Chilean court indicts priest for covering up 1973 military executions

Published: 2007-09-12

SANTIAGO, Chile (CNS) -- A Chilean appeals court indicted Father Luis Jorquera Molina, a former army chaplain, for covering up the execution and secret burial of 28 political prisoners in September 1973. The court ordered his arrest. This is the first time a tribunal has prosecuted a priest for human rights violations committed during the 17-year military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. The 72-year-old priest faces a five-year prison sentence. On Aug. 30 the Antofagasta Court of Appeals indicted the priest, along with 10 officers and an army doctor, for their roles in covering up the murder of political opponents near Calama, about 930 miles north of the capital, Santiago. The crimes were part of a broader military campaign known as the "Death Caravan" in which military envoys appointed by Pinochet traveled to towns and cities in the North to eliminate more than 70 political prisoners. On Oct. 19, 1973, the military envoys ordered the 28 prisoners taken from the Calama jail, where they were being held, and sent to the city outskirts to be executed. Father Jorquera, then chaplain of the Calama Regiment, helped the military locate a burial site that would go unnoticed and participated in the clandestine mass burial. A few years later, Pinochet ordered the victims' remains exhumed and dumped over the Pacific Ocean; they have never been found.

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