PINOCHET FACE OFF WITH CHILE’S FORMER DIRECTOR OF SECRET POLICE

Contreras Blames Human Rights Abuses On Former Dictator

Chile’s former military dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet was called to testify before Gen. Manuel Contreras, his own former director of the Directorate of National Intelligence (DINA) on Friday morning. Victor Montiglio, the investigating judge in the Operation Colombo case, called Contreras and Pinochet to give joint testimony to help him resolve discrepancies in their respective accounts of the 1975 murder of 119 activists from the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR).

The meeting came as a surprise to Gen. Pinochet’s lawyers, who were notified on Friday morning that Pinochet was to appear before Judge Montiglio later that day. Pinochet’s counsel had hoped to avoid any direct confrontations with government investigators that might further establish Gen. Pinochet’s mental competence after state medical examiners declared him well enough to stand trial in early November (ST, Nov. 11).

Gen. Contreras and Gen. Pinochet have been accused of masterminding Operation Colombo, a joint operation between the military regimes of Chile, Argentina, and Brazil in to cover-up of the execution of 119 members of the militant faction of Chile’s communist party MIR.

On July 13, 1975, a mysterious Argentine publication, Lea, in its sole edition, printed the names of 60 people it claimed had been executed by their own comrades in a settling of political scores. Four days later, the “list of 119” victims was completed when a small Brazilian daily, Novo O Día, published the names of 59 Chileans who, according to its sources, had died in clashes with military forces in Argentina. Later that month, DINA itself published the 119 names and announced that all had died in military operations in Argentina.

Contreras is currently serving a 12-year jail term for the 1975 kidnapping of Miguel Ángel Sandoval, after already serving seven years for the 1976 assassination of Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C. (ST, Jan. 31, 2005).

The current issue is essentially a dispute over the command structure of Chile’s 1975 military junta. Contreras maintains that even though he was the director of DINA from 1974-1978; he was ultimately responsible to Gen. Pinochet. To support this claim, he maintains that he delivered a daily intelligence briefing and report of ongoing DINA activities to Gen. Pinochet every morning over breakfast.

His story has been corroborated by Col. Ricardo Lawrence, a former DINA agent, who independently testified in September that, in the event Gen. Contreras was unable to attend the daily meetings, he was required to submit the daily intelligence briefing to Gen. Pinochet detailing DINA activities.

Gen. Pinochet maintains that Gen. Contreras operated on his own and is therefore solely responsible for any human rights abuses committed by DINA agents while he was director.

The claim is consistent with Pinochet’s previous statements to the effect that he was unaware of the more than 35,000 human rights abuses that took place in Chile during his 17 years as dictator.

The rift between the two retired generals arises from a conversation the men had over cocktails in 1993. At the time Contreras was being investigated for his involvement in the Letelier murder and reportedly asked Pinochet, then commander in chief of Chile’s armed forces, for legal support.

According to Contreras, he reminded Pinochet of his oath to defend his soldiers and was told, “I was referring to active-duty officials, not retired ones.”

After serving two years in prison for the murder, Contreras decided to cut a deal with prosecutors and provided a copy of his military record between 1973 and 1978. The document shows the various awards and promotions granted him by Gen. Pinochet, definitively illustrating the command structure between the two men.

The document was later used by Spanish courts to issue an international arrest warrant against Pinochet in 1998 while the former dictator was in London undergoing back surgery.

Since his arrest in London, Pinochet has been accused of numerous other civil and criminal offenses. He is currently being investigated for his role in the murder of 94 Chileans at the Villa Grimaldi torture center, for laundering over US$27 million while in office, as well as the Operation Colombo investigation.

The latest round of interrogations could signal that Chilean prosecutors are ready to bring legal action against the former dictator for crimes committed during his military dictatorship.