Rooted in Chile's political turmoil in the early 90s and embroiled in extradition proceedings almost 17,000 km away in Delhi, Frenchwoman Marie Emmanuelle Verhoevan's journey to Tihar, she says, is like a movie. And it has all the elements of an engrossing one: the assassination of a conservative politician, her service in prison administration, an infamous jail-break, her seeking out spirituality and eventual incarceration in a faraway land. Verhoevan (56), fighting extradition to Chile, was released from Tihar jail on July 2 this year, after the additional chief metropolitan magistrate in Delhi, hearing her case, granted her bail on June 24. Her story, however, is far from over. “It's completely Kafkaesque. But I want to win this,” says Verhoevan. The Centre had initiated the extradition proceedings against Verhoevan following a red corner notice issued by Interpol on the Chilean government's request. She was taken into custody from Sanauli in Uttar Pradesh on February 17, 2015, on the basis of the red corner notice issued in January 2014. [related-post] Watch Video: What's making news The government there believes she had a role in the 1991 assassination of Jaime Guzman Errazuriz, a senator close to former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Errazuriz was also the founder of the Independent Democratic Union (UDI), the right-wing conservative party that was in power when the case for extradition of his alleged killers was reopened in 2010. “They (Indian authorities) keep calling me a fugitive; I'm not one. I came here on a valid visa,” Verhoevan argues. She is also baffled that she was made to serve time in Tihar. “I don't understand this. But I prefer it that way. If I understand, I don't know what I will do,” Verhoevan says. Her journey to Tihar can be traced back to her life in Chile between 1985 and 1995. Born in Angers in western France, Verhoevan grew up in the nearby city of Nantes. “In 1982-83, when Chile was under dictatorship, there were a lot of Chileans living in exile in Europe; a number of them lived in France. I was engaged in politics and I was part of the Franco-Latin American Association that worked with the exiles,” she says. It is through this that she met her Chilean partner and they moved to Santiago in 1985 along with their six-year-old son Kevin. A year later, their second son, Nikolai, was born. “When I first went to Chile, I taught in a French school. I then submitted my resume to various places. I got a call that a special human rights commission of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America was coming to Chile to probe what had transpired during the dictatorship. They needed people who were not Chilean but could speak Spanish and I accepted because it was very interesting,” Verhoevan says. Chilean politics witnessed significant changes as it transitioned into democracy in 1990. These changes, Verhoevan feels, are behind Chile, the country she left in 1995, seeking her extradition. In 1994, three years after Errazuriz's assassination, Verhoevan interacted with Ricardo Palma Salamanca and Mauricio Hernandez Norambuena — the two men held guilty for the senator's murder — when she worked with the new prison administration in Santiago. They belonged to an autonomous offshoot of the far-left Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (FPMR), she adds. The duo and two other inmates staged a dramatic jailbreak from the Santiago prison in December 1996. They were scooped up by a helicopter fitted with bullet-proof material, the media then reported. They have been fugitives since. “I talked to these people when they were moved to the high-security prison. Salamanca was very young and told me that they were tortured. When they escaped from prison in 1996, I was already back in France. I had left Chile in July, 1995, and have never returned since,” Verhoevan says. “It is not me that they want. They think I talked to these people and so I must know something. But that is not possible. They've made up a false file against me,” says Verhoevan, who has been dubbed as 'Commandante Ana' by the Chilean media and as a conspirator in the killing on Errazuriz. “This character does not exist; it is a fictional one invented by those who've decided to rewrite history. I challenge anyone today to prove the authenticity of this ‘Commandante’,” Verhoevan's open letter to current Chilean President Michele Bachelet states. “In 2013-14, the UDI lost elections; after that, this is all just political propaganda. The Chilean government did nothing when I was in France because they did not want a diplomatic stand-off with the French government. In my country, this would have been a scandal; they would have snapped diplomatic ties. This is harassment. That is why they've decided to go after me in a third country,” Verhoevan says. The first attempt to extradite Verhoevan to Chile was made in January 2014, when she was in Hamburg, Germany. The German court, however, refused to allow the extradition. In 2011, Verhoevan landed in Varanasi seeking Panchakarma therapy for a respiratory tract infection. The extradition saga followed her here. Her government has approached lawyer Ramni Taneja, who is fluent in French, to aid Verhoevan. Proceedings are under way before a Delhi magistrate as the Supreme Court in April held that the 1897 extradition treaty between India and Chile was valid. While she has gone through a series of legal battles in the Indian courts to secure her release, there have been other skirmishes in Tihar. “We slept on the floor and the conditions are not hygienic at all. You had to fight with the jail administration for many things. In winter, I fought for warm water to bathe for all inmates. The women with babies had nowhere to keep their little ones. And I really want to do something to help them,” says Verhoevan. She wrote to the Supreme Court about the ‘deplorable’ conditions in Tihar jail. It has earned her a reputation of being feisty. “The inmates were too afraid to speak because most of them were very poor. But if I see something wrong, I speak up. I told them they have rights,” she says. Not much later, she helped people draft bail applications. On bail, Verhoevan is living with friends from the Buddhist community at a location she does not wish to reveal. With her passport seized, however, she is not allowed to leave Delhi without the court's permission. Apart from continuing to contest her extradition to Chile, Verhoevan has a book on the cards. “I want to write a book; a letter to my granddaughter. She was born a month after my arrest. She is very beautiful,” says Verhoevan.
