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documents,’ Fuentes said. Garcia disappeared
on 18 February 1984. But it
was not until 26 years later that two
of those responsible for his death, both
former policemen, were sentenced to
40 years in prison on charges of forced
disappearance.
Fuentes said the AHPN also provided
documents that contributed to
this year’s arrest of retired general
Hector Lopez, accused of the crime
of genocide in connection with the
deaths of more than 300 people between
1978 and 1985, and the arrest
of former police chief Hector Bol for
the disappearance of Garcia.
‘The documents in the archive are
being used as proof to enable the justice
system to issue arrest warrants
and bring people to trial,’ Fuentes
said.
Justice is essential to bringing
about reconciliation in this impoverished
Central American nation. Ada
Melgar, whose father was assassinated
during the armed conflict, told
IPS that ‘once it has been clearly demonstrated
that army officers and the
high command played a role in the
thousands of massacres and murders
in the country, we will be able to feel
a measure of peace.’
The massacres included the
wholesale destruction of around 440
indigenous villages in the country, as
part of a scorched-earth counterinsurgency
policy applied in the late 1970s
and early 1980s.
‘We have filed a case against the
state, because we are sure that my father’s
death was planned by the security
forces,’ said the daughter of Hugo
Rolando Melgar, a law professor at
the University of San Carlos who was
machine-gunned on 24 March 1980.
Ada Melgar, who works in the
police archive, believes the institution
has ‘very valuable documents that can
prove the existence of lists of names
of people held in police custody that
coincide with many men and women
who were captured and disappeared.’
Forensic experts have also found
answers in the archive. ‘The first photos
we saw there were from postmortem
records of several bodies that
had not been identified. But there
were even references in the records
to the fingerprints that they took from
the bodies,’ Jose Suasnabar, assistant
director of the non-governmental
Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology
Foundation (FAFG), told IPS.
Chilean judge indicts former US officer
over coup killings
Joe Hinchcliffe
CHILE’s Supreme Court has requested
the extradition of former US
army officer, Capt. Raymond E
Davis, over his alleged involvement
in the murder of two US citizens in
Chile, days after the coup d’etat of
11 September 1973 that ushered in
17 years of brutal military rule.
Judge Jorge Zepeda issued the
indictment request as part of a longrunning
trial into the deaths of
Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi,
triggered by a criminal suit filed in
2000 by the widow of one of the victims,
Joyce Horman.
Capt. Davis, who was commander
of the US Military Group in
Chile, is accused of providing Chilean
military intelligence agents with
information that led to the arrest, torture
and subsequent death in custody
of the journalists.
The trial has already made significant
advances in its attempt to establish
the chain of command that led
to the arrest of former Chilean military
officers accused of tracking the
journalists in the last days of their
lives.
The case was given high international
profile following the 1982
release of the award-winning film
Missing, which promotes the allegations
of Joyce Horman that her husband
was murdered because he was
unwittingly made aware of CIA involvement
in the military coup.
The victims were both involved
in the American Information Source
(FIN), a left-wing organisation which
supported socialist President Salvador
Allende in the years leading up
to the coup.
Horman is believed to have
The AHPN ‘has become a primary
source of information’ for the
search for people who were disappeared
during the armed conflict, he
said. – IPS
ÿu
made contact with Capt. Davis in a
hotel in the port city of Viña del Mar
and was later driven by the former
naval officer to Santiago, days before
his detention. Both bodies were
later discovered in the streets of the
capital, riddled with bullets and
showing signs of torture.
In 2001 the Chilean government
issued a request to hear the testimony
of former US Secretary of State,
Henry Kissinger, over the role of US
intelligence services in the case.
The US government has officially
denied any involvement in the
coup, although government documents,
declassified by the Clinton
administration in 1999, declare that
‘US intelligence may have played an
unfortunate part in Horman’s death.’
Judge Zepeda’s ruling drew
heavily on evidence procured from
the heavily redacted documents,
which describe Capt. Davis as ‘being
in a position. . . [to] prevent the
murder’ of the journalists, given his
‘coordination with Chilean agents’.
The US Embassy in Santiago released
a statement stating that it does
not comment on specific cases. ‘The
US government continues to support
a thorough investigation into the
Horman and Teruggi deaths in order
to bring those responsible to justice,’
the statement said.
Capt. Davis has denied his involvement
in the murders. His
whereabouts are currently unknown.
– The Santiago Times
(www.santiagotimes.cl) ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿu
Editor’s note: Capt. Davis’ wife has since
been reported by the Associated Press
as saying that her husband is in a US
nursing home suffering from Alzheimer’s.
Patricia Davis, who lives in
Florida, refused to name the nursing
home.
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