Justice Stalks Pinochet

Justice won another round last week when British Home Secretary Jack Straw ruled that criminal extradition procedures against Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet can move forward in the courts.

It is to be expected that the old tyrant will appeal the ruling and the case will drag on in Britain. Straw’s decision, however, has brought Pinochet closer to facing Judge Baltazar Garzon in a Spanish court.

Straw’s ruling is extremely important in that it sets up, for the first time, a legal mechanism that would allow courts in some countries to enforce an international treaty that forbids torture. Of course, torture was a hallmark of Pinochet’s rule in Chile from 1973 to 1990. Following Pinochet’s arrest in London last October, after Spain issued a warrant for his extradition, slowly but surely the legal case has been evolving with a remarkably fair sense of justice.

Straw’s decision came after a key ruling by Parliament’s Law Lords, who declared March 24 that Pinochet could be extradited for acts committed after Britain signed the anti-torture convention in December 1988.

It would indeed be a terrible irony if Pinochet, the man responsible for placing thousands of people in concentration camps wheremany of them were methodically exterminated, is tried only for the torture and murder of one Marcos Quezada Yanez, a 17-year-old student and pro-democracy activist, killed while in police custody in Chile in June 1989.

The British court should allow Garzon to present some 50 cases of torture alleged to have taken place under Pinochet’s rule after 1988. That would give the case a dimension more commensurate with the terror.