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A former Chilean Military officer accused of torturing and killing the Chilean people singer Victor Jara and others through the bloody aftermath of a 1973 army coup was arrested in Florida, officers introduced Tuesday.
The previous officer, Pedro Pablo Barrientos, 74, who moved to Florida in 1990, is needed in Chile for the extrajudicial homicide of Mr. Jara at a Chilean sports activities stadium. There, Mr. Jara and different dissidents had been detained after the coup on Sept. 11, 1973, that toppled the nation’s president, Salvador Allende, and thrust Gen. Augusto Pinochet into energy.
Federal immigration officers and native regulation enforcement officers arrested Mr. Barrientos on Oct. 5 throughout a visitors cease in Deltona, Fla., about 30 miles southwest of Daytona Seaside, in line with a information launch revealed on Tuesday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Mr. Barrientos is in ICE custody, officers mentioned.
“Barrientos will now should reply the fees he’s confronted with in Chile for his involvement in torture and extrajudicial killing of Chilean residents,” John Condon, a particular agent with ICE’s Homeland Safety Investigations division in Tampa, mentioned within the information launch.
Mr. Jara, who has been described because the “Bob Dylan of South America,” was a preferred singer who hailed from the Chilean countryside and sang tales of poverty and injustice.
He had supported the Allende authorities and was a member of Chile’s Communist Get together when he was arrested on the State Technical College alongside lots of of scholars and school members.
Three days after his arrest, Mr. Jara’s bullet-riddled physique was discovered exterior a cemetery alongside these of 4 different victims. Earlier than he was killed, troopers smashed his fingers with their rifle butts and mockingly informed him that he would by no means play guitar once more.
Mr. Barrientos’s arrest comes greater than seven years after a federal jury in a civil case discovered him answerable for Mr. Jara’s loss of life and awarded $28 million in damages to the singer’s household, which had introduced the case beneath a federal regulation that permits the victims of abroad human rights violations to hunt redress.
A former Chilean soldier testified in courtroom that Mr. Barrientos had bragged about having shot Mr. Jara twice within the head.
“He used to indicate his pistol and say, ‘I killed Víctor Jara with this,’” the soldier, José Navarrete, testified.
A federal courtroom revoked Mr. Barrientos’s U.S. citizenship in July based mostly on a sealed criticism introduced by the Division of Justice’s immigration litigation workplace.
“The courtroom discovered that Mr. Barrientos willfully hid materials info associated to his army service in his immigration functions,” the ICE information launch mentioned.
It was unclear whether or not extradition proceedings for Mr. Barrientos have been underway. The federal authorities couldn’t instantly be reached for touch upon Tuesday evening, and it was unclear if Mr. Barrientos had retained a lawyer.
Mr. Barrientos was the most recent former Chilean official to be arrested in Mr. Jara’s killing. In 2018, eight retired army officers have been every sentenced to greater than 15 years in jail by a Chilean choose over Mr. Jara’s loss of life.
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