It’s been three years since Gen. Augusto Pinochet was detained in London under the European Anti-Terrorism Convention for crimes that included terrorist atrocities. If George W. Bush is serious about directing “every resource at our command” to defeating terrorism, Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archive reminds us, there’s one relatively easy step he can take: Indict the former Chilean dictator.
General Pinochet, whose rise to power with US support in 1973 first marked September 11 as a bloody day in history, is responsible for what was considered until that hijacked jet rammed the Pentagon as the most infamous act of political terrorism committed in our nation’s capital–the September 21, 1976, car-bombing murders of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt. Janet Reno’s Justice Department concluded as much after reopening an investigation into his culpability in 1998, sending a team of FBI agents to Chile and reviewing hundreds of still top-secret intelligence reports. But Attorney General John Ashcroft’s Justice Department, which inherited the all-but-signed indictment, has refused to prosecute the case–without explanation.
“There is no room for neutrality on terrorism,” New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said in his October 1 speech to the United Nations. “On one side is democracy, the rule of law and respect for human life. On the other is tyranny, arbitrary executions and mass murder.” Pinochet clearly falls into the latter camp. By indicting the general, George W. Bush can signal the world that the United States will use international law-enforcement powers to pursue those who commit atrocities on our soil. And it would show that Washington’s “zero tolerance” for terrorism extends to those who were once our allies, as well as those who are our sworn enemies.
