The World - News from April 20, 1988

A Chilean court ruled out an immediate investigation into a mysterious German colony in southern Chile where former members claim children have been tortured and other members virtually imprisoned. Documentary evidence offered by the West German government in support of the allegations against the “Colonia de la Dignidad” (Dignity Colony) was “incomplete . . . and lacking in judicial value,” the court said. The inquiry into the colony, in the foothills of the Andes about 250 miles south of Santiago, was requested by Bonn after former members testified that the camp’s 350 mainly German settlers were subjected to a “regime of terror.”