Infamous Pinochet-era torturer dies in Chile
Wed Jul 4, 2007 3:29PM EDT
SANTIAGO, July 4 (Reuters) - A notorious Chilean agent who confessed to torturing political opponents during the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet died on Wednesday having served five years in prison for human rights abuses.
Osvaldo Romo, known as "El Guaton" (The fat one), died of heart failure in a prison hospital in the Chilean capital Santiago at 4:45 a.m. (0845 GMT), the hospital said in a statement. He was 69.
Romo was an officer in the DINA, the intelligence service set up by Pinochet after he seized power in a military coup in 1973.
The coup ushered in 17 years of dictatorship in Chile during which nearly 3,200 died in political violence, the vast majority killed by Pinochet's men. A further 28,000 were tortured and thousands fled into exile.
Romo worked at Santiago's Villa Grimaldi, the most notorious of the DINA's detention centers.
Michelle Bachelet, Chile's current president and a longtime opponent of the Pinochet regime, was briefly detained at the center in the 1970s.
Survivors of Villa Grimaldi described Romo as a sadistic and psychopathic torturer, and in television interviews conducted from prison in recent years, the rotund former officer openly discussed his torture techniques.
"He felt satisfied with what he'd done because his view was that at that moment in history his country needed his services, and that made him happy," Romo's former defense lawyer, Enrique Ibarra, told reporters on Wednesday.
More:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/07/04/idUSN04371134
[center] 
Osvaldo Romo[/center]
Romo has his own Wikipedia:
~snip~
Osvaldo Romo made himself known in working classes' neighborhoods before Pinochet's coup in 1973 as a leftist activist, member of the Partido Socialista Popular and sympathizant of the MIR <1>. Following the coup, he reappeared in these neighborhoods with a military uniform, arresting his friends and contacts. Left-wing circles still debate to know if he suddenly changed political orientation or if he always was a mole for the security services <1>.
. . .
Excerpt from a Univision interview:
—Would you do it again? Would you do it the same way?
—Sure, I'd do the same and more. I wouldn't leave anybody alive (...) That was one of DINA's mistakes. I was always arguing with my general: don't leave that person alive, don't let that person go free. There are consequences.
—As for throwing the corpses of the prisoners into the sea...
—I think it could have happened. (...) Throwing them into the crater of a volcano would be better... (...) Who'd go looking for them in a volcano? Nobody.
—On the day you die... what would your epitaph say? "Here lies the hangman, the torturer, the murderer..."
—Logical, logical. I accept that. But for me it was a positive thing. (...) I am at peace with my conscience and my beliefs.
– Extract from the interview, Wikipedia
More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osvaldo_Romo
[center] 
Villa Grimaldi
President Michelle Bachelet & her mother were both imprisoned and tortured here.
Her father, General Alberto Bachelet, died in prison after relentless torture, died for
his allegiance to the elected President of Chile, Salvador Allende, his commander in chief.
Tower (torture)[/center]
Villa Grimaldo, Wikipedia
~snip~
For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, the three-acre estate was a gathering place for many of Chile’s artists and intellectuals. Over the years Villa Grimaldi’s various owners hosted parties and cultural events. The structures included meeting rooms, entertainment halls, and a theater, as well as a school that was open to the entire community. It was a gathering place for many left wing and progressive cultural and political figures during the Popular Unity years, the period associated with the election of Salvador Allende, a Socialist, to Chile’s presidency in 1970.[1]
This liberal atmosphere changed suddenly when General Augusto Pinochet seized power in a military coup d’etat on September 11, 1973. Chile’s wealthy oligarchy, the Nixon administration, and the Central Intelligence Agency were among the supporters of Allende’s overthrow. The owner of Villa Grimaldi at the time of the coup, Emile Vassallo, was pressured to sell the estate to the new government in order to protect his family.[2] This is one of the first examples of the state of siege that was enforced under Pinochet for the next 17 years. His regime began to detain thousands of political activists, students, workers, trade unionists, and any other subversive individuals who spoke out against his fascist military government.[3]
Villa Grimaldi was taken over by the DINA, Pinochet’s secret police, under Colonel Manuel Contreras and became an interrogation center under the cover of an electrical utility company. It was referred to by the government as Cuartel Terranova, but continued to be referred to as Villa Grimaldi by the greater population.
An estimated 4,500 people were detained at Villa Grimaldi, and of those at least 226 were “disappeared” forever.[4] Victims included Carlos Lorca, the British physician Sheila Cassidy, the MAPU leader Juan Maino, the CEPAL diplomat Carmelo Soria, and the President of Chile, Michelle Bachelet, who was tortured with her mother.[5] Prisoners were supposedly detained for interrogation but their detention usually lasted for long periods of time without explanation and many prisoners were subject to torture. According to the Rettig Report, they were kept in several different living situations: The Tower, a tall structure containing ten narrow spaces measuring 70 x 70 centimetres and two metres high in which multiple prisoners were held. The tower also contained a torture chamber. Apparently, people brought to the tower were detainees considered to be of some importance and whose stage of intense interrogation had finished. Many prisoners who went to the tower were never seen again. Chile Houses were wooden structures designed for solitary confinement. They consisted of vertical sections similar to closets in which the person had to remain standing in darkness for several days. Corvi Houses were small wooden rooms built inside a larger room, each containing a bunkbed. This was supposedly where prisoners stayed while they were undergoing intense interrogation and torture.[6]
The forced voyeurism exercised at Villa Grimaldi has been likened to places like Abu Ghraib.[3] Electric shock was the most common form of torture used by agents at Villa Grimaldi. Agents tied naked prisoners to a bare metal bed known as la parilla, or the grill, and shock devices were attached to sensitive parts of the body such as the lips or genitals.[7] Other torture methods included hanging, underwater asphyxiation, beatings, burning, verbal abuse and general degradation. Detainees were sometimes drugged and hypnotized during interrogations.[6]
More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_Grimaldi
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