[North-NV-Greens] Fwd: Dictator's name a byword for torture

[Paul Etxeberri]

>
>Dictator's name a byword for torture
>by Hugh O'Shaughnessy
>
>The Irish Times, Tue, Dec 14, 04
>http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2004/1214/4245286970FR14PINOCHETA 
>NA.html
>
>CHILE: Gen Augusto Pinochet, the 89-year-old former
>dictator of Chile, was put under house arrest in his
>luxurious residence on the foothills of the Andes
>overlooking Santiago shortly after midday yesterday.
>
>Explaining his action to the media, Judge Juan Guzm·n
>dismissed defence arguments by the former dictator's
>lawyers that Gen Pinochet was mentally incapable. He
>found him "mentally alert". The judge said that one of
>the elements which led him to the conclusion that the
>former dictator, who was president from 1973 to 1990,
>was compos mentis was a television interview he gave 13
>months ago to a station in Miami where he lucidly
>expounded his philosophy.
>
>Judge Guzm·n had interviewed Gen Pinochet for 25
>minutes at his home on September 25th before the
>session was ended when the former dictator started
>sighing and coughing strenuously. During that session,
>records of which were released yesterday, he was asked
>whether he had had knowledge of 24 assassinations. He
>replied, "I was president of the republic, and as
>president of the republic I was informed of national
>security, not of petty security matters."
>
>This is the second time Gen Pinochet has been formally
>accused of murder. The same judge indicted him in 2001
>for his "Caravan of Death" initiative, which was
>launched within a few weeks of Gen Pinochet's military
>putsch of September 11th, 1973, and which involved the
>assassination of selected supporters of the civilian
>government of the late President Salvador Allende, who
>died during the coup d'Ètat. Gen Pinochet sent military
>death squads in helicopters up and down the country
>summarily to liquidate them.
>
>The renewed house arrest comes at the end of some
>difficult months for the general. In mid-year a
>committee of the US Senate revealed the multi-million
>dollar fortunes of the Pinochet family held in accounts
>at the Riggs Bank in Washington and London. The funds,
>which are now estimated at some $300 million, were
>accumulated during the massive privatisations of state-
>owned companies in the insurance, mining and chemical
>businesses in the wake of 1973. The general's annual
>pay itself never rose beyond some $16,000.
>
>Other evidence has pointed to the general having taken
>profits from a cocaine marketing operation run with the
>Chilean army and Chilean arms dealers, various Middle
>Eastern businessmen and a former corporal in the US
>Marine Corps, Cpl Frankell Baramdyka. A trader in
>cocaine who appears to have been active in selling
>drugs for US officials in order to obtain funds for the
>Contra terrorists in Nicaragua, Cpl Baramdyka was
>subsequently extradited from Chile and jailed by a
>court in California.
>
>The Chilean judge's decision has revived memories of
>the clemency shown to Gen Pinochet in 2000 by Mr Jack
>Straw, then the British home secretary, when he let the
>former dictator avoid house arrest in England and
>extradition to Spain for health reasons.
>
>The last remnants of the facade of probity and
>righteousness that the former dictator and his many
>Chilean and foreign friends tried to maintain were
>swept away last month when a government commission
>under the chairmanship of Sergio Valech, a former
>auxiliary bishop of Santiago, confirmed the worst
>accounts of abuse which circulated in the 1970s during
>the first years of the Pinochet regime - the torture of
>heavily pregnant women, the violation of others by
>specially trained dogs, the torture of babies and
>children in front of their parents and the ejection of
>suspected opponents of Gen Pinochet from aircraft over
>the high Andes or the Pacific Ocean.
>
>Having stood by him for more than 25 years, the Chilean
>armed forces are rapidly distancing themselves from
>him, conscious that they are tarred with the actions
>which made the former dictator's name a byword for
>bestial behaviour.
>
>Hugh O'Shaughnessy is the author of Pinochet: the
>Politics of Torture
>
>© The Irish Times
>
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-- 
Paul Etxeberri

"Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow"   ---Chateaubriand