Justice: The First Casualty of Truth?

If Gen. Augusto Pinochet had not been arrested in England on the night of October 16, 1998, the truth about his crimes would never have been fully revealed and democracy in Chile might have remained in a state of arrested development.

Eight years after Pinochet relinquished power, he still cast a long shadow over Chilean society. The Senate was stacked with his supporters. The Chilean courts lacked true independence. Painfully little progress had been made in restoring democratic rights to the importance they had enjoyed before the military takeover. Although a majority of Chileans hoped that Pinochet would stand trial for the atrocities committed during his rule, the "Senator for Life" benefited from parliamentary immunity and a 1978 amnesty that the military had granted itself. In the face of Pinochet's lingering power, the elected government quickly abandoned its pledge to seek derogation or annulment of the self-amnesty law. Indeed, despite a highly regarded report by a government-sponsored truth commission, proof of Pinochet's own role in the worst atrocities remained largely circumstantial.

Pinochet's arrest by British police, and his seventeen months of humiliating detention, changed all that, unleashing a renewed debate in Chile about the legacy of the military government and rekindling hopes of justice for Pinochet's thousands of victims. Previously timid Chilean judges began looking for chinks in the dictator's legal armor. After decades of silence, Pinochet's former collaborators stepped forward to tell of his role in covering up atrocities, revelations that have had a snowball effect.

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