Raul Rettig; Led Probe of Human Rights Abuses by Pinochet Regime

Raul Rettig, 91, the Chilean lawyer who led an official investigation into human rights abuses during the regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Rettig headed the Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, which was charged with documenting the crimes of the Pinochet dictatorship. Rettig’s 1991 report, ordered by then-President Patricio Aylwin, was based on testimony, legal documents, government files, press reports and information collected by human rights organizations on political killings and disappearances during the 16 years that Pinochet was in power. It told of more than 3,000 politically motivated deaths and disappearances between 1973 and 1989 and led to the reinstitution of some judicial processes that had been suspended during the dictatorship. Rettig had been a national senator, Cabinet member, ambassador and president of the Chilean Bar Assn. He headed an eight-member panel and staff of 55, made up mostly of young lawyers and legal interns who interviewed witnesses and relatives of the Pinochet regime’s victims. He once fired a pistol in a duel with a young Marxist congressman, Salvador Allende, who later became the president toppled by Pinochet in a violent 1973 coup. The reasons for the duel, in which both men fired shots but missed, were never revealed. Afterward, the two men became friends. Allende, as president, named Rettig ambassador to Brazil. On Sunday of a heart attack at his Santiago residence.