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| GENERAL AUGUSTO PINOCHET | |
 October 19, 1998 
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ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: For more now we are joined by Arturo Valenzuela, director of the Center for Latin American Studies at Georgetown University. He has written several books on Chile and served in the State Department in the first Clinton term; and Ruth Wedgewood, international law professor at Yale University, and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Thank you for being with you us. Mr. Valenzuela, how was the arrest being received in Chile, first by the government? |
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Reactions in Chile. |
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ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And this throws a monkey wrench in it? ARTURO VALENZUELA: And throws a monkey wrench completely, and this is why the government is really quite nervous about it, doesn't want this to affect its delicate balance internally, and it wants, therefore, Pinochet not to be prosecuted outside of Chile. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What about other political forces? ARTURO VALENZUELA: Well, other political forces, of course, are reacting differently. The left in Chile is applauding this particular event, because they see this as a vindication for their position, and they would like to have this man tried for the violations of human rights that occurred in his regime. Now, the current government is a center left government. It's a very complicated center left government, and this could, of course, jeopardize the unity of that center left government. As the left says, bravo, we're happy with the Spanish judge's action and we hope Pinochet will be tried abroad because he wasn't able to be tried here, and the right says, oh my gosh, you can't do that, he saved Chile from Communism and, therefore, we really must stand by him. So there's a real tension in Chile.
ARTURO VALENZUELA: Well, Chile is a very divided country and remains so, and in some ways this transition has papered over some of the wounds of the past that haven't really been fully come to grips with. And one third of the country is probably very much against the military government. One third of the country thinks the military government saved Chile, and then the other third is sort of in the middle, so I would think that there's a very strong segment of the country that would like to see him tried and an equally strong segment of the country that would like to see him exonerated, of course, of any action. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Ruth Wedgewood, explain the legal aspects of this. We got some of this in Charles's report, but let's go into some more depth. First, why Spain? |
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Why Spain? |
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RUTH WEDGEWOOD, Council on Foreign Relations: Well, Spain is a particularly cogent actor here, because some of the victims of the terror and torture that Pinochet carried out were Spanish nationals or held dual Spanish citizenship. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And what are the - what's the law under which this is being done, this European convention on terrorism? Explain that.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Why is Spain - the judges are bringing the case because of the Spaniards, but they're also bringing that case on behalf of the thousands of other people killed too, right? How does that work? RUTH WEDGEWOOD: They have alternative ways to justify what they're doing. First is again the right to protect their own citizens. The second is the idea of universal jurisdiction that genocide or terrorism or torture are such horrendous crimes that any other country, Germany, a country that has no citizens involved, has the right potentially to try those cases as well. And what's controversial here, I suppose, is that indeed, as other guests said, the Chilean democratic government thought it had to make a compromise in order to have a transition of power, and here you have a foreign government disregarding the compromise. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay. I'm going to come back to that in a minute, but first, has this law, has the International Convention on Terrorism or the European convention ever been used in this way? Has it ever been a head of state, taken, arrested in this way? RUTH WEDGEWOOD: This three-way ricochet, I don't believe so, no. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Valenzuela, has anybody been prosecuted in Chile for any crimes that took place -- ARTURO VALENZUELA: Yes.
ARTURO VALENZUELA: There have been some prosecutions in Chile but most of the criminal abuses of power - of human rights violations - were exempted by a 1978 amnesty law. The amnesty law exempted a few people from prosecution and in fact today in Chile the head of the secret police, the former secret police, General Contreras, is in prison for human rights abuses. But most cases have been thrown out by the courts precisely because of the amnesty law that Pinochet had established before he left office. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: So this is really a very important development in Chile? ARTURO VALENZUELA: I think it sets really a new precedent, but here we have a tension between international human rights law for one - on the one hand - and human rights conventions, and the national law of a country. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Ms. Wedgewood, give us some idea of how this evolved in international law. This is something that didn't just happen, right? RUTH WEDGEWOOD: Well, it's been a long steady development, if you like. When Nuremberg said that there are crimes against humanity that can be tried by international tribunals, the Geneva Conventions that were created in 1949 after the war, established the idea of universal jurisdiction for war crimes in international wars. What's new is applying this to civil wars, to civil conflicts, and there there has been a gradual evolution -- in the negotiations for the Rome criminal court, which just took place this past summer, for example, you had the idea of taking jurisdiction even over state nationals where their own state had not signed up to be a member of the court. You have the Rwanda tribunal, the Yugoslavian tribunal established by the UN Security Council to cover civil conflicts as well. So the idea that you have to have some kind of international venue to remedy grotesque crimes against humane standards has been, I think, developing quite productively and rapidly the last decade.
