Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte[1]
(November 25, 1915 – December
10, 2006) was President of
Chile from 1974 to 1990, and head of
the military junta from 1973 to
1974. His rule instituted broad economic reforms and a severe and highly controversial campaign
against leftist political parties, including repression of the civilian population.
On September 11, 1973, Pinochet, recently appointed
Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army, headed
a coup d'état against Socialist President Salvador Allende and established
a military government. Pinochet implemented a series of military
operations in which (according to the 1993 Rettig Report) approximately 3,000 people were
killed [2], while (according to the 2004 Valech Report) 27,000 were incarcerated without trials and subjected to
torture [3]. Thousands
more fled in exile, in particular to Argentina,
as political refugees; however, they were followed in their exile by the DINA secret police, in the
frame of Operation Condor which linked South American dictatorships together
against political opponents.
In 1974, the junta appointed Pinochet president by a joint decree, later
confirmed by a plebiscite in 1980. He remained in power until 1990,
after his attempt to continue to rule was defeated in the 1988 plebiscite. After stepping down, he remained a life-senator, in accord with the 1980 Constitution. He was also Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean
Army until March 10, 1998.
At the time of his death in December 2006, around 300 criminal
charges were still pending against him in Chile for human
rights abuses (torture, forced
disappearance, assassination, etc.), tax evasion and embezzlement under his rule and
afterwards [4] — in 2006, Pinochet's total wealth was
estimated at $28 million or more [5]. Pinochet
remains a controversial figure in many parts of the world, dividing people who condemn him for his human rights abuses from those
who credit him with bringing order and economic stability to Chile.
Pinochet is a "Famous Rotarian" Honorary Member of the Rotary International.
Early career
Pinochet was born in Valparaíso on November 25
1915, the son of Augusto Pinochet Vera (descendant of Breton
immigrants who arrived in Chile during the 18th century) and Avelina Ugarte Martínez. He went to primary and secondary school at
the San Rafael Seminary of Valparaíso, the Rafael Ariztía Institute (Marist Brothers) in Quillota, the French Fathers' School of
Valparaíso, and to the Military School, which he entered in 1933. After four years of study, in 1937 he graduated with the rank
of alférez (Second Lieutenant) in the infantry.
In September 1937, he was assigned to the "Chacabuco" Regiment, in Concepción. Two
years later, in 1939, then with the rank of sub-lieutenant, he moved to the "Maipo" Regiment, garrisoned in Valparaíso. He
returned to Infantry School in 1940. On January 30 1943 , he
married Lucía Hiriart Rodríguez, with whom he had five children: three daughters
(Inés Lucía, María Verónica, Jacqueline Marie) and two sons (Augusto Osvaldo and Marco
Antonio) [citation needed].
At the end of 1945, he was assigned to the "Carampangue" Regiment in the northern city of Iquique. In 1948, he entered the War Academy, but he had to postpone his studies, because, being the youngest
officer, he had to carry out a service mission in the coal zone of Lota. The following year, he returned to his studies in the Academy. After obtaining the title of Officer
Chief of Staff, in 1951, he returned to teach at the Military School. At the same time, he worked as a teachers' aide at the War
Academy, giving military geography and geopolitics classes. In addition to this, he was active as editor of the institutional
magazine Cien Águilas ("One Hundred Eagles"). At the beginning of 1953, with the rank of major, he was sent for two years
to the "Rancagua" Regiment in Arica. While there, he was appointed professor of the War
Academy, and he returned to Santiago to take up his new position.
In 1956, Pinochet was chosen, together with a group of other young officers, to form a military mission that would collaborate
in the organization of the War Academy of Ecuador in Quito, which
forced him to suspend his law studies. He remained with the Quito mission for three-and-a-half years, during which time he
dedicated himself to the study of geopolitics, military
geography and intelligence. During his time there, he was known in diplomatic circles as an exceptional poker player.
At the end of 1959, he returned to Chile and was sent to General Headquarters of the I Army Division, based in
Antofagasta. The following year, he was appointed Commander of the "Esmeralda"
Regiment. Due to his success in this position, he was appointed Sub-director of the War Academy in 1963. In 1968, he was named
Chief of Staff of the II Army Division, based in Santiago, and at the end of that year,
he was promoted to Brigadier General and Commander in Chief of the VI Division, garrisoned in Iquique. In his new function, he
was also appointed Intendant of the Tarapacá Province.
