Chl/Fr - Pinochet officers to be tried in absentia | Chile |
PARIS (Reuters) - France is to try 17 Chileans in absentia over the disappearance of four French or French-Chilean nationals in Chile during the rule of dictator Augusto Pinochet, the French state prosecutor's office said on Monday.
The 17, most of whom were military officers, will go on trial on charges of "arbitrary detention accompanied, or followed, by torture and barbarous acts" in a period between 1973 and 1975, it said.
Pinochet, who held power in Chile from 1973 to 1990, was implicated in the disappearance of the same four French nationals but died in December 2006 without ever facing trial.
The accused, whose trial is scheduled to be heard in a Paris court from May 19-23, include General Manuel Contreras, former head of the Dina secret police, and Paul Schaeffer, who headed a community called Dignidad that the Chilean opposition said was used by Pinochet's secret police as a torture centre.
The four who disappeared are a former counsellor to leftist President Salvador Allende, who was overthrown by Pinochet in a 1973 coup, a priest and two members of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR).
The case against the 17 alleges that Georges Klein, the counsellor, and priest Etienne Pesle were taken off to military camps in September 1973.
Prosecutors say MIR member Alphonse Chanfreau was tortured at the Dignidad camp, while Jean-Yves Claudet-Fernandez was abducted in Buenos Aires as part of a wider operation against Chilean opposition members involving other Latin America countries.
"Despite the death of Augusto Pinochet, this trial will nonetheless be a posthumous judgment on not only the dictator but also the whole of his system of repression," a statement on behalf of the families of the four victims said.
(Reporting by Thierry Leveque; Writing by Richard Balmforth; Editing by Alison Williams)
The accused, whose trial is scheduled to be heard in a Paris court from May 19-23, include General Manuel Contreras, former head of the Dina secret police, and Paul Schaeffer, who headed a community called Dignidad that the Chilean opposition said was used by Pinochet's secret police as a torture centre.
The four who disappeared are a former counsellor to leftist President Salvador Allende, who was overthrown by Pinochet in a 1973 coup, a priest and two members of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR).
The case against the 17 alleges that Georges Klein, the counsellor, and priest Etienne Pesle were taken off to military camps in September 1973.
Prosecutors say MIR member Alphonse Chanfreau was tortured at the Dignidad camp, while Jean-Yves Claudet-Fernandez was abducted in Buenos Aires as part of a wider operation against Chilean opposition members involving other Latin America countries.
"Despite the death of Augusto Pinochet, this trial will nonetheless be a posthumous judgment on not only the dictator but also the whole of his system of repression," a statement on behalf of the families of the four victims said.
(Reporting by Thierry Leveque; Writing by Richard Balmforth; Editing by Alison Williams)
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