.png)
Olga Weisfeiler, sister of missing U.S. citizen Boris Weisfeiler shows photographs of her brother during a press conference at the American Embassy in Santiago, Chile, March 5, 2004. (Victor Rojas/AFP/Getty Images)
A Chilean judge ordered the arrests of eight former army and police officials for allegedly taking part in the kidnapping of a U.S. hiker in the 1980s under the regime of Augusto Pinochet.
Boris Weisfeiler, a Pennsylvania State University math professor, disappeared while he was hiking in Chile in 1985 and is the only American to have disappeared during Pinochet’s dictatorship.
Judge Jorge Zepeda gathered evidence from declassified files before making the order.
The officials will be tried for “aggravated kidnapping” and “complicity” for Weisfeiler’s disappearance, the court said, according to the BBC.
Weisfeiler, who was hiking near the Argentina border, may have been seized because he was wearing military clothing and led the Chilean officials to believe he was a militant.
The suspects also “persistently tried to conceal information about the circumstances of the arrest and whereabouts of the American citizen,” the court added.
Olga Weisfeiler, his sister, told The New York Times that “my family and I are pleased that there is finally some concrete progress and that we may finally learn the truth about what happened to my brother.”
“We have been waiting for this day for 27 long years. I am also hopeful that those ordered arrested will speak the truth and lift the burden of lies from their shoulders,” she added.
