Chile awards $6.6m damages to ex-political prisoners

Chile's Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a ruling ordering the state to pay $6.6 million in damages to 31 former political prisoners detained in a concentration camp during Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship.

In a unanimous decision, the court said it had found evidence of "grave human rights violations" perpetrated by regime agents at the detention center on Dawson island, a windswept outcrop in the Strait of Magellan, near the southern tip of South America.

"The court confirms the state's responsibility for the physical and psychological damage suffered by the former prisoners," it said, rejecting an appeal by the government.

The court said its ruling was based on "the torture suffered by the plaintiffs and inflicted by the Chilean state, with enormous coercive power and use of force."

The camp's inmates included cabinet ministers and other political figures close to the government of Salvador Allende, the socialist president Pinochet toppled in a bloody 1973 coup.

Prisoners were subjected to forced labor and lived in overcrowded quarters on the island, which has freezing temperatures and is often lashed by harsh Arctic winds.

The Pinochet regime (1973-1990) killed an estimated 3,200 people and tortured 38,000 in its brutal crackdown on leftist opponents.
Source: AFP