Contreras Sepúlveda, Manuel

   A colonel (later general) in the military and the director of the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA, Directorate of National Intelligence), Chile’s secret police. In 1993, after the return to civilian government, a Chilean court convicted General Contreras Sepúlveda and his former deputy, Brigadier General Pedro Espinoza Bravo, of complicity in the 1976 car-bomb assassination of Orlando Letelier del Solar and his assistant, Ronni Moffitt, in Washington, D.C. Since the crime had been committed outside the country, the amnesty law of 1978 did not shield them from prosecution. He was sentenced to seven years and served time in a special military prison. In 2004 the Supreme Court struck down the amnesty in cases of disappearance, a ruling that upheld his conviction for the 1975 kidnapping and disappearance of Miguel Angel Sandoval, a leftist guerrilla. He began serving his 12-year sentence in January 2005. In July 2008 Judge Alejandro Solis sentenced Contreras Sepúlveda to two life terms for the 1974 murder of General Prats González and his wife, Sofía.