Global Policy Forum

By Jonathan Franklin

A rare television interview granted by Chile's former dictator Augusto Pinochet has revived a judicial effort to put him on trial for human rights crimes. Gen Pinochet, aged 88, gives coherent answers and shows few signs of the senility or strokes that stopped both the British and Chilean authorities putting him on trial. On Wednesday, a Chilean judge, Juan Guzman, petitioned to obtain a copy of the interview, broadcast by a Miami TV station, WDLP-22. Rights lawyers have asked the courts to re-evaluate whether Gen Pinochet is mentally fit to stand trial on charges that, after the US-backed coup that overthrew Chile's elected leftist government in 1973, he personally organised terror campaigns which killed some 3,200 Chileans, as well as foreign nationals, and saw thousands more tortured.

"If Pinochet appears as a person who obviously deals well with his recollections, then that would demonstrate that he is not crazy," Eduardo Contreras, a lawyer representing families of victims, told Reuters. Prosecution in Chile has been repeatedly stalled by tests showing the general has insufficient control of his memory and mind to defend himself adequately. Lawyers and victims say the ailments are exaggerated. In the interview Pinochet appeared unashamed of his 17-year rule. Asked whether he should request Chile's pardon, he turned the question around: he was "an angel", and his opponents should ask for a pardon because they once tried to assassinate him. The interview was widely reported in Chile and abroad, and sparked a public brawl among his children, who accused one another of using or badly advising their father. The socialist government downplayed the incident. Though the left cannot forget its treatment at his hands, the consensus is against reopening the wounds of what was virtually a civil war. However, interior minister Jose Miguel Insulza called the interview "pathetic".

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