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Santiago (AFP) July 8, 2010 Chile's Supreme Court Thursday drastically cut the life jail term slapped on an ex-secret police director convicted of assassinating deposed leftist president Salvador Allende's defense chief. The court reduced the two life terms imposed last year on Manuel Contreras to 17 years in prison for his role in the 1974 killing of exiled ex-army chief Carlos Prat and his wife Sofia Cuthbert, who at the time lived in Argentina. The assassination of Prat and his wife occurred early after General Augusto Pinochet came to power in September 1973. The couple was killed in a car bomb near their home in Buenos Aires, where they had fled in exile after the fall of the Allende government. At the time, Contreras was the head of DINA, the National Intelligence Directorate, under the rightwing regime set up by Pinochet after he overthrew Allende in a US-backed military coup. Contreras is also believed to have played a role in many of the 3,000 murders and disappearances during the Pinochet dictatorship from 1973 to 1990. The court lowered the sentence for Contreras, one of Pinochet's top lieutenants, because a clause in Chile's legal code allows a reduced prison term in cases where a lot of time has passed between the crime and the trial. The court also lowered the sentence of another DINA official, Pedro Espinoza, who was found to have played a role in the assassination plot, from 20 years in prison to 17.
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