Indictment and arrest of Augusto Pinochet
General Augusto Pinochet was indicted for human rights violations committed in his native Chile by Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzón in 1998. He was arrested in London six days later and held under house arrest for a year and a half before being released by the British government in 2000. Authorised to return to Chile, Pinochet was subsequently indicted by judge Juan Guzmán Tapia and charged with several crimes. He died in 2006 without having been convicted. His arrest in London made the front pages of newspapers worldwide; not only did it involve the head of the military dictatorship that ruled Chile between 1973 and 1990, it marked the first time judges had applied the principle of universal jurisdiction, declaring themselves competent to judge crimes committed in a country by former heads of state, despite the existence of local amnesty laws.
Pinochet led the 1973 coup, backed by a number of citizens, which deposed Socialist President Salvador Allende. His 17-year regime was notorious for many human rights violations, some of which were committed as part of Operation Condor, an illegal effort to suppress left-wing political opponents in Chile and abroad in coordination with foreign intelligence agencies. Pinochet was also accused of using his position to pursue personal enrichment through embezzlement of government funds, the illegal drug trade and illegal arms trade. The Rettig Report found that at least 2,279 people were conclusively murdered by the Chilean government for political reasons during Pinochet's regime, and the Valech Report found that at least 30,000 people were tortured by the government for political reasons.
Pinochet's attorneys, headed by Pablo Rodríguez Grez, argued that he was entitled to immunity from prosecution first as a former head of state, then under the 1978 amnesty law passed by the military junta. They also claimed that his alleged poor health made him unfit to stand trial. A succession of judgments by various Courts of Appeal, the Supreme Court, medical experts, etc., led to Pinochet's subsequent house arrest and release, before he died on 10 December 2006, just after having been again put under house arrest on 28 November 2006 in the Caravan of Death case.
At the time of his death in 2006, Pinochet had been implicated in over 300 criminal charges for many human rights violations, including the Caravan of Death case, Carlos Prats's assassination, Operation Condor, Operation Colombo, the Villa Grimaldi, Carmelo Soria, Calle Conferencia, Antonio Llidó and Eugenio Berrios cases, tax evasion and passport forgery.
Timeline
Arrest in London
In 1998, Pinochet, who at the time continued to wield considerable influence in Chile, travelled to the United Kingdom for medical treatment; allegations have been made that he was also there to negotiate arms contracts. While in London, he was arrested on 16 October 1998 under an international arrest warrant issued by judge Baltasar Garzón of Spain, before he was placed under house arrest: initially in the London Clinic where he had just undergone back surgery, later in a rented house. The charges included 194 counts of killings of Spanish citizens, the 1975 assassination of Spanish diplomat Carmelo Soria, in addition to one count of conspiracy to commit torture – allegations of abuses had been made numerous times before his arrest, including since the beginning of his rule, but had never been acted upon. Grappling with the conditions set by Chile's turbulent transition to democracy, the coalition government known as Concertación and headed by President Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle opposed his arrest, extradition to Spain, as well as trial.A hard-fought 16-month-long legal battle ensued in the House of Lords, then the highest court of the United Kingdom. Pinochet claimed immunity from prosecution as a former head of state under the State Immunity Act 1978. This was rejected by a majority of the Law Lords, who ruled that some international crimes, such as torture, did not grant a former head-of-state immunity. However, the judgement was set aside in a subsequent, unprecedented case on the basis that one of the judges involved was potentially biased due to his ties to Amnesty International, a human rights organization that had campaigned against Pinochet for decades and acted as an intervenor in the case. A third ruling in March 1999 confirmed the original verdict; this time, the Lords held that Pinochet could only be prosecuted for crimes committed after 1988, the year in which the United Kingdom implemented legislation ratifying the United Nations Convention Against Torture in the Criminal Justice Act 1988. This invalidated most, but not all, of the charges against Pinochet and gave the green light for his extradition to Spain to proceed.
In April 1999, former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and former US President George H. W. Bush called upon the British government to release Pinochet. They argued that Pinochet should be allowed to return to his homeland rather than be extradited to Spain. On the other hand, United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights, Mary Robinson, hailed the Lords' ruling, declaring that it was a clear endorsement that torture is an international crime subject to universal jurisdiction. Furthermore, Amnesty International and the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture demanded his extradition to Spain. In protest against Spain's action, Chile withdrew its ambassador from Madrid for a time. Thatcher sent Pinochet a bottle of single malt whisky during this time, with a note saying "Scotch is one British institution that will never let you down".
