Emilio Sajuria, an officer in Pinochet's political police, is a lawyer for the operator in Chile.

Lieutenant Emilio Patricio Sajuria Alvear, whose name appears among the 74 members of the General Staff of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) compiled by historian León Gómez Araneda in a list of Pinochet's political police officers between 1973 and 1975, currently works as a lawyer at Telefónica de Chile, an operator controlled by Telefónica España, which holds 43.6% of the shares and maintains a majority on the board of directors.

Sajuria, 55, works at Telefónica's headquarters in Santiago, on the seventh floor, in the legal department. He joined the company on November 1, 1986, and, according to his bosses and colleagues, is a lawyer who does his job well.

In charge of criminal matters, he is responsible for taking property crimes such as cable theft, interference, and telephone fraud to court. But alongside the professional efficiency he exhibits when litigating, he carries a past that gives him away.

Just a month ago, about fifty young people from the Comisión Funa gathered in front of the Telefónica building on Avenida Providencia. They dirtied the street with red paint and unfurled several banners: "Telefónica shelters criminals," "Trial and punishment for torturers and murderers." The Comisión Funa is made up of young students, many of them children of victims of the dictatorship.

For months, they have begun to identify and funar (unmask, in Chilean youth slang) collaborators of the Pinochet regime who live protected by impunity. The chairman of the board of directors of the Chilean operator—the country's leading telecommunications company—has been the Spaniard Javier Aguirre for the last nine months, and its general manager is the Chilean Claudio Muñoz.

In addition to Telefónica España, City Bank (25.4%) and various Chilean pension funds participate in its shareholding. Historian Gómez Araneda notes in a presentation note to his long list of the 521 officers serving in the Pinochet political police: "These are the ones who know the fate of those forcibly disappeared and murdered by the Chilean military dictatorship." And he adds: "It must be very clear that the Supreme Court of Chile ruled that the DINA was a criminal organization." The weekly El Siglo, of the Communist Party, published a photo in July 1995 in which about twenty military personnel and former members of the DINA are posing at a wedding. Manuel Contreras, former director of the institution, and Emilio Sajuria appear in it. The Telefónica lawyer is an old acquaintance of the lawyers who work in the field of human rights and who have been consulted by this newspaper. Everyone links him to the DINA, with varying degrees of responsibility. Sajuria receives EL PAÍS in his office. "No recording or taking notes," he warns. "Let me live in peace. I had nothing to do with the DINA," he states. But not everything is denials. He admits that he was a Carabineros officer during the dictatorship and head of security for General César Mendoza, a member of the first coup-plotting Military Junta. Knowing what happens outside is understanding what will happen inside; don't miss anything. -Your name appears on a list of the DINA General Staff. -False! There never existed a DINA General Staff. -But there was a director of the DINA who is in prison. The DINA existed. -Yes, of course. But do not link me to the DINA. Sajuria admits more things. For example, that, while he was a captain, General Mendoza offered him the chance to join the Pedro Diet Lobos company, incorporated in Santiago on December 28, 1977, as a cooperative to buy land and build housing. It did not build a single one. Pedro Diet was one of the few civilian partners and a man of General Contreras's utmost confidence. He held the secretariat of the Corporation for National Studies between 1979 and 1980, which was directed by Lucía Pinochet Hiriart, the dictator's daughter. Sajuria's signature appears on the company's notarial deed along with those of the other 43 partners, whose political-military biography reveals that Pedro Diet Lobos is in reality a front company for the DINA, under which one of the most important economic links of the dictatorship's repressive apparatus is hidden. Augusto Pinochet Hiriart, the dictator's son and an Army officer, signed the deed through a legal representative, as he was on duty in the US. Other names that appear on the incorporation deed are no less revealing: Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, former head of the DINA's foreign department and accused of the assassination of General Carlos Prats in Buenos Aires; Francisco Maximiliano Ferrer Lima, a known torturer at the Villa Grimaldi detention center; Vianel Valdivieso Cervantes, linked to the disappearance of the engineer David Silberman; Rolf Gonzalo Wenderoth, prosecuted for the assassination in Washington of former Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier; Pedro Espinoza Bravo, head of DINA operations, identified as one of those responsible for the Letelier case and currently in prison. All of them appear on the list of the DINA General Staff. Part of the documentation of the ghost company was found by the Chilean journalist Mónica González in Buenos Aires while she was investigating the summary of a trial against nine Chilean far-rightists, who formed the core of the DINA operation in the Argentine capital. Companies like Pedro Diet Lobos, incorporated with a negligible share capital, served to finance terrorist activities abroad coordinated in the so-called Operation Condor, in which the dictatorships of Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia worked together to eliminate political opponents. What role did Sajuria play in the financial framework of the sinister organization? Human rights lawyers point to him as a member of the DINA's legal service. The amnesty decree-law approved to Pinochet's liking and measure protects the silence of all those activities of the military regime that remain under suspicion.

Source: elpais.es, March 11, 2000