From Craig Murray
My father is a Chilean political refugee. He fled the country after the military coup in 1973. After years of half-stories too painful to recount fully, last night he finally put a figure on the losses he suffered – 16 of his friends and colleagues disappeared, no doubt tortured and killed by Pinochet’s guard. The location of their bodies is still unknown today.
That’s why exiles, survivors and families left behind will not see Pinochet’s death as a triumph, nor the conclusion of their suffering.
No cause to rejoice? I completely agree. The bastard got away with it, to the end of his days. He escaped justice, mainly because, unlike other dictators we could name, he never turned around and bit his former Western allies in the arse.
Knowing about the relationship between Chile and the UK in the 80s makes me ashamed to be British.
9-11 has a very different meaning for those of us who were around Latin America in 1973.
I don’t know if Pinochet really got away with anything. He was an arrogant man who suddenly had to feign dementia in order to avoid international warrants, and was exposed for being a petty crook and thief of public funds (funded from I wonder what? Arms sales? Drug trafficking?) who was exposed in the end as interested at enriching himself than in promoting the goals he said he stood for. Ideally he would have been placed in a cage somewhere, but we rarely get perfect justice. Being exposed and reviled as a fraud and having to feign senility must have grated at him enormously.