Michael Townley - Ongoing Investigations

Ongoing Investigations

In 2003, Argentine Federal Judge Maria Servini de Cubria asked Chile for the extradition of Mariana Callejas, who was accused of Carlos Prats' murder. But, in July 2005, Chilean Judge Nibaldo Segura of the Court of Appeals stated that the case cannot proceed, arguing that Callejas was already being tried in Chile.

Questioned in March 2005 by Judge Alejandro Madrid about ex-Chilean Christian Democrat President Eduardo Frei Montalva's death, Michael Townley acknowledged links between Colonia Dignidad, led by ex-Nazi Paul Schäfer and DINA on one side and the Laboratorio de Guerra Bacteriológica del Ejército (Bacteriological War Army Laboratory) on the other. It is suspected the toxin that killed Frei Montalva in a Santa Maria clinic in 1982 was created there. This new laboratory in Colonia Dignidad would have been, according to him, the continuation of the laboratory the DINA had in Via Naranja de lo Curro where he worked with DINA biochemist Eugenio Berríos. Townley would also have testified on biological experiments made upon prisoners in Colonia Dignidad with the help of the two above mentioned laboratories.

In 1992, Townley testified that the Spanish diplomat Carmelo Soria, assassinated in 1976, had been detained at his home on Via Naranja in the sector of Lo Curro. There he was tortured and, since he did not speak, subjected to sarin gas (which had been re-invented by Berríos). Soria was then detained and tortured again in the Villa Grimaldi and his case was included in Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzon's indictment of Pinochet.