A long, vain wait for justice

THERE was a sense of dej vu when the Pinochet case hit the headlines again last week. Following Jack Straw's decision to release the old former dictator from house arrest in England on health grounds last March, and the landmark Chilean Supreme Court decision to remove his immunity in July, another judge was trying to indict the retired general and senator on human rights charges.

This time, judge Juan Guzmn decided to order Pinochet's detention - again under house arrest - prior to new medical checks being carried out to determine his fitness to stand trial. Observers felt the judge was trying to move the case on quickly, fearing that political and military pressures to remove him from investigating over 180 lawsuits filed against the general would be successful.

A precedent had been set days earlier, at the end of November. Judge Correa, in charge of the extradition case presented by the Argentinian authorities in respect of the car bomb assassination of general Carlos Prats - who was Pinochet's predecessor - in Buenos Aires in 1974, was removed by the Supreme Court and posted to a meaningless bureaucratic job in the archives section.

Judge Guzmn has been delving into Pinochet's connection to human rights abuses during his 1973-1990 regime for two years. After the general's immunity was revoked, he has continued to pursue his man with dogged determination and a well-known workaholic approach, concentrating his efforts on the infamous "Caravan of Death" case.

On December 1, Guzmn decided the general's statements of innocence relating to all charges levelled at him by Spanish judge Baltasar Garzn could also be considered to be his official pre-committal statement to the Caravan of Death case. Accusations levelled at Pinochet include those of intellectual authorship in 57 counts of homicide and 18 kidnappings. The judge had upped the stakes. Pinochet's lawyers immediately appealed by submitting a habeas corpus writ, which was heard by the Appeals Court in Santiago last week. A decision is expected tomorrow.

The Caravan of Death - so called due to the itinerant nature of the mission and the macabre results it produced - is among the best- documented cases of Pinochet's direct intervention in human rights abuses after the 1973 coup. Just over two weeks after the military takeover, on September 30th, Pinochet gave orders for general Sergio Arellano Stark to act as his delegate and visit army garrisons up and down the country. He was to review the cases of supporters of deposed president Salvador Allende, many of whom were being held in military detention.

Closer examination indicates clearly that those garrisons visited were the ones where the army had taken a measured approach and avoided bloodshed. Despite the violence in the capital Santiago, the coastal metropolitan area of Valparaso and the major cities and towns in the extreme north and south, prisoners in the garrisons visited by Arellano had been treated fairly well. War tribunals had been set up to hear their cases, and each situation had remained calm.

Arellano, carrying a signed order from Pinochet which gave him total discretion to decide on cases affecting political prisoners, travelled in a Puma helicopter, accompanied by a chosen group of officers who had shown a particular ability to be tough.

All of them - with the exception of the flying crew, but including brigadier Pedro Espinoza, colonels Sergio Arredondo and Marcelo Moren and captain Armando Fernndez Larios - have now been indicted, along with Arellano, after serving many years in the secret police.

Arellano and his party travelled first towards the south of Santiago, making short stops in Curic, my home town, Talca, and Cauquenes. The Caravan's mission in Curic and Talca was only partly successful. The people whose cases they considered the most serious, including my own, were either not in custody or held somewhere other than the military barracks.

In Talca, the army commander's humane approach to the military repression of left-wing sympathisers resulted in his removal and transfer, while in Curic the local commander transferred me to Santiago in chains and under military escort alongside two members of Allende's presidential guard. I was saved by the intervention of the Catholic church, while the others were executed after torture. The link with the Caravan only came to light in 1999, when I submitted a signed affidavit. It is not part of the current case.

In Cauquenes, the Caravan started its real work by killing four young Socialist Party members, ages ranging from 22 to 29 years old, on October 4. Their bodies were buried in unmarked graves and were only recovered by their families after the return to democracy in 1990.

Having been to the south, the Caravan turned towards the northern cities of La Serena, Copiap, Antofa-gasta and Calama. The latter, the largest mining centre in Chile, is close to the Chuquicamata open- cast copper mine. A further 68 extrajudicial killings, most of them following horrific torture, were carried out before October 1973 was out. All the victims had already been under arrest and had either given themselves up or offered no resistance when arrested.

Journalist Patricia Verdugo Aguirre, a former president of the Metropolitan Council of the Journalists' Union, documented the Caravan Of Death in her 1989 book Los Zarpazos Del Puma (loosely translated as In The Claws Of The Puma). Verdugo, who managed to interview many of the soldiers who served in the garrisons visited by Arellano's party, as well as the victims' families and witnesses of their removal from detention, called the events surrounding the trip in an interview this week "the founding base of the military dictatorship in Chile".

Verdugo argues that without Arellano's mission it would have been possible for the army to hand over power after a relatively short period of time to a centre-right democratic government. The killings and the atmosphere of terror they created, Verdugo maintains, allowed Pinochet to reign over a brutal and bloody regime for 17 years.

So this case is not just another episode of military brutality under Pinochet. Rather it can be seen as the pivotal moment when Chilean soldiers, acting with malice and forethought and without fear of reprisals, knowingly and coldly murdered defenceless prisoners to set an example to the country. As such, judge Guzmn took on more than just general Pinochet, but the whole military and their right-wing supporters.

Yet Pinochet supporters and his legal team are full of confidence that the writ will be upheld and the case against the general put back for long enough to become irrelevant. They have good reason to feel this way. Firstly, the judge was censured in writing by the Supreme Court justices this week, who reprimanded him for having sent a letter to the President of the National Defence Council, Clara Szczaranski, lending her his support in the face of mounting criticism from the right and the military. The Council is a party in the Caravan of Death case. Secondly, the composition of the Appeals Court was changed at the last minute, replacing the ill judge Cisternas with a known right-wing conservative, judge Daz. Finally, political pressures led President Lagos to call a meeting of the National Security Council, involving the military chiefs, but only after the habeas corpus writ has been decided. One must admit that things look good for the general.

The first reactions from lawyers acting for and against Pinochet at the appeal hearing are predictably contradictory. While Carmen Hertz, the widow of one of the detainees killed by the Caravan, stated that "[Pinochet] was asked to tell the truth on October 4, 1999 in London, and he answered that he had no participation at all in the material facts. His answer shows clearly that he understood the questions, and that he claimed total innocence". Pablo Rodriguez, acting for the general, who was spat at and insulted by the victims' relatives on Thursday, reiterated that "there is no pre-committal statement, since Pinochet did not answer any of the 75 questions sent by judge Guzmn to London".

Most observers in Chile agree that either the Appeals or Supreme Courts will in the end uphold the Pinochet writ and set aside Guzmn's detention order. This would open up the way for a political settlement of the human rights issue, which is what all key players - the government, the opposition and the military - really want.

In all likelihood, General Pinochet will escape justice in terms of standing trial. The judgement of history, on the other hand, will be much more lasting and damaging. He will be remembered as an ambitious, ruthless and savage dictator who destroyed Chile's proud democratic tradition, leaving a legacy of repression, censorship and thousands of victims spread across the world.

The Santiago appeals court has said it will decide tomorrow whether to uphold an arrest order against Chile's former military ruler, General Augusto Pinochet. The order stems from the general's alleged involvement in murders and abductions, but has provoked fierce opposition from the heads of Chile's armed forces. Any subsequent appeal would then be heard by the Supreme Court.

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