Court upholds bail for Pinochet in rights case

SANTIAGO, Chile - A court upheld bail for former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet today after seven weeks of house arrest in one human rights case, but stripped him of immunity from prosecution in another.

A three-judge panel of the Santiago Appeals Court affirmed an earlier ruling by Judge Victor Montiglio, who said Pinochet should be released from house arrest, and set bail at US$19,000 ($27,261.20).

Montiglio is investigating and prosecuting the case known as Operation Colombo, in which 119 leftists, many from an armed revolutionary group, disappeared in 1974 and 1975, near the beginning of Pinochet's 17-year rule.

Pinochet's regime is also accused of covering up the deaths with false news reports saying members of the Revolutionary Leftist Movement died in internal clashes.

Pinochet is charged with kidnapping nine Operation Colombo victims. The kidnapping charge is used in cases where people disappeared after being taken into custody and are presumed dead but whose bodies have never been found.

The full 23-member Santiago Appeals Court also stripped Pinochet of immunity -- a privilege of former presidents -- so that he can be charged with crimes related to two victims in the case known as the Caravan of Death.

It refers to a military mission, just after the Sept. 11, 1973 military coup that brought Pinochet to power, to execute dozens of opponents in cities in northern and southern Chile.

The Supreme Court threw out the Caravan of Death case in 2002, saying Pinochet was too ill to face charges, but a prosecuting judge now argues that ruling does not apply to two of the victims.

The courts decide on Pinochet's immunity from prosecution on a case-by-case basis.

Pinochet, 90, ran Chile from 1973-1990, an era in which an estimated 3,000 people died in political violence and some 28,000 people were tortured.

While many former military officers and secret police have been convicted of human rights crimes, Pinochet has yet to face trial because the Supreme Court has agreed with the defence that his mild dementia, caused by frequent mini-strokes related to diabetes, makes him too ill to defend himself.

An icon of the Cold War who says he is proud of purging his country of communism, Pinochet is now politically sidelined -- even loyal supporters abandoned him after he was charged last year with evading taxes on an estimated US$27 million hidden in off-shore bank accounts.

- REUTERS