Castillo Velasco, Jaime

   A Chilean jurist, Castillo Velasco had served as minister of justice under President Eduardo Frei Montalva (1964–1970) and as a representative to the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations. During the dictatorship, he posed a challenge to the Chilean legal community. He was one of five prominent Chilean lawyers who sent an “open letter” to the Organization of American States (OAS) when it met in Santiago in June 1976. The letter deplored the human-rights abuses of the junta and the unwillingness of the courts to intervene. Two months later, Castillo Velasco and a second letter writer, Eugenio Velasco Letelier, were abducted by agents of the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (Directorate of National Intelligence, DINA) and forced into exile. A copy of the letter was included in the second supplement to Final Report of Mission to Chile: Arrests and Detentions and Freedom of Information in Chile, published in September 1976 by the International Commission of Jurists.