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Update: Chilean Court Upholds as Lawful the Disappearance, Kidnapping and Murder 30 Years Ago of Boris Weisfeiler, Professor of Mathematics at Pennsylvania State University

November 30, 2019

In January 1985 Boris Weisfeiler, Professor of Mathematics at Penn State, disappeared while hiking in the Andes. In the review of declassified documents, it appeared that he was kidnapped, questioned, tortured by the Chilean military and executed.

In 2012 the Judge of the Chilean Court of Appeals indicted 8 Chilean police and military officers for this crime. Indictments assured that those accused would be prosecuted for aggravated kidnapping and complicity in hiding information on Dr. Weisfeiler’s whereabouts.

In 2015 Chilean authorities communicated that there was some movement in Chile to address the human rights violations that occurred during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Additionally, at that time the Ministry of Interior joined with the Human Rights program to investigate Dr. Weisfeiler’s disappearance. However, the former Judge in the Court of Appeals closed the investigation a month later.

In 2016 that same Judge issued a final ruling. He ruled that the human rights atrocity only qualified as a common crime, applied the statute of limitations and acquitted the accused.

In February 2018 the case was re-opened but moved ahead very slowly. The Judge required that some of the eight men charged with the death of Weisfeiler, must have psychiatric evaluations. The case was postponed indefinitely until the evaluations were completed. All of the defendants involved were over 70.

Recently, the Chilean Court of Appeals upheld the legitimacy of the early Judge’s ruling, that the happenings in the case were lawful. The next steps would be an appeal to the Supreme Court and if that is not successful the case could be presented to the Court at the Organization of American States but that process could take another six to eight years.

Filed Under: Chile Tagged With: Andes, Boris Weisfeiler, Chile, Pennsylvania State University

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Co-chairs

Joel L. Lebowitz, Rutgers University

Paul H. Plotz, M.D., Washington, DC

Walter Reich, George Washington University

Eugene Chudnovsky, Lehman College

Alexander Greer, Brooklyn College

Vice-chairs

Astronomy – Arno Penzias, New Enterprises Associates*

Biology – Max E. Gottesman, Columbia University

Chemistry – Zafra Lerman, MIMSAD Inc.

Computer Science – Rachelle Heller, The George Washington University

Computer Science – Jack Minker, University of Maryland, College Park

Engineering – Philip Sarachik, NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering

Mathematics – Simon Levin, Princeton University

Medical Sciences – J. Joseph Blum, Duke University

Honorary Board Members

Nancy Andrews, Duke University

David Baltimore, California Institute of Technology*

Alan J. Bard, University of Texas

Jacob Bigeleisen (deceased), SUNY, Stony Brook

Raoul Bott (deceased), Harvard University

Owen Chamberlain (deceased), University of California, Berkeley

Stanley Deser, Brandeis University

Edward Gerjuoy, University of Pittsburg

David Gross, (2004 Nobel Prize in Physics), Kavil Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara*

Pierre Hohenberg (deceased), New York University

Walter Kohn (deceased), University of California, Santa Barbara*

James Langer, University of California, Santa Barbara

Peter Lax, New York University

Louis Nirenberg, New York University

Marshall Nirenberg (deceased), National Institutes of Health*

Honorary Board Members

John C. Polanyi, University of Toronto*

Stuart Rice, University of Chicago

Sir Richard J. Roberts, (1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology & Medicine), New England Biolabs*

Myriam Sarachick, City College of New York

Harold Scheraga, Cornell University

Sylvan Schweber (deceased), Brandeis University

Maxine Singer, Carnegie Institution of Washington

Alfred I. Tauber, Boston University

Steven Weinberg, University of Texas, Austin*

Myrna Weissman, Columbia University

Rosalyn S. Yalow (deceased), Mount Sinai School of Medicine*

* Nobel laureate

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