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From: marcelo_hoffmann%QM.SRI.COM@uchcecvm.cec.uchile.cl (        Marcelo Hoffmann)
Subject: Chilean Judge Gloria Olivar
Original-To: Multiple recipients of list CHILE-L <CHILE-L@PURCCVM.BITNET>
Newsgroups: chile.chile-l
Distribution: chile
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 09:53:09 CST

Mail*Link(r) SMTP               Chilean Judge Gloria Olivares...Krasnoff
SANTIAGO, (OCT. 7) IPS - Undaunted by the presence of known agents of
repression, Chilean Judge Gloria Olivares has taken it upon herself to bring
to justice the people who committed human rights abuses during the country's
previous dictatorship.  Fiercely loyal to the call of duty, the gentle Olivares
has been investigating claims of human rights violations during the military
regime of Chilean Gen. Augusto Pinochet from 1973-88, often bringing victims
face to face with their aggressors.

"It's just that I am a woman of courage," Olivares told the Chilean daily "La
Nacion" in an interview in August. Not many people would believe that this
woman, who has dedicated her life to the pursuit of Pinochet's henchmen, was
once married to a military man and has been described by friends as
"conservative." Perhaps no other judge has managed to collect massive evidence
on the human rights abuses by Chile's National Intelligence Office (DINA),
Pinochet's secret police.

Since 1990, she has been meticulously leading the investigation on the
disappearance in 1974 of Alfonso Chanfreau, a professor and leader of Chile's
Leftist Revolutionary Movement (MIR) whose arrest was never admitted by the
Pinochet regime.

While working on the case, and with the help of the country's civilian police
force, Olivares managed to trace the whereabouts of one of Pinochet's special
agents, Osvaldo Romo, who had been hiding in Brazil under a false name since
1975.

Romo was arrested in Sao Paulo on July 29 and his extradition to Chile is
imminent. Even more important than Romo's arrest is the bringing to trial of
Col. Miguel Krassnoff and his henchman Basclay Zapata. Krassnoff is one of the
past regime's most elusive men who enjoys the protection of the present Chilean
army headed by Gen. Pinochet.

"The lady will have to keep on hoping," the former dictator remarked with
irony on Sept. 15, when the Chilean Supreme Court was preparing to hear the
arguments of Krassnoff's defense lawyers for the Chanfreau case.

Despite efforts by Krassnoff's lawyers to justify his refusal to answer six
subpoenas, Olivares managed to get him to court on the seventh try. Olivares
and Krassnoff then began exhausting 15-hour interrogation sessions and endless
meetings with victims and families of those who had "disappeared" during the
Pinochet regime.

On March 28, a tall and arrogant Col. Krassnoff had no other choice but to
face Erika Hennings, Chanfreau's widow, in the Chilean courts.  Krassnoff was
born on Feb. 15, 1946 in the Lager Peggetz Camp where Soviet leader Joseph
Stalin had placed some 50,000 White Russians repatriated by the Allies after
the defeat of Adolf Hitler in the second World War.

His father, a Cossack landowner who had left the Soviet Union for France after
the Bolshevik revolution and fought in the Nazi army, had disappeared after the
Allies won the war.

Chilean journalist Monica Gonzalez, who had done some research on Krassnoff,
said the young Miguel and his mother managed to survive in the camps with the
other White Russians while awaiting emigration to Chile.

In 1973, 27-year-old Krassnoff participated in the bloody military coup led by
Pinochet to overthrow then Chilean President Salvador Allende.

Soon after the coup d'etat, Krassnoff was assigned to the DINA where he said
he had only served as an "information analyst." But in 1979, Ret. Gen. Manuel
Contreras, who had also served under Pinochet, submitted a sworn statement
admitting that Krassnoff had lead "arrest" operations.

In 1975, while Krassnoff was committing crimes against human rights, Olivares,
who had since separated from her husband and was living with her two children,
was finishing her law studies, which marriage had disrupted for 10 years.

During his frequent visits to the Chilean courts, Krassnoff has firmly
answered journalists, denied the charges against him, and reiterated that back
in 1973 there had been a "war in Chile won by the Chilean Army which has never
lost a battle."

But in contrast to these bold statements, those who have met Krassnoff say
that sometimes he has had to lower his gaze and voice when confronted with his
victims' recollections and the judge's sharp questions.