Socialist
12-11-2006, 08:34 AM
Augusto Pinochet's death ends calls for trial in Chile
BY EDUARDO GALLARDO
ASSOCIATED PRESS
11 December 2006
Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, 91, died Sunday. Dissidents were tortured and killed during his rule from 1973-90.
SANTIAGO, Chile -- Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who terrorized opponents for 17 years after taking power in a bloody coup, died Sunday, putting an end to a decade of intensifying efforts to bring him to trial for human rights abuses blamed on his regime. He was 91.
Supporters saw Pinochet as a Cold War hero for overthrowing democratically elected President Salvador Allende at a time the United States was working to destabilize Allende's Marxist government.
But the world soon reacted in horror as Santiago's main soccer stadium filled up with political prisoners to be tortured, shot, made to disappear or forced into exile.
Pinochet's dictatorship laid the groundwork for South America's most stable economy but his crackdown on dissent left a lasting legacy: His name has become a byword for his government's terror, in many cases secretly supported by the United States, that retarded democratic change across the hemisphere.
"This criminal has departed without ever being sentenced for all the acts he was responsible for during his dictatorship," said Hugo Gutierrez, a human rights lawyer involved in several lawsuits against Pinochet.
Chile's government says at least 3,197 people were killed for political reasons during Pinochet's rule. But courts let the aging general escape hundreds of criminal complaints as his health declined.
He died at the Santiago Military Hospital, a week after having a heart attack.
Allende, who mistakenly thought Pinochet would defend constitutional rule, had appointed him army commander 19 days before the coup.
The CIA worked for months to destabilize the Allende government, including financing a truckers strike that paralyzed the delivery of goods across Chile. But the U.S. government denied having anything to do with the coup itself.
Soon after Pinochet's seizure of power, soldiers carried out mass arrests of leftists. Tanks rumbled through the streets of the capital, and many people were herded into the National Stadium, which became a torture and detention center. Other leftists were rounded up by death squads, and the "Caravan of Death" to Chile's forbidding Atacama desert left victims buried in unmarked mass graves.
Pinochet disbanded Congress, banned political activity and crushed dissent. In addition to the dead, more than 1,000 victims remain unaccounted for. Thousands more were arrested, tortured and forced into exile.
Pinochet defended his rule as a crusade to build a society free of communism."I see myself as a good angel," he told a Miami Spanish-language TV station in 2004.
When investigators uncovered coffins stuffed with two bodies each after the coup, he dismissed it as a "a good cemetery space-saving measure."
Copyright © 2006 Detroit Free Press Inc.
BY EDUARDO GALLARDO
ASSOCIATED PRESS
11 December 2006
Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, 91, died Sunday. Dissidents were tortured and killed during his rule from 1973-90.
SANTIAGO, Chile -- Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who terrorized opponents for 17 years after taking power in a bloody coup, died Sunday, putting an end to a decade of intensifying efforts to bring him to trial for human rights abuses blamed on his regime. He was 91.
Supporters saw Pinochet as a Cold War hero for overthrowing democratically elected President Salvador Allende at a time the United States was working to destabilize Allende's Marxist government.
But the world soon reacted in horror as Santiago's main soccer stadium filled up with political prisoners to be tortured, shot, made to disappear or forced into exile.
Pinochet's dictatorship laid the groundwork for South America's most stable economy but his crackdown on dissent left a lasting legacy: His name has become a byword for his government's terror, in many cases secretly supported by the United States, that retarded democratic change across the hemisphere.
"This criminal has departed without ever being sentenced for all the acts he was responsible for during his dictatorship," said Hugo Gutierrez, a human rights lawyer involved in several lawsuits against Pinochet.
Chile's government says at least 3,197 people were killed for political reasons during Pinochet's rule. But courts let the aging general escape hundreds of criminal complaints as his health declined.
He died at the Santiago Military Hospital, a week after having a heart attack.
Allende, who mistakenly thought Pinochet would defend constitutional rule, had appointed him army commander 19 days before the coup.
The CIA worked for months to destabilize the Allende government, including financing a truckers strike that paralyzed the delivery of goods across Chile. But the U.S. government denied having anything to do with the coup itself.
Soon after Pinochet's seizure of power, soldiers carried out mass arrests of leftists. Tanks rumbled through the streets of the capital, and many people were herded into the National Stadium, which became a torture and detention center. Other leftists were rounded up by death squads, and the "Caravan of Death" to Chile's forbidding Atacama desert left victims buried in unmarked mass graves.
Pinochet disbanded Congress, banned political activity and crushed dissent. In addition to the dead, more than 1,000 victims remain unaccounted for. Thousands more were arrested, tortured and forced into exile.
Pinochet defended his rule as a crusade to build a society free of communism."I see myself as a good angel," he told a Miami Spanish-language TV station in 2004.
When investigators uncovered coffins stuffed with two bodies each after the coup, he dismissed it as a "a good cemetery space-saving measure."
Copyright © 2006 Detroit Free Press Inc.