Rivas was the secretary of Manuel Contreras, the head of the now-defunct National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), the secret police of Augusto Pinochet’s regime, but she also participated in operations of that repressive body.

In Chile, she is accused as a co-perpetrator of the aggravated kidnappings of Víctor Díaz, deputy secretary of the Communist Party, and the leaders and activists Fernando Navarro, Lincoyan Berrios, Horacio Cepeda, Juan Fernando Ortiz, Hector Veliz, and Reinalda Pereira.

Pereira, 29, was five months pregnant at the time of her capture and, despite this, was tortured, executed, and her body disappeared.

Adriana Rivas traveled to Australia in 1978 and during a visit to Chile in 2007 was arrested by authorities, but she violated her parole and returned to the island continent.

In a 2013 interview with SBS, she denied the charges against her but defended the torture. “They had to break people; it’s happened all over the world, not just in Chile,” she stated at the time.

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