Ex-Pinochet colonel captured in Argentina

BUENOS AIRES: Argentina says it has captured a former Chilean army colonel convicted of crimes against humanity during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Sergio Francisco Jara Arancibia was “one of Chile’s most wanted fugitives over murders committed in 1973” Argentina’s ministry of security and the nation said, announcing the retired military leader’s arrest in Mar del Plata, some 400 kilometers (250 miles) to the south of the capital Buenos Aires on the Atlantic coast. “The detainee will be extradited to Chile,” said the ministry. Jara Arancibia had been “on the run for more than a year” and was the subject of an international arrest warrant. He was captured through surveillance of his son’s travels around various cities. Last year, Chile’s supreme court found Jara Arancibia guilty of the murder of a doctor and a public official opposed to the bloody regime established by the now-deceased general Pinochet between 1973 and 1990. According to official statistics, around 3,200 people were killed or disappeared and 38,000 tortured during Pinochet’s dictatorship. Despite being indicted and arrested several times for various crimes and murders, Pinochet died in December 2006 without ever having been convicted.