Word: pinochet
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Yesterday, Chile’s Court of Appeals upheld the decision, made last week by Santiago judge Juan Guzmán, to indict former dictator Augusto Pinochet for allegedly ordering the kidnapping of nine people and the murder of another, between 1976 and 1977. While it is absolutely laudable that, six years after his arrest in London in 1998, the 89-year-old General Pinochet may, at last, be held to account for at least some of the abuses of his brutal regime (which lasted from 1973 until 1990), Chilean jurists must be cautious not to circumvent due process...
...Pinochet seized power in Chile in a U.S.-supported coup that toppled socialist president Salvador Allende. The military dictatorship that followed resulted in appalling violence. 3,000 Chileans lost their lives and thousands more were tortured throughout the regime’s 17 years in power...
Since leaving power, Gen. Pinochet has successfully assured himself immunity from prosecution, first claiming that, as a former head of state, he could not be prosecuted for acts carried out in performing the functions of office. That defense ran out of steam in 1998, thrown out by the House of Lords (the United Kingdom’s highest court of appeal), which ruled rightly that murder, torture and hostage-taking fail to qualify as legitimate functions of a head of state and so are not immune from prosecution. Gen. Pinochet then turned to his poor health as a defense...
While the Chilean military welcomed its former leader home in 2000 with a full-dress greeting party, others were not so warm to his return, and efforts to try Pinochet domestically for his alleged abuses began almost immediately. Ever since, the General’s manifold layers of protection have been slowly stripped away. First to go was his senatorial immunity: in August 2000, Chile’s Supreme Court stripped Gen. Pinochet of the protection he enjoyed as a Senator-for-life. There remained, however, the pesky issue of Pinochet’s health: after a judge placed...
...Witness to Atrocity CHILE President Ricardo Lagos hailed the completion of an official report on torture and political detention during General Augusto Pinochet's 1973-1990 dictatorship as "a historic step" for a nation coming to terms with its past. The study, based on testimony from 35,000 victims, will be made public in December...