The slow, slow pace of international justice

Charles Horman, a filmmaker and Frank Teruggi, a student, were both killed in Chile’s National Stadium in the aftermath of the 1973 military coup.

This week Chile’s Supreme Court, by a vote of 4-1, authorized a judge to request the extradition of a retired U.S. naval officer implicated in the killing of two Americans, Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, in wake of the 1973 military coup. (See earlier posts https://notesontheamericas.wordpress.com/2011/11/30/captain-davis-and-el-caso-missing-2/,   https://notesontheamericas.wordpress.com/2012/04/21/an-extradition-request/ and https://notesontheamericas.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/the-whereabouts-of-captain-davis/).

It was last November that Judge Jorge Zepeda announced he would seek Captain Ray Davis’s extradition, and according to information posted on its website http://www.poderjudicial.cl/ the Supreme Court would consider the request within a few days. Now, almost a year later the Supreme Court has finally made its ruling.

So what now?  The case goes to Chile’s Foreign Ministry, which must then present the extradition request to U.S. authorities.

An extradition request

Last November Chilean judge Jorge Zepeda, who has been investigating the case of two American citizens killed during the country’s 1973 military coup, said he was seeking the extradition of former U.S. naval attache Captain Ray E. Davis in the case. The Americans, graduate student Frank Teruggi and filmmaker Charles Horman, were arrested and taken to the National Stadium in Santiago where they were both executed. Horman’s case became the basis for the 1982 film Missing, directed by Costa-Gavras.

Davis, now in his mid-80s, is known to have met Horman and his wife in the days following the coup. But Davis’s wife, when contacted at their home in Florida, said he was suffering Alzheimer’s and living in a U.S. nursing home.  She would not say which one.

Then everything seemed to go quiet. Zepeda has a considerable backlog of unsolved human rights cases in his files, including that of missing Penn State mathematics professor Boris Weisfeiler.  But this past week Zepeda asked Chile’s Supreme Court to approve the extradition request for Davis, who is known to have been in contact with one of the dead Americans, filmmaker Charles Horman.  The judge said that Horman’s killing “happened during secret operations against American citizens and was part of Ray E. Davis’s intelligence activities.”  According to the Chilean Supreme Court web site (www.poderjudicial.cl), the extradition request will be considered within the next few days.

For more on the Charles Horman case:  http://www.hormantruth.org/

For more on the Boris Weisfeiler case: http://www.weisfeiler.com/boris/