Five high-ranking retired navy officers were indicted on Friday for the abduction, torture and killing of a British-Chilean priest and other dissidents on floating detention centers in the days following Chile’s 1973 military coup.
The priest, Michael Woodward, was taken into custody by security forces in the port city of Valparaiso on Sept. 16, 1973, five days after the coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power.
Woodward was allegedly tortured with other detainees on at least two navy ships used as detention centers and died on Sept. 22. He was buried in a mass grave and his family was provided with a certificate saying he died of cardio-respiratory problems. But prosecutors believe he died from his injuries under torture.
On Friday, Judge Eliana Quezada said she indicted retired admirals Sergio Barros, Guillermo Aldoney and Adolfo Walbaum and retired navy captains Sergio Barra and Ricardo Riesgo for the kidnapping and torture of Woodward and other members of leftist groups.
The five men were taken into custody and sent to military barracks in Valparaiso on Friday.
Also charged was Carlos Costa, a navy doctor.
Quezada said the defendants all maintain their innocence, but they could not be reached.
Woodward, 42 at the time of his death, had been suspended from the Roman Catholic priesthood and joined the Christians for Socialism, said a report by a commission appointed by the first post-Pinochet civilian government to investigate the rights abuses during the 1973 to 1990 dictatorship. He had Chilean and British citizenship.
Woodward’s sister, Patricia, applauded the indictments.
“The case of my brother has taken a very important step ahead,” she said. “I hope this means we are reaching truth and justice for Miguel and other victims of the navy.”
On Thursday, a former chief of Pinochet’s secret police was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Retired General Manuel Contreras, 78, was found guilty of the disappearance of radio technician Marcelo Salinas, who was last seen in a government detention center a few weeks after his 1974 arrest.
He is presumed dead.
About 3,200 people were killed for political reasons under Pinochet, the commission found.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
RSS