[News] Chilean Court Revokes Pinochet's Immunity From Prosecution

[News at freedomarchives.org]

May 29, 2004

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/29/international/americas/29chil.html?ex=1086408000&en=6150f2ecb0e354c6&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE


Chilean Court Revokes Pinochet's Immunity From Prosecution

By LARRY ROHTER

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UENOS AIRES, May 28 - An appeals court in Chile on Friday revoked the 
immunity from prosecution granted in 2002 to the country's former military 
dictator, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, reopening the possibility that he may yet 
be brought to trial for human rights abuses committed during the nearly 17 
years he was in power.

By a 14-9 margin, the judges rejected the arguments of General Pinochet's 
lawyers that he was incapable of facing such charges because he suffered 
from senile dementia. The verdict was so unexpected that one of the lawyers 
who filed the request early this month to strip the former dictator of 
immunity, Juan Subercaseaux, described it as "a miracle."

But the decision must now go to Chile's Supreme Court, which ruled in July 
2002 that General Pinochet, who also suffers from a heart condition and 
diabetes and has had at least three strokes, was both physically and 
mentally unfit to stand trial. That decision came after a panel of 
court-appointed doctors found what judges described as mild but 
"progressive and incurable dementia."

However, the court left open the possibility of reviewing the decision if 
there were signs that the former dictator's condition had changed. Around 
his 88th birthday last November, General Pinochet, ignoring the advice of 
several family members, gave a defiant interview to a Spanish-language 
television station in Miami that provoked accusations that his claims of 
dementia were a sham.

"Who am I supposed to ask for forgiveness?" he asked during the interview. 
"They are the ones who have to ask me for forgiveness, them, the Marxists."

Nearly 4,000 people are believed to have been killed by state security 
forces during his dictatorship, most of them in the first few months after 
the military coup that brought him to power on Sept. 11, 1973. Thousands 
more were jailed, tortured or forced into exile.

In the interview, General Pinochet, who has been seen frequenting cafes and 
restaurants in Santiago recently, also said that "everything that I did, I 
would do again, everything was thought through." He indirectly acknowledged 
some abuses, saying "during political struggles some people can't control 
themselves," but distanced himself personally from any wrongdoing by 
asserting: "I'm a good person. I feel like an angel."

As part of their evidence, human rights lawyers submitted a videotape of 
the interview to the Appeals Court. While it is known that the panel of 
judges watched the tape, their reaction is likely to remain unknown until 
the full text of their verdict is published sometime next month.

The court opinion on Friday is connected with efforts by an investigative 
judge in Chile to bring General Pinochet to trial on accusations over 
"Operation Condor," a clandestine assassination and kidnapping operation 
run by military intelligence agents of six South American countries in the 
1970's and early 1980's.

Ambrosio Rodríguez, a lawyer for General Pinochet, said he would appeal 
Friday's ruling, which he described as an aberration. "This verdict breaks 
with the doctrine of the Appeals Court itself and rides roughshod over an 
implementing sentence of the Supreme Court," he told reporters in Santiago, 
adding that he was confident the high court would "restore the rule of law."



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