General, Go Home and Fade Away

For nearly 15 months, the British justice system has given the world a lesson in how to conduct an extradition procedure for which there was no precedent. The handling of the complicated and politically sensitive case of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was legally precise and humanely responsible, and no one should be surprised that the proceedings are about to come to a just conclusion.

A report by four British medical specialists indicates that the 84-year-old retired general is unfit to stand trial. Now Home Secretary Jack Straw is expected to deny extradition requests by Spain and several other nations, and Pinochet is likely to return to Santiago.

The medical report leaves Straw no option but to decide that Pinochet should not be extradited. Spain has announced it will abide by Straw’s decision. France, Belgium and Switzerland, the other countries that made extradition requests, should follow suit.

The legal struggle began with Pinochet’s 1998 arrest in England on a Spanish judge’s request to send him to Madrid to face 35 charges of torture and conspiracy to torture stemming from the 1970s, when he ruled Chile with an iron fist. Straw has handled the case gingerly but correctly, and Baltazar Garzon, the Spanish judge who first sought extradition of the Chilean, has helped set a new human rights precedent in his pursuit of the dictator. His action has made it less likely that tyrants will escape answering for their crimes.

We hope that the news of Pinochet’s probable release won’t affect Chile’s presidential election this Sunday. He is not being sent home to revive his fascist regime but to await a natural death, an opportunity that his regime denied to thousands in the democratic opposition. If Pinochet has any decency left, he will immediately resign as senator-for-life and forsake politics. If he is unfit to be tried for the crimes of which he’s accused, surely he is unfit to serve in the Chilean Senate.