Bañados, Adolfo

   Supreme Court justice in Chile. Appointed by President Patricio Aylwin Azócar after the return to civilian rule, Bañados was one of the first appointees to a high court dominated by judges from the military regime of Augusto Pinochet Ugarte. In 1993 Bañados presided over the case of Orlando Letelier del Solar’s assassination, the first case excluded from Pinochet Ugarte’s amnesty law of 1978. Bañados sentenced two former military officers from the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA, Directorate of National Intelligence), Chile’s secret police. General Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda received a seven-year term, and Brigadier General Pedro Espinoza Bravo received a six-year term, for planning the 1976 murders of Letelier del Solar and his assistant, Ronni Moffitt, with a car bomb in Washington, D.C.