21 Sep 1976: Chilean dissident assassinated

On this day in 1976, Chilean dissident Orlando Letelier was assassinated in Washington, D.C., by members of his nation’s secret police.

In 1975, the U.S. joined several South American countries in launching Operation Condor, designed to stamp out communist activities on the continent.

Letelier was a supporter of Marxist president Salvador Allende; after Allende was overthrown in a military coup in 1973 (also with secret U.S. support), Letelier was the first member of his cabinet sent to jail in Tierra del Fuego, where he was subjected to torture during his year-long stay.

After his release, he moved to Washington, where he took up a number of academic positions. He soon became the leading voice against the brutality of dictator Augusto Pinochet, on whose watch tens of thousands of dissidents were taken into custody, often ‘disappearing’ in the dead of night.

Less than two weeks after Letelier was stripped of his citizenship by Pinochet, Chilean secret police, DINA, placed a bomb under the driver’s seat in Letelier’s car; its detonation also killed his research assistant, Ronni Karpen Moffitt.

Image: photo of Letelier taken in Washington in 1976