Pinochet & His Enemies
Harris, Robin
NNW 30 September 1999 • The American Spectator I he British House of Lords is traditionally a model of fusty decorum, where worthy speeches by elder statesmen are heard in silence, punctuated only...
...Garzon and the CPS had thus reduced the whole extradition process to the level of farce...
...The Torture Convention, it was widely noted, had never been intended by those who drew it up or the states that subscribed to it to remove sovereign immunity...
...As has since been confirmed by a government minister, the Metropolitan Police had already asked the FCO on Thursday whether Pinochet enjoyed diplomatic immunity in the event of arrest, and were told he did not...
...This hostility is systematic and reaches to the highest levels...
...As Lady Thatcher put it: "This is a cautionary tale of Socialist justice that concerns every man and woman in Britain...
...Pinochet arrived in Britain on September 22, on a diplomatic passport, charged with a special mission by the Chilean president...
...In one case, someone was beaten up by drunken policemen...
...ROBIN HARRIS has been a policy adviser to Lady Thatcher for the last ten years...
...His forced immobility presented the Spanish with a God-given opportunity...
...But Hoffman did not apologize and the judicial establishment closed ranks...
...A different group of law lords then re-heard the case...
...At once, however, the CPS went to work...
...Judge Garzon succeeded in having the dormant dossier of Chilean alleged human rights abuse cases transferred to him...
...Then, advised at each stage by Garces, he set out to trap the aging and unwary Pinochet...
...All such conventions were abandoned on July 6, when Lady Thatcher, joined by three former Conservative Cabinet Ministers, attacked the abuses connected with the arrest some nine months earlier in London of the former Chilean ruler, Augusto Pinochet Ugarte...
...His lawyers vigorously sought his release...
...This arrest was, in fact, made under an unlawful warrant, as was later confirmed by the Divisional Court...
...Protesting that she had already spoken too long, the chief whip demanded she stop...
...Yet the case not only concerns Chileans...
...None concerned a Spaniard...
...and that their real motivation was revenge...
...The ploy succeeded...
...It constitutes a precedent that imperils former heads of government and, taken to its logical conclusion, jeopardizes serving rulers too...
...None purported to have any connection with Pinochet, who was simply held responsible for what happened because he was head of state at the time...
...By the time the first warrant had been quashed, the new one had been drawn up—and Pinochet was still a prisoner...
...Initially, Garzon approached the British authorities merely seeking to interrogate him...
...None had been even cursorily investigated by Garzon...
...Unfortunately, Augusto Pinochet cannot afford to laugh...
...The day after the law lords' judgment, it faxed to Baltasar Garzon a request for more cases: Garzon, in turn, faxed the request to a left-wing "human rights" group in Chile, which immediately sent back 85...
...Jack Straw, the home secretary, has wide grounds to intervene to set Pinochet free...
...In any case, Garzon's antics demonstrate the kind of justice Pinochet can expect in Madrid...
...and the same day, 33 of these were faxed by Garzon to the CPS...
...His staff have been harassed by the British authorities—their baggage was broken into at the airport—and his supporters have been subjected to petty humiliations...
...According to the commission set up by Pinochet's opponents to establish the facts, 2,279 people lost their lives...
...How could they have been, in less than 24 hours...
...They had to establish both that Pinochet had committed "crimes against humanity" and that Spain had jurisdiction over those crimes—neither of which any self-respecting Spanish magistrate was prepared to accept...
...The precise details of the coordination between Garzon and the British government are obscure, but circumstances suggest it was close...
...The CPS lawyers can therefore rest assured that in their uncharacteristically energetic pursuit of Pinochet they are doing their political masters' will...
...By now the Chileans were worried and decided to seek FCO advice...
...The law had never seemed more of an ass...
...It was effective...
...Only one of the incidents mentioned in the original Crown Prosecution indictment was still admissible, and this was merely an alleged case of police brutality in southern Chile, with which Pinochet had no conceivable connection...
...In Britain he is not permitted to contest the substance of the charges, no matter how absurd they are, because no prima facie case needs to be made for extradition to a country which has signed the European Convention on Extradition...
...All the cards in Britain and Spain are stacked against him...
...By contrast, a group of protesters was allowed to play drums outside in order to prevent his sleeping...
...that the charges against him had been maliciously conceived...
...But he was not allowed to walk on the lawn, or even sit outside...
...They concluded (by a majority) that Pinochet enjoyed immunity for crimes of torture—but only up to December 8,1988, when Britain adhered to the international Torture Convention...
...By the time that Lady Thatcher had reached the line, "Senator Pinochet, is of course, being victimized because the organized international left are bent on revenge," the organized left on the opposite bench could stand it no longer...
...The house itself was and is full of armed police...
...He was now, as on many previous occasions, accorded the treatment of an ambassador...
...Pinochet established a constitution, respected it, recognized the outcome of the plebiscite that ended his tenure of power, and retired gracefully...
...On Thursday October 15, FCO officials told the Chilean ambassador that they had only heard "rumors...
