Old torturers face hard times as 'Pinochet effect' spreads

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON (JP): With the extradition trial of former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet in London this week, the efforts of the Chilean government to get the old torturer off the hook grew daily more frantic. But they are not succeeding -- and meanwhile, the 'Pinochet effect' is spreading.

ITEM: in early August the former Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, wanted at home for crimes of genocide and torture, suddenly left Zimbabwe, where he had been given shelter for years by a fellow 'African Marxist', Robert Mugabe. Mengistu has reportedly sought refuge in North Korea, one of the few places where there is absolutely no danger of the courts responding to a demand for his extradition on charges of human rights abuses.

ITEM: in mid-August Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, Saddam Hussein's right-hand man in Iraq, who led the forces that bombed and gassed thousands of Kurds in 1988, arrived in Vienna for a month's R&R and some medical treatment at the plush Doeblinger Clinic. An Austrian member of parliament, Peter Pilz, discovered that he was in the country and asked the Justice Department to arrest him on charges of genocide and torture.

Someone tipped Izzat Ibrahim off and he took the next plane back to Baghdad. "I am ashamed of the Austrian government," complained Pilz; "the country is becoming a paradise for mass murderers." But in fact Izzat Ibrahim won't risk going to Vienna again -- or to any other place with independent courts either.

ITEM: in late August former Indonesian dictator Soeharto canceled the trip he usually makes to Germany for medical treatment around this time of year. He actually needs specialist medical attention, having suffered a stroke and intestinal bleeding in July, but it's just too risky to go to a country where people would be waiting for him with arrest warrants pertaining to massacres he authorized in East Timor and elsewhere.

Augusto Pinochet has yet to be extradited from Britain, but it is already becoming unsafe for other 'statesmen' who murder and torture their subjects to travel freely. If he is convicted and sentenced by a Spanish court, firmly establishing the precedent in international law, every country with the rule of law will be completely off-limits to the killers in power -- and his conviction is looking increasingly likely, despite the best efforts of the Chilean government.

It's not that the present, democratically elected Chilean government likes or respects the elderly general who ruled the country with an iron fist in 1973-89, and had at least 3,000 people murdered, mostly after horrible torture, during his time in power. It's just that Chile's arrogant and privileged armed forces still see Pinochet as their symbolic leader, and hint from time to time that his imprisonment could 'destabilize' Chile (i.e. trigger another coup).

This is almost certainly a hollow threat. Even if the generals could get the junior ranks to follow them in a revolt against Chile's elected government -- which is far from certain -- a new military government in Santiago would quickly collapse in the face of overwhelming revulsion both at home and abroad.

The Chilean government nevertheless feels that it is prudent to humor the military, so it is trying quite hard to bring the ex-strongman home.

Santiago has pretty well given up on Britain, which arrested Pinochet at the request of a Spanish court while he was in London for medical treatment 11 months ago. The British High Court has stated that Pinochet is liable to prosecution for acts of torture committed after Britain ratified the Torture Convention in 1988, even though he was a foreign head of state, and it has grown visibly impatient with Chile's endless legal challenges to the extradition proceedings. (Last time, in May, it even ordered Pinochet's lawyers to pay the government's legal costs.)

Spain seemed a better bet for a while, since it has a right- wing government and extensive trade ties with Chile. In July, therefore, Chilean Foreign Minister Juan Gabriel Valdes secretly suggested to his Spanish counterpart, Abel Matutes, that they might clear up this little embarrassment if Spain dropped its extradition request to Britain and instead put its case against Pinochet to an arbitration tribunal made up of one Spanish judge, one Chilean, and a third agreed both parties.

The beauty of this proposal was that Britain would have to send Pinochet home as soon as Spain withdrew its extradition request. Then some creative foot-dragging in choosing the arbitration tribunal and defining its terms of reference, plus a good deal of squabbling about what evidence was admissible, could easily use up five to 10 years, enabling the 83-year-old Pinochet to live out his remaining years at home and undisturbed.

The Spanish government was clearly tempted -- but in early August the opposition Socialist Party revealed the secret negotiations. Balthazar Garzon, the Spanish high court judge who originally made the extradition demand against Pinochet, promptly wrote a three-page open letter to Foreign Minister Matutes condemning this infringement of the "principles of independent justice".

The Spanish government has now officially rejected the Chilean proposal. Santiago retaliated by withdrawing its ambassador from Madrid, and threatens reprisals against Spanish companies and a full rupture of diplomatic relations if Pinochet's trial goes ahead. But go ahead it will, and the result may be that other retired dictators like Haiti's Jean-Claude 'Baby Doc' Duvalier, currently in France, and Paraguay's Alfredo Stroessner, now in Brazil, may soon have to follow Mengistu to avoid similar prosecutions.

It is going to get quite crowded in North Korea.