Manuel Contreras
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General Juan Manuel Guillermo Contreras Sepúlveda (born May 4, 1929) was the head of Augusto Pinochet's National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) and one of the most powerful and feared men in Chile after a military coup headed by Pinochet and other Chilean militaries overthrew Socialist President Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973. Documents released by the CIA in 2000 revealed that Contreras was a CIA paid asset from 1975 to 1977.[1]
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[edit] Operation Condor
- Further information: Operation Condor
From 1973 to 1977, he led the agency on an international hunt to track down and murder the political opponents of the dictatorship, particularly members of the Communist and Socialist Parties and the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR). According to the report "CIA activities in Chile" released on September 19, 2000, the US government policy community approved CIA's contact with Contreras from 1974 to 1977 to accomplish the CIA's mission in Chile in spite of his role in human rights abuses. By 1975 American intelligence reporting had concluded that Contreras was the principal obstacle to a reasonable human rights policy within the Pinochet's government, but the CIA was directed to continue its relationship with Contreras. The CIA became concerned with Contrera's role in the assassination of former Salvador Allende cabinet member and ambassador to Washington Orlando Letelier and his American assistant, Ronni Karpen Moffit in Washington, DC, on September 21, 1976. The CIA gathered specific, detailed intelligence reporting concerning Contrera's involvement in ordering the Letelier assassination, but some of the material remains classified and another portion has been withheld at the request of the US Department of Justice (CIA, 2000)
After Orlando Letelier's assassination, tensions between Contreras and Pinochet grew over the course of his tenure, and the DINA was closed down in 1977 and replaced with a new apparatus, the National Intelligence Center (CNI). By 1979, Contreras was out of the army after a short time at the rank of General.
[edit] Prison sentences and court investigations
In 1993, a Chilean court sentenced him to seven years in prison for the Letelier assassination. He completed his sentence in January 2001, after which he was placed under house arrest and then released.
In May 2002, he was convicted as the mastermind of the 1974 abduction and forced disappearance of Socialist Party leader Victor Olea Alegria. Contreras was also convicted by an Argentinean court in connection with the assassination of former Chilean army chief Carlos Prats and his wife in Buenos Aires in 1974. However, an extradition request by Argentina was denied by Chile.
On January 28, 2005 he was put in prison for the disappearance of tailor and MIR member Miguel Ángel Sandoval in 1975. The sentence time is 12 years.
On May 13, 2005, Contreras submitted to Chile's Supreme Court a 32-page document that claimed to list the whereabouts of about 580 people who disappeared during Pinochet's rule. Human rights groups immediately questioned the information and its source, citing Contreras's years of deception and denials of responsibility for human rights abuses. Many of the details he provided were previously known, and some contradicted the findings of commissions that have investigated the disappearances. In the document he wrote that Pinochet personally ordered these repressive measures.
During the same May 2005 hearing to the Supreme Court, he directly involved the CIA and Cuban anti-Castrist terrorist Luis Posada Carriles in the 1976 assassination of Orlando Letelier.[2]
Manuel Contrerazs has accused Augusto Pinochet of having given the order of the assassination of Orlando Letelier and of Carlos Prats. He also declared to Chilean justice in 2005 that the CNI, successor of DINA, handed out monthly payments between 1978 and 1990 to the persons who had worked with CIA and DINA agent Michael Townley in Chile, all members of Patria y Libertad, the far-right movement which had been involved in the Tanquetazo : Mariana Callejas (Townley's wife), Francisco Oyarzún, Gustavo Etchepare and Eugenio Berríos.[3] Assassinated in 1995, Berrios, who worked as a chemist for the DINA in Colonia Dignidad, also worked with drug traffickers and DEA agents.[4]
Judge Victor Montiglio, who succeeded to judge Juan Guzman, applied amnesty to Manuel Contreras in 2005, after his conviction in operation Colombo.
[edit] References
- ^ "CIA Acknowledges Ties to Pinochet’s Repression", pp.16–18, CIA declassified documents, Retrieved from National Security Archive on Feb.21, 2006
- ^ LAS PRUEBAS DE LA DINA CONTRA POSADAS CARRILES, Cronica Digital, May 23, 2005 (Spanish)
- ^ Contreras dice que Pinochet dio orden "personal, exclusiva y directa" de asesinar a Prats y Letelier, La Tercera, May 13, 2005, mirrored on CC.TT. website (Spanish)
- ^ El coronel que le pena al ejército, La Nación, September 24, 2005 (Spanish)
