By Tito Drago
MADRID, Sep 28 1999 (IPS)

Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet could be tried in Spain for all of the offences of which he is accused, and not only those authorised by Great Britain, if he ends up being extradited by London.

The extradition proceedings that got underway Monday in the British capital are based on an April ruling by the House of Lords that Pinochet can only be extradited on charges of alleged crimes committed after December 1988, when the International Convention Against Torture went into effect in Great Britain.

But in the past week, two lawsuits were filed against Great Britain in the European Court of Human Rights based in Strasbourg, France, on the argument that the House of Lords ruling violated four clauses of the European Convention on Human Rights.

If even just one of the lawsuits is declared admissible and the Court comes down on the side of Great Britain, the sentence would not be binding for London. But it would be for Spain, where Pinochet – who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990 – will have to answer for crimes against humanity.

Santiago, meanwhile, plans to bring a suit against Madrid before the International Court of Justice in The Hague by year’s end, Chilean diplomats Alberto van Klaveren and Jaime Lagos announced Tuesday in that city in the Netherlands.

Van Klaveren and Lagos reach Madrid Wednesday to meet senior legal advisers with Spain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to discuss technical aspects of the lawsuit to be filed against Spain.

A source at Spain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told IPS that Chile’s plans were only logical, as a lawsuit looked like the wisest option, given the failure of Chile and Spain to reach an agreement on the application of the International Convention Against Torture and on settling the issue in arbitration.

“As in any legal action, Spain will respect the decisions handed down by the judges,” said the source, who preferred to remain anonymous.

With the exception of former Spanish prime minister Felipe González of Spain’s Socialist Workers Party (PSOE), no political leader – whether with the governing party or the opposition – is opposed to Pinochet’s extradition from Great Britain and his trial in Spain.

The only notable exception in Spain is the office of the public prosecutor, which filed, and successively lost, several appeals designed to keep Pinochet from standing trial here.

Spain’s political leaders agree, nevertheless, that it would be preferable for the former dictator to stand trial in his own country.

Professor of International Relations at the Complutense University, Felipe Sahagún, recommended that the Chilean government call on the courts in that country to try Pinochet, and thus prevent the former dictator from standing trial in Spain.

That possibility would mean “eliminating, as soon as possible, all of the conditions that Pinochet imposed on Chileans in order to step down from the (presidential) palace of la Moneda,” he said.

Those conditions include senators designated by the armed forces and other mechanisms curtailing a full transition to democracy in Chile.

As a next step, the centre-left coalition government of Eduardo Frei should “convince the magristrates in London and Madrid that with respect to the lawsuits filed in Chile against Pinochet and his collaborators, the judges will be able to act with guaranteed independence.”

Regarding the argument that the extradition hearing gives the Chilean right a boost in terms of the campaign for the December elections, Sahagún said that was simply “one more reason to believe that the conditions do not exist in Chile for justice to be done by the victims of the dictatorship.”

If the necessary changes do not occur to pave the way for Pinochet’s trial in Chile, the Spanish prosecutors charging the retired general with crimes against humanity are confident that after a lengthy trial plagued with legal maneuvres, London will grant extradition.

If that occurs, the retired general will be charged with 37 murders committed after December 1998, and more than 1,100 disappearances, since no statute of limitations is applicable to the offence of forced disappearance, considered an “ongoing” crime until the victim appears – dead or alive.

Pinochet will also have to answer for crimes committed before 1988, if the court in Strasbourg declares admissible one or both of the lawsuits filed by Guillermo Valera – an Argentinian lawyer residing in the Spanish city of Valencia – and seven survivors of the Chilean dictatorship.

According to the “Rettig Report” released in April 1991 by Chile’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the security forces in that Southern Cone country committed 3,190 political assassinations and forced disappearances during the Pinochet regime.

Pinochet was arrest Oct 16, 1998 in a London clinic where he was recovering from back surgery, on an arrest warrant issued by Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón.

Garzón is preparing cases against the dictatorship of Chile as well as the de facto regime that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983.

The president of Chile’s Group of Families of Detained- Disappeared victims (AFDD), Viviana Díaz, termed the first day of extradition proceedings “positive,” given the inclusion by prosecutor Alun Jones – representing Spain – of the more than 1,000 cases of disappearances in the charges against Pinochet.

AFDD secretary-general Mireya García, who travelled to London along with other members of the human rights group, stressed that the high court on Bow Street would have to confirm torture as an extraditable offence, and forced disappearance as a crime with no statute of limitations.

Retired general Luis Cortés, executive secretary of the Pinochet Foundation, said meanwhile that “this trial will not find that we have right on our side,” and will thus deny the ex- dictator immunity.

Pinochet’s followers admitted that their aim of securing his return to London based on the immunity he supposedly enjoys as a former president and senator-for-life had fallen through. “We will have to argue his delicate physical and mental health,” said Cortés.

It would be up to British Home Secretary Jack Straw to decide to release the 83-year-old retired general on humanitarian grounds, said Chile’s acting foreign minister Mariano Fernández.

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