Word: pinochets
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There's a palpable sense of fear in General Augusto Pinochet these days. Not that the former Chilean dictator will ever know the terror of the thousands of his countrymen his regime tortured to death in prison cells, or tossed screaming from aircraft high over the ocean. The fear Pinochet knows is the anxiety of the former strongman discarded by history and forced to face justice; to account for himself stripped of his uniform and the power to inflict unimaginable pain on others...
...sure, Pinochet's life over the past three years has been a miserable story of unending flight - from legions of prosecutors the world over determined to bring him to book for crimes he is alleged to have authored. And his fight to evade prosecution appears to have taken its toll on the 85-year-old general, who only last weekend spent a night in the hospital after suffering what doctors called a "mini stroke...
...That didn't stop Judge Juan Guzman from issuing an arrest warrant for Pinochet on Monday, ordering that he be placed under house arrest on charges relating to the notorious "Caravan of Death" campaign shortly after the general seized power in 1973. The campaign involved a group of Pinochet's top officers touring the country's military prisons, rounding up some 57 political detainees, and summarily executing them. (And these charges constitute but one case of more than 200 pending against the general...
...Judge Guzman had previously ordered General Pinochet's arrest, but that order had been overturned by the Supreme Court on a technicality - Judge Guzman had failed to interrogate the suspect before indicting him, as required by Chilean law. Last week the judge set about rectifying his error by subjecting General Pinochet to an interview. And the general's answers to the judge's questions may contain some clues as to his likely fate...
...unhappy with the process. They want justice, not just the truth. The object of this process is only to gather information; it was never designed to prosecute. Those people in the military who provided the information had their identities concealed. So although it exposed further atrocities by Pinochet's regime, the revelations didn't really change much...