3 sentenced in Pinochet-era killings

A retired general and two former sergeants were fined and sentenced to 10 years in prison on Wednesday for killing a leftist couple shortly after Chile's 1973 military coup.

The Santiago Court of Appeals said in a communique that Gen. Fernando Polanco and Sgts. Luis Fernandez and Hector Vallejos, all retired, were ordered to pay $600,000 to the son of the slain couple, Ernesto Lejderman.

Argentine primary school teacher Bernardo Lejderman and Maria Avalos, a Mexican citizen, came to Chile in 1971, attracted by their sympathy with Marxist President Salvador Allende.

When the military overthrew Allende in September 1973, the Lejderman family tried to flee to Argentina. An informer guided a unit led by Polanco to an abandoned mine where they were hiding and the soldiers shot the couple in front of the 2-year-old child in December 1973.

Hundreds of military men, including more than 50 generals, have been tried and many sentenced for human rights violations during the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet from 1973 to 1990.

Pinochet himself was under indictment on human rights charges when he died last year of heart problems at age 91. He was never sentenced in any of the scores of criminal suits filed against him.

According to an official report, 3,197 people were killed for political reasons under Pinochet.