Suspicious accident delays Pinochet hearing

By Jonathan Franklin

SANTIAGO: A crucial Supreme Court hearing to examine the first of 137 criminal cases against Augusto Pinochet was postponed last week after a mysterious car accident that nearly killed a leading human rights lawyer.

The incident occurred on a deserted road north of Santiago when a pick-up truck slammed into the parked car of Eduardo Contreras.

He had stopped, as he was heading home from the coast, to help another motorist who had mechanical problems. When a red pick-up truck crossed the road and swerved into his car, Contreras leapt aside and escaped unscathed.

But his wife was trapped in the wreckage and is in a critical condition with kidney damage and the probability that she will lose a leg.

Contreras has repeatedly been the target of death threats and until two months ago was accompanied by a state-appointed bodyguard. Earlier this year the authorities warned him his name headed a right-wing hit list.

"I can't help but think that this was an action by sectors who wanted to threaten us," said Contreras, who is also a prominent member of the Chilean Communist Party. "I don't have proof, but I do have all the right in the world to link this with the previous circumstances (threats) that are well known to everyone."

Last Thursday police arrested a man and declared the incident a normal traffic accident, a claim that incensed Contreras, who again denounced the incident as a political attack.

An anonymous telephone call from the right-wing terrorist group Patria y Libertad -- "Fatherland and Liberty" -- claimed credit for the attack but provided no corroborating evidence. Communist Party activists are clamoring for more protection.

"There have been repeated burglaries of our homes, death threats by telephone and a continual climate of hostility," said Lautaro Camarona, 48, a top official in the party. "In Chile, there are still paramilitary groups like those of the (Pinochet) dictatorship and they have the government cornered."

Contreras, one of seven lawyers seeking to have Pinochet stripped of his senatorial immunity and put on trial, is widely known for his role in presenting the first criminal complaint accepted by the courts, in January 1998. Contreras is an accomplished orator and charismatic attorney who was to lead the oral arguments against Pinochet.

These arguments have now been postponed until Wednesday.

If the Supreme Court confirms a lower court ruling that stripped the aging ex-dictator of senatorial immunity, Pinochet could face criminal prosecution for his role in coordinating a 1973 helicopter hit squad that roamed Chile and left at least 72 political prisoners dead.

He could also be prosecuted for some or all of the 143 other criminal complaints against his former regime that are being investigated by the courts.

Pinochet's defense team plans to fight in the Supreme Court, where the vote is expected to be tight.

Its primary strategy is to claim that Pinochet, 84, suffers both mental and physical illnesses that make him unfit for trial. The Pinochet team has fought bitterly -- and thus far unsuccessfully -- to have those tests carried out before the immunity hearing.

In the past weeks, however, the hearing has been overshadowed by a historic agreement known as the Mesa de Dialogo (Table of Dialogue) in which human-rights lawyers and top army officials met privately for nearly a year in sessions mediated by Cabinet- level politicians. The purpose was to convince the armed forces to disclose the whereabouts of the estimated 1,200 Chileans executed and "disappeared" by Pinochet-era death squads.

The final agreement, signed on June 16, became effective this month and specifies that the military must release information.

Last week Gen. Carlos Salgado met middle and low-level retired army officers to convince them they would be protected if they participated in the search process anonymously.

These officials are believed to have detailed information about the burial of several hundred corpses. The key element of the accord is to maintain the secret identity of the informants.

If a recent public confession made by retired army officer Roberto Flores is any indication, voluntary confessions may not be particularly easy.

Flores stunned the nation last month with a television interview in which he claimed to have witnessed dozens of executions inside the National Stadium prison camp created in the wake of the coup on Sept. 11 1973 which overthrew the left-wing coalition government of Salvador Allende.

Last week, Flores was again on television, this time denouncing the rash of death threats he had received.

Pamela Pereira, a human-rights lawyer who helped to negotiate the accord and whose father was among the victims, remained optimistic that the secret law would reveal new information.

"I am tired, but relieved," she said. "I am convinced information on what happened to the disappeared will be revealed within six months, or at most a year."

President Ricardo Lagos and army Commander-in-Chief Ricardo Izurieta have apparently agreed to a "realistic" goal in which approximately 300 of the missing will be accounted for under the new agreement. These cases would include "VIP" victims and thus placate the government and the military's most ardent critics.

-- Observer News Service