The 40th anniversary of September 11th is next week.
Wait a second, you might be thinking. Weren’t the attacks in New York City and Washington D.C. just 12 years ago?
In fact, 9/11 marks another terrible tragedy, one that dates back to 1973. In Chile, right-wing forces led by Augusto Pinochet and tacitly backed by the United States launched a coup d’etat against the elected socialist president, Salvador Allende. In a brutal military crackdown, hundreds were disappeared and killed.
One of them was an American journalist named Charlie Horman. He was taken from his home by the Chilean military to the stadium pictured above, and murdered.
On this week’s podcast, Tom Murphy speaks with Joyce Horman, his wife, who serves on the board of the new Charles Horman Truth Foundation. Joyce takes us back to what it was like in Chile before, during, and after the coup. She talks about her family’s decades-long, agonizing pursuit of justice. Getting information from her own government about her husband’s death, she says, has been like pulling teeth.
She’s still trying. Little by little, though, a picture has emerged of deep complicity by her own government in the coup and his death.
Faced with an official cover-up and legal hurdles, Joyce describes the unsung Chilean and American heroes who’ve pressed for accountability and who now call for universal jurisdiction – the ability to investigate and prosecute human rights violators anywhere.
This is a must-listen, even for those already aware of “the other 9/11.”
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