Chilean Exiles Urge U.S. to Support Trial of Pinochet

Heriberto Rutherford was leading a quiet life as a small-town grade school teacher in Chile the night soldiers kicked in his door, dragged him out of bed and locked him in a warehouse where hundreds of prisoners were tortured and killed. He survived--with festering bayonet wounds to his stomach that required surgical repair--but he is still haunted by the screams of those who never made it out alive.

Last weekend, Rutherford and other California Chileans exiled in the wake of the September 1973 Chilean military coup met with legal experts to draw up formal testimony for what they hope will be the prosecution of former Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet--now under arrest in London--for the deaths of some of the 3,000 people slain during his 17 years of military rule.

“I would like to see justice,” Rutherford, 54, said. “This man is a monster. So many died and disappeared. So many families--like mine--were destroyed.”

Tonight at 7, Rutherford and other members of the largest Chilean exile community on the West Coast will demonstrate in front of the federal building in Westwood to urge the U.S. Justice Department to strongly support international efforts to try Pinochet for his alleged crimes--including a 1976 car bombing assassination a mile from the White House.

But such prosecution is far from certain.

Clinton administration officials, concerned about setting a precedent with deep implications for the international justice system, have declined to endorse Pinochet’s extradition to Spain, as have officials in France, Switzerland and Belgium.

“It’s awkward for them. They have an internal debate over how to handle dictators,” said Daniel Weiss, spokesman for Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), who is one of several House Democrats pressing the administration to take a stand.

“The Clinton administration has an opportunity to send a message to all dictators and terrorists that they will not receive safe haven,” he said.

British authorities arrested Pinochet as he was recovering from back surgery in London on Oct. 16, exercising a Spanish warrant charging him with state terrorism.

In November, the House of Lords ruled that Pinochet was not shielded by sovereign immunity, clearing the way for his extradition. It set aside that judgment a month later when Pinochet’s lawyers argued the case should be heard again because one of the ruling judges had ties to Amnesty International. A new panel will review the issue again Jan. 18.

U.S. officials have agreed to declassify some U.S. files on torture and killings during the coup, which occurred at a time when the CIA had a close relationship with the Chilean secret police and the Nixon administration opposed Chile’s elected Marxist president, Salvador Allende. In Washington, U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno said that Justice Department officials are studying whether Pinochet could be tried in the United States for the 1976 car bombing that killed one of his leading opponents, Orlando Letelier, who had been a foreign minister in Chile’s democratic government. Also killed was an American colleague, Ronni Karpen Moffit, whose husband of several months was riding in the back seat.

A Chilean American agent of Pinochet’s intelligence service, Michael Townley, served five years for planting the bomb, but some House Democrats want the Spanish case against Pinochet to include allegations that he ordered the Letelier bombing and other crimes.

“I would certainly be willing to testify,” said Francisco Letelier, 39, one of Letelier’s four sons, now a Southern California artist.

So would Juan Rojas, 53, who was working at his Agriculture Ministry job helping peasants obtain credit and technical assistance when soldiers burst in and rounded up everyone in the office.

For three months, he was a prisoner without a name in a cell without a number. His cell was too small to stand up in, so he crouched--naked, barefoot and blindfolded--in his own urine and feces, he said.

Between electroshock torture sessions, his captors played tapes of screaming women and children which they said were his wife and daughters being tortured. In reality, his wife was going from prison to prison looking for him, but authorities denied he had ever been arrested.

“They kept asking me where were the arms, who were my leaders in the plan for a leftist takeover of Chile,” Rojas said. “Since such a plan didn’t exist, I had nothing to tell them.”

For Chileans like Rojas, who was eventually sentenced to life in exile and deported, news of the arrest of Pinochet stirred up powerful emotions and traumatic memories.

Therapists who specialize in torture rehabilitation say that requests for counseling have shot up among California Chileans.

Heriberto Rutherford said that for years he endured anxiety attacks and depression and was plagued by a recurring nightmare of soldiers pursuing him. He received psychological counseling after he joined the 15,000-member Chilean community in Los Angeles at the suggestion of Rojas, who was a fellow political prisoner.

“Thousands of Chileans like me were detained--and not in elegant mansions--by soldiers not nearly as courteous as Scotland Yard and none of the expert legal and diplomatic assistance Pinochet has,” Rojas said. “And this man, who never had pity or clemency for anyone, dares to resist the trial he never gave thousands of disappeared Chileans whose families still do not know whether their loved ones were shot or tortured to death.”