Pedro Espinoza

Pedro Espinoza Bravo was a Chilean army colonel and director of operations of DINA, the secret police of General Augusto Pinochet, under Manuel Contreras.¹

Michael Townley testified that Espinoza came to him several times in July and August 1974 about "doing something" about General Carlos Prats, the former army commander living in Buenos Aires, who Espinoza feared might lead a government in exile. Townley called it "a patriotic request." Prats and his wife were killed by Townley's bomb on September 30, 1974. The Chilean judge Alejandro Solís later indicted Contreras, Espinoza, and three other DINA officers for the killing.¹

In a sworn statement of April 24, 1978, in the file of the military prosecutor Héctor Orozco, Espinoza said that in 1976 "the Director of DINA ordered me to designate an agent to carry out a mission abroad, who in any case had to be accompanied by another person fully fluent in English. For this I chose then-Lieutenant Armando Fernández Larios. The name of the second man was suggested by then-Major Iturriaga, under the name Andrés Wilson. This Andrés Wilson turned out to be the same person I had known since November or December 1974 as Michael Townley. The mission consisted of traveling to the USA to meet with Gen. Vernon Walters, then head of the CIA, who would hand over information related to people who could disinterestedly help the Government and our country's cause." When the second pair of officers could not find Walters in August they telephoned Espinoza, who authorized their return. On April 10 the prosecutor had ordered a confrontation between Townley and Espinoza "as to who assigned Townley each of the operations he carried out abroad."²

A federal grand jury in Washington indicted Contreras, Espinoza, and Armando Fernández Larios in 1978 for the murder of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt. Chile put the three under military detention and refused to extradite them, and a military court dismissed the domestic case. On an appeal by Letelier's sister the Chilean Supreme Court ruled in January 1982 that the dismissal "was temporary and not definitive." Contreras was sentenced to seven years for the murder in 1995.³

A man who sought asylum in 1987 told American officials that Charles Horman had been put to death in the National Stadium in September 1973 on Espinoza's orders. A Chilean court sentenced Espinoza to seven years in the Horman and Frank Teruggi case in 2015, and the Supreme Court raised the term to fifteen years in 2016.⁴