HEAD OF CHILE’S SECRET POLICE CHARGED WITH TORTURE

[Say_What]

<clips>

(March 8, 2005) In a history making resolution, Judge Alejandro Solís on Monday notified Manuel Contreras, the former head of Chile’s secret police, that he will be prosecuted for tortures he help commit during the 17-year reign of ex-dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

This is the first time a Chilean court has charged former military authorities with deliberately using violence against political prisoners.

Though Solís’ case is limited to abuses that took place at the Tejas Verdes torture center in San Antonio, Region V, his ruling could set a precedent for the 28,000 people who, according to the Valech Report on Political Detention and Torture, were tortured during the Pinochet era.

Juan Carlos Manns, Contreras’ defense lawyer, lamented Solís’ resolution, calling it the fruit of the judge’s “invention.”

http://www.tcgnews.com/santiagotimes/index.php?nav=story&story_id=8510&topic_id=1

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Background on Manuel Contreras and the Tejas Verdes torture center

...Contreras, at forty-four one of the youngest colonels in the Chilean Army, would later become its youngest general. But he did not seek power through rank alone. Port San Antonio and the Tejas Verdes regiment provided a base to build upon until he would stand next to power itself.

The son of a middle-class, social-climbing military family, Contreras was in his final year at the Chilean military academy when one of his future victims, Orlando Letelier, entered as a lowly plebeian. Early in his career, Contreras attracted the attention of one of his former academy professors, Captain Augusto Pinochet. The two, young officer and his mentor, became close friends, and Pinochet crowned their friendship by standing as godfather<3> at the baptism of one of Contreras' children.

http://www.remember-chile.org.uk/beginners/contdina.htm

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Cases in which the DINA was responsible

On or before January 25, 1974, Gerardo Ismael RUBILAR MORALES, 26, an office worker, and Ernesto Guillermo SALAMANCA MORALES, 20, a university student, who were brothers on their mother's side and were active in the Communist party were arrested. They had both been arrested after September 11, 1973 in search operations conducted in the La Legua shantytown where they both lived at that time and had been held in the National Stadium for twenty-three days.

The date of arrest cannot be determined exactly but it must have been January 25, 1974 or shortly before. About midnight on the day of the arrest, these two brothers and approximately twelve heavily armed people came to their parents' house in Lo Gallardo, near the city of San Antonio. They said they were coming to try to free the prisoners in Tejas Verdes. The two brothers looked nervous. The next morning they left. However, some of those who had brought the two brothers, came back and arrested the father of Ernesto Salamanca and a younger brother, and took them to Tejas Verdes where they were brutally tortured. They were released after having been disappeared for forty-two days.

Witnesses whom this Commission regards as trustworthy have testified that Gerardo Rubilar and Ernesto Salamanca were taken to Tejas Verdes; at that point all trace of them was lost. Statements by a number of witnesses, the experience of the relatives as well as the imprisonment of Gerardo Rubilar's fiancée at Tejas Verdes, enable the Commission to come to the conviction that these prisoners disappeared at the hands of the DINA in violation of their human rights, and that the claim by government officials at the time that these brothers were not imprisoned must be rejected.

http://www.usip.org/library/tc/doc/reports/chile/chile_1993_pt3_ch2_a2_c.html

[emad]

1. Did they freeze his Riggs Bank accounts or transfer the balances

to Gen Pinochet???

[Vladimir]

2. Most superb! n/t

[daleo]

3. BFEE take note.

You just never know, justice might eventually catch up.

[bemildred]

4. Bravo Chile. nt

[Judi Lynn]

5. This is most timely! Hope it gives Kissinger and his confederates

something to ponder.

From the first article, on Contreras:

Last January Solís sentenced Contreras to 12 years and one day in prison for the 1975 abduction of left activist Miguel Ángel Sandoval, but received staunch resistance from the retired general, who was forcibly removed by policemen from his house after he pulled a gun and said he would “not go to any prison” (ST, Jan. 31).

The ex-chief of the DINA, the Pinochet-era secret police, is now serving his sentence at the Cordillera Prison in Santiago’s Peñalolén district, together with four other retired colleagues also sentenced for Sandoval’s kidnapping.
(snip)

If his people could only get back in power (only through violence or massive fraud and intimidation with these people) he can have the arresting officers tortured!


Contreras standing with his
leader, Augusto Pinochet.

Manuel Contreras:

• paid CIA informant (1974-1977)
  
  
• General Pinochet's closest friend and confidant (1974-1979)
  
  
• head of DINA, Chile's secret police, which was responsible for kidnappings, torture and disappearances in Chile (1974-1978).
  
  
• met high-level intelligence officials in Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Venezuela and U.S. to discuss Operation Condor (1974) and met Vernon Walters, Assistant Director of the CIA (1975)
  
  
• plotted the assassination of Orlando Letelier (former Chilean Foreign Minister and ambassador to the U.S.) in Washington (1976)
  
  
• sentenced by a Chilean court to 7 years for the murder of Letelier and sentenced in his absence by an Italian court to 20 years, for the attempted murder, in 1975, of Italian politician Bernardo Leighton (1995)

http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/issue43/articles/operation_condor.htm