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Around the World

Court upholds Pinochet arrest

The former Chilean dictator now faces only three of 32 counts for crimes allegedly committed during his 1973-90 regime: torture, conspiracy to torture and conspiracy to murder.

In a 6 to 1 decision, the House of Lords dismissed the remaining 29 counts in a Spanish warrant seeking his extradition, saying he could not be held accountable for acts of torture committed before 1988, when Britain signed a law making it an international crime.

Pinochet must remain in Britain under police guard while Spain seeks his extradition on the remaining counts. But the court said Home Secretary Jack Straw should reconsider whether to allow the extradition process to go forward in light of the greatly reduced case.

"The basis of this case has now changed and now there is really not much left," said Saouise Delahunty, an extradition expert with the London law firm of Peters and Peters, which is not connected with the case.

In Chile, a close associate of Pinochet, retired Gen. Luis Cortes, said the former dictator "is very happy because this ruling has made justice."

After speaking with Pinochet by phone, Cortes said, "He now has no doubts whatsoever that he will come back home."

The ruling marked the first time a national court has denied immunity to a foreign head of state accused of an international crime.

Legal experts said it should put heads of state on notice that they could be at risk when they leave power - and when they leave their own countries.

Pinochet was arrested in London Oct. 16 on the Spanish warrant, which alleged abuses committed by his secret police after the bloody 1973 coup in which he toppled Chile's elected Marxist president, Salvador Allende.

In his decision, Lord Justice Nicholas Phillips wrote that if Pinochet was still in office, "he and Chile would be in a position to complain that the entire extradition process was a violation of the duties owed under international law to a person of his status."

But, Phillips said, Britain has no legal obligation now Pinochet is no longer head of state.

Lord Chief Justice Nicolas Browne-Wilkinson wrote that "there is no real dispute that during the period of the Senator Pinochet regime, appalling acts of barbarism were committed in Chile and elsewhere in the world."

However, he agreed with his colleagues that torture did not become an extraditable offense in Britain until the country signed the torture convention in September 1988.

The bulk of Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzon's case consisted of allegations well before that time, leaving only a single charge of torture against a Chilean teenager dating from 1989 and numerous acts of conspiracy to torture.

The judges also denied Pinochet immunity on a count contending he conspired to murder a Chilean senator in 1976, since the alleged act took place in Spain. Britain has always recognized murder as an extraditable offense.

Immediately after the ruling, Pinochet's lawyers went to the High Court to file an appeal of Straw's December decision to allow the extradition request to continue. The court said the appeal would be considered Monday.

The general's supporters were jubilant that the case was so drastically reduced.

But his opponents were just as thrilled that the case still can go forward, and that the general must remain confined in the rented mansion west of London where he has resided under police guard for months.

"The most important thing is that Pinochet has to be discredited and that gives a message to all the dictators around the world that they cannot carry on killing innocent people," said Mario Alcayaga, who fled Chile in 1974 and was celebrating near the mansion.

Reed Brody of the New York-based Human Rights Watch, which campaigned to put Pinochet on trial, was positive about the prospects for the extradition despite the dismissal of most counts in the warrant.

"I think you have to remember that most people get extradited on one or two counts - not dozens," he said.

The Spanish government, which is wary of damaging ties with Chile and reluctantly passed on to Britain the formal extradition request by Garzon, said only that it respected the decision by the Lords.

Garzon said he was studying the ruling and offered no immediate comment.

An official Chilean report says 3,197 people were killed or disappeared at the hands of Pinochet's secret police during his 17-year rule.

England's High Court initially threw out his arrest in October, but Spanish prosecutors appealed the case to the House of Lords.

A five-judge panel ruled in November that Pinochet was not entitled to immunity but, in a move deeply embarrassing to Britain's legal system, that ruling was overturned after the discovery that one of the judges voting against the general had close ties to Amnesty International, a key player in the campaign to put him on trial.

Paraguay begins impeachment trial

Trying to defuse a fast-moving crisis, Cubas announced yesterday that Oviedo had surrendered earlier in the day to the presidential guard, capitulating after three months of defiance to a Supreme Court order that he serve a 10-year sentence for attempting a military coup in 1996.

But critics dismissed the move as an empty gesture because Oviedo promptly declared that he was not under arrest, merely consulting on his legal situation. The Senate pressed forward with impeachment proceedings, ordering Cubas to respond to charges of abuse of authority by today.

Although Paraguay remained isolated because of a border shutdown that authorities imposed to aid the hunt for the killers, the repercussions of the assassination were felt far beyond the confines of this landlocked nation of 5 million. Paraguay's slide into violence is another sign of spreading troubles in Latin America, according to regional leaders and commentators.

The first assassination in modern Paraguayan history came as nations including Brazil and Ecuador are struggling with crippling economic problems. The enduring power of militaristic, authoritarian leaders in Venezuela, Peru, Chile and other nations fuels concern about the health of democracy in Latin America. And Colombia and Mexico offer only the most extreme examples of the intertwined and region wide menace of drugs, corruption and murderous organized crime.

"The 10 gunshots that ended the life of Luis Maria Argana were the gravest, but not the only, warning about regional political stability," wrote J.M. Pasquini Duran of Argentina's Pagina 12 newspaper.

The sense of a region adrift has gathered force recently. While President Clinton and other leaders hailed the advances of democracy in the Americas at last year's hemispheric summit in Chile, U.S. policy-makers more quietly said they worry that the lack of strong institutions puts some nations at risk of sliding backward both politically and economically.

In some ways, Paraguay is symptomatic of Washington's top concerns.

The State Department recently gave Paraguay a failing grade on its anti-drug performance, citing the dominance of criminal mafias that have turned the nation, especially the lawless border with Argentina and Brazil, into a haven for smuggling, money laundering and even international terrorists.

Oviedo is a product of a military hierarchy that enriched itself on those criminal industries. Ever since his attempted coup, U.S. diplomats have warned that his rise endangers a democracy that was reinstated less than a decade ago.

In a television interview, the gravelly voiced ex-general denied that he is the power behind the throne of Cubas, who ordered Oviedo's release from prison days after taking office last year. Asked about widespread accusations that he was behind the assassination of Argana, he insisted that he had done no wrong.

Paraguayan newspapers yesterday quoted a close friend of Argana who asserted that he had learned in advance of a plot against the vice president and alleged that Brazilian hit men from a border drug cartel were hired to do the job. But there have been no arrests nor any statements by authorities confirming those allegations.

Yesterday, Argana's funeral was held in the crowded patio of ruling party headquarters. At one point during the impassioned ceremony, mourners opened the coffin and wrapped the body in the party's flag.

Pro-Argana forces dominate the Senate, making a vote to impeach the president likely to succeed after a process that could take at least a week.

03-25-99