Guardian 11.10.2000 � Chile Expels German Colony Leaders Wednesday October 11, 2000 SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) - The government on Wednesday said it is expelling three leading members of a secretive German enclave in southern Chile that has been accused of serving as a detention and torture camp under the former dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Deputy Interior Minister Jorge Burgos said an expulsion decree was issued for Gerhard Mucke, and visas will not be renewed for Helmut Hopp and Wolfgang Muller. Mucke's expulsion will be effective after the criminal allegations of kidnapping, obstruction of justice, and aiding a fugitive are resolved. The announcement of the expulsions of the high ranking officials of Dignity Colony came as police staged a new raid at the sprawling enclave 250 miles south of Santiago. The enclave had up to 400 residents at its peak in the late 1980s. One of the allegations against Mucke refers to the disappearance in 1974 of Alvaro Vallejos, a dissident leftist student leader. Enclave leaders have been accused by human rights experts here and abroad of allowing their enclave to be used as a torture and execution center after the 1973 coup led by Pinochet. They were also accused of forcing some members to stay against their will, and sexually abusing children. They reject all the accusations, calling them part of a communist-inspired smear campaign against them. Mucke also faces charges for obstruction of justice, for allegedly helping the colony's top leader, Paul Schaefer, to dodge police in several raids on the enclave. Schaefer is a fugitive indicted on child abuse charges more than three years ago. Police have raided Colonia Dignidad at least 10 other times searching for Schaefer, without success. Police said on some raids they were also checking on reports that some of the more than 1,000 dissidents who disappeared after being arrested by Pinochet's security services were buried there. Vallejos is one of them. Though the government officially dissolved the colony in 1991, up to 200 of its members still live on the large farm established by German immigrants in the mid 1960s near the city of Parral. � � � � � �� �
