In a landmark decision for human-rights cases, Britain’s Law Lords ruled Wednesday that former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet does not enjoy immunity from trial for killings, torture and hostage-taking that occurred during his 16-year rule.
The decision, on a 3-2 vote by the five Law Lords who heard the case, means that Home Secretary Jack Straw will now have to decide Pinochet’s fate.
Straw has until next Wednesday to rule whether Pinochet will be extradited to Spain to answer charges there, will be tried in Britain or will be released on “humanitarian grounds” as the Chilean government has demanded.
Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a strong Pinochet supporter, said Wednesday that he is “old, frail and sick and on compassionate grounds alone should be allowed to return to Chile.”
If Straw rules in favor of extradition, legal proceedings that will follow in Britain could take years. If he favors Pinochet, the former general, who observed his 83rd birthday Wednesday, will be free to go back to safety in Chile.
Chilean President Eduardo Frei, in a nationwide broadcast, promised to fight the Law Lords’ decision and said he would send messages to London and Madrid on Thursday contesting the ruling. He said Foreign Minister Jose Miguel Insulza would fly to London on Thursday to state the government’s case.
Hernan Larrain, a Pinochet friend and right-wing Chilean legislator who visited him after the ruling, said the former dictator was calm and composed and determined to fight extradition. “He said it is not easy to beat him,” Larrain said.
The decision by the Law Lords, acting as Britain’s highest court, was delivered in a five-minute sitting of the House of Lords and was greeted with cheering and applause by anti-Pinochet demonstrators on the streets of London, most of them Chileans. They hugged one another, wept with joy and drank champagne.
But in the Chilean capital Santiago, Pinochet supporters sobbed and angrily attacked journalists gathered at the Pinochet Foundation, while elsewhere human-rights activists and families of an estimated 3,000 people who were killed or “disappeared” under his rule shared embraces and tears of joy.
The Pinochet supporters focused much of their anger on members of a BBC television crew, who were pushed to the ground, kicked and punched. The general’s son, Augusto Pinochet Jr., shouted: “On his birthday he has been treated with sadism and cruelty in a way that no human being should be treated.”
Human-rights groups in many countries welcomed the ruling and said it would serve as a warning to other dictators.
“It’s a wake-up call to tyrants around the world who think about embarking on mass murder,” said Reed Brody of the New York-based Human Rights Watch in a statement in London. “They might not get away with it the next time.”
Pinochet, who came to London for medical treatment for a back ailment, was arrested Oct. 16 at the request of Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon, who wants to try him for crimes against Spanish citizens. Since then, authorities in France and Switzerland have applied for his extradition, and Belgium joined them Wednesday.
A three-judge London High Court ruled unanimously on Oct. 28 that Pinochet was immune from arrest in either civil or criminal cases for crimes committed while he was a head of state. But it ordered Pinochet held, at a clinic in London, pending an appeal hearing before the Law Lords.
Pinochet had expressed confidence he would be freed, and a Chilean air force plane has waited at a Royal Air Force base near London for nearly a month to take him home if that was the verdict.
But three of the Law Lords– South African-born Lords Steyn and Hoffmann and Lord Nicholls–ruled that the serious crimes imputed to Pinochet were not carried out as part of the normal functions as head of state, and by their nature do not permit him to enjoy immunity.
The justices concurred that, had Pinochet still been head of state, he would have had immunity. But they said this did not apply to a former head of state.
“International law has made plain that certain types of conduct, including torture and hostage-taking, are not acceptable conduct on the part of anyone,” Lord Nicholls wrote. “The contrary conclusion would make a mockery of international law.”
The dissenting rulings came from Lord Slynn and Lord Lloyd. Slynn acknowledged in his written opinion that states have been moving toward recognizing some crimes as not being covered by claims of state immunity, but he said the development of international law in that direction was still “embryonic.”
Slynn and Lloyd spoke first, followed by Nicholls and Steyn. When Hoffmann pronounced the deciding vote, there was a huge gasp of surprise from the visitors’ and media galleries.
Across the street, Luis Rigo Vasquez, 46, a Chilean exile living in London, could not hold back the tears as those around him celebrated.
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Vasquez, a teacher, said he spent two years in a Pinochet prison, was tortured while his family was denied all knowledge of his whereabouts, and many of his friends were killed. “I am relieved,” he said. “But I am not surprised. I had faith from the very beginning. I knew something positive was going to come out of this. Justice has been made.”
He said many others who served under Pinochet should be tried as well. Friends came up to embrace him, and Vasquez said: “We are going to have the longest celebration you ever saw. We want to congratulate everyone who made this possible.”