In January 1971, Pinochet rose to Division General, and was named General Commander of the Santiago Army Garrison. At the
beginning of 1972, he was appointed General Chief of Staff of the Army. With rising domestic strife in Chile, Pinochet was
appointed Army Commander in Chief on August 23
1973 by President Salvador Allende just the day after the
Chamber of Deputies of Chile approved the August 22,
1973 Resolution asserting that Allende was not respecting the Constitution. Less than a month later, the Chilean military
deposed Allende.
Military coup of 1973
-
La Moneda Presidential Palace being bombed during the
coup (1973)
On September 11 1973; the Armed Forces, with US support,
overthrew Allende's government in a coup, during which the presidential palace, La
Moneda, was shelled, while Allende committed suicide. The coup put an end to the Presidential Republic period of Chile (1924-1973).
In his memoirs, Pinochet affirmed that he was the leading plotter of the coup, and used his
position as Commander-in-chief of the Army to coordinate a far-reaching scheme with the other two branches of the military and
the national police [citation needed]. In recent years, however, high military officials from the time have said
that Pinochet reluctantly got involved only a few days before it was scheduled to occur and followed the lead of other branches
(especially the Navy) as they triggered the coup.[citation needed] There is some doubt as to whether Pinochet's declarations are true, because
they give rise to the question as to why Pinochet was at first reluctant to become supreme head of the junta if, as he claimed,
he was one of the main characters who planned it.
In the months that followed the coup, the junta published a book titled El Libro Blanco del cambio de gobierno en
Chile (commonly known as El Libro Blanco", The White Book of Change of Government in Chile), where they attempted to
justify the coup by claiming that they were in fact anticipating a self-coup (the alleged Plan Zeta, or Plan Z) that
Allende's government and/or its associates were purportedly preparing. United States intelligence agencies believed the plan to
be simple propaganda[6]. Some Chilean historians, however, point to the similarities between Plan Z and other existing
paramilitary plans of the Popular Unity parties in support of its legitimacy. [7].
Military junta
-
A military junta was established immediately following the coup,
made up of General Pinochet representing the Army, Admiral José Toribio Merino representing the Navy, General
Gustavo Leigh representing the Air Force, and
General César Mendoza representing the Carabineros (national police). Asestablished the junta as executive and legislative branch of
the government, suspended the Constitution and the Congress, imposed strict censorship and curfew, proscribed the left-wing parties and halted all political activities. This military junta governed until
December 17, 1974, after which it functioned strictly as a
legislative body.
Regime
-
The junta members originally planned for the presidency to rotate among the commanders-in-chief of the four military branches.
However, Pinochet soon consolidated his control, first retaining sole chairmanship of the military junta, and then proclaiming
himself "Supreme Chief of the Nation" (de facto provisional president) on June 27,
1974. He officially changed his title to "President" on December
17, 1974. General Leigh, head of the Air Force, became increasingly opposed to Pinochet's
policies and was forced into retirement on July 24 1978. He was
replaced by General Fernando Matthei.
Pinochet organized a plebiscite on September 11, 1980. The Chilean
people was asked to ratify a new Constitution, replacing the 1925 Constitution
drafted by President Arturo Alessandri. The new Constitution, partly drafted by
Jaime Guzmán, a close adviser to Pinochet and future founder of the right-wing
Independent Democrat Union (UDI), gave the position of President of the
Republic, held by Pinochet, a large amount of power. It created some new institutions, such as the Constitutional Tribunal and
the controversial National Security Council (COSENA). It also prescribed a single-candidate presidential referendum in 1988, and a return to civilian rule in 1990. The referendum was approved by 67.04% against
30.19% [8], although the Opposition denounced
various irregularities. Headed by the ex-senator Patricio Aylwin and more than 46
others, they argued that this result did not tally with electoral records. One objection was that voters were only marked by ink
on the thumb, which came off rapidly, making electoral fraud easy. These criticisms were
rejected by the Scrutiny Association, and the Constitution was promulgated on October 21,
1980, taking effect on March 11, 1981.
