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This week marks the 40th anniversary of what’s known as the other 9/11: September 11, 1973, when a U.S.-backed military coup ousted Chile’s democratically elected president Salvador Allende and ushered in a 17-year repressive dictatorship led by General Augusto Pinochet. We’re joined by Joan Jara, the widow of Chilean singer Víctor Jara, who has just filed a civil lawsuit in U.S. court against the former military officer who allegedly killed Jara 40 years ago. Jara’s accused killer, Pedro Barrientos, has lived in the United States for roughly two decades and is now a U.S. citizen. Jara’s family is suing him under federal laws that allow U.S. courts to hear about human rights abuses committed abroad. Last year, Chilean prosecutors charged Barrientos and another officer with Jara’s murder, naming six others as accomplices.

CJA Legal Director Kathy Roberts discusses the Yousuf v. Samantar case.

Thousands of miles from where Víctor Jara was murdered, the battle to bring his killers to justice is now making its way to U.S. courts as the family sues Pedro Barrientos, a former military officer living in Florida, for: “torture; extrajudicial killing; cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; crimes against humanity and arbitrary detention.”

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.