Patrick Martin

The abduction and murder of a Palestinian teenager early Wednesday morning, apparently a revenge killing carried out by right-wing Israeli settlers, has sparked rioting and direct clashes between Palestinian youth and Israeli security forces.

Muhammad Hussein Abu Khudair, age 16, was grabbed by several men who approached him on the street as he walked from his home to the local mosque for early morning prayers, the usual start of the day for an observant Muslim during Ramadan. Eyewitnesses said the men were Jewish. They shoved him into a dark-colored car and drove away.

The family reported the abduction to the Israeli police. About an hour later, the boy’s body was found in another part of the city, Jerusalem Forest, badly burned and bearing other signs of the violence that claimed his life. The father identified his son’s body, and this was confirmed by DNA analysis based on samples given by the parents.

The body was taken to Israel’s Abu Kabir Forensic Institute for autopsy. It will be released Thursday to the family for an independent autopsy by Palestinian doctors and for burial.

The Khudairs showed reporters a copy of the video footage from a CCTV camera in front of the family’s electronics shop showing two of the kidnappers. The original video was seized by Israeli police. Israeli courts have imposed a gag rule on media reports about the details of the crime.

Barry Grey

Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi

A Chilean court issued a ruling Monday that the commander of US military forces in Chile played a pivotal role in the murder of two US citizens following the September 1973 coup that overthrew the elected government of Salvador Allende and installed General Augusto Pinochet as dictator.

“The military intelligence services of the United States had a fundamental role in the creation of the murders of the two American citizens in 1973, providing Chilean military officers with the information that led to their deaths,” the ruling by Judge Jorge Zepeda said.

The ruling went on to say that the murders were part of “a secret United States information-gathering operation carried out by the US Milgroup [Military Group] in Chile on the political activities of American citizens in the United States and Chile.”

Judge Zepeda found that US Navy Captain Ray E. Davis provided his Chilean liaison, Raúl Monsalve, with information casting the two Americans, 31-year-old journalist Charles Horman and 24-year-old student Frank Teruggi, as left-wing subversives. Monsalve passed on the information to the Intelligence Department of the Chilean Joint Chiefs of Staff, which ordered the men’s arrests.

Horman, whose abduction and murder were depicted in the award-winning 1982 film Missing, was seized from his home by soldiers on September 17 and taken to Santiago’s National Stadium, which had been turned by the US-backed junta into a detention, torture and execution center. An estimated 10,000 people were incarcerated at the stadium in the immediate aftermath of the coup. Horman was severely tortured and shot to death on September 18. His corpse was hidden in a wall in the stadium and only discovered a month later. Teruggi was arrested on September 20 and taken to the stadium. He was tortured and executed the following day.