> 27 years later, Chile's Caravan of Death touches U.S.
>
> The family of an economist killed in the Pinochet era
> accuses a Chilean ex-major who lives in Miami.
>
> By DAVID ADAMS
>
> =A9 St. Petersburg Times, published March 13, 2000
>
> MIAMI -- When Gen. Augusto Pinochet arrived back in Chile earlier this
> month, he was given a hero's welcome by his followers.
>
> After 16 months under arrest in Britain, it seemed he had escaped the legal
> clutches of a Spanish judge seeking to put him on trial for human rights
> abuses.
>
> But despite efforts to bury the past, the crimes of the Pinochet era
> continue to fester. And the cries for justice that reached around the
> globe have now landed in a Miami courtroom.
>
> It has been almost 27 years since Winston Cabello, a young economist, was
> arrested and killed in Chile during a military roundup of left-wing
> activists known as the Caravan of Death.
>
> For all that time, it seemed that Cabello's killers would never be brought
> to justice. For one thing, they were protected by a sweeping amnesty for
> crimes committed by the military.
>
> Even so, Zita Cabello-Barrueto refused to give up hope. And her efforts paid
> off last year.
>
> She learned that her brother's alleged killer, a former major in the DINA,
> Chile's feared secret police, was living in Miami.
>
> In April, Cabello-Barrueto, who fled to the United States in 1974, filed
> civil charges against Armando Fernandez Larios in a Miami court.
>
> Backed by human rights advocates, Cabello-Barrueto, 53, her mother and two
> siblings are seeking to apply international human rights statutes that allow
> families of victims to sue in U.S. courts for crimes committed abroad.
>
> Her quest for the truth is suddenly on course to dovetail with the general's
> homecoming.
>
> Chilean Judge Juan Guzman is investigating 71 cases against Pinochet
> alleging his involvement in the systematic kidnapping, torture and murder of
> leftists who were hunted down after he took power in a bloody 1973 coup that
> overthrew the elected president, Salvador Allende.
>
> Last Monday, Guzman initiated legal proceedings to strip Pinochet of the
> immunity he enjoys as a senator for life, a status the dictator engineered
> for himself before stepping down in 1990.
>
> Key to the efforts to prosecute Pinochet are the victims of the Caravan of
> Death.
>
> Winston Cabello was arrested Sept. 12, 1973, the day after the coup. Five
> weeks later he was taken from his cell along with 15 other political
> prisoners and executed.
>
> According to the civil case filed in Miami, Fernandez was a member of a
> military death squad that toured northern Chile by helicopter for several
> weeks in October 1973. Potential political opponents of the Pinochet regime
> were tortured and executed.
>
> The death squad was allegedly headed by Gen. Sergio Arellano Stark, an
> army officer who claims he was acting on Pinochet's instructions.
>
> Cabello was picked out by the death squad because he worked for Allende's
> socialist government as head of a regional planning office. "The military
> had so much hate for those who were working for Allende in the economic
> area," said Cabello-Barrueto.
>
> According to a Truth Commission set up to investigate abuses, Cabello was
> one of 3,197 people who disappeared or were killed after the coup. At least
> 50,000 others were interrogated and later released, often after being
> tortured. Another 50,000 people fled the country.
>
> Cabello was being held at a military garrison with other political
> prisoners, including Cabello-Barrueto's husband, Patricio, who worked in
> the same office. "The military came one night and took Winston," she said.
> "The next morning, the guards told my husband he was dead."
>
> According to court documents, after a night of heavy drinking, Fernandez's
> unit loaded 13 of the prisoners, including Cabello, onto a military truck
> and drove to a secluded area. As the prisoners got off the truck they were
> shot. Cabello was allegedly stabbed repeatedly by Fernandez with a military
> knife.
>
> All the bodies were buried in an unmarked grave.
>
> The next day, local newspapers reported that the prisoners died while trying
> to escape. "Even though the guards yelled "halt' several times and even
> shot in the air to frighten them, they did not stop," stated an official
> military communique. "In view of this situation, they proceeded to shoot at
> the fugitives, wounding 13 of them, and they died on the spot."
>
> But in 1990, an official judicial inquiry came to a different conclusion
> after the bodies were exhumed.
>
> "It does not seem very likely that in order to crush an escape attempt by 13
> prisoners it should be necessary to kill all of them on the spot," it
> reported. "The state of the remains ... indicates that these people were
> executed in a situation in which they were totally under the control and at
> the mercy of the soldiers, and that is quite inconsistent with the official
> account."
>
> Shortly after the killings, Cabello-Barrueto's husband was released. But he
> continued to face military harassment.
>
> After he received a summons to appear before a military court, the couple
> decided to flee the country in December 1974.
