AFP - A Chilean judge ordered the arrest Tuesday of at least 129 former Chilean soldiers and police for human rights violations during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, court sources said.
   
The arrest warrants issued by Judge Victor Montiglio were directed against former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate, a feared political police unit known as the DINA by its Spanish-language initials.
   
Named in the order were retired military officers who had never before been brought before the court and former non-commissioned officers from the air force, navy and police services, the source who had access to the order said.
   
The warrants are related to "Operation Condor," a campaign by some South American governments in the 1970s to assassinate opponents of their regimes, and "Operation Colombo" during which 119 Chilean members of the opposition were killed in 1975.
   
They also concern the cases of 10 communists who disappeared in 1976.
   
Pinochet's 1973-1990 military regime is blamed for human rights abuses including some 3,000 deaths and disappearances.
   
Pinochet died in December 2006 at a military hospital in Santiago, at the age of 91, after evading repeated attempts to bring him to trial.
   
Two weeks before his death, Pinochet took responsibility for actions committed under his rule, but never apologized for the suffering he caused.