This same year, Pinochet was promoted to the rank of Captain General previously borne
by colonial governors and by Bernardo O'Higgins, a hero of Chile's war of independence. The rank has been subsequently reserved only for those who were
simultaneously heads of Government and of the Army.
In May 1983, the opposition and labor movements began to organize demonstrations and strikes against the regime, provoking
violent responses from government officials. The beheading of professor José Manuel Parada,
journalist Manuel Guerrero, and Santiago Nattino by the uniformed police (carabineros) led
to the resignation of junta member General César Mendoza in 1985 (Caso Degollados, or Slit Throat Case). In a 1985 report, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights stated that it hoped that “the case
now under way will lead to the identification and punishment of the persons responsible for the execution of so culpable an
act.”[9] Eventually six members of the police secret
service were given life sentence.
In 1986, security forces discovered 80 tons of weapons smuggled into the country by the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (FPMR), the armed branch of the outlawed
Communist Party, created in 1983. The shipment of Carrizal Bajo included C-4 plastic explosives, RPG-7 and M72 LAW rocket launchers as well as more than three thousand
M-16 rifles. The operation was overseen by Cuban intelligence, and also involved
East Germany and the Soviet Union.
In September, weapons from the same source were used in an unsuccessful assassination
attempt against Pinochet by the FPMR. Taken by surprise, five of his military bodyguards were killed. Although Pinochet's
armored car was struck by a rocket, it did not explode, and Pinochet suffered only minor
injuries, managing to escape [10]
Suppression of opposition
- Further information: Operation Condor and Augusto Pinochet's arrest and trial
Almost immediately after the military's seizure of power, the junta banned all the leftist parties that had constituted
Allende's UP coalition. All other parties were placed in "indefinite recess," and were later banned outright. The dictatorship's
violence was directed not only against dissidents, but also against their families and other civilians.
The Rettig Report concluded that 2,279 persons who disappeared during the military
government were killed for political reasons, and approximately 30,000 tortured according to the later Valech Report, while several thousand were exiled. The latter were chased all over the world in the frame
of Operation Condor, a cooperation plan between the various intelligence
agencies of South American countries, assisted by a US communication base in Panama. Pinochet believed these operations were
necessary in order to "save the country from communism"[11].
Some political scientists have ascribed the relative bloodiness of the coup to the stability of the existing democratic
system, which required extreme action to overturn. Some of the most famous cases of human rights violation occurred during the
early period: in October 1973, at least 70 people were killed by the Caravan of Death,
to which Manuel Contreras, later head of the DINA
intelligence service, participated. Charles Horman, a US journalist, "disappeared", as Víctor Olea Alegría, a member of the
Socialist Party, and many others, in 1973.
Furthermore, important officials of Allende's government were tracked down by the DINA in the frame of Operation Condor. Thus,
General Carlos Prats, Pinochet's predecessor and army commander under Allende, who had
resigned rather than support the moves against Allende's government, was assassinated in Buenos
Aires, Argentina, in 1974. A year later, the murder of 119 opponents abroad was
disguised as an internal conflict, the DINA setting up a propaganda campaign to accredit this thesis (Operation Colombo).
Other victims of Condor included, among hundreds of less famous persons, Juan José
Torres, the former President of Bolivia, assassinated in Buenos Aires on 2 June, 1976; Carmelo Soria, a UN diplomat working for the CEPAL, assassinated in July 1976;
Orlando Letelier, a former Chilean ambassador to the
United States and minister in Allende's cabinet, assassinated after his release from internment and exile in Washington, D.C. by a car bomb on September 21, 1976. This led to strained relations with the US and to the extradition of Michael Townley, a US citizen who worked for the DINA and had organized Letelier's assassination. Other
targeted victims, who escaped assassination, included Christian-Democrat Bernardo
Leighton, who escaped an assassination attempt in Rome in 1975 by the Italian terrorist Stefano delle Chiaie; Carlos Altamirano, the leader of
the Chilean Socialist Party, targeted for murder in 1975 by Pinochet, along with Volodia
Teitelboim, member of the Communist Party; Pascal Allende, the nephew of
Salvador Allende and president of the MIR, who escaped an assassination attempt in
Costa Rica in March 1976; US Congressman Edward Koch, who became aware in 2001 of relations
between death threats and his denounciation of Operation Condor, etc. Furthermore, according to current investigations,
Eduardo Frei Montalva, the Christian Democrat President of Chile from 1964 to
1970, may have been poisoned in 1982 by toxin produced by DINA biochemist Eugenio
Berrios [12].
