Why
Chile must finally
prosecute Pinochet
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF Associate
since 1991
September 29,
2004
LONDON - Could it be that the
Pinochet affair is now moving inexorably towards its
denouement? Even more a cause celebre among human rights
activists than the case of the Serbian, Slobovan
Milosevic, it remains unresolved since the arrested
former dictator was allowed to walk free four years ago
from his detention in Britain.
General Augusto Pinochet's crimes
were no ordinary crimes of the maintenance of political
authority in a time of turbulence. They continued until
1990, long after Pinochet announced in 1978 that the
"communist threat", with which he had justified his coup
against the democratically elected government of Salvador
Allende, had ended. "The rituals of torture were intended
to send horrific whispers through the populace", wrote
Geoffrey Robertson in his book, Crimes Against Humanity.
Pinochet, it is alleged, personally supervised the
torture operations with the boss of the torture unit,
Manuel Contreras, reporting daily to him. He is also the
man who on occasion joked that the "disappearances" had
saved bereaved families the cost of coffins.
A determined investigating Chilean
judge, Juan Guzman, is trying hard to bring Pinochet to
justice one more time. On Saturday he questioned the 88
year-old Augusto Pincochet in an attempt to nail down
Pinochet's knowledge of the horrendous catalogue of human
rights' abuses.
It is almost six years to the day
that very late one evening police officers in London
sealed off a private medical clinic where Pinochet was
recovering from an operation on his back and arrested
him. The request for his arrest had come from Spain's
well-known anti-terrorist judge, Baltasar Garzon, and was
made under the European Convention on Extradition. The
next day former prime minister, Margaret Thatcher,
attacked the police publicly for disturbing the rest of a
"sick and frail old man".
Lower courts quickly handed the
case to Britain's highest court, the justices of the
House of Lords. The process crystallized half a century's
debate on the legal and political problems of
accountability for crimes against humanity. For the first
time in a high court anywhere it was decided that
sovereign immunity must not be allowed to become
sovereign impunity. For that we have to thank most of the
nations world, including Thatcher's Britain and Ronald
Reagan's America, which in the late 1980s and early 1990s
put their signatures to the UN Convention Against Torture
and thus laid the legal basis for the House of Lords'
ruling.
But then, just as it appeared that
Pinochet would be shipped to Spain for criminal trial,
the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair announced
that it was "minded" to allow Pincochet to be released
because an examination by doctors had found him not fit
to be tried. On March 3rd, 2000, he was allowed to fly
home where on the tarmac of a Santiago airbase he jumped
out of his wheelchair and greeted the welcoming military
officers with great gusto.
Nine months later Pinochet was
subjected to a court-mandated medical examination in a
Chilean hospital. It is clear that the Chilean doctors
did a much more thorough job than their British
counterparts, of whom only one of the four member panel
spoke Spanish. "The examinations carried out in London
were very insufficient for a diagnosis", said Dr Luis
Fornazzari, the neuro-psychiatrist on the team. The
Chilean doctors concluded that Pinochet's strokes had
been light enough that he was fit enough to follow the
course of a trial.
Although the Chilean judge who had
ordered the health examination, the same Juan Guzman,
wanted to charge Pinochet with murder an appeals court
voted to accept the argument that Pinochet was in no
state to defend himself.
But now, three years' later,
Pinochet is back under questioning again, the Supreme
Court having last month lifted Pinochet's immunity.
Stupidly for him, Pinochet recently allowed himself to
bounce back into the limelight, seemingly healthy, giving
a couple of bravado press interviews. On top of that came
the revelation by a subcommittee of the U.S. Senate that
while in power the supposedly austere general, only
interested in law and order, had secreted $8m in accounts
at Riggs bank in Washington.
The tide of opinion has now turned
far enough in Chile, even among the military, for a trial
to go ahead without a threatening political
revolt.
It should. Pinochet by all accounts
is healthier than Milosevic, and for all the delays at
the UN war crimes court few want to see Milosevic walk
free on health grounds. These cases are just too
important for the health card to be played. To allow
these two their freedom before the line is properly drawn
in history's sands would be to fudge a major turning
point in the world's maturing understanding of human
rights' law. Seen properly to their conclusion these
trials will lay down a marker for all time.
Copyright © 2004 By
JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by
phone +44 7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
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written for the
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"Like
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