When police went to his residence to convey him to jail he took a firearm.
Santiago, Chile:
A retired Chilean normal killed himself on Tuesday earlier than he might be jailed for the 1973 homicide of beloved people singer Victor Jara within the aftermath of a army coup that put in dictator Augusto Pinochet, the lawyer normal’s workplace mentioned.
Hernan Chacon, 85, was amongst seven former troopers who had jail phrases confirmed on Monday after an attraction.
When police went to his residence to convey him to jail he “took a firearm, firing a shot that induced his loss of life,” prosecutor Claudio Suazo informed reporters.
The singer Jara, 40, was arrested the day after the September 11, 1973, CIA-backed coup that overthrew Salvador Allende.
His physique was discovered days later, riddled with 44 bullets. He had been held, together with some 5,000 different political prisoners, in a sports activities stadium the place he was interrogated, tortured and killed.
Amongst different horrors, the singer-guitarist’s fingers had been crushed — damaged by rifle butts and boots.
Jara was a member of Chile’s Communist Occasion and a fervent supporter of the Standard Unity coalition that backed Marxist president Allende, who got here to energy by fashionable vote in 1970.
The physique of a fellow detainee, Littre Quiroga, 33 — nationwide prisons director and a Communist Occasion member — was discovered with indicators of torture close to that of Jara and three different political prisoners.
Monday’s ruling confirmed sentences of 15 years for the murders of Jara and Littre and one other 10 years for his or her kidnapping, for Chacon and 5 different ex-army officers.
One other former soldier obtained eight years for his function in overlaying up the crimes.
Jara, a pacifist singer whose lyrics spoke of affection and social protest, grew to become an icon of Latin American fashionable music with songs like “The Proper to Reside in Peace.”
He impressed musicians from U2 to Bob Dylan, and at a 2013 live performance in Santiago, Bruce Springsteen paid tribute to him.
Pinochet dominated Chile till 1990 and died in 2006 with out ever being convicted for the crimes dedicated by his regime, which is believed to have killed some 3,200 leftist activists and different suspected opponents.
A couple of days forward of the anniversary of the coup, the Supreme Court docket on Tuesday posthumously bestowed the title of lawyer on eight individuals murdered below Pinochet — together with Allende’s former inside minister Jose Toha.
His daughter and present Inside Minister Carolina Toha mentioned the symbolic gesture was an “act of justice” and an necessary show of “restore efforts” by state establishments.
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