Bondi nanny Adriana Rivas accused over ‘death camp’ fights return to Chile

Adriana Rivas insists she never participated in the abduction of innocent citizens in Chile — now her lawyers are asking the Federal Court to overrule a Local Court who agreed she should return home to face trial.

A Bondi nanny accused of guarding a Chilean death camp has asked a court to put morality aside and not send her home to face trial for her alleged role in the kidnapping, killing and disappearance of seven innocent people.

Lawyers for Adriana Rivas say even if the grandmotherly woman was at the “extermination camp” she wouldn’t be in a position to stop the horrors – but they insist they’re not running a Nazi “Nuremberg defence”.

The Daily Telegraph, in December, revealed harrowing details about seven Chileans who were allegedly tortured with sarin gas and electrified beds before they were disfigured with welding torches and thrown from helicopters.

Adriana Rivas speaks with SBS News in 2014. Picture: SBS News

Adriana Rivas

The allegations, from bound Chilean government dossiers given to Australia’s courts, came decades after Rivas left her homeland to begin a new life as a nanny in Sydney’s east.

She was arrested in her public housing home in early 2019 and that’s when her alleged former life as an operative of dictator Augusto Pinochet’s feared DINA secret police emerged.

Since then she has fought her extradition at every step, maintaining her innocence, and is now asking for the Federal Court to throw out the decision of a Local Court magistrate who was content to send her back to Chile.

Rivas’ barrister Frank Santisi told the Federal Court, on Tuesday, “this is not your ordinary extradition” and Rivas denies working for DINA.

Mr Santisi said that even if Rivas did work for DINA, as Chile alleges, the Pinochet government had set the secret police up within the legal system at the time -so it’s not clear how it could be illegal.

“(DINA) was set up by the military junta, we might not like it, we might frown on it these days and back in those days,” he said.

“But the overall purpose was to stamp out and to make sure this thing called ‘communism’ didn’t take root in Chile.”

The identity card of Adriana Rivas as a young woman.

Chilean Army Commander in Chief Gen. Augusto Pinochet in 1997. Picture: AP Photo/Santiago Llanquin

DINA was not operating “like a gang” but as an official agency trying to control “a nation in turmoil” and Chile’s government of today needed to answer how that came about and why it was prosecuting Rivas, the barrister said.

“It’s not a gang going out to rob someone or murder someone it’s a government agency that went to the trouble to be created by decree by a government under martial law.”

Rivas’ barrister said there were no documents showing when she began working for DINA or what her roles were.

The allegations appeared to be chiefly that she stood guard at the notorious house where bodies were disfigured and vanished by other operatives, he said.

Adriana Rivas from her Facebook page.

Mr Santisi disagreed that his argument “sounds very like a Nuremberg defence,” instead it’s about Chile not providing enough information to properly determine Rivas’ involvement.

“She may have engaged in guard duties at the front gate,” Mr Santisi told the court.

“If she was standing guard at the front gate what could she do to bring an end to the detention?”

He also accused Chile’s top judges of acting against their own constitution by seeking out Rivas. There is a 15-year limit on prosecutions which should kill the case against her, Mr Santisi said, and an amnesty.

Chile argues most of Rivas objections are matters for the Chilean court.

Further, they say, Rivas was still allegedly part of the criminal group that undertook the kidnapping, torture and murder even if she was just a guard or employee with even fewer responsibility in DINA.