CHILE: General in Hiding a 'Coward', Say Activists
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SANTIAGO, Jun 14 (IPS) - Human rights groups in Chile described General Raul Iturriaga Neumann as "cowardly" for fleeing the justice system, which sentenced him to five years in prison for the 1974 forced disappearance of a leftwing activist.
What Iturriaga Neumann has done "is ignominious and reflects the cowardice of the country's cruellest torturers," Lorena Pizarro, president of the Association of Families of the Detained-Disappeared (AFDD), told IPS. On Wednesday, "we went to converse with the president-designate of the Supreme Court to express our concern about this incident, which we consider extremely serious, not only because of the crime against humanity committed by the officer but also because this is not an isolated incident," said Pizarro. "We believe that this is part of a manuever, of a defiant attitude against the rule of law and the judiciary," supported by other retired officers who have made statements to the press in the last few days, said the activist. Iturriaga Neumann, a retired army general, was to report to prison on Monday to begin a five-year sentence for ordering the 1974 kidnapping of 22-year-old Luis San Martin Vergara, a member of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR). Instead, the 69-year-old retired officer went into hiding. "I openly rebel against this arbitrary, biased, unconstitutional and illegal sentence. I do not accept it!" he said in an email message sent to the media Tuesday. The four-page statement began with a question: "Can the Chilean justice system convict someone for a crime they have not committed?" On Wednesday evening, television news programmes broadcast a video recording that showed Iturriaga Neumann reading his message out loud. "If the judge tried me for kidnapping, he should have proven that Luis San Martin Vergara is still alive and was kidnapped by me," he said. "I have said it before and I repeat it now: I never met nor saw Luis San Martin Vergara; I never arrested him nor ordered his arrest; I never kidnapped him nor ordered his kidnapping." "I was subjected to undue prosecution, just like approximately 500 other members of the armed forces, several of whom have been convicted for the same reason, under the complacent gaze of the government and institutions that do not defend our rights, which we are justly claiming," said Iturriaga Neumann. "I have put up with many things... detentions, endless depositions, identity parades with false witnesses, humiliations, double standards, bias, psychological exams, suffering on the part of my family and friends, loss of work, personal financial chaos, judicialised political persecution, etc.," he added. "Must we continue to put up with this? I won't any longer!" he declared. But Nelson Caucoto, lawyer for the plaintiffs, pointed out that the case was appealed and studied by three courts, and that the accused was found guilty by all of them. Because the crime of kidnapping is considered to be ongoing until the victim is found dead or alive, the 1978 amnesty issued by dictator Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) did not apply to this case. The amnesty let off the hook those guilty of human rights crimes committed between the Sep. 11, 1973 coup in which Pinochet overthrew socialist president Salvador Allende and 1978. Iturriaga Neumann was initially sentenced to 10 years by Santiago Appeals Court Judge Alejandro Solis. But the Supreme Court cut the sentence in half. His victim, San Martin Vergara, disappeared after he was taken to a detention centre run by the Direccion de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA), the dictatorship's secret police. The general was a department head in DINA, which operated from 1974 to 1978 and was responsible for a large part of the 1,119 forced disappearances and 1,800 murders of leftists, trade unionists and opposition leaders committed during the dictatorship led by Pinochet, who died last December at the age of 91. The police have a warrant to find Iturriaga Neumann which gives them broad powers to search any locale or residency where they suspect he may be hiding. Before the elderly retired general sent his email message, his family was worried that he might have committed suicide, as other members of the military facing prosecution for human rights abuses have done. Iturriaga Neumann is also accused of the 1974 assassination in Buenos Aires of General Carlos Prats, who remained loyal to the constitution and refused to take part in the coup, and his wife Sofia. In addition, he has been convicted in absentia by the Italian courts for the 1975 assassination attempt in Rome against Bernardo Leighton, interior minister under president Eduardo Frei Montalva (1964-1970), which severely injured the Christian Democratic politician and left his wife Anita permanently disabled. The retired general cannot leave the country because he is wanted on human rights charges by Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon, who became famous for Pinochet's 1998 arrest in London. Ricardo Lagos Weber, spokesman for the centre-left government of President Michelle Bachelet, said Wednesday that "General Iturriaga Neumann lost this legal battle, and must now turn himself in to the justice system and serve the sentence he has been handed by the judicial process to which he had access in a fair and democratic manner." Interior Minister Belisario Velasco said that in Chile "there is a state of law" and "no one is above the law." Retired general Guillermo Garin, who was close to Pinochet in his last years, said the sentiments expressed by Iturriaga Neumann in his statement "are quite widespread" among retired officers. |
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