LatinNews Daily - 26 May 2016

Chile: On 16 May Chile's supreme court (CS) announced that it will ask the US to extradite three former police agents from its disbanded national intelligence directorate (Dina), Chile’s secret police under the military government led by General Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990). The three individuals are suspected of being responsible for the 1976 murder of a United Nations diplomat in Chile. In a unanimous verdict, the CS agreed to ask the US to hand over Chilean national Armando Fernández Larios, US national Michael Townley, and Cuban national Virgilio Paz. All three, who are currently living in the US, are wanted in Chile for the detention, torture, and murder of Spanish-Chilean Carmelo Soria Espinoza, who was arrested as he travelled home from his office in Santiago and was taken by Dina officials to a torture centre on the outskirts of the city. Townley and Fernández are currently in the US witness protection programme after assisting in the investigation of the murder of Orlando Letelier, a leftist Chilean exile executed by Pinochet operatives in Washington DC in 1976. Paz was released in 2001 after spending a decade in a US prison for his role in Letelier’s murder.

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