Chile Appears Set To Investigate, Not Prosecute Pinochet

by Gustavo Gonzalez

(IPS) SANTIAGO -- Chile's Supreme Court dropped charges against former dictator Augusto Pinochet in one human rights case Thursday, just one day after it stripped him of immunity in another case.

The controversial Supreme Court rulings came amid protests from leftist factions and human rights groups accusing the government of President Ricardo Lagos of trying to get the ex-dictator and other suspected human rights violators off the hook.

Pinochet, 89, ruled the country with an iron fist from 1973 to 1990.

The government, meanwhile, said allegations made Wednesday by The Guardian newspaper should be studied. According to the British publication, a defense contractor paid nearly $2 million in commissions to Pinochet, who is also being investigated for keeping secret bank accounts abroad, in what is known as the "Riggs case."

"This is a somewhat complicated moment," Gabriela Zuniga, head of communications in the Group of Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared (AFDD), told IPS after the Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that Pinochet is mentally unfit to stand trial on nine murders and one kidnapping.

The crimes were committed as part of Operation Condor, a coordinated plan among the military dictatorships that ruled Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay in the 1970s and 1980s to track down, kidnap, murder and "disappear" leftists and other dissidents.

"We are coming to an understanding that the decisions to strip Pinochet of immunity mean nothing," said Zuniga. "They are a device used to save the honor of the Supreme Court by allowing the ex-dictator to be investigated, but he is not being prosecuted. Prosecutions would be something real, but Pinochet is let off the hook before things go that far, based on his unreal mental illness."

On the very same day, June 7, the Santiago appeals court stripped Pinochet of the immunity he enjoys as a former president to allow him to be investigated in the Riggs case, while dropping charges against him in the Operation Condor case -- the decision that was confirmed by the Supreme Court Thursday.

Retired Gen. Manuel Contreras, who headed the dictatorship's secret police between 1973 and 1978, publicly stated this year that he organized Operation Condor in 1975 on Pinochet's orders.

The case in which the Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a July 6 appeals court ruling to remove Pinochet's immunity involved the killings of 119 Chileans in July 1975 under Operation Colombo. A media campaign staged by the secret police of Argentina, Brazil and Chile made the deaths look like the result of infighting between guerrilla groups.

The Supreme Court first invoked Pinochet's "senility" in July 2002, when it ruled that he was unfit to stand trial in a case involving 57 murders and 18 kidnappings committed by the "caravan of death," a special army mission carried out in October 1973.

The former de facto ruler's supposed senility was the basis for the British government's decision to allow Pinochet to return to Chile in March 2000.

He had been held under house arrest in London since he was arrested Oct. 16, 1998, on the basis of an international warrant issued by Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon, who wanted to have him extradited to Spain to try him for human rights crimes.

On March 24, the Supreme Court also dropped charges against Pinochet for the 1974 murders of his predecessor as army chief, Gen. Carlos Prats, and his wife Sofia Cuthbert, who were killed by the Chilean secret police in Buenos Aires.

Zuniga said Pinochet's "senility" is being used as a stratagem by the Supreme Court magistrates to exonerate the elderly former dictator. She pointed out that he has given fully coherent interviews to the media and has continued to handle bank accounts abroad.

The report by The Guardian says Pinochet received payments from the British defense firm BAE Systems PLC and managed accounts up until 2004, "which someone who is mentally incompetent could not do," said the activist.

Interior Minister Francisco Vidal, who is standing in for Lagos while the president is at the UN summit in New York, said Thursday that the State Defense Council should evaluate whether the payments from BAE should be investigated as part of the Riggs case.

Pinochet, his wife Lucia Hiriart and their son Marco Antonio are estimated to have accumulated as much as $20 million in secret accounts in the Riggs Bank in Washington, D.C, and other financial institutions in the United States, Panama, the Cayman Islands and other countries.

The investigation of the secret accounts is being handled by Judge Sergio Munoz of the Santiago appeals court, who was proposed by Lagos to fill a vacant seat on the Supreme Court.

Human rights lawyer Eduardo Contreras, a plaintiff attorney in several cases against Pinochet, said he had serious suspicions that Lagos's proposal to name Munoz to the Supreme Court was "a maneuver by La Moneda (the presidential palace) to put an end to the Riggs case."

Contreras described the decision to drop charges against Pinochet in the Operation Condor case as "insulting."

He also said that both the right-wing opposition and the government have been attempting to come up with initiatives that would grant impunity to perpetrators of human rights crimes by means of legal loopholes, as well as a bill that would offer a partial pardon to officers currently serving time.

Both Vidal and Minister Secretary General of the Government Osvaldo Puccio denied that there were any political intentions behind the proposal to appoint Munoz to the Supreme Court.

The bill introduced by right-wing senators Hernan Larrain and Jorge Arancibia, which would commute to parole the sentences of non-commissioned officers and other subordinate members of the armed forces who had served 10 years in prison or were older than 70, prompted a protest Wednesday in front of La Moneda, which was harshly cracked down on by the police.

Tomas Hirsch, who is running in the Dec. 11 presidential elections as the candidate for the Juntos Podemos Mas alliance, which links the small Communist and Humanist parties, was arrested along with other demonstrators and held for two hours.

The heads of the AFDD met Wednesday with Minister Vidal to express their concern over "the signals of impunity" that are being sent out and have been reinforced by the Supreme Court's continued back-and-forth on Pinochet, said Zuniga.

"Although we have always looked to the judiciary for justice, it has been very adverse to us," said the activist. He said the situation would be different if the Supreme Court allowed one of the trials against Pinochet to reach a conclusion, and, cited reasons of health or age to absolve him.