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A
Trial for Pinochet Now Looks Certain
By JONATHAN
POWER
January 30, 2001
LONDON - The Pinochet affair is now inexorably moving
towards its denouement. The script is written. The
players have but to act out their lines, which we in the
audience by now know almost as well as the actors
themselves. At last, this most miserable of men is set to
confront his fate and witness his own final destruction-
in name, and mind, but not in body. The Chilean social
and legal system is too kind and forgiving for that- even
the daughter of Salvador Allende, the president he
overthrew, asks for mercy once the trial is over. Thus
mankind this year will take a giant step forward towards
its goal of civilization, a state of political being
where the rule of law grounded in the belief that
disputes can be settled short of violence triumphs over
the baser and more primitive instincts of each one of
us.
In Chile Judge Juan Guzman this week, his
interrogation of General Augustino Pinochet completed,
set the wheels in motion for a trial almost exactly two
and a quarter years since Scotland Yard detectives,
acting on a warrant from a Spanish judge, arrested
Pinochet in a London clinic where he was recovering from
a back operation. The next day former British prime
minister Margaret Thatcher attacked the police publicly
for disturbing the rest of a "sick and frail old
man".
The arrest of Pinochet at the time appeared like a
bolt from the blue. Amnesty International had tried, but
failed, on Pinochet's previous visits to Britain to
persuade the authorities to investigate the case. Not
even the most well-informed considered it a possibility.
It can be said with certainty that it never crossed the
mind of the British judges who were soon to be landed the
job of untangling the legal intricacies.
Looking back it was Amnesty International's decision
in December 1972 to campaign for a UN Convention on
Torture that was the undoing of Pinochet. Ironically it
was Pinochet's coup in Chile in September 1973 that gave
an enormous boost to the Amnesty campaign. It gave a
sense of immediacy and urgency to everything that Amnesty
had been saying, spilling over into the UN General
Assembly which began its session only days after the
coup. At the time most Third World and Communist
countries were highly suspicious of "Western" critiques
of their human rights behaviour. But Allende was to many
of them an heroic figure, and they suspected that the
U.S. was behind his overthrow.
For all that, it took eleven years of hard, grinding
work before the UN approved a legally binding treaty
against torture, in 1984. The list of those who fought
for it included the expected, Scandinavian governments
and Holland, and the quite unexpected, the U.S.
Administration of Ronald Reagan and the British
government led by Margaret Thatcher.
When, after Pinochet's arrest, the House of Lords,
Britain's highest court, met to decide on whether he was
eligible for trial it was Amnesty International which
presented a long and detailed disposition. Never before
had a high court anywhere allowed a non-governmental
organization to file an argument on such a sensitive
political matter. The court agreed by a majority of six
to one that torture was an international crime and there
was no immunity even for heads of state.
That the British government then decided to allow
Pinochet to return to Chile because they judged that his
health was precarious will be a black mark forever in
Prime Minister Tony Blair's book. To allow Pinochet his
freedom, before the line was properly drawn in history's
sands, was to fudge a major turning point in the world's
maturing understanding of jurisprudence.
At the time the British government had no way of
knowing that the Chilean courts would pick up the baton
in the way they recently have. The Chilean Supreme Court
even today has on its bench judges selected by Pinochet.
The army, as was demonstrated by the tremendous welcome
it staged for Pinochet on his return from London, still
finds a place for him in its heart. Yet something has
profoundly changed in Chile over the years- and his two
year detention in Britain and the court case there
clearly worked to compel Chile to confront its past.
The Chilean doctors, unlike their British
counterparts, decided he was fit for trial, even though
the examination was carried out in a military hospital.
The armed forces are not muscling in to save him. Indeed
one highly placed general from the Pinochet years has now
denounced him.
The end is in sight. It has now gone too far for there
to be any turning back. Pinochet will be surely
convicted. And the world will be a safer place than it
was before, not just in Chile, but everywhere.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2001 By
JONATHAN POWER
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