'Disappeared' wait in court for Pinochet

SANTIAGO - The Chilean Supreme Court formally stripped General Augusto Pinochet of his immunity from prosecution by a vote of 14-6, after keeping its landmark verdict secret for a week.

Security measures in the capital, Santiago, were bolstered in anticipation of widespread celebrations and protests.

The ailing ex-dictator, aged 84, will now face independent medical tests to confirm his mental capacity to stand trial for his role in the disappearance of 19 leftists during the 1973 political executions known as the "Death Caravans." But lawyers cautioned that the tyrant who ruled Chile with an iron hand for 17 years was unlikely to spend time in jail for the thousands of human rights atrocities which allegedly occurred during his regime.

Eduardo Contreras, a communist lawyer who two years ago filed the first of 157 criminal complaints against the silver-haired great-grandfather, said that Chilean legal procedures "could take up to eight years." The Supreme Court justices overturned Pinochet's appeal against an earlier court decision, ruling that the tactics used by his security forces - plus his own alleged involvement in the death and disappearance of more than 3000 dissidents - constituted an abuse of power that warranted revoking his immunity.

The verdict was less close than last week's media leaks had indicated, with three additional judges signing the historic document that lifts legal protection for the right-wing general who purged Chile of its leftist movement through state-sponsored murder. There can be no appeal.

Outside the Supreme Court building in Santiago, hundreds of jubilant human rights activists with the photos of missing relatives pinned on their chests were kept separated by a metal crowd control fence from despondent Pinochet supporters. Stunned Pro-Pinochet demonstrators waved flags and mournfully sang the national anthem. President Ricardo Lagos called for calm, urging all elements of Chilean society to respect the verdict.

A dozen years ago, Lagos, a socialist, had been the first politician who dared point a finger and call Pinochet a liar: his accusation was memorably broadcast on live television. The former Moscow envoy for Salvador Allende had been briefly arrested after a left-wing assassination plot against the dictator was thwarted. But after taking office in March, Lagos vowed to let the Judiciary run its course and not press for a witch-hunt. In modern Chile, the President said, the General's fate is "an irrelevancy."

This Supreme Court decision was unimaginable just five months before, when the world assumed that the powerful Pinochet, who had been arrested in Britain, was allowed to dodge a torture trial in Spain to retire with impunity in his homeland.

- INDEPENDENT