Santiago, November 20 (teleSUR-RHC)-- A Chilean court has ordered the government to pay $7.5 million to 30 former political prisoners who were imprisoned and tortured under the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet in the 1970's.

The prisoners, who included political leaders and government ministers, were jailed in September of 2013, after Pinochet seized power in a military coup against President Salvador Allende.

The 30 men and women were imprisoned for one year, held in crowded cells, under zero Celsius degrees on the remote Dawson Island in Chile's southern archipelago, and subjected to forced labor, according to media reports on Thursday. The Justice Ministry said the prisoners endured “immeasurable moral injury.”

They were “mistreated and lived in a state of anxiety and uncertainty about their own fate,” read a statement released by the ministry. They were “detained illegally on an island on the edge of the world.”

Upon their release, many of the people being held captive went to live in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and the United States, reported the BBC.

Under Pinochet's regime, from 1973-1990, some 3,225 people were killed and 37,000 people were tortured and held under illegal detention, according to numbers by an official commission.