LATIN AMERICA : Chile’s Political Prisoners Put Aylwin on Spot

Free the freedom-fighters, the left demands. Don’t turn the terrorists loose, the right protests.

President Patricio Aylwin is caught in the middle.

Nearing the end of his four-year term, Aylwin faces some of his hardest decisions yet on the tough issue of what to do with “subversives” convicted for violent crimes under the former dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

When Aylwin took office in March, 1990, almost 400 Chileans were in jail for politically motivated offenses under the Pinochet regime. Presidential pardons and commuted sentences have helped whittle that number down to 11. But some of the last cases are the most controversial.

In his latest act of leniency, just before Christmas, Aylwin freed a Communist guerrilla who had been sentenced to 35 years in prison by a military court for a 1986 robbery-ambush in which a member of Chile’s Carabineros police force was killed. Aylwin, acting with his legal authority, commuted the sentence to exile in Belgium.

“As if Carabineros did not have a right to life and to justice,” protested the policeman’s mother. Such protests have reverberated loudly in the Chilean news media.

“One of the most criticized aspects of the current government’s performance has been its policy on pardons,” said an editorial Wednesday in the conservative daily newspaper El Mercurio.

In all, Aylwin has commuted the sentences of 18 leftists convicted of violent political crimes, exiling them to Europe. More than 150 other political prisoners have received pardons and are free in Chile.

Perhaps the most controversial pending requests for pardons are those of three men serving life sentences for an attempt to assassinate Pinochet in 1986. He escaped, but five of his bodyguards were killed.

Pro-Pinochet Sen. Eugenio Cantuarias has warned that pardons for those prisoners would “necessarily affect” the “climate of trust that should exist between the armed forces and civilians.” Although Pinochet gave up government power in 1990, he remains commander of the army.

Those who favor release of all political prisoners argue that most of them already have served long terms and that many did not receive fair trials in military courts. They say the pardons contribute to peace and reconciliation in a country that was violently divided.

Leftists claim that violence used to resist the dictatorship was legitimate. Former rebel Belinda Zubicueta, pardoned in October, declared that she had been “unjustly jailed all these years for exercising my legitimate right to rebellion against a dictatorship that imposed state terrorism in our country.”

Chile’s private Commission for the Defense of the People, which provides legal aid to political prisoners, does not condone acts of terrorism but pushes for pardons on the grounds that the 16-year military regime was a period of serious human rights violations, arbitrary rule and abnormal judicial processes.

It is difficult for Aylwin to ignore that kind of reasoning when it comes from political allies such as the Socialist Party, which was brutally persecuted early in the military regime and now shares power with the president’s Christian Democratic Party.

But critics argue that crimes in which blood was shed should not be “rewarded” with leniency.

Aylwin’s justice minister said last week that the president will not leave any of the pending requests for pardons unresolved when he hands over power in March to his elected successor, Eduardo Frei. Even if Frei is spared having to deal with those requests, however, others are expected to arise.

Dozens of the former regime’s political prisoners who now are free on recognizance still have charges pending against them, as do many rebels who fled military rule and now plan to return. If they are convicted, Frei will face the issue of whether to pardon them.

Leaders’ Lingering Problem

The question of what to do with political prisoners is a prickly matter that spans three changes of the nation’s leadership.

Gen. Augusto Pinochet

Nearly 400 Chileans were in jail for “subversion” when former dictator stepped down in 1990. Three had tried to assassinate him.

President Patricio Aylwin

Aylwin has pardoned most political prisoners or commuted their sentences. But 11 controversial cases remain unresolved.

Eduardo Frei

President-elect takes office in March. Aylwin has vowed to resolve all requests for pardons by then. But others may arise.