Australia risks becoming safe haven for war criminals

By Farid Farid
Updated September 28 2023 - 1:50am, first published 1:44am

Paula Sanchez was jailed and tortured by Augusto Pinochet's notorious secret police in Chile, so when her son told her his friend's father was part of the regime and lived a few suburbs away in Sydney, she shut down.

Detained for two months in 1987 at a jail in La Serena, 500 kilometres north of the capital Santiago, the leftist activist was interrogated, tortured, electrocuted and raped by four men working for the powerful security agency.

She was a virgin at the time of her arrest.

"My son was shocked. He knows my story, he knows about the horrors of Chile but being next to somebody who was saying what he did was distressing," she told AAP.

"He told me, 'Mum, what if that man was one of them (the men who violated her)?'"

Dr Sanchez said the Chilean military official living in western Sydney claimed to have killed people rounded up at the national stadium in Santiago, which functioned as a prison camp for thousands of people following a bloody military coup in September 1973.

"I get stirred up, I get upset but then I don't know what to do," said the nursing academic, who arrived in Australia as a refugee with her family in 1988.

More:
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8367737/australia-risks-becoming-safe-haven-for-war-criminals/