Chilean’s survivors sue Miami businessman

Published Tuesday, March 23, 1999, in the Miami Herald
By DAVID KIDWELL Herald Staff Writer
http://www.herald.com/

The surviving family of a Chilean economist—tortured, murdered and decapitated 25 years ago by the secret police of former military leader Augusto Pinochet—has sued a Miami businessman they say is responsible. "It took a private investigator and a very long time to track him down, but we did it," said Zita Cabello-Barrueto, whose brother Winston Cabello’s body was exhumed in 1990. "This is the most exciting thing that has ever happened for us, but it is very sad, too.
"It brings everything back all over again."
It is the first U.S. case against an agent of Pinochet’s regime, accused in thousands of murders and disappearances since a 1973 coup d’etat brought him to power.
Accused of "crimes against humanity, wrongful death, summary execution, torture, cruelty, arbitrary detention and civil conspiracy" is Armando Fernandez-Larios, 49, a Miami import/export businessman. The lawsuit identifies him as a former Chilean army major who has lived under federal protection for reporting atrocities in which he participated.
A man answering a cellular telephone at Fernandez-Larios’ business identified himself late Monday as an associate and said Fernandez-Larios was traveling outside the country.
"I understand your question. I will try to get a message to him," said the man, who declined to provide his name. "You need to talk to him."
According to a 23-page lawsuit in U.S. District Court and unsealed Friday, "Fernandez-Larios was a highly trusted lieutenant in the Chilean army who led the coup’s final assault on . . . the presidential palace.
"In the days following the coup, the defendant was assigned to participate in a campaign to eliminate key political prisoners throughout Chile," said the lawsuit, filed by lawyers from Amnesty International’s Center For Justice & Accountability in San Francisco.
Fernandez-Larios came to the United States in 1987, turning himself in to federal authorities seeking him for his involvement in a car-bombing in Washington, D.C. The explosion killed a Chilean ambassador and his assistant. Fernandez-Larios pleaded guilty to being an "accessory after the fact"in the bombing and turned government informant regarding the roles of other Chilean military figures in the bombing case. He spent a short time in a federal prison and entered the federal witness protection program, the suit says.
"Larios recently left the witness protection program and currently lives in Florida," the suit says. Cabello’s mother, two sisters and brother filed the suit under seal last month seeking unspecified punitive and compensatory damages. Cabello was 28, married and the father of two children in September 1973 when he was arrested.
The military announced he had been shot "trying to escape." But after Chile elected a civilian president in 1990, the bodies of Cabello and others were exhumed, showing they had been dismembered, beheaded and tortured. "What we are really searching for is some truth," said Zita Cabello-Barrueto, the sister. "We were fortunate that we knew where my brother was buried, but there are hundreds more still missing, and I think this man knows where they are. "In Chile there is no truth," she said. "No one wants to talk about it."
Cabello was imprisoned after attending a meeting of public service officials immediately following the Pinochet coup. For about a month, his family was allowed to visit, but on Oct. 16, 1973, Gen. Sergio Arellano Stark and his "bodyguard" Fernandez-Larios arrived by helicopter and order Cabello and 12 others executed, the suit says.
The family’s attorneys—including Coral Gables attorney Julie Ferguson and lawyers from Amnesty International—said the suit was not filed earlier because Fernandez-Larios had successfully concealed his whereabouts.
The lawsuit is expected to cause a stir in the diplomatic community as the first-ever in the United States against a member of the Pinochet regime.
In 1978, Chile’s military regime passed an amnesty law prohibiting such suits in that country.
Pinochet himself was arrested in London last year on a Spanish warrant accusing him of crimes against humanity during his 17 years in power. Lawmakers there are set to vote Wednesday on whether he can assert diplomatic immunity as a former head of state. According to a February 1991 report by the Chilean government’s Commission on Truth and Reconciliation, 2,025 people disappeared or were killed by state agents under Pinochet. Thousands more were arbitrarily detained, tortured and subsequently released as a result of the military campaign to eliminate potential political opponents following the coup.