A panel of Chile's Supreme Court of Justice voted 4-1 on Oct. 17 to approve a request for the extradition of former US Navy Capt. Ray E. Davis to stand trial for his involvement in the murders of two US citizens, journalist Charles Horman and graduate student Frank Teruggi, in the days after the Sept. 11, 1973 military coup that overthrew President Salvador Allende Gossens. Chilean investigative judge Jorge Zepeda asked for the extradition in November 2011 when he indicted Davis for allegedly failing to prevent the murders; the indictment was based in part on declassified US documents. The court's one dissenter held that a 15-year statute of limitations applied in the case, but the majority held that the charges were for a crime against humanity and therefore were not subject to the limitation.

The Sept. 11 anniversary of Chile's 1973 coup exploded into a night of street battles in Santiago that ended with one officer of the Carabineros dead, 26 people wounded, and 255 arrested, including 83 minors. Five public buses were set on fire to make street barricades, and more than 400 others sustained broken windows and other damage, prompting the transportation agency to shut service throughout the city. There was widespread looting through the night, and at least 58,000 homes were left without power after hooded protesters threw metal chains onto power lines. The Carabineros officer was apparently killed when he tried to stop the looting of a supermarket in the northern district of Quilicura.

A Brazilian federal judge in Pará on Aug. 31 agreed to conduct the first trial against members of the former dictatorship for alleged crimes during the military's rule from 1964-1985. The defendants are two retired army reserve members, Col. Sebastiao de Moura and Maj. Licio Maciel, accused of kidnappings during suppression of the guerilla movement in the Araguaia region between 1972 and 1975. The judge agreed with prosecutors that Brazil's 1979 amnesty law, which provides amnesty for members of the government and military alleged to have committed political crimes between 1961 and 1975, does not apply because bodies of the alleged kidnapping victims were never found, and the cases are therefore still technically open.