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A Chilean judge ordered the immediate confiscation of all copies of The Black Book of Chilean Justice by journalist Alejandra Matus. Police, acting on the orders of a Santiago appeals court, raided the warehouse of the publishers, Planeta, and made off with the entire stock of the book, which had been launched the previous day. Planeta's general editor, Carlos Orellana, said yesterday he was expecting police to raid bookshops across the city in search of copies already on sale.

The Black Book of Chilean Justice is said to be a well-researched expose of
corruption in the Chilean judiciary. It contains hitherto unpublished episodes involving senior justices, some of who are still in office, as well as a searing critique of the judiciary under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

Within hours of the launch, one of the judges named, Servando Jordan Lopez, filed a petititon against the author for violating the Law of State Security (LSE). This law, which dates from 1958, makes it an imprisonable offence to publish statements considered defamatory by senior officials of the government, the armed forces and the judiciary.* The judge to whom Justice Jordan filed his complaint, Rafael Huerta of the Santiago Appeals Court, opened a prosecution against Matus, and ordered the seizure of the book, with what the press described as "unusual celerity." Although the LSE does not explicitly empower judges to impound books, other Chilean laws give judges discretion to do so, at the request of any litigant filing a libel or defamation complaint. Fearing her imminent arrest, Matus took a plane to Argentina.

Jordan reacted in an identical manner to press criticism last year. Two leading Chilean journalists, Fernando Paulsen Silva, then Director of Chile's bestselling newspaper, La Tercera, and La Tercera reporter Jose Ale, are still facing charges under the LSE for articles referring to the judge, who narrowly escaped impeachment in 1997 for corruption allegations. Two others were also charged for a humor article with an irrevereant reference to Jordan. They were later released after a wave of protest.

Alejandra Matus is one of Chile's most distinguished young investigative journalists. She graduated from the Catholic University of Chile in 1987, began her career on the prestigious opposition weekly Hoy, and has subsequently worked on La Ultimas Noticias, Pluma y Pincel and Radio Nuevo Mundo. In 1990 she joined the staff of La Epoca, a now defunct newspaper which championed human rights during the last years of the military dictatorship, and in democracy. In 1996 El Pais awarded Matus and her colleague Francisco Artaza their annual Ortega y Gasset Prize for an investigation, originally published in La Nacion, of the murder in Washington of former Chilean foreign minister Orlando Letelier.

* See Human Rights Watch's November 1998 report The Limits of Tolerance: Freedom of Expression and the Public Debate in Chile for a full analysis of the State Security Law and its grave effects on freedom of expression and government accountability.

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