Boris Weisfeiler, Missing Penn State Professor, Not Included On Updated Pinochet Victim List
SANTIAGO, Chile — Chile has given recognition to 30 more people who lost their lives at the hands of the military dictatorship.
An official commission posted its final report online Friday naming each additional victim that Chile recognizes as being killed, tortured or imprisoned for political reasons by the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. The addition of 30 slayings raises the death toll to 3,095, and the total victim list stands at 40,048.
At least one prominent name is not on the list – U.S. citizen Boris Weisfeiler.
The Penn State University mathematics professor disappeared while hiking in 1985 near Colonia Dignidad, a notorious compound that Pinochet's intelligence service used as a secret torture and detention center. But the commission apparently did not find both political motive and proof of state terror in his presumed death.
Weisfeiler's sister Olga called the decision a shame.
"My brother is a victim of the political repression of the Pinochet regime, even if the Commission did not have the proof at its disposal to formally accept his case as a human rights atrocity. Declassified U.S. documents leave no doubt," she wrote in her blog. "I have waited over 25 years for both truth and justice in his case, and I will continue to wait for the government of Chile, and the Courts, to do what must be done to find him, and punish those who are responsible."
"It is also time for the U.S. government to make clear to Chile that the case of Boris Weisfeiler must be resolved and to provide all necessary investigative assistance toward that long overdue goal," she added.
Those officially recognized as killed by the junta include members of armed guerrilla movements who were captured by Pinochet's agents as well as people who were shot for just for violating curfew. One man, a deaf-mute, was killed when he simply tried to buy bread and didn't hear an order to stay inside.
Many other victims remain without official recognition because the commission determined there was insufficient evidence for both state complicity and a political motive in their cases.
In all, the commission considered 622 new cases of people who allegedly disappeared after being detained or were killed for political reasons and 31,831 cases of people who suffered political detention or torture during the 1973-90 dictatorship. Of these, it officially recognized 30 deaths and 9,795 survivors who will now be entitled to compensation.
"The standard of evidence of the commission to accept a case was high: proof of the hands of state in the crime, and some sense of a political motivation," said Peter Kornbluh, who described the Weisfeiler case in his book "The Pinochet File, a Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability."
"Irregardless, there is no doubt that Boris Weisfeiler was a victim of the Pinochet regime's repression. Like all of the disappeared in Chile, he deserves the dignity of being found and his family deserves the closure that only truth and justice in his case will bring," Kornbluh said.
The U.S. Embassy in Santiago praised the commission's work. As for Weisfeiler, it said that "we continue to work closely with the family and will continue to support the ongoing and separate judicial process to reach a just decision in this case."
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08/26/11 07:47 PM ET Associated Press