol Nezzo on September 16, 1973, both of whom were taken to the Ministry of Defense and later to the National Stadium; l) Statement of Isabella Angela Rastello Muzio (pages 303 and 3,177), who indicates that she knew Charles Horman and his wife Joyce Horman, and states that she became aware of his disappearance when Joyce informed her; she adds that on September 18, 1973 between seven and eight in the morning, she received a phone call which her grandmother answered, but which was for her; she maintains that when she went to the phone an adult Chilean male indicated she was speaking with someone from the Military Intelligence Service who added that they had detained a bearded North American extremist and wanted to know the nature of her relationship with him; October 3, 2014 Page 13 ll) Declassified U.S. State Department document (page 326) affirming that Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi were executed extra-judicially by Chilean security forces shortly after the military coup; m) Declassified U.S.