Adriana Rivas: Pinochet-era kidnap suspect 'eligible for extradition'

[Eugene]

Source: BBC

Adriana Rivas: Pinochet-era kidnap suspect 'eligible for extradition'

29 October 2020

A Chilean woman suspected of being involved in Pinochet-era kidnappings is eligible to be extradited from Australia, a court has ruled.

Adriana Rivas, 67, was arrested in Sydney in February last year.

She has denied involvement in the 1970s kidnappings of seven people which resulted in their deaths, Australian media reported.

Some 3,000 opponents of Gen Augusto Pinochet were killed in the 1970s and 1980s during his military rule.

Ms Rivas has 15 days to decide whether to appeal Thursday's decision by a magistrate in New South Wales.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54728348


Adriana Rivas left Chile in 1978 and moved to Australia (Storyboard Media)

[Judi Lynn]

1. Better late than never, anyway. Too bad this happened while a Pinochet supporter rules Chile.

Adriana Rivas with her boss, foaming-at-the-mouth sociopath,
Pinochet's powerful henchman, Manuel Contreras

Google translation:

CI: 6.615.200-6
Address in Chile: Cautín 830, Quinta Normal, Santiago

Australian address: 207/5 Florence Avenue, NSW 2018

Adriana Elcira Rivas González. the Chani. She entered the Ministry of Defense as secretary, after taking courses in military intelligence, she entered the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) in 1974, where she became a member of the dreaded Lautaro Brigade . He was in his early 20s. She was Manuel Contreras' personal secretary and became a non-commissioned officer in the Navy and today receives a pension and benefits as a member of the armed forces.

In 1978 Adriana Rivas settled in Australia. According to information obtained by human rights groups in Australia, between 1994 and 2000 more than 400 former DINA , CNI and other figures related to Pinochet's secret police entered that country. Australia granted permanent visas to all of them, suggesting an agreement between the two governments.

In 2006 Adriana Rivas returned to Chile and was arrested for her participation in the Conference Case , a DINA operation against the clandestine leadership of the Communist Party in 1976. She was prosecuted in February 2007 for her participation as a member of the Lautaro Brigade in the death of the leader Víctor Díaz , was detained for almost three months. When he was granted parole, but with an arrest warrant, he fled via Argentina to Australia, where he is today.

His niece recently made a documentary video in which she tries to investigate what motivated her aunt to become a DINA agent since 1974 and why she shamelessly justifies the use of torture with political opponents

In an interview broadcast by Australian radio SBS, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the military coup in Chile, Adriana Rivas defended torture as a method of extracting information and considered those years as the best of her youth. In the interview, Rivas indicated that the torture during the dictatorship was "an open secret" and described it as a technique "necessary to break the people."

When asked about the whereabouts of the more than 1,000 detained-disappeared, she answered that it is something that will never be known: " If he is dead, he is dead. Where are they? It is not known . "

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Surely hoping there will be demonstrations in the street. There will be living humans related to her victims who wouldn't want this Pinochet-supporter's government let her slip away again.

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Australian court rules to extradite kidnap suspect to Chile



Supporters of those who disappeared in Chile in the 1970’s are seen outside the Sydney Central Local Court in Sydney, Thursday, Oct. 29, 2020.An Australian judge has ruled that a woman wanted in Chile on kidnapping charges dating to Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship in the 1970s can be extradited. (Margaret Scheikowski, AAP Image via AP) (Associated Press)

By Associated Press

Oct. 29, 2020 at 1:52 a.m. CDT

SYDNEY — An Australian judge ruled Thursday that a woman wanted in Chile on kidnapping charges dating to Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship in the 1970s can be extradited.

Magistrate Philip Stewart dismissed Adriana Rivas’ lawyers’ objections to her extradition on allegations that she kidnapped seven people in 1976 and 1977, including Communist Party leader Victor Diaz. The alleged victims have never been found.

The 67-year-old Rivas has 15 days to appeal the decision in the Federal Court.

She has been in custody since her arrest in Sydney in February last year on a Chilean Supreme Court extradition order. Several court attempts for provisional release during the extradition hearing have failed.

Chilean-born lawyer and advocate for Pinochet’s victims Adriana Navarro said Rivas’ case was the first of its kind and “extremely important.”

