A Chilean woman accused of seven kidnappings during Augusto Pinochet's brutal military dictatorship has lost a court bid to see the legal advice Australia used when deciding to send her home.
Adriana Rivas, who immigrated to Australia in the late 1970s and later worked as a nanny in Sydney, has been locked in a six-year battle to avoid extradition to her native country since her arrest by NSW Police in February 2019 on a request from Chile.
The woman, now in her 70s, is facing seven charges of aggravated kidnapping in the South America nation if she fails in her legal bid during a last-ditch hearing in March.
She has been accused of being a former operative for Chilean police and being involved in the disappearance of seven people, including a woman who was five months' pregnant, in the 1970s.
In the latest in a long series of legal appeals, Rivas's lawyers pushed in the Federal Court on Friday to see a full brief outlining why Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus decided to allow her extradition in August 2024.
Rivas had been given a version of the brief that included redacted legal advice.
In March's hearing, she is expected to argue Australia did not meet its obligations under the United Nations' convention against torture when permitting the extradition.
Her lawyers said "cherry-picked" legal advice denied them the chance to assess if the department had appropriately followed the law.
The allegations levelled in Chile "don't rise to anything that would amount to kidnapping", they said.
Justice Michael Lee dismissed the application and said Rivas would not experience any unfairness at her hearing by not seeing the legal advice behind the decision.
The attorney-general's decision would either meet Australia's treaty obligations or it wouldn't, Justice Lee said, regardless of the legal advice.
It is the latest episode in Rivas' long-running legal battle since she was arrested in 2019.
The modern-day Chilean government alleges she was part of a Direccion de Inteligencia Nacional brigade that physically and psychologically tortured members of the communist party who opposed Pinochet's regime.
Sydney lawyer Adriana Navarro, who has been representing families of the seven people who disappeared, said it was a historical case of "very gross human right violations".
"It is important to have those matters prosecuted before the courts in Chile, so that the families can find the truth of what occurred," she told AAP after Friday's hearing.
"I am interested in making sure these matters are not put in a too-hard basket and never dealt with."
In October 2020, a Sydney magistrate dismissed Rivas's legal team's objections and ruled the then-67-year-old was eligible for extradition.
Her lawyers challenged the magistrate's decision in the Federal Court, but a judge dismissed her application for a review.
In 2021, an appeal against that decision was also dismissed.
