Chilean Higher Court Ends Pinochet's CaseThe Chilean Supreme Court session ended at midday Friday without announcing the contents of its decision to either revoke or confirm the appeal against the stripping of Augusto Pinochet's congressional immunity.Judge Marcos Libedinsky said that the court adopted an agreement and will work in the final draft of the document. The lawyer said that the decision will be, as in normal situations, a reasoned exposition of the law in force, "and that obliges us to study the matter to confirm it or to revoke it, and that necessarily takes time," he said. It was known that the 20 lawyers of the court had stripped Pinochet of his congressional immunity on August 2, but they had agreed not to reveal the result before the signing of the agreement because of the narrow margin of the vote. In May, a Santiago court voted 13-9 to strip Pinochet, 84, of his immunity from prosecution. Pinochet appealed against that ruling in the Supreme Court. Two weeks ago, judges heard testimony from lawyers representing the families of victims of Pinochet's 17-year rule and from lawyers defending him. Pinochet ousted socialist President Salvador Allende in a bloody September 1973 coup. More than 3,000 people died or disappeared while Pinochet was president and tens of thousands of other Chileans fled the country. One of the most infamous incidents of the era involved the so-called Death Caravan, a military helicopter unit that blitzed through northern Chile in October 1973 in search of union leaders and left-wing supporters of Allende. At least 72 people were killed. |
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