A 72-year-old Chilean woman, Adriana Rivas, suspected of kidnapping and torturing dissidents during the military rule of Gen Augusto Pinochet, has lost her lengthy legal battle against being extradited from Australia, according to the BBC.

Historical Context of the Pinochet Regime

More than 40. 000 people were politically persecuted and some 3,000 were killed during the Pinochet era, which lasted from 1973 to 1990, the BBC reported. Rivas, who moved to Australia in 1978, worked as a nanny and a cleaner in Sydney’s Bondi suburb before the Chilean government requested her extradition 12 years ago.

Chile alleges that Rivas was involved in the disappearance of seven people before she emigrated to Australia, which she denies; she was first arrested during a visit to her home country in 2006 but returned to Australia while on bail.

Legal Proceedings and Extradition Request

Chile filed an extradition request in 2014, and on Monday, a federal judge dismissed her lawyers’ arguments that the request was legally flawed, the BBC reported. Rivas could try to appeal against the decision at the full federal court, but it is unclear whether the grounds for such an appeal would be met.

A lawyer representing the relatives of the victims of the Pinochet regime said the families were ‘truly, truly delighted’ by Monday’s ruling — Barring another appeal, Rivas will be sent back to her home country to stand trial on charges of aggravated kidnapping.

Role in the Dina Secret Police

Rivas was the personal secretary for Chile’s infamous secret police chief Manuel Contreras from 1973 to 1976; Rights activists have long alleged that she was personally involved in the kidnapping and torture of dissidents, the BBC reported.

They say that she became an active agent for the National Intelligence Directorate (Dina), the secret police force founded by Pinochet to hunt down his political opponents after he seized power in a military coup in September 1973. Dina agents abducted. Tortured, killed and forcibly disappeared thousands of people before the agency was replaced by the equally brutal CNI, an army intelligence battalion.

Rivas described her years at the Dina as ‘the best of my life’ in a 2013 interview with Australian broadcaster SBS, but denied any wrongdoing. Asked about the torture carried out by Dina agents, she said that ‘they had to break the people – it has happened all over the world, not only in Chile.’

Chilean prosecutors accuse Rivas of having participated in the 1976 forced disappearance of the secretary-general of Chile’s Communist Party, Víctor Díaz, and six other Communist Party members. The youngest of the seven was 29-year-old Reinalda del Carmen Pereira Plaza, who was pregnant at the time, as all seven Communist Party members are assumed to have been killed in detention.

Rivas ‘took part in the detention… of the victims while she served as guard and in other operative roles,’ according to documents supplied by Chile to request her extradition. Witnesses alleged in interviews given to documentary filmmaker Lissette Orozco that she was one of Dina’s ‘most brutal torturers’ who played a key role in the elite Lautaro Brigade, which was tasked with killing the leadership of Chile’s underground Communist Party. Rivas has denied taking part in any torture sessions.

Orozco, who is Rivas’ niece, spent five years making a documentary about her aunt, which was screened at the 2017 Berlin Film Festival; the film highlights the allegations against Rivas and her alleged role in the Pinochet-era atrocities.