SUNS  4334 Monday 30 November 1998



CHILE: THE LONG ARM OF THE LAW FROM LONDON TO LONDON STREET

Santiago, Nov 26 (IPS/Gustavo Gonzalez) -- London is a recurrent refrain for former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet, a name which will come back to haunt him as it did many of his victims.

For, while Pinochet was arrested in the London clinic, in London, Britain, London street, Santiago, was the address of one of the old dictator's detention and torture centres in operation from October 1973 - just a month after the coup.

Hence it seems symbolic that 25 years after the event, on October 16, 1998, Pinochet should be taken into custody in London, only to be told his diplomatic immunity was invalid this Wednesday - quite coincidentally, on his 83rd birthday.

The General had maintained control over the army until eight months ago, retaining his position as Commander in Chief of Chile's army. He retired from the post on March 10 only to be sworn in as senator for life the next day, under a constitutional norm he brought in himself.

Close associates of the former dictator said he sometimes considered retiring from public life, and even toyed with the idea of buying a house in London - his favourite city outside Chile.

His close friendship with Britain's former prime minister Margaret Thatcher and his links with British weapons producers meant London was an attractive spot for the old warhorse, and also a safe one.

In early October, Pinochet travelled to London invited by the Royal Ordinance company, travelling on an official passport granted by Chile's Eduardo Frei administration classing him as ambassador on a special mission.

The veteran general was troubled by worsening back pain whilst in the British capital, a vertebral hernia was diagnosed, and he was admitted to the London Clinic for surgery. Scotland Yard agents arrived at his bedside on Friday October 16 to arrest him.
Chile had been kept well informed of the lawsuit opened against Pinochet in Spain in 1997 and later taken over by Judge Baltasar Garzon, who was investigating charges of genocide and international
terrorism against the former dictatorships of Argentina (1976-1983) and Chile (1973-1990), and it was he who asked for the preventative detention of Pinochet from the British courts.

The judge has now called for Pinochet's extradition from Britain with the support of Spain's High Court and Council of Ministers - all ground breaking decisions.

In Santiago, the General's advisors are still being harangued for not advising him of the risks of travelling to Europe, and the government has also received a lashing, for offering him a dud diplomatic passport.

Pinochet could now be in London for some time, not as a quiet old age pensioner, but as the key figure in a tortuous extradition process which could last up to a year.

The Frei administration has started playing its last cards in an effort to defend what they see as the principles of diplomatic immunity and the territoriality of justice, claiming Spain has no right to try
Pinochet.

Pinochet's replacement as commander in chief of the army, General Ricardo Izurieta, has remained moderate despite pressure from the hardline retired generals and the far-right, and is calling for
repatriation on humanitarian grounds considering other legal channels appear unreliable.

After a lengthy meeting Wednesday night, the military leadership officially gave its "unrestricted support" to Frei's efforts to block Pinochet's extradition to Spain.

Foreign minister Insulza, however, still thinks a legal solution is possible, as does Chile's Chief Supreme Court Judge Roberto Davila. Insulza will travel to London Friday to lobby the British government and courts.

In 1973, Gabriel Garcia Marquez imposed a literary strike expressing his opposition to the Coup in Chile, only to lift it in 1980, arguing his stoppage merely encouraged the prolongation of the regime.

Today in Chile, paraphrasing two of the 1982 Nobel Literature Prizewinner's books, it is unclear just how the General will get out of this Labyrinth in what is obviously the Autumn of this Patriarch.