On the afternoon of 14 July 1976, the Spanish diplomat Carmelo Soria left his office in Providencia, one of the most charming neighborhoods in a militarized Santiago. Agents from the Directorate of National Intelligence led by Colonel Manuel Contreras, with support from the dictator Augusto Pinochet, intercepted him as he drove home. Soria, then a member of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean and a known communist activist, was taken to Quetropillán, a center used by the regime for detention and coercive interrogations. There he was killed two days after his capture. His car was later dumped on a mountain pass north of the capital to imitate a drunken-driving accident. As the 50th anniversary of the coup that toppled President Salvador Allende approached, the Chilean Supreme Court opened the case again, ultimately delivering a decision that held six former DINA members and two former military personnel accountable for the crime. The case underscored the long arc of justice in post-dictatorship Chile.
