CHILE: The extensive legal case being brought against Gen Augusto Pinochet took a significant step forward yesterday when the judge leading the inquiry into his military rule placed him under house arrest and charged him with killing and kidnapping opponents to his regime.
Judge Juan Guzman also confirmed that he would not accept ill-health as grounds for delaying a trial of the 89-year-old former Chilean leader.
"Gen Pinochet is declared mentally fit to stand trial in Chile," said Judge Guzman, who has accused Gen Pinochet of playing a role in the murder of one and the kidnapping of nine others during Operation Condor, an intelligence-sharing scheme by five South American dictatorships to execute and disappear hundreds of left-wing activists in the 1970s. Court documents claim Operation Condor was largely organised by secret police working under Gen Pinochet.
"This is a historic and transcendental ruling for all the families of the victims, and all the democrats in our country," said Ms Vivianna Diaz, spokeswoman for the Families of the Detained and Disappeared.
Mr Pablo Rodriguez Grez, a lawyer for Gen Pinochet, immediately appealed, saying Gen Pinochet was in no condition to defend himself.
Yesterday's move reverses earlier court decisions which determined that a series of minor strokes had left the former dictator mentally incapacitated and unable to stand trial. "It was an easy decision," said Judge Guzman, who told reporters that Gen Pinochet demonstrated "extraordinary subtlety" and mental agility during a 2003 interview given to a Miami TV station.
That interview, which Gen Pinochet called "the last interview I will give in my life", showed an aged but coherent leader describing his place in history.
"I harbour no hatred or rancour. I am good, I feel like an angel," he told interviewer Maria Elvira Salazar. - (Guardian Service)