The Chilean Investigative Police arrested retired army colonel Nelson Hasse Mazzei, who remained a fugitive after being convicted of the kidnapping and murder of Víctor Jara.

The 80-year-old soldier was sentenced in 2023 in a final ruling to a total of 25 years for his participation in the crime of the Chilean singer-songwriter and the kidnapping, torture and murder of the then general director of Prisons, Littré Quiroga Carvajal.

The reference of the “New Chilean Song” and professor at the State Technical University, was murdered on September 16, 1973 at the Chile Stadium (today Víctor Jara Stadium), just five days after the coup d'état against the government of Salvador Allende.

The Chilean justice system determined that the singer-songwriter was separated from the rest of the almost 5,000 prisoners who were detained there and taken to the dressing room area. Together with Quiroga, he received serious physical and psychological attacks before being executed.

He had 56 fractures in his body and 44 bullets.

His case is one of the most emblematic of the way in which the dictatorship of the late General Augusto Pinochet exercised political violence. The military regime that lasted 17 years in the South American country and left thousands of people tortured, executed and disappeared.

The Chilean Judiciary reported that this Saturday the visiting minister in Human Rights cases, of the Court of Appeals of Santiago, Paola Plaza, ordered the immediate entry into prison of the former military man.

According to local media, the fugitive from justice was found by police officers on a plot in Puyehue, in the Los Lagos region, in the south of the country.

Haase Mazzei was sentenced along with seven other former soldiers who also participated in the crimes of Jara and Quiroga, but did not appear to serve the sentence handed down in 2023 by the Supreme Court.

Since that date the retired colonel remained a fugitive. He was the only one of those convicted in this case who was not serving a sentence.

The country's highest court imposed 15 years in prison for the crime of qualified homicide and 10 years for qualified kidnapping.

According to the sentencing ruling, the Chilean justice system was able to establish that despite having denied any participation, Mazzei acted as the perpetrator of the crimes, being part of the internal command structure and carrying weapons capable of inferring the traumas and injuries that caused the deaths of both Jara and Quiroga Carvajal.

Hugo Sánchez, Raúl Jofré, Edwin Dimter, Ernesto Bethke, Juan Jara, Hernán Chacón and Patricio Vásquez were also convicted of the crime. In that same sentence, officer Rolando Melo was convicted as an accessory to the crimes.

Chacón committed suicide before being arrested in August 2023. Jofré, like Mazzei, did not voluntarily serve his sentence at that time either.

That same year, the United States extradited to Chile the retired lieutenant of the Chilean army Pedro Barrientos, convicted in the North American country as the material author of the crime and torture of the singer-songwriter and Littré Quiroga.

Download the new BBC World Service app. Choose BBC News Mundo and receive news alerts, documentaries and analysis, all in one place. Important: The new app is not available in the United Kingdom or the United States.