Judge Says Chilean Military Kidnapped US Hiker
Judge Says Chilean Military Kidnapped US Hiker
SANTIAGO, Chile August 22, 2012 (AP)
The case of a U.S. hiker who disappeared during Chile's dictatorship has finally resulted in arrest warrants.
Judge Jorge Zepeda ordered the arrests Tuesday of eight former police and military officials on charges of kidnapping and conspiracy to cover up the disappearance of Boris Weisfeiler. He was a Princeton University professor who hasn't been seen since 1985.
The indictment says Weisfeiler was wearing military-style clothes while hiking alone near the Argentine border and the officers suspected he was a leftist militant sneaking into Chile to challenge the regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.
It says most of the evidence came from declassified U.S. files. They include witness accounts of how Weisfeiler was kidnapped and delivered to Colonia Dignidad, a German enclave that Pinochet's secret police used as a torture center.
More:
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/judge-chilean-military-kidnapped-us-hiker-17053246
(Short article, no more at link.)
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Boris Weisfeiler[/center]
There are more than 1,100 desaparecidos (disappeared persons) in Chile and one of them is a U.S. citizen - Boris Weisfeiler. A Russian-born mathematics professor at Pennsylvania State University, Weisfeiler vanished while on a hiking trip near the border between Chile and Argentina in the early part of January 1985. After a quick and cursory investigation, Chilean authorities concluded that Weisfeiler had drowned in the Nuble River during his trip.
Declassified U.S. documents tell a different story. According to an informant, Weisfeiler was detained by Augusto Pinochet's soldiers, presumed to be a Russian or Jewish spy, and taken to the mysterious German colony Colonia Dignidad. The declassified U.S. documents show that the U.S. Embassy personnel did not do enough to ascertain the fate of Weisfeiler, the only missing U.S. citizen in Chile. As consul Jayne Kobliska stated more than a year after Weisfeiler's disappearance in a memo from April 1986, "the real danger in this case is that we will delay action until it is too late to either save Weisfeiler's life or to determine the true circumstances of his death."
The investigation of the disappearance of Boris Weisfeiler in Chile was judicially reopen in January 2000 by the Chilean lawyer Hernand Fernandez who is working on the behalf of the Boris' family. On April 1, 2000, the State Department demanded that the Chilean government mount "a vigorous and thorough investigation aimed at uncovering the facts, and in accordance with Chilean law, prosecuting those responsible." In October 2000 Judge Juan Guzman, the special prosecutor in charge of bringing Augusto Pinochet to justice, assumed responsibility for the Weisfeiler investigation. The Weisfeiler case officially becomes Complaint Number 169 brought against Augusto Pinochet in Chile.
More:
http://boris.weisfeiler.com/index-pre4-12-04.html
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