At least 22 dissidents who disappeared under the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet were killed at a secretive German commune and their bodies later burned with chemicals, La Nacion newspaper reported on Sunday.
The killings occurred in the aftermath of the Sep. 11, 1973 military coup in which Pinochet toppled elected Marxist president Salvador Allende, the paper said.
The disclosure was made by Gerhard Mucke, one of the former leaders of Colonia Dignidad -- or Dignity Colony -- to Jorge Zepeda, the judge investigating human rights abuses at the sprawling farm 340km south of Santiago, the newspaper said.
There was no comment from the government on the report, and a call to Zepeda's office on Sunday was not answered.
Mucke told the judge that the reclusive religious sect's top leader, Paul Schaefer, ordered him in 1978 "to clean the farm" removing the remains.
"All the bodies were burned," Mucke said of the 22 dissidents, according to the paper.
Schaefer, who founded the commune in the early 1960s, is currently serving a 20 year prison term after being convicted of sexually abusing 26 children at the enclave.
Schaefer and other colony leaders were for many years accused of allowing Pinochet's security service to use it for the detention, torture and execution of dissidents.
The colony was gradually dismantled after civilian rule was restored, but many of its members still live on the farm.
Earlier this year, the remaining members of the colony, Chileans and Germans, acknowledged in a public statement abuses occurred there during the Pinochet regime.
"We realize that serious crimes were committed," they said.
"We want now to work so we can be pardoned and reinserted" [in society], they said.
They blamed Schaefer, 84, for the abuses, saying "he allowed our villa to be used for the detention and repression of people persecuted" by the Pinochet regime.
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