Four years outside of Chile do not seem to bother Albert Schreiber. The tough temperament he forged as an accountant for Colonia Dignidad has not disappeared, and even his physical appearance, always neat, has relaxed to the point that he now dares to wear a beard.

The presiding judge in the trials against the Colony, Jorge Zepeda, requested his extradition twice from Germany, where Schreiber has been for six years, because he considers him the final link missing to unravel the mysteries surrounding the German enclave: the purchase of weaponry abroad—especially the destination of the money—and the disappearance of opponents of the military dictatorship.

Regarding this last topic, Schreiber possesses relevant information about the fate of dozens of the forcibly disappeared who were not among those who, in 1978, were exhumed and burned with chemical phosphorus.

Despite the insistence of the Chilean justice system, which has sent two extradition requests, the German government has remained faithful to its policy of not handing over German citizens to foreign courts, and Schreiber has not even been detained.

The last available image of the fugitive, dating from the beginning of July, belongs to a video of the sermons of preacher Edward Frank, who presides over the Misión de Personas Libres movement, a Protestant sect that periodically sends religious messages to its followers in Chile.

A few months ago, the program Monitor, from the WDR television network, showed Schreiber’s house in the town of Krefeld, northwest of Düsseldorf. Shortly after, however, “The Spy”—a nickname the former accountant for Schäfer received in the Colony—left there without leaving a trace.

The constant movements of the former Dignidad leader, however, are not just his own merit. Judicial sources indicated to LND that Schreiber is now established in Burgau, a town in Bavaria, where he has the help of what was once the circle of the late Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, “the angel of death,” and of those close to the former Nazi officer Walter Rauff, who resided in Chile from 1958 until his death in 1984.

Mengele’s connection to Dignidad and its former accountant allegedly arose in the 50s, when the SS doctor took refuge in Argentina, escaping a death sentence for the murder of thousands of Jews in Auschwitz.

At that time, the father of the sinister doctor, Karl Mengele, owned an arms company in Bavaria, and Schreiber, as Schäfer’s emissary, traveled frequently to Germany to buy weaponry and ammunition, which he stored in a house in the vicinity of Bonn.

According to the book El último secreto de Colonia Dignidad (The Last Secret of Colonia Dignidad), by journalist Carlos Basso, a secret witness named “Daniel” who testified in the trial for the death of the Jewish-born mathematician Boris Weisfeiler, indicated that at the beginning of 1980 there was an operation in the colony to receive a certain “Mr.

Schmidt,” whose true identity was Mengele. “He said that Mengele had been in Chile, in Osorno or Puerto Montt. Daniel mentioned that Mengele’s contact was Walter Rauff, and pointed out that Weisfeiler was in the area looking for his trail, associated with someone in Israel,” the book notes.

When the witness provided the information, the “angel of death” was dead, but the world did not yet know it. Only in 1985 was it revealed that Mengele had died in 1979, having drowned—under strange circumstances—on a beach in Brazil.

Rauff’s weapons The ties between the Dignidad accountant and Rauff, meanwhile, were born in the mid-60s, after the latter arrived in Chile fleeing the trials against SS soldiers. In April 1963, the Supreme Court rejected the extradition requested by Germany, and later the governments of Frei Montalva, Allende, and Pinochet refused to expel him.

Police sources assert that Schreiber’s friendship with the Rauff family allegedly arose from the arms purchases that the former made as Paul Schäfer’s emissary abroad, since the former Nazi agent’s family owned a company in that sector.

Another of the links arises from an Amnesty International report in 1977, which denounces that the former Nazi officer, like Schreiber, had been an advisor to the DINA on matters of weaponry. Furthermore, Rauff’s name and address in Punta Arenas appeared in the phone book of another former Nazi, Fredik Schwend, captured in Peru for arms trafficking.

The Maino case Despite the protection he receives and the inflexibility of the Berlin government, Schreiber is not completely safe. Two months ago, Judge Zepeda received a request from a Bonn court, which is investigating the participation of Schäfer’s right-hand man in the disappearance of the former Mapu leader, Juan Maino Canales.

Schreiber’s link to the case emerged when, during the raids on the enclave, a citroneta (Citroën 2CV) was found that had been used in the detention of Maino, carried out by the DINA on May 26, 1976, along with another car of the same model that had been owned by the kidnapped leader.

