CJA

Musician Victor Jara’s family has sued a retired Chilean army officer who lives in Florida for allegedly torturing and killing the folk singer and political activist after a military coup four decades ago. The Center for Justice and Accountability, or CJA, and Chadbourne & Parke, LLP filed the civil lawsuit on behalf of Jara’s family in a Florida district court.

A lawsuit was filed in Florida on Thursday seeking damages against a former Chilean military officer accused of torturing and executing the folk singer Víctor Jara shortly after General Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 military coup.

The wife and two daughters of a popular folk singer who was tortured and executed in Chile days after a 1973 coup has filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court against a former Chilean army officer – now an American citizen – they accuse of carrying out the killing.

The family of Victor Jara, the famous Chilean folk singer who was among the first victims of the country’s military coup in 1973, has filed a lawsuit in Florida against the former army officer it alleges killed him. The killing happened 40 years ago, and it wasn’t until last year that a Chilean judge charged eight former army officers with the singer-songwriter’s death. One of those indicted, Pedro Barrientos, has lived in Florida since the early 1990s. That is where Jara’s family filed the lawsuit Wednesday in Jacksonville.

Acción judicial fue presentada en un tribunal de Florida en contra el ex oficial de Ejército Pedro Barrientos Núñez (en la foto), procesado en Chile como autor material del homicidio del artista. Familia espera que demanda ayude en la extradición solicitada por la justicia chilena.

A former Chilean Army officer charged with murdering Víctor Jara, a popular folk singer, shortly after the 1973 military coup has been sued in a Florida court under federal laws allowing legal action against human rights violators living in the United States.

The family of folk singer Victor Jara, one of the best known of the more than 4,000 people who were killed and disappeared in the Sept. 11, 1973 coup in Chile, filed a civil suit Wednesday against one of his alleged killers, a former Chilean army lieutenant now living in Florida.

The family of Victor Jara claims to have solved the 40-year-old mystery of who killed the revered folk singer during Chile’s 1973 coup, and they’re preparing to prove it in a federal courtroom in Jacksonville, Florida, invoking rarely used U.S. laws that address human rights violations committed elsewhere.

The Center for Justice and Accountability (“CJA”) and pro-bono counsel Chadbourne & Parke, LLP (“Chadbourne”) today announced that they have filed a lawsuit on behalf of the surviving family members of Chilean folk singer and social icon Víctor Jara, who was imprisoned, tortured and executed in Chile during the early days of the brutal military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet on September 11, 1973. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida against Pedro Pablo Barrientos Nuñez (“Barrientos”), a current resident of Deltona, Florida and a former officer in the Chilean Army under Pinochet.

The long quest to bring the Salvadoran military killers of six Jesuit priests to justice has received a significant boost, human rights activists say, with the sentencing of a former commander — on unrelated charges in a faraway Boston court.