Chile: Facing the Past

In Chile the brutal, murderous past under dictator general Augusto Pinochet is never far away. Families of those who perished or simply disappeared under his rule are looking for clues to what happened to their loved ones and they’re yearning for justice. During the Pinochet years more than 3,000 Chileans were politically targeted and killed. Fernando Ortiz was one of them - a university professor and senior member of the Communist Party, snatched from a Santiago street in 1976. His family never saw him again. We now know that Ortiz ended up at a super-secret extermination centre called Simon Bolivar where he was beaten to a pulp, injected with a lethal poison and died. We also now have a clearer picture of the scale of suffering and death inside Simon Bolivar because a witness to much of it has been compelled to go public by Chilean authorities examining myriad cases of murder and disappearance. The testimony of a man known as The Little Waiter, and other supporting accounts have generated a national and global hunt for culprits and their associates. It’s a quest for justice that leads all the way to suburban Sydney. In this special investigation, Foreign Correspondent’s Sally Sara travels to Chile to talk to the families of victims and the investigators and lawyers who are very keen to see a woman named Adriana Rivas returned to Chile to face trial. And, back in Australia, we go in search of Adriana Rivas. The Chilean Government is submitting extradition papers to Australian authorities based on 7 counts of aggravated kidnapping during Rivas’ time at Simon Bolivar. Will she face the courts in Chile or will she stay out of reach in Australia?