For a decade, the case has also been investigated in Italy, due to the fact that Maino held dual citizenship. This opens the door for the Italian justice system to request the capture of Schreiber, relying on a legal figure called a European Arrest Warrant, which has a higher rank than an extradition treaty and allows the suspect to be interrogated in other European Union countries.

During the visit to Chile of Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi last March, the Maino Canales family met with the Italian diplomatic advisor for Latin America to study a judicial strategy to catch Schreiber.

In the meeting, they delivered a letter asking Prodi that the prosecutor investigating the aggravated kidnapping of Maino, Giancarlo Capaldo, issue a European arrest warrant to catch the former accountant, which was favorably received by the Italian authorities.

Source: La Nación, August 5, 2007

Hopp’s flight to Germany ignites alert over the millions hidden by Schäfer

Unease hovered last week among the settlers of Villa Baviera. Suspicions that Dr. Harmutt Hopp would flee the country grew stronger when they learned that the former right-hand man of Paul Schäfer—the man who for more than four decades commanded with an iron fist a sect where minors were abused, weapons were trafficked, and opponents of Pinochet were subjected to political imprisonment and torture—had been absent from his medical practice in Parral under the excuse that he was ill.

And on Friday, May 20, when they believed they had certainty, they notified Judge Jorge Zepeda: Hopp had vanished. That same day, the judge issued an international arrest warrant. But it was already too late.

Harmutt Hopp was no longer in Chile but in Germany, where his wife, the nurse Dorothea Esther Witthahn Kruger, was waiting for him. “She told us that he was going to follow her and she didn’t know if he would make it or not, but he effectively made it.

I haven’t seen him, but I know he has been in Germany for about a week,” says Bärbel Schreiber by phone from the German city of Krefeld. Bärbel is married to Hopp’s adopted son (Michael) and wants to stay on the sidelines of her father-in-law’s problems.

Bärbel is the daughter of Albert Schreiber, another of the key men in Schäfer’s iron circle who died in Germany in 2008 after having escaped justice in Chile. She left for Krefeld, northwest of Düsseldorf, to lead “a quieter and better life for her children.” Now, her father-in-law has arrived there as well, whom she said she does not intend to see.

Hopp’s departure from Chile represents a problem for the Investigative Police (PDI) and also for the Ministry of the Interior. This is because the doctor who served as Schäfer’s spokesperson during the time he was trying to demonstrate that the colony was a model of work and morality was under a travel ban by virtue of the trials that still remain open of the four in which he was accused: illicit association, arms trafficking, tax crimes, and child abuse.

Both the PDI and Minister Hinzpeter will have to explain how Hopp bypassed border controls.

THE TRAIL OF BLACK MONEY

Within Colonia Dignidad, concern is spreading not only because he is one of the old leaders, a protagonist of the most sinister era of Villa Baviera. For many settlers, Hopp’s flight puts at risk the possibility of recovering part of the millionaire assets that Paul Schäfer is supposed to have hidden abroad and which the new administration of the Villa Baviera settlers claims as its own.

Of the people known with certainty to have managed the millionaire black money accounts of Colonia Dignidad, three are dead: Paul Schäfer, who died in 2010; Albert Schreiber, in 2008; and Hans Jurgen Blanck, in 2004.

The fourth is Harmutt Hopp. And now that he has fled to Germany, the possibilities of the Chilean justice system finding the whereabouts of that money are fading. In the judicial proceedings linked to Colonia Dignidad, it has been established that Hopp had access to the money that Schäfer hid.

He himself acknowledged to Judge Zepeda in the arms trafficking trial that he traveled to the Saint Kitts Islands to buy a $250,000 apartment, after which he obtained a passport from that country for Paul Schäfer.

The first warning sign was given by the departure of Hopp’s wife, who traveled to Germany together with Erika Amanda Heimann Bahnk, the historic accountant for the Villa Baviera holding company created by Schäfer.

She is the only person close to the former leader who maintained an active role in Colonia Dignidad until recently, in the accounting of its companies. She is now retired. She is also the widow of Hans Jurgen Blanck, the man who made deposits abroad on Schäfer’s behalf.

Many of the settlers who still remain in Villa Baviera and whose goal is to recover that money suspect that she knows more than she has declared before the justice system regarding the destination of the money abroad.