RUTH WEDGEWOOD: Well, the worry is you point out, I think, that in not respecting local amnesty is that it may throw off the very delicate political balance that you needed to get the colonels back into their barracks, and the strong argument can be made that in general if local liberal democratic regimes in a transition think they need to promise amnesty and simply rely upon the Truth Commission or up on the judgment of history in order to work the situation out, that one should, in general, defer to their judgment. But here again where the Spanish nationals - Spain has its own independent interest - I think it's the strongest kind of facts that a Chilean government cannot willy nilly torture Spanish citizens. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And Mr. Valenzuela, what's the U.S. government's role in this? I know the Spanish government has asked the U.S. government for information that the CIA or FBI might have gathered about crimes under the Pinochet era. |
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U.S. involvement.
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ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What do you think the wider implications of this are for Latin America as a whole? There are former dictators from Guatemala to Argentina in Latin America. ARTURO VALENZUELA: Well, see, this, again, is this delicate balance that sometimes you have to turn the page and you have to sort of say we have to put behind us the horrors of the past. Most countries like Chile have tried to do this by looking to find the truth, but not necessarily to find full justice. That is, they have to sort of turn the eye away from prosecution of those who were involved in criminal kinds of procedures, and I'm afraid that this may be what's necessary from a realist's point of view. On the other hand, I do sympathize and do understand the position of those who lost loved ones and who think - and this is a legitimate concern - that there are some crimes - crimes of genocide or of torture or of terrorism - that are so heinous that we need to have some kind of international system, international convention, to be able to go after those crimes, even when national legislatures or judicial systems aren't capable of doing so. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Ruth Wedgewood, what are the options available to the British, to Britain now?
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Well, thank you both very much. |
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ARTURO
VALENZUELA, Georgetown University: Well, this is a political earthquake
in Chile, and the government is very nervous about it, because what
you need to understand is that Chile in transition has been an elaborately
crafted set of compromises, the most important compromise of which was
that Pinochet status, commander of the army, and now is senator for
life, and so he is immune from any kind of prosecution in Chile. This
was part of the deal that the Chilean Democrats had to put together
with the outgoing military government in order to be able to come into
power. 
ELIZABETH
FARNSWORTH: And you've written about this. How does the public come
down? What do you know about that would a poll show? 
RUTH
WEDGEWOOD: Sure. Well, Spain says it has a right to charge Pinochet
for the murder of these Spanish nationals because it has a right to
protect its own citizens, the right that we in the U.S. claim for our
own citizens as well from time to time. And England says that obligation
is as a member of the European Union, European Community to render unto
another member of the European Community, criminals who have fled abroad,
and Pinochet is wanted in Spain, so the UK has the obligation to surrender
him to Spain. 
ELIZABETH
FARNSWORTH: -- like the ones the Spaniards are - 
ELIZABETH
FARNSWORTH: But it could mean that any person from any country who was
a head of state that some other country considered did something that
was against these laws that have to do with terrorism could be tried
in any country, people might be afraid to travel, right, heads of state,
or secretaries of state, or ministers of whatever? 
ARTURO
VALENZUELA: Well, the U.S. government actually has been providing information
to the Spanish courts on this issue, as they have also been providing
some information to Argentine courts that have been looking into this,
but this is more of a judicial process. So far, the official position
of the U.S. government is that this, in fact, is a judicial issue, and
they have not taken any official stance on it. 
RUTH
WEDGEWOOD: Well, the Brits have been asked to surrender Pinochet to
the Spanish, as you know. This is a two-part procedure. The courts will
look at it first to see if there's probable cause to believe that Pinochet
committed these crimes. I suspect the case there is very strong, and
then the home secretary of Britain, Jack Straw, also has the option
of denying extradition if he chooses to on political or other unspoken
grounds. There also actually is a kind of backlash in Spain, itself,
where the government has questioned the judgment of the magistrate,
so you may see the Chilean government trying to exercise pressure both
on the British directly and through the Spanish government as well.
But one thing I wanted to point out, though. If you're talking about
the policy issues involved, you do want to have the ability to have
international autocrats, travel internationally, if it's necessary to
make peace to go into peace negotiations, either of the parties in the
Palestinian/Israeli peace process not wanting any liability abroad,
but at the same time, Pinochet is functionally retired. It was only
medical treatment. It didn't inhibit any kind of ongoing negotiation.
His claim to diplomatic immunity is not well founded. So I think in
this case it's a very strong set of facts on which to proceed.