Chile captures fugitive convicted of singer Victor Jara's murder under Pinochet

Police have apprehended Nelson Haase, a retired colonel convicted of the kidnapping and execution of folk singer Victor Jara during the Pinochet dictatorship. Haase was among a group of security forces sentenced for the killing, which occurred just five days after the September 1973 coup that installed Augusto Pinochet. He originally received a 25‑year sentence—later specified as 15 years for execution and 10 for kidnapping—after the Supreme Court’s final ruling in 2023. Following the announcement of his conviction in August 2023, Haase failed to report for incarceration and remained at large for roughly three years until police located him in Puyehue, Los Lagos region, approximately 950 kilometres (590 miles) south of Santiago on a Saturday. Victor Jara, renowned for his protest and pacifist music in the 1960s and 70s and a supporter of deposed president Salvador Allende, was detained shortly after the coup, taken to the national stadium in Santiago, tortured, and shot forty‑four times. Survivors described the ordeal, recalling that “the vocalist was tortured, with soldiers crushing his fingers and telling him helium would ne'er beryllium capable to play his guitar again.” Jara’s case stands as a stark illustration of the repression under Pinochet, during which thousands were tortured, executed or disappeared over the regime’s seventeen‑year span. Haase was one of eight officers found guilty of Jara’s murder in 2018. After five years of appeals, the Supreme Court issued its definitive judgment, imposing the combined 25‑year term. His voluntary surrender never materialised, prompting the manhunt that ended with his capture. General Hernán Chacón, another of the seven men convicted in the case, died by suicide when authorities attempted to arrest him; the remaining five convicted individuals remain incarcerated. In the same year, the United States extradited former lieutenant Pedro Barrientos to Chile after a Florida jury found him liable for Jara’s killing.