...Far more serious, the integrity of the country's judicial system has been defaced...
...There is no secret about who is behind the indictment of Pinochet...
...But considering that the regime began by fighting what was in effect a civil war and that right to the end it faced Cuban-backed terrorism, the death toll was low—far lower than in equivalent conflicts elsewhere in South America, let alone in Spain...
...As the case dragged on, the authorities were prevailed upon to allow the senator to rent a house at Wentworth, outside London, where he could be detained...
...Lady Thatcher believes in paying debts...
...32 September 1999 • The American Spectator...
...ore sinister, however, is the degree to which the judiciary has bent before the prevailing political mood...
...To the astonishment of observers, their lordships now made a new ruling on grounds not previously advanced at any stage...
...But he has not exercised them...
...This proved a double error...
...So anxious was one of their number, Lord Hoffman, to cast his vote against Pinochet that he failed to declare an interest—his connection with Amnesty International, which was a party to the prosecution...
...She also recognizes the scale of Pinochet's achievement in Chile, which his government transformed from chaotic collectivism into a thriving capitalist model for Latin America...
...She refused to comply, and was then berated by the government as "ignoble" and "hysterical...
...But in any case, the ruling left the case against Pinochet in tatters...
...For some years they were frustrated by the Spanish judicial system...
...Her real offense, of course, was to state in Parliament what newspapers had been alleging for months—namely that Senator Pinochet was the victim of a conspiracy in which the British authorities had apparently colluded...
...After the divisional court unanimously ruled that Pinochet, as a former head of state, enjoyed sovereign immunity, a wave of left-wing fury burst onto the courts...
...Throwing the doctors, nurses, and the senator's military aide out into the rain, the police woke the 83-year-old patient to tell him in broken Spanish that he was under arrest...
...True, it was at a high cost...
...If only all "dictators" did as much...
...NNW 30 September 1999 • The American Spectator I he British House of Lords is traditionally a model of fusty decorum, where worthy speeches by elder statesmen are heard in silence, punctuated only by grunts of approval and the occasional post-prandial snore...
...But the Home Office stalled and won more time...
...Pinochet proved himself a valuable friend of Britain during the Falklands War by discreetly allowing the head of the Chilean air force to pass on crucial intelligence about Argentinean movements, which in turn allowed the British task force to take preventive action, thus saving many lives...
...As for Britain, the country's reputation in Chile (its oldest ally) is destroyed...
...Eventually, however, they found their man in Baltasar Garzon, an embittered, publicity-seeking former Socialist politician...
...According to a detailed and credible report in the Sunday Telegraph, word of all this reached the British embassy in Madrid, which notified the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in London...
...The unexpectedly favorable attitude of the British government to this request encouraged him to raise the stakes...
...He now sought a British warrant for Pinochet's arrest for extradition to Spain...
...As a result, for the first time in legal history a House of Lords judgment had now to be set aside...
...On Friday the 16th, when the ambassador asked for confirmation that there would be no problem about Pinochet's being able to board a plane the following Tuesday, the FCO said that it would give a "definite" reply on Monday...
...The originator is a Marxist Spanish lawyer called Juan Garces, formerly a political adviser to Salvador Allende...
...Pinochet was held in a tiny room at the clinic for six days illegally under this warrant...
...Or perhaps he just could not believe that this was how Britain treated its honored guests...
...He could not understand them...
...In fact, the Chilean embassy had failed to obtain written confirmation of his registration in that capacity, which later proved to have been a grave mistake...
...In another, someone jumped out of a window because he feared that he might be tortured later...
...In Spain he would not be able to call key witnesses for his defense, because they risk arrest if they set foot on Spanish soil...
...If Pinochet dies in a Spanish prison, Chile will erupt...
...On appeal, a majority of the law lords now voted that Pinochet had no immunity whatsoever...
...But the officials knew that no such reply would be needed, because by then Pinochet would be detained...
...Meanwhile, knowing that the warrant was invalid, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) hurriedly sent two of its staff to Madrid to help Garzon draw up a new warrant...
...He is also a freelance writer and the author of the recent pamphlet "Pinochet and Allende: A Tale of Two Chileans" (Chilean Supporters Abroad), The American Spectator • September 1999 In this enterprise Garces was assisted by a group of Marxists in Chile and Spain, who have since boasted in print of their exploits...
...The advice they in fact received was duplicitous, while the facts they passed on about plans to get Pinochet out of the country were undoubtedly transmitted to those planning his arrest...
...31 Accordingly, just before midnight on Friday, armed police swooped on the clinic where Pinochet was still under heavy sedation after his operation — and also suffering from a severe infection of his urinary tract...
...Tony Blair, the prime minister, has spoken of his deep admiration for Allende...
...These matters should particularly concern the United States, which has an especially powerful interest in protecting its high officials from kidnap by powers it may offend...
...While in London, Pinochet developed acute back trouble and decided on an operation...
Vol. 32 • September 1999 • No. 9
