A Santiago court has convicted three former agents of General Augusto Pinochet's secret police for the murder of Ronni Karpen Moffitt, an American colleague of former Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier, in a 1976 car bombing in Washington DC. Judge Paola Plaza sentenced Pedro Espinoza, José Zara, and Raúl Iturriaga to 15 years in prison for their roles in the killing.
Background of the Attack
On 21 September 1976, Letelier and Moffitt were driving to work when a bomb detonated as they rounded a bend on Massachusetts Avenue Northwest. Letelier, a former Chilean minister and ambassador to the US, and Moffitt, 25, were killed instantly. The attack was orchestrated by the Dirección Nacional de Inteligencia (Dina), Pinochet's feared secret police.
According to the court ruling, the agents, led by Dina chief Manuel Contreras, planned the extrajudicial murders on foreign soil and conducted surveillance on Letelier. Pinochet directly ordered the killing, as revealed in declassified US documents.
Sentencing and Reactions
Espinoza and Iturriaga, who is already serving over 500 years for human rights atrocities, were held at a facility outside Santiago. Zara, who had completed a 15-year sentence in August 2023, was rearrested. Juan Gabriel Valdés, former Chilean ambassador to Washington DC, noted on social media: “Justice took 49 years and 97 days to arrive.”
Rebecca Karpen, Moffitt's niece, said in a statement: “These sentences are not just a victory for our family, but are a reminder that the countless lives ruined by the Pinochet regime are still being fought for, that the pain of the Chilean people will not be forgotten.”
Historical Context
Letelier, a prominent critic of the dictatorship, lived in exile in the US after imprisonment in a concentration camp. On 10 September 1976, Pinochet revoked his citizenship. That night, Letelier addressed 75,000 people at an anti-Pinochet rally in New York, declaring: “I was born a Chilean, I am a Chilean, and I will die a Chilean.” He was murdered 11 days later, aged 44.
The killings strained US-Chile relations, prompting a US congressional investigation and an arms embargo on Chile. Pinochet's junta disbanded Dina but quietly replaced it with the Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI).
