It would have strained credulity to imagine during the orgy of terror unleashed by the US-backed coup on the other 9/11, in 1973. But 35 years after Richard Nixon gave the green light to the Chilean military to drown Salvador Allende's elected socialist government in blood, the net is finally closing on the man who personally machine-gunned to death one of the outstanding political songwriters of the 20th century.

This week, Judge Juan Eduardo Fuentes agreed to re-open the investigation into the murder of Victor Jara, Chile's most famous musician, killed by an army officer in the Estadio Chile stadium in Santiago, where he had been interned, beaten and tortured with 5,000 other "subversives" in the wake of General Pinochet's fascist takeover.

Last month, Fuentes closed the Jara case after finding a retired army colonel, Mario Manriquez, guilty of the murder as commanding officer at the stadium after the 1973 coup, while accepting that Manriquez had not pulled the trigger.