Word: chiles
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Human-rights advocates around the world rightly rejoice at the idea that Chile's ex-President Augusto Pinochet Ugarte might be extradited to Spain [WORLD, Dec. 14]. If this occurs, Pinochet will be judged for past crimes. Heads of government should never get away with torture and murder. But unless an impartial international criminal tribunal is established with very clear rules and procedures, going after only certain dictators will be an arbitrary process. Also, if a nation approves a general amnesty for atrocities committed by one of its regimes, should a foreign judge be allowed to disrupt that nation...
...atop the human-rights wave right now is Baltazar Garzon, 43, a hard-charging investigative judge of Spain's National Court. Two years ago, he began looking into human-rights abuses against Spanish citizens in Argentina, which were linked to Chile by a scheme called Operation Condor. With this plan, Pinochet and other South American junta leaders pooled their deadliest secret-police units to crush resistance to their rule. Garzon concluded that Pinochet is not covered by the traditional legal tenet, called sovereign immunity, one aspect of which protects national leaders from prosecution. Garzon argues that it does not apply...
Instead Washington is straddling two positions. It says gross violators of human rights should be punished, but at the same time the views of the democratic government of Chile should be respected. And Chile insists that Pinochet should be sent home. Beyond that, says State Department spokesman James Rubin, "we have no view as to the merits of the case...
...officials swear they no longer fear exposing any lingering secrets about CIA support for Pinochet or for his 1973 coup against Chile's socialist President Salvador Allende. What does concern them, they say, is the prospect of a dangerous new right-left polarization in Chile if Pinochet were tried abroad. But having said that, the officials claim they are trying to signal to the Chilean government that it must "make the tough decisions it needs to" and pledge to try Pinochet itself. Of course, Pinochet has immunity at home, and no one thinks he would be put on trial there...
General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, former dictator of Chile, is arrested in a London clinic on a human-rights warrant. For Americans, a conundrum. Instinctively we think this must be right. If in America you were responsible directly or indirectly for 3,000 deaths, you'd be on death row. But Americans are not arbitrary. All kinds of thugs, both former and current rulers, are running around free. So why Pinochet...