Protests continued, however, during the 1980s, leading to several scandals. In March 1985, the savage murder of three
Communist Party members led to the resignation of César Mendoza, head of the Carabineros and member of the
junta since its formation. During a 1986 protest against Pinochet, 18 years-old student Carmen Gloria Quintana was burnt alive.
In August 1989, Marcelo Barrios Andres, a 21 years-old member of the FPMR (the armed wing of the PCC, created in 1983, which had attempted to assassinate
Pinochet on September 7, 1986), was assassinated by a group of
militaries, supposed to arrest him on orders of Valparaíso's public prosecutor. However, they simply executed him — this case was
included in the Rettig Report [13].
Further scandals emerged after the return to democracy, such as the
allegations that an ex-Nazi, Paul Schäfer, who had set up
in Pinochet's Chile an enclave, Colonia Dignidad, had worked with the DINA.
Economic policy
-
By mid 1975, Pinochet set forth an economic policy of neo-liberal, free-market reform. He declared that he wanted "to make Chile not a nation of proletarians, but a nation of proprietors."[citation needed] To formulate his economic policy,
Pinochet relied on the so-called Chicago Boys, who were economists trained at the
University of Chicago and heavily influenced by the monetarist ideas of Milton Friedman and Arnold Harberger.
Pinochet launched an era of deregulation of business and privatization. To accomplish these objectives, his government abolished the minimum wage, rescinded trade union rights, privatized the
pension system, and reprivatized state-owned industries, and
banks, and lowered taxes on income and
profits. However, the large copper industry,
nationalized by Allende, remained under control of the government owned Codelco. Parts of
its benefits were attributed to the Chilean Armed Forces' budget.
Supporters of these policies (most notably the late nobel laureate from the University of Chicago School of Economics,
Milton Friedman himself), have dubbed them "The
Miracle of Chile," due to the country's sustained economic growth since the late 1980s.
Pinochet's neoliberal economic policies' benefits have been sharply contested. In 1973, unemployment was only 4.3%. Following
ten years of junta rule in 1983, unemployment skyrocketed to 22%. Real wages declined by more than 40%. In 1970, 20% of Chile's
population lived in poverty, but by 1990, the last year of Pinochet's dictatorship, poverty had doubled to 40%.[14] Between 1982 and 1983, the GDP dropped 19%. In 1970, the daily
diet of the poorest 40 percent of the population contained 2,019 calories. By 1980 this had fallen to 1,751, and by 1990 it was
down to 1,629. Furthermore, the percentage of Chileans without adequate housing increased from 27 to 40 percent between 1972 and
1988, despite the government's boast that the new economy would solve homelessness.[15] Meanwhile, the wealthy were raking it in. In 1970, the richest one-fifth of the
population controlled 45% of the wealth compared to 7.6% for the poorest one-fifth. In 1989, the richest one-fifth controlled 55%
of the wealth while the poorest one-fifth controlled only 4.4%[1].
1988 referendum and transition to democracy
- Further information: Chilean transition to democracy
According to the transitional provisions of the 1980 Constitution, a referendum
was scheduled for October 5 1988, to vote on a new eight-year
presidential term for Pinochet. Confronted to increasing opposition, notably at the international level, Pinochet legalized
political parties in 1987 and called for a plebiscite to determine whether or not he would remain in power until 1997. If the
"YES" won, Pinochet would have to implement the dispositions of the 1980 Constitution, mainly the call for general elections,
while he would himself remain in power as President. If the "NO" won, Pinochet would remain President for another year, and a
joint Presidential and Parliamentary election then be scheduled.
Beside the softening of the Cold War and the initiating of reforms by Gorbachev, which tended to make Pinochet's anti-Communism discourse less audible among the
international community, Pinochet appeared at the time as one of the last dictators of South America. Successively, Latin
American dictatorships were toppled, opening the way for long period of uneven democratic
transitions. Thus, Argentina had returned to civilian rule in 1983 as well
as Bolivia, Uruguay in 1984,
Brazil in 1985, etc.
