Nelson Haase, a retired army colonel convicted of the kidnapping and murder of folk singer Víctor Jara during the Pinochet dictatorship, was finally taken into custody by Chilean police on Saturday – ending a three-year flight from justice that began the moment his sentence was announced.
Haase vanished in August 2023, after a Chilean Supreme Court ruling upheld his 25-year prison term for the killing of Jara, one of Latin America’s most iconic protest musicians. Police found him in the southern town of Puyehue, in the Los Lagos region, 950km from the capital Santiago. He had been on the run ever since failing to report to prison, local media reported.
“Fugitive colonel Nelson Haase arrested for 1973 murder of folk singer Víctor Jara”
The arrest brings a partial close to a case that has haunted Chile for more than half a century. Jara, a celebrated singer and advocate for socialist president Salvador Allende, was rounded up with thousands of others in the days after the 1973 military coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power. He was taken to a sports stadium in the capital, where – according to survivors – soldiers crushed his fingers and taunted him, telling him he would never play guitar again. He was shot 44 times.
Haase was one of eight former officers found guilty in 2018 of Jara’s murder, but the verdict was appealed for five years until the Supreme Court delivered a final judgment in 2023, sentencing him to 15 years for murder and a further 10 for kidnapping. Another of the seven men convicted of murder – General Hernan Chacon – died by suicide when police came to arrest him. The remaining five are in jail. In a separate development, the United States extradited retired army lieutenant Pedro Barrientos to Chile in 2023 after a Florida jury found him liable for Jara’s murder.
Yet the singer’s family greeted the news of Haase’s capture with a mixture of relief and bitterness. “We learned that retired Colonel Nelson Haase Mazzei, who had been a fugitive from justice since 2023, was found and imprisoned. We appreciate this news,” said Jara’s daughter, Amanda Jara, in a letter published Sunday night. She added: “It is difficult to consider this justice.”
Jara was one of roughly 5,000 people arrested in the immediate aftermath of the coup, and his case remains emblematic of the brutality that characterised Pinochet’s 17-year regime, in which thousands were tortured, executed or disappeared. For his family and for Chile, the arrest of Haase closes one chapter – but the sense of incomplete justice lingers.
