Newly declassified U.S. intelligence documents revealed Thursday that Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet personally ordered the 1976 assassination of one of his country’s diplomats in Washington.
Orlando Letelier, a former defense and foreign minister, was killed by a car bomb along with American Ronni Moffitt.
Letelier had been a top official under Marxist President Salvador Allende, who was ousted in a coup led by Pinochet in 1973. Letelier was tortured and jailed, but later managed to escape to the United States.
“We hope that studying these documents will shine a light” on both Pinochet’s role in the killing and a judicial system that never tried the dictator for the crime, Letelier’s son, Chilean Sen. Juan Pablo Letelier, told reporters Thursday.
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