With sloping red-tiled roofs, trimmed lawns and a shop selling home-baked ginger biscuits, Villa Baviera looks like a quaint German-style village, nestled in the rolling hills of central Chile.

But it has a dark past.

Once known as Colonia Dignidad, it was home to a secretive religious sect founded by a manipulative and abusive leader who collaborated with the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

Paul Schäfer, who established the colony in 1961, imposed a regime of harsh punishments and humiliation on the Germans living there.

They were separated from their parents and forced to work from a young age.

Schäfer also sexually abused many of the children.

After Gen Pinochet led a coup in 1973, opponents of his military regime were taken to Colonia Dignidad to be tortured in dark basements.

Many of these political prisoners were never seen again.

Schäfer died in prison in 2010, but some of the German residents remained and have turned the former colony into a tourist destination, with a restaurant, hotel, cabins to rent and even a boating pond.

Now, the Chilean government is going to expropriate some of its land to commemorate Pinochet's victims there. But the plans have divided opinions.

Across Chile, more than 3,000 people were killed and more than 40,000 tortured during the Pinochet regime, which was in power until 1990.

Luis Evangelista Aguayo was one of those who was forcibly "disappeared".

His sister, Ana Aguayo, sits by the fire in her house in Parral, the nearest town to Colonia Dignidad.

"Luis was quiet, he loved swimming. He wanted to create a fairer world," she said.

Mr Aguayo worked as a school inspector, was a member of the teachers' trade union and was active in the Socialist Party.

On 12 September 1973, one day after Pinochet overthrew Chile's elected Socialist President, Salvador Allende, police came to Mr Aguayo's house and arrested him.

Two days later, he was sent to the local prison, but on 26 September 1973, police arrived and dragged him into a van. His........

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