SANTIAGO – Chile’s Supreme Court has sentenced 24 former police agents to prison for the disappearance of a man who was arrested during the “dirty war” crackdown on leftists under dictator General Augusto Pinochet.
The ruling released Tuesday says Jorge Arturo Grez Aburto was detained in 1974 by agents of the National Intelligence Directorate and was tortured before vanishing in July, presumably killed.
The sentences range from four to 13 years and cannot be appealed. Forty-four other ex-agents were absolved for lack of evidence.
Chile’s Museum of Memory and Human Rights says Grez Aburto was a leatherworker who had been active in a clandestine armed Marxist group before his arrest.
Chile jails Pinochet-era agents for Gallardo Agüero’s forced disappearance
Chile’s government estimates 3,095 people were killed during Pinochet’s dictatorship from 1973 to 1990, including about 1,200 who were forcibly disappeared.
