Santiago (AFP) – The Supreme Court of Chile confirmed on Friday the sentences of 22 former political police agents of Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship, as perpetrators of the kidnapping and murder of 12 people within the framework of the so-called “Operation Condor.”
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In the mid-1970s, military dictatorships in the Southern Cone united to pursue and eliminate leftist dissidents across national borders, as part of a secret plan known as “Operation Condor.”
Hundreds of people were murdered under this program of state terror, supported by the United States, in which Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay participated.
The highest Chilean court ratified a previous sentence applied to the 22 former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), the feared political police that operated during the first years of the dictatorship (1973-1990).
This organization is accused of being the author of the majority of the more than 3,200 victims, including dead and missing, left by the Pinochet regime.
Among those convicted are retired soldiers Cristoph Willike, Raúl Iturriaga, Juan Morales and Pedro Espinoza, who received a 40-year sentence as perpetrators of murders and kidnappings.
The rest received sentences of between 36 and three years for their participation in the same crimes.
The majority of those convicted are already serving sentences for other crimes of the dictatorship.
In Geneva, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, praised the ruling of the Chilean Supreme Court.
“The calculated cruelty of these dictatorships has continued to have a profound impact on the families of those who suffered these serious human rights violations, the societies and the history of the region,” said Türk, in a press release.
The court ruling establishes that it was the Pinochet dictatorship that “formally on November 25, 1975” at a meeting in Chile created “a plan for the coordination of actions and mutual support between the leaders of the intelligence services of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Chile, aimed at destabilizing opponents of the regimes assumed by the Armed and Law Enforcement Forces.”
The ruling of Chile's highest court also imposed various acts of reparation in memory of the victims, such as the obligation to publish an extract of the sentence in a national newspaper.
The sentence is one of several final sentences issued this year by the Chilean justice system for crimes of the dictatorship, within the framework of the 50th anniversary of the coup d'état.
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