Hated Symbol of Chilean Repression Prospers : South America: Interest in Manuel Contreras is revived. But the former head of feared secret police is not likely to be brought to justice.

SANTIAGO, Chile —  Manuel Contreras. The name brings back cruel memories in Chile, nightmare scenes of persecution, torture and murder.

For many Chileans, Contreras was to dictator Augusto Pinochet what Heinrich Himmler was to Adolf Hitler. Unlike Himmler, however, the once-feared chief of Pinochet’s secret police is alive, well, free and reportedly prosperous.

A retired army general in good standing, Contreras lives these days on a secluded ranch in southern Chile. He exports timber produced on his land and is said to gamble occasionally at the casino of a nearby lake resort.

“He has a good life,” observed a government adviser.

That disgusts Contreras’ enemies, who hold him responsible in hundreds of well-documented cases of torture, disappearance and death between 1973 and 1977. Contreras is formally charged in the United States with ordering the 1976 car-bomb killing of Chilean exile Orlando Letelier on Washington’s Embassy Row.

American interest in the Letelier case has revived since April 23, when the FBI captured Virgilio Paz, a Cuban-American long sought on charges of participating in the assassination. Four others, including a former officer in the Chilean secret police, have been convicted in the United States. But no one has been charged with the murder in Chile.

Chile’s elected civilian government, which took power in March, 1990, is trying to revive legal proceedings against Contreras in the Letelier case. The Chilean Supreme Court is expected to issue crucial rulings soon.

But some human rights activists say chances are slim that the hated symbol of police-state repression will be pulled in from his rural hideaway and brought to trial.

“In Chile, there is no justice,” said Sola Sierra, 53, president of the Grouping of Relatives of Detained and Disappeared Persons.

For Sierra, Contreras symbolizes the impunity that continues to shield those who tortured and killed in the shadows of military power.

“That is what is terrible,” she said in an interview. “We see that we are in a democracy, a transition to democracy--but with the permanent presence of men like Manuel Contreras, who continue to threaten with the kinds of crimes they have committed.”

Sierra, a gray-haired widow wearing a shawl, spoke in her group’s offices on the second-floor of an old building next to the Roman Catholic cathedral of Santiago. The group shares the floor with the Vicariate of Solidarity, a church human rights agency.

Sierra’s husband, a Communist Party official, was among more than 800 people who disappeared after being arrested under the dictatorship. Plainclothes agents armed with submachine guns seized him and a friend on Dec. 15, 1976.

“We never heard again from either one,” Sierra said.

But from evidence gathered by human rights investigators, Sierra said there is no doubt that her husband was arrested “by the DINA.”

The Spanish acronym stands for National Directorate of Intelligence, the secret police force founded by Contreras in late 1973.

It began as a department in an agency created to manage detention centers for former supporters of the Marxist-led government of Salvador Allende that was deposed by a bloody coup in September, 1973. Contreras--DINA’s pudgy and affable leader, known by the nickname “Mamo”--quickly expanded its role, making it one of the most brutally efficient organs of political repression in Latin American history.

Under U.S. pressure after the Letelier assassination, Pinochet changed DINA’s name to the National Information Center in 1977 and removed Contreras from its helm later that year.

In 1978, Contreras was forced into retirement.

A 1978 amnesty law exempts Contreras and others from prosecution for political crimes committed previously. But in a specific exception, the law permits prosecution in the Letelier case.

Contreras spent 14 months confined to a military hospital while the Chilean Supreme Court considered a U.S. request for his extradition. But the court rejected the request in 1979 and transferred the case to the military courts.

U.S. officials have been advised by Chilean lawyers that under current legislation, Chile cannot consider a new request to extradite Contreras, even if new evidence is available.

Lawyers for the Letelier family, including Orlando’s sister Fabiola Letelier, have filed countless petitions, writs and appeals to bring Contreras to justice in Chile. Fabiola Letelier said their efforts have been frustrated at every turn by the military courts.

“During these 12 years, never has the military justice system granted us even one investigative order,” she complained. “What we have been able to do is keep the case open.”

