WORLD IN BRIEF : CHILE : 2 Officers Convicted in Killing of Letelier
Two leaders of the secret police during Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s regime were convicted in the 1976 assassination in Washington of Orlando Letelier, an exiled foe of the military government. Retired Gen. Manuel Contreras has been sentenced to seven years in prison and Brig. Pedro Espinoza, who is still on active duty, to six years. The court did not immediately release the ruling, but Interior Minister Enrique Krauss confirmed the convictions and sentences. Letelier was a foreign minister and envoy to Washington during the leftist government of President Salvador Allende, toppled in the bloody 1973 coup led by Pinochet. He was killed by a car bomb in Washington on Sept. 21, 1976.
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