Five senior officers from the former Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet's secret police have been arrested and charged with plotting the murder in 1974 of a dissident army general in a move hailed as "historic" by human rights groups.
The murder, by car bomb, of General Carlos Prats, Pinochet's predecessor as army chief, and his wife, Sofia Cuthbert, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was the first assassination allegedly carried out by the dictatorship outside Chilean borders.
Chilean Judge Alejandro Solis told reporters he indicted retired Gen. Manual Contreras, head of the dreaded DINA secret police at the time, his second-in-command, Pedro Espinoza, and three other high-ranking spies for masterminding the double murder.
All have denied the charges, lawyers said.
Human rights activists said the move was a major step forward in bringing Pinochet's agents to trial for human rights crimes, something inconceivable 10 years ago in Chile.
"This is absolutely historic. This is about as high up as you can get without touching Pinochet himself," said Sebastian Brett, senior researcher with Human Rights Watch in Chile.
Prats had fled to Argentina shortly after Pinochet's bloody 1973 coup, fearing his ties to ousted socialist President Salvador Allende made him a target of persecution.
Pinochet, 86, escaped trial in 2001 for human rights crimes during his 17-year rule on the grounds of poor health.
Solis has made fast headway on the case since it was transferred from Argentine courts last December.
He issued the order to arrest and charge the suspects after questioning Contreras, 73, on Friday about the now defunct DINA, the hit squad official blamed for most of the 3,000 deaths and disappearances of leftists in Chile under Pinochet.
All five men are under arrest and awaiting trial. Three, who were already under arrest in connection with other alleged crimes, were denied bail because they pose "a danger to society," Solis said.
Contreras has already been sentenced and completed a seven-year prison term for orchestrating a similar crime - the 1976 car bomb murder of Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier in Washington.
The former spy chief blames the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for plotting the Prats crime, according to his lawyer Carlos Manns, who added that he will ask the judge to summon former CIA agents to testify.
The CIA is believed by many to have backed the 1973 coup that brought Pinochet to power and helped him crack down on opponents of the dictatorship.
Argentine courts have sentenced former DINA agent Enrique Arancibia to life imprisonment for planning the Prats murder.