|
|
CHALLENGES 2005-2006: Pinochet - Trapped by the Law, Forgotten by the Right
By Gustavo González
SANTIAGO, Dec 29 (IPS) - Increasingly hemmed in by the law and abandoned by
his former apologists, former dictator Augusto Pinochet made headlines in
Chile again this year and will continue to do so in 2006, even though
President Ricardo Lagos and other politicians say he is "a figure of the
past."
The right is now working hard to distance itself from Pinochet "because of
its public image," since the former dictator casts a shadow over its chances
in the second round of the presidential elections, to be held on Jan. 15,
Lorena Pizarro, president of the Association of Relatives of the
Detained-Disappeared (AFDD), told IPS.
On that day, voters will decide between Michelle Bachelet, the socialist
candidate of the governing centre-left coalition, who received 46 percent of
the vote in the first round on Dec. 11, and businessman Sebastián Piñera, a
neoliberal politician backed by the civilian groups who governed with
Pinochet from September 1973 to March 1990.
Piñera, of the National Renewal Party, captured 25.4 percent of the vote and
now has the support of Joaquín Lavín, who took 23.2 percent as the candidate
of the rightwing Independent Democratic Union (UDI), the most pro-Pinochet
party in Chilean politics.
This year has been the ex-dictator's worst, not only due to the numerous
legal proceedings he faces for crimes against humanity and corruption, but
also because the presidential and parliamentary election campaigns have
motivated the right, and particularly Lavín and the UDI, to finally break
with him.
At the age of 90, the man who in 1983 boasted that in Chile "not a leaf
moves unless I order it to," will see in the New Year under house arrest,
accompanied only by his family and generals Guillermo Garín and Luis Cortés,
his immediate subordinates during his many years as commander of the army
(1973-1998), who remain loyal to him.
The last straw in a year full of legal resolutions on Pinochet was a Dec. 26
Supreme Court decision to reject an appeal on behalf of the ex-dictator and
allow him to be tried on four charges related to Operation Colombo, a media
campaign staged to cover up the forced disappearance and murder of 119
leftists in 1975.
"We were quite pleased with the verdict. Our presence at the hearings and
the background information contributed by our lawyers, who have shown
themselves to be knowledgeable and reliable in this Operation Colombo trial,
led to the failure of the appeal," said Pizarro.
The former dictator's defence lawyers wanted the Supreme Court to accept
that their client suffered from senile dementia, an argument that has been
successful in other legal cases, and to declare him mentally unfit to stand
trial.
"We hope this will be the way forward, and that the Court will re-open
proceedings (against Pinochet) that were suspended because of his supposed
senile dementia, which has now been demonstrated not to exist," added the
AFDD activist.
The Supreme Court acquitted Pinochet on the grounds of mental incapacity for
the first time in July 2002, in the trial presided over by Judge Juan Guzmán
for 57 homicides and 18 kidnappings committed by a special army mission.
Known as the "caravan of death", the mission was carried out in October
1973, shortly after the Sept. 11 coup d'état that overthrew socialist
president Salvador Allende.
Guzmán began to prosecute the ex-dictator in April 2000, shortly after
Pinochet returned from London, where he had been held under house arrest
since October 1998 at the request of Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón. Garzón
was seeking his extradition to Spain to face trial for crimes against
humanity.
On that occasion Jack Straw, home secretary (interior minister) at the time,
interrupted extradition proceedings and freed the former Chilean de facto
head of state for "humanitarian reasons," based on the controversial
diagnosis of senile dementia.
Pinochet had handed over command of the army to General Ricardo Izurieta on
Mar. 10, 1998, and was sworn in as senator-for-life the next day.
Upon returning to Chile after his arrest in London, Pinochet resigned from
the Senate but remained under the protection of a special statute for former
heads of state which granted him immunity from criminal prosecution.
This means that prosecuting judges investigating human rights accusations
must ask for Pinochet's immunity to be lifted every time they attempt to
bring him to trial.
In a case involving the 1974 assassination in Buenos Aires of General Carlos
Prats and his wife Sofía Cuthbert, the Supreme Court declared Pinochet
mentally unfit to stand trial, last March.
Another trial for nine murders and one kidnapping in connection with
Operation Condor was also terminated on Sept. 15 by the Supreme Court, again
on the grounds of mental incapacity.
Operation Condor was a coordinated plan set up in 1975 by the security
forces in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay to track
down, kidnap, murder and 'disappear' opponents of the de facto military
regimes ruling those countries.
Pinochet's apparent invulnerability in the Chilean justice system based on
his alleged dementia began to crack slightly in August 2004, when a United
States Senate investigating committee revealed that the ex-dictator had
millions of dollars in secret bank accounts abroad.
The scandal primarily involved the Riggs Bank, a U.S. financial institution,
and it led to an inquiry in Chile headed first by Judge Sergio Muñoz and
then by Judge Carlos Cerda. The investigation established that Pinochet and
his relatives accumulated an illicit fortune of about 27 million dollars.
On Aug. 10, Judge Muñoz ordered the arrest of 81-year-old Lucía Hiriart,
Pinochet's wife, and their youngest son, Marco Antonio, on charges that they
participated in the crimes of tax evasion and hiding allegedly ill-gotten
money abroad.
On Nov. 23, two days before his 90th birthday, the courts ordered the house
arrest of Pinochet himself. He was then prosecuted by Judge Víctor
Montiglio, who is investigating Operation Colombo.
Over the past year, as evidence mounted against Pinochet in the Riggs
affair, the political right has been increasing its distance from the
ex-dictator.
In May, Lavín said that had he known of Pinochet's involvement in
corruption, he would not have supported him in a 1988 referendum that
spelled the beginning of the end of the dictatorship.
Lavín also said on that occasion that he shared President Lagos's view that
"General Pinochet is a political figure of the past, he is old and sick, and
justice must take its course (in the trials he is facing)."
"What's happened is terrible," said Pizarro. "The right considers illicit
enrichment to be worse than the thousands of people murdered and
'disappeared' during the dictatorship. We think Pinochet should be judged
for all of his crimes, including corruption, but the right does not seem to
be interested in the value of human life."
The activist further stated that "the right has always known about the
crimes and the corruption," recalling that in the 1980s, journalists who
reported the purchase of a mansion for Pinochet with public funds were
persecuted by the state. And in 1994 an investigation of the irregular
transfer of three million dollars to Pinochet's eldest son, Augusto, was
closed, invoking "reasons of State."
(END/2005)
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
What is RSS?
