Last Fugitive Convicted in Víctor Jara Assassination, Retired Lieutenant Nelson Haase Mazzei, Captured After Evading Prison

Chilean police detained retired Army lieutenant Nelson Haase Mazzei on July 25, 2026, on a rural property in Puyehue, Los Ríos Region, ending his time evading a prison-entry order. Haase Mazzei — who served at Estadio Chile (National Stadium) in the days after the September 11, 1973 coup, when it was used as a mass detention and torture center, and was among the first officers to join DINA — was convicted alongside Pedro Barrientos of the qualified kidnapping and homicide of folk musician Víctor Jara and former Prisons Director Littré Quiroga Carvajal, both killed there in mid-September 1973. Visiting judge Paola Plaza, who has overseen the case, ordered his imprisonment; his sentence totals 15 years and 1 day for the two homicides plus 10 years and 1 day for the qualified kidnappings. His capture leaves Barrientos — deported from the US to Chile in 2023 after decades as a fugitive and now facing a separate oral criminal trial — as the case's other convicted perpetrator.