A CALLER into a radio show shocked Chile this week with a chilling confession of executions he had taken part in as a conscript during Chile’s military dictatorship, and the socialist party said a judge had ordered his arrest.
A caller to the “Chacotero Sentimental” radio station on Wednesday, who identified himself as 62-year-old “Alberto”, began talking about a love affair but then moved on to describing how he had executed people during the 1970s.
The brutal dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet ruled Chile between 1973 and 1990, when an estimated 3,200 people were murdered and another 28,000 tortured by the state. Many of the victims had been affiliated with the socialist government of Salvador Allende, who was deposed in a 1973 coup.
Courts are still hearing cases of those accused of human rights abuses.
“Alberto’s” sometimes rambling call to the station described with little apparent remorse how “we took some of these guys out into the countryside and shot them in the head”.
“We blew them up. They fell apart. Nothing was left of them. Not even their shadow,” he told the stunned radio presenter.
“But you killed people!” said the presenter, Roberto Artiagoitia.
“I was obliged, otherwise the military would have killed me,” he replied. He said he did not know how many people he had executed, but that it was “more than” 10.
Reports of the radio show spread quickly via social media. Local media said that the police traced the call, arresting a man identified as 62-year-old Guillermo Reyes.
Chile’s socialist party said on Friday that Reyes was being investigated by a human rights judge over the execution of two members of its party in the 1970s.
