SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) – Chile’s Supreme Court says it will ask the United States to extradite three former secret police agents accused of the 1976 kidnapping, torture and murder of a Spanish U.N. official in Chile.
The top court said Tuesday that U.S. citizen Michael Townley, Chilean Armando Fernandez Larios and Cuban Virgilio Paz are co-authors in the killing of Carmelo Soria.
The 54-year-old Spanish diplomat was working for the U.N.’s Economic Commission for Latin America.
The accused worked for the feared DINA secret police under Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s 1973-1990 dictatorship.
Prosecutors say they apparently targeted Soria because they were convinced he had been helping Communists in Chile.
Townley served a five-year sentence in a U.S. prison for the 1976 assassination in Washington of former Chilean Ambassador Orlando Letelier and his assistant.