By Perry Duffin
The families of people who vanished and were tortured and murdered by South American death squads accuse Australia’s attorney-general of “callous silence” after the extradition of one alleged torturer found living in Bondi was delayed two years.
Adriana Rivas was arrested in Sydney in 2019 at the request of Chilean prosecutors, accused of being involved in the kidnapping of seven people who had vanished in Santiago. The 70-year-old former nanny has spent the past five years fighting, and losing, extradition to her homeland, while languishing in immigration detention.
Adriana Rivas during her time as an alleged Chilean secret police agent.Credit: Jamie Brown
This month the Herald revealed Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus had ordered Rivas’ surrender, but she had immediately issued another legal challenge. She continues to deny all wrongdoing.
It came as a blow to the families of Rivas’ alleged victims who have waited two years for her surrender after she abandoned a High Court challenge in mid-2022.
“The A-G’s determination has been plagued with unreasonable delays in excess of two years,” Adriana Navarro, a lawyer representing families of those killed by the secret police, told the Herald.
There was no announcement of the long-anticipated surrender or the new challenge.
Families of Adriana Rivas’ alleged victims are angry at delays in the extradition to Chile.Credit: SMH
“The families and their representatives should have been informed of this decision by the A-G when made,” he said. “This secrecy at the A-G’s office is disconcerting and callous.”
Documents given to NSW courts alleged Rivas worked in the headquarters of the DINA secret police in the Chilean capital Santiago as agents rounded up, tortured and murdered left-wing enemies of US-backed dictator Augusto Pinochet.
Sarin gas, electrified bunk beds and welding torches were common inside the DINA headquarters at 8800 Simon Bolivar, where inhumane executions took place in the 1970s.
“The bodies were put inside sacks, tied up with cables to a piece of railway beam, and then thrown into the ocean by air force helicopters,” a dossier authored by Chilean authorities said.
Adriana Rivas in an interview with SBS in 2013.Credit: SBS
The families of two of Rivas’ alleged victims have spoken to the Herald about their missing loved ones and the decades of sorrow they have endured, and of their determination that she face justice.
Marisol Berrios recalled the fear in her home when the bodies of prominent communists, her parents’ comrades, were washed up on beaches.
Marisol was 16 at the time and remembered falling asleep in front of the television with her father and Communist Party worker Lincoyan Berrios in December that year.
Lincoyan Berrios, a Chilean Communist Party member, vanished in 1976.
“He woke me up, took me to my bed, tucked me in, and said goodbye affectionately,” Marisol told the Herald.
“The next day, he left as usual with my mum to catch the bus to their respective workplaces. That was the last time I saw him.”
Maria Luisa Rojas’ father vanished in late 1976.
Maria’s final memories of her father, Juan Fernando Ortiz Letelier, were nervous glances on the street before DINA squads whisked him off.
“Just being able to see each other was very significant for both of us. For me, I still treasure that memory today,” Maria said in a statement released to the Herald.
Pinochet had seized power in a bloody coup against Chile’s democratically elected socialist president, Salvador Allende, on September 11, 1973. Thousands of his political enemies “disappeared”.
The coup, which came after years of US meddling and CIA foment, is known in Latin America as “the other 9/11”.
Berrios cited the date of the coup in her statement to this masthead, saying people such as her father died trying to bring democracy back to Chile.
Fernando Ortiz vanished in November 1976.
“We don’t want any wife, child, grandchild, or great-grandchild to carry this wound in their lives,” Berrios said.
Rojas said Rivas must “face justice in Chile for her [alleged] responsibility in these crimes”.
“There will be no full justice until that happens,” she said. “I demand that the Australian authorities stop delaying the extradition of Adriana Rivas to Chile.”
Rivas moved to Australia in 1979 at the height of Pinochet’s rule and worked as a nanny in Bondi.
She was arrested in 2006 while visiting Chile, but allegedly absconded while on bail in 2010 and returned to Australia.
Two years later, a dusty mine shaft outside Santiago gave up its secrets; bone fragments of 11 males.
Chilean Australians outside a Sydney court following Rivas’ arrest in 2019.Credit: Dean Lewins/AAP
Fragments from Berrios’ and Letelier’s fathers were found in the mass grave.
“I still cannot bear to know the details of his death. The pain is too great,” Berrios said.
“It takes an unimaginable and painful exercise to come to terms with the fact that those small fragments are my father,” Letelier’s daughter added.
Rivas remained off the radar until 2014, when in an interview with multicultural broadcaster SBS she appeared to justify the use of torture to “break people” – particularly “communists”.
“It was necessary, just as the Nazis used it, and as in the United States, everyone does,” SBS quoted Rivas as saying. “It’s the only way to break people because psychologically there is no method.”
Dreyfus, in a statement, said the extradition was a matter between the Australian and Chilean governments.
Rivas, through her lawyer Dennis Miralis, denied all wrongdoing.
“Ms Rivas denies any criminal wrongdoing and has consistently maintained that she has been falsely accused of crimes she did not commit,” Miralis said in a statement.
“Under Australian, Chilean and international law, Ms Rivas is presumed innocent of these offences and is exercising her right to appeal the Australian government’s decision for her surrender to Chile under Australian law.”
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.