Chilean Dictatorship Agent Rivas To Be Extradited From Australia

On Tuesday, the Australian Federal Court approved the Chilean government’s extradition request of former Intelligence Directorate (DINA) agent Adriana Rivas, who disappeared seven Communist Party’s members during the Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship (1974-1990).

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"Justice is finally imposed," the victims' lawyer Adriana Navarro stated, recalling that defendant lawyer Frank Santisi delayed the extradition of Rivas to Chile for over two years by presenting unfounded appeals.

Santisi alleged that Australian magistrates had failed to consider the 1978 Amnesty Law, which Pinochet enacted to shield the military having violated human rights and and the Chilean parliament has not still removed.

“Rivas’s appeal grounds are not relevant to deny the offenses against her,” the Australian court sentenced, stressing that the Chilean Supreme Court ruled in 1998 that the Amnesty Law should not apply to cases of human rights violations.

In an interview with SBS television in 2013, Rivas confirmed that she worked for the DINA shadowy Lautaro Brigade, which chased and tortured Pinochet’s political opponents.

“The military had to do that to break communists, who otherwise will not talk. I was not involved in the interrogation procedures because I only worked as secretary of Brigade Director Manuel Contreras," she alleged and denied having taken an intelligence course, as judicial evidence proved. 

In 1978, Rivas moved to the Bondi beachside suburb in Sydney, where she worked as a nanny and a cleaner for over 30 years. When she visited her country in 2006, the Chilean police detained her for cases linked to her extradition. At that time, however, she managed to escape and return to Australia three years later.

The families of the seven victims of her offenses said that this behavior should be considered an aggravating factor. “We demand that Rivas remains in custody once she is extradited to Chile and hope the trial' outcome will be an exemplary sentence,” they stressed.