Colonia Dignidad: Chile's Nazi colony

[Jan Klimkowski]

Allegations of links between Colonia Dignidad, Operation Silencio (sub-operation of Condor), and biological warfare laboratories in the Nazi Dignity Colony.

The main source is Condor/Gladio/DINA assassin Michael Townley.

Operation Silencio

Operation Silencio (Operation Silence) was an operation to impede investigations by Chilean judges by removing witnesses from the country, starting about a year before the "terror archives" were found in Paraguay. In April 1991 Arturo Sanhueza Ross, linked to the murder of MIR leader Jecar Neghme in 1989, left the country. According to the Rettig Report, Jecar Neghme's death was carried out by Chilean intelligence agents [20]. In September 1991 Carlos Herrera Jiménez, who killed trade-unionist Tucapel Jiménez, flew away.[21] In October 1991 Eugenio Berríos, a chemist who had worked with DINA agent Michael Townley, was escorted from Chile to Uruguay by Operation Condor agents, in order to escape testifying in the Letelier case. He used Argentinian, Uruguayan, Paraguayan and Brazilian passports, raising concerns that Operation Condor was not dead. In 1995 Berríos was found dead in El Pinar, near Montevideo (Uruguay), his murderers having tried to make the identification of his body impossible. In January 2005, Michael Townley, who now lives in the USA under the witness protection program, acknowledged to agents of Interpol Chile links between DINA and the detention and torture center Colonia Dignidad,[4] which was founded in 1961 by Paul Schäfer, a Nazi accused of child-abuse and torture, arrested in March 2005 in Buenos Aires. Townley also revealed information about Colonia Dignidad and the Army's Bacteriological Warfare Laboratory. This last laboratory would have replaced the old DINA's laboratory on Via Naranja de lo Curro street, where Michael Townley worked with the chemical assassin Eugenio Berríos. The toxin that allegedly killed Christian-Democrat Eduardo Frei Montalva may have been made in this new lab in Colonia Dignidad, according to the judge investigating the case.

http://www.bookrags.com/wiki/Operation_Condor

Torture

Investigations by Amnesty International and the Chilean National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation Report have verified that Colonia Dignidad was used by DINA, the Chilean secret police, as a concentration camp for the detention of political prisoners during Augusto Pinochet's dictatorial rule of Chile. Most accounts have this happening between 1973 and 1977 but precise dates are not known. The son of DINA head Manuel Contreras claims that his father and Pinochet visited Colonia Dignidad in 1974, and that his father and Schäfer were good friends. The current leader of Villa Baviera admits that torture took place within the old colony, but says that Villa Baviera is a new entity. In March 2005, former DINA and CIA agent Michael Townley acknowledged to links between Colonia Dignidad and DINA, as well as relations with the Bacteriological War Army Laboratory. He would have spoken about biological experiments imposed to detainees, with the help of the fore-mentioned laboratory and another one, that used to be situated on Vía Naranja de Lo Curro hill [1]. In 2005 the German-born Gisela Seewald, who arrived in Colonia Dignidad in 1963, confessed according to Judge Jorge Zepeda, that she applied psychiatric treatment against children, because Schäfer assured her they were possessed.
Weapons caches

In June and July 2005, Chilean police found two arms caches in or around the colony. The first, within the colony itself, consisted of three containers with machine guns, automatic rifles, rocket launchers and large quantities of ammunition, some as much as 40 years old. Even a war tank was found under the ground. It was described as the largest arsenal ever found in private hands in Chile. The second, outside a restaurant operated by the colony, consisted of rocket launchers and grenades. In January 2005, Michael Townley, a former DINA agent, who currently lives in the USA under a witness protection program, acknowledged to agents of Interpol Chile links between DINA and Colonia Dignidad. Townley also revealed information about Colonia Dignidad and the Army's Laboratory on Bacteriological War. This last laboratory would have replaced the old DINA's laboratory at Vía Naranja de Lo Curro hill, where Michael Townley worked with the chemist Eugenio Berríos. Townley also gave proofs of biological experiments made upon the political prisoners at Colonia Dignidad, related to the two aforementioned laboratories [2].

http://www.bookrags.com/wiki/Colonia_Dignidad