A Crime the World Can’t Forget

On Sept. 21, 1976, Washington’s Embassy Row was the scene of one of the most brazen acts of foreign terrorism ever carried out in the United States--the murder of Orlando Letelier.

This year two coincidental events make the 15th anniversary of Letelier’s murder worth special note: A man who pleaded guilty in the killing has agreed to help prosecutors, and a Chilean statute of limitations expires.

Letelier, Chile’s former foreign minister and also a former Chilean ambassador to the United States, was a vocal opponent of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who then ruled Chile with dictatorial powers. Letelier and a U.S. citizen who worked with him, Ronni K. Moffit, were killed when their car was destroyed by a bomb set off by remote control.

Eight people were indicted on suspicion of plotting Letelier’s murder, among them Gen. Juan Manuel Contreras and Col. Pedro Espinoza Bravo, leaders of Pinochet’s notorious secret police.

The last suspect at large in this country, Cuban exile Virgilio Paz Romero, was arrested only recently. Monday he pleaded guilty to helping detonate the bomb that killed Letelier. He could go to prison for life, but prosecutors will seek a shorter sentence: Paz has agreed to cooperate with government investigators who are trying to persuade the Chilean government to hand over Contreras and Espinoza, the men who actually hatched the assassination plot and paid his killers.

Throughout his tenure as head of the military junta that ruled Chile until 1990, Pinochet refused U.S. requests for extradition of Contreras and Espinoza. They remain in Chile, where Contreras--according to recent reports--is living in prosperous retirement. That comfortable status could be made permanent fairly soon, because the statute of limitations for murder in Chile is 15 years.

So it would be a travesty to let this anniversary of the Letelier murder pass without the Bush Administration trying once again to extradite Contreras and Espinoza. Even if it fails, the effort may prod the new, democratically elected government of President Patricio Aylwin to prosecute the two men in Chile. After all, Bush’s “new world order” won’t amount to much if foreign agents think they can get away with murder in this country.