The family’s struggle is approaching a critical juncture as the civilian Supreme Court prepares to issue two rulings.

In March, the civilian administration of President Patricio Aylwin submitted a formal petition asking the Supreme Court to appoint one of its members as ministro instructor , a kind of special prosecuting justice, to review the Letelier murder case. It previously has been under the jurisdiction of military courts because army officers are involved. But a new law permits the Supreme Court to review a case involving military personnel if the case has an impact on Chile’s foreign relations.

The Supreme Court also is considering a petition by military attorneys asking that the Letelier case be closed permanently. A military appeals court had ruled to close the case permanently. But in April, the Court Martial, Chile’s highest military tribunal, modified that decision to close the case only temporarily, making it possible to reopen proceedings if new evidence warrants.

The military attorneys then filed their petition with the civilian Supreme Court. If the Supreme Court rules against closing the case permanently and then appoints a ministro instructor, it will breathe new life into the Letelier family’s persistent fight.

But if the case is closed permanently, it will be almost impossible to get it reopened again, U.S. officials fear.

While the military was in power, the Supreme Court’s decisions consistently favored the regime. “The greater part of the Supreme Court justices were designated by the military regime,” said Hector Contreras, a human rights lawyer and no relation to Manuel Contreras. “They owe their positions to the military regime, and they share the positions of the military regime.”

Hector Contreras said that even if the Supreme Court appoints a ministro instructor, the investigating justice is not likely to have the cooperation of military authorities. Pinochet is still commander of the army, and many high officers are former members of DINA. “The army is not going to permit its ‘war’ against Marxists to become a criminal cause,” Hector Contreras said.

Since 1979, Manuel Contreras has gone about his business untouched by the law. His numerous business enterprises, according to sketchy reports, have included:

* Alfa Omega, a security company that provided private guards and technical services to banks and other businesses, including some government-owned enterprises. This business, founded in 1980, was deactivated before the civilian government took office in 1990.

* Banco Austral, a private bank that went broke along with several others during a recession in the early 1980s. The military government assumed some of the failed banks’ debts, and Contreras reportedly received stock in another bank that took over Banco Austral’s assets.

* Prosegur, an armored-vehicle transport company. “He has an interest in that company,” said a foreign diplomat. “I don’t know if it is many shares or not.”

* Tegualda, an import-export business also known as IMETEG. Established in 1989, this company exports lumber from Contreras’ ranch near Valdivia in southern Chile.

Contreras’ dealings are surrounded by secrecy. He will show up unexpectedly in Santiago, then vanish for months. People at his ranch disavow any knowledge of him, and reported sightings of him at the casino in Puerto Varas, on Lake Llanquihue, are infrequent.

Former classmates recall Contreras, now 62, as a timid, retiring youth. He graduated from the Chilean military academy in 1947 and rose steadily through the officer ranks.

In 1976, according to a U.S. federal indictment against Contreras, he ordered the assassination in Washington of Letelier, a member of Chile’s old Marxist Socialist Party who had been ambassador to the United States and a Cabinet minister in the Allende government. Letelier had been successful in rallying international criticism of the Pinochet regime. The car bomb that ended his antagonistic role also killed his American secretary, Ronni Moffitt.

Outrage over the killings led to the removal of Contreras and added a sinister new dimension to his legend. Another added dimension has come since his retirement.

Many Chileans assume that the former intelligence czar has information in his possession that implicates high military officers in serious abuses of power. “He has information on the acts of each and every general,” asserted Fabiola Letelier. “That is the great power he has.”

She and others said Contreras uses his power mainly to protect himself from prosecution. But most agree that even without blackmail, the army provides him with a protective shield.

Many former DINA officers hold important army positions. President Aylwin vetoed the promotion last year of one former DINA official in the army, but the civilian administration generally refrains from interfering in military matters.

In March, Contreras appeared on national television and told an interviewer that “there are DINA people placed in very high positions in the current government, which means that they were good people.”

One example is Col. Miguel Krasnoff, former head of a DINA unit that hunted down and tortured suspected guerrillas. He now heads the army division in the area where Contreras has his ranch.