A former Sydney nanny will be extradited to Chile to face court over kidnapping allegations after losing her seven-year battle to remain in Australia.<\/p>\n
Adriana Elcira Rivas emigrated to Australia in the late 1970s and worked as a nanny in the eastern suburb of Bondi before she was arrested by the NSW Police in 2019 at the request of the Chilean government. <\/p>\n
She has been in custody for seven years as she resisted attempts to extradite her to the South American nation to face trial for seven counts of aggravated kidnapping.<\/p>\n
Rivas, now in her 70s, is accused of participating in the disappearances of seven people – including a woman who was five months’ pregnant – while working for Augusto Pinochet’s secret police force.<\/p>\n
She denies the allegations and has argued her extradition to Chile should be blocked because it would result in her being tried for crimes against humanity. <\/p>\n
But the argument that the offences had been mischaracterised was “misconceived”, Justice Michael Lee told the Federal Court in Sydney on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
“The materials do not suggest the offence for which extradition is sought is anything other than the offences identified throughout the request \u2026 namely aggravated kidnapping,” he said.<\/p>\n
Rivas’ contention that the government failed to consider the time limit for prosecuting the kidnapping offences had expired was similarly flawed, the judge determined.<\/p>\n
“The applicant has failed to demonstrate that the minister’s decision was affected by jurisdictional error,” Justice Lee said.<\/p>\n
The ambassador and consul-general of Chile sat in the public gallery as the decision was handed down.<\/p>\n
Families of Chileans who vanished or were killed during Pinochet’s rule had packed the courtroom during the two-day hearing, but were not able to be in the court for the decision. <\/p>\n
Tens of thousands of Chileans came to Australia after the dictator violently overthrew the nation’s elected socialist government with a coup in 1973. <\/p>\n
About 40,000 people were killed, tortured or imprisoned for political reasons before the end of his ruthless reign in 1990.<\/p>\n
Rivas is accused of playing a role in a Direccion de Inteligencia Nacional brigade that physically and psychologically tortured members of the communist party who opposed Pinochet’s regime.<\/p>\n
Adriana Navarro, who represents the families, previously said more than 1100 Chileans have still not been found.<\/p>\n
“We have a very good idea of what happened to them and we think Ms Rivas may do too,” Navarro told AAP outside court during the hearing. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former Sydney nanny will be extradited to Chile to face court over kidnapping allegations after losing her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[85,28708,67,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-367657","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-central-south-america","10":"tag-crime-and-justice","11":"tag-headlines","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-top-news","14":"tag-top-stories","15":"tag-topnews","16":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}