MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Chilean sect leader arrested in Argentina

Fugitive religious sect leader and German citizen Paul Schaefer, who has been convicted in absentia of sexually abusing 26 children in Chile, has been arrested 40 kilometres of Buenos Aires City, a Chilean government official said yesterday.

Schaefer, who moved to Chile with a group of German families and established a religious cult and farming commune here in 1961, is also wanted in Germany on an arrest warrant related to accusations dating back to the 1950s.

He was one of the most wanted men in Chile. Schaefer is believed to be about 81 years old.

A Chilean court charged Schaefer in 1996 with the sexual abuse of dozens of Chilean children who went to the free school and clinic at Colonia Dignidad, as the sect used to be called. He disappeared in 1997, and late last year a Chilean judge convicted and sentenced him for sexually abusing 26 children.

Chile's Channel 13 television station said the Interpol arrested Schaefer in Argentina, and that several of his supporters were being held with him. An investigative team from Channel 13's Contacto show said they had been following clues to Schaefer's whereabouts for 18 months and had tracked him down and tipped off police in Argentina, leading to the arrest.

Dozens of German immigrants lived in Colonia Dignidad, the commune and religious community formed by Schaefer, which was later renamed Villa Baviera. Although sect leaders close to Schaefer were allowed to come and go from the hermetic enclave, most members of the community lived in complete isolation from the real world.

Sect members spoke German and worked every day in the cult's agricultural and restaurant businesses, with no pay. Men and women were separated so strictly that some married couples did not even speak to each other for years. Restrictions on intimacy were so tough that for decades no children were born to cult members.

Cult members saw Schaefer, a charismatic World War II German army nurse, as a God-like guru and followed him blindly. He preached an unnamed religion which said harsh discipline would draw them closer to the supreme being.

The cult was the target of dozens of legal battles in Chile for decades, including tax evasion cases and a human rights investigation related to collaboration with Chile's former military government, as well as the sex abuse charges.

Defence attorneys for cult members convicted of covering up Schaefer's crimes said they were innocent and would appeal.

The community had close ties with the 1973-90 military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet and has been accused of providing his secret police with a place to torture political prisoners.

About 280 members of the sect still live at Villa Baviera, a 140 square km farm behind a perimeter fence, a four-hour drive south of Santiago. Many of them are elderly Germans who do not speak Spanish and continue to have minimal contact with the outside.

The sect has only recently begun to open up about its past. Members of the community broke a four-decade silence last year and spoke with Reuters about the widespread physical abuse within the sect under Schaefer.(BAH)