“We are happy that Australia is on the side of human rights and it respects human rights,” Navarro told reporters outside the Sydney court following the ruling.

More:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/australia-rules-to-extradite-alleged-kidnapper-to-chile/2020/10/29/44663e44-19b3-11eb-8bda-814ca56e138b_story.html

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Rivas' employer:

Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (English: National Intelligence Directorate) or DINA was the secret police of Chile during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. The DINA has been referred to as Pinochet's Gestapo.[1] Established in November 1973 as a Chilean Army intelligence unit headed by Colonel Manuel Contreras and vice-director Raúl Iturriaga, the DINA was then separated from the army and made an independent administrative unit in June 1974 under the auspices of Decree 521. The DINA existed until 1977, after which it was renamed the Central Nacional de Informaciones (English: National Information Center) or CNI.

In 2008, the Chilean Army presented a list of 1,097 DINA agents to Judge Alejandro Solís.[2

. . .

DINA internal suppression and human rights violations
Under decree #521, the DINA had the power to detain any individual so long as there was a declared state of emergency. Such an administrative state characterized nearly the entire length of the Pinochet government. Torture and rape of detainees was common:

In some camps, routine sadism was taken to extremes. At Villa Grimaldi, recalcitrant prisoners were dragged to a parking lot; DINA agents then used a car or truck to run over and crush their legs. Prisoners there recalled one young man who was beaten with chains and left to die slowly from internal injuries. Rape was also a recurring form of abuse. DINA officers subjected female prisoners to grotesque forms of sexual torture that included insertion of rodents and, as tactfully described in the Commission report, "unnatural acts involving dogs."[3]

DINA censorship of media
As of September 11, 1973, the military dictatorship worked with DINA to censor channels, newspapers, and radio transmissions that supported the Popular Socialist Union and supporters. A decree by the Junta established that all public information would have to be inspected and revised by the Junta before airing, and a couple days later an "Office of Censorship" was created to supervise all media. A lot of newspapers received their work back scribbled out with red ink.

Through coercion, murder, and kidnappings, television outlets masked the truth on the coup d'état as a plan by the military of Chile. Various international cable news networks were banned by DINA to prevent the news of the forced coup d'état by the military. Some international networks were convinced to lie by the Junta about social and political aspects of Chile.

The censorship breached particular homes and public services, and on September 23, 1973, DINA sent policemen to register households and institutions. They searched subversive evidence such as books by Pablo Neruda, articles on social sciences, political science, human rights, and those who were rounded up and burned at the Plaza de Armas (Santiago).

Foreign involvement
The United States backed and supported the Fatherland and Liberty which funded and attempted the first coup of Allende's regime known as Tanquetazo. The CIA established links after the 1973 Chilean coup d'état however ties were cut after The Assassination of Orlando Letelier which former CIA agent Michael Townley was directly tied with which eventually led to the disbanding of The DINA in 1977.

DINA foreign assassinations and operations
Further information: Operation Condor and Operation Colombo
The DINA was involved in Operation Condor, as well as Operation Colombo. In July 1976, two magazines in Argentina and Brazil appeared and published the names of 119 Chilean leftist opponents, claiming they had been killed in internal disputes unrelated to the Pinochet regime. Both magazines disappeared after this one and only issue. Judge Juan Guzmán Tapia eventually asked Chilean justices to lift Pinochet's immunity in this case, called "Operation Colombo", having accumulated evidence that Pinochet had ordered the DINA to plant this disinformation, in order to cover up the "disappearance" and murder by the Chilean secret police of those 119 persons. In September 2005, Chile's Supreme Court ordered the lifting of Pinochet's general immunity from prosecutions, with respect to this case.

Assassinations of Carlos Prats and Orlando Letelier
Main article: Letelier assassination
The DINA worked with international agents, such as Michael Townley, who assassinated former Chilean minister Orlando Letelier in Washington DC in 1976, as well as General Carlos Prats in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1974.

Michael Townley worked with Eugenio Berríos on producing sarin gas in the 1970s, at a laboratory in a DINA-owned house in the district of Lo Curro, Santiago de Chile.[4] Eugenio Berríos, who was murdered in 1995, was also linked with drug traffickers and agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).[5]

More:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direcci%C3%B3n_de_Inteligencia_Nacional