As the three week hearing before the Law Lords drew to a close today, Human Rights Watch called on the appellate panel's seven judges to reject the claim of immunity by former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
Reed Brody, Advocacy Director for Human Rights Watch, said that lawyers for Pinochet and the government of Chile had based their case on the notion that former heads of state should be shielded from responsibility for acts such as torture and crimes against humanity. Brody said that during the Law Lords' first hearing of the case, in November, Pinochet's lawyers had avoided making the flimsy legal argument that the Convention against Torture did not create universal jurisdiction over alleged torturers.
"Pinochet's case was based on false premises to begin with, and it's even more flawed the second time around," said Brody.
Human Rights Watch, an international monitoring organization based in New York, today presented supplemental legal arguments to the House of Lords showing that the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment was enacted specifically to deny torturers a "safe haven." The convention obligates Britain to extradite General Pinochet to a country that seeks to try him, or to put him on trial in the United Kingdom.
"Pinochet's lawyers cannot change the command of international law; no one, not even a former head of state, can claim immunity for torture," said Brody. "Britain's legal obligation under the torture convention is equally clear. It must try General Pinochet, or extradite him."
The United Nations' Committee Against Torture took the unusual step of reminding the British government of this obligation in a ruling last November.
Brody asserted that Pinochet's arrest already marked a great victory. "Whatever the outcome," he said, "the mere fact that Spain, France and Switzerland are seeking to extradite Pinochet shows how far we have come. Tyrants can no longer terrorize their own populations, secure in the knowledge that at worst they'll face a tranquil exile. The Pinochet precedent has opened up new horizons for justice."
