Chile: Troubled Conscience

A onetime Chilean army captain last week confessed to taking part in a murder, but he also suggested that Chilean President Augusto Pinochet may have been involved. On Sept. 21, 1976, former Chilean Ambassador Orlando Letelier, a Pinochet foe, was killed in Washington when a bomb exploded under his car.

For almost nine years, the U.S. sought to extradite three Chilean secret- police officers believed to be involved in the crime. The Pinochet regime refused to cooperate, but last week one of the officers, Armando Fernandez Larios, claiming his conscience troubled him, admitted he had helped the Chileans find Letelier in the U.S.

With Fernandez facing a ten-year prison sentence as an accessory after the fact, the U.S. Ambassador to Chile requested the extradition of the other two secret-police officers. The Chilean Foreign Ministry is studying the case.