Pedro Montiel, 42, a Chilean research scientist who also lives in London, said he was imprisoned from 1975 to 1979 by the regime.
“The new Chilean democracy has been portrayed as a perfect transition, but now Britain has done Chile a favor, in the sense that this decision will help complete the transition to democracy,” he said. “Britain has done a favor to the whole world. I know now my small children have a chance of living in a better world, a world in which no dictator and no war criminal can be given immunity.”
This mood was shared by victims’ families in Santiago, Chile. Viviana Diaz, the head of Families of the Disappeared, said: “We are enormously moved and happy. This is a victory for our families but for humanity also.”
Members of her organization had kept an all-night candlelight vigil at their office.
“We have to reconstruct our national life based on truth and justice,” said Ricardo Nunez, head of Chile’s Socialist Party. He urged government officials to “create an environment to make this possible and heal injuries.”
But the stunned Pinochet supporters, who had expected the general’s return and planned a triumphant party, said they felt humiliated.
“This is the biggest aggression Chilean sovereignty has ever suffered. This is not justice,” said Alberto Espina, head of the right-wing party National Renovation.
Retired Gen. Luis Cortes, head of the Pinochet Foundation, said British judges “have given support to the people who want to hate” and had polarized opinion in Chile.
Most Chileans stayed home to watch live television reports from London. With tensions running high, authorities banned street protests and vigils, but right-wing leaders predicted chaos anyway.
“I don’t think this country will be calm,” said Hernan Guloff, executive secretary of the Pinochet Foundation. “We can’t control the people.”
Polls indicate Pinochet enjoys the support of about one-third of Chileans, thankful for his free-market economic reforms that have made Chile the envy of Latin America.
Chilean exiles living in Chicago were joyous after Wednesday’s ruling.
“This is an important victory for the victims, families, survivors and for all of Chile,” said Mario Venegas, who was exiled from Chile in 1976 and now lives in Chicago’s West Rogers Park neighborhood.
Venegas, coordinator of a Chicago group called the Permanent Committee for Chile, said he hopes this court ruling will pave the way for the prosecution of other military officials.
“This opens the door to a process for justice not only in Latin America, but in Bosnia, South Africa and all the countries where there have been human-rights violations,” said Venegas, 50, who said he was tortured in the infamous Villa Grimaldi.
Aurora Cano, who also was tortured in the Villa Grimaldi, said she was hopeful Pinochet would be tried.
“It’s a moral triumph,” said Cano, 46, who lives in Rogers Park. “I hope this is the beginning of what will be justice for an assassin of humanity.”
Chicago resident Francisca Gabler, 21, whose father worked in the Allende government, said this has been an emotional outcome.
“We just hope this means there is a chance for justice,” said Gabler, who was born in Colombia, where her parents fled after they were exiled from Chile.
In London, Christopher Hall of Amnesty International said his organization was pleased with the Law Lords’ decision but was at the same time troubled by their finding that, if Pinochet had still been head of state, he would have been immune from prosecution. “I hope that will not be followed by any country in the world,” he said.
Brody of Human Rights Watch said Chile was using “commercial blackmail” to try to obtain Pinochet’s release. He said the U.S. government has been “strangely silent” on the case, despite the fact that two U.S. citizens were killed in Chile under Pinochet’s rule and Chilean secret police organized a bombing in Washington that killed two people, one of them an American.
He urged the U.S. government to back a trial for Pinochet and to release classified documents related to the Washington bombing. In Washington, National Security Council spokesman David Leavy said the government was studying legal implications of the ruling and considering a request for Pinochet’s extradition to answer charges in the bombing deaths.
Sherman Carroll, of the London-based Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, said the Lords had sent a signal that “the world is no longer safe for despots. There is no safe place to hide.”
He said Pinochet’s victims seek justice, not revenge, and “there can be no healing to the body politic without this justice.”
In the French National Assembly in Paris, members applauded when the ruling was announced. President Jacques Chirac said: “It is not acceptable that crimes could remain unpunished. Therefore let justice be done.” Prime Minister Lionel Jospin said, “This is a surprise, a joy, bad news for dictators.”
In Madrid, Isabel Allende, daughter of former Chilean President Salvador Allende, who died during the U.S.-backed coup in 1973 that brought Pinochet to power, hailed the ruling as a “marvelous victory” for the dictator’s victims. She said it showed the world’s dictators that they are not above the law.
United Nations Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson said in Geneva that the ruling would “hearten human-rights defenders around the world.”