Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (Spanish: National Intelligence Directorate) or DINA was the Chilean secret police during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

DINA was established in November, 1973, as an Army Intelligence unit headed by General Manuel Contreras. It was separated from the Army and made an independent administrative unit in June 1974, under the aegis of decree #521.

DINA existed until 1977, after which it was renamed the Central Nacional de Información (CNI) (Spanish for National Information Center). During its history as both DINA and CNI, its members were trained in the U.S.'s School of the Americas, known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation since January 2001.

DINA Internal Suppression and Human Rights Violations

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Under decree #521, the DINA had the power to detain any individual only so long as there was a declared state of emergency. Such an administrative state wound up lasting almost the entire length of the Pinochet dictatorship.

DINA Foreign Assassinations and Operations

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The DINA hired the American expatriate Michael Townley, ordering and assisting him in carrying out both the 1974 assassination of General Carlos Prats, and the 1976 assassination of former Allende cabinet member Orlando Letelier.

According to a CIA document released in 2000, French OAS member Albert Spaggiari also acted as intermediary for the DINA in Europe.

DINA was involved in Operation Condor, as well as Operation Colombo.

In July 1976, two magazines in Argentina and Brazil published the names of 119 Chilean leftist opponents, claiming they had been killed in internal disputes unrelated to the Pinochet regime. Those two magazines would disappear after this one and only issue. Judge Juan Guzmán Tapia would eventually ask Chilean justices to lift Pinochet's immunity in this case, having accumulated evidence that he had ordered the DINA to plant this disinformation, in order to cover up the "disappearance" and murder by the Chilean secret police of those 119 persons. On September 2005, Chile's Supreme Court would accept the lifting of Pinochet's immunity on this case. Judge Victor Montiglio, who took over the case after Juan Guzmán Tapia's retirement a few months before, has yet to name the doctors who would statue on Pinochet's health and ability to be interrogated. Victor Montiglio is known as a Pinochetist, and supports military auto-amnesty laws. He has already accorded amnesty to Manuel Contreras, who was given firm prison sentence in 2004 in the Operation Colombo trial.

Allegedly, Michael Townley worked with Eugenio Berríos on sarin gas in the 1990's, in a house DINA had in Lo Curro.

Eugenio Berríos, who was murdered in 1995, was also linked with drug traffickers and agents of DEA.^*

See also

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• Operation Condor
• Operation TOUCAN
• Colonia Dignidad

Anti-communism | History of Chile | Human rights abuses | Intelligence agencies | Political repression | Operation Condor

DINA | DINA | DINA | DINA | DINA