FIDH, LDH and CODEPU: Trial of the Pinochet dictatorship

The organisations FIDH, LDH and CODEPU have released this press note on the trial to 19 persons involved in acts of torture and disappearances of 4 french citizens in Chili during the dictatorship.The alledged include Augusto Pinochet, who was identified as the most senior official responsible for these crimes. The trial for 14 of the perpretators will be held before the Paris Cour d’assises – the highest French criminal court – from 8 to 17 December 2010 against some of the alleged perpetrators of the crimes of torture and enforced disappearance committed against Franco-Chilean citizens during the first years of the military dictatorship in Chile.

Extracts of the press release:

On 16 October 1998 General Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London at the request of the Spanish judicial authorities.
In the days that followed, the families of nine French citizens who had disappeared or were executed in Chile or in Argentina (but for acts that could be attributed to the Chilean authorities), between 11 September 1973
(the date of the coup d’Etat) and 9 February 1977, filed complaints in France to obtain the truth and justice that they have not obtained in Chile.

[...]

The trial of the Pinochet dictatorship - A historic trial
This trial is of historic value in several respects Beyond recognition of the individual responsibility of the accused, the trial will be the opportunity to establish and punish the system of repression set up and operated
by the Pinochet dictatorship that reigned in Chile from 1973 to 1990.
Although there are existing proceedings in Chile, none of these has concerned the victims of different crimes jointly, to permit a complete picture to be drawn up of the way the dictatorship operated. Furthermore, proceedings relate here to significant events at the start of the dictatorship that are characteristic of the way it functioned and make its modus operandum perfectly clear:

•  the bombing of the Moneda Presidential Palace and the arrest of the advisers of Salvador Allende;
•  the systematic repression of opponents (amongst whom were activists of the Revolutionary left wing movement MIR) and persons linked to the former government (such as those involved with the great land reform embarked on by Allende);
•  the extremely hierarchical operation of DINA, the junta’s political police force (under the direct orders of Augusto Pinochet and Manuel Contreras);
•  Operation Condor, which aimed at eliminating opponents of the region’s dictatorial regimes;
•  the crimes systematically committed under the Pinochet dictatorship in torture centres such as London 38, Villa Grimaldi, or “Colonia Dignidad” (the latter was
• created and directed by Paul Schaeffer, a former Nazi war criminal).

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