CHILE: COURT BEGINS PROCESS TO STRIP FORMER PRESIDENT AUGUSTO PINOCHET OF IMMUNITY FROM TESTIFYING IN INVESTIGATION INTO KILLING OF HIS PREDECESSOR AS ARMED FORCES CHIEF

Record ID: 640500

  • Title: CHILE: COURT BEGINS PROCESS TO STRIP FORMER PRESIDENT AUGUSTO PINOCHET OF IMMUNITY FROM TESTIFYING IN INVESTIGATION INTO KILLING OF HIS PREDECESSOR AS ARMED FORCES CHIEF
  • Date: 15th August 2002
  • Summary: SLATE INFORMATION
  • Embargoed: 30th August 2002 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: SANTIAGO AND IQUIQUE, CHILE
  • Country: Chile
  • Topics: Legal System,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA2F60ULKKYSX0RJBB77Y2L9QO7
  • Story Text: A Chilean court has begun a process to strip former President Augusto Pinochet of his immunity so he can be summoned to testify in an Argentine investigation of the killing of his predecessor as armed forces chief, occurred in Buenos Aires 28 years ago.
    A Chilean court accepted a request from an Argentine judge to have former President Augusto Pinochet testify in the investigation of the killing of general Carlos Prat and his wife, occurred in Buenos Aires in 1974.
    The acceptance of the Argentine request formally launches a process to strip the former dictator, 86, of his immunity as former president and former senator for life in yet another effort to force him to respond in court to accusations for alleged crimes committed while he ruled Chile.
    Prat was Chile's armed forces boss when Pinochet overthrew President Salvador Allende in a bloody coup in September of 1973. Prat and his wife fled to neighbouring Argentina, where they where eventually assassinated in 1979.
    Argentine judge Maria Servini wants Pinochet to testify in her court room for his alleged involvement in the killing of the Prats process can take months and lead nowhere, but this is the first time in Chile's political history that a tribunal starts a process such as this at the request of a foreign court.
    In August of 2000, the controversial general was stripped of his immunity in a process known as "The Death Caravan,"
    that ties him to the killing of 75 members of the opposition while he was president. The killings were carried out by a platoon just days after he deposed Salvador Allende.
    Nevertheless, the Chilean justice determined this year that Pinochet should face a separate process for each one of the charges pending against him.
    The Argentine request will be decided by the Santiago High Tribunal. If Pinochet looses this process, he would be required to answer to the Argentine judge questions.
    Judges in the Supreme Court study reopening "The Death Caravan" process on the basis of "vices of origin" in the 2000 legal action that included consideration of a law that had not yet entered into force in Santiago.
    Chilean law allows those declared mentally insane to evade trial. Pinochet was diagnosed with "subcortical dementia" and a court accepted it as exculpatory.
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