Chile jails 14 officers for death of Pinochet henchman

Chile's Supreme Court jailed a group of 14 Uruguayan and Chilean army officers Tuesday for kidnapping and killing a top agent of late dictator Augusto Pinochet's regime in order to silence him.

The case delved into the murky death of secret police agent Eugenio Berrios, a chemist who oversaw the production of sarin gas and other chemical weapons for the Pinochet regime (1973-1990) to use against its opponents.

After Pinochet stepped down, Berrios fled to Uruguay, where he was found dead on a beach with bullet wounds to the head in 1995.

The court found the convicted officers collaborated on a plan to eliminate Berrios, whom they apparently feared would testify on some of the darkest secrets of a dictatorship that killed or "disappeared" more than 3,000 people and tortured some 38,000.

His killing is believed to be one of the last missions carried out under Operation Condor, a joint program launched in the 1970s by the right-wing dictatorships of South America to assassinate their opponents and stamp out dissent.

The Supreme Court upheld a lower court's 2010 sentences for the three retired Uruguayan officers and 11 Chileans. The sentences range from five to 20 years.

Chilean ex-military prosecutor Fernando Torres Silva was sentenced to 10 years for organizing the conspiracy.

The Uruguayan officers were extradited to Chile in April 2006 and will serve their sentences at a military prison outside Santiago.

Berrios fled to Uruguay in 1991 after being called to testify on the murder of former Chilean foreign and defense minister Orlando Letelier in a car bombing in Washington in 1976.

"Berrios was an extraordinarily important figure to shed light on cases of human rights violations during the dictatorship," Letelier's sister, lawyer Fabiola Letelier, told AFP after the verdict.