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| GENERAL AUGUSTO PINOCHET | |
 October 19, 1998 
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Today, Pinochet is revered by the right for restoring order to Chile and for introducing free market capitalism to a country that had nationalized much of its economy by the time Pinochet seized power. Most development economists said the free market plan would never work. Yet in recent years Chile has become one of the world's fastest- growing economies -- a model for developing countries from Latin America to Eastern Europe and even the former Soviet Union itself. But to restore order after the coup and later to eliminate resistance to the new economic program, Pinochet presided over a regime that was notoriously brutal in pursuit of its opponents and its ideological enemies. Once in power, Pinochet used state terror in ways that had never been seen before in Latin America, ordering the arrest, torture and execution of more than 3,000 suspected leftists.
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Operation Condor |
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And, after giving up the presidency, he remained commander in chief of Chile's armed forces until earlier this year, when he became a senator-for-life. Britain is one of the few countries in the world that would grant Pinochet a visa, so it was no accident that he was at a medical clinic in London recovering from an operation when he was arrested. British police acted at the behest of a Spanish judge in Madrid named Baltasar Garzon. The judge is investigating the disappearances of Spanish citizens -- and the thousands of others -- killed in Chile after the coup.
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CHARLES
KRAUSE: Arrested Friday in London, Chile's former president, General
Augusto Pinochet, is a larger-than-life figure who's played a key role
in shaping Latin America's recent economic and political history. Dour
and ramrod straight, it was Pinochet who led the bloody 1973 coup that
overthrew Chile's democratically elected government, led by socialist
president Salvador Allende. 
Many
of them were kidnapped, never to be seen again, and became known as
"desapparicidos"---the disappeared. Today, there's a memorial to them
and to the others who died after the coup at Santiago's general cemetery.
Under Pinochet, Chile also entered into an agreement with military governments
in neighboring countries to kidnap and kill suspected leftists. The
agreement was code-named "Operation Condor." 
As
knowledge of the human rights situation became widely known, Pinochet
and his government became pariahs in the eyes of most of the international
community. But Pinochet retained a strong grip on Chile itself until
1988. It was then that he lost a plebiscite which would have allowed
him to remain in power as Chile's president for another eight years.
Ultimately, he recognized and accepted the vote, and voluntarily turned
over power to a democratically elected civilian government in 1990.
But before leaving, he arranged for an amnesty to pardon all human rights
abuses committed by the military -- including himself -- during the
so-called years of emergency. 
Last
week, Garzon issued an arrest warrant for Pinochet -- requesting that
Britain extradite the 82-year-old general to be questioned for what
the judge called "crimes of genocide and terrorism including murder."
Stunned by the arrest, Chile's government has demanded that Pinochet
be freed, arguing that the general has diplomatic immunity because he
was traveling on a diplomatic passport. But Britain has apparently rejected
that argument although a final decision on the extradition request has
not yet been made by Britain's home secretary, Jack Straw.