A Chilean court ruled out an immediate investigation into a mysterious German colony in southern Chile where former members claim children have been tortured and other members virtually

imprisoned. Documentary evidence offered by the West German government in support of the allegations against the “Colonia de la Dignidad” (Dignity Colony) was “incomplete . . . and lacking

in judicial value,” the court said. The inquiry into the colony, in the foothills of the Andes about 250 miles south of Santiago, was requested by Bonn after former members testified that

the camp’s 350 mainly German settlers were subjected to a “regime of terror.”