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FORMER
COLONIA DIGNIDAD MEMBERS CONFIRM KILLINGS
(Jan. 11, 2006)
At least four former Colonia Dignidad members confidentially
testified last week to Judge Jorge Zepeda, the investigating judge
in the Colonia Dignidad human rights case, that a Chilean military
squad assassinated a group of political prisoners and later buried
their bodies in the German enclave in the fall of 1973.
The
testimonies confirm the long-suspected alliance between the former
Colonia Dignidad hierarchy and the Directorate of National
Intelligence (DINA), Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s secret police agency
that has been blamed for thousands of deaths, disappearances and
torture cases during the initial years of his 17-year military
regime.
In their testimony, the former Dignidad members
stated that between October and November of 1973 a group of ten Army
soldiers shot 34 political prisoners in the Colonia Dignidad area.
Investigators believe the bodies of these “disappeared” were
then buried in the Colonia Dignidad compound. The corpses were most
likely later exhumed and burned sometime in 1978 in an effort to
dispose of all physical evidence.
The German colony members
also confirmed a second shooting of two men in 1974. Judge Zepeda
had already received earlier reports of these deaths through the
confessions of several DINA agents.
This 1974 shooting
coincides with the disappearance of Hernán Sarmiento Sabater and
Aroldo Vivian Laurie Luengo from Parral, who were arrested by police
and subsequently never heard from again.
Forensic experts
last week successfully uncovered what is believed to be a former
grave site, and while no bones or human material were recovered from
the site, the specialists believe the grave once held at least 20
bodies (ST, Jan. 4).
Colonia Dignidad was a right-wing
religious compound, settled by German immigrants in 1961 near
Parral, in southern Chile, and led by Paul Schäfer. Schäfer at the
time was fleeing German justice, accused of pedophilia; but his
close relationship with right wing Chilean political leaders,
especially after Pinochet’s rise to power, prevented any further
investigation into these crimes.
Pedophilia charges were
finally brought against Schäfer in Chile in 1997, by parents of
local children who had been made part of the community, and Schäfer
then went underground. He was arrested in March, 2005, in Argentina
and then extradited to Chile. Schäfer remains in police custody on
charges of serial child molestation at the compound (ST, Oct. 5,
2005) and for human rights violations of political prisoner taken to
Colonia Dignidad by Pinochet-era secret police.
SOURCE: LA
NACIÓN, LA TERCERA
By Jackie Hailey
(editor@santiagotimes.cl)
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