Obscure Crime May Bring Down Chile’s Pinochet

Imagine him as the defendant on the first day of trial: Gen. Augusto Pinochet, senator-for-life and former dictator of Chile, accused of the torture-murder of Marcos Quezada Yanez, a 17-year-old student, in this melancholy rural town.

Although Britain’s interior minister decided Thursday to permit extradition proceedings to go forward, the vagaries of law and fate have already determined that Pinochet will not be tried for the most notorious crimes of his 17-year regime: the car-bomb assassinations by his spies in foreign capitals, the massacres in his concentration camps.

A judicial panel of Britain’s House of Lords ruled last month that Pinochet faces extradition to Spain only for offenses covered by an international law against torture ratified in 1988, the year before he stepped down. The Law Lords eliminated all charges except two alleging conspiracy to torture and a third based on the June 24, 1989, death of Quezada, a pro-democracy activist, in a shabby police lockup here.

It is poetic justice, Pinochet’s foes say, that he could be brought down by an obscure crime committed at a time when he had agreed to relinquish power and in a place in the verdant, slow-moving south of Chile that had largely avoided state terror.

“This death was the result of a state policy,” said Miriam Reyes, a Santiago human rights lawyer. “It occurred in the context of hundreds of other deaths. Pinochet has personal criminal responsibility because he tolerated, instigated and covered up the crimes.”

Quezada’s death is emblematic because it resulted from a systematic practice of torture whose architect was the tyrant himself, human rights advocates say. A Spanish judge has added at least 51 cases, mostly allegations of police abuse after 1988, to the extradition request. And advocates say the prosecution can still introduce cases dating to 1973--more than 3,000 people were killed and thousands more tortured during the dictatorship--as evidence of a conspiracy.

Extradition proceedings begin April 30 and could drag on as long as a year with appeals. Thursday’s ruling by British Home Secretary Jack Straw left it to British judges to decide whether to incorporate the new allegations and whether they are potential new charges or supporting evidence, analysts said.

The latter decision could be crucial to gaining an eventual conviction, but a treaty facilitating expedited extradition between European nations makes it likelier than ever that Pinochet will stand trial, his foes say.

“All the major hurdles have been cleared,” said Reed Brody of U.S.-based Human Rights Watch. “He can string this out, but he’s not going to escape justice now. I don’t think it matters if you have one case or 51 cases.”

The legal and philosophical questions about a dictator’s responsibility for the atrocities of his minions are thorny enough to encourage both sides. Pinochet’s partisans say the Law Lords gutted the prosecution’s case by limiting it to the 1988 anti-torture convention. They compared the reliance on cases like the Quezada death to charging President Clinton in the beating of Rodney G. King by Los Angeles police.

“Can anyone believe that [Pinochet], who didn’t know about the police operation or the arrest, picked up the phone and gave the order?” said law professor Miguel Otero. “No one has even insinuated that he knew anything about it. These are isolated, individual police cases in which the ends do not justify the means. They cannot be considered part of a state policy or the responsibility of the president.”

There is a big difference, however, between the LAPD and the Chilean national police, known as the Carabineros, who handle all patrol and crime prevention duties but remain a military force under the Defense Ministry. During the dictatorship, the commanding general of the police belonged to the military junta that governed the nation.

The challenge to prosecutors will be to establish a chain of evidence between Pinochet and low-level torturers. Pinochet’s comments over the years could come back to haunt him. In a brief to Straw, Human Rights Watch cited a 1989 speech in which the general reportedly declared, “Now they accuse us of being criminals, but yes, it was necessary to squeeze some people who wouldn’t tell us where the weapons were.”

Quezada’s brother has no trouble making the connection to Pinochet.

“If there had been justice at the time, if they had punished the officers, I would not blame Pinochet,” said Jorge Quezada, who was 15 at the time. “But Pinochet covered everything up. The police all had the general’s protection.”

Interviewed in their cramped wooden house in Malalhue, a roadside hamlet three hours from Curacautin, family members said they moved to get away from police harassment.

Even today, the police differ with the Rettig Commission, a panel that investigated atrocities under the regime and found that Marcos Quezada died as the result of torture with electricity. The military justice system ruled that he committed suicide, hanging himself with a wool jacket in his cell after his arrest for a burglary at a bakery where he worked part time, police say.

Conservative newspapers have dismissed political implications, labeling the youth a “habitual criminal.” Quezada’s record consisted of two previous arrests for petty theft, one resulting in conviction, court documents show.

“Marcos was not an angel,” said Cristian Bosay, the president of the youth division of the Party For Democracy. “But there are a lot of members of the Pinochet government whom I would accuse of being habitual criminals before I accused him.”

Quezada grew up in a lower-middle-class family. His stepfather worked in a wood-processing factory, a rare economic anchor in this town of 20,000 in a bleak foothill region that sends migrant workers across the Andes mountains to Argentina.

Quezada was tall, powerfully built and restless. He threw himself into politics with the same verve that he played sports, according to City Councilman Gustavo Weise, his political mentor. Weise led the local branch of the Party for Democracy, which overcame official persecution to play a key role in a 1988 referendum in which Chileans demanded that Pinochet step down.

“Marcos stood out for his energy, his solidarity; he was the first to go paint graffiti or pass out leaflets,” Weise said. “In a small town, the police knew all of us. They harassed us. They would stop Marcos coming out of pool halls and stores. They looked for any pretext to arrest us.”

Quezada complained that three policemen--including one who was his next-door neighbor and had a reputation as a torturer--made life miserable for him, according to friends and family. But the youth was caught up in the euphoria of the moment. Pinochet had accepted the referendum results and convoked presidential elections between a rightist candidate and Patricio Aylwin, who would be elected that December.

The center-left government argues today that, despite atrocities after the 1973 coup, systematic abuse had petered out by 1989.

“It was a different time,” said Chile’s current presidential chief of staff, John Biehl. “It was not a time when the average Chilean felt fear.” Although the coup forced Biehl into exile, he added: “The armed forces were a fundamental part of the transition, and they fulfilled their role very well.”

Pinochet foes retort that the repressive apparatus persisted. Precisely because the regime was on its last legs, preparing amnesty laws and political mechanisms to shield itself from punishment, the police had an incentive to cover up wrongdoing, Bosay said.

Quezada was arrested at about 12:45 p.m. on a Saturday after the owner of the bakery accused him of stealing a knife and a small amount of cash. He quickly confessed, police say. His jailers testified they found him hanging from the makeshift noose knotted to a rafter in a cell of the one-story station when they brought him dinner that night.

But the official autopsy challenged the police version. Dr. Wolfgang Reuter found that marks on the neck were consistent with strangulation, not hanging, and that burns on the hands were caused by electrical shocks--a classic tool of South American torturers.

“The . . . cause of death was shock caused very probably by electrical current applied to fingers on both hands,” Reuter concluded.

The doctor came under pressure and later backed down somewhat, testifying that crime scene photographs persuaded him that hanging could have caused the death. But he stuck to his assessment that torture occurred. His autopsy has become vital evidence in an international legal fight of epic proportions.

“Who would have ever thought this would happen? It had all been forgotten,” said Nelida Yanez, the youth’s mother. Yanez is willing to testify, if it ever comes to that. But she said: “I’d much rather never have been in the newspapers, never have been seen on television, and have my boy alive with me today.”