Until now, it is known that a part of those resources was used for the maintenance of Schäfer and his bodyguards during the years he was a fugitive in both Chile and Argentina. For others, the key question is how Heimann continued working in the financial administration of Villa Baviera after the “cleansing” that the younger generations who now hold the helm of the holding company claim to have done.

Sources from the colony informed CIPER that Heimann gave notice that she would return from Germany on June 8. Her children and grandchildren are waiting for her here. However, it was precisely the information that Erika Heimann was in Germany together with Hopp’s wife that alerted the settlers to the possibility that both would begin to execute movements with the secret accounts that Schäfer hid abroad.

The alert multiplied when they confirmed that Hopp had disappeared from Parral after having signed in for the last time on May 3 at the Patronato de Reos (Parole Office). After leaving Colonia Dignidad in 2008, when the new administrators asked him to leave, the doctor had returned to visit the premises assiduously.

A week ago, when asking at his medical practice, the answer was that he would be absent for a good while because he was ill. But the settlers knew that was not true. They had seen him healthy in recent days.

At the end of last week, the rumor circulated among the settlers that Hopp had rented a helicopter to flee to Argentina. Although the thesis seems adventurous, the history of Colonia Dignidad shows that it has counted on a cloak of protection that has facilitated things that seem implausible.

When it was already a fact that the place served as a center for torture and concealment during the dictatorship, in addition to being a sect where minors were systematically abused, already in democracy its leader Paul Schäfer managed to hide for years inside the premises, only to later flee toward Argentina.

It was not the justice system or the police who found him, but an investigation by the television program Contacto on Canal 13. Hopp’s flight leaves his participation in another important trial in suspense.

Judge Alejandro Madrid, who is investigating the assassination of former President Eduardo Frei, determined that Dr. Hopp was the liaison in Colonia Dignidad for the chemist who developed lethal gases and toxins for the DINA, Eugenio Berríos.

This occurred at the time when Schäfer and the head of the DINA, Manuel Contreras, developed a broad collaboration, which included the manufacture of lethal substances and arms trafficking. In fact, Hopp, like Berríos, illicitly obtained fungi and toxins from the Bacteriological Institute.

The trail of those toxins led Madrid to establish Hopp’s close and weekly relationship with the two doctors who performed the secret autopsy on Frei: Helmar Rosenberg and Sergio González. The meetings took place at the headquarters of the Department of Pathological Anatomy of the UC (Catholic University), of which Rosenberg was a high-ranking executive.

THE GERMAN REFUGE

Lawyer Hernán Fernández, a plaintiff in the cases regarding Colonia Dignidad, believes that the prior trip of the former head of finances of Colonia Dignidad “reveals that these are planned and coordinated operations of resources, with an advance party of people who establish themselves in the places where the fugitives subsequently arrive.” Fernández says that the same model was used for the flight of Paul Schäfer and other leaders like Albert Schreiber Rauschenberger and Alfred Matthussen.

In his opinion, the fact that Hopp has managed to reach Germany is particularly serious, since until now the justice system of that country has refused to extradite the fugitives from Colonia Dignidad.

This happened with Schreiber, who died in Germany without having been detained to face justice. The lawyer has already requested that the courts ask for Hopp’s extradition. He will also ask that the way in which he left Chile be investigated to determine possible complicity in his flight.

Judge Zepeda issued an international arrest warrant on Friday. In a statement released this Monday, the judge said he made the decision because there was “a certain possibility” that he had left Chile.

He also maintained that the Investigative Police had alerted him to the concealment plans and possible flight, which is why he revoked the bail that favored other members of Colonia Dignidad. These are the settlers prosecuted for illicit association, among whom are the main leaders who commanded the colony alongside Schäfer and who formed his protection network to ensure his impunity: Gerhard Mucke, Gerd Seewald, Peter Schmidt, Friedhelm Zeitner Bohnau, Matthias Gerlach Maschke, and Renate Freitag Hartmann.

The bail enjoyed by Rebeca Schäfer, his adopted daughter, was also revoked; she is suspected of also having been instructed in the secret of the money that Schäfer hid outside of Chile. So much so that in the investigation of those accounts carried out by Judge Zepeda, it was established that on the trip Hopp made to the Saint Kitts Islands to buy real estate and a fake passport for Schäfer, she was his companion.

Source: ciper.cl, May 23, 2011