Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 30. november 2011 / Timeline November 30, 2011
Version 3.529. November 2011, December 2011
11/30/2011
CHILEAN JUDGE REQUESTS EXTRADITION OF U.S. MILITARY OFFICIAL IN
"MISSING" CASE
Capt. Ray Davis Indicted in Chile for alleged role in murder of
Charles Horman, Frank Teruggi
Declassified U.S. Documents Used Extensively in Court
Indictment
Archive Posts Documents cited in Indictment, including FBI
Intelligence Reports Containing Teruggi's Address in Chile
Washington, D.C., November 30, 2011 - Thirty-eight years after the
military coup in Chile, a Chilean judge has formally indicted the
former head of the U.S. Military Group, Captain Ray Davis, and a
Chilean intelligence officer, Pedro Espinoza for the murders of two
American citizens in September 1973. The judge, Jorge Zepeda, said
he would ask the Chilean Supreme Court to authorize an extradition
request for Davis as an "accessory" to the murders of Charles
Horman and Frank Teruggi.
Both Horman and Teruggi were seized separately at their homes in
Santiago by Chilean soldiers and subsequently executed while in
detention. Their murders, and the seeming indifference of U.S.
officials, were immortalized in the Oscar-award winning movie
"Missing" which focused on the search by Horman's wife and father
for him in the weeks following the U.S.-supported coup.
The indictment accused the U.S. MilGroup of passing intelligence to
the Chilean military on the "subversive" activities of Teruggi that
contributed to his arrest; it stated that Davis "was in a position"
to stop the executions "given his coordination with Chilean agents"
but did not do so.
In his indictment, Judge Zepeda cited a number of declassified U.S.
government documents as the basic foundation for the case-although
none of them tie Davis or Espinoza to the crimes. "These documents
are providing the blocks for building a case in these famous
killings," said Peter Kornbluh who directs the Chile Documentation
Project at the Archive, "but they do not provide a smoking gun." To
successfully advance court proceedings as well as a successful
extradition request, according to Kornbluh, the judge will have to
present concrete evidence of communications between U.S. and
Chilean military officers regarding Horman and Teruggi prior to
their detentions and their deaths. "
The Archive today posted a number of the documents cited in the
indictment, including key FBI memos that contained Frank Teruggi's
Santiago address, as well as other records relevant to the Horman
and Teruggi case. The documents derive from an indexed collection:
Chile and the United States: U.S. Policy toward Democracy,
Dictatorship, and Human Rights, 1970-1990. The collection, just
published this week by the Archive and Proquest, contains over 180
documents on the Horman and Teruggi case.
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