The Supreme Court of Chile has validated a judicial decision ordering the army to remove from its premises a series of plaques paying homage to General Manuel Contreras, a former right-hand man of Pinochet, convicted of numerous crimes during the dictatorship. The country's highest court rejected in its decision, made public Friday, an appeal by the army against a judgment at first instance dating from December.
The latter had ordered the institution to "remove the commemorative plaques and portraits present at the War Academy and the School of Engineers of Tejas Verde" , located in the center of the country. It followed a complaint by several victims who believed that the continuation of these tributes violated the principle of "guarantee of non-repetition" , enshrined in international law in the context of reparation measures for victims of human rights violations. 'man. "The portraits of Manuel Contreras do not contribute to the reparation that the victims deserve , " said Sergio Micco, director of the National Institute for Human Rights (INDH), an independent public body.
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Manuel Contreras Sepulveda, who died in 2015 at the age of 86, had been sentenced to 529 years in prison in organized trials for 40 cases of torture, disappearances and kidnappings of opponents. He had notably been condemned for the assassination of Orlando Letelier, ex-minister of the government of the socialist Salvador Allende, victim of a car bomb attack in Washington in 1976. He had been the creator and only director of the National Direction Intelligence (DINA), which is responsible for the majority of the victims of the Chilean dictatorship (1973-1989) - more than 3,200 dead or missing and more than 38,000 people tortured.
Considered the right-hand man of ex-President Pinochet, he was one of the greatest tried criminals in the history of Chile, but always denied that the DINA was at the origin of tortures or disappearances. Manuel Contreras also participated in the creation and implementation of "Operation Condor", an extermination plan for opponents coordinated by dictatorships prevailing in several Latin American countries in the 1970s (Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil , Paraguay, Uruguay).