22/10/2011

Kidnap-murder mystery of the "unbalanced" scientist

"On Nov. 15, 1992, a terrified scientist -- trapped inside a white bungalow in the Uruguayan beach town of Parque del Plata -- broke a window to escape. Chubby, in his mid-40s, the man struggled through the opening.


Once outside, furtively and slowly, he picked his way through the town's streets to the local police station.


"I am a Chilean citizen," the scientist told the police. He pulled a folded photostatic copy of his identification papers concealed in his right shoe. "I have been abducted by the armies of Uruguay and my country," he claimed.


The scientist, rumpled with a graying beard, said he feared for his life. He insisted that his murder had been ordered by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, then the chief of Chile's army who had ruled as a dictator from 1973 to 1990.


The motive for the execution order was the man's anticipated testimony at a politically sensitive trial in Chile, a case that could have sent reverberations all the way to Washington, D.C., potentially embarrassing the man who in November 1992 still sat in the White House, President George H.W. Bush.


[...] the scientist's fate became a complex kidnap-murder mystery, with improbable twists and turns, an apparent disinformation trick, raw political power, a grisly discovery and, finally, forensic science."


Read more: http://consortiumnews.com/2006/071206a.html

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