A former nanny living in Australia lost a final court fight Tuesday to avoid extradition to Chile on allegations of kidnapping in the 1970s during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
Adriana Elcira Rivas Gonzalez, in her early 70s, was arrested in Sydney in February 2019, following an extradition request from Chile.
She had been working part-time as a nanny and cleaner in the city's Bondi suburb.
Rivas is accused by Chile of seven counts of "aggravated kidnapping" of figures who disappeared in the 1970s when she was an alleged member of Pinochet's feared secret police.
Among those charges, she is accused of being involved in the disappearance of Victor Manuel Diaz Lopez, undersecretary general of the Communist Party, court documents show.
He was detained by several agents early in the morning of May 10, 1976, transferred to a secret police facility on the outskirts of Santiago and then disappeared without trace.
Rivas had earlier failed in a court bid to review a 2020 magistrate's court finding that she was eligible for extradition to Chile.
In her latest challenge at the Federal Court in Sydney, Rivas said the government's decision to allow her extradition was legally flawed.
Her lawyers argued she was actually being extradited for a crime against humanity, which was not a crime in Australia or Chile at the time.
But the judge said the formal extradition papers and the indictments from Chile listed her alleged offences as aggravated kidnappings.
Rivas's reliance on "selected extradition materials" to argue that she was being accused of a crime against humanity was "misconceived", Justice Michael Lee said in a written ruling.
He stressed that the extradition hearing had no bearing on the underlying truth of the allegations against Rivas.
Outside court, a lawyer representing relatives of alleged victims, Adriana Navarro, told Australia's national broadcaster ABC that families were "relieved" there was finally an outcome.