Meanwhile, questions began to emerge in the media about Pinochet's allegedly fragile health. After medical tests were conducted, Home Secretary Jack Straw ruled in January 2000 that the former dictator should not be extradited to Spain. This triggered protests from human rights NGOs; it led the Belgian government, along with six human rights groups, to file a complaint against Straw's decision before the International Court of Justice in January 2000. Belgium, as well as France and Switzerland, had deposed extradition requests in the wake of Spain's demand. Despite protests by legal and medical experts from several countries, Straw finally ruled, in March 2000, that Pinochet had to be set free and authorized his return to Chile. On 3 March 2000, Pinochet returned to Chile. His first act upon landing in Santiago de Chile's airport was to triumphantly stand up from his wheelchair to the acclaim of his supporters. The first person to greet him was his successor as head of the Chilean Armed Forces, General Ricardo Izurieta. President Ricardo Lagos, who had just been sworn into office on 11 March, said the retired general's televised arrival had damaged Chile's international reputation, while thousands held demonstrations against the ex-dictator.
Despite his release on grounds of ill health, the unprecedented detention of Pinochet in a foreign country for crimes against humanity committed in his own country, without a warrant or request for extradition from his own country, marked a watershed in international law. Some scholars consider it one of the most important events in legal history since the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals. Judge Garzón's case was largely founded on the principle of universal jurisdiction – that certain crimes are so egregious that they constitute crimes against humanity and can therefore be prosecuted in any court in the world. The British House of Lords ruled that Pinochet had no right to immunity from prosecution as a former head of state, and could be put on trial. In Spain, the Court of Appeal of the Audiencia Nacional affirmed Spanish jurisdiction over Argentine and Chilean cases, declaring that domestic amnesty laws could not bind the Spanish courts. Both for matters concerning the "Dirty War" in Argentina and for Chile, they characterized the crimes as genocides. However, both the Spanish and British rulings relied not on international law, but on domestic legislation: "They talked about universal jurisdiction, but grounded their decision in domestic statutory law."
The arrest of Pinochet has been characterized as a watershed moment in the international justice regime. According to Daniel Krcmaric, the arrest "marked the first time in the modern international system that a current or former head of state was arrested in a foreign country for international crimes."
Return to Chile
In March 2000, after Pinochet's return, the Chilean Congress approved a constitutional amendment creating the status of "ex-president", which granted Pinochet immunity from prosecution and guaranteed him a financial allowance. In exchange, it required him to resign his seat of senator-for-life. 111 legislators voted for; 29 against. Despite this political move, on 23 May 2000, the Court of Appeal of Santiago lifted Pinochet's parliamentary immunity concerning the Caravan of Death case. This was confirmed by the Supreme Court of Chile, which voted on 8 August 2000, by 14 votes against 6, to strip Pinochet of his parliamentary immunity. On 1 December 2000, judge Juan Guzmán Tapia indicted Pinochet for the kidnapping of 75 opponents in the Caravan of Death case – Guzmán advanced the charge of kidnapping on the grounds that the victims were officially "disappeared": even though they were most likely dead, the absence of their corpses made any charge of homicide difficult. Shortly after, on 11 December 2000, the ruling was suspended by the Court of Appeal of Santiago on medical grounds. In addition to the Caravan of Death, 177 other complaints were filed against Pinochet.In January 2001, medical experts stated that Pinochet was suffering from "mild dementia", which did not impede him from being prosecuted before the courts. Subsequently, judge Guzmán ordered his arrest in late January 2001. However, the judiciary procedures were again suspended on 9 July 2001 because of alleged health reasons. In July 2002, the Supreme Court dismissed Pinochet's indictment in the various cases on medical grounds. That same year, the prosecuting attorney Hugo Guttierez, who headed the Caravan of Death case, declared that "Our country has the degree of justice that the political transition permits us to have." Shortly after the verdict, Pinochet resigned from the Senate, thus benefiting from the 2000 constitutional amendment granting him immunity from prosecution. Thereafter, he lived a quiet life, rarely made public appearances and was notably absent from events marking the 30th anniversary of the coup on 11 September 2003.