>
> Carrying a suitcase and their 2-year-old son, they nervously boarded a plane
> for Los Angeles, worrying that they would be arrested.
>
> "We took a chance," Cabello-Barrueto said. "That was one of the scariest
> things in my life."
>
> Meanwhile, Fernandez and other members of the Caravan of Death unit were
> promoted.
>
> In 1976, Fernandez was part of another hit team of Chilean agents that was
> sent to Washington to assassinate Allende's former foreign minister, Orlando
> Letelier. Traveling under an assumed name, Fernandez's job was to identify
> Letelier's car and provide details of his daily routine.
>
> The diplomat, who was one of Pinochet's most outspoken opponents, died
> almost instantly when a bomb exploded under his Chevrolet a few blocks
> from the White House. His American assistant, Ronni Moffitt, also was
> killed.
>
> In January 1987, an apparently repentant Fernandez returned to Washington.
> In a deal with the U.S. Justice Department, details of which remain secret,
> he provided information implicating the head of the DINA in Letelier's
> assassination. Fernandez pleaded guilty, but only as an unwitting accessory
> to murder. Sentenced to seven years in jail, he served five months.
>
> Since his release, Fernandez has been living in Miami, where he works in an
> auto body repair shop. He declines to talk about his past.
>
> After civil charges were filed by the Cabello family last year, Fernandez
> signed a brief statement denying the charges.
>
> "I have never committed acts of torture or murder on anyone," it reads.
>
> Fernandez's lawyers have sought to have the case thrown out, arguing that
> U.S. courts have no jurisdiction.
>
> Although Fernandez has admitted being part of Arellano Stark's unit, he says
> he was not present the night Cabello was killed.
>
> "He's a convenient scapegoat. He's just a speck in all this," said his Miami
> lawyer, Steven Davis. "He didn't execute anybody and he didn't see anybody
> executed."
>
> But lawyers for Cabello's family say the evidence indicates otherwise. "He
> was very much a part of what took place," said Shawn Roberts, legal director
> of the Center for Justice and Accountability in San Francisco, which
> represents the Cabellos.
>
> They are not the only ones with suspicions.
>
> In October, the Chilean Supreme Court approved a request for Fernandez's
> extradition from the United States for his role in the Caravan of Death.
>
> Fernandez's lawyer said he was confident the request would be denied.
> Although Davis declined to explain, he hinted that Fernandez's secret plea
> arrangement with the Justice Department protected him from being removed
> from the United States.
>
> The Justice Department did not return several phone calls inquiring about
> Fernandez's status.
>
> But his presence in the United States is becoming increasingly harder to
> ignore. "His case is going to tie the United States to the pursuit of
> justice in Chile," said Peter Kornbluh of the Washington-based National
> Security Archive, a non-profit group dedicated to the declassification of
> government documents.
>
> Fernandez also could turn out to be a key witness if Pinochet is prosecuted,
> Kornbluh added. In the Letelier case, Fernandez testified that he had tried
> to quit the DINA years earlier, even confronting Pinochet over the
> assassination.
>
> "He is a critical witness to Gen. Pinochet's obstruction of justice in the
> Letelier case," Kornbluh said.
>
> Cabello-Barrueto would like to see Fernandez tried in Chile, but extradition
> seems unlikely. She thinks she has a better chance of justice in a U.S.
> court.
>
> Whatever the truth about Cabello's death, any member of Chile's military
> would be protected under a sweeping amnesty passed in 1978. The law covers
> almost all political crimes committed during the first five years of the
> Pinochet dictatorship.
>
> Last year, Chile's Supreme Court made an exception for cases of
> "disappeared" people whose bodies remain missing. The court argued these
> cases could be considered unresolved kidnappings, a crime not covered by the
> amnesty.
>
> However, because Cabello's body was one of those exhumed in 1990, his case
> does not fall within the exception. Instead, the Caravan of Death case
> rests on 19 bodies that were never found.
>
> In June 1999, Judge Guzman applied the Supreme Court's ruling to indict five
> military officers -- including Gen. Arellano Stark and Fernandez -- on
charges of aggravated kidnapping.
>
> Cabello-Barrueto thinks Chile still has a long way to go before there can be
> true justice. She doubts Pinochet will ever be put on trial.
>
> "(Judge) Guzman is good. I'm really happy what he's trying to do," she said
> in a phone interview from California, where she is a university teacher.
> "But there's a lack of political will to back him up."
>
> The red carpet Chile's military rolled out to welcome Pinochet home was a
> reminder that prosecuting the general will not be easy, she said.
>
> "It showed how powerful and arrogant they are. The military still feel they
> are on top of the political institutions."