The Australian Federal Court has not set a date for announcing its decision, but it will be granted within a maximum of three months, said Adriana Navarro, a lawyer representing the relatives of the six accused by Rivas. At a hearing on Tuesday, April 6, Judge Wendy Jane Abraham addressed 24 issues of Rivas’ defense against a lower court ruling issued on October 29, which agreed to extradite the Chilean from the age of 68 and detain him in Sydney City Jail since February 2019.
Rivas, who worked as a nanny and cleaner in Sydney for three decades, was part of the La Toro eradication team of the Directorate of National Intelligence (Tina, Pinochet’s Secret Police), where he became secretary to Manuel Contreras, the unit’s head.
Former Secretary of the Controras, the ultimate oppressor of the Pinochet dictatorship, is said to have been involved in the “bad kidnapping” of Vector Thiaz, then deputy secretary of the Communist Party of Chile in 1976, as well as the arrests of Fernando Navarro, Lingoin Ferrios, Horacio Cebeta, Juan Bernardo Were pregnant.
Rivas hides behind the 1978 Amnesty Act
Defense attorney Frank Sandici today focused on protecting his client with the Chilean Amnesty Act, which was ratified on April 18, 1978, protecting criminals, accomplices or jewelers from crimes committed during the Pinochet dictatorship, from September 11 1973 to March 10, 1978. .
According to the attorney’s version, Sandici argues that the order is still in effect, although many Chilean judges have ignored the law in recent years. According to Rivas’ defender, Chile will “call” Australia to violate the Chilean constitution with the extradition request.
Similarly, Rivas, who denies the allegations, maintains that Chile did not prove that he was Tina’s operative agent and that he was involved in the kidnapping of seven members of the Communist Party, the prosecutor had already recommended. Attorney Adriana Navarro, for her part, pointed out that in the October 29 judgment, “crimes against humanity were not recommended.”
Chile stuck with legal aspects
For his part, Trent Clover, a representative of the Australian Attorney’s Office acting on behalf of Chile, focused on responding to technical and legal aspects to insist that handing over Rivas to Chile was appropriate. Clover criticized Sandici for focusing only on the two testimonies cited in the extradition documents, and stressed that it was recognized that Tina had acted “outside the law.”
The verdict of this process can still be appealed to full Australian federal court judges, although only on the basis of the possibility of an error in the interpretation or application of the law, it is unlikely to reach the High Court, the Supreme Court.
After settling the legal battle in Australia, the last word to be handed over was Attorney General Michaelia Cash of the Sea.
jov (efe, portnews)
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Oral archives in Germany and Latin America, Voices of History
Open memory
Argentina was a pioneer in oral archives in South America. The Oral File of Open Memory, which began to take shape in 2001, collects evidence relating to the period of state terrorism and the social and political life of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as actions promoted by human rights organizations and civil society. The search for truth and justice.
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Oral archives in Germany and Latin America, Voices of History
Audiovisual testimony
More than 750 testimonies and 2,000 hours of filming are available for public consultation at the Oral Archive’s Open Memory on the former Esma campus in Buenos Aires. These are interviews in audiovisual format with people affected by state terrorism. The list can be consulted online.
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Oral archives in Germany and Latin America, Voices of History
Oral Archive Villa Grimaldi, Chile
Villa Grimaldi is one of the main detention and torture centers of the Pinochet dictatorship. Today the site has been transformed into the Villa Grimaldi Park for the Peace Memorial and its oral archive, launched in 2006, was the first to compile audio-visual memoirs about the Chilean dictatorship. It contains five testimonial collections.
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Oral archives in Germany and Latin America, Voices of History
From dictatorship to peacekeeping
In the main collection, Sustainable Development, 197 witnesses of former political prisoners of Villa Grimaldi, relatives of detained, missing and executed politicians, actors working to restore and open the park for peace, human rights defenders and representatives of other sites in Chile Memory.
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Oral archives in Germany and Latin America, Voices of History
Oral archive MUME, Uruguay
The oral archive of the Montevideo Museum of Memory collects filmed testimonies of deportees or dissidents through secret and legal detention centers during the dictatorship. And children considered to be the second generation of affected children. It currently contains a collection of 80 interviews.
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Oral archives in Germany and Latin America, Voices of History
Voices transforming Colombia
Presented at the Centro de Memoria Hysterica in Bogot, the exhibition is currently designed to hear the voices of victims: “Stories of violence and suffering, but above all dignity and resistance to the onslaught of armed conflict.” The project was also presented at a book fair in the Colombian capital.
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Oral archives in Germany and Latin America, Voices of History
Memory and forced labor in Germany
In Germany, the Digital Systems Center (CDS) of the Free University of Berlin has developed oral files on online access sites. One of them presents the reality of the lives of more than 20 million people through the testimony of six survivors of national socialism who describe their experience in forced labor, factories and labor camps.
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Oral archives in Germany and Latin America, Voices of History
Memories of occupation in Greece
90 Witness Interviews bring together this CDS oral file, which is available for viewing online in German and Greek. Voices have a deeper identity in Greece than a chapter in history, although little is known about it in Germany. The collection also includes photos, documents and transcripts.
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Oral archives in Germany and Latin America, Voices of History
Witnesses of Showa
CDS also created this online archive, with nearly a thousand videotape interviews with Holocaust survivors in German and other languages. Visual evidence of how they lived these events and their memories of liberation are occupied by educational programs conducted in German schools.
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Oral archives in Germany and Latin America, Voices of History
Colonia Dignitad: Chile-German Oral Archive
“Colonia Dignitad, Chile-German Oral Historical Archive” is the name of a project by the Institute of Latin American Studies (ILA) and the Digital Systems Center (CDS) of the Free University of Berlin. The initiative will collect 50 testimonies related to this category of German immigrants in southern Chile, which will be available online.
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Oral archives in Germany and Latin America, Voices of History
Memory in Chile Colonia Dignitad
In Chile, the Colonia Dignitad Memorial and the Association for Human Rights presented a file with 20 testimonies from victims and experts. In the absence of a memorial site from the same colony, they are housed in the Villa Grimaldi Peace Park. The idea is to distribute copies in public places, including in Germany.
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Oral archives in Germany and Latin America, Voices of History
At least we can tell the story …
“They are 50 years old. They should pay everyone who hurt him. At least we can tell the story, but the killers, ”said Juan Batista Astudillo, a former politician at the Colonia Dignitat Association for Memory and Human Rights. It is estimated that at least a hundred political prisoners were killed in the colony.
Author: Victoria Danman
By Greg Vega 
