Case of Slain Filmmaker Horman Gets Boost

Case of Slain Filmmaker Horman Gets Boost
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: March 12, 2004


Filed at 7:33 p.m. ET

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) -- The investigation into the killing of an American filmmaker days after former dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet seized power in 1973 is finally making ``extraordinary progress,'' a lawyer in the case said Friday.

Fabiola Letelier, a lawyer for Charles Horman's widow, credited a hardworking judge, a more cooperative police and U.S. documents declassified by the Clinton administration with giving the case a boost after 30 years.
(snip)

``We hope the judge, the courts, will find the truth, discover those who participated, who were responsible, and will punish them,'' Letelier told The Associated Press.

The Horman case was the subject of the 1982 film ``Missing,'' directed by Constantine Costa-Gavras and starring Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek.
(snip/...)

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Chile-Slain-US-Filmmaker.html

... a relative of Orlando Letelier, who was killed in Washington, DC, in a car bombing in 1976. Something the CIA and its dictator friends often forget--people have long memories.

This must an intense time for her. I'll bet she feels really wired!

From the end of the article:

The lawyer is a sister of Orlando Letelier, a prominent Pinochet foe who was killed when a bomb blew up his car in downtown Washington in 1976. The killing was traced to Pinochet's security services.

Fabiola Letelier declined to discuss details of the progress in the case or what she called ``possible new evidence.'' However a former army intelligence agent was recently charged in the case, the only suspect indicted so far. Rafael Gonzalez, 65, is free on parole.

According to court papers, Horman was arrested on Sept. 17, 1973, two weeks after the bloody coup led by Pinochet, and taken to Santiago's main soccer stadium, which had been turned into a detention camp for Pinochet's suspected opponents.

His body turned up months later at a location that has not been disclosed on orders from the judge handling the case, Jorge Zepeda. It remains unclear whether he was killed there or elsewhere. His body was handed to his family who took it back home.
(snip/)

decades until others, many others, would listen to her. The U.S. Government (read CIA, George H.W. Bush, Kissinger, Nixon) must be held as accountable as Pinochet for the outright murders of non-mililtary victims in Chile due to the coup d'etat that was orchestrated, financed, and/or given military back-up by them.

It fits the pattern: a democratically-elected leader who does not take his marching orders from Washington is deposed. A dictatorship that is servient is much more preferable to an independent democracy.

Joyce Horman is a heroine on many levels.