Rally Urges Clinton to Back Pinochet Trial
Chileans in Los Angeles demonstrated Friday night to urge the Clinton administration to support efforts to prosecute former Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet, who will try to fight extradition to Spain at a hearing Monday in London.
“Justice Must Reign--Send Him to Spain!” chanted the more than 60 demonstrators, who marched holding candles and Chilean flags in front of the Federal Building in Westwood.
Pinochet, 83, was arrested in London in October on a Spanish warrant charging him with state terrorism during his military reign from 1973 to 1990, in which more than 3,000 people were killed or disappeared. Jurists will open a new hearing Monday on whether his status as a former head of state grants him immunity.
“Only when torturers know they have no safe haven in the world will they stop,” said Dr. Jose Quiroga, who said he was in Chile’s presidential palace when soldiers attacked it during the September 1973 military coup.
The Clinton administration has agreed to declassify some U.S. documents in cooperation with Spanish prosecutors, but has stopped short of joining European nations that have endorsed Pinochet’s extradition to Spain.
California Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), noting Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega was recently tried in the United States, is urging U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno to indict Pinochet in the United States in the Letelier car bombing.
Singer Jackson Browne and state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles) also marched with the protesters.
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