Eduardo Nicanor Frei Montalva was a Chilean political leader. In his long political career, he was Minister of Public Works, president of his Christian Democratic Party, senator, President of the Senate, and the 28th president of Chile from 1964 to 1970. His eldest son, Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, also became president of Chile (1994–2000).
Juan Manuel Guillermo "Mamo" Contreras Sepúlveda was a Chilean Army officer and the former head of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), Chile's secret police during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. In 1995, he was sentenced to seven years in prison for the murder in Washington, D.C. of Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier, which he served until 2001.
The 1973 Chilean coup d'état was a watershed moment in both the history of Chile and the Cold War. Following an extended period of social unrest and political tension between the opposition-controlled Congress of Chile and the socialist President Salvador Allende, as well as economic warfare ordered by US President Richard Nixon, Allende was overthrown by the armed forces and national police.
María Lucía Hiriart Rodríguez, also known as Lucía Hiriart de Pinochet, is the widow of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
Juan Emilio Cheyre Espinoza is a retired Chilean Army General. He was Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army from 2002 to 2006. As Commander-in-Chief he attempted to distance the Army from former dictator General Augusto Pinochet, and condemned the human rights abuses of Pinochet's dictatorship.
Operation Colombo was an operation undertaken by the DINA in 1975 to make political dissidents disappear. At least 119 people are alleged to have been abducted and later killed. The magazines published a list of 119 dead political opponents.
Michael Vernon Townley is a former agent of the CIA and Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional currently living under terms of the US federal witness protection program. An operative of the Chilean secret police, Townley confessed, was convicted, and served 62 months in prison in the United States for the 1976 Washington, D.C., assassination of Orlando Letelier, former Chilean ambassador to the United States. A coworker of Letelier's named Ronni Moffitt also died from the same attack. As part of his plea bargain, Townley received immunity from further prosecution; he was not extradited to Argentina to stand trial for the 1974 assassination of Chilean general Carlos Prats and his wife in Buenos Aires.
General Augusto Pinochet was indicted for human rights violations committed in his native Chile by Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzón on 10 October 1998. He was arrested in London six days later and held for a year and a half before finally being released by the British government in March 2000. Authorised to freely return to Chile, Pinochet was there first indicted by judge Juan Guzmán Tapia, and charged with a number of crimes, before dying on 10 December 2006, without having been convicted in any case. His arrest in London made the front-page of newspapers worldwide as not only did it involve the head of the military dictatorship that ruled Chile between 1973 and 1990, but it was the first time that several European judges applied the principle of universal jurisdiction, declaring themselves competent to judge crimes committed by former heads of state, despite local amnesty laws.
On September 11, 1973, Salvador Allende, President of Chile, died of self-inflicted gunshot wounds during a coup d'état led by the Chilean Army Commander-in-Chief Augusto Pinochet. After decades of suspicions that Allende might have been assassinated by the Chilean Armed Forces, a Chilean court in 2011 authorized the exhumation and autopsy of Allende's remains. A team of international experts examined the remains and concluded that Allende had shot himself with an AK-47 assault rifle. In December 2011, the judge in charge of the investigation affirmed the experts' findings and ruled Allende's death a suicide. On September 11, 2012, the 39th anniversary of Allende's death, a Chilean appeals court unanimously upheld the trial court's ruling, officially closing the case.
The Chilean transition to democracy began when a Constitution establishing a transition itinerary was approved in a plebiscite. From 11 March 1981 to March 1990, several organic constitutional laws were approved leading to the final restoration of democracy. After the 1988 plebiscite, the 1980 Constitution, still in force today, was amended to ease provisions for future amendments to the constitution, create more seats in the senate, diminish the role of the National Security Council and equalize the number of civilian and military members.
Jaime Castillo Velasco was a Chilean politician who served as president and vice-president of the Christian Democrat Party on several occasions. His father was poet and lawyer Eduardo Castillo Urízar and his mother was Elena Velasco. His brother was Fernando Castillo Velasco, mayor of the Municipality of La Reina.
Eugenio Berríos Sagredo was a Chilean biochemist who worked for the DINA intelligence agency. Berríos was charged with carrying out Proyecto Andrea in which Pinochet ordered the production of sarin gas, a chemical weapon used by the DINA. Sarin gas leaves no trace and victims' deaths closely mimic heart attacks. Other biochemical weapons produced by Berríos included anthrax and botulism. Berríos also allegedly produced cocaine for Pinochet, who then sold it to Europe and the United States. In the late 1970s, at the height of the Beagle Crisis between Chile and Argentina, Berríos is reported to have worked on a plan to poison the water supply of Buenos Aires. Wanted by the Chilean authorities for involvement in the Letelier case, he escaped to Uruguay in 1991, at the beginning of the Chilean transition to democracy, and what has been identified as his corpse was found in 1995 near Montevideo.
Carmelo Soria was a Spanish-Chilean United Nations diplomat. A member of the CEPAL in the 1970s, he was assassinated by Chile's DINA agents as a part of Operation Condor. Augusto Pinochet was later personally indicted over this case.
Gerardo Huber Olivares was a Chilean Army Colonel and agent of the DINA, Chile's intelligence agency. He was in charge of purchasing weapons abroad for the army. Huber was assassinated shortly before he was due to testify before Magistrate Hernán Correa de la Cerda in a case concerning the illegal export of weapons to the Croatian army. That enterprise involved 370 tons of weapons sold to the Croatian government by Chile on 7 December 1991, when Croatia was under a United Nations embargo arising from the war in Yugoslavia. In January 1992, Magistrate Correa sought testimony from Huber on the deal. However, Huber may well have been silenced to avoid implicating former Chilean President and then-Commander-in-Chief of the Army Augusto Pinochet, who was himself awaiting trial on related charges.
The Papal mediation in the Beagle conflict followed the failure of negotiations between Chile and Argentina, when, on 22 December 1978, the Argentinian Junta started Operation Soberanía, to invade Cape Horn and islands awarded to Chile by the Beagle Channel Arbitration. Soon after the event, Pope John Paul II offered to mediate and sent his personal envoy, Cardinal Antonio Samoré, to Buenos Aires. Argentina, in acceptance of the authority of the Pope over the overwhelmingly Catholic Argentine population, called off the military operation and accepted the mediation. On 9 January 1979, Chile and Argentina signed the Act of Montevideo formally requesting mediation by the Vatican and renouncing the use of force.
Eduardo Frei Montalva was an opposition leader against the government of President Salvador Allende and initially supported the Chilean coup of 1973 that deposed Allende and put General Augusto Pinochet in power. Frei Montalva, President of Chile, died in 1982 apparently following routine surgery.
Project Andrea is the code name of an effort by the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet to manufacture sarin gas for use as a weapon against its opponents.
Chile-Sweden relations refers to the diplomatic relations between Chile and Sweden. Both nations enjoy friendly relations, the importance of which centers on the history of Chilean migration to Sweden during the 1970s. Approximately 50,000 Chileans and their descendants reside in Sweden, making the country home to the third largest Chilean diaspora community. Both countries are members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
