The trial of the leaders of General Pinochet's dictatorship: more for memory than for justice?

Résumé du document

From 19 May 2008 onwards, the assizes of Paris were supposed to try in absentia fifteen leaders of General Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship, for illegal detention and torture of four French or Franco-Chilean nationals between 1973 and 1975. However, on 6 May the next year, the trial was postponed for several reasons, that left the victims' families greatly frustrated. This judicial initiative, beyond its symbolic aspect, appeared to be the result of years of struggle to bring justice to the victims of the regime's repression. The trial would have thus crowned nine years of investigation on the disappearance of Alfonso Chanfreau, Jean-Yves Claudet, George Klein and Etienne Pesle, and permitted the judgment of great criminals such as Manuel Contreras and Paul Schaefer. Obviously, Pinochet's death wrested the hope of absolute justice from the victim's families but the thrust of this historical trial goes far beyond the symbolic and will eventually sanction the crimes of Chile's darkest years, and hopefully put an end to the mourning of the departed. The families of the four victims had filed a lawsuit as soon as the news of Pinochet's arrest in London spread. With the dictator's passing, their hopes have been disappointed to some extent but it appears that the four cases will be allowed to cover all the repressive facts of the dictatorship.

Extraits

[...] Some 300 investigations are currently in process in Chile but few have yet resulted in definitive sanctions for Pinochet's limitation period and amnesty laws still partially constitute stumbling blocks. Alfonso René Chanfreau Oyarce, a French citizen, was one of the leaders of the MIR (Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria), a movement that endeavored to resist clandestinely in Santiago. He will thus embody the systematic repression of the leftist movements and political parties. Indeed, he fell under the second wave of repression, more selective and structured by the DINA (Direccion de inteligencia nacional). [...]

[...] Besides, the military has acknowledged too the implication of the Army, as an institution, in offenses against Human Rights, which comes down to repudiate the previous General. But the trial will come surely as a relief to those who suffered under the repressive regime of General Pinochet. One can remark that the responsibility of Pinochet is somehow difficult to demonstrate as far as it was merely intellectual. If the mastermind is now out of reach, we can assume that the condemnation of the ones who actually tortured the four victims and numerous others with their own hands would alleviate the pain of the ones who remain. [...]

[...] Since then, his family has not seen him again. Diverse associations such as FIDH (Fédération internationale des ligues des Droits de l'Homme), LDH (Ligue des Droits de l'Homme française), CODEPU (Corporacion de Promocion y Defensa de los Derechos del Pueblo), France Amérique Latine and the Association des anciens prisonniers politiques chiliens en France, constituted themselves as plaintiffs. For these crimes, fifteen men more or less directly implicated are to be tried, and among them all the ones cited above, except Osvaldo Romo and Javier Emilio Palacios who died in 2007, and including former DINA leader General Manuel Contreras. [...]

[...] The official reason why the trial was postponed in the first place was because several witnesses (in the United States, Latin America and Europe) were hard to reach. Me William Bourdon, one of the victims' lawyers said it was also a way to reaffirm the credibility of French judges in such a delicate situation when some could think the trial might question Chilean Courts' sovereignty. This assumption can be backed by a communiqué of the Court stating that the adjournment would allow to have “better conditions” for the debates. [...]

[...] As we said before, around the person of Augusto Pinochet revolves nimbuses that few are bold enough to pierce. The dolorous division that still exists within the Chilean society seemingly permeates all steps in the social ladder. When the FIDH organized a mission to Santiago, few were the officials that took the chance of commenting on the trial to talk about it would only revive the wounds while it is all about national reconciliation now. The symbolic trial, emblematic and historical, will shed the light on the detailed story of the repression and its logic, how a genuine “politicide” has occurred and eventually how fragile the Chilean transition appears to be eventually. [...]