Feared ex-spy chief dies, had killed scores
SANTIAGO, Chile — Gen. Manuel Contreras, who headed the feared spy agency that kidnapped, tortured and killed thousands during Chile’s military dictatorship, died late Friday at a military hospital while serving a combined sentence of more than 500 years for crimes against humanity. He was 86.
Contreras had been hospitalized since September because of kidney problems and was later moved to the intensive care unit when his condition degenerated.
Soon after the death was confirmed by the national prison service, a crowd gathered outside the Santiago hospital waving Chilean flags. They broke into changes of “Murderer!” and toasted with Champagne in paper cups to celebrate his death.
After the 1973 military coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet that ousted the socialist government of President Salvador Allende, Contreras formed and commanded the DINA spy agency and went on to become the second most powerful figure of the regime after Pinochet himself.
Born on May 4, 1929, in Santiago, Contreras was a career military man who also helped organize Operation Condor, a coordinated effort formed in the mid-1970s by South America’s dictatorships to eliminate dissidents who sought refuge in neighboring countries.
Contreras was among Pinochet’s closest confidants early on, but the pair exchanged accusations in their final years. While Contreras alleged his former boss amassed a fortune trafficking drugs to Europe, Pinochet accused the spy chief of acting without his consent and committing the era’s worst abuses.
According to an official report, 40,018 people were imprisoned, tortured or slain during the 1973-90 dictatorship. Chile’s government estimates that of those, 3,095 were killed, including about 1,200 who were forcibly “disappeared.”
Contreras supervised the apprehension of thousands of suspected leftists after the coup as Santiago’s national soccer stadium was transformed into a detention center where hundreds were held and tortured. About 150 bodies, many of them weighed down by sections of railroad track, were thrown from helicopters into the ocean and lakes, the military has acknowledged.
Most of the disappearances occurred during the dictatorship’s early years, when Contreras was head of intelligence. His prominence in Pinochet’s government waned after the U.S. sought to extradite him for involvement in the 1976 bomb assassination in Washington of Orlando Letelier, who had been defense and foreign relations minister under Allende.
Chile’s Supreme Court blocked the extradition, but Pinochet removed Contreras from his post under U.S. pressure and dismantled and replaced DINA. After Chile returned to democracy in 1990, Contreras was indicted in the Letelier case and eventually served seven years for the assassination. He always denied responsibility and blamed the CIA for the bombing.
Because of his poor health and mild dementia, Pinochet avoided trial for dictatorship era abuses by being declared unfit. He died in 2006.