He finished his secondary education at the Internado Nacional Barros Arana, after having studied at the Instituto Nacional. He pursued a law degree at the University of Chile and took his exam before the military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet against the government of Salvador Allende, but he did not graduate until 1975, after changing the subject of his thesis. It had initially been about aircraft hijacking (part of it came out in the first quarter 1974 "Public Law Review" under the title "El delito de apoderamiento ilícito de aeronaves" (The crime of unlawful seizure of aircraft). At the end of 1975, after working with the and the MIR, he left Chile for England, where he studied literature in London.