Another alleged reason of Pinochet's decision to call for elections was the April 1987 visit of Pope John Paul II to Chile. According to the US Catholic author George
Weigel, he held a meeting with Pinochet during which they treated of the theme of the return to democracy. John Paul II
would have allegedly pushed Pinochet to accept a democratic opening of the regime, and would even have called for his
resignation.[16] This has been contested however by critics, who claimed John Paul II never said a word concerning human right
violations in Chile during his visit. The Polish Pope was known as a supporter of anti-Communists, and during his reign the
Vatican had harshly condemned the Liberation
theology, by the voice of Cardinal Ratzinger (current Pope Benedict
XVI), then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith.
Whatever the case, political advertisement was legalized on September 5, 1987, and became a key element of the campaign for the "NO" to the referendum, which countered the official
campaign which presaged a return to a Popular Unity government in case of a defeat of Pinochet. The Opposition, gathered into the
Concertación de Partidos por el NO ("Coalition of Parties for
NO") organized a colorful and cheerful campaign under the slogan La alegría ya viene ("Joy is coming"). On
October 5, 1988, the "NO" vote won with a 55.00% majority
[17]. It was formed by the
Christian Democracy, the Socialist Party and the Radical Party,
gathered in the Alianza Democrática (Democratic Alliance). In 1988, several more parties, including the Humanist Party, the Ecologist Party, the Social
Democrats, and several Socialist Party splinter groups added their support, despite fears of election fraud by Pinochet.
Finally, the "NO" to Pinochet won with 55.99% of the votes, against 44.1% of the votes. According to several sources, Pinochet
thought of not recognizing the results, but finally decided to adhere to them and continue with the Constitutional process.
Presidential and legislative elections were called for the next year.
The Coalition changed their name to Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia (Coalition of Parties for Democracy) and
put forward Patricio Aylwin, the Christian Democrat leader, as a presidential candidate,
as well as launching a common list for the parliamentary elections. The opposition and the Pinochet government made several
negotiations to amend the Constitution and they both agreed to 54 modifications, changing the way the Constitution would be
modified in the future, restriction of state of emergency dispositions, the
affirmation of political pluralism, the strengthening of constitutional
rights as well as of the democratic principle and participation to the political life. In July
1989, a referendum on these proposed changes took place, supported by all the
parties in the political spectrum except the right-wing Avanzada Nacional. The Constitutional
changes were approved by 91.25% of the voters.
Thereafter, Aylwin won the December 1989 presidential election
with 55.17% of the votes [17], against
less than 30% for the right-wing candidate, Hernan Buchi, who had been Pinochet's Minister of Finances since 1985 (there was also a third-party candidate, Francisco Javier Errázuriz, who garnered the remaining 15%[17]. Pinochet thus left the presidency on March 11, 1990 and transferred power to the new democratically elected
president.
The Concertación also gained the majority of votes for the Parliament. However, due to the binomial system, the appointed senators, and the necessary quorums to pass certain laws, they had no complete
majority in Parliament, a situation they found themselves in constantly for over 15 years. This forced them to negotiate all law
projects with the Alliance for Chile (originally called "Democracy and Progress" and
then "Union for Chile"), a center-right coalition involving the Unión Demócrata
Independiente (UDI) and Renovación Nacional (RN), parties
composed of many of Pinochet's supporters.
Due to the transitional provisions of the constitution, Pinochet remained as Commander-in-Chief of the Army, until March 1998.
He was then sworn in as a senator-for-life, a privilege first granted to former
presidents with at least six years in office by the constitution. His senatorship and consequent immunity from prosecution protected him from deposed complaints against him, and legal challenges began
only after Pinochet had been arrested in 1998 in the United Kingdom, on order of an
arrest warrant issued by the Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón —allegations of abuses had
been made numerous times before his arrest, but never acted upon [18].
Arrest and trial
-
Pinochet's regime has been accused of systematic and widespread human rights violations both in Chile and abroad, including
mass-murder, torture, kidnapping, illegal detention, and press censorship. At the end of his life, he was also criticized for
using his position to enrich himself and his family — a fact which wasn't known of the general public, as he had always tried to
present a rather modest style of life.
