Pinochet Competency Tests End

Doctors here finished tests Friday to determine whether Gen. Augusto Pinochet is mentally fit to stand trial for human rights abuses during his 1973-90 dictatorship, but it was not known when results would be released.

Despite the lack of results, Judge Juan Guzman, who is investigating more than 200 cases of Pinochet-era violence, said he had rescheduled his interrogation of the aging ex-dictator for Jan. 23.

The three days of exams at Santiago’s Military Hospital left Pinochet, 85, exhausted, said his son Marco Antonio Pinochet.

“Without a doubt, my father was extremely worn out,” he said.

The former army commander has diabetes and wears a pacemaker. His doctors say that he suffered two strokes during more than a year when he was under house arrest in Britain fighting extradition to Spain.

Anyone older than 70 facing trial in Chile has the right to a mental evaluation. Those declared mentally unfit are not tried.

Guzman ordered Pinochet placed under house arrest Dec. 1 for allegedly planning the kidnappings and murders of more than 70 leftists who were victims of the “death caravan,” a military squad that crossed Chile in the weeks after Pinochet’s 1973 coup, which ousted Socialist President Salvador Allende.

Pinochet was detained in Britain in October 1998 at the request of a Spanish judge who wanted to try him on charges of torture. He spent 503 days under house arrest before being allowed to return home after the British legal system ruled that he was too old and sick to be put on trial.