Chilean assassin gets assassinated

Author Elbert Hubbard allegedly once said “men are not punished for their sins, but by them.” That was certainly the case with assassinated assassin Enrique Arancibia Clavel.

Police in Buenos Aires found the corpse of Arancibia Clavel with at least fifteen stab wounds throughout his lifeless body. Argentine national news agency Telam cited “several sources” that claimed that his death was not recent in part because the blood around his wounds was dry.

At the time of his death, Arancibia Clavel ran a local taxi service but he was also a former Chilean secret agent punished of the murders of Carlos Prats and his wife. Prats, who served as the head of the Chilean army under President Salvador Allende, was killed in a 1974 car bombing while exiled in Argentina. His death came roughly thirteen months since Allende was depose in a coup by Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

In 2004, Arancibia Clavel was sentenced to twelve years in prison over the Prats incident though he had been on conditional release since 2007. The 66-year-old was also convicted that year of torturing a pair of Chilean refugees who fled the Pinochet dictatorship.

At the time of Arancibia Clavel’s conviction in 2000, Prats’ daughters failed in seeking the extradition of the now-deceased Pinochet to Argentina. Last month they filed a $15 million dollar lawsuit against the Chilean government as well as former Pinochet-era spy chief Manuel Contreras who was sentenced last year for his role in the Prats car bombing.

Prats’ family has publicly declined to comment on Arancibia Clavel death aside from stating that they were “impacted” by his murder. Though Interior Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter noted that Arancibia Clavel committed a "shocking crime" he also said that he was "moved" by his death.

One Chilean victims’ rights leader, meanwhile, lamented that he died without serving time in a Chilean prison:

(Lorena Pizarro, president of the Families of the Disappeared group) said that what most impacted her was that Arancibia Clavel “died in impunity” and that “governments…have been negligent and permitted impunity, which is very serious.”

Image- EFE via Pagina 12 (Arancibia Clavel enjoyed conditional freedom despite his dual convictions.”)
Online Sources- Europa Press, El Tiempo, BBC News, ntn24news.com, Terra Chile, La Tercera, quotegarden.com

Daily Headlines: March 31, 2011

* Mexico: A combined reward of up to $5.8 million was offered by the U.S. and Mexican governments in relation to the attack against a pair of U.S. immigration agents in February.

* Chile: The attorney representing the three daughters of assassinated former army chief Carlos Prats confirmed that they filed a $15 million lawsuit against the Chilean government.

* Haiti: According to documents obtained by the Canadian Press news agency officials in Canada worried that a "popular uprising" would take place after a major January 2010 earthquake.

* Brazil: Could Brazil's growing reliance on China hurt the South American country's growing economy or are such fears unfounded?

Image – CNN (“Special Agent Jaime Zapata was shot and killed February 15 while traveling between Mexico City and Monterrey.”)
Online Sources- BusinessWeek, Reuters, MSNBC, CTV

Chile: Convictions upheld in ’74 bombing

Yesterday we mentioned how victims of Guatemala’s Dos Erres massacre received some measure of justice nearly three decades after the killings. The families of Carlos Prats and his wife can also rest a little easier 36 years after they were slain.

On Thursday Chile’s top court upheld the murder convictions against several former members of that country’s secret police (DINA, in Spanish) for their role behind the Prats killing. Ex-DINA head Manuel Contreras were among those whose convictions were upheld by the Supreme Court for the 1974 bombing in Buenos Aires, which was masterminded by the late dictator Augusto Pinochet.

The court reduced Contreras’ sentence in the Prats case from life imprisonment to twenty years in jail but he has been imprisoned for other murders such as the 1976 car bombing of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffit in Washington, D.C. The tribunal’s decision has brought some comfort to the family according to daughter Sofia Prats:

“As a family we’ve conformed with the reality that we know but no there has been juridical responsibility placed against those who at the time were sent by the Chilean government and military to commit their crimes.” – [ed. Translated text]

Image- BBC Mundo (Carlos Prats had served as vice president under Salvador Allende before the military coup in 1973).
Online Sources- BBC Mundo, AP, AFP, The Latin Americanist