Former army lieutenant Pedro Barrientos Núñez, accused for more than a decade by the Chilean justice system as the perpetrator of the crime of singer-songwriter Víctor Jara, was assassinated in Santiago five days after the coup of September 11, 1973, which overthrew him. Socialist President Salvador Allende (1970-1973) was imprisoned in the United States, meaning he will be transferred to Chile to face trial since his extradition was approved by the Supreme Court in 2013.
Barrientos was indicted in December 2012 by Chilean judge Miguel Vásquez, who requested his international arrest at the time because he has been living in the United States since 1989. According to the January 2013 Chilean Supreme Court court document that approved his extradition to Chile, “The multiple antecedents recorded by the investigative court allow us to make sufficient assumptions to confirm that the requested party is involved in the facts under investigation in the case was.”
The former military man was arrested on October 5 at a road checkpoint, reported the chief inspector of the Prefect for International Cooperation of the Chilean Investigative Police (PDI), Catalina Barría, who explained that Interpol has had a red flag for his arrest since 2013 for the crime of qualified Killing. Now they are waiting for an immigration judge to decide how to expel them from the United States.
In 2016, a federal court in Miami found Barrientos guilty, in addition to damages, of torture and extrajudicial execution of the Chilean singer and theater director as part of a civil lawsuit brought by Víctor Jara’s family. In addition, last July, Judge Roy Dalton of the Central District of Florida revoked the former military man’s citizenship because of his involvement in the artist’s crime and because he had also illegally acquired citizenship in 2010.
At the end of August and on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the coup in Chile, the Supreme Court confirmed the conviction of seven former army soldiers as perpetrators of the kidnapping and murder of Víctor Jara, who was beaten and shot together with Littré Quiroga, director of the National Prison Service of the Allende government, to death on September 16, 1973 at the Chile Stadium in central Santiago. According to the testimony and the judicial reconstruction, his captors were particularly cruel to them and were tortured for at least three days in this sports facility: the singer-songwriter had 56 broken bones and 44 bullet wounds in his body, while Quiroga had 47 fractures and 23 bullet wounds.
Pedro Pablo Barrientos
“Prisoners with a certain public connotation were identified by military personnel and separated from the rest, and during their respective periods of imprisonment, both Víctor Jara Martínez and Littré Abraham Quiroga Carvajal were recognized by military personnel” and then “separated from the rest.” the prisoners and the assignment of special confinement who suffer from constant and violent episodes of physical and verbal aggression throughout their captivity,” the August ruling said.
The bodies of communist militants Víctor Jara and Littré Quiroga were dumped on a vacant lot near the railway line near the Metropolitan Cemetery on September 16, 1973. It was some passers-by who identified them and they notified families. Familys.
Víctor Jara, author of songs such as “The Right to Live in Peace” and “I Remember You Amanda”, was arrested the day after the coup of dictator Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990). On September 11, 1973, he had gone to the State Technical University (UTE), where he worked, in response to a call from President Allende.