MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Ex-generals acknowledge Pinochet-era exhumation

Retired Chilean army generals, including members of ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet's junta, acknowledged for the first time yesterday that secret graves of people who “disappeared” under the 1973-1990 dictatorship were later dug up in order to hide the bodies again.

In a statement, the eight members of Pinochet's inner circle condemned the mass exhumations believed to have occurred from 1978 onward, saying the crimes should be punished by the courts but they fell short of assuming responsibility for ordering the procedure.

"Whatever the conditions were under which these exhumations took place, they constitute actions that do not fit with the proper conduct of a military officer," they wrote.

Human rights groups believe Pinochet or other high-ranking military commanders ordered the removal of corpses to hide evidence of massive human rights violations. Over 3,500 people were killed or disappeared during Pinochet's brutal crackdown on leftists and hundreds of bodies have never been found, according to official reports. In what is one of the most conciliatory statement yet made by former Pinochet collaborators, the group apologized for the harm caused to Chileans by past human rights abuses.

"We lament the pain these events have produced ... Apart from understanding the origin of the military government and its work, we recognize the existence of problems in the area of human rights, which must never be repeated," they said.

Chilean courts have unveiled evidence recently of the illegal removal of remains from mass grave sites, including on military bases.

A military witness of an exhumation told a newspaper last month how aides to the late President Salvador Allende were executed by the army and their bodies dug up five years later to be whisked away by an army helicopter.

The military said three years ago that many of the remains of the disappeared had been dumped into the Pacific Ocean.

The center-left government that has ruled Chile since 1990 is currently drafting a proposal to resolve the Pinochet-era human rights legacy to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 1973 coup.