Manuel Contreras

This article deals with the Chilean general. For the Guatemalan politician, see Manuel María Orellana Contreras .

Manuel Contreras

Juan Manuel Guillermo Contreras Sepúlveda (born May 4, 1929 in Santiago de Chile ; † August 7, 2015 there ) was an officer in the Chilean armed forces and head of the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA), the secret police during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet . As head of DINA, he was one of the most powerful and feared people in the country after Pinochet. Up until his death, he was sentenced to a total of 526 years in prison in 59 final court judgments, including for kidnapping , torture , enforced disappearance and murder . This made him the junta member with the most convictions for human rights violations .

Operation Condor

From 1973 to 1977 the secret service led by Contreras pursued and murdered political opponents of the dictatorship, in particular members of the communist and socialist parties and the movement of the revolutionary left (MIR) as part of Operation Condor , an international manhunt. According to the report CIA activities in Chile , published on September 19, 2000, representatives of the US government approved the contacts of the CIA with Contreras from 1974 to 1977 in order to achieve the goals of the CIA in Chile (see also: CIA activities in Chile ). In 1967 Contreras had received military and secret service training in the "Escuela de las Américas" known as the "Putschist School", an institution in the United States in the Panama Canal zone that it ruled, which provided tens of thousands of military personnel primarily from or for Latin American dictatorships and the like. a. trained in torture practices.

From 1975 onwards, US intelligence came to the conclusion that Contreras was the fundamental obstacle to sound human rights policies in the Pinochet government. However, the CIA was instructed to continue relations with Contreras and to provide financial support to Contreras in 1975.

After the assassination of former ambassador and cabinet member in the government of Salvador Allende , Orlando Letelier and his American assistant Ronni Karpen Moffit on September 21, 1976 in Washington, DC , the CIA is said to have collected detailed intelligence reports on Contreras' involvement in the murder assignment. The documents in question were released in 2015 and show that the Chilean President and dictator Augusto Pinochet personally ordered the murder and commissioned Contreras to do it. The CIA continued contacts with Contreras until 1977.

After Letelier's assassination, tensions grew between Contreras and Pinochet. In 1977 DINA was dissolved and replaced by a new service, Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI). In 1979 Contreras was retired with the rank of general.

Judicial investigations and convictions

On November 12, 1993, a Chilean court sentenced Contreras to seven years in prison for the murder of Letelier. Contreras initially evaded the Chilean judiciary by fleeing to the south of the country and then hid with an army regiment and in a military hospital . He was caught two months later and served his sentence until January 2001 in the Punta Peuco Military Prison in Tiltil . He was then under house arrest in connection with his involvement in the kidnapping of David Silberman ; for this act he was sentenced in 2009 to seven years in prison.

In May 2002 Contreras was convicted of being responsible for the kidnapping and disappearance of Socialist Party leader Víctor Olea Alegría in 1974. An Argentine court convicted him of his involvement in the murder of the former Chilean army chief Carlos Prats and his wife Sofía Cuthbert in Buenos Aires in 1974. An extradition request by the Argentine judiciary was rejected by Chile. In June 2008, Contreras was sentenced to twice life imprisonment for the murder of General Prats and his wife.

On January 28, 2005 Contreras received a prison sentence of twelve years and one day for the disappearance of MIR member Miguel Ángel Sandoval in 1975.

On May 13, 2005, Contreras submitted a 32-page document to the Supreme Court of Chile about the alleged whereabouts of around 580 people who had disappeared during the Pinochet dictatorship. Human rights groups immediately questioned this information, citing Contreras's years of deception and cover-up efforts and attempts to deny responsibility for human rights abuses. Many of the details of the document were known beforehand, and others contradicted the results of committees of inquiry into the abductions. In the document, Contreras alleged that Pinochet personally ordered the repression.

During those Supreme Court hearings in May 2005, Contreras stated that the CIA and Cuban terrorist Luis Posada Carriles were implicated in the murder of Orlando Letelier.

Contreras accused Pinochet of ordering the murder of Orlando Letelier and Carlos Prats. In 2005 he also stated to the Chilean judiciary that the CNI, the successor organization of DINA, had made monthly payments between 1978 and 1990 to people who had worked with DINA agent Michael Townley in Chile. These people belonged to the right-wing extremist movement Patria y Libertad , which was involved in the attempted coup (" Tanquetazo ") against the Allende government on June 29, 1973. These included Townley's wife Mariana Callejas, Francisco Oyarzún, Gustavo Etchepare and Eugenio Berríos . Berríos, who was murdered in 1995, worked for DINA as a chemist in the Colonia Dignidad and worked with both drug dealers and DEA agents .

On June 6, 2012, Contreras was named for his involvement in the arrest of former MIR members José Hipólito Jara Castro and Alfonso Domingo Díaz Brones, who were taken to the secret detention center "José Domingo Cañas" and "Ollagüe", from where they were later removed disappeared, sentenced to another 10 years and one day in prison without privileges. The fate of the two prisoners is still unclear.

The last judgment against Contreras came on July 29, 2015, when the Chilean Supreme Court upheld a 13-year prison sentence for the June 1974 murder of Victor Varraroel Ganga.

Since 2005, Contreras has been serving his sentences in the Penal Cordialena and Punta Peuco military prisons near Santiago de Chile. On July 28, 2014, he was transferred to the military hospital in Santiago de Chile, where he died on August 7, 2015 of complications from severe diabetes and colon cancer. People celebrated his death in front of the hospital and in the streets of Santiago.

To the end, Contreras insisted on his innocence and denied any involvement in crimes and human rights violations during the dictatorship.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Andrea González Schmessane: Manuel Contreras: El general (r) que sumó el mayor número de condenas por violaciones a los DD.HH. In: Emol. August 7, 2015, accessed August 8, 2015 (Spanish). 
2. ↑ "CIA Activities in Chile" , recorded in approved CIA documents, published by the National Security Archive on May 24, 2007
3. ↑ ^{a b} Christopher Marquis: CIA Says Chilean General in '76 Bombing Was Informer , New York Times , September 19, 2000
4. ↑ Guardian: Pinochet directly ordered killing on US soil of Chilean diplomat, papers reveal , October 8, 2015
5. ↑ Un general chileno se declara en rebeldía contra un fallo que le condena a 5 años , El País , June 14, 2007
6. ↑ LAS PRUEBAS DE LA DINA CONTRA POSADAS CARRILES. Cronica Digital , May 23, 2005, archived from the original on April 7, 2008 ; Retrieved November 4, 2014 (Spanish). 
7. ↑ Contreras dice que Pinochet dio orden "personal, exclusiva y directa" de asesinar a Prats y Letelier ( Memento of the original from November 5, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , La Tercera , May 13, 2005 
8. ^ El coronel que le pena al ejército , La Nación , September 24, 2005
9. ↑ ^{a b} Muere ex jefe de la DINA Manuel Contreras a los 86 años. In: Emol. August 7, 2015, accessed August 8, 2015 (Spanish). 
10. ↑ Pascale Bonnefoy: Manuel Contreras, Chilean Spy Chief Under Pinochet, Dies at 86. In: The New York Times , August 8, 2015 (English). Retrieved August 11, 2015.
11. ↑ FAZ from August 2015