Operation Colombo

Operation Colombo was an operation undertaken by the DINA (the Chilean secret police) in 1975 to make political dissidents disappear. At least 119 people are alleged to have been abducted and later killed. The magazines published a list of 119 dead political opponents.

DINA took advantage of media outlets by publishing false stories with the intentions of misleading the public. DINAs goal was to convince the public that they had a foreign enemy who were responsible for the kidnapping and killing of Chileans. These fabricated stories included names of missing victims and stories about how they were killed in clashes between Argentine security forces. However, days later the Chilean church-sponsored committee for peace published a comprehensive report detailing direct evidence that seventy-seven individuals on the list of the missing 119, had been last seen detained by Chile security personnel before they disappeared. Rightest media outlets in Chile published stories containing evidence and details of mutilated corpses resulting from Operation Colombo. These stories contained the names of the victims and included details of how the victims had died in internecine battles within the Chilean Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria (movement of the revolutionary left-MIR). The bodies of victims were discovered with handwritten signs that read “executed by the MIR” meaning these individuals had been members of the revolutionary left movement and had been killed as a result of an internal struggle.

Years after the Colombo operation was discovered, secret DINA files were discovered in the Buenos Aires office and home of Arancibia Clavel that included lists and identity documents of the 119 missing chileans and reports that discussed the modus operandi of Operation Colombo.

Arancibia Clavel was the only defendant that was indicted for the assassination of Carlos Prats and Sofia Cuthbert. In September 2004, Guzmán Tapia indicted sixteen former members of the DINA for Operation Colombo. In November 2005, Judge Victor Montiglio indicted Augusto Pinochet for his role in Operation Colombo, and in May 2008, he indicted ninety-eight DINA leaders and former agents for the abductions and forced disappearances of sixty victims of Operation Colombo. All listed victims had been abducted and held in various clandestine detention centers in Chile.

One of these fake magazines, titled LEA, was published by Codex Editorial, a dependent of the Argentine Ministry of Welfare, directed by José López Rega, counselor of Isabel Perón and founder of the Triple A death squad.