Overview
- Justice Michael Lee, ruling Tuesday in Sydney, dismissed Rivas’s final challenge and found the extradition request consistently charges aggravated kidnapping.
- She remains in custody and can seek a further appeal to the Full Federal Court, yet the decision removes the immediate legal barrier to her surrender to Chile.
- Chilean prosecutors allege Rivas, now 72, helped detain, interrogate, and disappear seven people in 1976 and 1977, including a woman who was five months pregnant, which she denies.
- Her lawyers argued Chile could reframe the conduct as crimes against humanity, which affects time limits and penalties, but the judge said the record shows only kidnapping charges and Australia does not extradite where a death sentence could apply.
- Relatives of the missing welcomed the decision as long‑delayed progress in cases tied to Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, a period when thousands were killed, tortured, or imprisoned.