Manuel Contreras Blames Human Rights Abuses on Former Dictator
(Nov. 21, 2005) Chile’s former military dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet went face-to-face with Gen. Manuel Contreras, his own former director of the Directorate of National Intelligence (DINA), in a joint testimony before Chilean authorities Friday morning. Victor Montiglio, the investigating judge in the Operation Colombo case, ordered the meeting between Contreras and Pinochet 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 to cover-up the execution of 119 members of leftist opponents belonging to the MIR.