On October 17 1998, while visiting the United Kingdom for medical treatment, Pinochet was arrested on a Spanish provisional warrant for the
murder in Chile of Spanish citizens while he was president.[19] Five days later, Pinochet was served with a second provisional arrest warrant from the Spanish
judge Baltasar Garzón, charging him with systematic torture, murder, illegal detention,
and forced disappearances. The case was a watershed event in judicial history, as
it was the first time that a dictator was arrested on the principle of universal
jurisdiction (See Augusto Pinochet's arrest and trial:The
principle of universal jurisdiction for further details.)
After having been placed under house arrest in Britain and initiating a judicial battle,
he was eventually released in March 2000 on medical grounds by the then Home Secretary Jack
Straw without facing trial [20].
Henceforth, on 3 March 2000, Pinochet returned to Chile. His
first act when landing in Santiago de Chile's airport was to triumphally sit up from his
chair to acclaim his supporters [21][22]. He was first greeted by his successor as head of
the Chilean armed forces, General Ricardo Izurieta [22]. President Ricardo Lagos, who had
just sworn in on March 11, said the retired general's televised arrival had damaged the image of Chile, while thousands
demonstrated against him.[23]
In March 2000, the Congress approved a constitutional amendment creating the
status of "ex-president," which granted its owner immunity from prosecution and guaranteed him a financial allowance. In
exchange, it required him to resign his seat of senator-for-life. 111 legislators voted
for, and 29 (mostly, if not all, from the Left) against [24].
In Chile, judge Juan Guzmán Tapia (who had been during the dictatorship a supporter
of Pinochet) initiated a procedure against him, requesting three days after his return to Chile the suspension of his
parliamentary immunity. Pinochet's legal team was headed by Pablo Rodríguez, the former leader of the far-right paramilitary group Fatherland and Liberty (Patria y Libertad).
The Supreme Court acceeded to Juan Guzmán's request in August 2000, and
Pinochet was indicted on December 1, 2000 for the "kidnapping"
of 75 opponents in the Caravan of Death case — Guzmán advanced the charge of
"kidnapping" as they were officially "disappeared:" even though they were all most
likely dead, the absence of their corpses made any charge of "homicide" difficult [25].
However, in July 2002, the Supreme Court dismissed Pinochet's indictment in the various human rights abuse cases, for medical
reasons (an alleged "vascular dementia"). The debate concerned Pinochet's mental faculties, his
legal team claiming that he was senile and could not remember, while others (including several physicians) claimed that he was
only physically affected but retained all control of his faculties. The same year, the prosecuting
attorney Hugo Guttierez, in charge of the Caravan of Death case, declared that "Our country has the degree of justice that
the political transition permits us to have.[26]"
Pinochet resigned his senatorial seat shortly after the Supreme Court's July 2002 ruling. In May 2004, the Supreme Court
overturned its precedent decision, and ruled that he was capable of standing trial. In arguing their case, the prosecution
presented a recent television interview Pinochet had given for a Miami-based television network, which raised doubts about the
mental incapacity of Pinochet. He was charged with several crimes in December of that year (including the 1974 assassination of
General Prats, the Operation Colombo case (119
dead), etc., and again placed under house arrest, on the eve of his 90th birthday. Questioned by his judges in order to know if,
as President, he was the direct head of DINA, he answered: "I don't remember, but it's not true.
And if it were true, I don't remember." [27]
In January 2005, the Chilean Army accepted institutional responsibility for past human rights abuses. Other institutions also
accept that abuses took place, but blame them on individuals, rather than official policy. Lucía Pinochet Hiriart, Augusto
Pinochet's eldest daughter, said the use of torture during his 1973–90 regime was "barbaric and without justification", after
seeing the Valech Report [citation needed]. Much of the torture was carried out at secret prison facilities like
Villa Grimaldi, Chacabuco, and Pisagua.
The same year, the US revealed that Pinochet had a large network of secret bank accounts abroad (See below). On November 22 2005,
he was indicted on tax evasion charges and placed again under house arrest
for an alleged $27 million hidden in secret accounts under false names. That figure was later reduced to $11 million.
