Chile, Latin America: Week in Review, Southern Cone

Chile: Ex-Colonels Charged For Torturing Michelle Bachelet’s Father

July 18, 2012 By Staff

Top Story — Two retired Chilean colonels were charged  Tuesday with torturing to death the father of former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, General Alberto Bachelet. General Bachelet, loyal to then-President Salvador Allende, was arrested during the Pinochet coup and died in 1974 at age 51  in the custody of the Air Force War Academy.  During a brief return to his home for house arrest, he told his family that some of his torturers were students he had taught and others were long-time military comrades. In a letter from prison, General Bachelet described his experiences and said “they broke me from the inside”. A recent forensic study reported that the elder Bachelet probably died of heart-related problems caused by his torturers. Ex-colonels Ramon Caceres Jorquera and Edgar Benjamin Cevallos Jones, both of whom allegedly presided over Bachelet’s interrogation, are accused of killing him. Cevallos, 82, is being held in a hospital due to Alzheimer’s disease. Michelle Bachelet and her mother Angela Jeria were also detained and tortured during the dictatorship, and returned from exile in 1979.

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