SANTIAGO (Reuters) - His name is on a monument to victims of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, his family buried his mistakenly identified remains — now a Chilean court is probing how German Cofre has come back from the dead.
Cofre, a former leftist community leader reported to have been whisked away by the military early in Pinochet’s 1973-1990 dictatorship, was not seen again — until he returned to Chile 35 years later from neighboring Argentina, where he has been living.
Now a judge is looking into how Cofre was erroneously declared dead, how Chilean authorities in Argentina renewed his identity card and how his family was paid a pension because he was on an official list of dictatorship victims.
Cofre, 63, says he didn’t know he had been declared one of around 3,000 people who died or disappeared under Pinochet’s rule.
“I’ve no idea,” he told reporters as he went to court for questioning on Wednesday.
It is unclear how he ended up in Argentina after his detention, or why he returned to Chile.
“Technically he is dead,” investigating judge Carlos Gajardo told reporters. “We have to determine his true identity ... I don’t know of another case (like this).”
Cofre’s wife died in Chile last year. His children, who don’t remember him, want answers.
“He needs to give an explanation before the courts,” his eldest son Marcelo, who is now 39, told daily newspaper El Mercurio. “He must give an explanation. I don’t yet have one.”
He said his uncle called one day out of the blue to say his father was alive and at his house in Chile.
“I don’t know him,” Marcelo Cofre said. “I don’t why we could get mixed up in this ... To atone for a father who disappeared and reappeared 35 years later? Are we responsible for that?”
Cofre said he brought the information of his father’s reappearance to the government’s attention.
“It wasn’t the government that discovered this. I went personally to the Interior Ministry to ask why I was given a body in a 50 cm (20 inches)-long box,” he said of the container he had thought held his father’s remains.
Families of real victims of the dictatorship also want the case cleared up.
“This needs investigating,” said Lorena Pizarro of Families of the Disappeared, which groups relatives of victims of the dictatorship. “The state, the governments of (ruling center-left coalition), the Concertacion have responsibilities to face.”
Successive Concertacion governments have ruled Chile since the return to democracy after the dictatorship ended.
Human rights lawyer Hugo Gutierrez said the case should be treated as isolated.
“What we have here is a pretty unusual situation,” Gutierrez said. “I hope people won’t make generalizations because of this situation, because that would be serious and stain what human rights groups are trying to do.”
Additional reporting by Erik Lopez, Monica Vargas and Manuel Farias; Writing by Simon Gardner; Editing by Vicki Allen