Furthermore, Pinochet was indicted in 2006 for kidnappings and tortures at Villa
Grimaldi detention center by the judge Alejandro Madrid (Guzmán's successor) [28], as well as for the 1995 assassination of the DINA biochemist
Eugenio Berrios (himself involved in the Letelier
case) [29]. Berrios, who had worked with
Michael Townley, had produced sarin gas, anthrax and botulism in the Bacteriological War Army Laboratory for Pinochet
(used against political opponents). The DINA biochemist was also alleged of having created black
cocaine, which Pinochet then sold in Europe and the United States [30]. The money for the drug trade was allegedly
put directly into Pinochet's bank accounts [31]. Pinochet's son Marco Antonio, who had been accused of participating in the drug
tradem, has denied claims of drug trafficking in his father's administration and announced a lawsuit for libel against
Manuel Contreras, who had also claimed Pinochet sold cocaine[32].
On October 30, 2006, Pinochet was charged with 36 counts of
kidnapping, 23 counts of torture, and one of murder for the
torture and disappearance of opponents of his regime at Villa Grimaldi.
On November 25 2006, Pinochet marked his 91st birthday by
having his wife pronounced a statement written by him, and read to his admirers present for his birthday: "I assume the political
responsibility of all what has been done." [33]" Two days later, he was again ordered to house arrest for the kidnapping and murder of two
bodyguards of Salvador Allende who were arrested the day of the 1973 coup and executed by a firing squad during the Caravan of
Death episode.[34][35]
However, Pinochet died a few days later, on 10 December, 2006, without having been convicted of any crimes committed during
his dictatorship.
Secret bank accounts, tax evasion and arms deal
In 2004, a United States Senate money
laundering investigation led by Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) and Norm Coleman (R-MN) — ordered in the wake of the September 11,
2001 attacks — uncovered a network of over 125 securities and bank accounts at Riggs
Bank and other U.S. financial institutions used by Pinochet and his associates for twenty-five years to secretly move
millions of dollars.[36] Though the subcommittee was
charged only with investigating compliance of financial institutions under the USA PATRIOT
Act, and not the Pinochet regime, Sen. Coleman noted:
| “ |
This is a sad, sordid tale of money laundering involving Pinochet accounts at multiple
financial institutions using alias names, offshore accounts, and close associates. As a former General and President of Chile,
Pinochet was a well-known human rights violator and violent dictator.[37] |
” |
Over several months in 2005, Chilean judge Sergio Muñoz indicted Augusto Pinochet's wife, Lucia Hiriart; four of his children
--Marco Antonio, Jacqueline, Veronica and Lucia Pinochet; secretary Monica Ananias; and former aide Oscar Aitken on tax evasion
and falsification charges stemming from the Riggs Bank investigation. In January 2006, daughter Lucia Pinochet was detained at
Washington DC-Dulles airport and subsequently deported while attempting to evade the tax charges in Chile.[38] In January 2007, the Santiago Court of Appeals revoked most of the indictement from Judge Carlos Cerda
against the Pinochet family [39]. But Pinochet's five
children, his wife Lucia Hiriart, and 17 other persons (including two generals, one of his
ex-lawyer and his ex-secretary) were arrested in October 2007 on charges of embezzlement
and use of false passports. They are accused of having illegally transferred $27m (£13.2m) to foreign bank accounts during
Pinochet's rule [40][41].
In September 2005, a joint-investigation by The Guardian and La Tercera revealed that the British arms firms BAE Systems had been
identified as paying more than £1m to Pinochet, through a front company in the British
Virgin Islands, which BAE has used to channel commission on arms deals [42]. The payments began in 1997 and lasted until 2004 [42][43].
Furthermore, in 2007, fifteen years of investigation led to the conclusion that the 1992 assassination of DINA Colonel
Gerardo Huber was most probably related to various illegal arms traffic carried out, after
Pinochet's resignation from power, by military circles very close to himself. [5]. Huber had been assassinated a short time before he was due to testify in the case concerning the 1991 illegal export of weapons to Croatian paramilitaries. The deal involved 370 tons
of weapons, sold to Croatia by Chile on 7 December 1991, when the former country was under a United Nations' embargo because of the war against Serbia.[44]. In January 1992, the judge Hernán Correa de la Cerda wanted to hear Gerardo Huber in this
case, but the latter may have been silenced to avoid implicating Pinochet
in this new case [45][46][5] — although the latter was not anymore President, he remained at the time Commander-in-Chief of the
Army. Pinochet was at the center of this illegal arms trade, receiving money through various offshores and front companies, including the
Banco Coutts International in Miami [47].
Death and funeral
