Chile: 129 To Be Arrested In 'Dirty War' Crimes

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RENEE MONTAGNE, host:

This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.

ARI SHAPIRO, host:

And I'm Ari Shapiro. A Chilean judge has issued arrest warrants for 129 former government officials. The defendants all worked under Augusto Pinochet, Chile's military dictator from 1973 until 1990. They're accused of kidnappings, torture and assassinations. Joining us for some perspective now is Peter Kornbluh, director of the Chile Documentation Project at the National Security Archive in Washington.

Good morning.

MR. PETER KORNBLUH (Chile Documentation Project): Good morning.

SHAPIRO: So why are we seeing these indictments now?

Mr. KORNBLUH: Well, there's been a lengthy, almost decade-long investigation by the Chilean judges. First the crusading judge, Juan Guzman, and when he retired he passed these cases on Operation Condor, Operation Colombo and (unintelligible) confidencia to Victor Montiglio.

And he has spent years identifying, gathering the evidence, and basically arriving at indictments, not just arrest warrants, which in the Chilean legal system means that he's concluded that these 129 individuals, which range from chauffeurs and drivers to the colonels and generals who ordered these crimes, are guilty. It's taken years to gather that evidence. He's basically made a statement that there is no statute of limitation on human rights crimes.

SHAPIRO: Now, you mentioned Operation Condor and some of these other operations that were aimed at leftists in the 1970s. Describe for me what happened in those operations, what the crimes are.

Mr. KORNBLUH: Well, they were very different kinds of crimes. Operation Condor was essentially a Latin American rendition and disappearance program. Chile was Condor One. It collaborated - the Chilean secret police collaborated with secret police services in Argentina and Uruguay and Paraguay to identify leftists, track them down, secretly kidnap them, torture them and disappear them. In a number of cases, they were direct assassination efforts.

And the most famous Condor crime took place right here on the streets of Washington, D.C., when Chile sent agents to kill a former Chilean ambassador, Orlando Letelier, in 1976.

SHAPIRO: Well, with all these other countries involved that you mentioned -Uruguay, Argentina, even the United States - is this likely to have an impact beyond Chile's borders?

Mr. KORNBLUH: This is a huge statement in the history of human rights judicial process. There's no doubt that this major indictment's going to have an impact in Chile. It's going to have an impact in Argentina, where there are cases that are being pursued, including Operation Condor cases. And eventually, I think, it'll have an impact in the United States as well.

SHAPIRO: What kind of impact?

Mr. KORNBLUH: Well, it's a statement that civilized countries don't close the chapter on human rights crimes of the past, even crimes that in this case were committed 30 to 35 years ago, and that countries will hold their leaders and their national security agents accountable for the types of crimes that were committed in Chile, in Argentina, for torture, disappearance, illegal detention. Certainly those are issues we're debating in the United States right now, of how to deal with the past.

In Chile's case they're saying we cannot shut the book on the past until there is legal accountability for the future.

SHAPIRO: Peter Kornbluh is author of "The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability."

Thanks a lot.

Mr. KORNBLUH: Thank you.

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