Fugitive general from Pinochet era captured

SANTIAGO, Chile (Reuters) -- Police on Thursday captured a fugitive general from the 17-year Chilean dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, officials said. The general had fled in June before he was to start a five-year jail term.

Retired Gen. Raul Iturriaga was arrested in the resort town of Vina del Mar, on Chile's Pacific coast about 75 miles west of the capital, Santiago, said Felipe Harboe, Chile's deputy interior minister.

Iturriaga was arrested in an apartment in the upscale beach town early Thursday, he said.

Further details were not immediately available.

Iturriaga was to report to prison in early June to start a five-year sentence for the kidnapping of a leftist opponent of the Pinochet regime, Luis San Martin.

Instead, he fled, leaving behind a video declaring his innocence and claiming to be the victim of "an arbitrary, biased, unconstitutional and unjust verdict."

Former members of Pinochet's armed forces often complain of being victimized and persecuted for human rights abuses since Chile returned to democracy in 1990.

San Martin was arrested in 1974 and taken to a detention center run by the DINA, the secret police force that abducted, tortured and killed scores of opponents during the early days of the dictatorship.

Iturriaga, who headed a DINA department at the time of the abduction, has said he had nothing to do with it.

Nearly 3,200 people died in political violence during the dictatorship, the vast majority killed by Pinochet's forces and the DINA. E-mail to a friend

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